Nobody Runs Forever

by Richard Stark

  For instance, she hadn’t tried any names on him. “How do you know Mrs. Langen?” “What’s your relationship with Wendy Beckham?” “Do you happen to know Jake Beckham?” “What else are you doing in this part of the world, Mr. Allen?”

  She hadn’t asked those questions. She should have, but she hadn’t, and he knew that meant she knew he’d lied to her.

  She was going to be a problem.

  6

  At dinner in the same family restaurant, Parker told the other two about Wendy Beckham’s doubts about Dr. Madchen. Dalesia said, “I thought he was a jerk that first day in his office. Comes out with a folder, has to have a very important conference with the receptionist, at the same time he’s giving us the steady double-o.”

  “I don’t mind if he’s curious,” Parker said. “I mind if he’s drawing attention. This woman cop on the case, this Reversa, she’s sharp, and she knows something’s happening, and she’s keeping an eye on everything that ripples anywhere around Jake.”

  “So,” McWhitney said, “you mean we should stop this guy from rippling.”

  “He’s seen Nick and me,” Parker said.

  With a snort, Dalesia said, “And he’ll sure remember us.”

  “A little later tonight,” Parker said, “we’ll go visit him and see if he can learn to control himself.”

  “Good,” McWhitney said. “Save me for if it has to turn mean.”

  Dr. Madchen’s home address was in the local phone book, and when Parker and Dalesia got there at nine-thirty that night, the neighborhood was a surprise. “He didn’t get this from pushing pills,” Dalesia said.

  It was true. This had to be one of the richest neighborhoods anywhere around here. Large old houses set well back from the road commanded acres of rolling lawns and many specimen trees and well tended hedges. The few cars visible down the long driveways were recent and expensive.

  This was a hard place to move around in without being noticed. There was nowhere nearby to leave the car, and it wasn’t a neighborhood where people did a lot of walking, particularly at night.

  They were in Dalesia’s Audi. Parker’s new rented Dodge Stratus would stay mostly out of sight. The second time they approached the doctor’s address, Parker said, “Let me out, circle back for me. I’ll see what’s the situation.”

  There was very little traffic along these curving roads, none of them major streets from anywhere to anywhere, just ribbons laid out on a field of emerald green. The tall streetlights were soft, and so were the private lights defining driveways and entrances. At the moment, there wasn’t another moving vehicle in sight. Parker left the Audi and walked in along Dr. Madchen’s blacktop drive in a faint, pervasive amber glow that made everything visible but nothing easy to focus on.

  The Madchen house was brick, probably a century old, three stories high. Elaborate white woodwork surrounded all the doors and windows, and a large, empty wooden porch crossed the front, looking as though no one had used it since the invention of air-conditioning.

  Not trusting the old wood floor of the porch to be silent, Parker moved around the house to the right, where he saw lights in windows. Moving slowly but steadily, keeping a few feet back from the windows, he passed along the right side of the house.

  First a living room, brightly lit but empty. Then a dining room, where a uniformed Asian maid finished loading a round silver tray with dinner things and carried it away through a dark wood swinging door. Then a smaller room with darker furniture and walls, and a blue-lit woman not quite facing the window Parker peered through.

  He stopped. The woman was fiftyish, heavyset, with too-black hair. She was seated deep in a soft broadcloth armchair, and wore a lumpy satin robe or muumuu with Hawaiian island scenes repeated on it. She was barefoot, her feet on a hassock. She gazed forward, discontented, brooding. The television set she glowered at, its sound rising dimly and disjointedly through the window, was out of Parker’s sight, below and just to his right of the window.

  He watched her for a minute. The Asian maid entered and asked something respectful, folding her hands at her waist like a character in a movie. Without looking away from the screen, the woman said something sour. The maid nodded, crossed to pick up the squat empty glass from beside her mistress, and carried it out of the room. The woman abruptly called something after her, still without looking away from the television set. Parker thought he made out the word “ice.”

