The Black Ice Score
By
RICHARD STARK
A book in the Parker series
Copyright 1965 by Richard Stark
One
1
Parker walked into his hotel room, and there was a guy in there going through his suitcase laid out on his bed. He looked over when Parker came in and calmly said, “That’ll be all right.” He had some kind of accent.
And he hadn’t been talking to Parker. Parker looked behind himself, and number two was shutting the door. Number three was to the left, over by the window; he was the only one with hardware showing, an automatic held negligently in his right hand pointed nowhere in particular.
The faces were all strangers. They were all about forty, tall, in good physical condition, well dressed, deeply tanned. They might be law, but they didn’t smell like it. They smelled like something new, something Parker didn’t know anything about.
He said, “Where’s the woman?” because Claire was supposed to be in here; she was here when he’d gone out, and he didn’t like the idea of her being around guns.
The one at the suitcase nodded his head toward the closed bathroom door. “In there,” he said. “On a promise of good behavior.”
Number two, standing directly behind Parker, said, “Hold your arms out from your sides, please.” He had the same sort of accent as the first one, and the “please” was a surprise. Like some levels of law, maybe federal. But not with the accents. And not with the feel of them, the general manner.
Parker put his hands out to his sides, and number two patted him up and down. It was a thorough frisk but not a professional one. He took too long to cover the territory, as though he wasn’t sure of his ability to get it right.
When the patting was done, number two said, “Right.” Parker put his arms down again.
“If you don’t mind,” number one said, “I’ll just finish up here.”
Parker looked at number three’s gun. He didn’t say anything.
Number one didn’t wait for an answer. He kept on poking through Parker’s suitcase, not being unnecessarily sloppy but not trying to be too careful either. Most of the drawers in the room were partly open, so the suitcase was the last thing to be searched.
What were they looking for? Parker had no idea, so he stood in the middle of the room and waited to find out who they were and what they wanted and what his best move was. Number one poked at his gear in the suitcase, number two stood with his back against the hall door, and number three leaned against the wall near the window, the automatic in his hand filling the room with a silent buzz. Outside the window and seven stories down, the New York City traffic inched along making muffled noises. The sky out there was gray, mid-March gray. Wherever these three had picked up their tans, it wasn’t in New York.
Parker looked at the closed bathroom door. What shape was Claire in? Violence shook her up, even the hint of violence; it reminded her of a time she didn’t want to think about. If they’d leaned on her she was probably having silent hysterics in there now. She could do anything, react in a million different ways. She might come screaming out with a pair of nail scissors in her fist; it was impossible to say.
Parker said, “Let me talk to my woman while you’re doing that.”
“Just finishing up.” He turned away from the suitcase, leaving it open on the bed, and gave Parker a wintry smile. “She hasn’t been hurt, I assure you,” he said. “Not so far, at any rate.”
Parker felt his shoulder muscles tensing. He wanted to move out of this, switch the odds on this trio, find out what they thought they were doing. The only sensible thing to do was wait, but that was the thing he was bad at.
Number one said, “You can sit down, if you like, while we talk.”
“I’ll stand.”
“Suit yourself.” He sat on the foot of Claire’s bed. He produced a pack of cigarettes. “Smoke?”
“No.”
He shrugged and lit a cigarette for himself, then took it from his mouth and looked at it. “Overrated, American cigarettes,” he said. “Though I suppose it’s what one grows used to.”
“Do you have something you want to get to?” Parker asked him.
He raised an eyebrow. He seemed to be trying for the studied British effect, but it didn’t quite work. There was farmer in him somewhere, farmer or cattleman, something like that. He said, “I think you can guess, Mr Parker, what we’re here for.”
Parker didn’t like that. He was here under his other name, Matthew Walker, the name he used when he wasn’t working. He didn’t like it that these people knew so much about him and he knew nothing about them. He said, “I don’t make guesses. You’re here, you’re going through my goods, you’re making muscles. I don’t know why. Right now you’re having fun, taking your time. Later on you’ll tell me.”
Number three, over by the window, said, “A very hard case, this one.” He seemed amused.
Number one shook his head. He said to Parker, “Very well, you’re a cautious man. So I’ll make things plain for you. We’re here to talk to you about your current project.”
“I have no current project,” Parker told him. It was the truth, but he didn’t expect these three to believe it.
They didn’t. Number one smiled and shook his head. “There’s no point in any of this,” he said. “We know everything about you. Your name is Parker, you travel with a woman named Claire the young lady now in the bathroom and you are a professional thief. Your specialty is planning the details of large-scale robberies.”
That was all true. Parker said nothing.
Number one waited, looking at Parker, asking for a response. Finally he said, “You don’t deny it? Don’t admit it? Nothing?”
“Get to the point,” Parker said.
“That isthe point,” he said. “You have been approached on a certain project. There’s no need to go into details, for God’s sake.” He was suddenly nettled, as though Parker were delaying him in some important series of events.
“Go into details,” Parker said.
“No. How do I know how much or how little they’ve told you?”
“Who?”
“This is very foolish.”
Number three said, “The point is, are you going in with them?”
Parker turned his head and looked at him. “Going in with who?”
Number three smiled sardonically at number one. “I think he is,” he said. “That’s why he’s carrying on like this; he’s already committed himself to the other side.”
“Perhaps,” said number one. “Or perhaps he’s merely undecided.” He looked at Parker. “I’m going to assume that’s the case,” he said. “And I’m going to suggest to you that you not get involved.”
Parker said, “In what?”
“Don’t waste my time!”
Number two, at the door behind Parker, said, “Two or three lost teeth would be the best convincer.”
Number one shook his head. “Only if it’s absolutely necessary,” he said. To Parker he said, “Ostensibly, you and your lady friend are here from Miami on a shopping trip. Content yourself with that. Makeit a shopping trip. And bring it soon to a conclusion, and return to Miami. Do not get involved. If you don’t already know the caliber of the people who’ve approached you, allow me to tell you they are useless. Worse than useless. Liabilities. You know the kind they are, you seem to be a sensible man. You aren’t simply bucking the Colonel’s stooges, you’re bucking us. I don’t think you’ll want to do that.”
Parker said, “If I ever find out what you’re talking about, I’ll bear what you said in mind.”
“Cautious to the end, eh?” He smiled and got to his feet, flicking cigarette ash on the rug. “Very well, then,” he said. “We’ll leave it at that. For the moment.”
They trooped to the door. Parker turned and looked at them, the three of them standing together, looking like cousins, threads of similarity among them, that touch of the farmer in all three of them.