The guy on the floor was dazed, but moving. “Mike!” he called. “Mike!”
“Who the hell is it?” The question came from the corner of the living room down to the right of the doorway.
The one on his back on the floor skittered away until his head hit the stove, while he called, “It’s the guy killed Oscar!”
“And who else?”
“Some woman.”
Parker moved along the kitchen wall toward the spot where Mike would be just on the other side.
“Mike! He’s gonna shoot through the wall!”
Parker looked at him. “I don’t need you alive,” he said.
The guy on the floor lifted his hands, offering a deal. “We can all share,” he said. “That’s what we were trying to tell your pal there.”
Sandra said, “Make him come over here.”
Parker nodded. “You heard her.”
“No,” the guy said.
“You go over there, you live,” Parker told him. “You stay where you are, you die.”
The guy started to roll over.
“No,” Parker said. “You can move on your back. You can get there.” Over his shoulder to Sandra, he said, “This is taking too long.”
She said, “Don’t kill anybody unless you have to.”
“I think I have to,” Parker said.
“Mike!” cried the guy on the floor. “Mike! What the hell are you doing?”
That was a good question. Parker went to the doorway, flashed a quick look through, then had to duck back again when Mike fired a fast shot at him, very loud in this enclosed space, the bullet smacking into the opposite wall. But in that second what he saw was that Mike had pulled the extension cords off McWhitney, and had the groggy McWhitney sagging on his feet with Mike’s left arm around him to hold him as a shield.
Parker looked again and Mike was dragging McWhitney backward toward the door to the bar. He didn’t waste a shot in Parker’s direction this time, but called, “You come through this door, you’re dead,” then backed through the doorway, shoved McWhitney onto the floor on this side of it, and slammed the door shut.
Parker turned on the one on the floor. “The money?”
Now that Mike had quit him, the guy was trying to figure out how to change sides, “in the bar,” he said. “He carried the boxes in before we jumped him.”
Parker turned to Sandra. “You let this thing move,” he told her, “I’ll kill you.”
“I’ll kneecap him twice,” Sandra offered.
But Parker was already on his way, back through the bedroom and out the door to the darkness. He found his way down the alley to the street, turned toward the bar, and its door was propped open, Mike just carrying the first carton of money out, in both arms.
Parker stepped forward and pushed the barrel of the Bobcat into Mike’s breadbasket. He fired once, and there was very little noise. “It works,” he said, and Mike, eyes and mouth open, darkness closing in, fell down, and back into the bar. Parker kicked his legs out of the way, pulled the liquor carton full of money back inside, and shut and relocked the door.
Going through the bar to the apartment, he stopped in the living room to pick up the extension cords Mike had used to truss McWhitney and brought them to the bedroom, where nothing had changed. Tossing the extension cords onto the floor next to the guy, Parker said to Sandra, “Tie him up. Let’s get this over with.”
Sandra put her pistol away. “On your stomach. Hands behind your back.” As he did so, and she went to one knee beside him, she said to Parker, “What about the other one?”
“He wasn’t so lucky.”
“Jeeziz,” said the guy on the floor.
“Stay lucky,” Sandra advised him. When she was satisfied he wasn’t going anywhere, she stood and said, “What now?”
“Let’s see what Nels looks like.”
He didn’t look good, but he looked alive, and even groggily awake. The two guys working him over had been eager but not professional, which meant they could bruise him and make him hurt, but couldn’t do more permanent damage unless they accidentally killed him. For instance, he still had all his fingernails.
Parker lifted him to his feet, saying, “Can you walk?”
“Uuhh. Where...”
With Parker’s help, McWhitney walked slowly toward the bedroom, as Parker told him, “One of them’s dead in the bar, the other one’s alive right there. Tomorrow, you can deal with them both. Right now, you lie down. Sandra and me’ll split the money and get out of here.”
He helped McWhitney to lie back on the bed, then said to Sandra, “If we do this right, you can get me to Claire’s place by two in the morning.”
“What a good person I am,” she said.
“If you leave me here,” the guy on the floor said, “he’ll kill me tomorrow morning.”
Parker looked at him. “So you’ve still got tonight,” he said.