Mourner (4 page)

Harrow looked back and forth from Parker to his daughter, beaming and happy. "A fascinating history," he said, swelling on the words, "a fascinating history. A bloody revolution, a somewhat less bloody rebellion, a civil war, an economic crash all have touched this small statue and influenced its destiny. It has travelled from France to Canada to Atlanta to Boston and to a provincial upstate New York town. Now it is in Washington. It has been stolen at least twice, and possibly three times, and now it is to be stolen again. A fascinating, fascinating history."

"Yeah," said Parker. He lit a cigarette and threw the match towards an ashtray. "The point is, you want me to get it for you."

"Exactly. I will give you, of course, full particulars"

"What's in it for me?"

"What? Oh." Harrow looked puzzled for a second, but now he smiled radiantly. "Of course, you expect to be paid. You'll get the gun, for one thing, and a certain sum of money."

"What sum?"

Harrow sucked on his cheek, studying Parker's face. Finally, he said, "Five thousand dollars. In cash."

"No."

Harrow raised his eyebrows. "No? Mr Willis, I consider the gun to be the major item of payment. Any cash would be in the nature of a bonus."

"Fifty thousand," Parker said.

"Good God! You aren't serious?"

Parker shrugged, and waited.

"Mr Willis, I could buythe statuette for little more than that. I've told you, the present owner has no idea"

"You can't buy it at all," Parker said, "or you would."

"Well." Harrow pursed his lips, glanced with an aggrieved look at his daughter, sucked on his cheek again, drummed his fingers on the book in his lap. "I'll go to ten thousand, Mr Willis. Absolutely my top offer. Believe me, the statuette is worth no more than that to me."

"I'm not bargaining," Parker replied. "Fifty thousand or get out."

"And shall we go to the police, Mr Willis? Shall we go to the police?"

Parker got to his feet, went over to the closet, and took out a suitcase. He opened it on the bed and turned to the dresser.

Harrow said, "Very well. Twenty-five. Half now, and the balance when you get the statuette."

Parker opened the top dresser drawer and began transferring shirts to the suitcase.

Harrow watched him a minute longer, and Bett watched them both. The father was frowning, the daughter smiling.

"Thirty-five."

Parker started on the second drawer.

"Damn it, man, we have the gun!"

Bett said, "Give up, Dad, he won't change his mind."

"Ridiculous," Harrow said. "Absurd. We have him over a barrel." He frowned in petulance at Parker. "All right. All right, stop that asinine packing, you're not fooling anyone."

Parker started on the third drawer.

"I said you could stop packing. Fifty thousand. Agreed."

Parked paused, "In advance," he said. "The fifty thousand now, the gun after I get the statue."

"Half now."

"I told you I don't bargain."

Harrow shook his head angrily. "All right. The money now, the gun afterwards."

Parker left the suitcase and went back to the chair by the writing table. "All right," he said. "Come over here. Bring your chair. I want this Kapor's address. You've been in his house, I want as detailed a ground plan as you can give me. I want to know what room the statue is kept in, and if he's got more than one there I want a detailed description of the one I'm after. I want to know how many people are in the household, and what you know about the habits of each of them."

It took a while. Harrow wasn't an observant man, and his memory had to be prodded every step of the way. It took half an hour to get even an incomplete ground plan, with half the interior still terra incognita. As for the people living there, there was Lepas Kapor himself, and some servants. Harrow didn't know how many, or if any of them lived in. Kapor was unmarried, but Harrow thought that occasionally a woman stayed in the house overnight.

When Parker finally had everything from Harrow he was likely to get, Harrow was put on the send for the fifty thousand. Bett wanted to stick around for bed games, but Parker wasn't in the mood. He was never in the mood before a job, always in the mood right after.

After they'd gone, Parker went down to the bar and got Handy. Together they went over the ground plan and the sketchy information they had, and the next day, after Harrow had turned over the attachй case full of cash and Parker had checked it in the hotel safe, they took off for Washington.

