Does Cathman really believe he can tell the law he knows details about a robbery, but he won’t give them over unless he gets a press conference? If he clams up, that’s already a crime. He’ll have no choice, once he sends this goddam manifesto to whoever he’s going to send it to the governor, probably, being the megalomaniac lunatic he is he’ll have no choice but to tell the law everything he knows.
And everything he knows is Parker.
“at the tone seven-thirty. Expect high clouds today, seasonable temperatures
“
Cathman’s radio alarm clock. It went on, talking about this and that, and soon it would tell Cathman his designer robbery had come off according to plan. Time he should type up that letter neat and send it out.
Along with what? What else would Cathman have to give? Parker’s name and phone number written down somewhere. Maybe a diary? How much of his own involvement with the heist was he figuring to admit? (They’d get the whole thing out of him in five minutes, which he wouldn’t be likely to realize.)
Cathman is a danger and an irritation and a lunatic, but he has to be talked to, for just a little while, to make sure all of the danger and all of the lunacy is known about. What else are Cathman and his idle hands up to?
Parker folded the four pages, folded them again, put them in his left hip pocket. Then he picked up the Python from the desk and walked down the hall and stopped in the bedroom doorway.
Cathman lay on his back now, pajama’d arms over the covers, still frowning as he stared at the ceiling. He didn’t notice Parker right away, and when the excited news announcer began the story of last night’s robbery all he did was close his eyes, as though the effort to make that robbery happen had merely left him exhausted.
“Turn it off,” Parker said.
Cathman’s eyes snapped open. He stared at Parker in terror. He didn’t move.
Parker pointed the Python at the radio. “Turn it off or I shoot it off.”
Cathman blinked at the gun, at Parker’s face, at the radio. At last he hunched himself up onto his left elbow and reached over to shut it off. Then he moved upward in the bed so he could slump with his back against the headboard. He looked dull, weary, as though his sleep had not been restful. He said, “I didn’t know you’d come here. I didn’t think you’d actually give me the money.”
Parker almost laughed at him. “Give you the money? I just read your confession.”
“My con? Oh. That’s not a confession.”
“The cops will think it is.”
Cathman sat up straighter, smoothing the covers with his hands, looking at Parker more carefully. He had finally realized his survival was at issue here. He said, “You don’t think I intend to mail that, do you?”
“With copies to the media.”
“Certainly not,” Cathman said. He was a bureaucrat, he lied effortlessly. He said, “It occurred to me, there was a remote possibility you people might get caught, and then, what if you implicated me?In that case, I had that letter to show, the letter I would have said I was just about to mail.”
“What else” Parker said, and too late he saw Cathman’s eyes shift, and something solid shut down his brain.
9
Voices, far away, down a yellow tunnel, then rushing forward:
“All I want is the money.”
“Why would I know where any”
“You ranthis thing! It’s yourrob!”
“I never did! I’m not a thief!”
“He’s here.Look, look at him, he’s here.”
Handcuffs, behind back. Pain, in small mean lightning bolts, in the back of the head.
“I didn’t know he was coming here, I never thought he”
“I’ve been watching. You think you can lie to me? I’ve watched this house. He was here before, dressed like from the electric company, he spent hourshere”
“I never expectedhim to”
“I’m thinking, who is this guy? He’s not from the electric company, breaking in, staying hours.”
“He wasn’t supposed to”
“You came home. You talked with him.”
“He was in my”
“You drank wine withhim!”
Lying on the floor. Legs free. That idiot Cathman silent now. This one isn’t connected to Cathman after all, he was following him, watching him. Why?
“I didn’t hear everything you said, I came over after you came home, I listened at the side window. You called him Parker and he said he needed police ID and there was something about an assemblyman and you asked him when he was going to commit the robbery and he wouldn’t tell you.”
This one has been here all along, bird-dogging, waiting for it to happen. Who the hell is he? Where did he come from?
Cathman finally had his voice back: “You’ve still got it wrong. I’m afraid of that gun of yours, I won’t pretend I’m not, but you’re still wrong. I don’t know where the money is. You’ll have to ask him,if you didn’t kill him.”
“I didn’t kill him, but let’s wake him up. Go get a glass of water from the bathroom.”
“I’m awake.”
Parker rolled over onto his back, as much as he could with his hands cuffed behind him, and tried not to wince. When he moved, the pain in his head gave an extra little kick. He opened his eyes and squinted upward.
The guy was youngish, pudgy, thick-necked, in wrinkled chinos and a pale blue dress shirt; Parker had never seen him before in his life. His right ear was covered by a bulky makeshift bandage, what looked like a length of duct tape over several thicknesses of toilet paper. A red scar pointed to the bandage along his right cheekbone.
The biker back at the cottages had come very close, almost close enough. The .45 automatic slug does a lot of damage even on the near misses, and that’s what this had been. The bullet scraped facial bone, took out an ear, and kept going.
Parker nodded at the bandage. “You got any ear left down in there?”
The guy looked surprised, and almost glad. “Are you wising off with me?”
“Tell him, Mr. Parker,” Cathman said. “Tell him I have nothing to do with it.”
The guy laughed. He enjoyed being in charge. “Oh, now he’s mister,is he?” He held a little .38 revolver in his right hand, which he pointed at Parker as he said, “I bet, if I shoot you in the ankle, and then ask a question, you’ll answer it. Whadaya think?”
“I think this is the wrong neighborhood for gunshots,” Parker said. “I think it’ll fill up with cops, and I don’t think anybody in this room wants that. If you’d like to think with your brain instead of your gun, reach in my left hip pocket and read Cathman’s confession.”
That threw the guy off-stride. “His what?”
Cathman babbled, “It was a letter, I was never going to send it, I needed a”
“Read it,” Parker said. With difficulty, he rolled the other way. “Then we can talk.”
The guy was cautious, and not completely an amateur. He came the long way around Parker, staying away from his feet, crouching down behind him, touched the barrel of the revolver to the back of his neck, and held it there while he pulled the folded pages out of his pocket. Then he stood and backed away to the doorway, where Parker could see him again.
Cathman said, “I have to go to the bathroom.”
The guy was struggling to unfold the pages while not letting go of the gun or looking away from Parker. Distracted, he said, “Go on, go on.”
Cathman, looking like a large sad child in his yellow and green striped pajamas, got out of the bed and padded barefoot into the connecting bathroom, while the guy got the pages open at last and started to read.
Parker rolled again and managed to sit up, then moved backward until he could lean against the foot of the bed. He looked around on the floor and didn’t see the Python, so it was probably in the guy’s pocket. He watched him read, and thought about how to deal with this situation.