“Well, sure,” Formutesca said. “Naturally.”
“Good,” Parker said. “Major, you’d better get out of here. You have a car out front?”
“Yes.”
“Formutesca, help him move Manado.”
The Major said, “Is it necessary? It would be better”
“We might lose,” Parker said. “Leave him here if you want.”
“No.” The Major looked more and more troubled.
Parker turned back to Formutesca. “Where are the bodies?”
“In the basement. We just stacked them there, and some things that got bloodied. We were going to come back tomorrow night and bury them.”
“They had guns?”
“They’re down there, too.”
“All right. You people use the elevator, I’ll use the stairs. Formutesca, when you’re done helping the Major I’ll be on the first floor. Leave the lights on up here.”
Formutesca nodded. “I will.”
Parker headed for the door, but the Major said, “Mr Parker.”
He turned. “What?”
The Major was having trouble compressing his thoughts again. “I” he said, then shook his head and started again. “I do appreciate, I understand your position. I sympathize with your position”. I want you to know if there weren’t so many other factors to consider, I would”
“That’s good,” Parker said. “It’s three minutes to five.” He left the room.
5
Parker looked at the armaments on the display case. The ground-floor lights were off, but illumination came in the barred windows from a streetlight just out front. To Parker’s right, through an archway, was the main entrance foyer, with a long rectangle of white light on the floor from the open doorway.
The display case contained knives and axes, mostly of stone. On the glass top Parker had put all the guns he’d found downstairs: six pistols, two machine guns, one shotgun with the barrels sawed off back to the stock. Parker looked at them and then looked at his watch. Five o’clock. Formutesca was still outside with the Major.
Were Marten and the others on the scene? It wouldn’t change anything in their minds for them to see the Major and Formutesca carry Manado out of the building. They could incorporate that into the story Parker had given them with no trouble: Manado must have been wounded during the battle on Long Island, too seriously to be left in the museum. With the fourth-floor lights burning, that must mean Gonor was still upstairs.
The only problem was, would they jump the gun? Would they decide to go for Formutesca out there on the street? They shouldn’t; they should prefer to keep things quiet outside and make their move in the privacy of the museum. Also, if they attacked now they would have to believe that Gonor would be alerted to their presence, and it would be better for them to get into the building undetected.
Still, Formutesca was taking a long time. Parker was about to go out after him, when a shadow lined out on the rectangle of light in the foyer, and a second later Formutesca came into sight, peering around into the darkness.
Parker called, “In here. Shut the door.”
“Oh! Right.”
The rectangle disappeared, and in greater darkness Formutesca came in and stood beside Parker. The weapons on the display case glinted in the patch of light from the streetlight.
Formutesca said, “The Major feels bad, you know. He’s afraid you don’t understand the”
“It doesn’t matter to me,” Parker said. “Where can we stash some of these under lock and key?”
“There’s a closet”
“Good. Put them away, all but those two pistols. I checked; they’re both loaded.”
Formutesca touched one of the machine guns. “You don’t want to use these? Or that shotgun? At close range you can”
“I want at least one of them alive. I want to shoot to wound, not kill. For that we can’t use those things.”
“All right.” Formutesca filled his pockets with pistols, picked up the machine guns and the shotgun, and carried them away.
Parker went over to the window. It was the deadest part of night: no traffic, no pedestrians. Down to the left at Lexington Avenue a brightly lighted bus rolled slowly by, nobody in it but the driver. Up to the right and across the street was Hoskins’ car, its key now in Parker’s pocket. Hoskins himself was with Gonor and the Kasempas in the basement.
It was going to be tough for the Major and his people to keep this thing hushed up now, with Gonor dead. The others could have disappeared with nobody to notice particularly once Colonel Lubudi was no longer president but Gonor was a known official; his absence would have to be accounted for somehow.
Well, that wasn’t Parker’s problem. The Major would do it, or he wouldn’t do it.
Formutesca came back. “Done,” he said.
From the window, Parker said, “There’s a gun for you on the case there. Take it and go into the room on the other side of the entrance. Wait till they’re all the way in before you start to shoot and then aim low. Aim for the legs; we want them alive. And remember I’m over here, so wait till they’re a little past you and you can shoot at an angle. I don’t want one of your bullets coming over here and getting me.”
Formutesca was regaining some of his natural manner. “I don’t want it either,” he said. “I don’t want to be alone in here with that bunch. If they show up. What time is it?”
“They’ve shown up,” Parker said. “Get on over there.”
Formutesca, looking startled, ran from the room and across the foyer as Parker looked out the window at the three men coming up the walk.
6
They took a long time getting through the door, and they were very slow and very loud. Parker was about ready to go over and open it for them, when at last they did pop it and come in.
Now they turned pro. They moved well, taking their time, not moving in very far until the door was shut and the foyer back in darkness. Then they went in quick dashes, bent low, almost silent. It implied military training at some time or other.
It also made it difficult to see them and hit them. Parker, against the wall beside the doorway, felt around till he got the light switch for the room he was in and switched it on.
