This had been the arrangement. There was probably no way that Claire could avoid being implicated in the robbery, but she might be able to make some sort of case for herself as a hostage on the basis of where she’d been seen so far. She could claim she’d been waiting in the hotel lobby for a man who stood her up, and that when she left she saw the robbers carrying coin cases, that they grabbed her and held her up in the ballroom, that they had apparently intended to release her after they were finished, and that she’d been taken away as a prisoner afterwards. If this story were to work, Mavis Gross couldn’t be allowed to see Claire working in league with Parker and French, so Claire had waited downstairs while the blonde was being put out of the way.
It seemed to Parker that Claire had had a secondary reason for wanting to wait downstairs, that she was still very shaky at the thought of potential violence, but he didn’t worry about it. Her control had snapped once, but now she knew it could snap and so she was holding to it tighter than before. She’d be all right.
She came up the stairs slowly, not out of reluctance but out of exhaustion, and when she came close Parker could see her eyes were haggard. “We’ll get a couple of hours sleep,” he told her.
“How is—how is Mavis?”
“Fine. Tied and gagged, lying in bed. Not hurt, not scared.”
“She’s probably both,” Claire said, “but I know what you meant.”
They went into the apartment, and while Parker shut the door Claire went on into the living room, turned a three-way lamp on low, and stretched out on the sofa. “I don’t know how I can think about sleeping,” she said, her voice already getting fuzzy.
Parker saw she was going under, so he went on into the kitchen, where French had made himself a thick sandwich and opened a can of beer. He looked up from the sandwich and said, his mouth full, “I can never eat before a job. I get a nervous stomach, you know? But afterwards I could eat for a week.”
Parker sat down across the kitchen table from him. He said, “We’re going to have to work it out.”
“I know.” French put the sandwich down, swallowed beer, and said, “Let me say my say first.”
“I know everything you want to say. You were up tight for cash, you figured you were bucking an amateur operation, everything would have gone smooth except Lebatard tried to draw down on you.”
“Then I got rattled,” French said. “I should have thrown in with you and Lempke right away, as soon as Lebatard turned it sour. But I wasn’t thinking, so when Lempke came through the wall I slugged him. That was stupid.”
“The law has Lempke now. And the other two, Carlow and Mainzer.”
“I don’t know either of them.”
“They work around.”
French said, “It’s too bad about Lempke.” But then he shrugged and said, “He won’t be the first one died behind the walls.”
“The point is,” Parker said, “you queered an operation of mine, so I shoudn’t let you walk around. But you can set it straight again, bringing your own fence in, so the question is how valuable is that. Enough to keep you breathing, but how much besides.”
“Well, there’s three of us,” French said. “So we split it even.”
Parker shook his head. “No, there’s six of us. Lempke and Mainzer and Carlow are still in, they’ve all got contacts that can take their shares. And they’ll need it for lawyers and this and that.”
“So I get a sixth?”
“You get a sixth.” Parker reached out, picked up the beer can, took a swig. “Who’s the fence?”
French grinned. “You kidding? He’s the only one keeping me alive. I give you the name I’m down the chute.”
Parker shrugged. “I can afford to give you a sixth.”
“That ought to be enough to stake me. What the hell, I’m in for a sixth. So what do we do now?”
“We wait till eight o’clock, and then you go rent a delivery van.”
“Why me?”
Parker looked at him. “Because that’s your job,” he said.
French said, “I don’t like leaving you here with the goods.”
“That stuff won’t be getting out of this town for a while. Use your head.”
French drank some beer, looked at his sandwich, and said, “I wish I’d stayed with it back in the beginning. It turned out sweet after all, didn’t it?”
“Up to a point,” Parker said.
Six
UNDER ONE of the railroad bridges over the White River, north of Riley Park, Parker and French worked at transferring the coin cases again, this time from the Microbus to the Dodge delivery van that French had rented. It was nine o’clock on a Sunday morning and nobody was around.
When the cases were all transferred, Parker pulled the D.C. plates off the Microbus and stashed them in the back of the van. Then he and French drove back to Mavis Gross’s place, where they’d left Claire still sleeping. Parker stopped in front of the building and French opened his door, but before getting out he said, “I wait one hour.’ Then I start making trouble.”
“I’ll be back,” Parker told him. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I do worry,” French said. He slid out of the van and shut the door.
Parker drove off, seeing in his rearview mirror French standing there on the sidewalk, looking after him.
Parker drove downtown and went to another parking garage. The attendant here was a moustached Negro asleep in the back seat of a green Lincoln parked beside the office. The Lincoln radio was on, playing a Vivaldi concerto. Parker touched the horn and the attendant immediately woke up and sprang from the car, alert and ready. Parker told him he wanted to leave the van here for a day or two, took the pasteboard the attendant got for him from the office, went back to the street, and walked a couple blocks before he found a booth where he could phone for a cab. He took the cab to within two blocks of the Mavis Gross apartment, walked the rest of the way, and found that French was the one asleep on the sofa and Claire was the one eating a sandwich in the kitchen. She was also drinking coffee, and when Parker came in she went to work making a cup for him.
