The Seventh

by Richard Stark

  That was the kind of time that crept by hamstrung. Like now; waiting in silence for Little Bob Negli to make a mistake, a little guy who's a professional and not in the habit of making mistakes.

  And waiting for the amateur to make his mistake, a wait that shouldn't take as long.

  There was another shot, from up closer to the road, and then two more in rapid succession.

  That wouldn't be Negli. That would be the amateur.

  The hell with Negli for now. The amateur was the important thing, he couldn't be permitted to get away again. Three times and out; this was the end of the amateur's string.

  Parker moved as quickly and as silently as he could around the edge of the cabin and along the grass that flanked the gravel driveway. He kept watching for Negli, looking down every vista between cabins, past the bushes growing against some of the cabins, down toward the pine woods that flanked Vimorama on three sides. He didn't see Negli, not a sign of him, but all at once, ahead of him, he saw the amateur go pelting by, running out of Vimorama entirely, heading for the trees, trying to get away again.

  Parker took off after him, jumping across the gravel driveway in two steps, angling through between the cabins to try to head the other one off. Behind him, Negli shouted something he didn't try to understand. A cabin window to his right shattered in time with the sound of a shot from back there. Parker half turned, still running, and snapped a shot in Negli's direction, not to hit him but just to slow him down, distract him. The important thing now was not Negli, it was the goddam amateur.

  The amateur went through the woods without looking back, and across the front of a gas station. Parker went after him, running flat out, determined this time not to lose him. And knowing Negli would never be able to keep up to this pace, so he wouldn't have to worry about his back for a while.

  Parker was fast, but the amateur was faster, and the gray Ford parked down the road there had to be his. He reached it and flung open the near door, and Parker stopped long enough to put a bullet into the door. He'd been trying for the amateur's leg, but his aim was off because of the running and the lack of time.

  But the miss was almost as good as a hit. It deflected the amateur from the car anyway, and sent him off into the woods instead.

  Parker got to the car a minute later and looked in and saw the suitcases on the back seat. The same ones. So he'd found the cash at last.

  But he couldn't do anything about it yet. There was still the amateur in front of him and Little Bob Negli behind him. Looking down to his left, Parker saw Negli running along on his bantam legs like some sort of silly lunatic from a silent movie comedy, his fancy clothing all rumpled up and torn, the tiny Beretta glinting in his hand, his face dark with thunderclouds.

  Which first? If he took the time for Negli, the amateur might be able to circle back and get the car and the loot and take off again. But if he went on after the amateur, why wouldn't Negli do the same thing, just hop into the car and take off after the whole bundle?

  No, not Negli. One look at him, running along there like somebody's idea of a joke about vengeance, was enough to tell Parker he didn't have to worry about Negli taking off with the cash. It wasn't cash Negli wanted anymore, it was Parker's scalp. Why he wanted it Parker didn't know, but he could take time to find out later on.

  The amateur first.

  The whole thing, looking into the back seat of the Ford and looking back at Negli and making up his mind which idiot to go after first, the whole thing had taken only a couple of seconds. The amateur could still be heard crashing and blundering through the woods, headed straight away from the road and the car, so scared he wasn't even remembering the cash.

  Parker went in after him.

  The woods, at first, were like that around Vimorama: well-spaced pine trees with a thick mat of needles covering the ground, darkness and muffled silence, shadows flitting past the black trunks. But the farther they moved from the road, the thicker the going became. Some birch and maple trees began to show up between the pines, clogging the paths more. Dead leaves were mounded around the tree trunks, and the entwined branches of the birches and maples were bare and jagged-looking.

  As the pines thinned and the birches and maples increased, more and more bushes began to grow between the trunks. Vines and creepers, roselike bushes covered with thorns, thick rubbery bushes with intertwined branches, clumped hedgelike bushes autumn-stripped of their leaves; they all slowed Parker down, slowed him down.

  But they slowed the amateur more. He had to hack and claw his way through the stuff up ahead there, and where he had passed the going was easier for whoever would come through next.

  Parker was next, close behind the amateur, moving after him with grim and steady speed. This wasn't going to be like the first time, outside Kifka's place, when night and surprise and a good head start had made it possible for the bastard to get away. Nor like the second time, when the presence of the law there had forced Parker to help him get away.

  This time it was clear and simple. This time it was straightforward, the way Parker liked it.

  The amateur was running, leaving a broad trail. Parker was following him, and gaining on him. When he caught up with him, he'd kill him.

  The land was sloping gradually downward, and now the trees were thinning out and the bushes getting larger and thicker and even harder to fight through. There was still some greenery on some of the underbrush that was green all year round, and here and there bushes sported hard inedible bright red berries, but the color of the forest was mostly black, accented by the white trunks of the birches. Between the trunks swelled the underbrush, sharp and gamy.

  Now and again Parker came to clumps of bushes the amateur hadn't been able to go through at all; he could see the marks where the amateur had fought his way part-way in and had then been forced to back out again and go around.

  That slowed the amateur too, and helped Parker gain on him.