  The maid didn’t immediately return. Parker retraced his steps back to the road. Three minutes later, when Dalesia arrived, Parker went around to the driver’s side. When Dalesia lowered his window, Parker bent to say, “He isn’t home. Just a wife and a maid. Keep circling, I’ll wait for him, see what we do.”

  “Fine.” Dalesia nodded generally at the neighborhood. “You know,” he said, “along about the second week, I bet this gets boring.”

  An hour and a half later, a car came slowly down the road, its right blinker switched on. There was no other car anywhere in sight. This had to be the doctor.

  Parker waited, leaning against the plump specimen tree shaped like a lollipop, with maroon leaves, that stood off to the left of the driveway, midway between road and house. The oncoming car’s lights flashed over him as the car turned in, but he doubted he’d been seen. The doctor’s night vision would be limited to what he expected to see along this well-known route.

  As the car moved slowly toward the house, Parker stepped away from the tree and crossed the lawn to intercept it. The doctor, alone in the car, holding the steering wheel with both hands, was miles deep in his own thoughts and wasn’t aware of anything else until Parker tapped his side window. Then he jolted away, slamming on the brakes, barely stopping himself from thudding his forehead against the windshield.

  Parker patted the air downward: calm down. Then he lifted a finger: wait.

  Dr. Madchen stared at him in terror as Parker walked around the front of his Alero and got into the passenger seat. “Back out of here,” he said.

  “What are you—why is the—what are you—”

  Parker tapped a knuckle on the doctor’s kneecap; not hard, just enough to draw his attention. “Back out of here,” he said.

  “You’re not supposed to—we’re not supposed to know—”

  Parker said, “Well, this would be easier,” and brought the Beretta out of his pocket, not pointing it anywhere in particular.

  “No! I don’t want to die!”

  “Then you’ll back out of here.” Finally the doctor got the idea. Shaking, clumsy, he managed to shift the Alero into reverse and jump on the accelerator.

  “Easy.”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “Back around to the right and stop.”

  The sight of the pistol had calmed the doctor wonderfully. He backed out of the driveway and around to the right, stopping along the low curb. There were no sidewalks here.

  “Put it in neutral.”

  The doctor did that, too, then turned a very earnest face toward Parker. “I don’t want to die,” he explained, as though there might have been some question.

  “That’s good,” Parker said. Bending down a bit, he saw, in the right side mirror, headlights approach. Putting the Beretta away, he opened his window and waved his arm. Dalesia drove by, and Parker said, “We’ll follow him.”

  The doctor put the Alero in gear. “I don’t see—I don’t see why—”

  “We’ll talk when we’re all together.”

  Dalesia drove them away from that expensive neighborhood, into the nearby commercial neighborhood that’s always to be found in an area like that. It included an all-night supermarket, a glaring bubble of fluorescent light in the darkness. Dalesia turned in at the parking lot there, and the doctor followed. Dalesia parked some distance from the store, and Parker said, “Stop to his left.”

  “All right.”

  “Shut off the engine.”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Dalesia got out of the Audi and slid into the
back seat of the Alero. “You’ve been a naughty boy,” he told the doctor.

  The doctor twisted halfway around in the seat, face distorted. “No, I haven’t! I did everything Jake asked me to do, I’m willing to do whatever.”

  “You’re hanging around the hospital,” Parker told him. “You don’t have a job there.”

  “He’s my patient, I want to be sure.”

  “He’s not your patient now. You come in there,” Parker said, “and you act like a little boy with a secret. You talk to Jake about what’s happening—”

  “No, no, I wouldn’t!”

  “You hint about what’s happening. You hint in front of his sister. Who else do you hint in front of?”

  “Nobody! No one! I swear, I wouldn’t— I need this! I need it, you don’t understand, the life I live, I need this, I don’t want to die—”

  “I got that,” Parker said.

  “I don’t want to die,” the doctor said, more calmly. This time, it was a humble statement, as though he were asking permission. “If this doesn’t happen,” he told them, “this thing you two are doing, if this thing doesn’t happen, I’m going to die.”

