But he wasn’t sure: yet whether he just wanted to kill Negli or not. If Arnie Feccio really was dead, then there were developments Parker didn’t know anything about. For his own good, he had to find out about them, find out how the situation now stood, and Negli was the only one handy to tell him.
The whole operation had soured completely, he knew that much. The job itself, at the stadium, had been sweet, one of the sweetest pieces of work he’d ever been a part of. For three days after the job, everything was still sweet. And then, because of that simple minded amateur, lying out there now on the dead ground, everything went to hell.
Shelly was dead. If Negli had the story straight, then Feccio was dead, too. Negli was going to be dead himself pretty soon. Three out of the seven, dead or soon to be.
Leaves rattled.
Parker was instantly alert. It had come from the left, and deeper into the woods away from the open ground. Negli had been more to the right earlier, when he’d taken that near-miss shot at Parker. So they’d spent the last five minutes circling each other, both of them moving to the right, shifting position in relation to the forest but not in relation to one another.
If he were to move out to the edge, out by the moonscape, and head down to his left, he might still flank Negli, still wind up on Negli’s back. With that advantage, he could pick and choose, he could maybe get close enough just to disarm the little man and hold him down while he asked some questions.
It was worth a try.
He moved to his left, as slow and careful and silent as a wolf.
‘Parker!’
He slopped. The call had come from the same spot; Negli hadn’t moved since then. Parker said nothing. He waited.
‘Parker, you did everything wrong.’
He waited.
‘You hear me? You stupid lummox, do you hear me?’
He waited.
Negli’s voice was getting shrill, his words were bumping into one another. He shouted, ‘Do you want to hear about it, you brainless bastard?’
This time, as Negli shouted Parker moved. Negli’s own roaring voice covered any small sounds Parker might make. He followed the line he’d already worked out, moving out to the edge of the forest and then down the line to get behind Negli. He moved when Negli spoke, and stopped when Negli was silent.
Negli shouted, ‘You lost the money, that was the first thing. You walk out of the apartment and leave the money in there with nobody to watch it and somebody comes and takes it away, you simple moron, takes it away!’
Parker stopped. He was at the edge now; he’d travelled about seven feet so far, during Negli’s speeches.
It was almost comic. Negli shouting about stupidity and killing himself with every shout.
‘And you went to the cop!’ Negli shouted, and Parker moved forward again. ‘You got that goddam list from that goddam cop, and what the hell did you think he’d do? You hear me, Parker? What did you think that cop would do?’
They both slopped.
‘He put law on the inside, Parker! There weren’t any cops watching for you on the outside, there were plain-clothesmen inside the goddam apartment!’
Parker frowned and crouched down to wait awhile. That was a cross-up. It didn’t make sense that way. Detective Dougherty had to figure he was part of the mob that made the haul at the stadium. He had to figure Parker would lead him to the rest of the mob. It only made sense for Dougherty to put men on watch outside the homes of those nine men on his list with orders not to grab Parker when he showed up but to follow him when he left.
That was the whole basis of it right there, that was why it seemed safe to let the others go around and ask their questions.
Why? Where had he figured wrong? Had Dougherty been too smart for him or too dumb for him?
Negli shouted again: ‘They put the grab on Arnie, you know that? I saw them bring him out. I tried to help him cop it, they gunned him down. You hear me, you rotten bastard ?’
Parker heard him. He’d gone down the line now, Negli’s voice was coming from farther back. He’d managed to cross Negli’s flank and get behind him. He turned, and on Negli’s next speech he started in through the underbrush again.
‘Parker! Arnie’s dead! Don’t you know what I’m talking about, you mindless piece of hate? Annie’s dead?
Closer, Parker stopped, his left hand resting lightly on the smooth white trunk of a birch tree. The automatic was in his right. The little Colt revolver was still in his trouser pocket, hadn’t been used at all yet.
‘And that other one! He killed Kifka, did you know that? Not just your girl, that slut of yours, you animal, not just her. He killed Kifka, too, just now, just today.’
Kifka? Then who was left?
Shelly dead, Feccio dead, Negli dying. Kifka dead. If the law was on watch inside those apartments, then they now must have Clinger and Rudd.
Nobody was left.
Only Parker was left. Parker, and a corpse that was shouting because it didn’t know yet it was a corpse.
‘Kifka’s your fault, too, Parker, you hear that? You killed Arnie just as much as if you pulled the trigger yourself. You killed Arnie, and you killed Kifka, and I’m going to kill you!’
They stopped. Negli was no more than ten feel away now, ahead and to the right. Crouching, waiting, Parker peered through the underbrush for some sign, some glimpse of Negli. He’d been wearing a luminous tan camel’s hair coat over his natty suit; that tan should show nicely against the black and green of the woods. But not yet, not quite close enough yet.
The wait this time was a longer one, and when at last Negli spoke out again there was a difference in the tone of his voice. He seemed suddenly less full of rage, less sure of himself:
‘Parker? Parker? Where the hell are you, Parker?’
A foot closer. Two feet closer.
