He’d come up onto the roofs at the eastern end of the block, and the building he wanted was about hallway down. He passed clotheslines, passed a pigeon cote, passed a rumpled, frayed, faded blanket left behind by someone in a hurry. When he’d counted buildings and knew he was at the one he wanted, he moved to the rear and over the side and down the fire escape.
There was no light in the apartment at all, and both windows opening onto the fire escape were locked. Parker look a roll of Scotch tape from his pocket, ran some piece’s of tape back and forth across one of the windows near the inside lock, and then took a gun from his overcoat and used the butt of it to tap the taped window gently until it cracked several times. It was reasonably quiet this way and didn’t take too long. When he peeled some of the tape off again, pieces of glass came off with it, leaving a hole large enough for him to get his hand through and unlock the window.
He doubted there was a plant in the apartment at all, but just to be on the safe side he opened the window with slow caution and climbed in the same way. He could assume there was a police guard outside the apartment door, in the hallway out there, but other than that he should have the place to himself.
He did. The bedroom looked strange with one of the swords missing from the wall and with the messed-up bed, but the body was gone and so were the guns from the closet. The rest of the apartment was unchanged.
Parker went through it quickly but thoroughly. He wanted names. Male, female, it didn’t matter. What he wanted to know was Ellie Canaday’s life. It was someone from that life who’d come in here and ended that life, and taken the money; that was his mistake.
There were a couple of telephone numbers jotted down on the cover of the phone book, without any names or other identification. Parker wrote them down without expecting much from them.
On various papers here and there in the apartment Parker found four of the names he’d already gotten from Detective Dougherty, but no new names, and no female names at all.
Sometimes it was a bad thing to be devoid of small talk. If he’d had meaningless little conversations with her the last few weeks he might have learned something he could use now. lint Parker couldn’t stand meaningless conversations, couldn’t think of anything to say or any reason to say it.
The only time he talked about the weather, for instance, was when it had something to do with a job he was on.
All right, the apartment was useless. Still, he’d had to check it out before going back to Dan.
He went out the apartment the same way he’d gone in and started up the fire escape again. He went half a flight, and an automatic boomed above him, a metallic sting went pinging and ricocheting around him, slicing off the metal parts of the fire escape.
He flattened himself against the wall, dragging the pistol out of his left topcoat pocket, and above him again the automatic boomed and the slug went whining and whizzing on down the fire escape.
The first shot is for time. Not even bothering to look up, Parker raised his hand up over his head and fired upward, generally in the direction from which the shots had come. With the echoes of that shot still sounding around him, he ducked away again, back down the fire escape.
He could hear the sound of running feet within Ellie’s apartment as he went on by the window he’d broken. So the cop on guard duty out in the hall had heard the shooting and was coming to see what was happening.
Parker felt a cold rage pouring through him. The bastard was right there, right up there on the roof! It had to be him again, hanging around, hanging around, taking his stupid potshots at Parker just as though he knew what he was doing. Right up there on top of the goddam building, and instead of going up and taking the stupid bastard apart piece by piece until the money fell out, Parker was running like a rabbit the other way.
Because of the cop. Because the maniac on the roof was so stupid he’d stand up there and shoot off a gun with a cop on plant inside the same damn building.
So he was up there, and by rights Parker had him cold, but instead of having him cold Parker was forced to let him go. And more than that. He didn’t want the law to get its hands on the silly bastard yet, either, so he was going to have to make a distraction, he was going to have to cover for the bastard.
He had to make it possible for the bastard to get away.
Cursing, raging, Parker went on down the fire escape, firing a couple of shots nowhere in particular in order to distract the cop’s attention from the roof. Above, the cop had found the broken window and had become aware of Parker going down the fire escape and was hollering for him to stop.
The bottom was a square pit, a concrete hole spotted with dented garbage cans. A black metal door led into the basement of the building, through blundering darkness in which Parker cursed and kicked and hurried, and then to a flight of stairs, and up, and through another metal door to the first floor hallway.
He stopped running at the front door. The pistol went back into his pocket, he closed his overcoat, took a deep breath, and walked calmly out the front door. He turned to the right, and a block away heard sirens coming from the other way. But he was clear now.
And so was the quarry. No matter how stupid he was, he had to be clear now.
Ready for refolding.
Six
Janey was a disappointment with her clothes on; still pretty, but young and dull. She was wearing a pink sweater that made her breasts look like hard and youthful buds and a green skirt that gave no hint of the round rump underneath. She wore neither stockings nor socks, and on her feet were rumpled loafers.
She opened the door to Parker’s knock, saw Parker standing there in the hall, and said, ‘Oh, it’s you. You might as well come in. We’ve got a whole convention going here.’
‘Think you’ll need help?’
‘Don’t talk dirty.’
Parker heard sounds of talking from the kitchen and went over there first. Negli and Rudd and Shelly were sitting around the kitchen table drinking beer and playing knock poker. They looked up when Parker came in, and Negli said, ‘You must have it by now. You couldn’t of been gone this long and come back without it. They didn’t swipe it from you again, did they, Parker?’
‘In a little while, Negli,’ Parker said, ‘I’m going to use you for toilet paper.’
Shelly said, ‘What’s the score, Parker?’
‘Tied, nothing-nothing at the half.’
Negli said, ‘Where’ve you been all this time?’
‘Hiding from you.’ To Shelly and Rudd he said, ‘I’ve got to talk to Dan, I’ll be back in a minute.’
Negli had the last word, but Parker didn’t listen to it.
Kifka, still holding his own with the virus, was sitting up in bed with two large yellow bath towels draped over his shoulders and torso to keep him warm. Clinger was sitting hunched in a chair like a bankrupt laundromat owner in his lawyer’s outer office. Feccio, over at the window, was studying the world with an eye that reserved judgment.
Kifka looked up when Parker came in, and said, ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Getting started.’
Clinger roused himself a little bit, and said, ‘I would never have expected it from you, Parker. Not you.’ He said it like it was Parker’s fault the laundromat was bankrupt.
And it was; Clinger was right. Parker said, ‘I’ll get it back myself, you want that. You want to help, fine.’
Feccio, coming over from the window, said, ‘Parker, don’t lose your logic. It could have happened to any of us. Some things you can’t account for, you can’t plan in advance.’
Parker walked around the room with his arms swinging at his sides, his hands opening and closing. ‘The bastard can find me,’ he said. ‘He’s got no brains, no sensible plan, he’s a lousy shot, he’s an amateur, but he can find me like that. And I can’t find him at all.’