Slayground p-13

by Richard Stark

  Dunstan was nodding all the way through Parker’s instructions, and when Parker was done he said, “I understand. Don’t worry, I know what to do.”

  “All right, that’s good.” Parker nodded at the gun on Dunstan’s hip. “Now there’s that,” he said. “I want you to take it out very slow, using thumb and forefinger only, and holding it only by the butt. Go ahead.”

  Dunstan did it, moving so slowly Parker almost told him to speed it up. But sweat was breaking out on Dunstan’s face now, the idea of drawing his gun with Parker armed and standing in front of him was shaking him up so much he was liable to faint, so Parker waited him out, and when Dunstan finally held the gun out to him Parker took it, flipped open the chamber, and shook the cartridges out. Then he gave the gun back to Dunstan and told him, “Put it back in your holster.” When Dunstan started trying to do it while holding the gun with thumb and forefinger, he said, “No, you can hold it the regular way now.” Dunstan made a nervous embarrassed laugh and put the gun away.

  Parker now had two guns of his own, the automatic he’d taken from Ed and the Smith & Wesson Police Positive .38 revolver now in a holster at his belt. He had the holster flap open and tucked in behind the revolver butt so he could get at the gun in a hurry, and now he opened the zipper of his Ike jacket and tucked the automatic inside the waistband of his trousers. He closed the Ike jacket again and picked up the shirt he’d already ripped partway for the other cop’s gag. He separated the rest into two long strips and tied them both around his head, obscuring most of the right side of his face, including his right eye. When he put the cop’s hat on, he tilted it forward and to the left, covering more of his face.

  Dunstan watched him nervously, and finally said, “What if somebody asks us what happened?”

  “We thought we saw somebody in here, so we came in after him and I tripped over a wire and laid my head open. You’re taking me home, and after I get the wound cleaned and put a bandage on it we’ll both be back.”

  Dunstan nodded, too quickly. He was like a beginning actor with stage fright on opening night. “All right,” he said. “I’ll do’ my best.”

  “That’s good,” Parker said. He went over and put his arm around Dunstan’s shoulders, and Dunstan recoiled wide-eyed, as though afraid he was about to be strangled.

  Parker held his shoulder, didn’t let him go. “I hurt myself,” he said. “Remember? I need you to help me to the car.”

  “Oh,” Dunstan said. “Oh, yes, all right.” He reached his left hand up to grasp Parker’s left wrist and put his right arm around Parker’s waist.

  Parker said, “Don’t let that hand get too close to the gun.”

  “Oh, no! I didn’t even think of that!”

  Parker was sure that was true. “Let’s go,” he said.

  Seven

  THE TWO cops came out of the Voyage Through the Galaxy building, the one leaning heavily for support on the other, his head covered in what looked like impromptu bandages. His head lolled forward as they moved out into the sunlight and turned toward the gates.

  To Parker’s right as they moved slowly along was the fun house, where he’d counterattacked first last night. It had been a long time since last night. Next after the fun house was the little island with picnic tables, and off beyond that was Marooned!, the black-light ride where he’d hidden the satchel full of money.

  He didn’t like leaving here without the money, he didn’t like it for a lot of different reasons. In the first place, it meant he’d expended all this effort, first on the armored-car job and then in here, for no profit. In the second place, they would have to know, Lozini and his people, that although their quarry had gotten away he hadn’t managed to take the cash with him, and they would now take this park apart looking for the seventy-three thousand. It didn’t seem to him the money was hidden very well for that kind of search.

  But there wasn’t any choice. This whole operation was iffy enough as it was, trying to pass himself off as somebody else in front of people who knew the guy he was supposed to be. To try carrying a satchel out as well, when one of the things everybody in here was looking for was a satchel full of money, just wasn’t going to be possible.

  Some other time. A few months from now, maybe, or maybe next summer, he could come back and see if his money was still there. And if it wasn’t, he knew who to collect from.

  Lozini.

  “Hey!”

  It was a voice behind them, and it had to be for them. Parker felt Dunstan hesitate, but he said under his breath, “Keep moving,” and Dunstan moved forward again.

  “O’Hara! Hey, O’Hara, where the hell are you going?”