  From time to time Parker caught glimpses of him through the trees and brush; a bobbing head, a straining back. But they were just moving glimpses, and he made no attempt to hit him from this range, given such a bad target. He'd catch up with him sooner or later. The amateur might be faster on open level ground, but not in here.

  Parker was so sure that he even stopped at one point and listened for Negli. The little man would be coming along too, he was positive. Being smaller, following this trail after two men bigger than himself had already forced it open, Negli should be able to make fine time in here.

  But there was no sound.

  Parker frowned and listened. Off the other way, he could hear the amateur still blundering away through the underbrush like a frightened range cow, but back toward the highway there was silence.

  The silence was split open by a gunshot. Something thudded into the tree beside Parker's head.

  That was the second time Negli's gun had fired off to the right; sooner or later Negli would notice it himself and start compensating.

  But he was back there, anyway. Moving more slowly and silently than he had to because he was afraid of being ambushed.

  Parker turned and went on after the amateur before Negli had a chance to try for another shot.

  He'd lost ground in those few seconds he'd been stopped, but it didn't matter. The end was inevitable anyway.

  His topcoat was an annoyance, snagging branches, slowing him down. He stopped again and transferred the pistols to his trouser pockets and stripped off the topcoat. He threw it over a bush and went on.

  Abruptly, trees and underbrush stopped. Along a straight line running from left to right there was a sudden border to the forest as clear and neat as though someone had cut the earth with a scissors and in fixing things again had seamed two mismatched parts together at this spot like getting a jigsaw puzzle wrong.

  On one side of the seam was the forest, black and red and green, verticaled with birch and maple, jagged-armed at the top, cluttered with underbrush at the bottom. On the other side of the seam was blas
ted dirt, dry tan in color, so light as to almost be cream. Moisture had eroded and drained from the soil, a few late autumn frosts had done their work, and the ground now was baked and cracked like the surface of the moon. Zigzag lines ran here and there across the powdery dirt. Nothing grew.

  Looking up, Parker saw the explanation. In front of him, maybe sixty yards away, a broad yellow brick building rose up in the middle of the dead plain like a squared-off dinosaur. Marching rows of windows reflected the afternoon sun, giving off a cold yellow light. On the right side of the building the temporary steel framework of a construction company's external elevator rose up like the crane next to a missile bound for the moon.

  Bulldozers had worked this dry miracle with the land. The constructors of that building over there had called in the bulldozers to strip down every inch of the property they owned before anybody started to work putting up the foundation. Later, when the building was done, landscape architects would come in with fresh earth and seed and hothouse plants and turn this moonscape back into something vaguely like the forest it had been, but with less clutter and liveliness.

  The building wasn't finished, that was obvious, though there didn't seem to be any workmen on or near it. Parker assumed they were all out on strike.

  Whether the building, when it was finished, would be an apartment house or an office building Parker couldn't tell and didn't care. Whatever it was going to be, it implied a road or highway or street of some kind over on its far side. If the amateur could make it over to there, over to paved street and a populated neighborhood, he just might get away after all.

  But he wasn't going to make it.

  He was halfway to the building, running splayfooted, arms making ragged pinwheels at his sides. He was obviously winded, running on terror now instead of strength or energy. Little puffs of dust rose up around his feet at every pounding step. He half staggered, nearly fell forward, but kept his balance and his momentum and ran on.

  Parker half turned so his right side was to the building and the runner. He stretched his right arm out, shoulder high, large hand bunched around the Colt .38 automatic, arm and hand and automatic all pointing at the straining back of the runner.

  He fired.

  Dust puffed ahead of the runner and to his right.

  The runner didn't dodge, didn't swerve. He kept running straight ahead, flat out, running along the straight taut string of terror.

  Parker compensated, aiming now just a bit to the left, just a bit lower. His first finger squeezed and the automatic bucked just a trifle, and the runner thudded face forward into the ground. Dust billowed up around him and slowly settled down again. There was no wind; the dust settled on the body.

  Now for Negli.

  A bullet cut Parker's right earlobe.

  2

  There was silence.

  Parker crouched next to a thick maple, peering through the underbrush, waiting for Negli to make a move. Behind him, five or six feet away, was the edge of the forest; beyond, the tan earth lay dull and flat, and farther away the yellow building gleamed in the pale sunlight.

  It was cold in here now. He'd left his topcoat, and he was no longer moving, and he could feel the chill air seeping through his clothes.

  Five minutes had gone by since Negli's bullet had drawn blood on Parker's ear. Parker had taken cover, had moved slowly and carefully away from where Negli could expect to find him, and now he was sitting here and waiting for Negli to make the first move.

  It had to be Negli who would move first. He was a pro, the same as Parker, but right now he was running on emotion, and a man full of emotion can't sit and wait as well as a man in control of himself. So Negli would eventually have to move, and when the time came, Parker would take whatever advantage of it he could.

  But he wasn't sure yet whether he just wanted to kill Negli or not. If Arnie Feccio really was dead, then there were developments Parker didn't know anything about. For his own good, he had to find out about them, find out how the situation now stood, and Negli was the only one handy to tell him.

