“I wasn’t in on those two. Who give me the dough from them?”
“Make it worth your while. Bronson may not have much on him.”
Handy shrugged. “Keep the dough, Parker. We known each other for years. We’ll split the take from Bronson, and call the rest for old time’s sake.”
Parker frowned. He didn’t like it that way. He said, “A split all the way, then. Twenty-one hundred for each of us, plus Bronson.”
“Why?” Handy left the match in his mouth while he fumbled for another cigarette. “Why you want to give money away all of a sudden?”
“I’m not giving it away. I’m making it worth your while. You don’t want to do a job for nothing.”
Handy watched himself light the new cigarette. He leaned over to drop the match into an ash tray and then shrugged. “All right,” he said. “A split all the way.” He lipped the cigarette, then grinned and looked over at Parker. “I could use the money, anyway.”
“For the diner.”
“Sure, for the diner.” Handy settled back on the bed, relaxing. “When do you want to go after this Bronson?”
“Early next week. By then, the Outfit’ll have been hit a few times. I want to be sure this guy Karns won’t be in any hurry to cause trouble when he takes over.”
“When do you want to go to Buffalo?”
“Tomorrow. We can use the time getting set up. How’s your car? Hot?”
“Not a bit. Paid cash for it in Bangor. Absolutely legitimate.”
“Same name as with the diner?”
“Sure. My own.”
“We’ll use mine then. To be on the safe side. It can’t be traced back to me.”
“It’s a mace?”
“Yeah. I got it off Chemy, in Georgia. You know, the little guy with the brother?”
“Sure. It should be okay, then.”
“It is.”
“All right.” Handy got to his feet. “I’m gonna stop in with Madge for a while. Come along?”
“Not tonight.”
“See you in the morning, then.”
Handy went out, and Parker switched off the light. He sat by the window, smoking, and looking out at the highway. Handy was troubling him. Buying a car, buying it legitimate. Buying into a diner, and planning to work in it. And being willing to come into a job for nothing out of sentimentality.
It was a bad sign when a man like Handy started owning things and started thinking he could afford friendships. Possessions tie a man down and friendships blind him. Parker owned nothing, the men he knew were just that, the men he knew, not his friends and they owned nothing. Sure, under the name of Charles Willis he had pieces of a few businesses here and there, but that was for tax reasons. He stayed away from those places, had nothing to do with them, didn’t try to get a nickel out of them. What Handy was doing was something else again buying things to have them. And working with a man, not for a profit, but because he likedhim.
When a man like Handy started craving possessions and friendships, it meant he was losing the leanness. It was a bad sign.
2
SYRACUSE STARTED FLAT, with used-car dealers and junkyards. Then came stucco bars and appliance stores in converted clapboard houses. It was late Friday afternoon, with rush hour and weekend traffic starting to overlap. Parker pushed the Olds through the traffic, making the best time he could. South Salina Street. The stores got taller and older, the traffic heavier, till they were downtown, where all the streets were one way the wrong way.
“I hate this city,” Parker said.
“It’s a city,” Handy replied. “They’re all like this.”
“I hate them all, then. Except resort towns. Miami, Vegas, you don’t run into this kind of thing.”
“You’re like me, you like a little town. You ever been to Presque Isle?”
“No.”
“You should see the winters. Snow over your head.”
“Sounds great.”
Handy laughed. “I like it,” he said. “We turn at the next corner. You make a right.”
“It’s one way the other way.”
“Oh, yeah. Take the next right and circle around. I forgot about the one-way stuff.”
The next corner was no good either. The cross street was one way, in the same direction as the block before it. Parker ran on down another block in time to get stopped by the traffic light. Women in heavy coats carrying clothing-store boxes massed around the car in a herd. It wasn’t December yet, but the Christmas decorations were up. A few Thanksgiving decorations were still up, too; nobody’d remembered to take them down.
The light turned green and Parker made the right. The next cross street still was one way the wrong way. “They got any oneway streets in Presque Isle?”
“Maybe one or two. You can live there all your life and not have to worry about it.”
“Maybe I’ll go there some day.”
“Stop in the diner, I’ll fry you an egg.”
“Thanks.”
The next street allowed them to go in the direction they wanted.
Handy said, “I’m sorry about this. I wish I knew somebody in Buffalo, then we could of just by-passed this town.”
“It’d be the same in Buffalo.”
“Yeah, but we’d bethere.”
“After you make the connection, we’ll get up north of town by the thruway and stop in at a motel. I don’t want to drive any more after this. We can get to Buffalo tomorrow and still have plenty of time.”
“Okay, good. Park anywhere.”
“Sure.”
There weren’t any parking spaces. They passed the building they wanted, and there still weren’t any parking spaces. The curb for the last half-block to South Salina Street on the right was empty of cars, but lined with No Parkingsigns. Parker would have been willing to go around the block again, but to go around the block again, he’d have to go halfway around the city, so he pulled to the curb in the forbidden zone and shut off the engine. Let them give him a ticket. The car was a mace anyway. And he wouldn’t have it more than a week or two. Once the job was done, he’d unload it. So let them copy down the licence number in their little books and pile the tickets on the hood like snow.
They both got out of the car. Parker locked it, and they walked back down the block to the building they wanted, two tall men in hunting jackets and caps among the milling herd of stocky women with their arms full of packages.
It was an old building, with plaster walls, painted a bad green. There were two elevators, but only one of them was running. Because it was nearly six o’clock, the old man who ran the one elevator was sitting on his stool with his coat on, waiting for the last few tenants to come down so he could go home. He frowned when he saw Parker and Handy, because he knew they’d be keeping one of the tenants past six o’clock.
“Everybody’s gone home,” he said, hoping they’d believe him and go away.
Handy had called earlier today, from Binghamton. “Our man’s still here. Third floor we want.”
Handy’s man was Amos Klee, and on the directory between the elevators it said: AMOS KLEE, Confidential Investigations. Klee was a licenced, bonded private detective, but if he’d tried to make a living, as a private detective in a city like this with an office in a building like this one he would have starved to death in a month. Klee had one priceless asset which paid his rent and kept him in spending money. That asset was his pistol permit. Plural. Pistol permits. The State of New York had given Amos Klee three pieces of paper each of which allowed him, for purposes of business, to own and to possess and to carry a pistol. Three pieces of paper, three pistols. Klee normally owned between fifty and a hundred pistols, but he never had more than three at a time where they might be noticed.
Pistols were Klee’s business. Revolvers and automatics, and, occasionally, shotguns and rifles. Just twice in his career he had been asked for machine guns, and both times he’d been able to supply the order. Both times the customer had had to wait a bit, but Amos Klee had eventually supplied the order.