“By God,” Lozini said grimly, “we’re going to put this together. I don’t like the whole feel of this.”
As Parker left, he heard Lozini behind him going on in the same vein, with his three lieutenants silently listening and nodding their heads. Walking across the empty receptionist’s office with Calesian, Parker listened to Lozini’s voice without the words, and there seemed a slight echo in the sound, a touch of hollowness created both by distance and the tone of the man’s voice. Lozini sounded more and more like someone blustering to hide his uncertainty.
Parker and Calesian walked down the hall to the elevator. Calesian pushed the button, then turned to say, “You know, just between us, what Nate said wasn’t all that stupid.”
Parker shrugged.
“There’s such a thing as too much pressure,” Calesian said. “You have Al where you want him; now might be a good time to ease off a bit. Let him take care of business first, get this election out of the way.”
“No.”
Calesian looked puzzled. “Why not? What’s the problem?”
“Lozini.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
Parker said, “He’s a man who didn’t hear the twig snap.”
Calesian frowned a second, then said, “Oh. Somebody’s coming up behind him?”
“Somebody came up.”
“You think somebody’s going to try a takeover.”
Parker gestured a thumb toward Lozini’s office. “Isn’t that what that was all about?”
Calesian thought about it. “Maybe,” he said. “But who?”
“You know the territory better than I do.”
The elevator door slid back, showing an empty interior. Grinning at it, Calesian said, “That’s a smart boy.”
They stepped into the elevator, and started down.
Calesian said, “If you’re right, you know, that’s even more reason to ease up on Al a little. Don’t distract him while he’s trying to hold his business together.”
“This election you’ve got coming up,” Parker said. “I think maybe that’s the key. Come Wednesday, Lozini may not be around any more.”
Calesian looked troubled, but had nothing to say.
Parker said, “I wouldn’t want to start all over again with somebody new.”
Seventeen
The two men sat in the back seat of a darkened car on Brower Road, near the baseball field and the amusement park. It was four o’clock Sunday morning, six hours after the meeting in Lozini’s office had broken up, and it was almost pitch-dark. The stars were thin and aloof and far away, the thin crescent of moon was like a tiny rip in a black plastic bag showing the sugar inside. There were no houses out in this part of town, no traffic, nobody moving except the driver of the car, strolling back and forth a hundred feet down the road, kicking at stones he could barely see, while the two men in the car, dark faceless mounds to one another, talked things over.
“So Al knows what’s happening, does he?”
“Not yet. He knows something is happening, but he doesn’t know what.”
“The money?”
“You mean from Fun Island?”
“No, the money we’ve been skimming. Is he onto that?”
“No. He still believes it’s just that times are slow.”
“So what does he know?”
“That he should take a look around. That something isn’t kosher.”
“And we have these people from out of town to thank, huh?”
“Mostly.”
“What’s their names?”
“They call themselves Parker and Green.”
”What are they like?”
“Green didn’t come to the meeting. Parker looks tough.”
“What kind of tough? He talks big?”
“He doesn’t talk much at all. He just makes you want to step to one side.”
“Scare him, buy him off.”
“Not the first. And I doubt you could do the second with less than the full seventy-three thousand he came here for.”
“I hate to say it, but I think maybe we need the two of them hit.”
“Good God. Like O’Hara?”
“That wasn’t my idea. He did it on his own and told me later.”
“It was a bad thing to do. We’ve been clean up to now, no killings, no strong-arm. Sooner or later you’re going to have to deal with some people at the national level, Jack Fujon in Baltimore, Walter Karns in Los Angeles. They don’t have any complaint against Al, and you don’t want them to have complaints against you.”
“I’ve already talked to some of them. Don’t worry about it, leave them to me. They’ll accept the situation the way it is.”
“They won’t be happy if we start acting like twenties gangsters.”
“What do you mean, gangsters? I’m a businessman.”