  Parker watched him. “You are?”

  “I can’t live. This is my last, you’re my last hope.”

  Parker and Dalesia shared a glance. Dalesia said, “So you don’t want to louse things up.”

  “No! No! Anything but!”

  Parker said, “Stay away from the hospital.”

  “I will,” the doctor said. “I hadn’t realized, but you’re right, you’re absolutely right, I—”

  “Stay away from Jake,” Parker said.

  “I will. I promise.”

  “No more hints.”

  “No.”

  “No more hanging around.”

  “No.”

  “Not a word out of you to anybody.”

  “No,” the doctor said, and sat up straighter, and crossed his heart and held his right hand up like a Boy Scout. “I swear to God,” he said. “Hope to die.”

  7

  From the rear of the Trails End Motor Inne, where Parker and the others had been placed by Jake Beckham, you could see and hear the MassPike, just to the south, beyond a chain-link fence and a wooded gully. The sound was undifferentiated rush, steady enough to become white noise, and the constant streaming by of toy-size vehicles was soothing to watch, in its own strange way. Most of the regular customers of the motel were around on the other side, facing the local road and the swimming pool, which was still open though too cold for anybody to swim. Their three rooms were not contiguous, but spaced apart half a dozen units or so, along the ground floor. This time of year, there were no customers at all upstairs.

  The day after they’d cooled off Dr. Madchen, in the middle of the afternoon, Parker sat in the open doorway of his room, looking out toward the MassPike, doing nothing but wait until tomorrow, when the work would be done. He’d been there for a while, empty and relaxed, when McWhitney drove slowly past in his red Dodge Ram pickup. He pointed at Parker, as though to say, don’t move, wait for me, and Parker nodded. McWhitney went on, parking the pickup in front of his own room, then came walking heavily back to where Parker had now gotten to his feet.

  “This woman cop of yours,” McWhitney said, by way of greeting.

  “What about her?”

  “Describe her to me.”

  “Blonde, late twenties, good-looking, dresses well.”

  “I don’t know about the ‘dresses well,’” McWhitney said.

  Where they stood, facing south, the MassPike a flat barrier wall in front of them, the thin September sun shone down at them from a slant. Parker turned away from it to look more closely at McWhitney. “What do you mean?”

  “I think she’s tailing me,” McWhitney said.

  “You? Why does she even know you?”

  “That’s the question in my mind, all right.”

  “Where did you see her?”

  “There’s a town near here with a drugstore with a phone booth in it,” McWhitney said. “A real phone booth, for a little privacy, I went there to check in with the guy who’s taking care of my bar while I’m gone. On the way out, I noticed this woman, because she’s the kind of woman you’ll notice—”

  “Sure.”

  “And then,” McWhitney said, “coming out of the drugstore, there she was, parked across the street, looking at a roadmap.”

  Parker frowned. “I’d think she was smarter than that.”

  “Maybe she figures I’m not worth all her smarts. Anyway, I’m walking back to my truck, I see her, I remember seeing her before, and all of a sudden I’m thinking, wait a minute, I saw her before this, too. Before today.”

  “You’re sure it’s the same woman.”

  “Good-looking blonde, late twenties. Could be a cop, I suppose, how can you tell?”

  “You can’t.”

  “No.” McWhitney scratched his head, looking aggravated. “The question is, what’s she doing bird-dogging me?”

  “Makes no sense,” Parker said.

  “With you there’s a link,” McWhitney pointed out. “She’s got you through your car here, your car there. I’m not around any of this stuff, I showed up late. How come she made me all of a sudden?”

  “I don’t get it,” Parker admitted.

  “Neither do I.” McWhitney glowered back at the sun. “It’s making me mad,” he said. “But who the hell am I mad at? And for what? If somebody screwed up, who was it? Nick? You? But how would you even screw up?”

  “I want to see this woman,” Parker said.

