But he didn’t care. He told himself he didn’t care, not about that, nor about the betrayal of his friends, nor about anything else. Soon this would all be over, the robbery finished. Parker gone, the money coming in, and then everything would be all right. Claire wasn’t going to get a penny until after she’d been in Billy’s bed, he’d promised himself that, and he was going to stick to it.
In the meantime, the work was almost finished. Billy was hot inside his coat, perspiring, but he didn’t dare take it off because he’d disobeyed Parker’s orders. His gun, a chrome-handled Colt Commander .38 automatic, was in its holster under his left arm. He’d bought it before attending his second convention as a dealer, he’d worn it almost constantly for a while, he still wore it at every possible excuse, and it seemed to him that tonight’s work required its presence more than any other time before this. So he had it on, Parker or no Parker, and he also had his coat on, and inside it he was perspiring.
But it was all almost over. Parker himself came over and said, “It’s ten to three. When you’re done with that case, carry it down to the truck. We’re clearing out.”
“Good,” Billy said, and meant it. He’d been more nervous than he liked to admit, and he was glad it was coming to an end.
It only took him a minute more to finish packing this case, so he would be leaving before any of the others, Parker or Lempke or Claire. He picked up the case, which seemed to weigh a ton, L and carried it over to the hole in the wall, where he had to put it down, go backwards through the hole, and then pull the case through after himself.
The tour office was very dark, after the brightly lit bourse room. Billy stood there a few seconds, waiting for his eyes to adjust, and then he saw Jack French standing over by the door, wearing hat and topcoat.
Billy was surprised and confused, but not frightened. “French!” he said, “What are you doing here?”
“Come over here,” French said, and motioned, and Billy saw he was holding a gun in his hand. Billy, without thinking, dropped the case and reached for his gun.
He died astonished.
Seven
UNTIL SHE heard the sound of the shot Claire had thought there was nothing left for her to find out. But then she heard it, muffled and indistinct but unmistakable, and she thought, “Somebody just died.” And her knees gave way. She slid down sideways through the air, glancing off the edge of the table she’d been clearing, hitting the floor hard on her left shoulder, rolling onto her back and then just lying there, staring up at the ceiling.
She never actually lost consciousness. But she had no strength in her body, no will in her mind, no control over her emotions. Inside, she was gibbering with terror and guilt. Reality had just hit her a paralyzing blow.
Because it wasn’t a game, this venture she was on. Nothing in life was a game, nothing, and she hadn’t known that until this second.
It had seemed a game when she was growing up, and the name of the game was let-‘em-have-less-than-they-want, and if she lost that game sometimes what did it matter? And later on the name of the game was glamorous-life, and even when Ed died it didn’t really change things, because he had died hundreds of miles away on some mountainside, his death as glamorous as his life, his death merely another way of playing the game.
And when the clod Billy came snuffling around, just at the time she learned how little Ed had left her, that she wasn’t merely broke but actually in debt, the name of the game became confidence, and that was just another way to have the glamorous life and to give them less than they wanted. Claire the con woman, romantic and elusive.
The number seventy thousand had come out of the air. Actually she owed about eighteen hundred dollars and was prepared to skip out on that, but Billy had done some boasting about how much he had salted away and it had seemed to Claire she’d do better at the game of life with a healthy stake, so she’d given him a mysterious song and dance, a couple of half-promises, and it turned out Billy didn’t have that sort of cash on hand.
But Claire could already taste the money. With a lot of money she could leave Indianapolis, travel, see a lot more of the good life that Ed had been her entree to, while without the money she was stuck in this town, she’d have to hunt around in too much of a hurry for a second husband, the game would turn sour.
The transition from Billy’s called bluff to this bourse room on this Saturday night had been gradual, with the game slowly becoming one that was played for keeps, but still being a game, always a game. So she’d given Parker the same seventy-thousand story as Billy, but something about the remote strength and cold self-assurance of Parker had gotten through to her and she’d given him other things, too, that Billy had never gotten. Which simply made the game more interesting.
Until the shot.
It was as though a layer of mud had been abruptly washed away from the inscription on a tomb, so that she could suddenly see words she had never suspected the existence of before, telling her a truth too unbearable to support. So she had fallen, and was lying here, and in all the jumble that her mind had turned into only one picture kept returning and returning: Ed, broken open like a sausage, smeared across that rocky mountainside. Inside, in a quiet corner away from the panic and the guilt and the chaos, she began for the first time to mourn her husband.
Parker came into her line of vision, a gun in his hand, but he was only a black shape between her and the white ceiling. He spoke, harsh and quick, and the words might as well have been Swahili. She wanted to say to him, “Help me escape the responsibility. Don’t let them make me pay. I didn’t know how it was.” But she couldn’t organize words, couldn’t find the strength or the method.
Parker leaned down and slapped her face, very hard, so that her head rocked, and afterward the whole side of her face began to sting and burn, the feeling getting worse and worse. She closed her eyes, knowing she deserved it but wishing it wouldn’t happen.
This time when he spoke she understood the words. “On your feet,” he said. “Now. On your feet.”
She didn’t move, and he slapped her again, on the other side of the face, even harder, and she burst violently into tears, as though she’d been weeping for an hour already. As though someone would turn on a television set and the picture would show someone who has been crying for a long while without letup.
But Parker wouldn’t change. His voice cut through her own sounds, telling her again to get on her feet, and only the new fear of his hand made it possible for her to nod her head and move her arms and actually start to get up.
He didn’t help. She pulled herself up with the table beside her, and when she was vertical he said, “We’re getting out of here. Stay with me.”
“Don’t show me any pictures,” she said, because it seemed to her that Parker was some kind of judge, and he had pictures of who had been killed when the shot was fired, and he was going to show them to her, and she wouldn’t be able to bear it.
“Stay with me,” he said, ignoring her, and started away.
She moved after him, hurrying on shaky legs, her mind still a jumble, and ahead of her Lempke came backing out of the wall and turned around and his head was all bloody. “French,” he said, wide-eyed, and fell down.
Claire began to scream.
PART FOUR
One
THE SCREAM tore it.
Parker looked around, and the job was sour, it was dead, it was in pieces around him. Billy Lebatard had to be dead. Lempke was maybe dead, maybe dying, maybe just unconscious. Carlow and Mainzer had to be already taken out of the play. French had come back in to hijack the operation, and was blocking the exit through the tour office.
There’d only been the one shot. Lebatard must have brought his goddam gun after all, that’s why he kept his coat on. French was a pro, he wouldn’t be in a hurry to do any shooting, so Lebatard must have forced his hand. Then he’d slugged Lempke when Lempke poked his head through the hole in the wall, but French was a little shaky himself now and he didn’t manage to get Lempke right. He had got him enough to put him out, but not before showing himself to Claire and setting her off like a siren.