“I don’t give a damn about you.”
“You don’t like the dirty old blind man. He smells bad. Yah, Parker?”
“Maybe I’ll go to Amos Klee.”
“For machine guns? No, Parker. For machine guns, you come to Scofe. You want the burp gun?”
“Let me see it.”
Scofe pointed. “Over there you see a shelf. Long boxes on it, battleship models. Bottom box, second from the left. Bring it here.”
Parker got the box. The ones he had to move were light, but the one he wanted was heavy. He started to open it and Scofe said, “I’ll open it, Parker. Bring it here.”
Parker brought it over to him. Scofe was sitting in a squeaky kitchen chair next to a table, an old scarred worktable with nothing on it. Parker handed him the box and Scofe put it on the table, half-turned to be closer to the table, and took the top off the box. It was full of parts. Scofe’s hands touched the parts, his long fingers moving like worms in a garden. Parker watched him as he put the parts together, feeling in the bottom of the box for screws, using a small metal screwdriver he took from his hip pocket. He put the parts together, and when he was done there was a burp gun on the table. “There,” he said. “You like it?”
Parker picked it up. There was rust on it, a little, not much. It was an old gun, but it looked to be in good shape. The places where it was rusted were where identification marks had been filed away, leaving the metal rough.
“Well?”
“How much?”
“I don’t haggle, Parker, you know I never haggle.”
“How much?”
“One twenty-five.”
Parker put the gun back down on the table. “What else you got?”
Scofe chuckled again. His hands reached out and found the gun and he disassembled it again, putting everything back in the model battleship box. When he was finished, he put the top on the box again and said, “You want to put it back? You’re not interested?”
“Leave it out a while. What else you got?”
“You take the burp, I can let you have two Tommys, a hundred apiece.”
“Where are they?”
“You know me, Parker, they aren’t bad guns. I don’t touch bad guns.”
Parker knew that, but he wanted to see them before making up his mind. He said, “You know me. I always look first.”
“I never look first, Parker. The smelly old blind man never looks at all.” He swiveled around and pointed to a corner. “Road-racer sets there,” he said. “Big square boxes. Fourth and fifth down. They’re all assembled.”
Parker went over. The fourth and fifth boxes were heavier than the first three. Parker felt the sixth box, and it was heavy, too. He carried the fourth and fifth over to the table, opened them, and looked at two Thompson .45 submachine guns, each equipped with a twenty-shot clip. They both looked all right. He put the tops back on the boxes and said, “These are good. I’ll take three of these.”
“Those two are all I got.”
“Then I want a road-racer set. The sixth from the top.”
“You’re a bastard, Parker. You’re a rotten bastard. You’re a filthy rotten son of a bitch. You take advantage of a poor old blind man, you’d spit on your own mother. You’re a cesspool, a walking cesspool, you’re vomit, you’re a cheap two-bit rotten punk.”
“Shut up, Scofe.”
Scofe shut up. He stuck his right hand up to his face and gnawed on a knuckle. He looked like an old squirrel.
Parker said, “One hundred each for three Tommys.”
“Two Tommys. And one twenty-five for the burp.”
“I don’t want the burp.”
“Then one fifty each for the Tommys.”
“Goodbye, Scofe.”
“I don’t haggle, Parker, you know me.”
Parker turned away and started for the front of the store. He opened the door and went through, leaving the door open behind him, and walked down between the display cases. The sullen woman watched him suspiciously.
Parker got halfway to the street door and then Scofe called, “Parker! Hey! Come back here!”
Parker turned around and went back. The woman kept watching him. He went into the back room again and said, “What?”
“Put these boxes away. You can’t leave these boxes out.”
“I’m going to see Amos Klee.”
“You’re a liar.”
“He can get me guns. I wait a few days, that’s all. He’ll scout around for me.”
Scofe twisted his head back and forth. “If I could seeyou!”
“It’s all in my voice, Scofe.”
“I hate you like poison. Like poison.”
“I don’t like to deal with you, Scofe. You smell bad. What’s your price, the three Tommys?”
“Three-fifty. That’s it, that’s the lowest.”
“Deal.”
“Tell my woman to come in here.”
Parker went to the door and motioned to the woman. “Come in here.”
She came in, and Scofe said, “Every transaction cash. This transaction, you pay the cash, then we see what else you want.”
The woman said, “How much?”
“Three-fifty. For three road-racers.”
Parker took an envelope out of his jacket pocket, and counted three hundred and fifty dollars on to the table, while the woman watched.
When he was done, she said, “Okay.”
“You’re all right, Parker,” Scofe raised his head and smiled. He was filthy, and his eyes were covered by a white film, and his teeth were brown. When he smiled, he looked like a parody of something unspeakable. “You’re all right,” he said again. “You don’t mean all those things you say to me.”
Parker went over and got the sixth heavy road-racer box. He put it with the first two, and picked up all three. He said to the woman, “Come out with me and open the car door.”
Scofe said, “What about the other stuff you wanted?”
“Never mind.”
“You’re going to Klee?”
Parker ignored him. He said to the woman, “Come on,” and started for the front of the store.
“You scum! You vomit! You stinking cesspool!”
Parker walked through the store to the street, the woman coming behind him. She opened the rear door of the car, and Parker put the three boxes on the seat. He closed the door and nodded to the woman.
She said, “He’s getting worse.”
Parker hadn’t expected her to talk. He stopped and looked at her and said, “He’s stupid. There’s others in the same business.”
“He don’t get half the business he used to. You, too, you’re going somewhere else now.”
“Tell him, not me.”
“It’s because he’s blind.”
“He ought to be used to it by now.”
Parker went around and got behind the wheel. It was a one-year-old Mercury, painted blue and white, a mace he’d picked up yesterday in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He’d drive it out to North Dakota, stash it at the mine, and drive away in it after the job. Then he’d get rid of it. The Pennsylvania plates and registration paper looked good enough if he stayed out of Pennsylvania. From the little mileage on it, he thought it had probably been taken right from a dealer. Even with planned obsolescence, it would last as long as he’d need it.
He made a U-turn on Second Avenue and went up the hill and over to the Thruway entrance. The way he’d originally figured, he’d go back to Jersey City and stay over tonight, then pick up Edgars in the morning and head west. But now, having to stop off in Syracuse to see Klee, he’d have to make better time than that, get Edgars to leave tonight. If everything worked out, they could maybe pull it next Thursday night.
He picked up the ticket at the Thruway entrance and headed south. He was impatient, but he stayed just under the speed limit. He didn’t want a trooper looking into the road-racer boxes on the back seat.
4
“This is Jean,” said Edgars. He seemed uncomfortable.
Jean wasn’t uncomfortable at all. She was a hard-looking blonde of about thirty, short, with hard, conical breasts. She was sitting on the sofa in the living-room of Edgars’ apartment, her legs crossed and skirt hiked up to show her tan.