“Get him up. Tell him it’s Parker.”
“He left a call for nine.”
“You tell him,” Parker said, “that I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
“But—”
Parker hung up, got to his feet, and started over to Abadandi as Grofield came back out of the bathroom, one white towel wrapped around his waist as he scrubbed his hair with another. Parker said to him, “We’re going to Lozini’s.”
Grofield stopped drying his hair, but left the towel draped around his head, so that he looked like a sheik’s younger son. “Both of us?” Nodding at the man on the floor, he said, “You think Lozini did that?”
“No. This is the other side. But they’re using Lozini’s people.”
“It said so in his wallet?”
“He was in the amusement park two years ago,” Parker said. “I recognized him.”
Grofield went to the closet to get the suitcase. Putting it on the bed, he said, “Good thing you did. But where was he?”
”Outside.” Parker nodded at the room next door, saying, “I was in my place, I looked out the window to see if the car was back, and I saw him doing a circuit down there, looking things over.”
“Somebody followed us last night.” Grofield was stepping into his clothes.
“He was just giving up when you came in. He watched where you went, and then he faded away for a while. So I let myself in over here, and watched out the window till he came back.”
“All the time I was in the shower? Why not tell me something?”
“What point? You’re tired and naked and wet, and I can handle it.”
Grofield went back to the closet for his shoes. Putting them on, he looked at Abadandi and said, frowning, “He’s bleeding.”
“Put a towel under him. We don’t want marks on the rug.”
Getting one of his white towels, Grofield knelt next to Abadandi and lifted the man’s head to put the towel underneath. The blood trickling down the side of his face and around his ear into his hair was a slender dark red ribbon. Grofield, leaning close, said, “Jesus, Parker.”
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s his eye.”
Parker went over and stood watching while Grofield thumbed back the man’s other eyelid. The eye stared upward wetly, without expression, and Grofield gently touched a fingertip to the pupil, then let the lid close again; it did so slowly, like a rusted gate.
“Contact lens,” Grofield said. He moved slightly to the side, so Parker could see the blood seeping from Abadandi’s other eyelid: thin, unceasing, with a slight pulsing effect in it. “The other one’s back in his head someplace,” Grofield said.
Parker went down on one knee, and twisted Abadandi’s cheek. The flesh was cold, doughlike. There was no reaction to the pinch. “Damn,” Parker said.
“He’s in shock,” Grofield said.
“I wanted him to talk to us,” Parker said.
“Not today. Maybe not ever.”
“He doesn’t die here,” Parker said. “You ready?”
”Sure.”
“We need tape, some kind of tape.”
“Electric tape?”
“Anything.”
Grofield went to his suitcase, and came back with a roll of glossy-backed electric tape, half-inch width. Parker ripped two two-inch lengths of it, and taped Abadandi’s right eyelid down. The eye felt strange beneath the thin skin. Parker wiped the blood away from the side of the face, and waited. No more blood seeped out from under the tape, which looked like a small neat black eyepatch. “Good,” Parker said. He rolled up the towel, bloody side in, and gave it to Grofield. “Stash that.”
“Right.”
Standing, Parker said, “We’ll walk him to the car, leave him somewhere.”
Grofield closed his suitcase and put it away again. Then they picked up Abadandi’s awkward weight between them, lifting him by the armpits, putting his arms over their shoulders. From a distance, he could be a drunk being helped along by his friends.
They went out to the balcony. Two maids were talking in an open doorway halfway around the horseshoe, but nobody else was visible. They carried Abadandi along the balcony, his feet dragging, and maneuvered him awkwardly down the stairs. Two disapproving middle-aged women in their Sunday finery, purses hanging from their forearms, waited at the bottom of the steps, and glared impartially at all three men as they went by, before clicking huffily up, nattering to one another.
They put him in the back seat of the Impala and drove away from the motel, Parker at the wheel and Grofield occasionally glancing back at Abadandi. After several blocks, Grofield said, in a troubled and unhappy way, “Goddamnit.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Now he’s bleeding from the ear.”
“Put some paper in it.”
Grofield opened the glove compartment. “Nothing there.”
“Turn his head then. We’ll unload him in a couple minutes.” Grofield adjusted Abadandi’s head. Parker drove away from the city, looking for a tumoff that might lead to privacy. They were going to be late to Lozini’s, but there wasn’t any help for it. Sunday morning traffic was light and mostly slow-moving; family groups.
“I feel sorry for the bastard,” Grofield said.
Parker glanced at him, and looked back at the road. “If I’d slept late this morning,” he said, “he could be feeling sorry for you by now.”
“An hour ago I was getting laid back there,” Grofield said. “Jesus, his skin looks bad.”
Parker kept driving.
Twenty-one
Lozini was out by the pool, still on his first cup of coffee. He had dressed in paint-stained work pants and an old white shirt and brown loafers, and he was wearing sunglasses against the morning glare. He felt unwell and uncomfortable, and it was only partly because he’d had too little sleep. The rest was nerves, the accumulating tension and unease and a sense of helplessness that he wasn’t used to. He’d lived a life of dealing with his enemies, directly and efficiently, and winning out over them. Now he had a sense of enemies he couldn’t find, couldn’t deal with, wasn’t winning over.
And what had happened now? Parker was late by almost a quarter of an hour, and Lozini wanted to know what the new problem was. His nerves weren’t getting any better sitting here.
Movement over by the house. Lozini shifted in his chair, and put the coffee cup back on the glass-topped table. Parker and Green both came out into the sunlight, followed by the houseman, Harold. Lozini waved to Harold to go back inside, and Parker and Green came on alone.
Lozini didn’t stand. He gestured to the empty chairs at the table, and as they were seating themselves he said, “Harold ask you if you want coffee?”
Parker said, “Michael Abadandi works for you.”
Lozini frowned. “That’s right.”
“He came to our motel this morning, to make a hit.”
“On you?” But that was a stupid question, and Lozini knew Parker wouldn’t answer it.
He didn’t. “You didn’t send him,” he said.
“Christ, no.”
Parker said, “Lozini, if you’ve got the digestion for that coffee, you’re a tough man.”
“I don’t,” Lozini said.
“You’re falling off a cliff,” Parker said.
“I know that. Don’t talk about it.”
“I have a point to make.”
“I know the shape I’m in. Make your point.”
“In all this city, there are only two people you can trust.”
Lozini looked at him. Green, silent, was sitting there next to Parker, with his arms folded, squinting slightly in the sunlight and looking much more serious than when he’d had his little chat with Frankie Faran.
Lozini looked from Green back to Parker and said, “You two?”
“How did Abadandi find us? He was told where we were staying. How did anybody know where we were staying? We were followed after I left your meeting last night. How could we be followed? Because somebody who knew about the meeting put somebody outside to follow us. Who knew about the meeting? Only the people you trust.”