“It’s possible,” Parker said, and the bartender appeared and put his drink in front of him, saying:
“Are you Mr Walker?”
“Yes.”
“You’re wanted on the phone, sir. I’ll bring it to you.”
The bartender went away, and Hoskins, looking very suspicious and nervous, said, “Is that them?”
“My wife is the only one who knows I’m here,” Parker said. He and Claire were traveling as Mr and Mrs Walker, and since this one obviously didn’t know about the Parker name, he probably accepted Claire’s wife status, too. In any case, it was simplest to describe her that way.
Hoskins worked moodily at his drink while they waited for the phone to be brought. He didn’t look at Parker at all now, neither directly nor in the mirror, but gloomily studied the surface of the bar as though thinking about flaws in his course of action.
The bartender brought the phone and handed the receiver to Parker.
Parker said, “Yes?”
It was Claire. “There are four men here,” she said. It was hard to tell anything from her voice.
Parker said, “The same?”
“No,” she said. “These are different ones. I told them about the others, and what you’re doing now, and they promised to explain everything.”
“Why did you?”
“Tell them? They aren’t like the others; you’ll see. There’s nothing to worry about.”
There was always something to worry about when various groups were maneuvering around each other and at least one of them was flashing guns, but Parker didn’t say anything about that. He said, “I’ll be right up,” and hung up.
Hoskins was watching him worriedly. “Trouble?”
“My wife wants to see me. I have to go up for just a minute. You want to come along or wait here?”
“I believe I’ll wait,” Hoskins said.
“Watch my drink,” Parker told him. “I’ll be right back.”
5
Four black men in red robes stood and sat around the room, like a scene in a Negro version of Julius Caesar. Claire, legs crossed, cigarette in hand, at ease, sat in the chair near the window. She was still wearing the new outfit she’d put on to show him just before he left.
Parker shut the door with his left hand and let the hand dangle near his hip. He looked around at the faces.
Claire made the introductions, gesturing at the one of the four who was coming toward Parker now with a solemn face and an outstretched hand. “Mr Gonor,” she said, “this is Mr Parker. Parker, this is Gonor.”
The use of the name surprised him. He looked away from Gonor at Claire.
She smiled slightly and shook her head. “That was the name they knew,” she said. “Like the other ones.”
“We are most sorry about that experience,” Gonor said. His hand was still out. He was short, no more than five feet tall, and he looked up solemnly at Parker as he spoke. “They got to you before we did,” he said. He had some sort of faint accent too, a little harsher than the first group. It might have been two versions of the same accent, such as German might be if spoken by an American from the North and an American from the South.
Parker said, “Is that what it was? They thought I’d already talked to you so I’d already know what was going on?”
“Yes.” Gonor’s hand was still out there, undaunted.
“And the same with Hoskins,” Parker said.
Gonor’s hand dropped to his side, and his expression became suddenly wary. “Hoskins? You know him?”
“I just met him. He called me and we met and talked. He thought I knew about things too. He’s downstairs now, waiting for me. In the bar.”
Gonor turned his head and said something short and harsh in a language Parker had never heard before. Two of the others nodded and headed for the door.
Parker put his back against the door. “I haven’t taken sides yet,” he said. “The advertisement was you were going to tell me what’s going on.”
“What did Hoskins tell you?”
“Nothing. Doubletalk, like the other bunch.”
“He shouldn’t be here,” Gonor said. “He shouldn’t be involved any more; he was told to stay away.”
“He’ll keep,” Parker said. “Tell me the story first.”
Gonor cocked his head to one side. “Have you made a deal with him? Is that why you don’t want us to go get him?”
“Get him and do what with him?”
“Bring him up here. Make sure he stays away from now on.”
Parker moved away from the door. “Bring him up,” he said. “That’s a good idea. If you see the other bunch, bring them up too. Let’s find out what’s going on.”
“You’ll find out, Mr Parker.”
The other two were heading for the door again. Parker said to them, “Hoskins only knows me as Walker.”
“It isn’t our intention to endanger the structure of your life, Mr Parker,” Gonor said. “We’ll use the Walker name, if you prefer.”
“I prefer.”
The two went out, and Gonor said, “First, I suppose I should present my credentials. I have been sent to you by a Mr McKay, who operates a restaurant in a small city in Maine.”
“A diner,” Parker said.
Gonor nodded. “Yes. A small restaurant, with chrome.”
“All right,” Parker said. Handy McKay was the one man who knew Parker’s whereabouts and what name he was living under. Anybody who wanted to get in touch with Parker had to do so through Handy.
Gonor said, “We were sent to Mr McKay, in turn, by a man named Karns. Do you also know him?”
“Yes,” Parker said. A few years ago he’d had some trouble with a gambling-and-narcotics syndicate, and he’d had to get rid of the man at the top of it. Karns had taken that man’s place and had been grateful to Parker for making it possible.
“We went to Mr Karns,” Gonor said, “when Hoskins failed to be what we had in mind. We were looking for a criminal, but of a very particular kind. Hoskins is certainly a criminal, but not with the qualifications we need.”
“Karns didn’t send you to Hoskins?”
“No. We found Hoskins on our own.” Gonor shook his head, as though reflecting on great difficulties in the past. “The United States is a large and complex nation,” he said. “A nation of specialists. Here more than anywhere else in the world there will be someone capable of handling any specific task, no matter how unusual. The only problem is to find him.”
Claire said, “Mr Gonor, wouldn’t you like to sit down?”
He half turned and gave her a gracious nod. “No, thank you,” he said. “I lead too sedentary a life; I prefer to stand when possible.”
Claire looked at Parker. “He’s at the UN,” she explained, and he understood her to mean that she was sold on Gonor and wanted him to be too.
Gonor pursed his lips, as though he considered the revelation premature. “As I was saying,” he said, looking back at Parker, “finding the specialist is not always easy. One knows the specialist is here, somewhere, and all one can do is sift. We my associates and I we required a criminal. None of us has any experience of the criminal life, at least not in this country, so we began at a disadvantage. In our search, the first prospect we turned up was Hoskins. He is a confidence man, which is the wrong specialty, but he managed to make us believe for a time that he could help us. I believe he intended merely to rob us if by chance we should prove successful.”
Parker nodded. “I think that’s what he was telling me,” he said.
“Of course. We ultimately saw through him, naturally, and rejected him, but he seems intent on hanging around in hopes some profit will fall to him after all.”
“Like a dog under the table,” said the other one, who was sitting on the foot of Claire’s bed, the packages all in a jumble behind him.
“Yes,” Gonor said, turning toward him. “Mr Parker, this is Bara Formutesca, an assistant at the mission.”
Formutesca nodded at Parker with an ironic smile. He was a younger man than Gonor, possibly in his early twenties, and beneath the red robe he seemed to have a compactly muscular body. “A pleasure,” he said.