They wouldn’t know he was unarmed now, that was the only edge he had left.
He wished he could go out and take a look for them, find out for sure what they were up to, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t wear his shoes yet, and he had no others. The clothing he had on wasn’t enough to keep him warm inside this building, and it was even colder outside.
The soaking he’d taken had drained his energies more than he liked to admit. He still shivered from time to time, still found himself on the verge of losing his balance. His arms and legs seemed heavier than usual, and he was having trouble thinking, concentrating his thoughts. He needed time to recuperate, time to get ready again, so he hoped they really were doing the smart thing out there, pulling back to the gate to wait till morning.
He stood watching at the window for nearly five minutes, and saw nothing at all. He opened the window briefly, to try to listen for conversation, but the cold breeze coming in made him close it again. The absence of light out there was enough anyway. If they were still hunting for him, he’d see their flashlights. And probably see them switch on the lights in different buildings.
But they’d be careful about that now. They’d walked into his electric booby trap at the Buccaneer! ride, and they’d be a hell of a lot more cautious now, knowing he’d been setting up surprises for them while waiting for them to come in.
He didn’t know whether the Buccaneer! trap had killed anybody or not, but it had caught at least one guy, and even if he was still alive he wouldn’t be in any shape to hunt for anybody for a while. So out of the original seven, that left five out there. All of them armed, all of them wary now, and more than likely willing to wait to come after him in daylight.
All right. He’d take the respite, he could use it, and worry about tomorrow when it got here. He left the window at last, re-crossed the room, and went downstairs to the dress shop.
Draperies had been used as the principal decoration inside the shop, unlined cotton draperies in colorful prints. Parker took them all down from the walls and windows and carried them upstairs. It took two trips. The third time he went down he got a chair and a metal wastebasket from near the cash register and carried them over to the stairs. He went up two steps, pulled the mirror-door shut, and leaned the chair so its back legs were on a step and its top was against the door. Then he put the wastebasket on the chair seat. If anyone pulled this door open now, chair and wastebasket would both go crashing.
When he was satisfied with the arrangement, he went back upstairs again. Moving around helped, but it was still cold in here, and he was still weak and a little disoriented.
He covered both windows with draperies, putting them up with thumbtacks from a desk drawer, putting three of the thin draperies over each window. Then he turned on the flashlight again and tried the light switch, but the power in here was off. He would have liked to go downstairs and turn it on, but he didn’t know what lights or sounds were already in an On position and would begin to blare his position the minute he switched on the electricity.
He searched the office, and in the closet found a small electric heater. Again he regretted the lack of current, but there was nothing to be done about it. He left the heater where it was, and kept on searching, and in a bottom desk draw, tucked away behind a lot of manila envelopes as though it had been forgotten there, was a bottle of store-brand whiskey, about one-quarter full.
There was nothing else useful anywhere. There was a carpet on the floor, and Parker sat down on it and wrapped himself in the last two draperies. They smelled of dust, making him sneeze, but they started to get him warm.
He opened the bottle and turned off the flashlight. He sat in the dark like an Indian brave, wrapped in bright print draperies, and drank the whiskey, and that helped too. When the bottle was empty he put it down and lay back on the floor and closed his eyes and went to sleep.
Four
“ARE YOU LISTENING?”
It was one of those dreams where he knew he was dreaming.
In the dream he stood at the foot of a sheer rock cliff, and up at the top somebody was standing and bellowing. He was too far away to make out what he looked like, but his words were loud and clear.
“I HOPE YOU’RE LISTENING. I HOPE YOU CAN HEAR WHAT I’M SAYING, BECAUSE I WANT YOU TO KNOW WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO YOU AND WHY IT’S GOING TO HAPPEN AND WHO’S GOING TO DO IT TO YOU.”
His back hurt, in the dream, and in the dream he wasn’t exactly standing, he was lying down, lying on his back on something hard. An uncomfortable dream, full of aching backs and loud noises, and he thought, I’m having this kind of dream because I’m in a bad situation.
“MY NAME IS LOZINI. DOES THAT NAME MEAN ANYTHING TO YOU?”
He opened his eyes, and in vague diffuse light he looked at the ceiling. The light was very dim, like being at the bottom of a tank of water in an aquarium, and when he turned his head he saw the draperies covering the windows, saw the light filtering through the different colors, very little getting through into the room. But outside it would be full daylight.
“LOZINI. THE NAME SHOULD MEAN SOMETHING, BECAUSE I OWN THIS TOWN. THIS IS MY TOWN AND YOU PULLED A JOB HERE IN MY TOWN WITHOUT CLEARING IT WITH ME.”
Parker sat up. He was wrapped in draperies, his clothing was hanging around on chairs and doorknobs. He pushed the draperies to one side and got to his feet. His back and neck were stiff, his bones ached, his muscles didn’t want to work.
“BUT THAT’S NOT WHY I’M HERE. THAT’S NOT WHY I’M GOING TO GET YOU. THAT’S NOT WHY MY MEN HAVE ORDERS NOT TO KILL YOU BEFORE I CAN GET MY HANDS ON YOU.”
He limped over to the window facing the center of the park, knelt down there painfully, and pushed the draperies out of the way. He lifted a corner of the shade and looked out.
The fountain area was full of men, fifteen or twenty of them. The sun was shining today, a bright cold morning sun casting long shadows on the snowy ground. The men looked like a shape-up waiting for work, standing around in leather or cloth jackets, some of them wearing hunting caps, a few with sunglasses on against the brightness of the sun on the snow. They had their hands in their jacket pockets, or their arms were folded, and they were just standing around waiting, impassive, neither in a hurry to get on with it nor wishing themselves somewhere else. Just a bunch of guys waiting to go to work.
They were all watching their leader, a stocky white-haired man in a black overcoat, standing out in front of them, his back to them, the loud-hailer to his mouth. The two cops were with him, all suited up in their tight uniforms and knee-high boots and snappy hats and opaque sunglasses, like the military guard for a pocket Mussolini. They were watching the old man, too, but they were less impassive, they were both moving around, shuffling their feet, looking this way and that, moving their hands and heads into different positions. One of them seemed impatient, in a hurry to get to the manhunt. Would that be the one Parker had wrestled with last night? The other one, younger-looking and thinner, gave off an aura of apprehension, as though he didn’t like being out there in all that sunlight, maybe didn’t like being involved in this setup at all. Parker looked at that one, and he was interested. That cop might come in handy later on.
The old man with the loud-hailer was still bellowing. “I’LL TELL YOU WHY I’M GOING TO GET YOU, YOU SON OF A BITCH, AND WHY YOU’RE GOING TO BE SORRY YOU EVER SET FOOT IN THIS TOWN. BECAUSE LAST NIGHT YOU GUNNED DOWN A MAN I LOVED LIKE MY OWN SON. LAST NIGHT YOU GUNNED DOWN A MAN A THOUSAND TIMES BETTER THAN YOU’LL EVER BE. AND I’M GOING TO AVENGE THAT MAN, I’M GOING TO MAKE YOU PAY. IF YOU’VE GOT ANY BULLETS LEFT IN THAT GUN OF YOURS, THE SMART THING FOR YOU TO DO IS PUT A BULLET IN YOUR HEAD, BECAUSE IT’LL BE A HELL OF A FASTER DEATH THAN I’LL GIVE YOU, AND THAT’S A PROMISE.”