“All right,” he said. “You give me the details. And then you wait out the month, just like you planned. If neither Stubbs nor I come back by then you can do whatever you want. That’s only a week from now.”
“All right,” May said. “All right. All right.”
4
Parker took the Carey bus from La Guardia to the East Side Terminal building on 37th Street in Manhattan. A rented Chevrolet was waiting for him there but he let it wait a little longer, while he went up to Grand Central. It was five o’clock Sunday afternoon, and the station was doing a thriving business. Parker worked his way through it to the phone booths and the telephone books.
Buying a house had meant suburb to Parker from the beginning. The East Side Airlines Terminal had the phone books for the boroughs of New York — except for Staten Island — but the man Parker was looking for would be in Nassau County or Westchester County, or maybe even in Fairfield County up in Connecticut.
There was a “Wells, Chas. F.,” in Nassau County. Parker knew from May that Stubbs had planned to go through the phone book for all the possibilities and then go visit each one. He also knew that Stubbs would start with the city itself.
But sooner or later it would have to occur to Stubbs that Wells lived outside the city, and Stubbs was six days ahead of him. There wasn’t time to do it the way Stubbs was doing. Parker looked at the phone number for this Nassau County Wells, got some change out of his pocket and went into one of the booths.
He talked with an operator first, and fed some more money into the slots. Then the ringing sounded in his ear. He was just about to give up, after ten rings, when the phone was answered by a male voice. Parker said, “I want to talk to Charles F. Wells.”
“Speaking.”
“This is Wallerbaugh.”
If he was the wrong Wells, he’d be baffled. If he was the right Wells, the name coming at him this way might throw him off base.
It did. There was a pause, and then the voice, wary and carefully. “What was that name, please?”
“Dr. Adler,” Parker said. Just to be absolutely sure.
The wait was longer this time, and the voice this time was low and vicious. “Who are you? What do you want?”
Parker hung up. He left the booth and went back across the crowded terminal floor and took a cab back to the Airlines Terminal. It was the right Wells, and he was still alive. That could mean Stubbs hadn’t found him yet, even though he’d had six days. Or it could mean Stubbs had found him and Wells had proved his innocence. It could also mean that Stubbs had found him and was now dead.
The address wasn’t much to go on. Reardon Road, Huntington, Long Island. There was a map in the glove compartment of the rented Chevrolet, and Parker found Huntington and figured out his best route. The Queens Midtown Tunnel, because it was handy to the Terminal, and then the Long Island Expressway. Glen Cove Road up to North Hempstead Turnpike, which was also 25A, and that road into Huntington. When he got there, he could ask directions to Reardon Road.
He put the map back in the glove compartment.
5
Parker walked into the bar and ordered a beer. Outside, evening was coming on, and this was the first bar he had come to in Huntington. All of the normal bar bric-a-brac was on display — the Pabst Blue Ribbon antique car; Miss Rheingold; the Budweiser hanging clock; the Miller’s High Life dancing lights; the light shaped like a 7; the Schlitz clock against a pattern of spangled blue. Half a dozen locals sat along the length of the bar, and three more were playing the bowling machine in the back. One of them was a lefty.
Parker drank half the beer. “I’m looking for Reardon Road.”
The bartender looked at him and said, “You, too?” Then he turned to somebody else sitting at the bar. “Here’s another guy looking for Reardon Road.”
“Is that right?”
“You mean my brother’s been here already?”
“Your brother?”
“Older than me. Short and stocky and looks maybe a little punchy.”
“Well I’ll be damned,” said the bartender.
The local the bartender had talked to came over to Parker. “He was in here maybe half an hour ago.”
“Less than that,” said the bartender.
Parker drained the rest of the beer. “I thought I was ahead of him. Which way did you say it was?”
“Reardon Road?” The customer looked at the bartender. “How did we tell his brother to go?”
Another customer came down the line. “I was the one told him. Look, Mac, you go straight on through town on this street, see? And then you keep on going straight till you see the golf course.”
“The Crescent,” said the first customer.
“Right. The Huntington Crescent. And you make a left just the other side of the golf course.”
“First left,” said the bartender.
“Right,” said the second customer again; he didn’t like to be interrupted. “And then you make the second right and the first left.”
The other customer and the bartender nodded. “That’s the way we told him.”
Parker repeated it back. “First left after the golf course, then second right and first left.”
They all told him that was right, and he thanked them. Then he went back out to the car and drove through town, staying within the speed limit all the way. This was no time to waste fifteen minutes arguing with a cop.
The golf course was farther from town than he’d expected, but maybe that was because he was in such a hurry. Stubbs was less than half an hour ahead of him. But because of the phone call, Wells was forewarned.
Distances are deceiving on narrow blacktop country roads. The second right was forever after the first left, and the next left was across the rim of the world in Asia someplace. Then at last he was on Reardon Road, and he had to crawl to be sure of reading the names on the mailboxes. He spotted Wells’ name at last, and pulled the Chevy off the road. He couldn’t see the black Lincoln parked anywhere, so Stubbs must have just blundered on in, driving the car.
Parker got out of the Chevy, locked it, and walked down the private road among the trees. He came around a turn and there was the Lincoln, parked, blocking the road. He took the Sauer out and moved up slowly, but the car was empty. He went beyond it, saw the house, and cut away to the right into the woods.
If Stubbs had any sense, he was working his way around through the woods to the back of the house. Or he’d done it already. There were lights on in the house and Parker caught occasional glimpses of them through the trees. He kept bearing right, until he knew he was beyond the house, and then he angled to the left around it.
All of a sudden there was blacktop in front of him, and he was looking at the three-car garage. He cursed under his breath and took a backward step, and then he heard the shot to his left. He rushed out to the blacktop and looked down to the left and saw Stubbs there, in the evening gloom, folding forward into himself. Beyond Stubbs was another man, distinguished-looking and white-haired, holding a gun. Wells looked past Stubbs and saw Parker, and his eyes widened as the gun came up, ready for another shot.
Don’t kill him yet, Parker told himself, and don’t ruin his right hand. He fired low, and the bullet shattered Wells’ ankle. Wells made a strange high-pitched “Aaahh,” and pitched forward onto the blacktop. The gun skittered away and stopped next to Stubbs’ ear.