“And when would you like this?” Norte asked, but laughed before Parker could say anything and said, “Never mind, that was not a smart question. You want it as soon as you can get it, no?”
“Yes.”
“Texas resident?”
“That would be best,” Parker said.
“And easiest for me. So you want a driver's license and a birth certificate. Do you need a passport?”
“No.”
“Now you surprise me,” Norte admitted. “Most people, that's the first thing they want.”
“My troubles are domestic,” Parker told him.
Norte laughed. “All right, Mr. Lynch,” he said, “you can stop being Mr. Lynch, I think, in three days’ time. Is that all right?”
“That's fine,” Parker said.
Norte said, “But then again, you haven't been Mr. Lynch all that long, have you? Never mind, that wasn't a question. You didn't bring a photo, did you?”
“No.”
“We can do that here,” Norte assured him. “The other thing is money.”
“I know.”
“Driver's license, birth certificate, both with legitimate sources. Ten thousand. Cash, of course.”
“I like cash,” Parker said.
“There's so little of it around these days,” Norte said. “That would be in advance. Sorry, but it's best that way.”
Parker said, “Will you be here in half an hour?”
“If you intend to be,” Norte told him.
Parker got to his feet. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Norte,” he said.
“And you, Mr. Lynch.”
11
When Parker went back to Norte's office half an hour later, he'd made two stops, the first at a drugstore where he'd bought reading glasses of the lowest possible magnification, 1.25, and a dark brown eyebrow pencil. The glasses were squarish and black-framed, and the eyebrow pencil would work to emphasize his new mustache. And the second stop he'd made, in the far corner of a supermarket parking lot, had been to open a door panel and remove from inside it ten thousand in cash.
Again he rang the bell and walked in, and again the guard dog looked up from his fotonovela to watch Parker cross the room. Norte was on the phone, but he said something quiet in Spanish, hung up, and got smiling to his feet. “Right on time,” he said.
He wanted to shake hands again, so Parker shook his hand, then took out the money and placed it on the desk. Norte smiled at it. “You don't mind if I count.”
“Go ahead.”
Norte did, then said, “Bobby will take your picture.”
“Bobby?”
Norte indicated the guard dog. “Roberto,” he said. “Not a name you could use.”
“No.”
Norte spoke to Bobby in Spanish, and the guard dog put down his fotonovela and stood. Norte said to Parker, “You go with Bobby.”
Parker went with Bobby, through the door at the back of the room into what still was a kitchen, though not many meals would be made here. Bedrooms and a bathroom were off the kitchen to the right and rear.
A camera was set up on a tall tripod at head height, facing a blank wall. Bobby, moving toward the camera, made a shooing gesture for Parker to stand by the wall. When Parker went over there, he saw a pair of white footprints painted on the floor and stood on them.
Bobby was efficient, if silent. He moved his head to show Parker how to pose, then quickly took three shots. Still saying nothing, he led Parker back to the other room.
The money was gone from the desk, and Norte was standing beside it, smiling farewell. “Phone me Friday afternoon,” he said. “It should be ready by then.”
“Good,” Parker said, and left, and drove back to the motel. Later, after dinner, he put on black clothing, took his b&e tools out from under the trunk bed in the Taurus, and drove south again, one hundred fifty miles almost to the border, turning east at Harlingen toward South Padre Island, where the rich boaters keep their country villas and retirement homes.
Bay View, Laguna Vista, Port Isabel; this is where the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway begins, where the rich sea-loving Texans are based, alternating between agreeable “cottages” and even more agreeable yachts, moored just at the end of the lawn. In the evenings, they visit one another, play bridge, drink, gossip, plan excursions across the Gulf to the islands of the Caribbean. Half the houses are full of light, warmth, good cheer; the other half are empty.
A little after nine in the evening, Parker left the Taurus in the parking lot of a chain drugstore that wouldn't close till midnight. He left the parking lot over a chain-link fence at the back, and kept to the rear of houses, moving as far as possible from the lit-up noisy ones, crossing only side streets and only at their darkest points. This area was patrolled almost as heavily as Palm Beach, but he was keeping himself dark and silent.
All of the houses along the Waterway are equipped with alarm systems; enter through any door or window, and if the alarm is not switched off at the control pad within forty-five seconds it will signal both the town police and the security service. But where is the control pad to be found? In every house, it is just inside, next to the door nearest to where the car is parked. It was never hard to figure out which door that was.
In the next hour and a half, Parker went into nine houses, and the method was always the same. Interior pockets in the back of his coat carried his tools, which included a telephone handset with alligator clips, a special one used by telephone company repairmen to check lines. With this, he could attach to the house's phone line outdoors, where it came in from the pole, and call that line. He could always hear it ring, inside the house. If the answering machine picked up, or there was no answer after ten rings, and no dog barked, it was his. He'd go to the door nearest where the car would normally be parked and use his small pry bar to pop it.