Kapor lived in a sprawling colonial brick house with white trim off Garfield, four blocks from the Klastrava embassy. A five-foot hedge surrounded the property. The two-car garage was behind the house, like an afterthought. A gravel driveway led in from the street through a break in the hedge, made a left turn at the front door, and then continued on around to the garage.

Parker and Handy took turns three days and nights watching the house, and by then they'd filled in some of the holes in Harrow's information.

There were five servants, but only one slept in. The chauffeur did not sleep in, nor did the gardener-handyman, the cook, or the maid. The butler-valet-bodyguard did sleep in. His room was on the second floor front, right corner. Kapor's room was in the back somewhere.

The house was not in an isolated neighbourhood. Also, because it held an important man attached to the embassy of a country generally considered unfriendly to the United States, it was given unusually complete police surveillance. Prowl cars passed at frequent and erratic intervals day and night. There was also the possibility that the FBI or some other government agency was watching the house. It didn't look like an easy house to break into undisturbed.

Handy suggested the old tried-and-true maid ploy. Meet the maid, gain her confidence, and eventually get a chance to make an impression of the keys in her purse. With the keys, a bold frontal attack walk straight up to the door at a relatively early hour of the night, unlock it, and go on in.

Because it was Handy's idea, and because he had a more pleasant personality, he went after the maid. He was in his early forties, tall and strong-faced, like a lean Vermont sheriff. The maid, Clara Stoper, was about thirty and good-looking in a harsh sort of way. She spent her Monday and Thursday nights in a bar on Wisconsin Avenue, and it was there that Handy made the meet. That was a week ago, and tonight he'd been going to her apartment, where he was sure he would be able to get his hands on the keys. She'd already given him a ten-thirty deadline, so he'd told Parker he'd be back by eleven. But eleven o'clock had passed and he hadn't shown up, and then the two amateur bums had come up the fire-escape and gradually all hell had broken loose. So if Harrow had sent this second group after that goddamn statue, Harrow was in trouble.

1

"No trouble." Handy was sitting up now, and looked in better shape. He held the.380 loosely in his lap, his eye on Pliers. "He won't go anywhere."

"You guys are wasting your time," Pliers said. He looked surly and belligerent, but not very tough.

Parker got out of the truck and walked to the bungalow. It was still dark. All the houses around here were dark, and even the street lights seemed dimmed, because of the trees along the sidewalks, which cut off some of the light. Parker was the only thing moving on either sidewalk and there were no cars in sight.

There was a driveway next to the bungalow, but no garage. The driveway was just a double dirt track. Parker used it to go around to the rear. The kitchen door was locked, but it jimmied quickly and quietly. Parker stepped inside.

The house had four rooms. Living-room, kitchen, two bedrooms, and a bath. Without turning on any lights, Parker moved through them and found them all empty. He went out the front door and walked back to the truck. He started it and drove to the bungalow, up the driveway, and around to the back yard. "Hold him a minute more," he said to Handy, and got out of the truck again. He went into the house and turned on the kitchen light. Enough light spilled out the rear window so he could switch off the truck lights.

Handy could walk now, but stiffly. The three of them went into the bungalow, and while Handy covered Pliers with the.380, Parker frisked him. Back at the garage he'd only gone over him for hardware; now he was emptying everything out of the man's pockets. Under the white coverall Pliers was wearing brown slacks and a green flannel shirt.

His goods gradually stacked up on the kitchen table. A wallet, a pack of Marlboros in the box, a Zippo lighter with some sort of Army insignia on one side, a pair of pliers with electrician's tape on the handles, a screwdriver, a switchblade knife, a small flat black address book, an inhaler, and a tin packet of aspirin. The wallet contained thirty-three dollars, two pictures of a girl in a bathing suit, a picture of Pliers himself in a bathing suit, and a lot of cards Army discharge, driver's licence, chauffeur's licence, membership card in a Teamsters local, membership card in a gym all made out to Walter Ambridge of Baltimore.

