At the top he halted and listened; Jessup had made one noise, he might make another. But there was no sound, and finally it was time to move.
In total darkness, it was impossible to work out the design of rooms and hallways and doors. Parker simply moved left along the first wall he came to, until he reached a door. He turned the knob, inchingly, and pushed the door open, and saw a vague dim rectangle of slightly paler black: a window. Would this be a bedroom? Would he be standing in a hallway of some kind?
He held his breath, and leaned forward into the room, listening. Men breathe, and in total silence their breathing can be heard. Parker remained leaning forward, with his head and shoulders past the doorway, doing no breathing of his own, until he was sure the room was empty. Then he straightened again, and left the door slightly ajar, and moved past it to continue along the same wall as before.
He checked a second room the same way. The third door he came to opened toward him, and showed no window-rectangle inside. He felt the black air in front of himself and touched shelves, sheets, towels: the linen closet. He pushed the door to without shutting it entirely, and moved on.
A corner. He turned right, came to another doorway, this one with the door standing open. Again, no rectangle of window. He reached forward into the darkness—it was like reaching into black cotton, and feeling nothing—but this time there were no shelves, there was nothing within arm’s length at all. He touched the wall to the left of the doorway, on the inside, and found a light switch; so this was a room of some kind. He leaned in, holding his breath again, and it was empty.
But what sort of room was it, and did one or more other rooms lead off it? He had to know. Slowly he crossed the threshold, and the floor felt somehow different beneath his feet. He squatted down, holding the doorjamb, and felt the floor, and it was tile. A bathroom. Not a route then to anywhere else. He straightened, backed out of the doorway, moved on.
Another empty room, and then another corner. If he was working the building plan out in his head properly, the rooms on this side would face the road. Then a fourth side to come, and he should wind up back at the stairs. If he didn’t find Jessup first.
Could he be in the attic? Parker hadn’t found the stairs going up there yet.
The first room he came to on the third side was occupied. He leaned in and listened, and out of the normal rustle of silence he gradually culled the sound of breathing, faint and regular and quite far away.
There were two vague rectangles of window in this room, and the one on the left seemed more indistinct at the bottom, it didn’t have the clarity of line that the one beside it had. As though a piece of furniture were in the way. Or a man.
Jessup was sitting at the window, looking out at the road. Waiting for Parker? Watching one side of the house?
There was the faint odor of cigarette in the air. Jessup had been smoking, too.
Parker straightened, and stepped to one side of the doorway, outside the room. The automatic was in his right hand, but he didn’t want to use it unless he had to. The broken door in the kitchen of this house would be vandalism, and cause no unusual concern. Blood in any of the rooms would attract the wrong kind of attention.
Parker inhaled and exhaled. Holding the breath altered the responses of the muscles, just slightly. He leaned against the wall for a minute, breathing normally, and then turned and stepped silently in through the doorway.
The indistinctness at the bottom of the left window was still there. Parker moved toward it, taking small steps on carpeting, feeling in front of himself with one hand at every step.
“Manny? That you?”
The voice seemed very sudden. Parker froze where he was, one arm extended downward and out in front of himself, back bent slightly, right heel lifted.
Some people are very sensitive to the presence of another person in the same room. Jessup’s attention hadn’t been entirely on the nothing happening down below on the road; he had sensed Parker’s presence.
Parker stayed where he was, waiting for Jessup to decide he’d made a mistake. He continued to breathe, but slowly, with long silent intakes and exhalations.
The darkness shifted, at the bottom of the left window. It now matched the right window, squared off bottom and top.
“Manny! He’s up here!” A loud shout, for the benefit of the one downstairs, lying on that bed. And Jessup didn’t sound worried, it was simply a shouted bit of information.
Parker moved during the sound of Jessup’s shout; he backed toward the doorway, holding his left hand out behind him. He stopped when Jessup’s voice stopped.
Silence. And then, belatedly, a sleepy shout back, a query from below, with no intelligible words.
“He’s up here with me!” Parker moved backward. He would not let himself be between Jessup and the windows, he would not be outlined. Jessup wouldn’t have the same reluctance to use a gun.
This time Jessup kept shouting, giving Parker time to get all the way back to the door, and take one step to the left of it, within the room, and stand there with his back to the wall, the doorway just past his right elbow.
Jessup shouted, “Put out the light! Get to the bottom of the stairs and wait for him, in case he gets away from me!”
Would Manny do it? Or would Manny just prop himself on his elbow on the bed and gaze blearily at the doorway in the candlelight, and gradually just sink down again and forget all about it?
There were no more answers from downstairs, only the first muffled question. Jessup didn’t shout any more instructions; either he was sure Manny would do what he was told, or he wanted Parker to think he was. In either case, Manny’s one return shout had told Jessup that Manny was still alive and all right, that Parker had not already taken him out of the play.
Everybody was silent for a while now. Parker had kept his eyes on the smudgy rectangles of the windows. Jessup had been in front of the one on the left, and had disappeared from that one without having gone past the one on the right. Which meant that Jessup was somewhere in the left side of the room. Coming this way? Staying in one spot?
If he were going to get out of the room, he had two choices. He could either work his way around the wall, in which case he would run into Parker just before he reached the door, or he could get down on hands and knees and crawl to the door, in which case there was the slight possibility that he would get by Parker; but it was very slight. And in any case, Parker was getting to know Jessup better now, and he had the feeling Jessup wouldn’t crawl to the door. Just as he wouldn’t have gone up the stairs on all fours, though that was the best way to do it.
Jessup was half-good, which is the other side of being half-assed. He knew how to do some things right, but he wasn’t careful enough, he didn’t follow through on the reasons for doing this or that or the other. He would be one of those people who live their lives as a movie, in which they star and direct and write the story. That kind goes for drama, like traveling with a Manny. Or the way they handled Keegan. Or what they did to Claire with Morris’ body. And a man like that won’t crawl across a floor to a doorway, not if his life depends on it.
That was the edge Parker had; he knew that survival was more important than heroics. It isn’t how you play the game, it’s whether you win or lose.
A wristwatch with a radium dial. Parker looked at it, a faint green circle swimming in the darkness over there, and waited for the time it counted to make Jessup do something stupid.
Stupid like the watch.
They had been stalemated for about ten minutes now. Jessup had spoken once, seven or eight minutes ago, saying, “Don’t try to convince me you aren’t here. I know you are.” But at that time he hadn’t shifted so that the radium dial was showing yet, so Parker hadn’t moved while he’d talked, simply,looked at the place the voice was coming from, to know where Jessup was.