The three of them were bunched at the doorway at the back of the foyer. No direct light from Parker’s room reached them, but enough indirect spillage touched them to do the job. Parker fired at their legs, and a second later he heard a shot from Formutesca on the other side.
One of them went down, falling straight down as though the floor had been yanked out from under him. A second recoiled against the wall, white-faced, his arms shooting up in surrender. The third spun around, ducked low, and ran for the door.
Parker snapped off a quick shot at the running one, but missed. He came out into the light, but then he couldn’t shoot because Formutesca had come out too and was directly across the way. They stared across at one another in a frozen second that seemed to go on for years.
The running man reached the door, slammed it open, and leaped the front steps, landing on all fours on the walk. He was up like a sprinter, hurdled the wrought-iron fence, and was away down the street to the left.
Parker ran out the front door and saw him jump into a car down there. It was too late to do anything about it. He turned and went back into the museum, shutting the door after him.
He switched on the foyer light. The one with his hands up was still standing there, round-eyed, terrified, looking sixteen years old. He had a huge automatic in his right hand shaking up there above his head. He’d obviously forgotten he was holding it.
The other one was doubled on the floor clutching his left thigh. Over and over he was saying, “Jock. Help me, Jock.”
Neither one was Marten. Marten was the one who’d gotten away.
Parker went over to the standing one. “You’re Jock?”
A spastic nod.
“You’re holding a gun, Jock. Open your hand and let it drop.”
Jock abr
uptly looked twice as terrified as before. He opened his hand, making a little pushing movement, and the automatic fell in an arc. Parker caught it in his free hand and put it in his hip pocket.
These were the other two who’d been with Marten back at the beginning when they’d tried to muscle him out of working for Gonor. Jock here had been the phlegmatic one by the door. The other one, now lying on the floor, had been the one who had shown the hardware that first time.
Parker said, “Jock, I want some fast answers. Is she still alive?”
“Yes!” the word was shouted as much in surprise as anything else. Jock stared at Parker with astonishment now mixed with the fear. “What do you think we are?”
“Where is she?”
The one on the floor said, “Keep your trap shut, Jock. Don’t tell him a goddam thing.”
Jock looked from Parker to the one on the floor and back to Parker. His mouth was open but he wasn’t saying anything.
Parker said, “Formutesca, take that one to the cellar.”
Formutesca said, “Kill him?”
“Up to you. Jock, if you want to live through this you’ll tell me where she is.”
Formutesca was dragging the other one across the floor, neither of them making a sound. Jock, staring at them, said, “You can’t do that. You can’t just drag him away and murder him; you can’t do it.”
Parker said to Formutesca, “Hold it.” To Jock he said, “We’ll leave him there. You take me to where she’s being kept; then you can come back here and take care of him.”
The one on the floor cried, “Don’t tell him, Jock! Aaron can still make another try for the diamonds.”
Everybody looked at him. Jock, in bewilderment, said, “Why can’t he go for the diamonds anyway? What difference if we tell where the woman is?”
Parker said, “Is that where he’s going? Not the apartment on Riverside Drive?”
Jock blinked, staring now at Parker. “You know about the apartment?”
Parker put his hand on Jock’s shoulder. “Where is she, Jock?”
7
“You turn left,” Jock said. “You see where that big tree is up there? Just past it.”
They were in Connecticut. They’d crossed the state line from New York a little north of Brewster, and the last sign they’d seen had pointed toward East Lake off to the right. It was six thirty in the morning now, with vague daylight edging up over the mountains straight ahead.
Parker was at the wheel of Hoskins’ rented car with Jock beside him. Formutesca was in the back seat, a pistol at Jock’s head. Beside Formutesca were the machine guns and the shotgun. The closet where they’d been stored back at the museum now held Jock’s wounded friend.
The tree was an elm, old and thick-trunked and broad, its bare branches looking in the headlights as though they were knotted together. Parker slowed the car, saw the dirt road just past the tree, and made the turn. Accelerating again, the car jouncing on the packed earth, he said, “How much farther to the house?”
“About two miles,” Jock said. “We have to go up over a hill. There’s a woods.”
“In the daytime I wouldn’t be able to see the house from here?” What Parker meant was, Can Marten see my headlights if he’s here?
Jock said, “Oh, no. The hill’s in the way; it’s the other side of the hill. There’s a lake there, past the house. The road goes down to the house and then makes a left and follows the lake for a ways and then stops.”
There had been cleared land on both sides when they’d first entered this road, but now they were moving into woods. The road began to twist back and forth as though originally it had been made by somebody who hadn’t wanted to chop down many trees.
Parker hunched over the wheel, pushing the car as hard as he could, not knowing whether Marten was out in front of him or not. Jock seemed to think that Marten would lie low in the city, but the other one seemed to be sure that Marten would come up here. Why? To kill Claire, or ambush Parker, or both? The other one had refused to say any more, and there hadn’t been time to force answers out of him. Marten had started with about a ten-minute lead, and though Parker had pushed hard all the way up doing ninety and ninety-five on the Saw Mill River Parkway on the assumption that even state troopers don’t like to be out at five or six o’clock of a cold, damp March morning he had to take it for granted that Marten had done the same, if he was coming this way.
