Richard Stark - The Hunter

“Two days ago,” he said, “you were in a grocery store on West 104th Street between Central Park West and Manhattan Avenue. You spent some time in the back room of the store, talking with Manuel Delgardo, the proprietor. When two patrolmen entered the store, you stated that you were having a soft drink with Mr. Delgardo in the back of the store, and that you were there looking for Mr. Delgardo’s son, Jimmy. You stated that you and Jimmy Delgardo once worked for the same trucking company in Buffalo. You also brought up the subject of narcotics, although neither of the patrolmen had given any indication that they were thinking of narcotics or suspected you of having anything to do with junk. Is this all substantially correct, as you remember it?”

“Yes,” said Parker. Don’t explain, don’t justify, don’t argue. Wait till you find out the score.

The detective nodded. “Fine,” he said. “Now, you also stated that you were recently laid off from a General Electric Company plant on Long Island. Is that correct?”

“That’s what I said,” Parker answered.

The detective caught it. “But is it correct?”

So they’d checked that part. Change stories. “No,” said Parker.

The detective nodded again. “That’s right, we checked you out. The California address you gave the hotel is also incorrect, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like to explain those lies?”

“You’ve got to give a cop a background,” said Parker. “You tell him you’re just drifting, he pulls you in on general principles. You give him some kind of background, he leaves you alone. Same with the hotel. I put down no permanent address, then I get a lot of static from the hotel.”

“I see.” The detective nodded once more. “Then the truth is that you’re a drifter, that you don’t really have any background or address or job or anything else, is that it?”

“That’s right.”

“And where did you get the money to afford this hotel?”

“I won it in a crap game.”

“Where?”

Parker shook his head.

The detective reddened. “Don’t shake your head at me, punk! There wasn’t any crap game!”

Parker waited, ready. There wasn’t any reason to do anything yet. Maybe later he’d have to pay this one back for the bad name.

The detective controlled himself. “All right,” he said. “Get on your feet. Turn around. Touch the wall over the sofa, palms of your hands.”

The other detective came over from the door and emptied his pockets. Then they let him sit down again.

The first one looked at his driver’s license. He looked at it more closely than anyone had before, and frowned. He turned it over, and studied different parts of it, and then he licked the ball of his thumb and rubbed it against the state seal. He looked up at his partner and grinned. “A phony,” he said. “Not even a good one. Here, look.”

The other detective looked at the license and chuckled over it too, then handed it back. The first cop offered it to Parker, saying, “Want it back, Mr. Johnson?”

“No, thanks,” said Parker. “You spoiled it.”

“I’m sorry about that. What trucking firm in Buffalo did you and Jimmy Delgardo work for together?”

Parker grabbed a name out of the air. “Lester Brothers.”

The detective took a notebook out of his pocket, opened it, read something, and shook his head. “Wrong.”

Parker said, “Do you mind telling me what it’s all about?”

“I don’t mind at all,” said the detective. “Because then you’ll tell me what it’s all about. A man interested in narcotics, like you.”

“Wrong,” Parker said.

“Jimmy Delgardo,” said the detective, “was picked up at the Canadian border this morning at five o’clock coming down from Montreal. He was trying to enter the United States with a carload of liquor and marijuana.” He smiled from his corner of the web. “Now, Mr. Johnson,” he said, “you tell me what it’s all about. You tell me what your right name is and what you do for a living and what connection you have with that carload Jimmy Delgardo was driving into this country.”

Parker clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back on the sofa. He started to cross one leg over the other, but instead rammed his heel into the detective’s face, just above the nose. Detective and chair clattered over backward, and Parker surged out of the sofa, coming in low on the other one, who was pawing at his hip for his gun. Parker butted him in the stomach and brought his head up sharply, the crown cracking into the detective’s chin. His fist came up after, catching him in the throat.

Parker stepped back, yanking the detective by the tie. The detective stumbled, falling away from the door, and Parker grabbed the suitcase full of money, pulled open the door, and ran.

As he hit the revolving door, there were shouts behind him. The glass of the door starred, higher than his head, and something tugged at the shoulder of his coat.

He got through to the street, and there was a cab waiting at the backstand outside the hotel, waiting for a fare. He pulled open the door, tossed the suitcase in and dove in after it. “Grand Central!” he shouted. “A fin if I make my train!”

There wasn’t time now to get to Idlewild. The alarm would be out first.

“We’re off!” cried the driver. They jolted away from the curb, squealed around the corner as the light was turning red, and weaved erratically through the traffic. Parker reached up with his left hand to touch his right shoulder. The coat was ripped there, by the seam, but the bullet hadn’t touched him.

He reached out and patted the suitcase, and it was the wrong one. He looked at it, and turned his head to look out the back window. The detectives had the suitcase with the forty-five thousand. He had the suitcase with the socks and the shirts.

The cabby said, “What time’s your train?”

“It just left,” said Parker.

“Jeez,” said the cabby. “You didn’t leave yourself no time at all.”

“I was kidding. There’s still time.” Parker smiled, showing his teeth, thinking, What do I do now? Go to the Mayor of the City of New York? Tell him the city owes me forty-five Gs?

When the cab stopped, he gave the driver a ten. He dragged the suitcase along into Grand Central Station. The clock over the rotunda said 12:53. He walked along the gates, looking at the times of departure until he came to one that said 12:58.

One of the places it was going was Albany. He went through the gate and down along the concrete platform. He said to the conductor standing by the entrance to the first passenger car, “I didn’t have time to buy a ticket. I’ll get it on the train.”

“Wait here.”

He stood there, watching back to where the cops would come if they came, and five minutes occurred one by one. Then the conductor let him board the train and asked where he wanted a ticket for.

He said, “Albany,” and the conductor wrote interminably on ticket and papers, accepted his money and allowed him to go sit down.

The car was nearly empty.

He dropped into the first seat he came to, the wrong suitcase next to him, and thought about Omaha and Joe Sheer and the plastic surgeon. He’d need dough for the plastic surgeon. He had less than two thousand. He could cool at Joe Sheer’s for a while, and then he’d have to make a grab.

Maybe a syndicate operation? One more bite from the mosquito before the face-change? It was the syndicate’s fault that he didn’t have the forty-five thousand. They did a sloppy smuggling job, and Parker got hit by a bum peg, and now the forty-five thousand was baffling the boys in the narcotics squad.

Yeah, a syndicate grab. He liked the idea.