The Black Ice Score p-1

by Richard Stark

  “Take his feet. We can’t leave him out here.”

  “Oh.” Formutesca went down to Gonor’s feet, but then said, “He’s face down. Shouldn’t we turn him over?”

  “No,” Parker said. He bent and took Gonor under the arms. “Come on, Formutesca.”

  Formutesca shook his head trying to clear it. “I’m sorry,” he said. He lifted Gonor by the ankles. “His feet are skinny,” he said.

  They crossed the street and went up to the entrance of the museum. Parker held Gonor propped up while Formutesca unlocked the door; then they carried the body in and set it down on the floor. Looking down, Formutesca said, “What a waste. What an awful waste.”

  “Go move the truck,” Parker told him. He had to keep Formutesca moving; he was the only one left who could be used.

  Formutesca looked at him vaguely. “Move the truck?”

  “Put it down in the next block and then hurry back here. Go on, move.”

  Formutesca nodded, still vague, but when he went out he did move fast. Parker followed him out, and as Formutesca got into the truck Parker went to the two bodies lying on the sidewalk. He grabbed Hoskins as he’d carried Gonor and dragged him up the walk and into the museum. He left the body beside the other one and hurried back out to take a look at Manado.

  The boy was alive but unconscious. He’d been hit twice, once in the left side just above the waist, once high on the left shoulder. It looked as though neither bullet was in him. The lower wound was still bleeding, and his hands were cold.

  Parker picked him up in his arms and carried him into the museum. There was a padded bench along the side wall and Parker put him down there. He turned as Formutesca came trotting in.

  Parker said, “Shut the door.”

  Formutesca did, and said, “What now?”

  “We’ll take Manado upstairs. It’d be best to take the whole bench.”

  “All right.”

  The bench was heavy, and it was slow work carrying it with Manado on it the length of the building to the elevator. Once they got it inside and were on their way to the fourth floor, Parker said, “Do you have a doctor you can trust?”

  “Major Indindu is a doctor.”

  Parker was surprised. He said, “Your candidate for president?”

  Formutesca smiled. “Yes,” he said. “We still need Renaissance men in Africa. Major Indindu is a military man, a politician, a physician and a teacher. He has also worked for a shipping line and been a journalist.”

  “Call him when we get upstairs,” Parker said. “Is the phone still working?”

  “Oh, yes. Things went beautifully, just the way you said they would.” He shook his head. “In here, I mean.”

  “Hoskins couldn’t keep away,” Parker said.

  “How did he know to be here?”

  They were at the fourth floor. The door slid back. Parker said, “He must have followed somebody.”

  “What are youdoing here?”

  “Later,” Parker said. “We take care of Manado first. Lift.”

  Formutesca wanted to go on asking questions, but he shrugged and lifted his end of the bench instead. They carried it down the hall and into the first bedroom they reached.

  Parker said, “Take a look in the medicine cabinet. We need something to stop the bleeding. Then call Indindu.”

  “All right.”

  Formutesca left, and Parker moved Manado from the bench to the room’s double bed. He opened Manado’s clothing, then stuffed a pillow against the wound in the side. Manado made a small noise in his throat, and his head moved slightly.

  Parker looked at his watch. Quarter to four. An hour and fifteen minutes to get everything cleared away and organized.

  There were sirens. He went to the window and looked down and saw two police cars come to a stop in the middle of the block. The occupants got out, walked around, looked up at the buildings, looked into the few parked cars, talked to one another. They didn’t seem to know what to do. Nobody came out of any of the buildings to tell them anything.

  After a minute they got back into their cars and, without sirens, drove away.

  2

  Major Indindu came into the living-room. “He’ll be all right,” he said. “He’s in shock, of course, and he’s lost a lot of blood, but he’ll survive.”

  “Good,” Formutesca said. He was obviously too nervous to sit; he’d been pacing back and forth for twenty minutes now. Parker, having made himself a pot of coffee in the kitchen, had been sitting by the window drinking the coffee and watching the street. Nothing had happened since the police had left and Major Indindu had arrived. It was now twenty minutes to five.

  The Major said, “Is there more of that coffee?”

  “A pot in the kitchen,” Parker told him.

  “I’ll get you some,” Formutesca said.

  “Thank you.”

  As Formutesca hurried from the room, the Major walked over to Parker and said, “Frankly, I don’t understand where you fit into all this. Things seem to have gotten more confused than poor Gonor indicated to me.”

  “Gonor did some things wrong at the beginning,” Parker said. “They came back to bite him at the end.”

  The Major looked doubtful. “Was it as simple as that?”

  “Yes. He went to Hoskins, he told Hoskins the story without first finding out if Hoskins was the right man, and after that Hoskins couldn’t keep away. He’d been told how much gravy there was here and he couldn’t help himself; he had to try for it.”

  “Couldn’t you have done anything?”

  “I did. I leaned on him. I told him to go away. I hung him out my hotel window.”

  “You should have dropped him,” the Major said.

  Parker shook his head. “No. He was an irritation to me, that’s all, so I made sure he wouldn’t hang around me and bother me. I didn’t have to kill him for that, and Gonor didn’t hire me to do any killings for him. I told Gonor that Hoskins was hanging around, that he could be trouble. If Gonor had wanted him dead he should have done it himself.”

