Ask the Parrot p-23

by Richard Stark

  He made his way leftward along the rail to the far turn, where a lane would lead down to the paddocks if he felt like going there, but he thought he better not. There were always a few of the grooms and assistant trainers sleeping somewhere near their animals, on cots or in sleeping bags, because this horse or that was having some kind of problem, and those people didn’t like other humans around to spook their beasts.

  Bill turned away, walking toward the end of the clubhouse and grandstand, all in one building, and as he walked, he saw the reflection of headlights sweep over the white wooden wall that enclosed the entire track area.

  Headlights? They were outside, so he couldn’t see them directly, only their glow above the wall, and as he stopped to frown at that unexpected aura, the lights switched off.

  But what were they doing here? Nobody was supposed to be in that area beyond the wall at night. That would be where the service road came in, at the end of the clubhouse, and there was never any reason for traffic out there after the track shut down.

  Unless it was somebody out to harm the horses.

  Why that should be, Bill had never understood, but there was a kind of sick human being who just liked to mutilate horses. Attack them with knives, axes, bottles of acid.

  Why would people do things like that? They were always caught, drooling and bloody, and they were always put away in a nuthouse somewhere, and there was never any explanation. Whatever went wrong in your life, whatever went wrong in your head, why take it out on a horse?

  And is that what he’d happened across tonight? It was those sickos, he knew, who primarily made his job as a night guard here at the track necessary, that and the constant fear of fire. So is that what he’d found, some maniac with a chain saw in his fist? Was he about to become a hero, like it or not?

  He thought the thing to do was go back into the clubhouse and walk around to where he could look out one of the windows facing the service road. Let’s just see what’s out there. Couldn’t hurt.

  15

  Tom Lindahl drove past the main entrance to Gro-More, with its outlined stylized bulls on the gates, then drove on past the dirt road, unmarked except for the Dead End sign, that he should have taken down to the end of the clubhouse. But he just kept driving.

  For a mile or two, he didn’t even think about what he was doing, but just drove on as though that were his only purpose in being out here, to drive aimlessly, forever. It was easy, and it was comforting, and it didn’t make any sense.

  After a couple of miles, he came to himself enough to realize this wasn’t going to work. He hadn’t seen Smith anywhere on the long drive down, he’d come to believe he’d never see Smith again, but that didn’t mean he could just drive on and on. Where to? For what?

  I can’t go back, he thought for the very first time.

  That was a chilling thought. He was on a dark country road, and up ahead there was an intersection with a lit-up diner on the right. Refusing to think, clenching his teeth to hold back the floodgates of thought, he waited till he reached the diner, pulled in, stopped in the semidark around at the rear, opened his window, and shut off the engine. Then he slumped and stared at the back of the building, the Dumpster, the screen door closed over the glaringly bright kitchen.

  I can’t go back there. He meant Pooley, he meant the little converted garage he’d been living in, he meant that whole life.

  He didn’t think, I can’t go home. That wasn’t home, he hadn’t had a home for years. That was where he’d camped out, waiting for something to happen, although, until Smith had come along, there was never anything going to happen except one day he wouldn’t be waiting any more.

  But Smith had come along and riled up the waters. Tom had met him, and hooked up with him, and told him about this racetrack opportunity, because he’d thought he wanted revenge and money, but he’d been wrong. He’d wanted a hand grenade to throw into the middle of his empty unbearable life, and boy, he’d sure found one.

  He couldn’t go back because too many people had seen him with Smith, and, one way or another, who Smith really was would be bound to come out. If somehow they went ahead with this robbery, the police would automatically look at Tom Lindahl, simply because he was a former employee with a grudge, and what would they find? The mysterious Ed Smith, come and gone at just the exact right moment.

  But even without the robbery, how long would Smith’s identity stay hidden? Fred Thiemann suspected something, though he wasn’t sure yet just what it was. Fred’s wife, Jane, was smarter and more persistent than Fred, and if she started to wonder about Smith, that would be the end of it. And weren’t Cory and Cal Dennison poking their noses in somehow?

  So the only thing for Tom to do was what he’d instinctively started to do. Just drive, keep driving south, try to find somebody else to be, somebody else in some other place. Smith had told him it was impossible to disappear like that today, but that couldn’t be true. People vanished. And God knows, if there was one thing Tom Lindahl wanted to do, it was vanish.

  The only question was, should he go back to the track, just to see if Smith showed up? Without Smith, he knew he wouldn’t be doing any robbery here tonight, wouldn’t even go into the clubhouse, wouldn’t even get out of the car. But at least he should go back, look at Gro-More one last time before closing that part of his life at last. He’d give Smith, say, half an hour, then drive away from here and never be Tom Lindahl again.

  Once the decision was made, it was easy, as though it had always been easy; he’d just been too close to it to see the path. Now he could see it. He started the engine, drove back to Dead End, and this time headed on in. He went to where there was the right turn to the chain-link fence, and stopped at the gate there. He didn’t get out of the car but looked through the fence at the clubhouse and after a minute switched off the headlights. He didn’t need them to know where he was.