  “Be my guest.”

  “Drive out again. I’ll come with you.”

  “That links us pretty tight.”

  “If she’s tailing you,” Parker said, “she’s already linked us. I just want to see what she’s doing, try to figure out why she’s doing it.”

  McWhitney considered. He was angry, and wanted to relieve his feelings somehow, but couldn’t figure out how. “Fuck it,” he said. “Come along.”

  Parker closed his room door and walked with McWhitney down the row of closed green doors, past his own Dodge and Dalesia’s Audi to the pickup. He slid in on the passenger side, and McWhitney said, “Anywhere in particular?”

  “Do your drugstore run again.”

  “Fine.”

  They left the motel, and McWhitney took his time on the local roads, constantly checking his rearview mirror. “I don’t know where the hell she is,” he said.

  “She’ll show up.”

  McWhitney stopped at a stop sign, took his time, looked all over the place, started through the intersection, then looked down to his left and said, “Son of a bitch, there she is! Parked down there, see? Here she comes.”

  Parker looked past McWhitney’s jutting jaw and saw the car down there pulling away from the shoulder, saw the blonde at the wheel. “I see her,” he said.

  “So?” McWhitney’s belligerence was increasing, now that she was actually there, hanging discreetly back in his mirror. “What do you think now?”

  “Head back to the motel,” Parker said. “I think you and Nick and I have to talk.”

  McWhitney gave him a quick look. “Why? Something wrong? What is it? Isn’t that your cop?”

  “No.”

  “I give up,” McWhitney said. “Do you know her? Who is she?”

  “I’ve seen her,” Parker said. “Her name is Sandra. She was a friend of Roy Keenan.”

  8

  We don’t need this,” Dalesia said.

  “Well, we got it,” McWhitney growled. Now that he’d found out the one he should be mad at was himself, he sat hunkered, beetle-browed, as though waiting for a chance to counterattack.

  The three sat in Dalesia’s room, the door closed against the evening view of the MassPike. There were two chairs, flanking the round fake-wood table, and Dalesia and McWhitney sat there, each with an elbow on the table, while Parker stood, sometimes paced, sometimes stopped to watch one or the other
face.

  “That’s a few hundred miles,” Dalesia complained. “From Long Island to here. But you never saw her before today.”

  “I think I did,” McWhitney said, and beat the side of his fist gently on the table. “I think I probably saw her, maybe a few times. What do you think to yourself when you see that? ‘There’s a good-looking blonde.’ Not, ‘There’s the good-looking blonde I saw yesterday.’ You aren’t looking in that kind of way.”

  Dalesia, as though grudgingly, said, “That’s true, I guess. Good looks can make a woman anonymous.” He grinned at McWhitney, apparently deciding to make nice. “Anybody looks at an ugly beak like you two days in a row,” he said, “they’re gonna notice.”

  Parker said, “What does she want, that’s the question.”

  “Good,” McWhitney said, rather than have to answer Dalesia. “You tell us. What does she want? She can’t still be waiting for her partner to show up.”

  Dalesia said to Parker, “You saw her before, when Keenan braced you, but you didn’t talk to her.”

  “No, Keenan used her as a decoy to get me in position where he could suddenly show up. Then she left. He said her job was to be somewhere around, out of sight with a three fifty-seven Magnum.”

  “Christ on a crutch,” McWhitney said.

  Dalesia said, “So that’s what happened. Keenan went into Nels’s bar, and this Sandra woman stayed outside as backup. Didn’t help him much, but there she is.”

  As though reluctant to say it, or to say much of anything, McWhitney told them, “He had a walkie-talkie in his pocket.”

  Parker said, “But he didn’t use it.”

  “He didn’t get the chance.”

  Dalesia said, “That was at night. What, around eleven?”

  “A little earlier. That bar doesn’t get a late-night bunch, not even on weekends.”

  Dalesia said, “All right. Whatever happened between you and Keenan happened that night. Then what? In the morning, you came out to look for me?”