Menlo smiled again, his ingenuous smile. “I forgot to tell you. I returned to Clara’s apartment tonight, Mr. Parker, after you had left. You had mistreated the poor girl most terribly. The only humane thing I could do was end her misery.”
He beamed.
Parker stubbed his cigarette. “I didn’t ask her enough questions,” he said.
“You are hardly to be blamed. You must have thought of her as only a pawn in our game. How could you know she was the key?”
“So you want to team up with us?”
“It seems most logical, does it not? My information, your experience. And we will, of course, split evenly. Half for me, half for you.”
The fat man wouldn’t be getting any of it, but Parker, for appearance’s sake, made a complaint. “That’s no even split. A third for each of us.”
Menlo spread his hands and smiled. “If you insist. I am not greedy, I assure you.”
So the fat man was planning a double-cross too, Parker thought, and asked, “You still want to do it Friday?”
“That strikes me as the best time, yes. By the way, could you possibly tell me what it is that you two are concerned with in Kapor’s house? That lovely girl mentioned the sum of fifty thousand dollars.”
“Kapor’s got a statue, supposed to be one of the lost statues from some tomb in France. A collector gave us fifty thousand to steal it from him.”
“One of the mourners of Dijon?” Menlo smiled in surprise. “I have read of them, of course. How romantic! And a collector, you say? That charming girl’s father, no doubt. I would most like to meet him.”
“Maybe I can arrange it,” Parker said.
4
Her full name was Elizabeth Ruth Harrow Conway. She was, as the fat man had said, a magnificent female, twenty-nine years old, and with honey hair made to gleam in candlelight. She had the hollow-cheeked aristocratic face that comes of generations of breeding and inbreeding, and the tall, lush, well-proportioned body of a stripper crossed with a Channel swimmer. She was rich now, and had been all her life, living currently on a combination of alimony from her ex-husband and atonement gifts from her father. She was well-sexed, with an occasional liking for self-cruelty, and she kept her hotel-room door unlocked.
Parker came in and closed the door and stood there looking at her. “Whose idea was this? Yours or your father’s?”
She was in bed, with the covers up to her neck, and two pillows under her head. She smiled languorously and stretched, her body moving lazily under the blanket. “It was mine, Chuck, don’t you know that? But Daddy thinks it was his.”
“Either you take off, or there’s no job.”
“Now, don’t threaten me like that, Chuck. Be nice.” She slid one arm out from under the covers and patted the bed next to her hip. “Come sit down beside me and we’ll talk.”
He shook his head. “Forget it.”
“Be nice, Chuck,” she murmured. “Be nice to me, and I’ll go away first thing in the morning. If you still want me to.”
That would have been a solution, but he rejected it without bothering to think about it. This was the way he always was before a job. He lived to a pattern. Immediately after a job he was a satyr, inexhaustible and insatiable. Then gradually it would taper off, and by the time the next job was in preparation he was a total celibate. When a job was being set up, he could only think of one thing. Bett’s offer slid past him as though it had never been made. It simply didn’t interest him.
“You’ll go away first thing in the morning, or the deal’s off,” he said. “And you won’t come back. I’ll see you after I give your father the statue.”
“Maybe I won’t feel like it then.”
He shrugged.
She was still trying to be coy and seductive, but the edges were getting ragged. “What if I decide not to be an obedient little girl, Chuck?”
“Your father’s out fifty grand.”
Her languorous smile all at once turned sour, and she popped to a sitting position, her face twisted in a frown of anger. The sheet and blanket fell to her waist. She was nude and her breasts were heavy but firm, and tanned as golden as the rest of her. She said, bite in her voice, “What’s the matter with you, Chuck? This is little Bett, remember? We’re not exactly strangers.”
It was true. For most of two weeks they’d shared the same bedroom, though they’d seen each other only twice since.
“I’ve got other things to think about,” Parker said.
“You want to be careful, Chuck,” she said. Her voice was hard as a stone. “You want to be very careful with me.”
“I’ll see you when the job is done.”
“I’m not so sure. And just a minute, don’t leave yet. We’ve got more to talk about.”
He kept his hand on the doorknob. “Such as?”
“Such as those other two men. The one that looks like you, only more pleasant, and the funny fat one. You didn’t say anything to Daddy about working with anybody else.”
“How I work is my business. Don’t be here in the morning.”
She was going to say something else; but he didn’t give her a chance.
The other two were already asleep when Parker got back to his room. Menlo was staying here tonight, sleeping on the floor, and the three of them would move to another location tomorrow. Parker stepped over Menlo, stripped, and got into bed. He fell asleep the way he always did, completely and immediately.
He was a light sleeper. Normal predictable sounds — traffic outside a window, a radio playing that had been playing when he’d gone to sleep — didn’t disturb him, but any unusual noise would have him completely awake at once. So when Menlo got up from the floor and crept cautiously toward the door, Parker came awake. He lay unmoving on the bed, watching Menlo through slitted eyes. Menlo took the time to pick up his suit coat and tie and shoes, but nothing else. He went out, the shoes in his hand, the coat and tie over his arm.
There was no point stopping him. Parker went back to sleep.
He awoke again when Menlo returned. The fat man was once again carrying shoes and coat and tie, but now he was carrying his shirt as well, and in the faint light from the window Parker could see that he was smiling to himself. So Bett had got what she’d come for after all. He wondered if Menlo had.
5
“Go,” said Handy. He thumbed the stopwatch; it read just about nine o’clock.
Parker edged the Pontiac away from the curb in front of Kapor’s house. Moving with the traffic, they went straight over Garfield to Massachusetts Avenue, and then turned right on Wisconsin. That took them through Georgetown and on north out of the city into Chevy Chase, and then Bethesda. It was a commercial road all the way, with more traffic than Parker liked on a getaway route, but it was the quickest, shortest way.
Menlo, sitting on the backseat like a renegade Buddha, watched with interest. At one point he said, “I still don’t see why this is necessary. Kapor will hardly be in a position to notify the authorities.”
Parker was busy driving, so Handy explained. “You say the Outfit’s given up on this job, and maybe they did and maybe they didn’t. You claim Spannick was the only one of your old crowd that knew what you were up to, and maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t. We’re going through the play the same night you planned, because it’s a good setup. Besides, now that Clara’s dead there’s nobody inside to let us know when the next good time is. But we’re running it an hour earlier than you figured just in case there is still somebody interested in you or Kapor’s hundred grand. And we’re working out the best route for the same reason.”
“Then why go only so far as the motel? Why not continue on our way as rapidly as possible? We might go to Baltimore, for instance, and come to rest there.”