“I mean O’Hara, for one thing.”
“I told you that wasn’t me. Besides, I understand he wasn’t that strong a personality, it might have been possible to lean on him. This Parker sounds like someone who might have been able to get O’Hara to talk.”
“He could have been sent away on vacation for a couple of weeks. The point is, we’ve already had one killing, now you’re talking about two more.”
“Drifters. Parker and Green, who are they? We do it right, we don’t leave bodies, there’s no trouble at all. They drifted into town, they drifted out again. No fuss.”
“I don’t like to hear about this sort of thing.”
“You wanted a piece of it.”
“I wanted to be on the winning side. I’m not a fool. But if you want somebody killed, don’t talk to me about it, that’s not what I’m here for.”
”Calm down. I wasn’t at the meeting, that’s all, I haven’t met these two guys. I’m asking your opinion, that’s all it is.”
“My opinion is, don’t talk to me about murder.”
“All right, all right. Relax.”
“I just don’t want to hear about it.”
“Fine. Fine.”
Eighteen
Grofield awoke to excruciating pain, and a sense that the world had shifted on its axis. Why else was the sun down there in that strange position, why else did he have the feeling of being surrounded by the interior parts of an automobile all turned on their side, and why else did he have the impression he was standing up and lying down at the same time?
And why this excruciating pain? His neck twinged, his right shoulder was killing him, his legs ached abominably. And what was that mounded thing between him and the sun? And what was that awful bonging sound?
He closed one eye and squinted the other, the better to see, and suddenly understood that the mounded thing was a naked buttock. A torso was somehow draped across him so that the buttock was over his waist, with the sun rising over it. And from the roundness and the impression of softness—and from his own past history—he presumed the buttock to be female.
And the automobile parts? An automobile, a true complete automobile, on the back seat of which he was more or less lying.
And the horrible bonging sound? Grofield closed his other eye, tight, the better to muffle the sound (which didn’t work), and like an optical illusion that suddenly shifts its perspective and becomes a different picture, the horrible bonging transmogrified itself all at once into church bells.
Church bells? The combination of church bells and a girl’s naked ass seemed not only incongruous but downright profane. Taken aback, Grofield opened his eyes again, and the behind was still there, rounded pale flesh cloven into two equal melons, sunlight playing on the soft downy blond hair just above the cleavage where her tail would be, if she had a tail. That was actually pretty; the church bells seemed an appropriate accompaniment, after all.
An ass; an entire body. Pale flesh became tanned flesh at the downy hair; a bikini-wearer, apparently. Good hips narrowing to excellent waist, smooth back extending up in the direction of Grofield’s head, shoulder blades like the stubby wings of a
demoted angel out of focus just below Grofield’s nose. Slow, steady, quiet, foreign breathing in Grofield’s right ear. And in the opposite direction, out of sight beyond the hills, incredibly heavy legs lay crisscrossed on Grofield’s legs, causing one element of the excruciating pain that had awakened him.
Yes; about that pain. Grofield’s right arm was away someplace, out of sight and off in some unimaginable position. He tried to move it, experimentally, to ease the grinding in the shoulder, and felt a nipple rub against his palm. The breathing next to him broke rhythm, became a little purring moan, settled back to breathing again, and a nose burrowed more firmly into the side of his neck. The entire female torso became twenty-five pounds heavier.
Who was this, anyway? Rumps are anonymous, and memory had not as yet awakened in Grofield’s head.
But even as he thought that, it did, and he remembered everything. Dori Neevin, madam librarian. Three times he had called her last night; at seven to say yes, at seven-ten to say no, and at nine-thirty to say yes again. Infinitely available, she had prepared to come out, had resigned herself to staying in, and had quickly come out when the green light was given.