She said, “What about Mavis? We’re going to have to feed her.”
“French can do that when he wakes up. Let her get to know his face.”
“What about me, Parker?”
“What about you?”
“Do I go back and tell my tragic story? If I’m going to, it better be soon.”
Parker said, “What’s the other choice?”
“To go with you.”
Parker put both hands flat on the Formica tabletop, and looked at his hands as he spoke. “Sometime in the next few days,” he said, “I’m going to kill French. You want to be around for it?”
“No. I don’t want to hear about it. Never again, Parker. I never want to hear about any of it.”
He looked up at her. “What then?”
“I want to be with you,” she said. “I know sometimes you’ll have to go away and do these things, but those times you can’t talk about. Not tell me anything, not before, not after.”
“That’s how I’d be. Whether you wanted it or not.”
“The question is, do you want me?”
He looked at her. “I don’t know for how long,” he said.
“For a while.”
He nodded. “For a while.”
She smiled and said, “Then I don’t go back, do I?”
“Yes you do.”
“I do? Why?”
“We shouldn’t both of us be wanted. If you’re with me, you can help me, do things I can’t do. But not if there’s circulars on you, too.”
Puzzled, she said, “Then what do I do?”
“You go back. You tell your story, and you hang around two months. Two months from today you go to Utica, New York, Central Hotel. There’ll be a reservation waiting for you under the name Claire Carroll. Take the room, and I’ll meet you there.”
“Parker, is this a complicated way to get rid of me?”
“N
o. You either take my word for it or you don’t.”
She said, “You don’t have to be complicated, you know. If you don’t want me around, you just say so.”
“I know that.”
“Then—” She stopped, and stared past Parker, and her mouth stayed open.
Parker turned his head, slowly, and saw French in the doorway with a gun in his hand. “You’ll never find the truck,” he said.
French said, “I’m not out for the whole thing. I can’t hang around and play and cat and mouse with you, Parker. When I came in here, before your woman woke up, I called the fence. It’s Ray Jensen, in Cincinnati. I told him enough of the situation, and he’ll hold my sixth for me. He’ll be here tonight and you can dicker with him yourself. I’m clearing out.”
Parker watched French’s eyes, waiting to see how his chance was going to come, but then Claire said in a tight voice, “Don’t do anything, Parker. Please. Don’t do anything.”
Parker shrugged. “I’ll see you around, French,” he said.
French said, “We could call it square. You’re coming out in good shape.”
“If you say so. “But let Claire cut out first, she’s going back and square herself.”
French grinned. “Don’t be stupid. She’s the only thing keeping you from making a play at me. The two of you just stay here a few minutes. Don’t make me nervous. Good-bye, Parker.”
“So long, French.”
They stayed in the kitchen, Parker sitting at the table and Claire standing near the sink, until they heard the front door slam. Then Claire said, “I’m sorry. But I just wouldn’t have been able to take it.”
Parker got to his feet. “Wait ten minutes before you leave. I’ll see you in Utica.”
“Parker—”
He shook his head, and went for the door.
Seven
PARKER HELD the door barely open, and listened. French wouldn’t have had time to get all the way down the stairs yet, but there was no sound, no movement. So he was being cagey and smart.
Where would he be? He wouldn’t take a chance on hitting some other apartment; there might be people home, and then he’d have too much to think about all at once. He might go downstairs one flight and wait in the hall there to see what Parker was going to do, but the best bet was that he’d go up instead, wait one floor up, so that if Parker came out after him French would have a clear shot at Parker’s back in the hallway. So the thing to do was wait him out.
And there were two further complications. First, there was Claire, whose one taste of violence had made her allergic. Parker could see where that might complicate things a lot in the days to come, but it had its advantages too, in that Claire would be a rare find in a woman, one who would never pry into his affairs. So there was no point aggravating her if it wasn’t necessary.
The second complication was the fence. It was set up for him to come here tonight, according to French, and Parker didn’t want any ruckus in this building, or even in this immediate neighborhood. So he’d have to wait for French to leave, and then follow him.
He half-expected Claire to come down the corridor after him, asking him not to go after French, but she stayed in the kitchen, That was good; it meant she might have her hang-ups but she wouldn’t bug him about them more than absolutely necessary.
French was cautious, more cautious than Parker hud anticipated. When fifteen minutes had gone by with nothing happening, Parker finally left the door, hurried down the corridor to the kitchen, and said under his breath, “Time for you to clear out. Don’t look around, don’t hesitate, just keep moving.”
“All right,” she said. She looked composed, but pale. “I’ll see you in two months,” she said.
“Right.”
They went back to the door together, and Parker stood behind it as she went out. He held it so she couldn’t close it all the way, and he listened as she went down the stairs and out the door. And then at last he heard the small scuffling sound from upstairs that meant French was going to make his move.
The thing was, French had almost faked Parker out. Parker had been prepared to believe that French was worried enough to pull out, and now he had to remind himself that French was both a pro and hungry. He wanted the whole pie, French did.
