That wasn’t the butcher’s thumb; Hurley’s lips curled back in distaste and he said, “Who is it, Parker?”
“A guy named Grofield.”
Dan Wycza said, “Alan Grofield?”
“That’s right.”
Frank Elkins said, “Yeah, I remember him. He worked with us in Copper Canyon.”
“That’s right,” Wycza said. “He’s the clown brought the girl out with him. Telephone girl.”
Nick Dalesia said, “I worked with a guy named Grofield once. An actor.”
“That’s the one,” Wycza said.
Ralph Wiss said, “A very humorous type of fella.”
“Right,” Dalesia said.
“I don’t know him,” Hurley said. He made it sound belligerent, and his manner was aggressive as he looked around the room at the others. “Do I know this guy?”
Nobody answered him. Ed Mackey said, “I know him. We got together once on something that didn’t work out. Seemed like a good guy.”
Wycza said, “Wha’d he ever do with the telephone girl?”
“Married her,” Parker said. “They run a summer theater together in Indiana.”
“A love story,” Wycza said, and grinned.
Handy McKay said, “I know Alan. What happened to him? How’d he lose that finger?”
“He and I did a job here a couple years ago,” Parker said, and told them the story in a few quick highlights: the money in Fun Island, Lozini, Buenadella, Dulare. When he finished, Tom Hurley said, “I get it. These are mob places we’re hitting.”
“That’s right.”
Fred Ducasse said, “We put pressure on them, then you tell them to turn over Grofield and the cash or they’ll get hit again.”
Ralph Wiss had been sitting there paying no apparent attention to the conversation, seeming to be sunk in his own thoughts. Now he said, “That won’t work.”
“I know it,” Parker said. “That’s not what I have in mind.”
Ducasse, turning to Wiss, asked, “Why won’t it work? They’ll want their places left alone, won’t they?”
“I know this kind of people,” Wiss said. “They’re not used to losing a fight, they don’t know how to go about it. They’ll spend double the money to bring in more talent, guard everything they own, and start hunting for Parker.”
Stan Devers said, “While they send him a finger a day. That’s sweet.”
Hurley said, “So what do you want, Parker?”
“I want Grofield back,” Parker said, “and I want my money. And I want those people dead.”
Hurley gestured, wanting more. He said, “So?”
“So I set you people up with scores, you go do them, you’ve got good money you wouldn’t have had. You’ll all be finished, back here, by when? Three, four in the morning?”
Most of them shrugged in agreement. Hurley bobbed his head, saying, “Probably. Then what?”
“Then you come with me,” Parker said. “The twelve of us hit Buenadella’s house and get Grofield out of there. And if they moved him somewhere, we find out where and go hit that place.” He checked off names on his fingers, saying, “And we make them dead. Buenadella. Calesian. Dulare.”
His intensity had startled them a little. Nobody said anything until Handy McKay, speaking very quietly, said, “That’s not like you.”
What kind of shit was this? Parker had expected a back-up from Handy, not questions. He said, “What’s not like me?”
“A couple things,” Handy said. “For one, to go to all this trouble for somebody else. Grofield, me, anybody. We all of us here know we got to take care of ourselves, we’re not the Travelers Aid Society. You, too. And the same with Grofield. What happens to him is up to him.”
“Not when they send him to me piece by piece,” Parker said. “If they kill him, that’s one thing. If they turn him over to the law, get him sent up, that’s his lookout. But these bastards rang me in on it.”
Handy spread his hands, letting that point go. “The other thing,” he said, “is revenge. I’ve never seen you do anything but play the hand you were dealt. Now all of a sudden you want a bunch of people dead.”
Parker got to his feet. He’d been patient a long time, he’d explained things over and over, and now he was getting itchy. Enough was enough. “I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t care if it’s like me or not. These people nailed my foot to the floor, I’m going around in circles, I’m not getting anywhere. When was it like me to take lumps and just walk away? I’d like to burn this city to the ground, I’d like to empty it right down to the basements. And I don’t want to talk about it any more, I want to do it. You’re in, Handy, or you’re out. I told you the setup, I told you what I want, I told you what you’ll get for it. Give me a yes or a no.”
Tom Hurley said, “What’s the goddam rush? We got over an hour before we can hit any of these things.”
Stan Devers, getting to his feet, said, “Just time enough for a nap. I’m in, Parker.” He turned to Wycza, beside him. “Dan?”
Wycza wasn’t quite ready to be pushed. He frowned up at Devers, frowned across the room at Parker, seemed on the verge of telling everybody to go drop dead, and then abruptly-shrugged and said, “Sure, what the hell. I like a little boom-boom sometimes.”
Handy said, “Parker, I was never anything but in, you know that.”
Ed Mackey said, “Shit, we’re all in. I know Grofield, he’s a pleasant guy, we don’t want anybody out there dismantling him.”
Mike Carlow, the driver who hadn’t had anything at all to say up till now, said, “I don’t know this guy Grofield from a dune buggy. In fact, I don’t even know any of you people. But I know Parker, and I’m in.”
They were all in. Parker, looking from face to face, saw that none of them was even thinking of bowing out. Some of the tension eased out of Parker’s shoulders and back. “All right,” he said. “All right.”
Forty-two
In the den, Calesian paced the floor, prowling back and forth while Buenadella sat at the desk with furrowed forehead and watched him as though he were a one-man tennis match. The French doors were closed against the night’s mugginess but the curtains were drawn back, and through the glass panes the floodlit lawn could be seen, the grass and shrubbery and trees all an artificial unhealthy shade of green in the glaring light.
Calesian was sure he was on top of things. He’d nailed down the relationship between himself and Buenadella, he’d had a good productive meeting this afternoon with George Farrell, he’d been present and listened to during the first exploratory meeting this afternoon between Dutch and Ernie Dulare, and he had Parker on the run. And still he was keyed up, tensed and poised and ready as though a starting pistol were about to be fired somewhere and he had to be ready to leap.
It was waiting for the election, that’s all. Nine o’clock tomorrow morning the polls would open, eight o’clock tomorrow night they’d close again, and then it would all be over. Everything would be in place, all the relationships assured, the reins securely in the right hands, and no more possibility of anything lousing up, or of anybody making trouble.
Parker, for instance. If he came back after tomorrow, if he really was stupid enough to come back to this town, it wouldn’t matter how much noise and fuss and trouble he made. The entire local organization could shut down for a day or two and go find the bastard like a thousand cats looking for one rat in a barn, and that would be the end of him. If he ever came back. Which wasn’t in any case going to happen.
There was a tap at the door. Calesian glanced over at Dutch, and saw him sitting there with his eyebrows lifted, waiting to find out whether he should let the person in or not. His own den in his own house, and he was letting Calesian tell him whether or not to say Come in; that was how far Calesian had come into control, and he resisted the impulse to smile as he nodded: Yes, you can let the person enter.