Inside, on the wall, its red light lit, would be the alarm control pad. He never needed the full forty-five seconds to short-circuit and disarm it. Then he'd move through the house, looking only for cash. He had to leave behind hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of jewelry, bonds, paintings, cameras, watches, and all the other toys of the leisured rich, but it didn't matter: there was always cash. There was often a wall safe, which he would find by lifting pictures along the way and get into with hammer and chisel, and the wall safes always produced bundles of cash, often still in the paper band from the bank.
Nine houses, a little over a hundred twenty thousand dollars. Finished, he skirted the areas he'd already been through, made his way back to the drugstore fifteen minutes before it would close, and drove back north to Corpus Christi.
Tomorrow, he'd have more money for the banks in Houston.
12
On Friday, from a different motel in Corpus Christi, Parker phoned Norte, got the Poco Repro machine, left a message, and Norte phoned right back: “We're ready, Mr. Lynch,” he said.
“I'll come right down,” Parker told him, and drove down to Norte's place, but when he turned the corner a black Chevy Blazer was parked in front of the house, with white exhaust visible at the tailpipe. Parker decided not to stop, but drove on by, and saw the driver alone in the Blazer, a chunky man in a white dress shirt, with the pie face and thick black hair of the Mayan Indian. He sat facing front, hands on the steering wheel, waiting, patient.
Another customer was with Norte. Parker drove on down to the next corner and went around it. He didn't want Norte's other customers to meet him, and they probably didn't want him to meet them.
He spent ten minutes driving around the neighborhood before going back to Norte's house again, to see the Blazer still there. But this time its engine was off and the driver was gone.
Parker slowed, peering at the house. The “Ring Bell And Walk In” sign, which had been there ten minutes ago, was gone now from its hook above the bell button.
Something wrong. Parker drove three-quarters of the way around the block, parked, and walked on to the house.
Blazer still there, sign still
gone. No one visible in the windows. He walked up to the house and around it to the left to the carport. The Infiniti was there, as before. There was just enough room between the car and the house to slide down there and look through the high window over Bobby's desk.
Norte was at his own elegant desk, on the phone. Bobby stood in the middle of the room, an automatic loose in his hand. Three men lay facedown on the floor, wrists and ankles and mouths swathed in duct tape. One of them was the Mayan driver.
The thing to do was go away somewhere and phone. Parker moved back from the window, sidled past the Infiniti, and when he got to the front corner of the house Bobby was there, the automatic pointed at Parker's chest. With his other hand he gestured: Come with me.
Parker shrugged. He walked past Bobby and around to the front door and in, Bobby trailing after him.
Norte was off the phone now, standing behind his desk, looking aggravated. “Bad timing, Mr. Lynch,” he said.
“Hand me the papers and I'll go,” Parker told him.
Two of the men, not the driver, had twisted around to stare up at Parker, not as though he might help but as though he might be more trouble. Norte, with a sad smile and a harried look, shook his head. “I'm sorry,” he said. “You see the situation here, no?”
“Dissatisfied customers,” Parker suggested.
But Norte shook that away. “No, I don't have dissatisfied customers. What I got, I got a customer doesn't want anybody alive that knows who he is now and what he looks like now. That fuckhead sent these fuckheads to kill Bobby and me.”
“He sent the wrong fuckheads,” Parker said.
“So now I gotta take them down,” Norte said with a disgusted gesture at the men on the floor, “and I gotta take their boss down, because I don't need this shit.”
“It's not my fight,” Parker said. “Just give me the papers and I'll go.”
“I wish I could,” Norte said, and he sounded as though he meant it. “But you're a witness here, no?”
“I don't witness things,” Parker told him.
Norte didn't like it. He chewed the inside of his cheek, and then he said, “I tell you what. When I get this shit straightened out here, I'll call Ed Mackey, tell him the situation, see what he thinks I should do.”
Parker watched him.
Norte tried a smile while still chewing his cheek. He said, “That'll work, no? Ed Mackey knows you.”
“He knows me.”
“In the meantime,” Norte said, “just lie down on the floor here.”
“Sure,” Parker said, and as he bent forward he reached inside his shirt. He pivoted the holster down, lifted his left arm, and fired through his shirt.
The bullet hit Bobby somewhere, it didn't matter where. It wouldn't stop him, only confuse him for a second; long enough, maybe, for Parker to drop to his knees, turning, pulling the Sentinel out, hearing the big boom of the automatic bounce in this enclosed room, knowing the bullet had gone over his head. He thrust his arm out as Bobby adjusted his aim, and shot the guard dog in the face.
That still didn't finish him, but it made him drop the automatic as he whipped both hands up to his ruined face. He tottered there as Parker dropped the Sentinel, grabbed the automatic, and lunged to his feet.
Norte was pulling a blunt revolver out of a desk drawer, ducking down low behind his desk, calling, “Drop that!”
“Fuck you,” Parker said, and pulled Bobby in front of himself to take Norte's first three shots. Now he held the dead Bobby up in front of himself and moved forward toward the desk as Norte, still hidden behind it, called, “All right! I'm done!”
“Put the gun on the desk,” Parker told him.
Norte stayed out of sight behind the desk. “We don't have to kill each other,” he said.
“We're not gonna kill each other.”
“I was worried, I was upset, I was too hasty. Ed Mackey said you were okay, I should've remembered that.”
