Parker pushed past the women and said to the man, “Is Jimmy around these days?”
Delgardo kept scratching his elbow. His eyes came back from infinity and studied Parker’s face. “You a friend of Jimmy’s?”
“Yeah.”
“So how come you don’t know where he is?”
“We lost touch.”
“So how come I never seen you before?”
“Jimmy drove for me on that payroll job in Buffalo.”
Delgardo’s hands twitched suddenly, and his eyes flicked in alarm to the two women. In a quick undertone he said, “Don’t talk that way.”
Without lowering his voice Parker said, “You wanted to know who I was. Now you know. Now you can tell me where Jimmy is.
Delgardo fidgeted a minute, but the two women had shown no signs of interest. He fingered his mustache nervously and said, “Come in the back.”
Parker followed him deeper into the store, past a greasy curtain. In the back room the stink was even stronger. Delgardo, smelling of peppers, came close to whisper, “He’s in Canada. Driving, you know.”
“Cigarettes?”
“Yes.”
“When’s he coming back?”
“Two, three days.”
“Gimme pencil and paper.”
“Yes. Wait here.”
Parker waited, lighting a cigarette against the stink, while Delgardo went back to the front of the store. There was a flurry of rapid-fire Spanish between Delgardo and one or both of the women. They’d been stealing while he was in back.
He came back angry, and took a deep breath. He shrugged at Parker. “You know how they are.”
He gave him a long yellow pencil and a greasy three-by-five memo pad and Parker wrote down the name of the hotel.
“When he comes back, he should call me there. Parker, tell him. If I’m not in, leave a message.”
“Parker? You better write it down.”
“It’s an easy name to remember.”
Parker gave him back the memo pad and pencil. Delgardo hesitated, still wanting him to write the name down, then shrugged and led the way back to the front of the store.
The two women were still there, looking silent and frightened. Two uniformed policemen were there, too, filling the store. Their expressions blank and hard, they studied Parker, and Parker said, “Wallet.” He reached slowly to his back pocket. They waited, and Parker pulled out the wallet and handed it to the nearest of them.
They both read the driver’s license, giving his name as Edward Johnson, and then they gave the wallet back and one of them said, “What was the business in the back of the store? Did you buy something or sell something?”
“Neither.”
“Nothing like that, officers,” said Delgardo hurriedly. “You know me, I don’t do nothing like that.” He was sweating beneath his mustache.
“Nothing like what?” one of the cops asked.
Delgardo looked flustered. Parker said, “Nothing like junk.” He shucked off his jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeves, showed them his bare arms. “I don’t take it, buy it, sell it or carry it,” he said. “Get the broads out of here, I’ll show you my legs. No needle marks there either.”
“That won’t be necessary,” said the talking cop. “Just empty your pockets. You too, Delgardo. And let’s see the pad.”
He glanced at the memo pad, looked at Parker. “What’s doing at the Carlington Hotel?”
“I’m staying there,” Parker said.
“That isn’t what it said on your driver’s license.”
“I had a fight with my wife.”
“What was the business in the back of the store?”
“We had a Coke together,” said Parker. “I’m an old friend of Jimmy’s. I come around to look him up.”
“An old friend from where?”
“Upstate. We worked for the same trucker, up in Buffalo.”
“How come you don’t have a chauffeur’s license?”
“I don’t do that kind of work any more.”
“What kind of work do you do now?”
“I’m unemployed. I was laid off. That’s what the fight was all about.”
“What fight?”
“With my wife. I told you.”
“Laid off from where?”
“General Electric. Out on the Island.”
The cop chewed the inside of his cheek a minute, and glanced at his partner. “You tell a good story, Johnson. But you feel wrong.”
Parker shrugged.
The cop said, “How come you’re so hipped on narcotics? How come you brought the subject up the minute you saw us?”
“The neighborhood has a reputation,” Parker said. “I been reading the Post.”
“Yeah. Lean up against the wall there.”
Parker leaned forward, palms flat against the wall, and the cop frisked him briefly, then stepped back, saying, “Okay.”
“I’m clean,” Parker said. “Do I take my goods back now?”
“Yes.”
Parker took his wallet and change and cigarettes from the counter top and put them back in his pocket, watching as Delgardo was frisked and also found clean. The talking cop nodded sourly at Parker and said, “You can go. I suppose we’ll be seeing you around.”
“I doubt it,” Parker said. “It’s more civilized downtown.”
“We didn’t ask for this precinct,” the cop said.
“Nobody did,” Parker said.
“Take off,” said the other cop.
Parker went on out, pushing past the two women, who still look terrified. They hadn’t understood a word. They believed Delgardo had called the police to arrest them for shoplifting.
Chapter 2
I’m looking for a girl,” said Parker.
She smirked at him. “What do you think I am, big boy — a watermelon?”
Parker picked up his beer glass, looking at the cool wet ring it left on the bar. “I’m looking for a particular girl,” he said.
She arched a brow. She plucked her eyebrows and painted on new ones, in the wrong place, so that when she arched a brow it came out wrong, like a badly animated cartoon. “A hustler? I don’t know them all, baby.”
“She’d work by telephone,” he said. “She wouldn’t be a loner, she’d be connected with the organization.”
She shook her head. “Then I wouldn’t know her.”
Parker emptied the glass, motioned at the bartender for another round. “You’d know people who might know her,” he said.
“I might and I might not.” The round came and she said, “Thanks. Why should I tell you anything? I don’t know you from Adam.”
He looked at her. “Do I look like law?”
She laughed. “Not much. That’s one thing you’re not. But maybe you want to give her a bad time. Maybe she gave you athlete’s foot once or something.”
“I’m her brother,” Parker lied. “We been out of touch. The doctor tells me I got a little cancer in my throat. I want to look her up, you know how it is. It’s my last chance.”
She looked shocked and mournful. “Jeez,” she said. “That’s a bitch, man. I’m sorry.”
Parker shrugged. “I had a good life. I got maybe six months to go. So I thought I’d look her up. There’s just her and this aunt of ours, and I wouldn’t look the aunt up if she had a cancer cure.”
“Jeez,” she said again. Meditations on mortality creased her brow. “I know how you feel, man,” she said. “You maybe don’t think so, but I do. In this lousy business, you got to be thinking about disease all the time. There was this girl I knew, we used to room together. She didn’t feel so good, and it hurt to swallow, and sometimes she’d spit blood, so she thought it was TB. I told her and told her, go down to the clinic, so finally she did, and they put her in the hospital. She had a little something in the back of her throat too. Not cancer. The occupational disease, you know?”
Parker nodded. He couldn’t care less, but if he let her talk about this maybe she’d talk about the other.
“She’s still in there,” she said. “I went to see her once, and it was awful. She looked like an old bag, you know? And she couldn’t even talk any more, just croak. That was about six months ago, I went to see her. And that was enough for me, brother, I didn’t go back since. For all I know, she’s dead by now.