The Jugger

What he saw was the shaky penmanship and shaky mentality of an old man. Joe was going senile. At seventy, he'd lost every trace of the code of ethics he'd lived by all his adult life.

But he hadn't lost Parker's name and address.

Joe Sheer could crucify Parker, he could nail him to the wall with a hundred nails. He knew him by his old face, because who else but Joe Sheer had set Parker up with the plastic surgeon? He knew Parker's cover name, he knew twenty or twenty-five jobs Parker had been connected with, he knew enough about Parker to skin him alive.

Up till now that hadn't meant anything, because Joe had also known what sort of world he lived in and what his role was in that world. But not any more. Joe Sheer was just an old jugger now, turned shaky and rusty – he'd said it himself – shaky and rusty and scared, an old jugger ready to trade every man he'd ever worked with for a nice soft mattress and a nice warm radiator and a little peace of mind.

So Parker packed a suitcase and took a cab from the hotel and a plane from the airport and flew north and west across the country to see what it would take to protect himself from Joe Sheer.

He arrived at Omaha on Tuesday afternoon, switched from plane to train, got to the town of Sagamore Tuesday evening, and registered at the Sagamore Hotel. He didn't plan on staying at Joe's place this time because he didn't know what his relationship was going to be with Joe this time. And he used the Charles Willis name because that was the name he always used with Joe. He didn't know then that this time was going to get complicated, that a local cop would be in the act before noon the next day; if he'd known it, he would have used some other name.

No tourist had ever stayed at the Sagamore Hotel; travelling men only. Sagamore was not a tourist attraction, nor was it near any tourist attraction, nor on any possible route to any tourist attraction. A few smallish but dirty factories supported the town, and travelling men supported the Sagamore Hotel. The desk clerk looked at Parker and couldn't figure out for the life of him who or what Parker was. He spent the rest of the night thinking about it and finally decided that if Parker sold anything it was either liquor or guns.

Later that night, Parker went over to Joe's house to have a talk with him and see how the land lay. He walked, both because it was a small town where nothing was impossibly far from anything else and because in the future he might not want anybody able to state with certainty that Charles Willis had been in that neighbourhood tonight.

When he got to the house it was all in darkness, though it was only a little after eight. He stood on the porch and rang the doorbell, telling himself that senile old men sometimes sat in the dark and sometimes took evening naps, and then a teen-age kid called to him from the porch of the house next door and told him Mr. Shardin had died yesterday, yes, the funeral was to be tomorrow morning, yes, it was all very sudden.

Too sudden.

Parker went back to the hotel room to think it out. By the time he'd received that second letter from Joe, the old man had already been dead. What had happened to him? What sort of trouble had he been talking about? Was it anything that could eventually get back to Parker? He remembered, in that first letter, Joe had made a point of saying he'd have to cut out the messenger service until after he got everything straightened out.

Joe was dead, but that didn't solve everything after all. Parker still had to know how Joe had died, and who had been causing what kind of trouble, and if there was now anyone in the town of Sagamore who could later on cause trouble for Parker or Charles Willis. He had to know now, and not wait for it to come looking for him, because then it would be too late.

So he stayed over that night, and in the morning he went down and asked the desk clerk about the local paper, but the local paper was a weekly that came out on Thursday, so what Parker wanted was the district paper, and the district paper office was over in Lynbrooke, seven miles away.

Across the street from the hotel was the railroad station, and in front of it was parked a taxi, a dusty black Chevrolet four or five years old. Parker hired it to take him to Lynbrooke and back. He rode out there and picked up yesterday's paper. When he came out of the newspaper office there was a black Ford parked behind the Chevy, and a stocky man in brown business suit and tan cowboy hat was leaning against the side of the Chevy, talking in a lazy way with the driver sitting behind the wheel. He went away when Parker came along, and Parker saw him get into the black Ford.

Riding back to Sagamore, the black Ford stayed on their tail. After a couple of miles, Parker said to the driver, 'Who's the guy in the cowboy hat?'

'Him? The guy talking to me?' the driver was in his late twenties, wearing an Army Ike jacket and too-long dry blond hair. A dark inverted V on the sleeve of the jacket showed where he'd stripped off the insignia of the highest rank he'd ever held: Pfc. He had a sharp narrow face, with the bone structure clear and plain around the hollows of the eyes. When he spoke, old frustrations trembled behind his voice.

Parker said, 'He smelled like law. Is he?'

'You could say that.'

'What kind of law?'

'The rotten kind.'

'I mean what level. State, local, county, what is he?'

'Town. He runs the town police force, in Sagamore.'

Parker flicked his cigarette out of the window. 'How big's the town police force?'

The driver shrugged. 'Maybe twelve, fifteen men, I don't know.'

'Big responsibility. What do they call him, commissioner?'

'Captain. He's got a couple lieutenants and everybody else is sergeants.'

Parker frowned. The driver was willing enough to talk but he didn't know how. It was like pulling teeth, getting anything from him. He said, 'This captain, he got a name?'

'Younger, Captain Younger.'

'What did he want to know about me?'

'Who said he wanted to know about you? We were just talking.'

'Sure.' Parker shrugged, and looked back. The Ford was indolently behind them. He said, 'How come you aren't one of his sergeants?'

The driver didn't say anything for a minute. He hunched over the wheel more than he had, and the Chevy picked up speed. But after a few seconds the speed slackened off again, and the driver said, so low that Parker could barely hear it, 'I got a job.'

'Sure.'

After that they rode in silence, back to Sagamore and the hotel. Then, as Parker was paying him, the driver said quickly, 'He wanted to know did I know your name, did you say anything on the way out, had I ever seen you around town before anywhere, did you say what you wanted from the district paper, did you mention any names at all.'

'Thanks.'

'Even if I'd known anything, I wouldn't have told that bastard.'

Parker got out of the car and stood a second while the driver took the Chevy around a sweeping U-turn and put it in its parking slot across the street in front of the railroad station. The Ford pulled to the kerb a few yards to Parker's left. Captain Younger climbed heavily out of it, pulled a handkerchief from his hip pocket, took off his cowboy hat, wiped his forehead and the sweatband with the handkerchief, and put hat and handkerchief back where he'd got them. Out of his inside coat pocket he pulled a cigar and made a long ceremony out of unwrapping it and getting it ready to smoke. He didn't look at Parker at all.