The Jugger

by Richard Stark

  The screen door was unlocked, but the inner door wasn’t. Parker tried the knob, then tried leaning on it a little, then stood and considered it a few seconds. He’d brought no tools along, nothing at all, not expecting to have to work.

  There was no point fooling with it. He held the screen door open, raised his right foot, and slammed the flat of his heel into the door just above the knob. It made a hell of a racket, and the glass in the door trembled as though thinking about breaking. The second time Parker kicked it, the door gave up and opened, springing back so far and so hard it slammed into the wall. Parker stepped in, latched the screen door, and shut the door again. It wouldn’t close all the way, but good enough.

  He was in the kitchen, a small square room with green-checked linoleum on the floor and chintz curtains over the windows. The refrigerator was small and old and had been repainted; Parker could see the brush marks from across the room. The small wooden table and the sideboard were both clean, but in the sink were one plate, one set of silverware, one coffee cup, and two glasses. Parker opened the refrigerator and found it still working; so the electricity had never been turned off. That was stupid. The refrigerator contained some TV dinners, some hot dogs and hamburgers, a head of lettuce, an opened bottle of milk, a few twelve-ounce bottles of beer, and a quarter-pound stick of butter.

  Parker shut the refrigerator door again and looked around the room. What was he looking for? He didn’t know himself, exactly; just something to tell him what was going on, something to tell him how Joe had died, who had helped him if he had been helped, and what Captain Younger was up to. There might not be anything here at all, but it was the first place he should look.

  He searched the rest of the kitchen and found only the stuff you’d expect to find in a bachelor’s kitchen. He was all finished and ready to start on another part of the house when he remembered something. He got a table knife from the silverware drawer, took down the flour canister from its shelf, and took the top off. He poked the knife down into it, poked and pried around, and there wasn’t anything in there but flour.

  That wasn’t right. There should have been a tobacco pouch down in there, with twenty fifty-dollar bills rolled in it; Joe Sheer’s run-out money. He’d kept it there just in case he ever had to leave here too fast to close out bank accounts, and a couple of years ago he’d mentioned to Parker where he had it stashed.

  Now it was gone, and it didn’t make any sense for it to be gone. There was no sign anywhere around that anybody else had searched this place, which meant it wasn’t taken by somebody just stumbling on it but by somebody who knew it was there all along. Who else could that be but Joe Sheer? But if Joe had taken that money, five minutes later he’d have been out of town; the thousand bucks in the flour canister was getaway financing exclusively, not to be used for anything else.

  Parker put the canister back where it belonged, washed the flour from the knife, dried the knife and put it away again in the silverware drawer. Then he left the kitchen, going through a doorway that led to a central hallway about six feet long. Every room in the house led off this hallway; living room, two bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen. The cellar stairs were off this hallway, and a trap-door in the hallway ceiling led to the narrow cramped attic.

  Parker went into the living room next. It was a small room, made to look even smaller because of the bulkiness and darkness of the furniture. Joe Sheer had liked an older style of furniture, the kind of heavy round stuff that went with tasselled lamp shades and fringed shawls. Parker stood just inside the doorway and looked around, and the room looked no different from the last time he’d been here. There was a new television set, but it was in an old-style cabinet that blended in well with the furniture already there.

  Looking around the room, Parker happened to see the thermostat on the wall near the front door, and it occurred to him that the house was warm. He hadn’t paid any attention to that when he’d first come in, because it only seemed natural that the house should be warm; but it wasn’t natural at all. This house was supposed to be empty now, was supposed to have been empty for the last two or three days. Somebody should have come along by now to shut the place up.

  He went over and looked at the thermostat. It was set for seventy, and the little thermometer on it read the same. So the furnace was still going, and the electricity was still turned on.

  And the phone?

  It was over on a rickety-looking end table next to the sofa. Parker went over and picked it up and listened for a second to the sound of the dial tone. It was still working.

  He hung up the phone and looked around at the room. Somebody wanted this place to stay liveable, and he didn’t know why.

  He couldn’t get a corner on it, not a corner.

  He went on searching the place, for whatever he might find. The living room had nothing more beyond the thermostat and the telephone of interest to him. He poked and pried and found nothing. Nothing under the chairs, nothing under the sofa cushions or behind the small watercolor landscapes on the walls, nothing written or hidden in any of the few books on the shelf behind the sofa, nothing anywhere of interest.

  Parker limited himself to looking in places he could get at without taking anything apart, so there still could be a million dollars in jewels hidden inside the sofa back or ten pounds of uncut heroin in the speaker cavity of the television set or several notes in invisible ink written on the lamp shades, but he doubted any of it. He finished the living room, found nothing, and went on.

  Next was the bathroom, where the medicine cabinet told him Joe Sheer had been having physical trouble of all kinds in recent years, though maybe not heart disease. But, according to the junk in the medicine cabinet, he’d had piles and he’d been constipated and he’d had trouble sleeping and he’d had various troubles for which he’d been taking prescription medicines. Parker looked at the prescription bottles and they were all from the Five Corner Drug Store in Omaha, all with the name Dr. Quilley on them. According to the evidence of the medicine cabinet, Dr. Rayborn had never prescribed anything for Joe.