Parker pushed the door soundlessly shut, hurried into the living room, and crouched behind an armchair in there, out of sight from the door.
This was another long wait, and he never did hear French come in. French was m the living-room doorway all of a sudden, gun in hand, eyes moving every way at once. He didn’t see Parker, and he didn’t think Parker was waiting for him, so he moved on down the corridor without making sure.
Parker moved fast and silent across the living room, stepped out into the corridor, and said to French’s back, “Right there is good.”
French stopped moving. Still facing the other way, he said, “I lied about the fence. I gave you the wrong name.”
“Maybe. Drop it.”
French’s gun bounced on the carpet. Parker stepped forward and put him out with his gunbarrel.
It took one fast guarded phone call to Cincinnati, using French’s name, to find out that French had been telling the truth the first time; Ray Jensen was the fence, and was on his way.
It was going to be complicated keeping French alive a while longer, but there was nowhere to stash a corpse here without getting Mavis Gross excited, and Parker wanted her to go on being calm. He was going to have to let her up once or twice between now and when Jensen showed up, and it would be better if she wasn’t hysterical.
He went down the hall to the bedroom, opened the door, and found Mavis awake and all in a tangle on the bed. She’d done some thrashing around in a useless attempt to untie herself, and her negligee was now high over heavy thighs.
Parker said, “What’s the point of all that? I’m going to untie you now and you shouldn’t do anything stupid.”
She lay there unmoving while he worked at the tight knots of the stockings around her wrists, and when he had her wrists freed she immediately pulled the tape away from her mouth and said, “What’s the matter with you people? You never heard of the calls of nature?”
“That’s why I’m letting you up now,” he said. “That, and breakfast.”
She rolled over and sat up, not bothering about the rumpled negligee. “Thanks a lot.”
“Untie your ankles.”
“My fingers are all numb.”
He had to do it for her himself, and then he said, “My partner’s lying out in the hall, but don’t worry. He isn’t dead. But he wanted to kill you because you saw our faces, and I don’t want to get mixed up in any murder rap.”
She looked pale, and then she managed a crooked grin and said, “I’m on your side, pal. Will you help me up?”
He took her hand and heaved her up off the bed. She moved clumsily, because of the poor circulation in her arms and legs, and when she got to the hall she said, “You really laid him out, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t have any choice. Of course, if you lock the bathroom door and start hollering out the window I’ll have to think he was right.”
“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I’m not about to cause anybody any trouble.”
“Good.”
While she was in the bathroom he used more of her stockings to tie French. He didn’t bother with a gag, but when he was done with the stockings dragged French into the bedroom and left him on the floor there.
He went back to the corridor and waited, and after a while Mavis came out of the bathroom. First he saw that she’d put lipstick on, then he saw the way she was looking at him. He said, “Go on in and get some breakfast.”
“I was thinking,” she said. “You sort of saved my life, didn’t you?”
“Maybe,” he said.
“I’ll have to find some way to express my gratitude,” she said. She smiled suggestively. “I wonder if I’ll be able to think of anything?”
Parker looked at her, t
rying to decide whether she really had hot pants or was out to distract him in hopes she could get the drop on him. But the expression on her face wasn’t faked, and even if it was he could handle anything along those lines. And it was going to be a long day, waiting for Ray Jensen to show up.
Parker smiled back. “I’ll help you think,” he said.
Eight
JENSEN ARRIVED at ten-thirty, and he was surprised to see Parker. “You in on this?” he said. “French didn’t tell me.”
“French isn’t in charge anymore,” Parker told him. “Come on in.” He and Jensen had met a couple of times before, but didn’t really know one another all that well.
Jensen came in warily, saying, “I’m not sure there’s anything to discuss, if French isn’t around.”
“You seen the local papers?”
“I just came in from the airport.”
“Come into the living room.”
Both Mavis and French were stowed away in the bedroom now, Mavis tied and gagged on the bed and French tied on the floor, and the living room was neat and empty. A faint musky odor still hung in the air around the sofa, where Mavis had expressed her appreciation, and where later on she had expressed her astonishment that Parker should still mistrust her and want to tie her up again.
Parker had gone out early this evening and picked up the local paper, which had put out a Sunday extra in honor of the coin convention heist, and this he now showed to Jensen, who sat down and began to read.
Parker had already read it. He knew that Mainzer and Carlow were in custody, and that Lempke had died of head injuries on his way to the hospital. He knew that the guard he’d shot wasn’t dead, but was still on the critical list. He knew the truck had been found in the parking garage and the cops were now looking for the Microbus stolen from the garage. And he knew the value of the coins stolen from the convention had been estimated at three quarters of a million dollars.
It wasn’t from the paper, but from a six-o’clock news broadcast on the radio, that he knew Claire’s song and dance had apparently gone over. She was the heroine of the drama, and was said to be helping a police artist sketch the faces of the two missing men. Both the paper and the radio gave it as official opinion that William Lebatard, local coin dealer shot by another member of the gang, had been the brains behind the theft.
The Rare Coin Score p-9 Page 12