  “Did you know Hoskins would try something tonight?”

  “No. I thought he’d been convinced.”

  “Perhaps Gonor did too.”

  Parker shrugged. “We were wrong.”

  “You’re supposed to be the professional at this,” the Major said.

  “Not at people. Nobody’s a professional at people. Hoskins was a con man, nothing else. He’d never made a direct offensive move in his life. There was no reason to suppose he’d act that way tonight. You can use hindsight and make it make sense, but you couldn’t have called it ahead of time. Besides, Gonor was over by Hoskins’ car, on the other side of the street, so it looks as though Gonor went to him and forced the issue. Hoskins might have been figuring on just hanging around, watching, following them after they left here, hoping for a time when he could pull a sneak on them.”

  Formutesca came in with the Major’s coffee. “Here you are, sir. Cream, no sugar.”

  “You remembered. Thank you so much.”

  Formutesca said to Parker, “You know, I was thinking. It’s a good thing you came back. I couldn’t have taken charge out there. I’d have fallen apart. I’d have just stood around shaking in my boots till the police showed up.”

  The Major said, “I’m sure you would have done well, Bara.”

  Formutesca smiled weakly and shook his head. “I’m sure I wouldn’t.”

  The Major sipped at his coffee, then said to Parker, “How is it that you didappear? I was under the impression you had left for good this afternoon.”

  “I did. But other things happened.”

  “For instance?”

  “Sit down,” Parker told him. “This’ll take a while.”

  3

  Parker said:

  My woman was supposed to be waiting for me in Boston. When I left Gonor I went to my hotel to check out and take the shuttle flight to Boston. In my room was one of Goma’s white troops, one of the three that had tried t
o muscle me into keeping out of this. He told me he and his friends had taken my woman and they had her in a safe place. When they got the diamonds I could have her back.

  I said there wasn’t any way I could get the diamonds away from you people by myself, and he said his group would take care of getting them all I had to do was tell him what was going on tonight, where you people would be, what the plan was.

  I told him I wanted to think it over, I needed some time. Mostly I didn’t want to tip things too early; I didn’t want his bunch breaking in here before you people. So we sat around my room for a while, and then we went and had dinner, and then I gave him a story.

  I told him the Kasempas were holed up out on Long Island on a small estate on the north shore. I told him I’d only been out there once we didn’t want to make ourselves conspicuous hanging around, so I was vague about where the place was. I said we worked out our attack plan from a map of the property Gonor had made plus blueprints of the house. I said I thought the house belonged to the UN mission of one of the other African countries near Dhaba, but I didn’t know which one.

  I said you people were going to hit the place at two this morning, that you were going to kill everybody and then set the place on fire to cover up. I said the place was so isolated nobody would know about the fire until at least tomorrow sometime. And I said that afterwards you weren’t going back to Gonor’s apartment, you were coming here to this unused museum.

  I told him the reason you were coming here was you didn’t know if there’d be any casualties or not, you weren’t sure what shape you’d be in afterward, and there was this empty apartment on the top floor. That you’d laid in first-aid supplies up here, and fresh clothing, and you were going to stay here overnight and then hide the diamonds somewhere in the museum tomorrow and go on about your business.

  He didn’t have any clear idea how to go about hijacking you, so I made him some suggestions. I told him it would be too tricky to try anything out at the estate on Long Island, even if he could find it. There was no point going into the middle of somebody else’s battle. Also, it wouldn’t be a good idea to try anything with you people in your car on the way back. I said in the first place, I didn’t know what car you were going to use, and I didn’t know what route you were going to use. But even if they did find you on the road somewhere, if they tipped their hand then you might be able to get away from them and then you’d change your plans because you’d know your security was shot, and after that there was no telling where you’d go or what you’d do.

  I told him I wanted to help him figure out a good plan because I didn’t want him to go up against you people and lose. I wanted my woman back too much for that. That made sense to him, so he listened to me.

  I said his best bet would be to come here. I said they shouldn’t come before you got here because they’d have to break in, and that would leave marks you people would see. But I was pretty sure you planned to do some drinking when you got back here, and in any case none of you would be alert you’d be feeling the after-effects of the tension of doing the thing out on Long Island so the thing for them to do was get here after you’d been here maybe an hour. I told them the front door would be easy to get through, and none of you would hear them because you’d be four floors up.

  He thought that should work out, and he told me to go back to my hotel room and wait. Maybe they’d try my idea, maybe not, but one way or the other they’d go for the diamonds tonight, and once they got them they’d give me a call and tell me where to meet them. Then I would go to the place they said, and they’d tell me where to find my woman.

  I don’t know if she’s alive or not. I think there’s a chance she is, because they know they don’t have anything to be afraid of from her. But I do know they plan to try to kill me. That’s the only reason to have me meet them after they get the diamonds. If they were going to tell me where she was and let it go at that they could do it over the phone.