  Smith, in the dark beside Tom’s open window, said, “Time to get started.”

  FOUR

  1

  Parker saw the gray Volkswagen Jetta start out of Pooley after Tom Lindahl’s Ford SUV, and fell in line behind it, in the Infiniti he’d taken from Brian Hopwood’s gas station. The best opportunity to deal with the Jetta and the two inside it came just before the second roadblock, when the Jetta pulled off onto the apron of a closed gas station. Parker stopped beside them, planning to talk to them, see what he had to do to get rid of them, maybe shoot their tires out or shoot up their ignition, whatever it would take to scare them off, but before he got close enough to say anything, the idiot Cal was out of the Jetta and waving a handgun around and Parker put him down.

  The other one got scared, all right, and skittered away from there like a drop of water on a hot frying pan, but Parker knew he’d be back. Cory’d made it his lifework to stand with his dumber crazier brother, so once the fright wore off, he’d have to come back.

  The only problem was the body. Without the body, Cory would have nothing to say to the troopers down there at the roadblock, too far for them to have heard the flat crack of Parker’s single shot. The troopers were more bored tonight, less convinced they’d find anything useful out here, and they weren’t searching cars, not even cars with two males inside, so Parker threw the body into the trunk, went through the roadblock without a problem, flashing the Infiniti’s registration he’d found in the packet with the owner’s manual, plus William G. Dodd’s driver’s license, and a few miles later, at a silent dark empty stretch of road, no buildings in sight, he dumped the body off the road and down a slope toward a chattering little creek he could hear but not see.

  Shortly after that, he overtook the SUV, still potting along ten miles below the speed limit. He passed it when he could, and went on to the track, leaving the Infiniti on the scrub ground outside the chain-link fence away to the left of the road, facing back toward the gate. Then he switched off the engine, buttoned the overhead light not to turn on when the door was opened, and waited.

  It took longer than it should
have for Tom to get there. Had he lost his nerve? If he was running, too spooked to think what best to do for himself, Parker would have no choice but to drive away from here and forget the track. He couldn’t get in without Tom’s keys and Tom’s knowledge.

  Without Tom, he’d just drive south through the night. No profit from the bank in Massachusetts, and now no profit from this racetrack. In the morning, wherever he was, he’d phone Claire to drive out and get him, and that would be the end of it. It had been too long since he’d seen her.

  But here was Tom. Parker saw the headlights coming down the dirt road and got out of the Infiniti. Walking toward the gate as the SUV drove to it and stopped, he saw Tom in the amber glow from the dashboard, his window open, Parker coming to him from that side.

  Tom just sat there, not aware of Parker, but then at last he switched the ignition off, and in the darkness Parker said, “Time to get started.”

  2

  Parker carried the duffel bags, still folded into their plastic wrap, and followed Lindahl through the same routine as last time, first punching the code into the alarm box beside the gate, then keying the gate open so he could drive the Ford in to stop at the closed top of the ramp that led down to the safe room. Getting out of the Ford there, as Parker walked up to him, he looked back at the fence and said, “Do you have a car here?”

  “We’ll get to it later. We want to be in and out of this.”

  “Sure. Fine.”

  Once again Lindahl keyed them into the building and led them among the rooms through the same route around the spy cams. This time there was no leftover food in the accounts department to be knocked over, and no sign of the mess they’d made before. At the end, Lindahl waited for that camera in the corridor to start its sweep away from them, then they strode down to the stairwell door and inside. Down one flight, Lindahl pressed his face to the small window in the door there, to see where this camera was in its cycle, then led them out and to the door at the end of this corridor, the key already in his hand.

  Once again, when the door closed behind them, they were in full dark. Parker knew Lindahl was afraid the camera outside would be able to see light through the small window in this door here, so he waited in the darkness, holding the packages of duffel bag and pressing one elbow back against the closed door to keep his orientation.

  Out ahead was the sound of Lindahl’s scuffing feet as he moved cautiously toward the door they wanted. There was a little silence, then the sound of the key in the lock and the door opening, and at last the ceiling fluorescents clicked on in the safe room off to the right, so Parker could see this outer room with the forklift truck in the corner and the windowless garage door at the far end.

  There were two pallets of the money boxes on the floor in here tonight. Lindahl, a nervous grin flickering on his frightened-looking face, said, “Double our money, huh?”

  “That’s what we’re doing. Here.”

  He handed one of the duffel bags to Lindahl, who took it and said, “How do you want to work this?”

  “We open the boxes and put the cash in the bags. Don’t bother with singles and fives.”

  “No, I meant, how do we divide this?”

  Parker shook his head. “We aren’t gonna divvy it up,” he said. “What you put in the bag, you carry home.”

  “Fine.”

  They started to strip the plastic off the duffel bags, and a glaring light snapped on in the next room. They stopped, looking at each other, and a voice out there called, “Anybody here?” The voice tried to sound in control, but there was a quaver in it.

  Parker handed the duffel to Lindahl and pointed at the corner behind the open door as he started toward that doorway, calling, “Hello? How do I get out of here?”