‘Did you run away, you bastard? You coward? You moron?’
Closer.
‘Why don’t you fight like a man?’
There was a sudden scattering of leaves, and Negli was standing up in full sight, staring and staring the wrong way, his natty back to Parker and only five feet away.
‘Why don’t you fight like a man!’
Parker shot him in the back of the head.
Three
There was law all over the car.
Parker stood there, just within the cover of the pine trees, looking out at the gray Ford. He saw Dougherty there, and another plain clothesman, and three or four cops in uniform.
After he’d finished with Negli he’d worked his way back here along the path he and the other two had beaten out. He’d gathered up his topcoat from where he’d thrown it and put it back on, and when he worked his way up out of the thick underbrush and the birch and maple trees and in under the cool, dim spaciousness of the pine trees he took time out to brush himself off, rub away the dirt marks and the grass stains, get himself looking a little more sensible and civilized. He buried the two pistols under some loose dirt and pine needles because he wouldn’t be needing them any more and went on through the pines and almost stepped out into the open before he saw the law all over the car.
He’d taken too long. If it had just been the amateur everything would have been all right, but with the extra time it had taken to deal with Negli he’d stretched beyond the limit.
Five minutes sooner and he’d have been free and clear, with wheels and the whole boodle.
But there was no chance for it now. As he stood in among the trees and watched, Dougherty and the other plainclothesman reached into the Ford and took out one of the suitcases and set it down on the ground next to the car. They looked at one another, and then both crouched down in front of the suitcase and loosened the snaps. The other plainclothesman lifted the lid.
The money was stacked in there like heads of lettuce.
Both cops stood up again and put their hands on their hips and looked down at the open suitcase. Then Dougherty turned his head and looked at the woods in the general direction o
f Parker. He said something to the other cop, but Parker was too far away to hear the words. The other cop looked at the woods too and shook his head. Dougherty shrugged.
Parker waited a minute longer even though there wasn’t any point to it. He watched the cops take out a second suitcase, not one of the right ones, and open it up to find it full of laundry. Then they reached in again and this time brought out the right suitcase, and then they had both suitcases and all the money, and it was all over.
Never had such a sweet operation turned so completely sour.
Of the seven in on the job, all but one were dead or in the hands of the law. The take was in the hands of the law. There was nothing left.
Parker turned away and started back through the forest again.
The only thing to do now was get clear. The job was so completely sour, it was a kind of victory just to get himself out and clear.
The best way was the way the amateur had tried. Through the forest and out past that building under construction and along whatever street or road there was on the other side of it. Not back into town at all after that, but the other way, farther out of the city.
He had a little money on him, not much. Enough to carry him away from here.
He paused for a second where he’d buried the guns. But he’d be better off without them. From here on, what he had to do was keep out of sight. Gun battles with the law were for idiots.
He moved on, following the same trail as last time. But this time there was no one ahead of him and no one coming along behind him.
Back in the other direction, the sun crept down behind the pine trees. Darkness was slowly edging in from all sides, but there was still enough light to see the trail.
Four
The amateur was gone.
Parker stopped at the edge of the woods, peering, at first refusing to believe it, telling himself he was being tricked by perspective, by the long forest shadows that stretched now like witch fingers out across the dead plain toward the building, by the bad light of late afternoon.
But it was no trick. Where the amateur had fallen, where the dust had billowed up and then settled on him again, there was now no one. No one and nothing.
The second bullet hadn’t done the job, then. It had seemed like a good hit, but it had only wounded him. And he’d lain out there, either lying doggo or unconscious, and after a while he’d crawled or walked away.
Which way? Back into the relative safety of the woods? Or forward, on toward that building bulking out there?
Forward. There was no subtlety in the amateur, nothing in him but direct action. He would keep going forward no matter what.
But there were still questions. It all depended how badly he was hit. From the way he’d flopped out there, from how long he’d stayed lying there, the hit had to be fairly good, anyway. It was no flesh wound, no grazing of his shoulder or leg. But just how bad was it? Bad enough to have him dead now, up closer to the building? Or not quite that bad, but bad enough to force him to hole up in the building itself and not try to go any farther? Or was it so slight after all that he’d just walked away and was now lost forever?
Standing there at the edge of the woods, Parker regretted not having dug the guns up again. But there’d been no way to guess back there that he’d be needing a gun again so soon.
He faded back into the woods, hunted around, and found the body of Negli lying sprawled all over a thick and thorny bush. The little Beretta was on the ground near his hand.
Parker picked it up and broke the clip out of the butt. It was a six-shot .25-caliber automatic, and Negli had already used up five of the cartridges in this clip.
Parker slid the clip back in place, put the Beretta in his pocket, and dragged Negli clear of the thornbush. He went through Negli’s clothing, but the little man hadn’t been carrying an extra clip.
The damn fool!
Parker got to his feet and looked out again across the plain at the building over there. It was over twenty storeys high already, and from the confusion of cranes and pulleys atop the building — looking like unruly hair on the head of a Mongoloid idiot — it was apparently going to be even taller before they were done. The last rays of sunlight glinted like icicles from the windows on the first seven or eight floors; above that the windowpanes hadn’t been put in place yet.
