Richard Stark - The Hunter

“Anytime, dear heart. We’re friends, aren’t we?” The sarcasm twisted her mouth.

He reached into his pocket, dragged out his wallet. “I meant it about the twenty bucks,” he said.

She looked at the two tens he held out to her, hesitating.

“Oh, go to hell, will you? Get yourself killed, you bastard. Seven years, and you don’t even ask me how I’ve been.”

Parker put the tens back in the wallet, the wallet back in his pocket. “The next time,” he said, “I’ll bring slides.”

She snatched up a frog, spun around to hurl it at him, and stopped. He stood waiting, looking at her. Her arm dropped. She muttered, “I ought to tell him you’re coming.”

“You don’t want to do that,” he said. He walked to the door.

The waitress kept asking him if he wanted anything else.

It distracted him from looking out at the street. She had a band on her finger, so finally he said, “What’s the matter, don’t you get enough from your husband?” So after that she left him alone.

She glared awhile from the other end of the counter, but he could ignore that. He could look out at the street, and let his fifteen-cent cup of coffee cool. It was a Park Avenue coffee shop, and expensive. Pastrami on rye, eighty-five cents, no butter. Like that.

Directly across the street was the Oakwood Arms, a gray stone hulk with a modest marquee. A thin tall white-haired guy worked the front steps with a yellow-handled broom for a while, then went back inside. He and the doorman were both in blue uniforms with yellow trim.

A cab pulled up and two hefty matrons got out, giggling at each other as they pawed through their pocketbooks to pay the cabby. A blue-uniformed bellboy trotted through the revolving door and down the clean steps and the cabby opened the trunk. One matron had light blue luggage, the other light gray.

The cabby drove away, with a fifteen percent tip on the button, and as the matrons and bellboys were going in a guy in a pale gray suit came out, looking prosperous, followed by a younger guy in a black suit, looking cautious. Parker watched the two of them, ticking them off in his mind. Outfit wheel and bodyguard.

The wheel flagged a cab, while the bodyguard looked all around, and then they got in and drove away.

It was getting dark now. The hell of it was, he didn’t know whether Mal was out or in. If he was out, then he’d have to wait while he went in and then came back out again. If he was in, it would be simpler.

Guests arrived, most of them obvious tourists, a few obvious Outfit people, a few others borderline. None of them Mal, and none of them he recognized. Aside from himself, there was no stakeout outside the building.

But he knew what there’d be inside: two or three guys sitting around in lobby chairs, reading papers, glancing up whenever somebody came in. If the somebody was wrong, a somebody the Outfit didn’t want there, the two or three guys would put down their papers and saunter over and book-end him away through a door out of the lobby. They’d take him into a back room where they could ask him what they wanted to or tell him what they wanted to tell him.

Mal had picked a good place to live. It would be tough to get in there without being spotted. To left and right of the lobby entrance were storefronts with street entrances, a cigar store to the left and a coffee shop to the right. There’d be entrances from them into the hotel, but that wasn’t any good. Those entrances would be watched, too.

The waitress came back, still angry. “If you don’t want anything else,” she said, “let someone else sit down.”

He looked down the counter. Half the stools were empty. “Another cup of coffee,” he said. “This one’s cold.”

She was going to say something, but the owner was sitting at the cash register, looking over at them. She took the coffee cup away, brought it back refilled, and added another fifteen cents onto his check.

He was going to have to find someplace else to watch from. Next door on one side was a florist and then the corner, on the other side an antique store and a shoe store and other impossibilities all the way down to the next corner. But this place would close eventually, and the waitress irritated him.

Maybe the second floor of something. He left the new cup of coffee but no tip, paid the owner his thirty cents, and walked out to the street. Across the way, an Outfit girl got out of a cab and hip-swiveled up the steps. The doorman grinned at her and she grinned back.

Parker stood on the sidewalk, looking up at the things printed on second-story windows. A dentist, a beauty parlor, a secondhand clothing store, a stamp and coin store, another dentist. It was getting dark and the lights were out behind all the windows except the clothing store. He glanced across the street, but nothing was happening.

The door beside the coffee shop said it was the entrance to the dentist and the beauty shop. It also said there was a wig store and a lawyer on the third floor. Parker went in and up the stairs. Mal might be coming out right now, while he was on the stairs.

He went up the stairs mad and came to the landing. Dentist to the right, beauty parlor to the left, frosted glass in the upper half of the doors. There was light against the glass of the beauty parlor door. He knocked, clenching his other fist impatiently, and after a minute a shadow showed on the glass and a woman’s voice called, “Who is it?”

“I’ve got the coffee.”

After a puzzled second, she said, “What coffee? I didn’t order any coffee.”

“From the shop downstairs,” he said. “The boss said the beauty parlor.”

“But I didn’t order any coffee.”

“Lady,” he said, “they give me the order for the beauty shop.”

She opened the door to argue with him, a small woman with too much makeup on, and as her eyes were widening he clipped her, base-joint knuckles against the tip of her chin. Her eyes rolled back and she fell like glass.

He went in, closing the door fast, stepping over her. It was an anteroom. A gooseneck lamp lit the money on the desk. She’d been counting the day’s take.

He went through the other door to the darkened room where all the machinery was, the dryers looking like big-headed praying mantises. He looked down through the word Beauty on the window. Nothing was happening. Maybe Mal came out while he was on the stairs. All right, he’d be back before morning.

Maybe that Outfit girl was for him. Maybe he wouldn’t be going out at all. All right, all right, he had time. He had nothing but time.

In the dark, he unplugged two dryers, ripped the cords loose at the bases, carried them back to the other room. The woman hadn’t moved. He used one cord to tie her hands behind her, the other to tie her ankles. He found scissors in a desk drawer next to an inhaler, snipped off part of her slip and used it for a gag. She had good legs — But not now. After it was over, after Mal was dead, he’d want somebody then.

He went back to the other room, dragged a chair over to the window, sat down and smoked. People went in, people went out.

It was a bad position. If Mal came out and flagged a cab, then what? He might have to wait a few minutes for the cab, time for Parker to get downstairs, but maybe not. If he came out and walked, that would be better. If he didn’t come out at all, that would be worse.

There had to be a way in there. The hotel wasn’t right on the corner. There was a slender office building next to it on that side. Another hotel on the other side. The Oakwood Arms went eleven stories, the hotel on its left only nine. The office building went twenty-some.

In from the roof? Then he’d have to get down to the third floor. He didn’t like that way. But if nothing happened before two o’clock, he’d have to try it.