“Put the gun on the desk.”
Still he remained out of sight. “People need me,” he said. “They won't like it if you take me down. Ed Mackey won't like it.”
Parker waited.
“I was wrong,” Norte said. “I was too hasty.”
Parker waited.
“There's no reason to do anything anymore.”
Parker waited.
Norte's hand appeared, with the revolver. He put it on the green blotter and pushed it a little forward.
Parker let Bobby fall, on top of the men on the floor. He went forward and walked around the side of the desk to where Norte crouched there, looking up. Norte, voice shaking a little, said, “You don't need to do a thing. I got your documents, middle drawer. You'll see, they're beautiful.”
“Let's see them.”
Norte hesitantly rose, then looked at his revolver still on the desk. “Aren't you gonna take that?”
“You intend to reach for it?”
“No!”
“Let's see this ID.”
Norte opened the middle drawer, took out a manila envelope, shook two official papers out onto the green blotter. He was careful to keep as far as possible from the revolver. He stepped back to the wall, holding the manila envelope, and gestured for Parker to look them over.
His name was Daniel Parmitt. He'd been born in Quito, Ecuador, of American parents, and the birth certificate was in Spanish. His Texas driver's license showed he lived at an address in San Antonio. The photo on the driver's license, with the glasses and the mustache, made him look less hard.
He pocketed both documents, looked around the room. What had he touched? The carpet, Bobby; nothing that would leave prints. “Come here,” he said.
Norte didn't move. His hands fidgeted with the manila envelope the documents had been in as he said, “It's a misunderstanding, it's all over. Bobby and me, we were gonna take these shits away, not mess up the office, then all of a sudden we got you here—it was too much goin on, I got too hasty.”
“Come here,” Parker said.
It finally occurred to Norte that he was still alive and that he needn't be. With small steps, he came forward to the desk and Parker took the manila envelope out of his hands. “Pick up the gun,” he said.
“No!”
Parker held the automatic leveled at Norte's forehead. “You aren't gonna point it at me,” he said. “You're gonna finish those three.”
“Here? We didn't want to—”
“Bobby's messing your rug already. The other way is, I do you and I do them and I go.”
“But what—”
“Ed says you're useful. I say you're too jumpy to be reliable, but you do good work. If you make it possible, I'll help you stay alive. Pick up the gun.”
“And, and kill them?”
“That's what it's for,” Parker said.
Norte stared down at the three men. The driver was still stoic, but the other two were now staring up at Norte, hoping something different was going to happen now.
No. Abruptly, as though to get it over before he had to think about it, Norte grabbed up the revolver, bent over them, and shot each one in the head. The carpet would have to be replaced for sure.
“Keep shooting,” Parker said.
Norte grimaced at him. “They're dead. Believe me, they're dead.”
“Keep shooting.”
Norte looked down at the bodies and fired at random into their backs. One, two, click; the revolver was empty.
Parker held out the manila envelope. “Put it in here.”
Norte frowned, studying Parker's face. “You want a hold over me.”
“You make all this go away, what hold? All I need is, I was never here.”
Norte managed a twisted smile. “Oh, if only that could be true, no?”
“We can make it true. Put the gun in here.”
Norte shrugged and reached forward to slide the revolver into the envelope.
Parker said, “Stand back over there by the wall.”
Obediently, Norte moved back to where
he'd stood before. He kept his arms at his sides, palms forward, to show he wasn't going to try anything, but Parker already knew that.
Parker put the envelope, bulging and heavy with the revolver, on the green blotter. He went around the desk, found his Sentinel near Bobby's feet, and put it back in its holster. Then he picked up the envelope. Automatic in his right hand, envelope in his left, he backed to the door, as Norte looked around at the mess he had to clean up. His face had gone through too much surgery to permit it to show his emotions, but they were there in his eyes.
With a little trouble, Parker turned the doorknob with the hand holding the envelope. He stepped outside, let the door snick shut, and put the automatic under his shirt, keeping his hand on it in there, like Napoleon. But, as he walked away, Norte did not come outside. He had enough to think about.
13
Daniel Parmitt's address in San Antonio, according to his driver's license, was an office building downtown; nobody lived there.
Parker stayed in three motels off Interstate 10 for three nights while setting himself up in town. A real estate agent showed him rental houses, and the second day he found what he needed in Alamo Heights, between McNay Art Museum and Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. It was a three-bedroom two-story fake-Gothic yellow clapboard house with a turret, set back from a winding, hilly street among modestly upscale houses. Parker knew it was right, but didn't tell the real estate agent; they looked at another four places before he suggested they try again tomorrow.
It was then two-thirty in the afternoon, time enough to get to a bank and open a checking account for Daniel Parmitt, using the address of the house he hadn't rented yet, starting the account with a thirty-eight-hundred-dollar check from Charles O. St. Ignatius in Houston and a forty-two-hundred-dollar wire transfer from Charles Willis's money market account in Galveston, so the money would be available at once. From there he went to the post office and the Department of Motor Vehicles, putting in a change of address from the office building to the new house at both.
Next day, he said to the real estate agent, “Let's look at that yellow house again.”
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