The amateur might be in there. He might be anywhere inside that pile of brick and glass, or he might be gone from this area entirely.
Parker wanted him. He wanted that bastard the way Negli had wanted Parker. Not because there was any sense in it anymore, but only because the amateur, alive, was a loose end.
It was the amateur who had soured the sweet job, bringing in his own extraneous problems, killing for no sensible reason, taking money that should have been safe, running around wild and causing trouble with everybody, attracting the attention of the law.
There was no profit in killing him, but Parker was going to kill him anyway. He was going to kill him because he couldn’t possibly just walk away and leave the bastard alive.
But that didn’t mean he had to get like Negli, stupid and careless.
It would be full night soon, and that was bad. Night was the amateur’s ally, covering his blunders, obstructing Parker’s movements. If the thing was to be done, it should be done now.
He moved out across the dead plain, moving light and fast on the balls of his feet, watching the building, ready to jump in any direction. If the amateur was in there, and watching, and waiting for a good shot, that was all right. Parker would give him one shot to find out exactly where he was. He could count on the bastard to miss the first time.
But there was no shot. He came all the way across the plain and up to the building itself and there, was no sound, no movement.
This was the back of the building. Windows stretched away to left and right, reflecting with distortions the plain and the forest and the red circle of the sun beginning now to sink behind the western horizon. A few gray metal doors we’re snugly in place here and there along the rear wall, implying basements, furnaces, all the utilities needed for a bulging building like this one.
No sound, no movement.
But over to the right a window was smashed in. These were all permanent windows, fixed in place without any way to open them, meaning the building would be centrally the. Over to the right, one of these windows had been smashed in, and every last piece of glass knocked out of the aluminum frame.
So a man could crawl through without cutting himself.
A sound, a tiny scratch, made him look up.
Glinting like a phantom airship, slender, square, fast and murderous, a sheet of plate glass knifed down through the air at him, whistling. Highlights sparkled from the edges like reflections of ice.
Parker jumped away. With a sound like dry wood breaking, only much much louder, the sheet of glass destroyed itself into the ground, spraying shards and slivers in all directions. Silver triangles tinkled against the ground floor windows. Tiny pyramids of glass embedded themselves in Parker’s shin and cheek and the back of his right hand.
He looked up; the wall loomed up featureless and blank, the glass blood-red in the windows on the lower floors, reflecting the sun. The yellow bricks of the wall were tinged with rose color.
The amateur was up there, on a high storey, above the levels where the glass had already been fixed in place.
As Parker looked, a dusky shimmer extruded from high up the wall like the phantom of a slender tongue. It bent, it arched, it broke free of the wall and sliced downward; another heavy sheet of glass, three feet wide and four feet long and half an inch thick, slicing through the air like an invisible sword.
Parker dove through the hole in the building where the amateur had already smashed a window in. Behind him, the second glass torpedo sprayed itself into oblivion, musically.
He was in what would be a basement storage room, the interior walls made of concrete block and painted a dull blue gray. A metal door stood open onto a
concrete block corridor.
Parker moved cautiously, the Beretta insignificant in his hand. The corridor led him to the left to gaping holes in the wall where some day the elevators would hang. Opposite, another metal door led him to a stairway, the rough plaster walls painted an unfortunate yellow. He took the stairs up to the first floor.
He was now in what would be a lobby or entrance hall of some kind, a broad, dim, white painted echoing cavern with a low-hung free form ceiling, shaped like a swimming-pool. Light fixtures sprouted all over this ceiling like the faceted eyes of flies.
From here on, every part of the building was incomplete. A metal staircase, without the walls that would enclose it, stood off to the left, leading upward. Parker went that way, sliding his feet noiselessly across a floor that seemed to he, but was not, marble.
Beside the staircase a white bag fell and exploded, puffing whiteness out everywhere. A bag of cement, dropped too early. Parker ran through it, a white mist like a smokescreen in wartime, and started up the stairs. The stairs went forward to a landing, backward to the second floor. Forward again to another landing, backward to the third floor. And so on, and so on. And between the stairway halves was an empty space running down the middle’ of the stairwell, down which, like down some’ madman’s oubliette, the amateur hurled whatever he could get his hands on. Long warped one by-twelve planks went bumping and thumping by, bouncing from metal railing to metal tailing. More cement bags dropped by like torsos to make soft white explosions on the lobby floor. Hammers and wrenches fell by, rattling and clanking.
Parker kept to the far edge of the stairs, and kept moving upward. The windows had been glassed in completely up to the eighth floor. More than two or three floors above that there probably wasn’t even any glass in readiness yet, lying around to be used as weapons. On floor nine, then, or floor ten or floor eleven he would find the amateur.
As he passed the sixth-floor level the rain of stupidity stopped from above. The amateur had been throwing out of fear, out of panic, and now either his panic had abated or he had run out of things to throw.
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