  Parker could hear the putt-putt now, the sound of the little cart Lozini had been riding around in all morning. The gates were maybe a dozen paces away, too far to walk before Lozini could catch up.

  Parker said to Dunstan, “Remember the story.”

  “I remember.” Dunstan’s whisper was shaky and scared.

  “Make it work,” Parker told him.

  Then Lozini’s cart came wheeling around from behind them, the tires squeaking on the snow as the driver brought it to a stop, and Lozini was leaning out of the cart and saying, “What the hell happened? O’Hara?”

  Dunstan said, quickly and nervously and way too loud, “He fell down. Joe fell down, back in that building back there. He tripped over a wire.”

  “That son of a bitch has this whole place booby-trapped. We found two more rides he set up to electrocute people, would you believe that? O’Hara, how’s your head?”

  Dunstan seemed to be waiting for Parker to answer, but Parker was keeping his head down. He pressed Dunstan’s shoulder and Dunstan suddenly blurted, “Joe feels awful, Mr. Lozini. I wanna get him out of here, I wanna get him home and look at the wound and clean it up and all, and then we’ll come back.”

  “That’s a goddam shame,” Lozini said. “Put him on the back here, I’ll take you over to the car.”

  “No. thanks, Mr. Lozini,” Dunstan said, but Parker pulled him toward the cart, and he said, “Uh, maybe it’d be good for Joe.”

  “You don’t want him to walk.”

  There was a padded seat on the back of the car, facing rearward. Parker and Dunstan sat on it, Parker slumping heavily, and the driver started the cart up again.

  Lozini said, “What were you two doing in there anyway?”

  “We thought we saw somebody in there. But I guess we didn’t.”

  “We’re supposed to have him bottled up back in Alcatraz,; but I don’t know. We’ve gone through that part pretty good and we haven’t turned him up yet.”

  “He’s pretty shifty, I guess,” Dunstan said, laughing nervously.

  “He’s a rotten bastard,” Lozini said, “and when I get my hands on him I’ll kill him myself.”

  They stopped at the gates, and Lozini yelled for his people to hurry up and open them. Parker stayed slumped, listening, his hand near the gun on his hip, and after a minute the cart moved forward again and they drove out of the park.

  Lozini was half-turned in the front seat, facing backward, and now he said, “How bad a cut you got, O’Hara?” and reached out to touch Parker’s head. His hand brushed the hat, it slipped backward, and Lozini shouted, “Hey!”

  Parker came up with the revolver, pointed at Lozini’s throat. Low and quick he said, “Holler, and it’s your last noise.”

  But Lozini wouldn’t sit still. He shouted, and jumped backward off the cart, landing rolling on the street. A second later the driver jumped off the other way, and the cart veered to the right, slowing to a stop.

  Dunstan was yelling, “I didn’t do it!” but Parker paid him no attention. Dunstan wasn’t going to be a problem.

  Parker jumped off the still-moving cart and fired at Lozini, but the old man was still rolling away across the snowy blacktop, his overcoat streaked now with white. The bullet missed, and there wasn’t time to try again.

  Parker turned in a fast half-circle, and the cart driv
er was running like hell in the opposite direction. But a couple of guys, still puzzled, not sure yet what was happening, had started hesitantly out from the main gates of Fun Island.

  Parker turned again and raced across the street toward the police car, reaching into his pocket for O’Hara’s keys. Behind him Lozini was shouting.

  There were three other cars parked beside the toll building. Parker fired three times, and they all had flat tires.

  Someone fired from across the street, and a windshield to Parker’s right developed a starred hole. He turned and emptied O’Hara’s gun, hitting no one but making them all take cover. Lozini had wound up behind the stalled cart, still shouting for Parker’s blood.

  Parker got into the police car and started the engine. The sound agitated them across the street again, and the windshield was hit four times. Lozini was jumping up and down and screaming, “The tires! The tires!”

  Parker threw the car into gear and aimed for Lozini, but the old man got around behind the cart again. The left corner of the police car’s rear bumper nicked the cart, sending it spinning, and then Parker was accelerating down Brower Road.

