Richard Stark - The Mourner

He had waited that night till he was sure that Parker and McKay were asleep, and then he had risen from his bed on the floor. He carried his shoes and his jacket and necktie out to the hall, and there donned them, smoothing his somewhat oily hair into place with his fingers and running thumb and forefinger down his trousers crease.

He knocked softly at the door of room 512 and after a few seconds he heard a bed creak and then her soft call: “It’s unlocked.”

He went in. The table lamp beside the bed offered the only light, amber and intimate. She was lying supine on the bed, the covers outlining her incredibly long body, her face framed by the blonde hair on her pillow. She looked up at him with surprise. “Oh, it’s you.”

“You expected our friend again?” The prospect of Parker coming down the hallway now did not please him.

“That son of a bitch!” She seemed very angry with Parker. “Get me a cigarette, will you? Over on the dresser there.”

“Most certainly. I will, if I may, join you.”

“Be my guest.”

The tendency to goggle and giggle, as it had on the jetliner, was growing stronger and stronger. He fought it away, retaining an urbane and practiced exterior as he carried her cigarettes over to the bed and leaned over to offer her a light. Her eyes were hazel, and deep, and knowing, and they gazed up unblinking into his own. He held her gaze, and smiled pleasantly.

“Thanks,” she said, and blew smoke, but not toward his face. She patted the bed next to her mounding hip. “Sit down.”

“You are most kind.” His weight sagged the mattress, and she slid just slightly toward him.

“What are you to Parker?” she asked suddenly.

“Ah,” he said. “How coincidental. Much the same question I had in mind to ask you, though of course since you are a lady, I would have phrased it somewhat differently.”

“Parker’s a pain in the ass,” she said. “Sorry if I shocked you.”

She had. Women at home did not speak in such a manner. He smiled to cover the instant of shock. “Precision in all things, my dear. And that phrase has admirable precision. My name, which our mutual friend neglected to tell you, is Auguste Menlo.”

“You told me yourself, remember?”

“Ah, yes, so I did.”

“What are you so nervous about?”

“I am most sorry. I hadn’t realized I was.”

“Parker won’t be back, if that’s it,” she replied.

That was, of course, part of it.

He said, “As to Parker, my own connection with him is most transitory, and for convenience only.”

“I could say the same thing,” she said bitterly. “I’d like to push the bastard off a cliff.”

“Dear lady, how rapidly we have come to a meeting of minds.”

She didn’t get it at first. She frowned slightly at him as she sorted out the words, and then all at once she responded to his smile with a dazzling smile of her own. “I’m Bett Harrow,” she said.

“I am charmed.” And he meant it. He leaned forward to stub his cigarette in an ashtray. “Parker has told me of the statuette.”

“I didn’t know Parker ever told anybody anything.”

“He is not a blabbermouth, no. But he did tell me of the statuette. It was, you might say, a mutual sharing of confidences. My own is irrelevant at the moment, really. We might speak of it another time, perhaps.”

To have a woman like this, and in her company to spend one hundred thousand dollars. What a glorious dream! What a more glorious reality! “If I understand aright, your father has paid for this statuette in advance? Fifty thousand dollars?”

“Cash in advance,” she replied. “We’ve got something else Parker wants too. He gets that later.

“Anything of, uh, value?”

“Not to anybody else.”

“Ah. Alas. My dear, I would like to ask you a hypothetical question.”

“He would,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“My father would pay again. If Parker didn’t have the statue, and you did, and you wanted to sell, he’d pay again.”

“Another fifty thousand?”

“He might not go that high. But you could probably get twenty-five.”

Menlo shrugged. “I am not greedy.”

“I bet you’re not.”

He leaned over closer to her. “Another question, my dear.”

“What this time?”

“In my country,” he said, “women go to bed wearing great white sacks made of cotton. In the United States what do women wear when they go to bed?”

“Depends on the woman.”

“Well, you, for instance?”

“Skin.”

“Skin? You mean, no garment at all?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

“Incredible,” he said.

“You don’t believe me?” There was a mock challenge in her eyes, and her hands gripped the top edge of the covers.

“If you endeavor to prove that statement to me,” he replied, “I wish you to be warned that I can take no responsibility for whatever might transpire thereafter.”

“Is that right?” She flicked her arms, and the covers shot back, baring her to the knee.

He’d never undressed so quickly in his life. One sock was still half on when he lumbered into the bed, looming over her like a dirigible. Her hazel eyes darkened, her body seemed to grow firmer and more taut, and all at once he found himself in congress with a panther. He said a lot of things in his native tongue, until he no longer had breath to spare on talk, and from then on he merely clung.

When it was over, and they’d smoked a cigarette together and talked a bit more, he got up and began to get dressed. “I will see you in Miami. Very soon, I hope. And with the statuette.”

“You’ll remember the hotel?”

“It is imprinted firmly upon my memory.” He took one last cigarette from her pack, and lit it. “It might be best were you to leave in the morning, as Parker requested. He is taciturn and unpredictable, and I would want nothing to go wrong.”

“All right,” she answered.

“Until Miami, then.”

“I’ll be seeing you.”

He returned to Parker’s room and fell into pleasantly exhausted sleep, garlanded with sweet dreams...

Watching Parker and Handy at work, those last two days, he had grown more and more impressed with the way they handled themselves. He had originally planned to remain with them throughout the robbery and the getaway, letting them handle all the details, and double-crossing them only after the operation was completed. But as the time grew shorter, he revised his plans and decided to do away with them before they left Kapor’s house. Through some careful and judicious questioning, he had learned enough about the getaway route and the theories behind it to be able to handle it alone when the time came. But still, he was in a strange country and involved in an operation that was unfamiliar to him, besides being aligned with a pair of the most lupine of wolves. That last day, Friday, his nervousness and excitement grew and grew until he was afraid he would explode. It was more and more difficult to hold himself in check as the day wore on toward night.

They had not found the derringer stowed away beneath the false bottom of his leather toilet kit. It was more of a toy than a gun, especially in comparison with the weapons that Parker and McKay carried, but it was small enough and light enough to be safely hidden and it held two bullets. If he was careful, that should be sufficient.

Friday evening, when Parker and Handy left to steal the second car, he transferred the derringer to his coat pocket, hoping they would not think to search him again before entering Kapor’s house.

McKay came back at the appointed time, and Menlo carried the empty suitcase they’d bought that day out to the car. He climbed in, saying, “Have you had a good fortune?”