Parker nodded. ‘Good.’
‘You want to take any of the stuff with you now, or get it all at once?’
‘Leave it all together,’ Parker said. ‘I’ll get word through Yancy where it should be delivered.’
‘That’s good. Now, I don’t expect to see any of this stuff again, is that right? Not even the Sten guns?’
‘Nothing,’ Parker said.
Humboldt shrugged. ‘If that’s the way it is, that’s the way it is. Would you help me
‘
He meant the liquor bottles. He didn’t want to have to bend over for them. Parker picked them up and handed them to him, and Humboldt put everything back the way it was.
Walking back down the aisle, Parker in the lead, Humboldt said, ‘You got to excuse me thinking you were like Yancy. You come in with him and all.’
‘Sure.’
They got to the card table and Humboldt sat down with a sigh. He lit a fresh cigarette from Yancy’s pack and put the rest of the pack in his pocket. He reached for the playing cards and started in on his solitaire game again.
Parker went out to the bar, where Yancy was draped. Yancy saw him coming and said, ‘There’s my pal! Have a drink.’
‘Not now.’
‘You wanna go look at boats now?’
‘No.’ The man who’d run the boat could pick one better than Parker.
Yancy said, ‘Well, it’s time to go then.’ To the bartender he said, ‘Mind if I take the bottle, Eddie?’
‘Just so you don’t let no cop see you.’ The bartender explained to Parker, ‘All we’re supposed to sell in here is set-ups.’
Parker said to Yancy, ‘Give me the car keys.’
‘What? I can drive, don’t you worry about me.’
Parker snapped his fingers. ‘Give me the keys.’
Yancy straightened up on his stool. Then he laughed and said, ‘Yes, sir,’ and handed Parker the keys to the Thunderbird. To the bartender he said, ‘This is the toughest buddy I got.’
Parker went out to the car and Yancy trailed along behind him, bottle in one hand and glass in the other. They got into the car and pulled away, Parker making a U-turn and retracing the route to the Freeway.
When they were up on the Freeway and headed south, Yancy said, ‘You ever been in Houston before?’
‘No.’
‘Then you done pretty good.’ Yancy poured a fresh drink. ‘When our work is all finished, you and I,’ he said, ‘we’re going to have a nice long discussion about events and things.’
Parker glanced at him. Yancy was smiling and cold-eyed. Parker said, ‘When the job is done, I’ll discuss anything you want, Yancy.’
‘Yeah,’ said Yancy. He nodded, slowly, continuously. ‘That’s right,’ he said.
3
GROFIELD opened the door to Parker’s knock. ‘Salsa’s here,’ he said. ‘And a man to be our Charon.’
‘A what?’
‘Someone to operate the boat.’
‘Oh.’ Parker went on into the living room where the other two men were.
Salsa got to his feet, smiling, his hand out. ‘Hello, Parker,’ he said. ‘Good to see you again.’
‘Hello, Salsa.’
Salsa was a tall, slender, dark-haired man with gleaming white teeth, gleaming dark eyes, and the baby-face look of a gigolo. He’d been a gigolo once, and a professional revolutionary once, and a ballroom dancer once, and a lot of other things once. Now he said to Parker, ‘You’re handling this job?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then it’s a good one.’
Parker turned to the other man, a chunky beetling Irish type with dead white skin and dead black hair. Parker said, ‘You know boats?’
‘Like I know how to breathe.’
Parker turned and looked at Grofield. Grofield laughed and said, ‘He’s a lyrical type, don’t worry about it. He comes very highly recommended.’
‘By who?’
‘Wymerpaugh.’
‘Yeah?’ Parker turned back. ‘I’m Parker,’ he said.
‘I presumed as much. The name’s Heenan.’
‘What were you sent up for?’
Heenan blinked, and his mouth dropped open. ‘What’s that?’
‘You haven’t been out a week,’ Parker told him.
‘How in God’s name did you know that?’
‘Boatmen are out in the sun a lot. They burn, they peel, they tan. Especially their foreheads. You’re as white as a fish.’
Heenan touched his hand to his forehead. ‘I’ll burn,’ he said. ‘You’re right, man, I’ll burn like the condemned in Hell.’
Parker said, ‘What were you up for?’
Heenan gestured with his hands, brushing things away. ‘A little problem,’ he said. ‘A minor peccadillo. I’m no longer afflicted.’
‘What was it?’
‘It had nothing to do with this sort of operation,’ Heenan said. ‘I assure you, nothing at all.’
Parker shook his head. ‘What was it?’
Heenan looked pained. He glanced at Grofield, at Salsa, back at Parker. He made a gesture as though to make unimportant what he was about to say, and he said, ‘It was what they call a sex offence.’
‘A sex offence.’
‘There was this girl they said wasn’t eighteen, and in truth’
‘A sex offence,’ said Parker. ‘How old was she?’
Heenan cleared his throat. ‘Uhh, eleven.’
Parker said, ‘How long were you in?’
‘Five years, three months.’
‘Out of how much?’
‘Fourteen years the judge gave me.’
‘So you’re on parole. You reporting where you are, like they want?’
‘Not me. Them big doors opened, I left.’
Parker said, ‘Wait in the kitchen. I want to talk to these two guys.’
Heenan said, ‘I’m cured of all that, I really am. There was a doctor at the prison, he’
‘I’m not looking for a baby-sitter,’ Parker told him. ‘You don’t have to convince me.’
‘Oh. Yeah, sure. I’ll, uh, I’ll just go
‘
Heenan trailed away towards the kitchen, and when he was gone Parker said, ‘That’s the kind of guy blows a whole job wide open.’
Salsa said, ‘I think we need somebody else.’ He had a quiet, polite, gentle voice and a manner to match.
Parker said to Grofield, ‘What did Wymerpaugh say about him?’
‘I just asked for a boatman, Wymerpaugh says try Heenan. He didn’t say anything about all this.’ Grofield seemed not only surprised but also insulted.
Salsa said, ‘He knows things now.’
Parker frowned. ‘How much?’
Salsa checked it off: ‘Our names. That we’re setting up a local operation and it needs a boat.’
‘That’s all?’
Salsa looked a question at Grofield, and Grofield nodded. ‘That’s all,’ he said. ‘We were leaving the orientation lecture up to you.’
Parker said, ‘Then we can dust him with no trouble. Grofield, that’s you.’
‘Because I brought him.’ Grofield sighed and shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Right you are, as ever.’ He went on into the kitchen.
Salsa said, ‘Your woman got a telephone call, she had to go out. She said she’d be back early this evening.’
Parker nodded. He wasn’t thinking about Crystal, he was thinking about the job; they still had to find a boatman.
‘Very good, that woman of yours,’ Salsa said, as he might have said something pleasant and admiring about a friend’s new car. ‘She wishes to photograph me unclad.’
Parker said, ‘We’ve got to find somebody. I’ll call Handy McKay, maybe he knows somebody.’
Grofield came out of the kitchen, leading Heenan. Grofield was an actor all the way through, and now he was playing the role of a cheerful amiable junior executive, giving to some lost nudnick the discreet bum’s rush. ‘You see the position,’ he was saying, his arm draped over Heenan’s shoulders. ‘No hard feelings.’
Heenan was looking confused and not yet sore. He’d get sore later, some time after Grofield finished sending him away.
Salsa said to Parker, ‘Would you mind?’
Parker watched Grofield and Heenan go by. Distracted, he said, ‘Mind? Mind what?’