  When he looked in the rear-view mirror he saw a couple of them back there, standing in the middle of the street like FBI agents at the pistol range, firing after him, but none of the bullets came into the car. Others were running for the cars, and that looked like Lozini up again, limping now, probably still screaming. Dunstan was standing around like a wallflower, not knowing what to do with his hands.

  It took Parker ten minutes to get to where the second car was stashed. He left O’Hara’s gunbelt and holster and the empty gun in the police car. The hat had fallen off back in front of Fun Island, and he’d long since removed the bandages from his head.

  He switched to the other car. It contained extra clothing for himself and Grofield and Laufman, but he could change later on. For the first hour, he just drove.

  Eight

  PARKER TURNED in at the driveway where the rural mailbox said Willis. It wasn’t his idea, using that name, but this wasn’t his house, it was all Claire’s. He’d given her the money, but she’d bought it, it was in a name of hers, and she was the one who lived here. He stayed here when he wasn’t working, but Claire lived here. There was a difference, and they could both feel it.

  The name Willis on the mailbox bothered Parker a little, but it really shouldn’t. It was a common enough name, after five years a woman who used that name wasn’t going to lead the law to Parker, who was wanted under it, but it bothered him because it was an illogical thing to do and he tried not to do illogical things. He’d stopped being Charles Willis two years before he’d met Claire, but he’d told her about the name and that was why she was using it. In order to force herself some way into his life even before he knew her, to make their relationship with one another have roots that extended into the period of time when they didn’t know of one another’s existence. It was a small illogic, and it would have no ill effects, and in a way it pleased Parker that she should want to feel like that, but he couldn’t help, every time he came back from a job, looking at that name on the mailbox and being troubled for just a minute about its evidence that all was not rationality.

  Claire had recently had overhead doors installed in the two-car attached garage, to replace the old-fashioned doors in pairs that had opened outward. Now Parker reached into the glove compartment of the Pontiac — his own car, waiting for him where he’d left it at the Newark Airport parking lot — and pressed the button on the little box in there, and one of the doors lifted, and he drove in.

  Claire’s Buick wasn’t there, so she was shopping or someplace. Parker pressed the button that shut the garage door again, walked across the empty space that Claire’s car would occupy, and went through the connecting door into the house. He went into the kitchen and made himself a sandwich and a cup of instant coffee, and carried them through the bedroom and opened the glass door and went out onto the back porch. It was briskly cold here, but the sun was shining and he was warmly dressed and he wasn’t minding the cold any more. He sat down on a chair on the porch and looked out at the ice on the lake in the sunlight, and ate his sandwich and drank his coffee. There were no snowmobiles out there today, but over on the other side of the lake he could see the tiny black figures of children skating. Across the middle of the lake went two boys on bicycles, with a skidding, sliding dog trying to keep up with them.

  Only about a fifth of the houses around the lake were occupied year-round, that was one of the reasons Claire had picked this house. The houses on both sides were among those used strictly as summer cottages. This was a good place for a man who didn’t want to be noticed, and who didn’t want his comings and goings paid attention to.

  Parker sat out there about half an hour after he finished the coffee and sandwich, and then the glass door slid open behind him — the house was half old-fashioned rustic, half modernized country — and Claire came out, saying, “I saw your car.”

  “Hello,” he said, and she bent over him to kiss his lips. He was usually very interested in sex in the time right after a job, but this one had used up his body for a while. Tomorrow, maybe. For now, while she kissed him, he simply leaned up and stroked her hair.

  She straightened and looked at him, a quizzical smile on her face. “Something wrong?” She was tall and slender and good-looking, the way a fashion model is tall and slender and good-looking, but with more than the usual fashion model’s individuality in her face.

  “I’m tired,” he said.

  “Feel like telling me about it?”

  “Sure.”

  She pulled over a chair and sat down and he told her about it, and when he was done, she said, “All of that, and you didn’t even get the money. You must be disgusted.”

  “I know where it is,” he said. He stretched, and the muscles were aching again. He’d have to go to bed soon, sleep for a while. “Some day I’ll go back and get it,” he said, and got up yawning, and the two of them went into the house.

  The end.

  ––––––––––––

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  Richard Stark

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