'You'll figure it out," Parker said.
"I'm motivated, you mean," Meany said.
They listened to Vivaldi for four minutes. Then the woman came back on the line to say, "Mr. Meany?"
'Yeah."
"If you're in the office, Mr. Albert will call you back in ten minutes."
"Now," Parker said, and the woman, confused, said, "What?"
'Tell Mr. Albert," Meany said, "it's kind of urgent. He can talk to me from right there."
"One moment."
Vivaldi again. Meany, apologetic, said, "He was going to another phone. You know, so it wouldn't be in the office."
"I'm not gonna spend much more time here," Parker said.
Meany looked down at his tied-together thumbs. "I'm calling him," he said. "I'm doing all I can do."
Vivaldi answered him, for another half-minute, and then a new voice, heavy, guarded, came on, saying, "Frank?"
"Hello, Mr. Albert." Meany sounded nervous in a different way now. Parker was an immediate lethal problem, Mr. Albert a longer-term problem, maybe also lethal. "I'm sorry to interrupt you," he said, "but I got a decision to make, and I need your okay."
"What decision?"
"Well, sir," Meany said, hunched forward over his praying hands while small lines of perspiration ran down either side of his face, "you remember we had an arrangement with a Mr. Parker after we stopped dealing with Mr. Charov."
There was a little pause, and then, 'That's right," Mr. Albert said.
"Well, Mr. Parker's here with me now," Meany said, "in the office, and he'd like to end the arrangement, you know, just not have a relationship with Cosmopolitan at all any more, and I told him I thought that was the right thing to do, but we both know I got to get an okay from higher up, so he thought I should call you, and I thought that was a good idea."
Mr. Albert said, "He's there with you now?"
"Yes, sir."
Parker said, "On the speakerphone."
"Ah," Mr. Albert said.
Parker said, "If you want, I could finish up with Frank here and come discuss it with you personally."
"No, I don't think— I don't think that would be necessary, Mr. Parker."
"But the other thing is," Parker said, "I'll need some way to get in touch with Paul Brock. I mean, if you and I are finished with one another, then that just leaves the Paul Brock situation, and I think I ought to deal with that myself. Not put you people to any more effort."
There was a little pause, and Mr. Albert said, "Paul Brock is a valuable asset to our company, Mr. Parker."
"I understand that," Parker said. "Like Frank here."
"Ah. What it comes down to is, I have a choice to make."
Parker waited. Meany said, "I think Mr. Parker's way is gonna work out best for us, Mr. Albert."
"On balance," Mr. Albert said, "I believe you're right. So Mr. Parker needs a way to get in touch with Brock."
Parker said, "Yeah, I need that."
"Frank, you go ahead and give Mr. Parker Brock's address. I don't believe I have it here myself."
"Okay, Mr. Albert," Meany said.
Parker leaned a little closer to the phone. He said, "But you do go along with Frank's idea here, that we don't have any more business together."
"Happily," Mr. Albert said. "To be honest, I always felt it was a diversification we shouldn't have gone into. We let... a certain proprietary sense cloud our judgment."
"Everybody makes mistakes," Parker said.
"Well, I'm happy we have the opportunity to correct this one," Mr. Albert said. "Frank, is there anything else?"
"No, sir," Meany said, eager to get this finished, now that it seemed to be working out. "Just needed your okay to end the arrangement with Mr. Parker."
"It's ended. Goodbye, Mr. Parker," Mr. Albert said, and the dial tone sounded until Arthur found the button to switch off the speakerphone.
10
Parker said, "Arthur, write Brock's address on the same sheet as that phone number."
"You can trust Mr. Albert," Meany said.
Parker waited.
Meany turned to Arthur. "Brock and Rosenstein are over in New York, in Greenwich Village. It's four-one-four Bleecker."
As Arthur wrote that down, Parker said, "Brock hired Charov for his own personal reason, but Brock was already connected here."
"He's like a supplier," Meany said. "He doesn't work regular for us."
"But he's another valuable asset. What makes him valuable?"
"You don't know?" Meany was surprised. "Electronics. He does all our debugging, all the phone lines in all our operations, comes through on a regular basis, like the exterminator. And specialty stuff. He made those bombs, set that up."
Parker nodded. "Gave you people one more reason to help him get rid of me."
Meany shrugged. "Seemed like it ought to be easy."
Arthur said, "Is Albert going to warn Brock we're coming?"
"No," Meany said. "We want no more of this. If Mr. Albert calls Brock, and Parker finds out about it, here he comes again."
"No," Parker said. "I'd go see Albert."
"He knows that, too," Meany said.
Parker got to his feet, put the .32 away in his pocket, picked the Beretta off the floor. "You two walk us out to the car," he said.
Meany held up his hands. "Still like this?"
"I don't need you to wave goodbye," Parker said. "Come along."
On Sixth Avenue, just into Manhattan from the Holland Tunnel, Parker said, "Let me off here."
Surprised, Arthur said, "Aren't I coming with you?"
"Not needed."
"Oh. Okay."
Arthur pulled to the curb by a fire hydrant. "I was getting used to going places with you," he said.
"Now you're retired again," Parker told him, and got out of the Volvo. A block north, at a pay phone, he called Lloyd at home in Massachusetts: "Tell the others, I'm finishing up here, I'll see them out there after tomorrow."
"Good," Lloyd said. "You're all done there?"
"One last detail," Parker said.
PART THREE
1
Horace Griffith was in Geneva, negotiating the sale of a Titian, when the e came from Paxton Marino: "Need to talk to you soonest. Give me a number I can call."
Paxton Marino was a very good customer of Griffith's, a dot-com nouveau riche who judged his happiness level by how fast he could spend his money, but he was also a difficult and a cranky customer—a spoiled brat, in fact—who had already caused Griffith more gray hairs than he could afford at fifty-six.
Still, the art market was always changeable and fraught with potential disaster, so it was good to have a cash cow the size of Paxton Marino still on the string. Because of that, Griffith did no more than sigh just the once before replying with the name and number of the Geneva hotel.
It was seven minutes later that the phone rang; Marino must have been more anxious to spend than
usual. It was 9:30 in the morning here; Griffith wondered where Marino was phoning from.
"I'm in New York," Marino said, by way of hello. "If you're in Geneva, I'll fly over today, we can have dinner at my place in Courmayeur."
"Sounds urgent," Griffith said. He didn't mention that Marino also sounded nervous, rattled, something Griffith had never experienced with the man before.
"No no," Marino said, "not urgent," belying the words with the manner in which they were said. "Just a chat, that's all, a little chat over dinner."
I can drive down after lunch, get there before dark, Griffith thought, and said, "It will be wonderful to see you again, Pax."
"You, too," Marino said, in a hurry, and hung up.
Weird, Griffith thought. To sound upset like that, to make a phone call at what had to be three-thirty in the morning his time, not to take ten minutes to describe all his latest acquisitions, to rush across the Atlantic merely for dinner and a "chat"?