This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2004 by Richard Stark
All rights reserved.
Mysterious Press
Warner Books
Hachette Book Group USA
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at HachetteBookGroupUSA.com.
First eBook Edition:: November 2004
ISBN 978-0-446-50733-2
Contents
By Richard Stark
ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
TWO
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
THREE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
FOUR
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
BY RICHARD STARK
The Hunter
The Man with the Getaway Face
The Outfit
The Mourner
The Score
The Jugger
The Seventh
The Handle
The Damsel
The Rare Coin Score
The Green Eagle Score
The Dame
The Black Ice Score
The Sour Lemon Score
Deadly Edge
The Blackbird
Slayground
Lemons Never Lie
Plunder Squad
Butcher’s Moon
Comeback
Backflash
Flashfire
Firebreak
Breakout
ONE
1
When he saw that the one called Harbin was wearing a wire, Parker said, “Deal me out a hand,” and got to his feet. They’d all come to this late-night meeting in suits and ties, traveling businessmen taking a break with a little seven-card stud. Harbin, a nervous man unused to the dress shirt, kept twitching and moving around, bending forward to squint at his cards, and finally Parker, a quarter around the table to Harbin’s left, saw in the gap between shirt buttons that flash of clear tape holding the wire down.
As he walked around the table, Parker stripped off his own tie—dark blue with thin gold stripes—slid it into a double thickness, and arched it over Harbin’s head. He drew the two ends through the loop and yanked back hard with his right hand as his body pressed both Harbin and the chair he was in against the table, and his left hand reached over to rip open Harbin’s shirt. The other five at the table, about to speak or move or react to what Parker was doing, stopped when they saw the wire taped to Harbin’s pale chest, the edge of the black metal box taped to his side.
Parker bore down, holding Harbin against the table, pulling back now with both hands on the tie, twisting the tie. Harbin’s hands, imprisoned in his lap, beat a drumroll on the bottom of the table. The other players held the table in place, palms down, and looked at McWhitney, red-bearded and red-faced, who’d brought Harbin here. McWhitney, expression solemn, looked around at each face and shook his head; he hadn’t known.
“My deal, I think,” Dalesia said, as calm as before, and shuffled the cards a while, as the others watched Harbin and Parker. Dalesia dealt out hands in front of himself, all the cards facedown, and said, “Bet the king.”
“Fold,” said Mott.
It was Stratton who’d taken this hotel room in Cincinnati. He pointed at McWhitney, pointed at Harbin, made a thumb gesture like an umpire calling the runner out. McWhitney nodded and quietly got to his feet, being sure the chair wouldn’t scrape on the floor.
Mott and Fletcher were seated flanking Harbin; now they held him upright while Parker peeled his necktie out of the new, deep crease in Harbin’s neck.
“These cards are dead,” Mott said, and Fletcher peeled the tape off Harbin’s chest, freeing the antenna wire and the transmitter box.
McWhitney, standing there, made a broad shrugging gesture to the table, a combination of apology and innocence, then came around to pick Harbin up in a fireman’s carry, bent forward with Harbin’s forearms looped around his own throat.
“Bet two,” Parker said, coming back to his place at the table.
Fletcher held the transmitter and antenna while Mott crossed to the sofa at the side of the room and came back with a cushion, which he put where Harbin had been seated. Fletcher put the transmitter on the cushion, and they all sat, making comments about the game they weren’t playing, except Stratton, who went into the other room, where his gear was.
McWhitney carried Harbin to the hall door, looked out, and left, carrying the body. At twenty after one on a weekday morning, there wasn’t likely to be much traffic out there.
They continued not to play, to discuss how cold the cards were, and to suggest they might all make an early night of it. They hadn’t been together in the room long before Parker had made his discovery, and so hadn’t yet started to talk about anything that the wire shouldn’t know. They were mostly new to one another, and would have had to get acquainted a while before they started to talk for real.
Stratton was back from the other room in five minutes, with one suitcase. He took his former chair and said, “Deal me out.”
The others all made comments about breaking up early, the cards not interesting, try again some other time. Fletcher, who, it turned out, could sound something like Harbin, with that same rasp in his voice, said, “You guys go ahead, I’ll clean up in here.”
“Thanks, Harbin,” Stratton said, and as they left, they all said, “See you, Harbin,” to the transmitter on the cushion.
2
Parker and Dalesia and Fletcher and Mott and Stratton rode the elevator down together. Mott said, “Which of us is in their sights, do you think?”
“I hope not me,” Stratton said. “I took that room. Not as me, but still . . .”
Parker said, “Most likely McWhitney, he brought him.”
“Or maybe,” Fletcher said, “just any target of opportunity. Decorate him like a Christmas tree, send him out to get them somebody else, because they’ve already got him.”
“That sounds right,” Stratton said. “They love to turn people. Tag, you’re it, now you’re on my side, go turn some of your friends.”
“They’re like vampires,” Fletcher said, “making more vampires.”
The lobby door opened and they went out to a big space empty of people except for one green-blazered girl clerk behind the check-in desk. Fletcher and Mott had come together, and went off together. The other three had all arrived alone. “See you,” Stratton said, and left.