Richard Stark - The Mourner

Parker turned back and retraced his steps. There was only one door leading into the offices, but each had connecting doors. Parker stepped into one from the walkway and moved along through three other dark offices, opening and closing doors as he went without a sound. Then he was at the partition, standing in front of the inner door to the lighted office, and he could hear now.

“... but now we’ve got plenty of time. We’ve got all night, you know that? That partner of yours is plenty good, catching on so quick, but how’s he gonna find you here? Even if he gets anything out of Clara, so what? Off he goes to the house in Cheverly, right? And there’s the dead end.”

The other one said, “Or maybe you got another partner. How many of you in this thing, Pete? Just the two of you? Or maybe three, four? What do you say, Pete?”

There was silence, and then a thud, and the first voice said, “Take it easy, boy. You want to put him out again?”

“All he has to do is be civil, that’s all. Just answer a polite question, that’s all.”

“I tell you what, we’ll go over it for him again. Maybe he’s just a slow study.”

“Let me take my pliers to his fingers. He’ll be a real quick study.”

“No, Mr. Menlo said don’t mess him up too bad till we find out what the score is.”

“You got to mess him up. Look at him.”

“I figure he’ll listen to reason. Isn’t that right, Pete? You know we can’t do nothing drastic to you, but Pete boy, we got all night. Like, I could just take your hair like this, and just real gentle rap your head on the wall, see? Boom. And then again. Boom. See? The first time ain’t so bad. The second time’s a little worse. Now the third time. Boom. See? What do you think, Pete? Maybe forty times? We got all night, Pete.”

“So boom him and get it over.”

“Now wait a minute, let me talk to him. We got interrupted before; let me talk to him. Pete, listen to me. We don’t want so much. We ain’t greedy, Pete. But just listen. We’re getting this operation set up, getting everything ready, and all of a sudden you come into the middle of it. You make a play for Clara, so pretty soon Clara’s got it figured what you’re after is to get into Kapor’s house. You’re working on something and we’re working on something. Now, all we want to know, Pete — is it the same something? What do you want in Kapor’s house, Pete? And how many of you are in it? That’s all we want to know. What the hell, Pete, we were here first. I mean, fair’s fair, right? Boom, Pete. Boom. Isn’t fair fair, Pete? Boom, Pete.”

There was no sense listening to any more. They wouldn’t be saying more about themselves. There was Clara, and fat man, Menlo, and these two, plus the one downstairs and maybe the one named Angel. Maybe some others too. They were all after something that Kapor had, just as Parker was, and if they, like Parker, were after the mourner, they wouldn’t be volunteering that information to Handy. So Parker opened the door and went into the light, gun first. “Freeze.”

Nobody ever does. The two of them spun around, shock-eyed, and Handy opened tired eyes and grinned.

“Untie him,” Parker said.

The conversational one did it, while the one with the impatient pliers stood there and glowered. Then Parker had the one with the impatient pliers use the same ropes to tie up the conversational one. Parker only wanted to take one with him, and he had decided to take Pliers because in his experience the people who were the most anxious to use torture were also the ones most anxious to talk instead of being tortured themselves. Parker had been forced to ask questions the hard way twice already tonight. It hadn’t been bad with Wilcoxen, but with the woman, Clara, it had been very bad, because she was stubborn and Parker was in a hurry.

Handy couldn’t walk; his legs were numb from being tied so tight for so long. Parker had Pliers carry Handy, and the three of them left the office and went downstairs and out to the truck. Parker got the ignition key, and then arranged the three of them. There was no partition between the seats and the load area, so Handy lay in back with the Browning .380 automatic Parker had taken away from the conversational one upstairs. From there he could keep an eye on Pliers, in front. Parker drove.

He backed the truck down the driveway to the street, but for a second he didn’t know where to go. They hadn’t set up any place private yet, because the job wasn’t that close to being ready, and the hotel room wouldn’t be any good for questioning Pliers. Then Parker remembered the bungalow where they’d been holding Handy. Why not? If any place in the District was guaranteed empty right now, it was that bungalow.

They drove in silence. Parker had his questions, but he wanted the proper atmosphere in which to ask them. And among them, he was wondering if Harrow had been dumb enough to send two teams after the same ball. Could the fat man and his friends be working for Harrow too? That would be stupid, and dangerous, for everybody.

But Harrow wasn’t all that smart...

That was two months ago.

For eighteen years, Parker had lived the way he wanted, to a pattern he liked. He was a heavy gun, in on one or two institutional robberies a year — a bank, or a payroll, or an armored car — just often enough to keep the finances fat, and the rest of the time he lived in resort hotels on either coast, with a cover that would satisfy even the income-tax beagles. Then, because of a snafu in one job, he’d got fouled up with the syndicate. [1] The Hunter. He’d thought he’d got that straightened out — he’d even picked up a new face from a plastic surgeon [2] The Man With the Getaway Face. — and then, two months before in Miami, a syndicate heavy had tried for him, in his own hotel room, late at night. There’d been a girl in the bed with him named Bett Harrow, and when the syndicate heavy died, Bett had taken off with the gun that had helped kill him. The gun could be traced to Parker’s cover name, Charles Willis, and that was bad. There was a lot of money and time and preparation tied up in that cover.

Bett had let him know he could have the gun back for a price, but he’d told her she had to wait while he got the syndicate off his back. He’d got in touch with Handy McKay, who’d worked with him on other jobs in the past, and this time the syndicate question was settled for good [3] The Outfit. Then Parker went back to Miami with Handy to find out what Bett Harrow wanted.

But it wasn’t Bett who wanted anything, it was her father. Parker set up the meeting, but left Handy out of it. It might be useful sometime if neither Bett nor her father knew anything about Handy.

The Harrows came to Parker’s hotel room at one-thirty in the afternoon. They knocked on the door and when Parker opened it there was Bett, tall and slender and blonde, with vicious good looks, and next to her an older man, short and stocky and gray-haired. He had no tan at all, and the suit he was wearing was too heavy for Miami Beach, so he’d obviously just arrived in town. He was looking uncomfortable and carrying a book under his arm.

Bett said, “Can we come in, Chuck?”

He motioned them in. Bett came in first, and her father followed, clutching the book protectively to his chest. It was a large, slender book with a red binding and a picture on the cover of some people in a balloon.

“Dad, this isn’t Chuck Willis, but he says he is.” Bett was enjoying herself. It was the kind of scene she liked, which was one of the reasons she was living on alimony.

Ralph Harrow was fifty-three, the principal stockholder of the Commauck Aircraft Company. He owned 27 percent of that company’s outstanding shares. And he was additionally a large stockholder in three airlines and one insurance company. He was also a member of the board of each of the five companies thus represented in his stock portfolio. He had been born to money, and had multiplied his inheritance. A staff of attorneys saw to it that nothing he did was technically illegal, and they earned their money.