Hoskins had begun to blink rapidly, the prelude to shaky defiance, an attempt to get back his self-esteem. “I understand,” he said. Then, very high and fast, “Oh, I understand, don’t you worry. You want the whole thing for yourself, that’s plain enough. Well, you can have it, for all the good it’ll do you. You’re as crazy as those black madmen and you deserve each other and I hope before you’re done you’ll allkill each other off, because they won’t be as easy to fool as you think, they’ll be on to”
Parker slapped him, open-handed, just hard enough to stop the flow of words. “You didn’t listen,” he said.
Hoskins put his hand to his cheek. “I said I was out,” he said as though some great injustice had just been done him.
Parker looked at him and considered. Keep pushing and convince him of the truth? There was no point in it, not if he’d been sufficiently convinced to keep himself away from the action. In fact, it might be better if he thought Parker greedy enough to try for the whole pie himself. Hoskins would tend to stay a long way away from the kind of fight a Parker and a Gonor could have together.
Parker nodded and stepped back. “Good,” he said. “You’re out. Use that ticket to L.A.”
Hoskins felt for it in his jacket pocket in quick panic, and showed relief when it was still there. Then he felt the rest of his pockets and became aggrieved. “My gun!” he cried. “My notebook!”
“You don’t need a gun,” Parker told him. “Not on the plane.”
“My notebook.”
“You don’t need to take notes.”
“Listen,” Hoskins said, getting loud, “you can’t do”
Parker turned away from him and went over and opened the hall door. “Goodbye,” he said.
“You can’t” Hoskins said. “You can’t just”
“I don’t want to have to touch you,” Parker said.
Hoskins looked like a man who wanted very much to start punching something. But all he did was stand there rocking slightly on the balls of his feet and glaring at Parker in helpless rage.
Parker started toward him from the door.
“I’m going,” Hoskins said, trying not to sound too hasty. “Don’t worry, I’m going. Back to L.A. I wouldn’t be involved in this”
“That’s good.”
“But you’ll regret it, mark my words. You’ll wish you had a man you could trust at your side.”
Parker didn’t say anything to that. Hoskins looked anxiously around trying to find something else to say, but there wasn’t any more. He shook his head, tried to put on the scowling expression of a patrician leaving by his own choice and walked past Parker and out of the room.
Parker shut the door after him.
6
It was a half-ton Ford panel truck, seven years old, dark blue. Some previous owner’s firm name and address and phone number had been painted off the doors and body sides with broad sweeps of paler blue, itself old enough now to be chipped in places. Parker was at the wheel, Formutesca beside him, and he was finding the transmission almost unworkable. But the truck wouldn’t be needed long, and it would never be asked to travel very far or very fast, so it would do.
Formutesca was wearing his paint-smeared trousers, an old flannel shirt, an old brown leather jacket with ragged elbows and cuffs, and old brown shoes. Parker was in a suit and topcoat, but had his tie loose and his shirt collar open.
They turned into Thirty-eighth Street from Park Avenue and found a parking space just up the block from the museum. Parker cut the ignition, pocketed the key, and said to Formutesca, “You ready?”
“I think I have stage fright,” Formuesca said with a slightly shaky smile. “But I’ll be all right.”
“Good,” Parker said. He picked up the clipboard from the seat between them and got out of the truck. He waited on the sidewalk while Formutesca went around to the rear of the truck and got the toolbox and the seven-foot stepladder.
“Heavy,” Formutesca said, grinning shakily.
“All you have to do,” Parker told him, “is look sullen and stupid.”
“At this hour,” Formutesca said, “that should be easy.” It was a little after two in the morning.
Parker led the way down the sidewalk to the building just this side of the museum. The pictures Gonor had taken showed this one to be the better bet of the two. The other was a residential hotel, but this one was primarily an office building, with very few twenty-four-hour tenants. Also, the windows in this building’s fifth floor seemed to be at just about the right height, and two of them side by side were of frosted glass, surely meaning rest rooms.
There was a green canopy out front. Parker went under it, pushed open the door, held it for Formutesca, then went over and pushed the bell button beside the word Superintendent. When nothing happened after half a minute he rang again, and this time there came a response, a garbled voice sputtering out of the speaker above the buttons. The words couldn’t be made out, but the meaning was clear; he wanted to know who it was.
Parker leaned close to the speaker. “Water supply,” he said. He sounded bored and irritated.
“What”
“Water supply,” Parker said, louder.
“Whadaya want?”
“We gotta get in.”
There was a pause, and then a grudging, “Hold on.”
They waited nearly five minutes, and then a short and heavyset man appeared at the end of the corridor inside. He was wearing a maroon robe, brown pants and slippers, and he walked in a heavy-footed waddle. He came slowly down to the glass doors, looked through them at Parker and Formutesca, then opened one door and said, “You people know what time it is?”
“We don’t like it any better than you do,” Parker said. “If they’d done it right the first time, we wouldn’t have to be here on any emergency call.”
“What emergency call? I didn’t call nobody.”
“Not you,” Parker said. He walked through the doorway, Formutesca behind him. “The City,” Parker said. “It’s that fifth-floor men’s room again.”
“What do you mean, again?” The superintendent was still half asleep; he was irritated, and he was bewildered. But he wasn’t suspicious.
“It was supposed to be fixed three months ago,” Parker said. He consulted his clipboard. “Some smart inspector said it was all taken care of.”
“What inspector?”
Parker frowned suspiciously at him. “Didn’t you get that men’s room fixed?” he asked. “Three months ago?”
The superintendent shook his head, befuddled. “There’s nothing wrong with any men’s room in here,” he said. “There hasn’t been.”
“Oh, yeah?” Parker jabbed a thumb at the street. “You almost had a water main blow up out there, that’s how much there’s nothing wrong.”
The superintendent looked toward the street, then back at Parker. “I don’t know a thing about it,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Parker, showing disgust. “You know what that means, don’t you? Somebody layin’ down on the job. Nobody came around here three months ago, that’s what happened.”
“Sure it is,” the superintendent said, happy to have something he could be knowledgeable about. “Nobody came around at all.”
“That’s what I mean,” Parker said. He shook his head. “All right,” he said, “let’s get the damn thing done right this time. Is it locked up there?”
“No. I’ll take you up.”
“Good.”
Parker felt Formutesca trying to catch his eye, but the worst thing you could do in a situation like this was step out of character. Parker faced front and followed the superintendent down the hall to the elevator, Formutesca coming along behind him.
They rode up to the fifth floor and the superintendent showed them where the men’s room was. Then Parker said, “All right. What we want you to do is go down and turn off the water. You got a watch with a second hand?”
The superintendent was confused again, but he nodded. “Yeah. Sure.”