  Behind him, Lindahl moved silently into the corner, his face drained of blood, and Parker stepped through to the outer room, where he saw, over by the door they’d come in, a guy in a brown guard uniform. He was big, maybe six and a half feet, and once brawny, but now out of condition, older and too long comfortable. In the glare of the overhead fluorescents, his eyes and cheekbones showed fear. He was armed with a revolver, but it wasn’t in his hand, it was still in its holster on his right hip, and his right hand was still on the light switch just to the right of the door.

  Now, seeing Parker, he lowered that hand to the butt of the revolver but didn’t unsnap the safety strap that held it in the holster. He patched over the fear with a deep frown and said, “What the hell you doing here?”

  “Trying to get out.” Parker looked back over his shoulder at the safe room. “What kind of place is that?”

  “What do you mean, trying to get out of here?” The guard, not sensing threat, had settled into the indifferently bullying tactic that would always have been his method with civilians.

  Parker spread his hands. “Everything’s locked. I can’t get out of the goddam place.”

  “That’s kept locked,” the guard told him, jutting his jaw toward the safe room.

  “No, it wasn’t,” Parker said. “I saw the light in there, maybe it’s a way out at last.”

  “I don’t get this,” the guard said. “What are you doing in here? The end of the day, every day, there’s a sweep, make sure everybody’s out.”

  “I fell asleep,” Parker said. “In the men’s room, in a stall.” He didn’t try to act embarrassed, just matter-of-fact. “I didn’t have that much to drink. I been working double shifts for a while now . . .” He shrugged it off. “Can you get me out of here?”

  The guard was suspicious, but he wasn’t sure of what. Nodding at the safe room, he said, “That door’s kept locked.”

  “It was open, just like that,” Parker told him, pointing at the doorway. “Door hooked open and the lights on. You think I got keys to this place? Look at the door, I didn’t bust in, it was just like that. Listen, I’m sorry. If you wanna call the cops on me, go ahead, but I just gotta get out of here.”

  The guard considered him. “We’ll go to the office,” he decided.

  “If that’s on the way out,” Parker said, “fine.”

  “You lead the way.”

  “Sure. But you’ll have to tell me which way I’m leading.”

  The guard’s right hand went from the revolver butt to the doorknob behind him. Opening the door, stepping to one side, he said, “Just go out and down the hall.”

  “Sure.”

  As Parker went by him, the guard frowned at the door he was holding. “Was this unlocked, too?”

  “No, it wasn’t shut.”

  “It’s always shut.”

  Parker waited while the guard followed him out and pulled the door closed. “It wasn’t like that,” he said. “It was almost shut, but not all. I could just push it. And I saw those lights in there.”

  “Something’s funny here,” the guard said, and nodded at the corridor. “Just go straight down.”

  “Right.”

  They walked past the door on the left leading to the stairwell that Parker and Lindahl had used. Parker didn’t look that way but faced straight, and at the end the guard directed him to turn left down a different corridor. This was a completely different route from the one he’d taken before with Lindahl, and it led finally to an elevator. So this guard didn’t like climbing stairs.

  He also didn’t like being in the enclosed space of the metal elevator with Parker. He stood against the back wall, hand on the revolver butt again, this time his fingers toying with the safety strap as he looked sidelong at Parker.

  At the top, the corridor was carpeted. “To the left.”

  They walked down the corridor, Parker in front, and the guard said, “The open door on the right.”

  “What?” Somebody past that open door had heard the voice.

  Parker made the turn, and this was the security room, with banks of television monitors, shotguns locked into racks on the wall, and several desks, only one of them occupied, by a slightly smaller version of the first guard, equally out of shape.


  This one started to rise when he saw Parker, then settled back again when his partner came in. Looking at the partner, he said, “Bill? Whatchu got here?”

  “He was in the safe room.”

  “He what?” Now he did get up from the desk and frowned at Parker but kept talking to his partner. “What’s he doing in there?”

  “Says he’s trying to find the way out. Says he went asleep in the john.” Pointing at the monitors, he said, “You see him on any of the screens?”

  “I saw you, that’s all.” Now he did speak to Parker: “How’d you get in there?”

  “Walked.”

  He didn’t like that. “Don’t get snotty with me, fella.”

  “I told this guy,” Parker said with a gesture at Bill, “I fell asleep, I woke up, I’m trying to get out of here. Everything’s locked.”

  “Except the safe room,” said Bill. “How d’ya like that?”

  “I don’t,” the second one said, and to Parker he said, “You got anybody with you?”

  “I didn’t see anybody,” Bill said.

  “When I sleep in the men’s room,” Parker said, “I sleep alone.”

  The second one was getting steamed. He glared at Parker a long minute, then said, “I may have to tenderize you.”

  “We’d better call the troopers,” Bill said.

  “We’ll get to that,” his partner said. Still glaring at Parker, he pointed at the top of his desk and said, “Empty your pockets.”

  “Sure.” Parker took the automatic out of his pocket and showed it to them as he stepped to the left, so he could see them both. “Is this good enough?”