Finished with the wallet, Parker dropped it on the table. "All right, Wally, sit down."

"I'm called Walter." Pliers said it truculently, and he didn't sit down.

Parker hit him just above the belt. The wind whooshed out of him and he sagged. Parker pushed his shoulder slightly, to guide him, and he sat down. Handy was leaning against the refrigerator, still casually holding the.380.

Parker sat down in the other kitchen chair and rested his hands on the table. "All right, Wally," he said. "Who's Menlo?"

"Up yours."

Parker shook his head and picked up the pliers. He extended them towards Handy. "Take off his left thumbnail."

Ambridge came out of the chair roaring. They had to hit him hard enough to stun him before they could get him to sit down again. Parker waited until comprehension came back into Ambridge's eyes, and then he said, "Do we have to tie you to the chair, Wally? Do we have to hurt you? I've been doing nothing but ask questions all night long. I don't like that. You answer in a hurry, Wally."

Ambridge glared harder than ever, to cover the fact he was frightened. He said, "You birds are in trouble, you know that? You didn't get cleared or nothing."

"Cleared? What the hell are you talking about?"

"With the Outfit, Goddamn it. You don't make any play around here without you clear it with the Outfit first. What the hell are you, amateurs?"

"Well, I'll be damned," said Parker. He knew what Ambridge was talking about, but he was surprised. He knew the Outfit it was what the syndicate was calling itself that year didn't like action in its territories without its approval, and he knew there were people in his line of work who never took on a job without letting the Outfit know about it first. But Parker himself would never work on a job that had been tipped to the Outfit, and he didn't know why anybody else did. The Outfit always wanted a piece, 5 or 10 per cent, for giving its permission, and permission was all it ever gave. Whatever local fix the Outfit had was no good for the transients if their deal went sour.

"So Menlo cleared this job with the Outfit. Which was you with, Menlo or the syndicate?"

"Outfit. I'm with the Outfit, on loan. Menlo didn't have no sidemen of his own."

Handy said, "He still doesn't have any worth a damn. These guys had me for three hours and didn't get me to say one word."

"Nobody knew you had a partner." Ambridge sounded resentful, as though Handy hadn't played fair.

"Now we get to the question again," Parker said. He picked up the pliers and held them loosely in both hands. "Who is Menlo, and what's he after?"

"It don't make no difference," Ambridge said. "I can tell you and it don't make no difference at all. You guys have had it anyway. You ought to know better. You can't buck the Outfit."

Handy laughed then, because Parker had bucked the Outfit twice in the last year and hadn't done too badly either time. And when it came to operating without Outfit permission, Parker and Handy and most of the people they knew had been doing it for years.

Ambridge looked at Handy the way a patriot looks at somebody who forgets to take off his hat when the flag goes by. "You'll get yours," he said.

"Quit stalling," Parker replied.

Ambridge shrugged. "I'll tell you. It don't make no difference. This guy Menlo came around" He looked suddenly startled, and stared at their faces. "Wait a minute," he said. "Are you guys Commies?"

Handy laughed again. "Not us, bo. We're capitalists from way back."

"Who is Menlo?" Parker was getting tired asking the same question and he was holding the pliers tighter now.

"Menlo's a defector." Ambridge said it the way a man says a good word he just recently learned. "He's from one of the Commie countries. They sent him over here to do a job for them, but he's copping out. He says this Kapor's heavy, and it's all got to be in the house, so we're taking it away from him."

"How heavy?"

"Maybe a hundred G."

Handy whistled low, but Parker said, "Crap. In cash? Where'd he get all that?"

"Don't ask me. This Menlo made a contact and talked to Mc talked to the boss here, and the boss figured it's worth the chance for a fifty-fifty split. Menlo's got the goods, the Outfit's got the manpower. It don't make no difference what I tell you; you can't buck the Outfit."

