“That’s good enough. Get downtown now and send that request off. You can tell Regan you sent it off this afternoon.”
“Sure, I already got that.”
Parker let him out, waited five minutes, and then went out the back door and down behind the houses again. He was going to need a gun tomorrow, and now was the time to get it.
Downtown was silent and deserted. Electric clocks were aglow deep within the stores along the main street, a few red neon signs here and there were left on all night, and the railroad station and hotel made a little island of light in the middle of it all, but there was no traffic on the street, there were no pedestrians on the sidewalks.
Parker found a sporting goods store on a side street, half a block from the main drag. A rear window was butter under his hands, and he prowled through the fourth-rate stock, mostly rifles and scopes, and finally picked out a pistol for himself, a snub-nose Iver Johnson Trailsman .22. He grabbed a box of ammunition and went back out the window again, adjusting things behind himself to cut down the chances of the theft being noticed right away.
He went back to Joe’s house, sat at the kitchen table, and took the gun apart. After he cleaned the oil off it he put it back together again and loaded it. He slept with it under his pillow.
4
It was Regan at the door. Parker said, “Come in.”
Regan looked curious and displeased. He nodded, stepped into the house, and said, “I wanted to talk to you.”
“Sure.” Parker shut the door. “Official business?”
Regan made a disgusted mouth. “Unofficial,” he said. “I’m not connected with the Tiftus killing anymore.”
“I didn’t know that. Come in and sit down.”
Regan moved on into the living room, but he didn’t sit down. He was wearing a cheap topcoat, and his hands were in the pockets. With his grey crewcut and eyeglasses and hard mouth and the topcoat he didn’t look like a college teacher anymore, he looked like what he was; a hard, smart cop, smelling something wrong and not wanting to let go.
Parker stayed on his feet, too. He said, “You found out who killed Tiftus?”
Regan said, “You’d know more about that than I would.” He glanced around the room. “I wish I’d met Joseph Shardin,” he said. “He’s the key to this whole thing.”
Parker said, “Why would I know about it?”
“You were the one solved it,” Regan told him. He was being sarcastic, but quietly, not pushing it. “You gave us the clue we needed.”
“You mean about Jimmy Chambers?”
“That’s who.”
“He did it, then, huh?”
“It looks that way. Abner’s convinced.”
“But you’re not.”
Regan shook his head. “No, Willis, I’m not. It doesn’t make any difference; I’m not in charge.”
“You want to ask me something,” Parker told him, “go right ahead. I mean to co-operate.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want you down on Charles Willis.”
Regan frowned studying him. “I even think that’s the truth,” he said. “And I don’t get it. Why’d you wait so long to tell about Chambers?”
“At first, I figured he couldn’t of done it. Then, nobody else turned up that might of, so it had to be him. I figured to begin with if I told about him, you and Younger would grab him and not look anywhere else, because he’s served time. But if he really did do the job, I won’t want to cover for him. Did you get him yet?”
Regan shook his head. “He doesn’t seem to be around town anymore.”
“Well, that figures, if he did it.”
“Everything figures,” Regan said. “A little late, but it all figures. All the different stories that didn’t connect so good before, all of a sudden they all go together like magnets. There’s some link-up between you and Abner and the Samuels woman, and I can’t find it.”
“I didn’t know either of those two before this all happened,” Parker said.
“I believe that, too,” Regan told him. “That’s why I can’t figure it out.” He walked around the living room, looking at the furniture. “Shardin’s the key,” he said, more to himself than Parker. “He dies, and three old friends come to the funeral, a businessman from Miami and two ex-cons. One of the ex-cons kills the other, and the businessman is all of a sudden buddy-buddy with the local captain of police. And with the girlfriend of the murdered man, let’s not forget that. First she identifies him as the guy who killed her man, and then she changes her story, and then she changes it again to this Chambers right around the same time the businessman comes up with Chambers. That’s a funny thing, isn’t it, Willis? I never heard a word about this man Chambers until this morning, and then I hear it from everywhere.”