And then? Dancing to records at a place called Miss Fotheringay’s School for Boys and Girls; a joint, where they watered everything but the bar rag. Then to the New York Room, where the bewildered waitress Angie served them and Frankie Faran came over to sit at the table awhile, chat, have a drink and finally tell them everything was on the house. Dori had been impressed out of her mind by all that, and the drive home had detoured a bit. Neither of them had been sober, Dori had been doing some clutching and unzipping about his person while the vehicle was still in motion, and what with one thing and another, Grofield hadn’t paid too much attention to where he parked.
Out the window, above Dori’s butt, there was nothing to be seen but sky, with a rising sun in it. The church bells went on and on, like the bore in the next seat on a plane. And Grofield was still in pain.
He grunted. He shifted his entire person somehow, and managed to adjust his head less crookedly. Dori complained into his neck, mumblingly. With his left hand he patted her nearer shoulder blade, saying, “Dori? Hello?”
Mumble mumble.
He patted some more, on the middle of her back, and called her name again, to no greater effect. The sunlight looked so warm on her behind that he rested his palm there, and was surprised to find the flesh cool. She squirmed slightly beneath that touch, pleasurably, and he became aware that underneath her he was just as naked as she was.
They both seemed to be moving. His cupped left hand remained where it was, the nipple hardened suddenly against his right palm, and various complex things were happening in a very simple manner.
“Wake up, sweetheart,” Grofield murmured, “we seem to be having intercourse.”
Her right arm came up to wrap around his head and close off his windpipe, and her hips began to move more strongly. Clutching with both hands, Grofield gave as good as he got, and the breathing in his right ear became very fast and ragged.
Things went along that way for a while, until suddenly the upper part of the torso reared up, Dori’s astonished face appeared directly in front of Grofield’s eyes, and she cried, in amazement and delight, “Oh!”
“Hello,” he said. His right hand was now free; partly to ease the pain in his shoulder, he moved it down and placed it next to his left hand.
Dori was laughing. She put the heels of her hands against his shoulders, pressing him down into the car seat, and remained with her upper torso straight-armed erect; they were now like Siamese twins, joined from the navel downward.
Laughing and at the same time clenching her face muscles in concentration, she proceeded to bear down, doing things she’d never learned in the library.
Grofield lost track of the church bells, and when he could think about them again, they’d stopped. Dori had collapsed onto his chest, her hair in his nose and her lips against the pulse in his throat. “Good morning,” he said, and she murmured something contented, and shot bolt upright, her elbow in his neck as she stared in horror out at the day.
“It’s tomorrow!”
“Not any more,” Grofield said.
“My folks! I—” Abruptly she was scrambling around on top of him like a puppy on ice, giving him careless shots with knee, heel, elbow, and hip. “We’ve got to— What time is— Where’s my— We can’t—”
“Oof,” he said. “Ow. Easy! Look out!”
She was putting on coral-colored panties, while sitting on his stomach. “We’ve got to get home.’” she cried. “Hurry! Hurry!”
“Get off me, dear. I’ll do anything you want, if you’ll only get off.”
“Hurry hurry hurry.” Edging off him, she kept slapping his hip to hurry him, at the same time making it impossible for him to get his legs on the same side of the car as his head.
“Damn it,” he said. “Ow, I— Will you move that— I’d like to— Aaahhh!” All in one place, he sat up at last and looked around at a graveyard.
Exactly. The church, red brick, was off behind the car, and this was the congregation’s burial ground. Flat land symmetrically lined with weathering tombstones, the symmetry broken by an occasional maple tree or line of hedge. At some distance ahead, woods started, stretching off toward low hills. To the right and left, weedy fields separated the graveyard from tracts of small identical houses.
“In the midst of death,” Grofield murmured, “we are in life.”
The girl, hurrying into her clothing, gave him a distracted look. “What?”
“Nothing. Just a thought.”
”Please,” she said. She sounded truly terrified. “You aren’t even getting dressed.”
“Right,” he said, and looking around, found a sock. Putting it on, he said, “I’ll drive you home.” Then he sneezed.