Maybe if he said it often enough, about his talking not making any difference, he'd start to believe it himself. Better than believing he'd been scared into it with nothing but threats.

Which meant he was probably telling the truth. The fat man, Menlo, had convinced the Outfit that Kapor's house was full of money. But where was an embassy aide from a small and unfriendly country likely to pick up a hundred thousand dollars? Either Menlo was pulling a fast one, giving the Outfit a tale in return for some muscle, or there was more to this Kapor than Harrow knew about.

The next one to see was Menlo. Parker asked, "Where's Menlo now?"

Ambridge shook his head. "I don't know. He's got the wind up, on account of you guys. He was going to stick at Clara's place, but he won't be there now."

"Don't get cute, Wally. You were supposed to get in touch with him after Handy talked. Where?"

"He didn't say. That's the straight goods, I swear to God. He just called us here and said take that guy to the garage, that he'd get in touch with us later."

Handy shifted his position against the refrigerator. "He'll be going deep now. We left the other two breathing back there."

"That's all right. Wally knows where he'd go."

"How the hell would I know?"

"He'll go where the rest of you can find him. He wants his muscle close to him. Where is it, Wally?"

"I don't know. That's the straight"

Parker lifted the pliers again. "First we tie you," he said. "Then we take your fingernails off. Then we take your teeth out."

"What do you want from me? I don't know where he is." Ambridge was sweating now, his forehead slick under the fluorescent light. "I been telling you what you want, what the hell do you think?"

"I think you're afraid of somebody finding out you let us know where to find Menlo. I think you're afraid of these pliers too. Which you afraid of most, Wally?"

"I don't knowwhere he is!"

Parker turned his head to Handy. "Take a look in the drawers. People usually keep twine around. We'll have to tie him down this time."

"Wait wait a second. Wait now, just wait a second." Ambridge was a big man, but he was fluttering now like a little man. "I mean, maybe I"

"Don't make up any addresses, Wally. You'll give us the address and we'll keep you on ice here till we check it out, and if Menlo isn't there we'll come back and talk to you again."

"I can't be surehe's there! For Christ's sake, maybe he"

"Take a chance."

"Well…" Ambridge wiped bis palm across his forehead, and it came away wet. He looked at his wet hand with a sort of dull surprise. "I'm a coward. I'm nothing but a coward."

Handy took pity on him. "The information didn't come from you. It'll never get back to your boss."

"What good am I?" Ambridge asked himself.

It was dangerous. They'd had to push him, but there was always the chance with somebody like Ambridge, a bluffer, that you'd push him too hard and he'd be forced to look at himself and see the truth. You take a coward, and you force him to look at himself and see that he isa coward, he's liable all of a sudden to not give a damn any more, to get fatalistic and despairing. If he gets to that point, all of a sudden nothing will work on him any more, no threats, no punishment. He'll just sit there and take it, thinking he deserves it anyway, thinking he's dead anyway so what difference does it make?

Ambridge was on the edge of that, and Parker could see it. A few more seconds, and Ambridge would be unreachable. Parker reached out and slapped him across the face, open-handed, a contemptuous slap, and said with scorn, "Hurry it up, punk. You're wasting my time."

It was enough. The slap didn't hurt, but it stung. So did the words, and the tone behind them. It was enough to snap Ambridge out of his introspection. He threw up the old defences again, came back with the bluff as strong as ever. He glared at Parker and started up out of the chair. Parker and Handy had to work a little to get him to sit down again, then Parker said, "You started to give us the address. Now give."

It was the old Ambridge who answered. "You think it makes any difference? You think you can just walk in and take him? You think he's alone? You go after him and you're both dead."

"Let us worry about that."

"You'll worry about it. There's a house in Bethesda, on Bradley Boulevard. Menlo's got the borrow of it from the Outfit till the job's done. We were supposed to call him there after we found out what your partner was up to. Go on out there, get your heads blown off. I only wish I could be there to watch."

They had him write the address down, and then they tied him and left him in a closet. They never did remember to go back.