Richard Stark - The Hunter

People went in, people came out. He recognized one guy; he’d seen him around Chicago. An Outfit man. But no Mal.

He finished his last cigarette, and that made him nervous. He didn’t want to leave the window, but he did. The woman’s purse was on the desk, shoved back out of the way of the money. She had half a pack of filters. He slipped them in his shirt pocket.

He looked over at her; she was still out. That bothered him. She was on her side, her face in shadow. He went over and looked more closely, and her eyes were bugged halfway out of their sockets, her throat and face bluish red and mottled. He remembered the inhaler that had been in the drawer with the scissors. She’d had sinus trouble or something like that, and her nose clogged up.

It was stupid. He didn’t like it, it was stupid. There wasn’t any reason for her to be dead. There wasn’t any reason for a gag across the mouth to make her dead. Angry at the stupidity, he went back into the other room and sat down at the window again. He smoked the filters, but they were too mild. He couldn’t taste a thing, so he dragged too deeply and smoked too frequently and his throat got sore. And it was getting close in there.

He waited and he watched. And no Mal. At two o’clock, there was one Newport left. He left it in its crush-proof box on her desk, with the money. His prints were all over everything. Ronald Casper, the vag who killed the guard out in California, had killed again. It wasn’t worth it to try to wipe all the prints away. If they ever got him, the California guard would be enough. They wouldn’t need this broad with congestion trouble.

He went down the stairs to the street, and into the coffee shop. They were just closing up; a colored boy was mopping the floor, the chairs were all upended on the tables.

The owner was behind the counter now, two customers sat on stools. Parker said, “A pack of Luckies, and eight coffees to go. Five regular, two with sugar, one black.”

“You just made it,” the owner told him. “I’m just closing up. Two o’clock — closing up.”

“If you got a little cardboard box,” Parker said, “it’ll be easier to carry than a bag.”

“Five minutes later,” the owner told him, “you’d of been out of luck.”

He opened the Luckies right away and lit one. Then he paid for the coffees, which were in a shallow gray cardboard box, and the owner held the door open for him.

He went diagonally across the street to the office building. If Mal came out right now, it would be another stupidity. He would see Parker, and duck back inside and stay there. And make the whole thing tougher.

But Mal didn’t come out. And the office building on the corner was open twenty-four hours. That meant there was an employee on all night to run the elevator and open and shut the door for late-working tenants. Watching from the beauty shop window, Parker had seen three men come out of there a little after midnight and the employee lock up again after them. And on a few floors there were still lights on.

There were four glass doors in a row. Looking through them, he could see two elevators and a guy in a gray uniform sitting on a kitchen chair beside a wooden podium with a sign-in book on it. The guy was reading the News.

Parker kicked the door down at the bottom where the metal was, and the guy put down his News and strolled across the shiny geometric floor. He studied Parker and then noticed the carton of coffee, then nodded and knelt on one knee to unlock the door. The lock was down next to the floor in the metal strip along the bottom of the door.

Parker went in, and the employee locked the door again. He straightened arthritically and said, “Nice night.”

“Uh huh.”

They went back to the elevators. Both were at ground floor, but only one had a light on inside. They got into that one and Parker said, “Twelve.”

“Right.”

On the way up, the operator wanted to know if Parker had read that thing in the paper about them two kids, and Parker said no he hadn’t. They got to the twelfth floor and he said, “You want me to wait?”

“No,” Parker said. “I got five here, and three on the tenth. I can walk down to the tenth and then I’ll buzz you.”

“Okay by me.”

The doors slid shut, and Parker dropped the carton, not caring where it went. It hit the floor and the coffee containers rolled and spilled, making a mess. He went down to the end of the corridor, turned right and came to a door with lettering on it about accountants. He took off his shoe and smashed a hole in the frosted glass near the knob. Then he put his shoe back on, reached through the hole and unlocked the door.

There were air conditioners in all the windows. Looking out over one of them, he could see the hotel roof half a floor down, six or seven feet. An easy jump.

He knocked out the glass over the air conditioner and climbed through, dropping onto the hotel roof. Ahead of him was the door to the stairs. He went over and tried it; it was locked, the way he’d expected, so he went over to the edge of the roof overlooking the rear wall where the fire escape was. The back of another building was crowded in close, and down between them was utter blackness.

The first part of the fire escape was a metal ladder, down to the top floor landing. The window there was wide and lowsilled, and opened into the hallway. The hall was dimly lit and empty, but the window was locked.

He went back up the fire escape and over the roof again and up through the window into the accountants’ office. He searched through drawers, and in a kind of big closet full of supplies and a mimeograph machine he found a large screwdriver and a hammer and an uninked stamp pad. He took these and went back out and across the roof and down to the window. It would be easier just to break the window, but he didn’t want any noise.

He shoved the screwdriver up into the crack between the two parts of the window, by the lock. Then he took the soft pad out of its metal box and held it against the top part of the screwdriver to muffle the sound when he hit it with the hammer.

The screwdriver went in slowly, spreading the two parts of the window apart, straining the lock until finally it snapped. Then the screwdriver fell out, clattering against the metal of the fire escape, and he hunched unbreathing by the window after he retrieved it until he was sure no one had heard the sound.

He pushed the window up, climbed through, slid the window closed again. The red bulb over the window stained his face and hands with color.

He found the stairs and went down them quickly, pausing at each landing to listen. He met no one, and at the third floor he stood for a long moment at the door before cautiously pulling it open.

The hall was empty.

He found 361 around to the right. It was easy to get in — the screwdriver slipped between door and jamb with no trouble, clicking back the tumbler.

He went in cautiously, alert for any sound, any movement. The suite was dark. Not home, or asleep? He went across the living room in the darkness, grateful for the quiet thickness of the rug, and looked through the bedroom door.

The bed was empty and unmade — no sheets, no blankets, no pillow. The mattress was striped gray and white, shining dimly in the faint light from the window.

Startled, he went into the room, looked around and hurried over to the closet and pulled the door open.

It was empty. Nobody lived here any more.

As she was turning the knob, he shoved against the door, knocking her backward. She nearly fell down the three steps into the living room, but caught her balance just in time. He pushed into the apartment, angry and hard, slamming the door behind him.