“Who should he ask for?”
“Me. Parker.”
“What time Thursday?”
“Next Thursday. Not this Thursday.”
“I got that. What time?”
“Nine o’clock.”
“Morning or night?”
“For Christ’s sake. Night.”
“If I see him, I’ll tell him.”
“Thanks.”
He hung up, and the coins clattered deeper into the box. He left the booth and went out of the drugstore. He was on the outskirts of Indianapolis, far enough away from the centre of the city for the drugstore to have a parking lot. The blue Olds was there, nosed against the stucco side of the building.
Parker had had the Olds four days now, and it worked fine. He slid behind the wheel and pulled out of the lot. He was farther north now and, though the sun was bright, the air was cool. He headed east, through Speedway out to Clermont, and between Clermont and Brownsburg he turned off on a small road where a faded sign announced, “Tourist Accommodations”. The land was flat, but heavily forested, and he was practically on top of the house before he saw it. He pulled around to the side and parked.
It was a big house painted white some years ago. Bay windows protruded from its sides with no pattern, like growths. The porch was broad with narrow rococo pillars. Four rocking chairs stood empty on the porch. A second-floor curtain flicked and was still.
Parker got out of the Olds and walked around to the front and up on the porch. A small, bald man in white shirt and grey pants with dark-blue suspenders appeared at the screen door and squinted out at him. He had a pair of wire-framed spectacles pushed up on his forehead, but he didn’t bother to lower them, just squinted.
The plastic surgery Parker had had done seemed like a good idea at the time, but it made for complications. Nobody knew him any more. He stood outside the screen door and said, “I’m looking for a room.”
“Sorry,” said the bald man. “We’re all full up right now.”
Parker looked up. There was a light over the door in a complicated fixture supposed to look like a lantern. He said, “I see you got that fixed.”
“I did what?”
“The last time I was here,” Parker told him, “Eddie Hill got drunk and took off after that girl of his and shot that light all to hell. Remember?”
Now the bald man did lower his glasses to his nose, and peered through them at Parker’s face. “I don’t remember you,” he said.
“One time when Skimm was here,” Parker said, “he buried a wad of dough out back some place. If you haven’t looked for it, you can now. He’s dead.”
“You know who you sound like?”
“Parker.”
“Be damned if you don’t.”
A new voice, from inside the house said, “Invite the gentleman in, Begley.”
Begley pushed open the screen door. “Maybe you ought to come inside.”
Parker went in and saw a man in the entrance to the parlour. He was holding a gun, but not aiming it anywhere in particular at the moment.
“Hi, Jacko,” said Parker.
Jacko was chewing gum. He said. “You got the advantage on me, friend. I don’t seem to recollect your name.”
“Parker.”
“Crap.”
Begley had been leaning close, squinting up at Parker’s face, and he now said, “No, now wait a minute, Jacko. I be damned if it ain’t Parker! He’s had one of them face jobs, that’s all.”
“Oh, yeah?” Jacko frowned, chewing his gum. “Okay, who worked that Fort Wayne payroll job with you, back in ‘49?”
“You did.”
“Sure. Just the two of us?”
“Bobby Gonzales drove. Joe Sheer worked the safe. The inside man was named Fahey or something like that. He tried to run out with the boodle and you took him up to Lake Michigan and threw him in.”
“Where’d we hide out after the job?”
“In a trailer camp outside Goshen. It isn’t there any more.” Parker turned to Begley. “Let’s go sit down. I want to talk. You too, Jacko.”
“I’m not satisfied yet,” said Jacko.
“Then go to hell!”
Jack laughed. “Maybe you’re Ronald Reagan with the FBI. How do I know?”
“You’re scared of guns, Jacko, so you got no cartridge under the hammer. You’ll have to pull that trigger twice before you get any action, and I can move faster than that. Put it away, or I’ll take it away from you.”
Begley laughed then, and said, “Nobody but Parker can irritate people so quick.”
Jacko put the pistol inside his jacket, looking angry. “One of these days, Parker,” he said, “I’ve got to check you out. Nobody’s as mean as you talk.”
“Maybe not.” Parker went on past him into the parlour, where there was a sofa and three rocking chairs. He picked one of them, sat down, and said, “I want to talk anyway.”
The other two came in and sat down. Begley said, “You want a room now?”
“No. Two weeks from now.”
“You got something lined up?” Jacko asked him. “You want a hand, maybe?”
“No. I want to tell you a story.” He told them quickly about his trouble with the syndicate. Jacko sat impassive, chewing his gum. Begley listened, fascinated, blinking behind his spectacles.
“So I’m going to settle this thing with the Outfit once and for all,” Parker finished. “That’s why I’ll need a room in a couple weeks.”
“Why tell me?” asked Jacko.
“It’s a chance for you. It’s a chance for all the boys. The Outfit is full of cash, all untraceable, and they can’t call in the law if they get taken. We’ve always left them alone, and they’ve always left us alone. Now they’re making trouble for me. If you hit them, they’ll blame me.” He turned to Begley. “I want you to spread the word, anybody else drops in. Now’s the time to hit the syndicate.”
“For you?” demanded Jacko. “Why should I do anything for you, Parker?”
“Not for me. I don’t want a cut or anything else. I’m just spreading the word. You know of any syndicate operation that would be an easy take?”
Jacko laughed. “Half a dozen,” he said. “They pay the law and they figure that’s all they got to do.”
“So here’s your chance, that’s all.”
“But it helps you, too, Parker.”
“So what?”
Jacko shrugged. “I’ll think it over.”
Begley said, “I’ll spread the word, Parker. You can count on me.”
“Good.”
“They should have paid you in the first place the way Bronson promised. It was your money.”
Jacko said, “Maybe they didn’t figure it that way.”
“They figured it wrong,” said Parker. He got to his feet. To Begley, he said, ‘I’ll see you in a couple weeks.”
“Okay.” Begley walked him to the door. “Couple more boys you know upstairs. Want to say hello?”
“No time. Spread the word on the new face, too, will you?”
“Sure.”
Parker went back out to the Olds. Begley stood on the porch staring after him as he drove away. He drove back to the highway and headed north again, crossing into Illinois, getting as far as Kankakee before stopping at a motel for the night. He wrote half a dozen more letters that night. This had been his routine all the way up from Georgia. Stop off to see one or two people every day along his route, and, at night, write letters to the men too far off the route for him to visit. He’d written about thirty letters so far, and seen seven people. If only a third of them took the chance he was suggesting, it would be enough. The Outfit would start to hurt.
3
THERE WAS A LARGE poster frame beside the entrance. In it, a faggot with black wavy hair smiled above his bow tie. His eyes were made up like Theda Bara’s. Under the bow tie it said: RONNIE RANDALL & HIS PIANO EVERY NITE! Over the entrance, small spots shone on huge silver letters against a black background: THE THREE KINGS. Pasted to the glass of the left-hand entrance door was the notice: No cover, no minimum except weekends. Covering the glass of the other door was a poster: SALLY & THE SWINGERS EVERY FRI. SAT. SUN! The building behind all this information was low and squat, made of concrete blocks painted a pale blue. Porthole windows marched away to the right of the entrance across the front of the building, showing amber bar lights deep inside, making it look like midnight in an aquarium. Parker drove by twice, very slowly, and then parked half a block away in the darkness of a side street.