  That’s why I told them the story I did. And after I left Marten I went to the hotel in case he had anybody following me, and then I got out again and went to his place on Riverside Drive, an address I got from Hoskins a while ago. I wanted to know for sure what Marten would do. I thought Marten was sure he had me mousetrapped, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

  I went to his place and I saw the other two get there. What I would do if I was Marten at that point, I’d come stake out the museum and wait for you people to show up. Just to be sure Parker wasn’t setting me up for something. And if that’s what they’d done, I would have had to try to take them alone some way. It would have been early enough, before you people were here.

  But Marten must be sure of himself. Or sure of me. Anyway, he stayed there, all three of them stayed there. I waited around as late as I could, wanting to be sure they weren’t going anywhere, and then I came over here. I wanted to get here before you left, but I didn’t want to butt in till your caper was over, so I waited up by the corner for about fifteen minutes. Then the shooting started and I saw something was wrong, so I came on down.

  The reason I came was, I figured you people had gotten me into this situation, you could work with me to get me out of it again. I figured we’d let Marten and the other two break in here, then we’d grab them. You people are good at asking questions; you could ask them where my woman is. After that you could do whatever you wanted with them. Put them down in the basement with the Kasempas. Anything you want.

  I didn’t figure on the mess Hoskins made. I was counting on Gonor, and we could have used Manado. But the situation’s still the same. They’re coming here at five o’clock, ten minutes from now. I want you to help me.

  4

  There was a little silence, and then Major Indindu said without expression, “I see.” Standing there in the middle of the room, the saucer held on the palm of his left hand, he finished the last bit of coffee in his cup and said, “Bara, if you would be so kind another cup?”

  Formutesca obviously didn’t want to leave the room. He looked at Parker, then at the Major, and reluctantly said, “Of course, sir.” He took the cup and saucer and left the room.

  The Major said, “Ten minutes, you say. That doesn’t leave us much time.”

  “Enough,” Parker said.

  “Perhaps. There are a few things I would like to say.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I believe how can I best phrase this? I believe you have made some false assumptions.”

  “Such as?”

  The Major looked troubled. “We have to be realists, Mr Parker,” he said. “And realistically, we owe you nothing. You were hired to perform a specific task for us. You did so, very well, and you received full payment. We have no more call on you, and you have no more call on us.”

  “All right,” Parker said. “You better take Manado with you.”

  Surprised, the Major said, “I beg your pardon?”

  “They’re coming here. In seven minutes. I have to make a try for them; I don’t have any choice, and this is the place where I’m doing it. They’re going to want the diamonds, so if I lose out to them they’ll look around. If they find Manado they may want to wake him up and ask him some questions. So you better take him along.”

  “Just a moment,” the Major said. “You go too fast.”

  “We have seven minutes. And they could get here early.”

  “Yes, I understand that. But you didn’t take my meaning. I didn’t mean you wouldn’t be helped.” The Major stopped, looking confused. It was clear he was used to a world in which more words did less, where the sentences were long and full and didn’t move very far forward. Having to say the whole thing at once was turning out to be difficult.

  Parker prompted him. “What did you mean?”

  “I simply meant” The Major made vague hand motions, then gathered himself together and said, “What I meant was that you have no callon our services. Only young Formutesca is left to help you, and since you have no call on us I could not orderhim to work w
ith you. But if he is willing to, I certainly would not stand in his way. The morality of the situation, it seems to me, is clearly on the side of”

  “What about you?”

  The Major stopped his speech and said, “Me? I don’t understand.”

  “You can stay, too,” Parker told him. “That ‘major’ on your name means you’re a military man, doesn’t it?”

  The Major shook his head in astonishment. “Me? That’s out of the question!”

  “Why?”

  “Mr Parker, if all goes well I will be the next president of Dhaba. I cannot afford to risk myself in a gun battle here; it would be pointless and ridiculous.”

  Formutesca had come in with the fresh coffee while the Major was speaking.

  Parker said, “In other words, you’re too valuable.”

  Formutesca, holding the cup out, said, “Sir?” He was looking slightly confused.

  “Thank you.” The Major took the cup, then looked levelly at Parker. “If you want to phrase it that way, yes. I am too valuable. I believe Formutesca here will agree with me on that.”

  Formutesca, looking at the two of them, said, “Too valuable for what?”

  The Major said, “Mr Parker wants us to stay here and help him against the three that are coming here. I told him if you wanted to stay it would be your own choice, I couldn’t order you to do it. He wanted me to stay as well, and I told him I could not afford to risk myself in such a way. I believe that I am too valuable.” He turned to Parker. “To Dhaba, Mr Parker. Not to myself, to Dhaba.”

  “Of course, sir,” said Formutesca. Turning to Parker he said, “The Major is the only hope we have, Mr Parker. If anything happens to him, there won’t be anyone to stop Goma. Colonel Lubudi can’t last long, not now, and if the Major isn’t there to step in and take his place, General Goma will walk right in and take over the country.”

  Parker said, “A General. A Colonel. A Major.”

  With a thin smile, the Major said, “Do you mean we’re all alike, Mr Parker?”

  “I don’t know anything about your politics,” Parker told him. “Or anybody’s politics. It’s four minutes to five. Formutesca, I could use you. If you want to stay.”