Jock had said Marten was driving a two-year-old Ford Mustang, and Hoskins had rented himself a current model Ford Falcon, so in simple terms of automobile Marten had himself a slight edge. It all depended on which was the better driver. Parker had overtaken no Mustangs along the way, so Marten was either back in the city or still out in front of him.
Parker wasn’t sure what Marten might do. He was an arrogant man who would be enraged at Parker having conned him, but he was also a cautious man. It was unlikely he’d come up all this way just to kill Claire, but he might think it worth the effort to rid himself of Parker.
The road was beginning to climb. This must be the hill Jock had mentioned. Parker’s foot jabbed back and forth at accelerator and brake as he slued around the curves, lunged up the brief straightaways, and skidded past the trees. Clenching the wheel, staring straight ahead through the windshield, he said, “Let me know when we’re almost to the top.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jock, and the windshield starred in the middle, just under the rearview mirror, and Jock said, “Oh!” He fell sideways, his head hitting Parker’s right arm and then landing in his lap.
They were in the middle of a curve. Parker spun the wheel hard, slammed his left foot on the brake, and cut the lights and the ignition. He heard Formutesca make a sudden sound. Jock’s limp body came rolling into him more because of the tight turn they were in, and the rear tires scraped and gouged sideways across the dirt and the roadside weeds. Parker couldn’t move with Jock all over him, and he kept trying to push the body away.
The left rear of the car hit something, and they jolted to a stop. Parker shoved Jock hard and called to Formutesca, “Out of the car!” At the same time, he leaned over the back seat for the guns.
Formutesca was lying on them. Either he’d been hit by another bullet or he’d knocked himself out when Parker slammed on the brakes. In any case, he was out of the action. Parker pulled him out of the way, and he rolled on to the floor. Parker grabbed a gun butt, pushed open the door, and dove out of the car. The interior light had gone on when he’d opened the door there hadn’t been anything he could do about that and he heard the sound of two quick shots as he leaped into the darkness at the side of the road.
He rolled, came up against a tree trunk, and scrambled around to the other side of it. The car door was still open, lighting the center of the stage. When he stopped there was no longer any sound.
It was the shotgun he’d grabbed. Disgusted, he almost threw it away, but changed his mind and kept it. Holding it in his left hand, he took out his pistol and waited behind the tree for whatever would happen next.
It had been impossible to tell where the last two shots had come from. He’d been in motion himself at the time they were fired, and they could have come from any direction at all. The first shot, having hit the middle of the windshield and then the person on the right side of the front seat, must have been fired from in front and off the road to the left, but that had been while they were in the middle of a curve. The car had slued farther around the curve after the shot, and by now that guide to Marten’s direction was almost useless. The only thing that could be said for sure, since the curve was to the right, was that Marten had to be on this side of the road.
Dawn was coming. Here in the woods on the hillside it was still pitch black night, but Parker remembered the vague paleness against the mountains in the eastern sky. In half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes, it would be possible to see in here.
The question was, should he wait or not? The alternative was to try to get past Marten and on over the hill and down to the
farmhouse. Marten himself might try that, preferring to be safely hidden indoors when daylight came. But it would be impossible to get to the farmhouse in the dark without sticking to the road, which could be dangerous.
If Marten would make a noise, any kind of noise, it would help. But he was silent; the woods were silent. Far away Parker could faintly hear birds starting to announce morning to each other, but the gunfire in this part of the woods had silenced everything.
Could he draw Marten’s fire? Parker felt around on the ground, picked up a small stone, and tossed it in the direction away from the road and the car. It fell into a bush with a faint rustling noise.
Nothing.
Parker waited, watching and listening. No response.
He didn’t dare wait for daylight. Marten could be on his way to the farmhouse now. Aside from Claire, there was the problem of letting Marten get set inside the house.
Parker moved. He inched around the tree and moved away at a diagonal away from the lit automobile in the road. When he could barely see the light through the trees he angled back toward the road again. He moved silently, the pistol in his right hand and the shotgun in his left, going in quick spurts from tree to tree, stopping and listening, hearing nothing, moving on.
He reached the road and crossed it in three running leaps. He progressed again on the other side, going uphill now, keeping the light from the car just barely in sight. He knew the road curved over there, and he curved too, planning to come back to it far enough along so he wouldn’t be silhouetted on it in the light from the car.
It was black here, totally black. He could see only objects between himself and the car; otherwise he had to move by feel. He’d put the pistol away now and was holding the shotgun down along his left side so it wouldn’t bump into anything and make noise. He moved along with his right hand out in front of him guiding him along among the tree-trunks.
He knew he’d reached the road again when his hand found no tree. He stood where he was a minute, the dim light from the car down to his left and behind him, and listened to the silence of the woods. The bird sounds were closer now but still not in this immediate area. Parker turned right and began moving cautiously along the road.
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