Parker didn't bother to tell him about Captain Younger, that attention had already been drawn. Instead, he said, 'What if I told you I don't know what the hell you're talking about?'
Tiftus laughed and looked cunning and said, 'Oh, come on, Parker! What are you doing here, then? I suppose you're here for your health, or you just thought you'd come by for Joe's funeral, is that it?'
Parker considered. Tiftus was stupid in some ways, but clever in others; it wasn't likely he'd tell Parker more than he'd already told. But if Parker kept poking around asking more questions, Tiftus would begin to believe he really didn't know the story after all, and that would be no good.
Parker leaned forward, his left arm straight out, hand resting on the back of the armchair by Tiftus' head. Lowering his voice, he said, 'All right, Tiftus, I'll tell you the truth. I'll tell you why I'm really here.'
Tiftus cocked his head, the better to listen.
Parker clubbed him across the side of the jaw. Tiftus' head snapped over and bounced off Parker's left forearm. He sagged forward and would have fallen out of the chair, but Parker pushed him back.
Parker went through his pockets. Nothing in the jacket at all but that lavender handkerchief, which turned out to be scented. In the pocket of the orange shirt was an unopened five-pack of plastic-tipped little cigars. In the right-hand trouser pocket was a Zippo lighter inscribed FROM DW TO SF, neither set of initials having any connection with Tiftus. In the left-hand trouser pocket were fifty-seven cents in change, his hotel room key, and a rabbit's foot. In his hip pocket was his wallet, and in the wallet were a Social Security card made out to Adolph Tiftus, a Nevada driver's licence, four black-and-white photographs of horses, a photo of Tiftus himself from a coin-operated photo booth, sixty-four dollars in bills, a clipping from a Daily Telegraph column that mentioned his name as present at the opening of Freehold Raceway one prewar season, a small torn-off piece of adding-machine paper with two telephone numbers written on it in pencil, and an obscene photograph in colour of a Chinese couple standing up.
Nothing in pockets or wallet told him what Tiftus was doing in Sagamore, Nebraska, a useless town forty miles from Omaha. The telephone numbers were not the Sagamore exchange. There was no race track in the vicinity. Joe Sheer hadn't had anything to do with race tracks, except to hit them maybe sometimes. Joe had never been a gambler of any kind; that was why he was so good, before he retired.
Parker put everything back in Tiftus' pockets except the room key. He picked Tiftus up like a ventriloquist picking up his dummy, threw him over his shoulder, and went over to the hall door.
There was no one in sight in the hall. Parker took the time to go back across the room and get Tiftus' gun out of the dresser and stuff it in his pocket. Then he went out to the hall, locked the room door, and went down towards the red light that showed him where the staircase was.
Tiftus was all bones and leather flesh, as light as a tick. Parker carried him up the one flight and down another deserted hallway, and used Tiftus' key to open the door.
Tiftus hadn't been lying. His suitcase, closed and full, sat on the bed. A camel's hair topcoat, getting a little seedy at collar and cuffs and bottom edge, was sprawled across the armchair in a debonair manner. Tiftus had divested himself of these two things and gone right on down to Parker's room.
Parker went over and dumped Tiftus on his back on the bed. He heard a sound just as he let Tiftus go, and turned. The connecting door to the next room had opened. A woman was standing there in the doorway, wearing a white hotel robe on her left forearm and pink, puffy slippers on her feet and nothing else. She was yellow above, black below, and she'd been out in the sun for a tan while wearing a two-piece bathing suit. She was built heavy but not fat; firm flesh well padded over a big-boned frame. Her face would have been beautiful except that she had the eyes of a pickpocket and the mouth of a whore.
She said, 'What the hell are you doing?'
So Tiftus had left three things behind before coming to see Parker; bag, coat, and bag. The other bag had been stashed in an adjoining room to take itself a shower. Parker said, 'Go back in there and keep your mouth shut.'
'Says you. What happened to my man?'
'Your what?'
'Never mind, you. He's little but he's wiry.' And about twice her age, if she was the thirty she looked.
Parker said, 'I'm the one he had business with. Beat it.'
As an afterthought, she held the towel up in front of herself. Now she looked like a calendar in a firehouse. She said, 'Not till I find out what happened to poor Adolph.'
'He fell over an ambition.'
'Is that supposed to be funny?'
Parker walked over and put his hand on the middle of the towel and pushed. He shut the connecting door and threw the bolt lock, then went back over to the bed. The woman rapped on the door a few times, but quit when Parker ignored her. He knew she'd have more sense than to holler for the law or anything like that; connected up with Tiftus, she'd have to know that much.
He took Tiftus' suitcase off the bed, out from under one of Tiftus' sprawled legs, and put it on top of the dresser and opened it. He threw clothing out piece by piece, it all piling up on the floor beside him, but when he was done all he had was an empty suitcase and a lot of junk lying around on the floor. Clothing, toothpaste and toothbrush, tube of zinc ointment, tube of some sort of cream for piles, more obscene photographs of the same bored Chinese couple, box of cartridges for the automatic, hair oil, three astrology magazines. Still nothing to let him know Tiftus' game.
Ask the woman? No, even Tiftus should know enough to keep his business to himself. The woman would be along for after work, not during.
Then wait around for Tiftus to come out of it, and ask him direct? No, the hell of it for now. There wasn't much time, and Tiftus shouldn't be allowed to find out how little Parker knew.
Parker dropped the room key in the empty suitcase and went over to the door. He stopped there to look back, but Tiftus was still out. There was no sound from the woman in the next room. Parker left, closing the door carefully behind himself.
Down to the right were the elevator and the stairs he'd come up just now, but there ought to be a fire exit the other way, one that wouldn't lead to the lobby or any part of the front of the building. Parker went off in that direction and found it right around the first turn, a broad wooden door with FIRE EXIT on it in red letters. It opened rustily, reluctantly. Parker came out on to an exterior staircase running down the clapboard back of the building, an old, wide, wooden fire escape with age-warped banisters. He went down it to a little concrete alley lined with green doors and garbage cans. At the end of it was the street.
Parker stood looking out at the street for a minute before leaving the alley. He didn't see Captain Younger, nor anybody who looked offhand as though he might be working for Captain Younger. Nor anybody who looked as though he might be linked up with Tiftus; though on that score Parker was pretty sure Tiftus was working alone. If there were a second man with him, anyone besides the woman, Parker would have seen some sort of evidence of him by now.