“I told Younger yesterday. What about the woman, what did she say?”
Regan gave a sour smile. “That’s right, you weren’t there, you wouldn’t know. This morning she remembered, Tiftus told her the name of the man who beat him up, and it was Chambers.”
“That’s what he told me, too.”
Regan looked at Parker, and then some more at the room. “I’d like to know how Shardin died,” he said.
“I heard it was a heart attack.”
“I heard the same thing. All right, Willis, I just wanted to know why you took so long to tell us about Chambers, and you had an answer right on tap.”
“It’s the truth.”
“I’m sure of it.” Regan shrugged, and turned towards the door. “It’s not my worry anymore,” he said. “Chambers’ll be found sooner or later, and maybe some more will come out at the trial. I can’t wait.”
“Fine,” said Parker.
Regan walked across the living room to the foyer. “It’s been interesting knowing you, Willis,” he said.
There was nothing to say to that. Parker held the door open. Regan paused in the doorway and said, “I suppose you’ll be leaving town now.”
“Probably.”
“Well. Good-bye, Willis.”
“Good-bye.”
5
Younger arrived at three o’clock on the button. Parker didn’t wait for him to get out of his Ford and come ring the bell; as soon as he saw Younger pull to a stop at the curb he picked up his suitcase and walked out of the house.
When he opened the car door Younger said, “How come the suitcase?”
“We may have to stay over. We’re getting a late start.”
“You should have told me, I’d’ve packed a bag of my own.”
Parker didn’t want that. He said, “You can borrow from me. No problem.” He tossed the suitcase onto the back seat and slid in beside Younger in front. He pulled the door shut and said, “Let’s get out of here.”
“Right.”
Parker nodded at the Plymouth parked down the block. “You want to wake your boy on the way by?”
“What?”
“He’s been asleep most of the time the last couple of days. He must have found something steady for the nights.”
Younger frowned and said, “How long did you know about him?”
“From the time he parked there.”
“Son of a bitch.” Younger yanked at the steering wheel, started the Ford away from the curb, and they did a tight U-turn and rode away from the house and the Plymouth both. Younger said, “If you know about him, and if he was always asleep, how come you stuck around?”
“The money,” Parker told him. It was an answer Younger could understand.
Younger did. He turned and gave Parker a fat grin. “You want it as bad as I do,” he said. “As bad as I do.”
“Sure.”
“I know it.” Younger faced front again, watching the traffic. He was pleased with himself. He said, “Everything went fine with Regan. That was good, when the Samuels woman started talking about Chambers, too. You worked that real well.”
“She did it right, huh?”
“Listen, I almost believed her myself. A regular actress. The only thing,
what happens when Chambers is picked up?”
“He won’t be,” Parker told him.
“You sound sure of it.”
“I am.”
They didn’t do any more talking for a while. Younger took them on a route that didn’t go through downtown and that was good. There was less chance of anyone noticing the two of them together in the car. Not that it made that much difference.
After a while, out on the three-lane road that led to Omaha, Younger started again, saying, “You’re from Miami, huh?”
“I live there sometimes.”
“That’s what I’m gonna do. Once I get my hands on that money, I’m clearing out of here. What do you think, Miami? Or would I do better out of the country, maybe go to the Riviera, or Acapulco?”
“One place is like another,” Parker told him, but he knew Younger wouldn’t be able to understand it.
He didn’t. “Not with half a million dollars,” he said.
“A quarter of a million,” Parker reminded him.
Younger reacted like a kid caught playing hooky; guilty smile and all. “That’s right,” he said. “That’s right, you’re right, Willis. I meant to say quarter of a million, that’s what I meant.”
“Sure.”
“You can trust me.”
“No. I can’t trust you, you know that. And you can’t trust me. You don’t trust me, that’s why you had the guys in the Plymouth and the Dodge.”