Nineteen
Mike Abadandi drove slowly past the Princess Motel, looking at the pink-stucco walls and the blue-slate roof and the huge free-form sign out front. The sign’s neon was burning, but looked washed-out and anemic in the seven a.m. sunlight. None of the dozen cars parked along the front was the bronze Impala.
This was Motel Row, one sprawling low pastel building after another, the monotony broken here and there by a McDonald’s or a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet. Abadandi pulled in at the next motel along, called the Quality Rest, parked in one of the vacant slots near the office, and strolled back toward the Princess. The sun, still low in the eastern sky away to his right, stood just above the neon signs across the road, pale yellow, very bright, in a pale blue cloudless sky; the sky’s color ranging from nearly white in the vicinity of the sun to a rich blue above the horizon to the west. The air was very clear, and not yet too warm; in the seventies, with neither wind nor humidity. A great day, a beautiful day. Walking along, Abadandi’s mind turned lazily and pleasurably around thoughts of the big above-ground swimming pool he’d put in the backyard two years ago. Swimming, drinking beer, lying in the sun. Invite Andy Marko over; Abadandi just loved to look at Peg Marko in a bikini.
Separating the blacktop of the Quality Rest parking lot from the blacktop of the Princess parking lot was a six-inch strip of cigarette wrappers and weeds. A knee-high railing stretched along the boundary here, made of a horizontal two-by-four laid on vertical two-by-fours driven into the ground, the whole thing painted white. Abadandi stepped over the railing, walked between two parked Chevrolets, paused while a Plymouth Fury drove slowly by toward the exit with an angry-looking couple inside, and headed around to the back of the motel, where most of the units were located in a large two-story horseshoe.
No bronze Impala. Frowning, Abadandi walked around the horseshoe a second time, studying every car in turn, and the Impala just wasn’t there.
So what was the story? Were they being cute, keeping their car someplace else? Or maybe they’d known last night that they were being tailed, and they’d come here just long enough to lose the tail, and then left. Or maybe the tail
had loused things up and reported the wrong motel name.
Anyway, there was nothing to do now but find a phone and call for instructions. Abadandi headed for the front of the building again, and as he turned the corner out of the horseshoe the bronze Impala drove in.
He was so startled he almost ducked behind the nearest parked car. He did stop in his tracks for a second, but quickly recovered and walked on, giving the Impala no more than a glance as they passed one another.
Only one guy in it. Abadandi walked on around the corner, stopped, looked back, and saw the Impala pull in at an empty-slot across the way. It wasn’t Parker who got out—Abadandi remembered him from Fun Island two years ago—so it had to be the one called Green. He was yawning and stretching and scratching his waist at the sides as he walked along to the nearest exterior staircase and went up to the balcony-type walk that fronted all the units on the second floor. Abadandi watched him walk past seven doors and stop at the eighth. He fumbled for keys, found one, let himself in, and the closed door became anonymous again.
But where was the other one? Abadandi, suspicious by nature and by necessity, thought things over for a full minute before moving in any direction at all, and then he turned away and headed at a casual stroll for the front of the motel.
It took four minutes to walk through all the public areas of the motel, and to satisfy himself that the second man wasn’t outside anywhere. Then he went back to the horseshoe, took stairs up to the second floor across the way from the marks’ room, and walked around the three sides of the balcony to the door he wanted. In his right hand were four keys, one of which would definitely unlock it. His left hand hovered near his waist; his shirttail was out, hiding the snub-nosed .32-caliber Iver Johnson Trailsman tucked inside the band of his trousers.
He looked easygoing and unhurried as he walked along, a slightly stocky man of about forty, in gray Hush Puppies and pale blue slacks and a white-and-blue-striped shirt. He looked as though he wasn’t paying much attention to anything, but he was watching the blacktop down below and the doors along the balcony, and he was ready to move in any direction at the first sign of trouble.
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