“—but it happens that your former brother-in-law is working on a construction job not terribly far from here and would be happy to have that opportunity to visit you while you’re in confinement.”
“My former brother-in-law,” Parker said.
“I believe at one time he was married to your sister Debby.”
Parker had no sister Debby. He said, “Oh, sure.”
“So your former brother-in-law, Ed Mackey—”
“Ah,” Parker said. That was more real than sister Debby.
Li smiled at him. “Yes, I thought you’d be pleased.”
“Even surprised,” Parker said.
“As I understand it,” Li said, “you and your brother-in-law have been partners in business enterprises in the past, and he believes you might be interested in a similar business enterprise once your current legal problems have been resolved.”
“He’s probably right about that,” Parker said.
Li also had a briefcase, like Sherman, but his was on the floor and was much more glossy and polished. Dipping into it, Li came out with a thin sheaf of forms. “This is the application,” he said. “I’ve filled in Mr. Mackey’s part.”
Parker took the form. He hadn’t expected anybody else to take a hand in this. “I’m looking forward to seeing Ed,” he said, meaning it, then looked at Li: “I understand the arraignment’s next Thursday.”
“Oh, I don’t think we’ll be ready by then,” Li said. He seemed comfortable with the idea.
Parker said, “We’ll delay it?”
Li unfolded his wrists to open expressive hands, like lily pads opening. “You are, after all, the client,” he said. “I believe you’re in no hurry to alter your situation, in regard to these charges and so on. Am I right?”
“You’re right.”
“I thought so.” Rising, putting out a hand to shake, he said, “I won’t take up any more of your time unless I have news.”
Shaking that firm hand, Parker said, “There won’t be news for a while.”
“Only your brother-in-law.”
Parker grinned. “I’m looking forward to that.”
7
“It looks to me,” Ed Mackey said, “as though you zigged when you should have zagged.”
“There was a local hand,” Parker said, “dumber than he had to be.”
Mackey nodded. “I read about it in the local papers.”
This was a different place from where he’d met with the lawyers, farther along the same corridor in the same building, a more open place like a cafeteria, with bare metal tables and metal chairs, and soda and snack vending machines in a row on one wall. There were family groups and single visitors, with a steady surf sound of conversation, guards walking around but nobody standing over you.
The rules in here were few and simple. The prisoners were not to put their hands under the table, and no object of any kind, not even an Oreo cookie, was to pass between a prisoner and any visitor, not even an infant. To break either rule was to be removed from the visitor room immediately and strip-searched; and probably to lose visitation rights, at least for a while
When Parker had been led in here, Mackey was already seated at a small square table away from the vending machines and the loudest family groups. Mackey, stocky, blunt-featured, and blunt-bodied, didn’t rise but grinned and waved a greeting. Parker went over and sat with him, and when Mackey said he’d been reading the local papers, he asked, “You reading up on more than one thing?”
“Not around here.”
“Good.” Parker frowned at him. “I didn’t know you’d be in this part of the world.”
Mackey laughed. “I didn’t know you’d be here either,” he said. “You wanna know why I’m here?”
“Yes.”
“There was a fella we used to know named George Liss.”
“That’s right.”
“And because you were there, too,” Mackey said, “I’m still alive.” What he didn’t add, not in a place like this, was that Liss was not still alive, and Parker’d done that, too.
So Mackey felt he owed Parker one, because in truth Liss had tried to kill them both, and in saving himself Parker had saved Mackey as well. Parker didn’t keep scorecards like that, but he didn’t mind if Mackey wanted to. He said, “I appreciate it.”
“De nada,” Mackey said. “Anything I can do to make life a little brighter?”
“One thing now.”
“Sure.”
“This is all transient,” Parker told him. “The whole population, everybody moving through. Tough to get a read on anybody.”
“You need histories,” Mackey suggested.
“And if it’s somebody I can talk to,” Parker said, “then I need a friend of his on the outside to tell him I’m all right.”
Mackey wore a zippered jacket, and now he took from its inner pocket a memo pad and pen, which attracted the attention of a guard. The guard watched, but Parker kept his hands flat on the table and Mackey leaned back, pad on the palm of his left hand. “Go,” he said.
“Brandon Williams. Bob Clayton. Walter Jelinek. Tom Marcantoni.”
Putting the pad and pen away, Mackey said, “This is tricky. Very roundabout.”
“All I got is time,” Parker said.
That was the seventh day. Two days later, Mackey was back, looking pleased. “Brenda says hello,” he said. Brenda was his lady, had been for a long time.
Parker said, “She with you?”
“Always,” Mackey said. “She’s never far away. She’s somebody else saved my life once.”
“You must be a bad risk,” Parker said.
Mackey grinned. “Not if I keep hanging out with the right people.”
Some years ago, Brenda had trailed Mackey and Parker, though she hadn’t been asked to, when they went to deliver some stolen paintings in a deal that then went very bad. At the end, Parker left a lumberyard’s burning main building, with the paintings destroyed, and he’d believed Mackey was dead, shot by one of the people who’d been waiting in there. Brenda, seeing Parker take off alone, went into the building, found Mackey on the concrete floor, and dragged him out and into her car before the fire engines arrived.
“Fortunately,” Mackey said, “life is usually quieter than that.”
“We like it quiet,” Parker said.
“We do. Williams and Marcantoni might be good to talk to. They’re both facing hard time like you, both got stand-up histories.”
“Not the other two?”
“Clayton’s in on a Mickey Mouse,” Mackey said, “do a nickel tops. He doesn’t need alternatives. And Jelinek’s ratted people out before.”
“Then we don’t talk to Jelinek,” Parker said.
8
There was the day Parker went on sick call, and the day he went to the library to work on his case, and the afternoons he spent on work detail in the kitchen, a long windowless bright-lit space in the basement under the mess hall, with siren-alarmed iron doors at one end where supplies were delivered.
The eleventh day, after the other two from the cell went off to work on their case, Williams got up from his bunk and tossed away his magazine and came out to where Parker leaned on the railing to watch the movement down below. Williams said, “I hear you know Chili Greebs.”
Parker shook his head. “Never heard of him.”
Surprised, Williams turned away to see what Parker was looking at down there. Watching the guards as they shifted their charges around, he said, “Then why should Chili tell me to talk to you?”
“Probably,” Parker said, “it was after he talked with a friend of mine.”
“Would he be a friend of mine?”
“Not yet. His name’s Ed Mackey.”