“I don’t like the way you talked to my fiancee,” Parker said.
“Well, really. I mean really, after all, I was provoked.”
Parker said, “I think I better talk to the manager.”
“Miss Ross is not in at the moment.”
Claire said, “That’s what they always say.”
Parker pointed at the door in the far wall. “That’s the office, isn’t it?”
The woman was getting flustered again. “I tell you, Miss Ross is out, she really is out.”
“We’ll see,” Parker said. He went down to the end of the counter, raised the flap, and said to Claire, “Come on, Mary, we’ll see about this.”
“You can’t come in here like that,” the woman said, astonished and out of her depth. “You can’t just—you can’t—”
Parker, followed by Claire, went over to the door, opened it, and looked in at an empty office dominated by a large desk cluttered with papers. A pot of African violets was on the windowsill.
“You see,” the woman was saying, vindicated. “She isn’t there, she’s out, just as I told you.”
“We’ll wait for her,” Parker said, and went over to the brown leatherette sofa and sat down. Claire started to follow him, but he gave her a quick headshake and frowned toward the door.
She didn’t get it at first, and simply stood there, near the doorway, looking at him and trying to figure it out.
“You can’t wait in there,” the woman was saying. “Really, this is too much. If you insist on waiting, there are quite comfortable chairs out here, on the other side of the counter.”
“If my fiancee wants satisfaction,” Parker said, “she’ll get satisfaction.”
Then Claire got it, and said, “Honey, let’s forget it.”
He frowned at her. “You sure?”
“We’ve got so much to do. And maybe I was a little hasty.”
Parker acted like a man who doesn’t want to show how relieved he is, shaking his head and looking around and grimacing, while the woman stood in the doorway trying to decide what expression she should have on her face to help these people choose to go away. Finally Parker said, reluctantly, “Well, if you say so,” and got to his feet.
The woman obviously didn’t trust the situation well enough to chance saying anything. She watched them in silence as they left the office, not responding when Claire waved and said, on her way out of the door, “Well, so long now.”
Parker shut the door after them and said, “Bad. Always stay in character.”
Grinning, Claire said, “I couldn’t resist it.”
“Next time try harder.”
She immediately sobered, saying a terse, “Sorry.”
They left the building and Parker walked back and forth on the sidewalk a while, studying the street and the building facades and the buildings across the way. Claire stood under the hotel marquee and watched.
When Parker was done with his look around, he and Claire went back into the hotel. In the lobby, he took out his wallet and handed her a five, saying, “Get me city and state maps and a pack of Luckies. Then call Lebatard from a booth, tell him we’ll be out there at nine tonight to talk.”
“Will do.”
“And tell Lempke to come in here now, with a camera.”
Watching him closely, she said, “Are we really going to do it?”
“And stop asking questions,” he said.
Nine
BILLY LEBATARD was in the hallway outside Parker’s room, looking pale and determined.
“You’re an idiot,” Parker said, and brushed past him to unlock the door.
“I want to talk to you,” Billy said, trying to sound belligerent. All he sounded was over rehearsed. “Just the two of us,” he said.
Parker opened the door and said, “Get in here before you tell the world we know each other.”
Billy came in obediently, still parroting his prepared speech. “We’ve got to get things straight between us,” he said.
“When this is all over,” Parker said, shutting the door, “a couple of cops are going to come have a talk with you, they’ll want to know who you came to see here today. You won’t have an answer.”
“Nobody I know saw me,” said Billy defensively. He was thrown off-stride, and was standing in the middle of the room looking confused and worried, like a man listening to something important that’s happening too far away for him to exactly make it out.
Parker said, “I don’t care what happens to you, because they can’t get to me through you. I’m just pointing things out. This is your town, you’ve got to live here. You want to go leaving trails, that’s up to you.”
“I won’t have to live here forever. After this job, I can live anywhere. Maybe Majorca.”
Parker nodded. “You’re brilliant.”
With an obvious effort, Billy got himself back on the track. “What I came here about—”
“I know what you came here about. There’s only two things you can do about Claire. You can be the loser in her life, or you can cut loose. You can’t have her, because she doesn’t want you.”
“That’s for her to decide.”
“Right.” Parker went over and lay down on the bed.
Billy had lost his place in his script again. He gestured vaguely a bit, then blurted, “I want you to stay away from her. I know you’re tough, I know you’re—”
“Stop it, Billy.” Parker closed his eyes, and spoke into the grayness: “Claire does what she wants to do. You coming here to get your nose broken doesn’t change anything. She won’t like you with blood on your face any more than she likes you now.”
“I know you can beat me up,” Billy said.
“You came here to make me beat you up,” Parker told him. “Because the only thing you think you can hope for from Claire is pity.” He opened his eyes and sat up and looked at Billy. “You know how you make pity? One jigger guilt, one jigger contempt. But Claire’s got nothing to be guilty about over you.”
“I’d rather this whole thing was called off, I’d rather—”
“Did you ever notice,” Parker said, lying down again, putting his hands behind his head, looking up at the ceiling, “that funny scar she’s got low on her stomach, a kind of crescent shape? How do you suppose she got that?”
There was nothing Billy could say to that. He was just coming to that understanding, and to the knowledge that the only move left to him was to rush at Parker and start hitting him with his fists, when the door opened and Claire came in, saying, “Billy isn’t— Oh, here he is!”
Parker said, “Go out and walk around the halls and come back in.”
Billy said, “No! You ought to hear this, too. I want—”
“That’s all,” Parker said. He got to his feet, saying, “It’s off. The two of you get out of here.”
Claire said, “Billy, if you gum things up…”
“All I wanted—”
“Go home, Billy,” she said.
A sulky sullen child, Billy wagged his head back and forth, saying, “He has no right—”
” For the last time, Billy.”
Reluctant, pouting, Billy scuffed out of the room.
Claire shut the door behind him and said to Parker, “It won’t happen again. I promise.”
Parker was at the window. Far below was the street, this room being on the same side as the ballroom. He stood looking down, trying to balance the pros and cons, trying to decide whether it was worth it to hang on a little longer.
She came over and stood just behind him. “I gave Lempke the message,” she said. “He’s on his way, with a Polaroid.”
Parker kept looking out the window.
Tentatively she touched his arm. “I promise,” she said.
There was nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. He shook himself and turned around. “Let’s see the maps,” he said.
PART TWO
One
WITH A camera slung around his neck, Lempke looked like a retired postal clerk, off on a world tour, who somewhere along the line has made a left turn when the rest of his charter group (“14 Days, 21 Countries!”) made a right. He stood in the middle of Parker’s hotel room, shoulders slumped as though the camera were dragging him down, seeming to be waiting for somebody to come along and find him. He said: