Parker

by Richard Stark

  Farley nodded. “All right,” he said. “It's a good reason.”

  “I know it is. How are you doing?”

  “Well, the Chicago police—” At Parker's look, he made a sour face and said, “Yeah, Chicago's taken over now. Bernson, the guy we caught in the hospital—”

  “That his name? I only heard you got somebody.”

  “Edward Bernson. A professional killer, according to the Chicago people. One of the guns on him tied him to two other murders over the last couple years. When he saw we had him cold, he flipped.”

  “And gave you the name of the guy that hired him.”

  “No, the go-between. It's a lawyer in Chicago named Gilma Yard, and now the Chicago police are looking into it. They think she's like a clearinghouse or an agency for killers, for hit men. They're not even sure that's her name, but her files are full of stuff that's gonna clear up a lot of murders around the country.”

  Parker said, “This Gilma Yard, she isn't the principal? She's just the one that runs the string of killers?”

  “That's how it looks.”

  “And they haven't flipped her.”

  “Not yet. She's stonewalling, and she's a lawyer, and she seems to think she can skate out of it. I don't know if she can, but right now they've got her in protective custody in case there's any customers out there that wouldn't like to be mentioned.”

  “So it's still that nobody knows who's hiring these people that are trying to gun me down.”

  “Well, you must know,” Farley told him.

  “I don't.”

  Farley shook his head. “That isn't possible. You must have some idea why you—”

  “No. We'll get to that,” Parker promised, “but what's happening with this lawyer and her files? Don't they at least have somebody who could be the guy?”

  Reluctantly, Farley said, “Yes.”

  “In Chicago?”

  “No, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.”

  “We do get around,” Parker said. “Who is this guy?”

  Farley gave him an exasperated look. “Just given the wild chance that you don't know who's gunning for you,” he said, “why should I give you a name? So you can go out to Oklahoma and deal with him yourself? Level with me and let the law deal with him.”

  “I want the law to deal with him.”

  “Well, the law can't,” Farley said, “not so far, because there's no connection between the man in Tulsa and Daniel Parmitt. But why should there be, when you aren't Daniel Parmitt and we don't know who you are? If we knew who you really were, we'd know the link.”

  “Sheriff Farley,” Parker said, “I'm going to make you an offer.”

  Farley thought about that. He squinted at his white car hood, baking in the sun. He adjusted the air conditioner down a notch. He said, “I can at least listen to it.”

  “I will tell you the link between this man and me,” Parker said. “It's a stupid link, but it's the only one there is. You will tell me the name of the guy in Tulsa, and then I'll give every law enforcement agency in the country a year to bring him down. You won't need a month, I think, given the guy. But if you all fuck up, in a year and a day I kill him.”

  Farley said, “Why do you want to do it that way?”

  “Because he's already been too much of a distraction. Because I don't want to have to think about him anymore.”

  “The man had you shot. You don't feel any desire to go deal with him yourself?”

  “Why? You people are better equipped than me to be sure he's the right guy. And I want him out of my life, not in my life. And the other thing, Sheriff, just between you and me, I don't want you on my back-trail anymore, either. You go live your life in Snake River, and I'll go live my life somewhere else.”

  “If I see you again—”

  “You won't.”

  Farley thought it over. He said, “If I took you in, took your prints, asked you questions a few days, showed you to my friends at the FBI, I bet we'd come up with a lot of answers we'd like.”

  “Sheriff,” Parker said, “if you make a single move in that direction, the two of us in the car here together, you're a much more stupid man than I think you are.”

  Farley considered that. “I'm armed,” he pointed out.

  Parker held his hands up between them, fingers half-curled. “So am I.”

  “Jesus, you've got gall!”

  Parker lowered his hands. “Do we have a deal?”

  “You'll tell me the link between you and the man in Tulsa, and you'll keep away from him for a year, and we should have enough to get the goods on him.”

  “And,” Parker said, “you'll tell me his name.”

