Richard Stark - The Hunter

“There’s a good reason for that,” said Fairfax. “We’d get you if you tried it.”

Parker shook his head. “You’d never find us. We aren’t organized, we’re just a guy here and a guy there that know each other. You’re organized, so you’re easy to find.”

“In other words,” said Fairfax, “if we don’t give you the forty-five thousand dollars, you’ll steal it — is that it?”

“No. I don’t do things like that. I just keep chopping off heads. But I also write letters, to those hundred men I told you about. I tell them the syndicate hit me for forty-five Gs; do me a favor and hit them back once when you’ve got the chance. Maybe half of them will say the hell with it. The other half are like me; they’ve got the job all cased. A lot of us are like that. You organized people are so wide open. We walk into a syndicate place and we look around, and just automatically we think it over — we think about it like a job. We don’t do anything about it because you people are on the same side as us, but we think about it. I’ve walked around for years with three syndicate grabs all mapped out in my head, but I’ve never done anything about it. The same with a lot of the people I know. So all of a sudden they’ve got the green light, they’ve got an excuse. They’ll grab for it.”

“And split with you?”

“Hell, no. I’ll get my money from you people, personally. They’ll keep it for themselves. And they’ll cost you a hell of a lot more than forty-five thousand dollars.”

Fairfax rubbed his mustache with the tips of his fingers. “I don’t know if that’s a bluff or not,” he said. “I don’t know your kind. But if they’re anything like the people I do know, it’s a bluff. The people I know worry about their own skins, not about mine.”

Parker grinned again. “I’m not saying they’d do it for me,” he said. “Not because it was me. Because they’ve got a syndicate grab in their heads, and all they need is an excuse.” He switched the gun back to his right hand. “Take your fingers down from your face.”

Fairfax dropped his hand into his lap, quickly, as though touching his mustache was a habit he was trying to stop. He cleared his throat and said, “Maybe you know what you’re talking about, I couldn’t say.”

“You can say it to Bronson.” Parker motioned to the phone. “Call him now. Tell him what I told you. If he says no, you’re dead and it costs him money. He’ll still have to pay me sooner or later anyway.”

“I’ll call him,” said Fairfax. “But it won’t do any good.”

Parker sat listening as Fairfax put in a call to Bronson at the Ravenwing Hotel, Las Vegas. It took a while because Bronson was out of his room and had to be paged, but finally he came on the phone and Fairfax gave him the setup, including Parker’s threat. “I don’t know if he’s bluffing or not. He says they wouldn’t do it out of friendship to him, but because they’ve wanted to hit some of our places for years anyway.”

After that there was a pause, and Fairfax studied Parker as he listened. Then he said, “No, I don’t think so. He’s hard, that’s all. Hard and determined and don’t give a damn.”

Parker shifted the gun to his other hand. Fairfax listened again, then extended the phone to Parker. “He wants to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“Terms.”

“Stand over there by the window.”

Fairfax set the receiver on the table, got to his feet, and walked over to the window. From deeper in the apartment, a hammering began. Fairfax grimaced and said, “I’m replacing those two.”

“It was your fault,” Parker said. “Don’t make your bodyguards carry your suitcases.” He crossed over to the sofa, sat down where Fairfax had been sitting, and put the phone to his ear. “All right, what is it?”

“You’re an annoyance, Parker,” said Bronson’s heavy angry voice. “You’re an irritation, like a mosquito. All right. Forty-five thousand dollars is chickenfeed. It’s a small account, for small punks with small minds. To get rid of the mosquito, all right — I’ll swat you with forty-five thousand dollars. But let me tell you something, Parker.”

“Tell me, then,” said Parker.

“You’re a marked man. You’ll get your petty payoff, and after that you’re dead whether you know it or not. I’m not going to send anybody out after you especially. I wouldn’t spend the time or the money. I’m just going to spread the word around. A cheap penny-ante heister named Parker, I’m going to say. If you happen to see him, make him dead. That’s all, just if you happen to see him. Do you get what I’m talking about, Parker?”

“Sure,” said Parker. “Carter told me all about it. You’re as big as the Post Office. You’re coast to coast. I should look you up in the yellow pages.”

“You can’t go anywhere, Parker. Not anywhere. The organization will find you.”

“The organization doesn’t have three men in it from coast to coast who could make me dead. Send your Mal Resnicks after me, Bronson. Send your Carters and your Fairfaxes. Send their bodyguards. You’ll have to hire a lot of new people, Bronson.”

“All right, bush leaguer,” said Bronson angrily. “Keep talking big. Just tell me where to make the drop on your crummy forty-five thousand.”

“There’s a section of Brooklyn,” Parker said. “Canarsie. There’s a BMT subway to it. Two men, carrying the cash in a briefcase, should hit there at two o’clock tomorrow morning. I’ll be on the platform. No bill over a hundred, none under a ten. If it’s stuff you printed yourself, you better send two expendable men. If you send more than two, the mosquito will drain your blood.”

“Talk big, Parker,” said Bronson. “What’s the name of this subway stop?”

“It’s the end of the line.”

“For you too, Parker.” Bronson hung up.

Parker put the phone back on its hook and got to his feet. The pounding still echoed dully from the bedroom. Fairfax was touching his mustache with the tips of his fingers. When Parker stood up, he seemed to suddenly notice he was doing it because his hand jerked down to his side and he looked embarrassed.

Parker said, “You’re lucky, Fairfax. Your boss gave in easier than I figured. And that’s a pity. I would have enjoyed finishing you.” Then he smiled. “Maybe he’ll cross me. Maybe he’ll try for an ambush. Then I’ll be able to come back.”

Fairfax touched his mustache. “I’m going to fire those two,” he said.

Parker shook his head. “It won’t do any good.”

Momentum kept him rolling. He wasn’t sure himself any more how much was a tough front to impress the organization and how much was himself. He knew he was hard, he knew that he worried less about emotion than other people. But he’d never enjoyed the idea of a killing. And now he wasn’t sure himself whether he’d just been putting a scare into Fairfax or if he’d really meant it.

It was momentum, that was all. Eighteen years in one business, doing one or two clean fast simple operations a year, living relaxed and easy in the resort hotels the rest of the time with a woman he liked, and then all of a sudden it all got twisted around. The woman was gone, the pattern was gone, the relaxation was gone, the clean swiftness was gone.

He spent months as a vag in a prison farm; he spent over a month coming across the country like an O. Henry tramp; he devoted time and effort and thought on an operation that wasn’t clean or fast or simple and that didn’t net him a dime — the finding and killing of Mal Resnick. And more killing, and bucking the syndicate more for the mean hell of it than anything else, as though for eighteen years he’d been storing up all the meanness, all the viciousness, and now it had to come rushing out.