Mal frowned. He didn’t like to be reminded of Stegman or of Lynn or of anything else connected with that operation. “You didn’t give him my number, sweetie,” he said.
“Hell no, Mai — you know me. I told him I hadn’t seen you in months.”
“Good boy.”
“So he said I should ask around. He said he had to get in touch with you, it was important.”
Mal’s frown deepened. Was that stuff coming back to plague him? It couldn’t. Unless maybe Lynn was suddenly deciding she wanted more dough.
He ought to drop that bitch, she wasn’t worth it. A grand a month was heavy money; he couldn’t really afford it. And what did he get from her? Nothing. He put it to her a few times, and every damn time she just lay there like a board and closed her eyes and went a million miles away somewhere. He tried to hurt her, and she hurt easy, but he couldn’t reach her any other way at all, and the hell with that.
Was she a danger to him? If he was to drop her now, what the hell could she do? Not a damn thing. She didn’t know where he was, and even if she did he had nothing to fear from her physically. And if she spread the word about where and how he’d gotten the dough to pay back the Outfit, all he had to do was say she was a lying, vindictive bitch, he’d kept her for a while and then gotten tired of her and she was trying to get even. Nobody would listen to her.
So why keep her around? If it was conscience money, it was stupid. And it couldn’t be anything else.
So he made his decision. If she wants more dough, I drop her. To Haskell he said, “Did he tell you what it was?”
“He said some guy had come around looking for you. Killed some broad and then came around wanting you.”
“Some guy?” Ryan? No, he was dead. They were all dead. One of the South Americans? How the hell could they have found out who was in on the hijack? Somebody from the Outfit selling the guns? There was no way for them to connect him with the deal either. “What did this guy look like?”
“He didn’t tell me. He just said some guy came around talking mean and wanting you.”
“Talking mean. The hell with that.”
“I thought you ought to know about it, Mal, you know what I mean?”
“Yeah, yeah, you done right. Listen, I want to talk to that son of a bitch.”
“Stegman?”
“Who else? Set up a meeting.”
“At your place?”
“Go to hell, sweetie. I’ll meet him at Landau’s, by the bridge. In back.”
“Landau’s, by the bridge.”
“At nine o’clock.”
“Tonight?”
“When the hell else, idiot?”
“I’m not sure I can get in touch with him, Mal, that’s the only ihing.”
“Get in touch with him, sweetie. Do it. That lousy cab company of his is working now.”
“Okay, Mal, I’ll try.”
“Don’t try, sweetie. Do.”
Mal slammed the phone onto the hook and surged out of the (hair. Who was it? Who the hell was it?
He strode across the living room, throwing off his dressing ^own as he went. Beneath it, his chunky body was nude, heavy iind fat-rolled, with an even sunlamp tan.
He threw on his clothing muttering to himself, remembering names and faces, trying to figure out who it had been. Killed a broad and came looking for Mal. Killed a broad and came looking —
Killed Lynn.
His suit and shoes on, he came out to the living room again, staggering slightly, as the realization hit him. Killed Lynn. It had to be, it was the only broad connecting him to Stegman. Killed Lynn.
Oh, sweet Jesus Christ in Heaven!
The doorbell rang.
He stood frozen, staring at the door. The bell rang again and lie bellowed, “Who is it? What do you want?”
Her answer came faint through the door. “It’s me, honey. It’s Pearl.”
He pulled open the door and she came in, her mouth open, ready with excuses.
“It’s Parker,” he said, and hit her twice in the stomach. She fell retching to the floor, and he stepped on her back on the way out.
Chapter 2
By day, the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge lies on the windows of Landau’s Bar and Grill. By night, there are too many shadows to pick out the source of any one.
Mal parked his Outfit car two blocks away and walked through the Dutch slum to Landau’s. The regulars hunched at the bar watched him in the back mirror as he walked clown the length of the place, and they disliked him because he wore a suit and tie. But they knew better than to turn around, to speak or gesture or notice him in any way. They knew, vaguely, that Landau’s was different from the other bars in the neighborhood, that it led some sort of double life. Suits and ties congregated in the back room every once in a while, and it was best to leave them alone.
Stegman was already there, and nervous. He got up from the small room’s one table when Mal came in, and said, “Jesus, am I glad to see you! This place is a hole.”
Mal shut the door. “What did he look like?”
“What? Big. A mean-looking bastard, Mal. He braced me without a gun or a knife or anything. He said if he had to he’d kill me with his hands, and I swear to Christ I believed him.”
“It’s Parker,” said Mal to himself.
“He had big hands, Mal.” Stegman held up his own hands, claw-curved. “The veins stuck out all over them.”
“The son of a bitch,” said Mal.
“I tell you, I wouldn’t want him after me.”
“Shut up!” Mal glared, his hands closing into fists. “What am I, a nobody? I got friends.”
“Sure you have, Mal.”
“Am I supposed to be afraid of the son of a bitch? He couldn’t get near me.”
Stegman licked his lips. “I thought you’d want to know about it, Mal.”
“All I have to do is point,” said Mal. “I pick up the phone and I say his name, and he’s a dead man. And this time he stays dead.”
“Sure. I thought you’d want to know so you could take care of it.”
Mal crossed suddenly to the table, scraping the chair out and plumping down into it. “Sit down,” he said. “Tell me what he said. What did he say about me?”
Stegman sat across the table, his hands palm down on the table top. They trembled slightly anyway. “He said you could stop paying off the girl, she was dead. She was in the morgue. He said he was looking for you. That’s all.”
“Not who he was? Not why?”
“Nothing. Just what I said.”
“And he told you if you saw me you should let him know.”
Stegman shook his head. “No, he didn’t. He just let it go.”
The bartender pushed open the door, stuck his head in. “You gents want anything?”
“A beer,” said Stegman.
“Nothing,” said Mal. “Peace and quiet.”
The bartender waited, looking at Stegman. “Beer or no beer?”
Stegman shrugged, awkwardly. “No beer,” he said. “Later maybe.”
“We’ll let you know,” said Mal.
The bartender went away, and Stegman said, “That’s all there was, Mal. I told you everything.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. What could 1 tell him? 1 didn’t know where you were, what could I tell him?”
“What about the money?”
Stegman nodded quickly. “Yeah, I told him about that. About the checking account. He wanted to know about that, how I got the money.”
Mal gnawed on his lower lip, looking across the room. “Could he trace me through that? The statements go to you. The bank wouldn’t tell him nothing.”
“That’s what I figured,” said Stegman eagerly. “It wouldn’t hurt to tell him the truth. What could he do?”
“I don’t know. He used to be dead, and now he isn’t. I don’t know what he could do. What else did you tell him?”
“Nothing, Mal.” Stegman spread his hands. “What could 1 tell him? I didn’t know anything else.”
“Then why didn’t he kill you?”
Stegman blinked. “He must of believed me.”
“You gave him something else. To save your own stinking skin, you gave him something else. A name, maybe — somebody who knows where to find me.”