Richard Stark - The Mourner

It took a while. Harrow wasn’t an observant man, and his memory had to be prodded every step of the way. It took half an hour to get even an incomplete ground plan, with half the interior still terra incognita. As for the people living there, there was Lepas Kapor himself, and some servants. Harrow didn’t know how many, or if any of them lived in. Kapor was unmarried, but Harrow thought that occasionally a woman stayed in the house overnight.

When Parker finally had everything from Harrow he was likely to get, Harrow was put on the send for the fifty thousand. Bett wanted to stick around for bed games, but Parker wasn’t in the mood. He was never in the mood before a job, always in the mood right after.

After they’d gone, Parker went down to the bar and got Handy. Together they went over the ground plan and the sketchy information they had, and the next day, after Harrow had turned over the attaché case full of cash and Parker had checked it in the hotel safe, they took off for Washington.

Kapor lived in a sprawling colonial brick house with white trim off Garfield, four blocks from the Klastrava embassy. A five-foot hedge surrounded the property. The two-car garage was behind the house, like an afterthought. A gravel driveway led in from the street through a break in the hedge, made a left turn at the front door, and then continued on around to the garage.

Parker and Handy took turns three days and nights watching the house, and by then they’d filled in some of the holes in Harrow’s information.

There were five servants, but only one slept in. The chauffeur did not sleep in, nor did the gardener-handyman, the cook, or the maid. The butler-valet-bodyguard did sleep in. His room was on the second floor front, right corner. Kapor’s room was in the back somewhere.

The house was not in an isolated neighborhood. Also, because it held an important man attached to the embassy of a country generally considered unfriendly to the United States, it was given unusually complete police surveillance. Prowl cars passed at frequent and erratic intervals day and night. There was also the possibility that the FBI or some other government agency was watching the house. It didn’t look like an easy house to break into undisturbed.

Handy suggested the old tried-and-true maid ploy. Meet the maid, gain her confidence, and eventually get a chance to make an impression of the keys in her purse. With the keys, a bold frontal attack — walk straight up to the door at a relatively early hour of the night, unlock it, and go on in.

Because it was Handy’s idea, and because he had a more pleasant personality, he went after the maid. He was in his early forties, tall and strong-faced, like a lean Vermont sheriff. The maid, Clara Stoper, was about thirty and good-looking in a harsh sort of way. She spent her Monday and Thursday nights in a bar on Wisconsin Avenue, and it was there that Handy made the meet. That was a week ago, and tonight he’d been going to her apartment, where he was sure he would be able to get his hands on the keys. She’d already given him a ten-thirty deadline, so he’d told Parker he’d be back by eleven. But eleven o’clock had passed and he hadn’t shown up, and then the two amateur bums had come up the fire escape and gradually all hell had broken loose. So if Harrow had sent this second group after that goddamn statue, Harrow was in trouble.

Parker left the truck a block from the bungalow, and said to Handy, “Can you keep him tight?”

“No trouble.” Handy was sitting up now, and looked in better shape. He held the .380 loosely in his lap, his eye on Pliers. “He won’t go anywhere.”

“You guys are wasting your time,” Pliers said. He looked surly and belligerent, but not very tough.

Parker got out of the truck and walked to the bungalow. It was still dark. All the houses around here were dark, and even the street lights seemed dimmed, because of the trees along the sidewalks, which cut off some of the light. Parker was the only thing moving on either sidewalk and there were no cars in sight.

There was a driveway next to the bungalow, but no garage. The driveway was just a double dirt track. Parker used it to go around to the rear. The kitchen door was locked, but it jimmied quickly and quietly. Parker stepped inside.

The house had four rooms. Living room, kitchen, two bedrooms, and a bath. Without turning on any lights, Parker moved through them and found them all empty. He went out the front door and walked back to the truck. He started it and drove to the bungalow, up the driveway, and around to the back yard. “Hold him a minute more,” he said to Handy, and got out of the truck again. He went into the house and turned on the kitchen light. Enough light spilled out the rear window so he could switch off the truck lights.

Handy could walk now, but stiffly. The three of them went into the bungalow, and while Handy covered Pliers with the .380, Parker frisked him. Back at the garage he’d only gone over him for hardware; now he was emptying everything out of the man’s pockets. Under the white coverall Pliers was wearing brown slacks and a green flannel shirt.

His goods gradually stacked up on the kitchen table. A wallet, a pack of Marlboros in the box, a Zippo lighter with some sort of Army insignia on one side, a pair of pliers with electrician’s tape on the handles, a screwdriver, a switchblade knife, a small flat black address book, an inhaler, and a tin packet of aspirin. The wallet contained thirty-three dollars, two pictures of a girl in a bathing suit, a picture of Pliers himself in a bathing suit, and a lot of cards — Army discharge, driver’s license, chauffeur’s license, membership card in a Teamsters local, membership card in a gym — all made out to Walter Ambridge of Baltimore.

Finished with the wallet, Parker dropped it on the table. “All right, Wally, sit down.”

“I’m called Walter.” Pliers said it truculently, and he didn’t sit down.

Parker hit him just above the belt. The wind whooshed out of him and he sagged. Parker pushed his shoulder slightly, to guide him, and he sat down. Handy was leaning against the refrigerator, still casually holding the .380.

Parker sat down in the other kitchen chair and rested his hands on the table. “All right, Wally,” he said. “Who’s Menlo?”

“Up yours.”

Parker shook his head and picked up the pliers. He extended them toward Handy. “Take off his left thumbnail.”

Ambridge came out of the chair roaring. They had to hit him hard enough to stun him before they could get him to sit down again. Parker waited until comprehension came back into Ambridge’s eyes, and then he said, “Do we have to tie you up in the chair, Wally? Do we have to hurt you? I’ve been doing nothing but ask questions all night long. I don’t like that. You answer in a hurry, Wally.”

Ambridge glared harder than ever, to cover the fact he was frightened. He said, “You birds are in trouble, you know that? You didn’t get cleared or nothing.”

“Cleared? What the hell are you talking about?”

“With the Outfit, Goddamn it. You don’t make any play around here without you clear it with the Outfit first. What the hell are you, amateurs?”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Parker. He knew what Ambridge was talking about, but he was surprised. He knew the Outfit — it was what the syndicate was calling itself that year — didn’t like action in its territories without its approval, and he knew there were people in his line of work who never took on a job without letting the Outfit know about it first. But Parker himself would never work on a job that had been tipped to the Outfit, and he didn’t know why anybody else did. The Outfit always wanted a piece, 5 or 10 per cent, for giving its permission, and permission was all it ever gave. Whatever local fix the Outfit had was no good for the transients if their deal went sour.