These rooms, too, were old-fashioned, with a brass double bed and tall wooden chifforobe in the bedroom and a lion-foot tub with a plastic shower curtain hanging from a rod over it in the bathroom. Parker put both suitcases away in the bedroom closet, stripped, and took a hot shower, standing on a rubber mat in the white tub. While he was still there, the shower curtain opened and Claire stuck her head in. “Is there room for two?”
“Plenty.” He put his hand out to help her, and she stepped over the side of the tub and in.
“Steamy.” She turned in a circle, getting completely wet. Then he kissed her, sliding his hand down the long slick line of her back, the hot water streaming down their faces, and she raised her dripping arms lazily to close them around his neck.
Parker sat looking into the fire. A night wind had come up, and wood made small creaking noises in the top of the house. There was a low attic up there, he’d looked it over earlier today, and it was as full of noises now as a ship at anchor.
Claire had turned off all the lights in the living room, so their only sources of illumination were the fire and lightspill from the kitchen. It made Parker nervous, the semi-darkness and the anonymous sounds, but he understood there was nothing to beware of here, and he knew the atmosphere would make Claire happy, so he said nothing.
She was sitting beside him on the sofa, leaning her shoulder against his, and after a long silence she said, “What are you thinking about?”
“I have to call Handy McKay.” Handy, who used to be in the same profession and was retired to his own diner now in Presque Isle, Maine, was Parker’s contact with the rest of the bent world. Anybody who wanted to get in touch with Parker about a job or anything along those lines had to call Handy, who would pass on the message.
“Don’t call him tonight.”
“I don’t intend to.”
“In the morning.”
He didn’t say anything.
She said, “Is this going to be too dull for you?”
“I like it.”
“You’re sure?” Doubt and fear were evident in her voice.
“If we want a vacation somewhere else,” he said, “we can go, and then come back.”
“That’s right.” She sounded happier.
“For now I like it.” He tried to find a way to let her know he was telling the truth, and finally said, “I can feel my shoulders getting loose.”
“That’s good,” she said, and leaned closer to him. He could smell her perfume and the fire, intermixed.
A little later she said, “Would you tell me about where you were?”
“You mean the job?”
“Yes.”
“You said you never wanted to hear about it.”
“I feel different now. I still don’t think I want to know anything ahead of time. But when it’s over, and you’re back, I think I’d like to hear. Unless you don’t want to tell me.”
“I don’t mind.”
She abruptly sat up and leaned forward to pick up her cigarettes from the coffee-table. Keeping her face turned away, so that she was a silhouette between him and the fire, she said, “Sometimes I wish I was attracted to normal average everyday men who live quiet safe Jives and never make anybody nervous.”
This had been between them since the beginning. She was only interested in men whose lives were dangerous, but when she had one she wished he’d be more careful. Parker said, “I know. Your husband. And the stock-car racer.”
“And you.”
“I’m the worst of all.”
“I moved into this house over a week ago. Every night I sat here like this, and I couldn’t even anticipate. I picked the house with you in mind, and I didn’t know if you’d ever see it.”
“I know.”
“You are the worst of all, dammit. With the others, at least I knew where they were, I knew what they were facing, and if something happened I knew about it right away. But you, some day you’ll go off and you never will come back and how will I know when to stop waiting?”
This came over her from time to time, and there was never anything Parker could say to her. He wouldn’t lie to her, and he had no reassuring truths to say. He intended to go on being careful, within his own definition of the word, but it was true that something could always happen, that it might be one time that he wouldn’t get back. Once he’d tried to point out to her that it was no good spoiling the times he did come back by worrying about his not returning sometime in the future, but she’d thought that kind of attitude was unfeeling, so he hadn’t mentioned it any more. Now all he did was wait it out.
She sat hunched forward a minute longer, smoking, looking angrily at the surface of the coffee table. Then she shook her head and threw the cigarette into the fire and turned her head to say, “I’m sorry. I have to open the valve every once in a while, I guess, and let some of the steam out. Will you tell me about this last time? What kind of place was it? Not another coin convention.”
“No. A rock-and-roll concert.” She grinned uncertainly. “You’re kidding.”
“No.” He went on to tell her the whole story, from beginning to end. He left out only two things: the names of the people he was with, because they wouldn’t mean anything to her, and the discovery of Berridge’s dead body in the house afterward. None of them had been able to figure out what Berridge was doing there—he’d known about the place, of course, from the earlier meetings, but there’d been no reason for him to go there the night of the job—nor had they turned up the guy who’d killed him. They’d stayed in the house three days, having removed Berridge to the basement that first night, and the killer hadn’t come back. Keegan had been full of explanations, but none of them had sounded probable, and in the end none of them had mattered, because they’d split the take and waited out the manhunt and left the house to go their separate ways, and the death of Berridge had affected them not at all. Parker left the death out for two reasons: because he knew it would disturb her, and because it raised unanswerable questions that didn’t matter but that he knew would plague her mind.
At the end, when he was finished describing the routine to her, she said, “So it went just right, didn’t it?”
“Mostly.”
“If only they could all be like that. Simple, safe and finished with, and back you come.”
“That’s right,” he said.
The fourth day he was at the house, he was working on a stash hole in the basement when Claire called down the stairs, “Handy McKay on the phone.”
He went upstairs, and she was waiting for him. “We don’t need money yet,” she said.
“Let’s see what he’s got.”
Parker went into the living room and picked up the phone. He identified himself, and Handy’s voice said, “Did your friend Keegan get in touch with you?” He sounded vaguely worried.
“No. Should he?”
“He called last night, said he had to talk to you about that time you were together last week. Said it was important, but he couldn’t say much.” Nor could Handy, not on the phone.
Parker said, “Why should be call me? Why not you?
“He said he was moving around, didn’t have a place he could be reached. It was definitely Keegan, from things he said. And moving around, not having a place he could be reached, I figured maybe that meant he really should get in touch with you.” Meaning that to Handy it had sounded as though Keegan might be having trouble with the law, which naturally Parker would have to be told about.
Parker said, “So you told him where I was?” That wasn’t the way it was supposed to work. Handy passed messages on to Parker, didn’t give Parker’s whereabouts to other people.
Particularly not now, not Claire’s house.
Sounding more worried, Handy said, “Your phone number. It really sounded strong. I had to make a decision.”
“I suppose. All right.”
“But today I thought it over, and I figured I’d better call you and make sure.”