“You knew about them both?”
“We don’t trust each other,” Parker told him. “We can’t, there’s too much money in it. And that isn’t any good. Watching each other all the time, we’ll never get anywhere. The guy that killed Tiftus is still around some place, remember.”
“I’m getting close to him, Willis.”
“That isn’t the point.”
Younger nodded, facing straight ahead as he drove.
“I know that. You’re right, we got to be able to trust each other.”
“That’s what I say.”
“But how?” Younger turned his head and glanced at Parker, and then faced front again. “I’ll tell you the truth, Willis, you could swear on a stack of Bibles the sun was shining and I’d have to go out and look for myself. There’s no way on earth you could make me trust you.”
“There’s one way.”
“How?”
“I let you get something on me, so if I double-cross you it backfires.”
Younger squinted at the road, trying to figure it out. “I don’t get what you mean,” he said.
Parker told him, “I write a note. I say, I killed Adolph Tiftus.’ I sign my name to it. It’s all in my handwriting, so you’ve got me cold. I give you the note, and you give it to a lawyer or a friend or somebody for safekeeping. You tell him, if anything happens to you they should give the note to the law. That way, you’re safe. I don’t dare touch you.”
Younger nodded. “That makes sense,” he said. “That isn’t a bad idea at all. I could trust you after that.”
“Sure.”
“We’ll do it, then,” he said. “As soon as we get back to town.”
“We can do it in Omaha, at Joe’s apartment. The sooner we do it, the better for both of us.”
Younger shrugged. “Okay, fine. I don’t care. Only thing, what about me giving you an alibi?”
“I’ll cover it in the note. Say I told you it was earlier than it was, and you didn’t have a watch on you, something like that. The whole thing’ll be worked out in the note.”
“Good. That’s a good idea.”
“For you, too,” Parker told him.
Younger looked startled. He glanced at Parker, and away. “What do you mean, me, too?”
“You write a note, too.”
“What? That I killed Tiftus? It wouldn’t make any sense.”
“No, that you killed Joseph Shardin.”
Younger now looked scared. “I didn’t kill him! What the hell are you talking about, Willis, I didn’t kill him!”
“I didn’t kill Tiftus,” Parker reminded him. “That isn’t the point. The point is to have something on you, like you’ll have on me.”
“But it don’t make any sense. How’s it gonna look?”
Parker said, “You write, I killed Joseph Shardin. I was trying to extort money from him, and I didn’t mean to kill him.’ And you sign your name. No, wait a second. Besides that, you write, ‘Doctor Rayborn knows all about it.’ Because he does, doesn’t he?”
Young glowered at the road. “If that bastard’s been opening his mouth—”
“He didn’t have to. I haven’t seen him since he fixed up my face.”
“I don’t like it,” Younger said. “I didn’t kill the old man, why should I say I did?”
Parker told him, “You’ll have my note about killing Tiftus, I’ll have your note about killing Joe. That way, we’re safe from each other.”
Younger gnawed on his lower lip, and shook his head back and forth. “I don’t like it,” he said. “I just don’t like it.”
Parker sat back in the seat and watched the flat countryside roll by. Flat farmland, not a tree in sight. You could see white farmhouses miles away across the flat fields.
Sitting at the wheel, driving down the straight road, Younger chewed his lip and tried to get used to having only a quarter of a million dollars. That was the problem, and Parker knew it. Younger had been counting on the whole pie, and now he was having to shift his thinking, having to gear down to half a pie.
Half a pie in the sky.
With the outskirts of Omaha lumping up ahead of them, Younger finally nodded. “All right,” he said. “It’s the best way.”
Parker knew what he meant. He meant he wasn’t that sure anyway that he could get Parker before Parker got him.
“You’re right,” Parker told him.
