“No,” the guy said, and backed into the hall. “I don’t need to be that close to you, you’ll work it out.”
Of course he would. Well, it had been worth a try. Using the foot of the bed to push against, Parker turned himself partway around, got one leg under his torso, and pushed upward against the bed until he was on one knee. From there it was easier, except for one second when he wasn’t sure he’d keep his balance. But he did, again by leaning on the bed, and there he was, standing.
“I knew you could do it,” the guy said. “Come on out, lead the way. We’ll do this office first.”
They went down the hall and into the office, and the guy had Parker stand in the corner between the two windowed walls, facing the wall, while he did a quick open-slam of all the drawers in the desk. Then he said, “Okay, good. A lotta shit in here, you ask me. Back up to the door.”
Parker did, and felt the vibrations of metal scraping on metal as the key moved around the lock.
“Stand still, I’m doing this one-handed.”
“Right.”
The cuffs came off. “Walk.”
Parker walked. His head still ached, and now his wrists were sore. He rubbed them as he walked across the room, giving himself a fireman’s grip and kneading the wrists, and then sat at the desk.
A lot of shit in the drawers, as the guy had said, but not all of it useless. He palmed a paper clip, one of the larger thicker ones, and when he bent to open the bottom drawer he clipped it to the front of his shirt, below desk level. There were also ballpoint pens, simple plain ones that didn’t retract. He held one up, showing it to the guy in the doorway, saying, “I could use a pen. Okay?”
The guy snickered at him. “To throw at me?”
“Sure.”
“You want it, keep it.”
Parker dropped the pen in his shirt pocket, and kept searching, and at the end he had two pages from this year’s weekly memo book, one with Marshall Howell’s name and his own written there (the name “Parker” was followed by a question mark), and one with that phone number of his that Howell had given away. He had also smeared his palms over everything he’d touched. There was nothing else here either of danger or of use.
He held up the two torn-off pieces of paper and said, “I want to pocket these.”
The guy shrugged. His carelessness meant it didn’t matter what Parker did to avoid the law, he was dead meat anyway. He said, “Go ahead, you aren’t armed.”
Heisters don’t say armed,they say carryingor heavy,because a gun will be heavy in the pocket. Cops are armed.They don’t carry their guns in a pocket.
“I’m done,” Parker said, the two papers stowed away.
“Show me your hands.”
“Sure.” Parker held up empty hands, turned them to show the palms and the backs, fingers splayed out.
“Okay. Now do like we said. Stand up, turn around, back over to me.”
Parker stood, and as he turned he slid the paperclip into his right hand, held between the ball of the palm and the side of the thumb. The fingers of both hands were curled slightly. He backed across the room, seeing the guy indistinctly in the window ahead of him and to the right, and the guy backed across the hall. Very careful, very anxious.
“Okay, stop there.”
Parker stopped. The cold metal closed on his wrists again, and he heard the double snap. The guy tugged once on the cuffs to be sure they were locked in place, then said, “Okay, let’s go.”
“The bedroom.”
“Fine, fine.”
Parker went first, and in the bedroom he said, “I need those papers you dropped on the floor. Don’t tell me to pick them up, all right?”
The guy laughed. “I’ll help you out,” he said. “Go stand on the other side of the bed.” Too far away to kick him in the face, in other words.
“Sure,” Parker said, and walked over there, and through the open bathroom doorway he could see the mound of yellow and green striped cloth huddled between sink and toilet, like the laundry waiting for the maid. Well, you made a lot of trouble, Cathman, Parker thought, but tomorrow people will still pay money to see the next card.
The guy picked up Cathman’s four-page fantasy and put it in his own left side trouser pocket. He said, “Anything else?”
“Drawers. Dresser, bedside table. Anything paper.”
“I know, I know, toss it on the bed. You stay over there.”
“Naturally.”
While the guy was opening and closing drawers, Parker carefully shifted the paperclip to a more secure position, inside his curled fingers. The search was indifferent, but complete, and produced very little paper. Theater tickets, a medical prescription, a crossword puzzle magazine. Parker looked at it all, scattered on the bed, and thought at least some of this stuff would give this guy’s fingerprints to the law; the shiny magazine cover, for instance. He had to know it himself, so he had to already be in too deep shit to worry about such things. Which meant he wasn’t exactly careless in fact, he was very careful but he was reckless. So he’d be a little more hair-triggered and dangerous, but also possibly more readily confused and manipulated.
“Okay,” Parker said. “I’m ready.”
11
Then the next problem was the vehicle. They’d come downstairs, Parker being careful to rub along the wall, not wanting to lose his balance without hands to protect him in a fall, and the guy said, “My truck’s a block from here. You just walk a little ahead of me.”
“You’ll want to take my car,” Parker told him. “It’s about a block and a half that way.”
“Leave it, you can come back for it,” the guy said. “We’ll take my truck.”
“You want the car,” Parker insisted. He knew the guy was thinking about that shotgun in the truck, and wanted it with him, but Parker was thinking about the sixty-seven thousand dollars in the window well of the car.
The guy gave him an irritated look. “What’s your problem? You think the car’s more comfortable, because you’re cuffed? I don’t care about that. We’ll take the truck.”
“The point is,” Parker told him, “when we drive in there, if we’re in the car, they won’t shoot us.”
The guy frowned at him, trying to work out if that was true.
Parker said, “We just pulled a major job last night, everybody’s tense. We killed the guy owned that shack, we know the kind of people he hung out with. Some truck shows up, they won’t think twice.”
“I don’t know about this,” the guy said.
“Whatever you need out of the truck, get it and throw it in the car.” And all the time, he had to be careful to say “truck” and not “pickup,” because the guy hadn’t called it a pickup and he wasn’t supposed to know Parker had ever seen it.
Many things, though, were making him suspicious and antsy. He said, “What do you mean, what I need out of the truck?”
“Suitcase, whatever you’ve got,” Parker explained. “You aren’t carrying anything onyou.”
“What is this car?”
“Lexus. A block and a half that way. The keys are in my right side pocket here.”
“Keys.” The guy didn’t even like that, having to come close enough to get hold of the keys.
Parker knew they both knew what he might try at that point; the lunge, the kick, get the guy down and use the feet on him, hoping to get at the key for the cuffs later. But Parker wouldn’t do it that way; there was too much chance the .38 could go off, and nobody could know for sure where the bullet would go.
Nothing to do but wait. Words of reassurance would not reassure, they’d merely make him more spooked than ever. Parker stood there, patient, and the guy slowly worked it through, and then he said, “Face to the wall. Put your forehead on the wall. Don’t move anything.” Absolutely a cop.
Again the cool gun barrel touched the back of his neck. The hand burrowed into his pocket like a small animal, and withdrew, and then the barrel also withdrew.
“All right.”