  “Zulf Masters,” Farley said.

  “Zulf Masters.”

  “All anybody knows is, he's rich, everybody thinks from oil. He's in real estate, office buildings and shopping centers, all through Oklahoma and Kansas and Missouri.”

  “That's laundered money,” Parker said. “It didn't come from oil. Zulf Masters,” he repeated, in case he'd have to remember it later.

  “Nobody's sure if that's his real name, either,” Farley said.

  “It isn't,” Parker said.

  “These are very dubious people, Parmitt,” Farley said. “Bad as you.”

  “Take notes, Sheriff.”

  Farley had pen and notepad as part of the console between the front seats. He obediently picked them up and said, “Go ahead.”

  “In Galveston, Texas,” Parker told him, “there was a man named Julius Norte.”

  “Was.”

  Parker spelled the name. “Sometime in the last month he was murdered. I think by the same two that shot me.”

  “Oh ho,” Farley said.

  “Norte created ID for people.”

  “Like Daniel Parmitt.”

  “That's right. He did very good stuff, you could do background checks, whatever. Only the credit history wouldn't be there.”

  “You traveled with your birth certificate,” Farley said. “That snagged at me, but I didn't think it through.”

  Parker said, “If the Chicago cops are right about this guy in Tulsa, he got his name from Norte. And whoever he really is, some South American warlord or drug dealer or whoever, he doesn't want anybody who can link the new guy to the old guy. So he must have had plastic surgery, and he probably killed the surgeon. He killed Norte. And because I was there, I happened to be there at the time, he's trying to kill me. It was whoever was gonna be Norte's customer that day was gonna have this guy breathing down his back.”

  Farley looked up from his notepad. “That's it? That's all of it? You were with Norte at the wrong minute, and this fellow wants you dead?”

  “I think he's somebody comes from a former life where making people dead was the solution to most problems.”

  Farley said, “If we can prove the Zulf Masters identity is a fake, we can get through to the real guy.”

  “The one thing Norte couldn't do,” Parker told him, “was the Social Security number. He said he didn't have the access to the legit files.”

  “That'll bring him down,” Farley said. “You're right, we won't need a year.”

  “He's going to be some stinking piece of work when you find out who he really is.”

  Farley laughed. “Worse than you and me?”

  “Worse than you,” Parker said. “You going back to Snake River now?”

  “Naturally. So I can call Chicago.”

  “Drop me off in Miami Beach.”

  “That's out of my way.”

  “Not that far. And you can give me a quarter for a phone call.”

  Farley shook his head. “You don't lack for nerve, Parmitt, I'll give you that.”

  Forty minutes south of Palm Beach on Interstate 95, Farley said, “It isn't Mackenzie.”

  Parker looked at him. “What isn't Mackenzie?”

  “Who you're meeting in Miami Beach.”

  “Farley,” Parker said, “you've got that woman on your mind. You've got the itch for her, have
n't you?”

  “Don't be stupid,” Farley said, glaring at the traffic on 95. “I'm a happily married man.”

  “They all are,” Parker said, and Farley didn't talk about Leslie anymore.

  Driving down Collins Avenue in Miami Beach, Farley said, “Where do you want to get off?”

  “Anywhere at all,” Parker said.

  “No, I know you're still hurting, you don't want to walk a lot, I'll let you off wherever you say.”

  “Anywhere along Collins is fine by me,” Parker said.

  Farley laughed. “You don't want to give me one clue.”

  Parker looked at the hard-bodied girls on roller skates, weaving in and out among the retirees. Everything that was extreme was here.

  Farley found a fire hydrant and stopped next to it. “I give up,” he said. “Hold on, here's your quarter.” It came from a cup on the dashboard.

  “Thanks.”

  “You know, Parmitt,” Farley said as Parker opened the door, “it's kind of an anticlimax for me, you just walking off like this.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I'll always wonder,” Farley said, “if I could have taken you.”

  “Look on the bright side,” Parker told him. “This way, you have an always.”