6
Parker’s note read:
I killed Adolph Tiftus. He came in my room and we argued and I hit him with the ashtray. Then I went to Joe Shardin’s house and saw Captain Younger and told him it was half an hour earlier than it was. I scared Rhonda Samuels into making up the story about Jim Chambers.
Charles Willis
Younger read it and said, “Fine. That covers the whole thing.”
They were sitting at the kitchen table in Joe Sheer’s Omaha apartment. Parker had found pen and paper and had written his note first, to keep Younger from getting suspicious. Now he pushed the pen and the pad of paper across the desk and said, “Your turn.”
“Sure,” said Younger, but he kept holding Parker’s note, and there was a thoughtful look in his eye.
Parker told him, “Forget it. You still need me. You need me to find the dough, and you need me to help you when you find the guy that killed Tiftus.”
“I didn’t have any plans,” Younger said. He put the note down, took the pen, and started to write. Parker watched him and waited.
This was a quiet neighborhood Joe had picked. There wasn’t a sound coming in the kitchen window, not a sound anywhere but the ballpoint pen sliding over the paper as Younger wrote his suicide note.
When it was done, Parker took it and read it:
I killed Joseph Shardin. I didn’t mean to, I was trying to extort money from him and it was an accident. Dr. Rayborn knows all about it, he helped me cover it up. He had to, because I had something on him.
Capt. Abner L. Younger
Younger said, “How is it?”
“Fine,” said Parker, and took the .22 pistol out of his pocket. “Keep your palms flat on the table,” he said.
Younger’s eyes got bigger. He said, “What are you gonna do?”
Parker reached out for the note he’d written, crumpled it, and stuffed it in his pocket. Then he got to his feet. “You don’t move,” he said. “You don’t make a single move.”
“You found it,” Younger said. His voice was bitter and disgusted. “You found it. It was in the house there all the time.”
“I didn’t find a dollar,” Park
er told him. “Joe told you the truth, there wasn’t any half million.”
“You’re lying.”
Parker shook his head. “No more,” he said. “There’s no more reason to lie.”
Younger raised his eyes and looked at Parker’s face and saw what Parker meant. He said, “You can’t do this. You can’t get away with it.”
Carefully, so he wouldn’t wrinkle it, Parker picked up Younger’s note and put it up on top of the refrigerator, where it would be out of Younger’s reach.
Younger said, “If there isn’t any money, you don’t have to kill me.”
“I can’t trust you,” Parker told him. “I can’t ever trust you. If I let you live, you’ll always think the half million’s around somewhere; you’ll think I’ve got it.”
“No. No, I won’t, I’ll—”
“We’ll talk about it,” Parker promised. “But first I want your gun. I don’t want you armed while we talk about it.”
“We can talk about it,” Younger said nodding. “You’re right, we can talk about it. There’s always some other way to do things, you don’t have to—”
“Your gun,” Parker said. “Reach in under your coat and take it out and put it on the table. When you take it out, just use your thumb and first finger and just hold it by the butt. And move slow and careful.”
“Sure thing, Willis. I won’t try anything.” Younger was sweating now, scared and eager, trying to find some reason to think he might be alive fifteen minutes from now. He took his pistol out the way Parker had told him, and put it down on the table.
It was a .32, a Smith & Wesson Model 30. Parker took a clean white handkerchief from his pocket and picked Younger’s pistol up in his right hand. He held the .22 now in his left.
Younger’s hands were still pressed palm down on the Formica table-top, but they were trembling anyway. He watched Parker, and he kept smiling. He was smiling with nerves, and with some stupid idea that a smile would show Parker he was really an all-right guy after all, and with fear. He said, “I believe you, Willis. There isn’t any money. I believe you.”
“Too late,” Parker told him. He walked around the table and stuck the .32 up close against Younger’s chest, at an angle the way it would be if Younger were holding the gun himself in his right hand. Younger’s mouth opened, and his hands started to come up from the table to protect himself, and Parker pulled the trigger.
The Jugger Page 13