  The whole operation had soured completely, he knew that much. The job itself, at the stadium, had been sweet, one of the sweetest pieces of work he'd ever been a part of. For three days after the job, everything was still sweet. And then, because of that simple-minded amateur, lying out there now on the dead ground, everything went to hell.

  Shelly was dead. If Negli had the story straight, then Feccio was dead, too. Negli was going to be dead himself pretty soon. Three out of the seven, dead or soon to be.

  Leaves rattled.

  Parker was instantly alert. It had come from the left, and deeper into the woods away from the open ground. Negli had been more to the right earlier, when he'd taken that near-miss shot at Parker. So they'd spent the last five minutes circling each other, both of them moving to the right, shifting position in relation to the forest but not in relation to one another.

  If he were to move out to the edge, out by the moonscape, and head down to his left, he might still flank Negli, still wind up on Negli's back. With that advantage, he could pick and choose, he could maybe get close enough just to disarm the little man and hold him down while he asked some questions.

  It was worth a try.

  He moved to his left, as slow and careful and silent as a wolf.

  “Parker!”

  He stopped. The call had come from the same spot; Negli hadn't moved since then. Parker said nothing. He waited.

  “Parker, you did everything wrong.”

  He waited.

  “You hear me? You stupid lummox, do you hear me?”

  He waited.

  Negli's voice was getting shrill, his words were bumping into one another. He shouted, “Do you want to hear about it, you brainless bastard?”

  This time, as Negli shouted Parker moved. Negli's own roaring voice covered any small sounds Parker might make. He followed the line he'd already worked out, moving out to the edge of the forest and then down the line to get behind Negli. He moved when Negli spoke, and stopped when Negli was silent.

  Negli shouted, “You lost the money, that was the first thing. You walk out of the apartment and leave the money in there with nobody to watch it and somebody comes and takes it away, you simple moron, takes it away!”

  Parker stopped. He was at the edge now; he'd traveled about seven feet so far, during Negli's speeches.

  It was almost comic. Negli shouting about stupidity and killing himself with every shout.

  “And you went to the cop!” Negli shouted, and Parker moved forward again. “You got that goddam list from that goddam cop, and what the hell did you think he'd do? You hear me, Parker? What did you think that cop would do?”

  They both stopped.

  “He put law on the inside, Parker! There weren't any cops watching for you on the outside, there were plainclothesmen inside the goddam apartment!”

  Parker frowned and crouched down to wait awhile. That was a cross-up. It didn't make sense that way. Detective Dougherty had to figure he was part of the mob that made the haul at the stadium. He had to figure Parker would lead him to the rest of the mob. It only made sense for Dougherty to put men on watch outside the homes of those nine men on his list with orders not to grab Parker when he showed up but to follow him when he left.

  That was the whole basis of it right there, that was why it seemed safe to let the others go around and ask their questions.

  Why? Where had he figured wrong? Had Dougherty been too smart for him or too dumb for him?

  Negli shouted again: “They put the grab on Arnie, you know that? I saw them bring him out. I tried to help him cop it, they gunned him down. You hear me, you rotten bastard?”

  Parker heard him. He'd gone down the line now, Negli's voice was coming from farther back. He'd managed to cross Negli's flank and get behind him. He turned, and on Negli's next speech he started in through the underbrush again.

  "Parker! Arnie's dead! Don't you know what I'm talking about, you mindle
ss piece of hate? Arnie's dead!”

  Closer, Parker stopped, his left hand resting lighdy on the smooth white trunk of a birch tree. The automatic was in his right. The little Colt revolver was still in his trouser pocket, hadn't been used at all yet.

  “And that other one! He killed Kifka, did you know that? Not just your girl, that slut of yours, you animal, not just her. He killed Kifka, too, just now, just today.”

  Kifka? Then who was left?

  Shelly dead, Feccio dead, Negli dying. Kifka dead. If the law was on watch inside those apartments, then they now must have Clinger and Rudd.

  Nobody was left.

  Only Parker was left. Parker, and a corpse that was shouting because it didn't know yet it was a corpse.

  “Kifka's your fault, too, Parker, you hear that? You killed Arnie just as much as if you pulled the trigger yourself. You killed Arnie, and you killed Kifka, and I'm going to kill you!”

  They stopped. Negli was no more than ten feet away now, ahead and to the right. Crouching, waiting, Parker peered through the underbrush for some sign, some glimpse of Negli. He'd been wearing a luminous tan camel's hair coat over his natty suit; that tan should show nicely against the black and green of the woods. But not yet, not quite close enough yet.

  The wait this time was a longer one, and when at last Negli spoke out again there was a difference in the tone of his voice. He seemed suddenly less full of rage, less sure of himself:

  “Parker? Parker? Where the hell are you, Parker?”

  A foot closer. Two feet closer.

  “Did you run away, you bastard? You coward? You moron?”

  Closer.

  “Why don't you fight like a man?”

  There was a sudden scattering of leaves, and Negli was standing up in full sight, staring and staring the wrong way, his natty back to Parker and only five feet away.