  Before leaving the bathroom, Parker took the top off the water tank, because that was such a favorite place for people to hide things, either down in the water tank itself, wrapped in something waterproof, or taped to the inside of the top. This time there was nothing in either place.

  The next room he went into was the spare bedroom, the smaller of the two. It had a bed, a dresser, a throw rug, and a kitchen chair in it, because Joe did, every once in a great while, have company that stayed over, somebody like Parker. He preferred most of the time to meet with his friends from his old life down in the apartment in Omaha, but every once in a while—particularly when the weather was good—he brought a house guest out to see him living the good life in the little town of Sagamore.

  Now, the bed was made, the dresser was empty, and the closet was emptier. There was nothing in this room at all, no messages for Parker about anything. Except maybe that Joe hadn’t had any company that stayed over for some time.

  Joe’s own bedroom was a different proposition. It wasn’t as neat as the rest of the house. From the looks of it, it could have been searched two or three times already, and every time by impatient slobs. But Parker knew this was normal, the way Joe had always kept his bedroom. The rest of the house could be neat and clean, and usually was, but his bedroom had to be a mess. Maybe it was because he’d taken one fall, back when he was young, and had spent four years sleeping in the barren metallic neatness of a jail cell.

  It took a long time to go through Joe’s bedroom, and when he was done Parker had learned nothing. Throughout the whole house, nothing he knew of was missing except the thousand bucks from the flour canister. The telephone and utilities were still on, there was additional proof that Dr. Rayborn had been lying, and there was no sign at all that anyone else had made a search through here. He knew a few facts and no reasons.

  There were still two places to look, the attic and the cellar. He stood in the central hall and
considered, looking up at the trap-door in the ceiling but finally deciding to let the attic wait till last. He turned and opened the cellar door, and something with a sack over its head came lunging up out of the darkness, swinging something that whistled like the wind as it came around and smashed into the side of Parker’s head. Parker had time to feel his hand scrape along burlap, time to see the cellar stairs rushing in on a long curve towards him, getting bigger and bigger, and then he went out like a burned-out bulb.

  6

  The voice was a centipede, a long twisty bug with needle-sharp feet running back and forth on the left side of his face, driving its needle feet into the bone beside his eye and into his cheekbone and into the bone above his ear. His face hurt like fury; it hurt every time the voice sounded, and the voice sounded all the time. He thrashed a little in impotent rage, wanting the voice to stop hurting the side of his face.

  Moving like that brought him up out of it a bit more, far enough out so he could begin to separate sensations, differentiate between hearing the voice in his ears and feeling the pains on the side of his face, begin to know they weren’t connected, not two parts of the same thing after all but just two separate sensations that had both helped to drag him back to consciousness.

  From there, it was practically no step at all to come up far enough to begin to wonder what the voice was saying, and almost immediately to begin to separate the words and discover what they meant:

  “. . . out of it. Come on, Willis, snap out of it. I don’t have all day. Get with it, fella, get with it.”

  Now there was something else added to it all; somebody poking and pushing at his left shoulder. He complained, and moved around again, twisting on the concrete floor, and all at once he was out of it completely, eyes open, brain working. He sat up and stared into the face of Captain Younger.

  They were in a basement, garishly lit by bare bulbs in fixtures along the central beam. The concrete floor was painted a greyish blue. Captain Younger was sitting on the next-to-the-bottom step of the stairs leading up to the main floor, and Parker had been lying on his back right in front of the stairs.

  Captain Younger said, “You conscious now?”

  Parker said, “I was slugged.”

  “You sure you didn’t fall downstairs?”

  Parker shrugged. He was still woozy, having trouble thinking, having trouble making things connect so they made sense. The best thing for now was to say not much of anything; otherwise he might say something stupid and make trouble for himself.

  Captain Younger pointed and said, “You chopped up the side of your face there pretty good.”

  Parker said nothing. He closed his eyes and tried to make his brain come into focus.

  Captain Younger said, “Don’t pass out again. I got questions for you.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Like for instance,” Captain Younger said, “what were you digging for?”

  Parker opened his eyes. “What?”

  Captain Younger pointed off to the right. “What were you digging for, Willis? What were you trying to find?”

  Parker turned his head, slowly, and looked over where the captain was pointing. There was a coal-bin over there, with wooden slat sides. There wasn’t any coal in the coal-bin, because the furnace had long since been converted to oil, and the concrete floor didn’t extend into the coal-bin. The coal-bin had a dirt floor, most of which had been dug into. A big mound of dirt was out on the concrete.

  Captain Younger said, “Well?”

  “I didn’t do that.”

  “Come on, Willis, you think I’m stupid?”

