“That’s a lot of driving,” she said and sat up. She wanted to cry, but she wasn’t going to.
“You’re damn right,” he said. He pulled the covers up over himself. “See you tomorrow,” he said, and rolled over on his side so that when she got into bed next to him his back would be to her.
She looked at his shoulder covered by blanket. She didn’t think about tonight at all; she thought about the past. Other times with George. Things he’d done, things he’d said, things he’d failed to do. And other men, all of them like George one way or another. Things they’d done. Things they’d said. Things they’d failed.
She got to her feet. He was asleep already. She picked up her pajamas from the floor, and the waist button on the pajama bottoms had been pulled off. She bit the inside of her cheek because she wasn’t going to cry. She dropped the pajamas on the floor again, picked up the robe instead, put it on, left the room, shut the door quietly behind her.
The white pages phone book was under the telephone in the living room. She sat on the sofa, her chin trembling, and looked up the number, then dialed it. She listened to the ringing sound, wondering if she would hang up when it was answered.
“Rilington Hotel.” “Oh,” she said. “Uh.”
“Yes?”
She hunched over the phone, her voice low but steady. “I want to leave a message for Mr. Thomas Lynch,” she said.
FOUR
One
The mirror reflected Parker’s pencil flashlight. He stood inside the door he’d just jimmied and moved the flashlight and saw that the mirror ran the length of the room and all the way up the wall, maybe twelve feet high. A huge mirror facing a bare, wood-floored room. A piano in a far corner of the room, a piano far away in a room corner in the mirror. Portable phonographs on wooden tables, real and image. A few chairs along the wall opposite the mirror facing the chairs far away against the back wall inside the mirror.
The door was closed as far as it would go. Parker moved away from it, crossing the room in front of the mirror, ignoring the distracting image of himself and the echo of the flashlight next to him. He came to a curtained doorway and clicked off the light and then carefully moved the curtain an inch out of the way.
Darkness. No light anywhere, no sound anywhere. He stepped through, the curtain brushing against him, smelling dusty, and when the curtain had fallen into place behind him again he hit the flashlight button briefly, just long enough to see where he was.
A living room, small and crowded, full of spindly-looking Danish modern. An archway opposite, with a small dining room beyond it.
There was no obstruction between here and the dining room. Parker moved slowly through the blackness, and when he thought he was to the archway he flicked on the light again.
Formica-topped dining room table in a wood grain effect. Six chairs with red seats. Sideboard on the right, windows on the left. Left side of the opposite wall a doorway to what looked like a hall.
He turned left in darkness, moved to the wall, traveled along it. When he felt the glass of the first window he stopped and tried to look out, but the blackness outside was unbroken. An air shaft, probably. He moved on and reached the doorway. He stopped and flicked the light again.
A hallway, fairly long, with linoleum flooring. Two doorways on the right, both doors open, a bathroom visible through the first, the second one too far away to see anything. What looked like a kitchen at the far end of the hall.
Darkness again. He moved down the hall, touching both walls till he came to the emptiness of the second doorway. He stood in that doorway and he could see the vague outlines of heavily draped windows across the way. He listened and heard nothing and flashed light again.
Somebody in bed.
In the after-image, when the light was out again, he frowned at what he’d seen. A woman in bed, asleep, covers up to her neck, lying on her back. But there was something wrong with it, something wrong with the picture.
He moved around the wall, around a chair, around a dresser, stopped when he knew he was near the bed. He listened.
No sound. No breathing. Nothing.
He leaned far over, straining in the darkness, listening.
Inhale. Very faint, very slow, very long. Exhale, the same. A pause, a long pause, and then another inhale and another exhale.
There was a bedside table right next to him, and when he reached out his hand he touched a lampshade. He reached under it, found the switch, turned the light on. He squinted down at the woman in the bed.
She’d been worked over. Twice, the second time by a doctor. There were bruises on her face and a bandage on her jaw under the right ear. Her left arm, lying on top of the covers, showed dark bruises on the forearm and the three middle fingers in splints.
There were bottles of pills and a glass of water on the bedside table. There was a recent puncture mark on her upper arm. Barri Dane was out and was going to stay out for a while.
Parker shook his head. He looked around the room and saw a chair across the way with some ripped and rumpled clothing on it. He went over and dumped the clothing on the floor and sat down facing the bed. He looked at the woman lying there and wondered what to do next.
His path had finally crossed Rosenstein’s, that much was obvious. Had Barri Dane had anything to tell? If she had, Rosenstein already knew it, and it could be a couple of days before she could tell it to Parker. So what else was there to do?
It was well after midnight. He’d driven up and down the eastern seaboard all day today, starting with Grace Weiss in Wilkes-Barre this morning, then Lew Pearson in Alexandria, back north to Joyce Langer and Howie Progressi in New York, and now back south again to Washington. Almost twelve hours in the car, and nothing to show for it.
If only Uhl had gone to Progressi. Rosenstein hadn’t tried that one, and Parker would have been clearly safely ahead of him. But Progressi hadn’t know a thing.
Parker had made sure of that, though not as heavily as Rosenstein had done with Barri Dane. But Progressi was a loudmouth, a big talker with a belligerent facade, and that type never took long to empty. Just turn them upside down and everything they had spilled right out.
Parker had found him in the third place he looked, a bowling alley off Flatbush Avenue. He kept it calm and quiet at first, just telling Progressi he had a message for him from George Uhl.
Progress looked interested. “George? Something up?”
“Come on outside.”
“I’m in the middle of a game, pal.”
“You’ll be back.”
So Progressi shrugged and came out with him and they got into Parker’s car and Parker hit him in the throat. Then he sat there and waited till Progressi could talk again, when he said, “I’m looking for George.”
Progressi had a heavy face with a beard-blue jaw, but his skin was now white and unhealthy looking. Both hands were still up protectively around his throat, and when he spoke his voice was hoarse, “Whadaya hit me for?”
“So you’ll tell me where I find George.”
“You want his address? He’s in the phone book, for Christ’s sake. He’s down in Washington in the phone book.”
“You’re gonna try my patience,” Parker said, and backhanded him.
“Jesus!”
“All I want to know is how I find George.”
“I dunno! I dunno!”
Parker hit him again.
“What’s the matter with you? I don’t know. He isn’t home? I don’t know where he is, I swear to Christ I don’t.”
Parker sat back. “Anybody else been asking about him?”
“About George? No. My nose is bleeding. You got any Kleenex? My nose is bleeding.”
“No. Where am I going to find George?”
“Maybe his girl knows.” Progressi was snuffling, putting his head back. His fingers and wrists were bloody from his nose.
Parker said, “What girl?”
“Down in Washington. Barri Dane, her name is. With an i. She’d know where he is. Christ, what’s he done to you?”