When he’d come north at the wheel of a stolen car, with less than a hundred bills to his name, he’d contacted a few of the men he’d worked with in the past, letting it be known he was available for any job in the offing. He’d holed up in a place outside Scranton called the Green Glen Motel, run by an old hooker named Madge, and a week later a telephone call had come from Dan Kifka.
It was a strange conversation. In the first place, neither of them wanted to say anything specific over a machine as public and leaky as a telephone and in the second place, Kifka didn’t really believe he was talking to Parker.
He referred to that immediately after identifying himself, saying, ‘This is a new number for you, isn’t it?’
Parker knew what he meant. In the past no one had ever been able to contact him direct. Anyone who wanted to talk to Parker about business had to send a message through a guy named Joe Sheer, a retired jugger living outside Omaha. But Joe was dead now, a part of the trouble that had cost Parker everything but his neck.
He said, ‘I just moved. You hear about Joe?’
‘Hear what?’
‘He died. I went to the funeral.’
‘Oh. I tried calling you there, but no answer.’
‘That’s why.’
Kifka hesitated, and then said, ‘Well, I just called to say hello, see how things are going. You working?’
‘Looking for an opening,’ Parker told him.
‘Good luck.’
‘Thanks.’
‘If you see Little Bob Negli out your way, tell him hello for me.’
‘I will,’ Parker said, knowing Kifka meant he wouldn’t be coming out to Scranton himself but would be sending Little Bob. He said, ‘He knows about my face, doesn’t he?’ He’d had plastic surgery done last year, and hadn’t met up with Little Bob since then.
‘He knows,’ Kifka said.
Little Bob came out two nights later. Parker was lying fully clothed on the bed in his motel unit, watching television with the sound off, when the knock came at the door. He got to his feet, switched on the light and off the television set, and unlocked the door.
It was Madge, who owned the place. In her sixties now, she was one of the few hookers in the history of the world who really did save her money. When age retired her she’d bought this motel, it being the closest she could get legitimately to her old profession. She was too talkative and too nervous to be a madam, but she could run a motel where the rooms were rented mostly by the hour. She could also be trusted, so people in Parker’s line of work occasionally used her place for meetings or cooling off.
She came in now and shut the door, saying, ‘Little Bob Negli’s here. You want to talk to him?’ She was still bone-thin, which once had been her main selling point. Her white hair was harsh-looking and brittle, chopped short in an Italian cut. Curved black lines had been drawn on her face where the eyebrows had been plucked, and her long curving fingernails were painted scarlet, but she wore no lipstick; her mouth was a pale scar in a thin, deeply lined face.
She always dressed young, in bright sweaters and stretch pants, with dangling Navaho earrings and jangling charm bracelets. Inside the young clothing was an old body, but inside the old body was a young woman. Madge would hold onto 1920 until the day she died; she’d never had a better year and wasn’t likely to.
Now she said, ‘Little Bob’s in my room behind the office. You want to go there, or have him come here, or what?’
‘I’ll go there.’
‘I’ll fix drinks,’ she said.
Parker didn’t want drinks, but he said nothing. Madge had to turn everything into a party. Every day was old home week.
They left Parker’s room and walked down the sidewalk in front of the units toward the office. ‘It’s good to have the old bunch around,’ Madge was saying, and told him who’d been here last month, and two months ago, and six months ago. This was the one thing Parker couldn’t take about her, her gossiping. She never opened her mouth to the wrong people, but she never shut it with insiders. Parker walked along beside her now and let her chatter wash off him like rain.
They went into the office, where Ethel was sitting at the desk. Ethel was about twenty-five, mentally retarded, Madge’s cleaning girl and general assistant. Madge told her, ‘I’ll be in back with the boys,’ and she nodded without saying anything.
Little Bob Negli was sitting on the green leatherette sofa in the back room, smoking a cigar half as tall as him. He was a shrimp: four feet eleven and one-half inches tall. He had the little man’s cockiness, standing and moving like the bantamweight champion of the world, chomping dollar cigars, wearing clothes as fancy as he could find, sporting a pompadour in his black hair that damn near brought his height up to normal. He looked like something that had been shrunk and preserved in the nineteenth century.
He got to his feet when Madge and Parker walked in and frowned up at Parker’ as though he had a really tough decision to make and the civilised world hung on his answer. He said to Madge, ‘That’s really Parker?’
‘It really is,’ she said. ‘He traded one sour puss for another. Wait’ll you spend five minutes with him, you’ll see. He hasn’t changed a bit, still the same old Cheery Charlie, life of the party.’
Parker said, ‘Maybe Bob wants to talk business.’
Madge grinned. ‘See what I mean? What do you want to drink, Parker?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Maybe that’s your trouble. Bob, you want a refill, just holler.’
‘Will do, Madge.’
She went out, and Negli said, ‘I wouldn’t call it an improvement exactly.’
‘That’s enough about the face,’ Parker told him. He pulled a foam-rubber chair over in front of the sofa and sat down.
Negli stayed on his feet a few seconds longer. He seemed to be trying to make up his mind about something, maybe whether he should be insulted or not. But then he sat down arid said, ‘Business, then. You interested in a score?’
‘That depends.’
‘On what?’
‘The take, the risk, and who I’m supposed to be working with.’
‘Of course. That’s to be expected. But if the take is good and the risk is low and the people are known to you, you’re interested?’
Parker nodded.
‘All right.’ Negli put the long cigar in his mouth and talked around it. ‘The take,’ he said, ‘is between a hundred and a hundred fifty G. The risk is practically nil. The people, so far, are Dan Kifka and Arnie Feccio and me.’
‘So far,’ Parker echoed. ‘How many you figure all told?’
‘The details aren’t all worked out yet. We figure six or seven.’
‘That’s a big string.’
Negli shrugged. ‘We want risk low, we got to have enough men.’
That’s fifteen to twenty G a man, depending on how much and how many.’
‘Sure. Figure fifteen minimum.’
‘What’s the job?’
‘Gate receipts. College football gate receipts.’
Parker frowned. ‘How do you figure low risk?’
‘It all depends on the plan. We’ve already got a way in, and we ought to be able to make some kind of advantage out of the traffic jam after the game. There’s always a traffic jam after a football game.’
‘All you’ve got,’ Parker said, ‘is a way in and an itch.’
‘You ever hear a job start with more?’
‘It better have more before it’s worked.’
‘So come in and see Dan; you know where he lives. He’ll give you everything we got.’
‘Anybody asking ace shares?’
‘No. Equal divvy, share and share alike.’
Parker considered, and then nodded. ‘I’ll come in and talk,’ he said. ‘I don’t promise any more than that.’
‘Of course not.’ Negli got to his feet, the cigar at a jaunty angle in the corner of his mouth. ‘You’ll like this operation,’ he said. ‘It’s neat and clean. And profitable.’