“We didn’t want any stink, Mr Bronson. We”
“How many people know about this, Kirk?”
“Just me and maybe seven employees and three customers. I called”
“Threecustomers?”
“Two more saw them on the way out. But I straightened that out, Mr Bronson. And then I called Marty Keller, and he said I should call you direct.”
“He gave you the number, huh?”
“Yes, sir, Mr Bronson. He said you’d want to hear about it right away.”
“All right. All right. I’ll be sending somebody down there hold on a second.”
“Yes, sir, Mr Bronson.”
Bronson thought a minute, rubbing his hand over his face. “Quill. Jack Quill. He’ll be down there in a couple days.”
“Yes, sir, Mr Bronson. I’m sorry about this, Mr Bronson, but they pulled it off so smooth and quick, and we never ran into nothing like this before.”
“All right Kirk.”
“I could maybe of tried to make a play for them before they got out of the club, but I figured then they’d be shooting, maybe a customer killed or something, and that would of been even worse. I figured we’d pick them up after they got outside, but they just disappeared on us. We found the car they used, but they”
“All right, Kirk. You tell Quill all about it.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, Mr Bron”
“Goodbye, Kirk.”
Bronson hung up, then picked his cigar from the ash tray and puffed on it a while, staring at the opposite wall. So it wasn’t crap after all. Parker could do it. Somehow or other, he could talk a bunch of heavy armour people into going after organization targets. God damnhim! How the hell could they guard against a thing like that?
After a while he sighed, put the cigar down again, and picked up the telephone. He dialled an area code, then a seven-digit number. He gave his own number to the operator and listened to the ring that followed.
Keller himself answered. Bronson said, “This is Art.”
“Art! Say, did Kirk”
“You gave out my number, Marty.”
“What? Oh! Listen, I just thought you’d want to”
“You give out my number again, Marty, I retire you. With flowers, Marty.”
“Well, sure, Art. Jesus, I figured this was a special”
“With flowers, Marty.”
Bronson slammed the phone down. He glared at it a few seconds, then picked it up, and dialled another number. When he got an answer, he asked to speak to Quill. When Quill came on, he said, “Get on a plane. Come to Buffalo. Phone Edgewood 5-6598 when you get in. Ask for Fred.”
“Right now, Mr Bronson?”
“When the hell do you think, Quill? Next year?”
He broke the connection. The next time he dialled a local number. The voice that came on said, “Circle Rental.”
“Let me talk to Fred.”
“Who wants him?”
“I do. Snap it up.”
There was a silence, then the phone was slammed down. After a brief wait, a new voice came on. “Yeah?”
“Bronson. Sometime tonight or tomorrow, a guy named Quill will call you from the airport. Go pick him up and bring him here.”
“Will do.”
“Good.”
Bronson hung up and spent a while sitting motionless at the desk. He finished his cigar, sat a while longer, then made one more phone call, this time to Fairfax in New York. When Fairfax came on the line, Bronson said, “Parker’s causing some more trouble.”
“St Clair’s conscious,” Fairfax said. “They say he’ll pull through.”
“What? Who cares? Two professionals knocked over a gambling setup of ours tonight.”
“You mean Parker’s threat of”
“I mean two pros knocked over one of our operations! You got wax in your ears?”
“All right, Art, all right. Just take it easy.”
“The hell with take it easy! What have we got, god damn it, do we have an organization or don’t we? Do we have twelve thousand employees, coast to coast, or don’t we? What the hell is this? One lousy man can goose us any time he wants?”
“You sure this was connected with Parker, Art?”
“Who else?”
“Parker was just in New York two days ago.”
“For Christ’s sake, do you listen or do you just stand there and play with your moustache? This wasn’t Parker, this was two of Parker’s friends! You know what that means?”
“Art, did they sayso? Now quit screaming at me for a minute. Did they sayit had anything to do with Parker? Maybe it was somebody else altogether”
“No. Amateurs try to hit us sometimes, but not pros. Pros leave us alone. Why should two pros suddenly hit us? You like coincidence, maybe?”
“All right, so it was Parker himself, faking it. Right now he’s on a plane to Oregon, maybe, or Maine, or someplace, and tomorrow night he does it again. And you stick pins in a map and say, ‘Look at that, all over the country. It couldn’t all be just one man.’”
“Maybe so.”
“Sure. Those robbery guys are loners. They don’t go help somebody for the hell of it.”
“Yeah. And what the hell difference does it make?”
“What?”
“If Parker’s doing it, or somebody else is doing it, what the hell difference does it make? Somebody’sdoing it! We still got hit for eighty-seven grand last night!”
“Well, all I was saying was”
“Don’t give me a lot of talk! I didn’t call you you should give me a lot of theories who needs them?”
“All right, Art, it’s your dime.”
“It’s a hell of a lot more than a dime, you bastard. Don’t get snotty with me.”
“I’m not Parker, Art. Shout at him if you want, don’t shout at me.
“All right. Wait. Wait a minute.” Bronson put the phone down and took a deep breath. He rubbed his hand over his face. He lifted the instrument again and said, “All right, I just got upset, that’s all.”
“Sure, Art. What did you want?”
“Parker. I want Parker. Don’t that sound easy? He’s one miserable man, and I’m a coast-to-coast organization. Don’t it sound easy?”
“But it isn’t easy.”
“I know that. All right. What about this Parker? What about his background? Where’s he from? Where’s he live? What kind of family? He’s gotto have some family some place.”
“He had a wife, but she’s dead. He killed her himself.”
“There’s got to be somebody. I need a hook in him. I need to be able to grab him. Listen, you put people on it. I want to know who this guy Parker is. I want to know where he’s soft.”
“I don’t think he’s soft anywhere.”
“Everybody is. Everybody’s soft somewhere. We’re an organization, right? Can’t we find one man? Find me this bastard Parker. Find what he is, what he does, who he knows! FindHIM!”
“I’ll do my best, Art.”
“Don’t do your best, god damn you! Findhim!”
“All right, Art, calm down. I’ll call you back tomorrow or the next day.”
“Just find him.”
He hung up and sat a while longer at the desk, brooding. Then he got to his feet and left the office. He was remembering how abrupt he’d been with Willa, and he wanted to make it up to her. She was somewhere in one of these draughty rooms, maybe still down at the television set. He’d find her and they could go for a drive. Maybe up to the Falls. And stop someplace for dinner. And leave the damn bodyguard behind for once.
He stopped, halfway down the stairs, and thought it over. There was no sense going overboard. Just keep the bodyguards in the other Cad, like this morning. It would be almost the same. Willa would hardly even know they were there.
4
THREE DAYS AFTER the Cockatoo Club raid, and twelve hundred miles away
All the money came to the Novelty Amusement Corporation. It started as small change, here and there throughout the city, and it all funnelled into one central office, all the money bet every day on the numbers.
Take one dime. A lady goes into a magazine store and tells the man at the counter she wants to put ten cents on 734. If 734 hits she wins sixty dollars. The odds are 999 to one, but the pay-off is 600 to one. The magazine store owner writes 734, and 10c under it on two slips of paper. He gives the woman one slip; he puts the dime into the cash register, but he rings No Sale. At three o’clock, his wife takes over the counter while he takes the cigar box in back and adds up the amounts on all the slips. The amount is $18.60. He puts all the slips in an envelope and goes out to the cash register and from it he takes a ten dollar bill, a five, three ones, two quarters, and the dime. He puts this cash in the envelope with the slips. He places the envelope inside a science fiction magazine on Wednesdays, it’s a science fiction magazine and puts the magazine under the counter.