  Parker squinted up at him, trying to think. Younger wasn’t kidding around; he really did think Parker had done that digging. So Parker’s first thought, that Younger or somebody working for Younger had been down in the cellar and had slugged him, was probably wrong. There was somebody else in this, too, somebody Younger didn’t know anything about.

  Tiftus? Could it possibly be Tiftus? Could that little bastard have been the one down here?

  Captain Younger leaned forward, his round face inches from Parker’s. A thin sheen of perspiration covered his face, glinting like wet varnish. In a hoarser and quieter tone, he said, “I know what you’re looking for, Willis. I knew what you were up to the second you came to town. You found out the old bastard was dead and you figured to just come in here and have everything your own way.”

  He wasn’t making any sense at all. Parker shook his head and said, “You’re talking Chinese. I’m going to stand up now.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  Parker reached out and grabbed the staircase banister and used it to drag himself up to standing. Captain Younger had got to his feet in the meantime and retreated up three more steps, so he was out of Parker’s reach.

  Parker looked up at him and said, “Let’s go upstairs.”

  “What were you digging for, Willis?”

  “It’s the way I exercise.” He put his hand on the banister again, and started up the steps.

  Captain Younger retreated backwards up the stairs, looking affronted. “You’ll tell me, Willis,” he said. His voice was a little shrill. “You’ll tell me anything I want to know. Before I’m done with you . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence; he’d reached the top of the stairs. He backed out of the way and glared, and Parker came on up the stairs and through the hall and into the bathroom.

  The face he looked at in the mirror over the sink was a mess. The left side of it, from the jawline up into the hair above his ear, was all mottled red and purple and black, as though somebody had thrown bright-colored mud on him. A puffiness and darkness was developing around his left eye; unless he did something about it soon, he was going to have a hell of a shiner.

  Captain Younger came and stood in the doorway and said, “That’s a real job you did on yourself.”

  “Call your tame doctor, I need him.”

  “Sure, Willis. Just as soon as you tell me what I want to know.”

  Parker was feeling impatient, and he was still rocky from having been slugged, so he said more than he would have usually. He turned to look at Captain Younger and say, “You know everything already. You know I was digging down there without a shovel, and you know I hit myself on the side of the face. You know what I was looking for. What else do you want?”

  “What was that you said? About the shovel?” Captain Younger was so startled he almost crossed the threshold and got close enough for Parker to reach out for him.

  Parker said, “Did you see a shovel down there? What do you think the guy hit me with?”

  All of a sudden there was a gun in Captain Younger’s hand. “So you found it,” he said. “You had an accomplice, and you found it, and he took off with it.”

  “With what? When do you start making sense?”

  “Where’s he going, Willis? There’s still a chance for you to get a cut. You tell me where he’s going, what he looks like, what name he travels under. I can get out an alarm on him, have him picked up for questioning no matter where he goes. You can’t get him, but I can.”

  Parker shook his head. “There’s a hell of a lot of morons with guns,” he said. “I talk to you after I see the doctor.”

  Captain Younger seemed to consider for a minute, and then he said, “So you’re not worried about wasting time. So maybe you know where he’s going.”

  Parker waited. Sooner or later Younger was going to have to start making sense.

  Younger motioned with the gun. “All right, Willis,” he said. “Let’s go into the living room. I’ll call Dr. Rayborn for you. He can come right over here and take care of you, and then we’ll talk. I’m not taking you down to headquarters; I’m keeping you right here, and when we’re done with the doctor you’ll tell me everything I want to know.”

  They walked into the living room, Parker first, and Parker settled himself in an overstuffed armchair where the light from the windows was all behind him, where Captain Younger wouldn’t be able to see his face
very well. Younger got on the phone and made his call and then sat down fat and smug on the sofa, the gun held casually in his lap. His brown suit was baggy and creaseless, his cowboy hat was tipped back on his head. He looked like a yokel Khrushchev.

  They sat in silence a minute or two, and then Younger said, “I know what you think. You think I’m just another hick cop. Well, that’s all right, Willis, I don’t mind. You go on thinking that, you think that just as long as you can. Dr. Rayborn’ll be here in a little while, and he’ll get you all fixed up nice and new, and then you can start telling me all about yourself and what your connection was with Joe Sheer.”

  It took Parker a few seconds to realize that Captain Younger had just said Joe’s real name, not the cover name he’d been buried under. Parker squinted, and saw Captain Younger sitting over there pleased and contented, smiling like the Cheshire cat.

  7

  . . . All about yourself and what your connection was with Joe Sheer.”

  That was easy. What his connection was with Joe Sheer most recently, he had come up to this rotten little town to find out if it was going to be necessary to kill Joe Sheer or not. And all about himself, that was even easier; he was a thief.

  Once or twice a year, Parker was in on an institutional robbery—the robbing from organizations rather than from individuals. It wasn’t out of humanity that he limited himself to organizations, it was just that organizations had more money than individuals; organizations like banks or jewelry stores or one of those firms that still paid its employees in cash.