“Maybe he’ll tell you someday,” Parker said. “You can go back to your game now.”
Progressi didn’t believe it. He blinked at Parker, blinked at the door handle. “I can go?”
“Put some ice on the back of your neck,” Parker told him. “It stops the bleeding.”
Progressi opened the car door. “You want to try this stuff on George,” he said. His voice was shaky. “You can’t push everybody around like this, not everybody.”
Parker waited for him to get out of the car.
Progressi licked blood from his upper lip. He was blinking and blinking, trying to figure some way to get his assurance back. “I’ll see you again sometime,” he said, saying it less tough than he wanted.
Parker waited.
Progress! got out of the car and stood there with the door open a second. “You’re a real son of a bitch,” he said. “You’re a goddam bastard, you know that?”
Parker started the engine and drove away from there, and the acceleration shut the passenger door. He drove straight down the coast to Washington and here was his first sign of Matt Rosenstein, and Barri Dane wasn’t going to be answering anybody’s questions for quite a while.
He shifted in the chair, looking across the room at her. If she’d wake up. But she wasn’t going to, she’d been doped to the ears. It would be tomorrow sometime before she opened her eyes at all, and she’d still be groggy then.
And he didn’t even know for sure she had anything to tell. It looked as though Rosenstein had worked on her a long time, maybe for as long as she’d stay conscious for it, so it could be she didn’t know anything at all and Rosenstein had just been tough to convince.
Why hadn’t Rosenstein brought along that drug of his? Maybe he preferred to ask his questions this way, if it was a woman.
But the hell with Rosenstein. The question was, What was Parker going to do now? There was nothing left except the cop in New York, Dumek, the one Joyce Langer had told him about. A patrolman named Dumek. He might be tough to find, and even if he was found he was a real long shot to know anything. Dumek might be one hundred percent crooked, he might be on the take every way there was, but he was still an unlikely guy for Uhl to go to with his hands full of caper money. But what the hell else was there?
He got to his feet, suddenly impatient. He wanted to go somewhere and there wasn’t anywhere to go. All this driving today, up and down, back and forth, hour after hour, and he hadn’t gotten anywhere at all. And he wanted to do more of it. His mind was full of the urge to get into the car and drive, just drive. Just to be doing something.
He remembered having seen a phone in the living room. He left the bedroom and went back through the flat, this time switching on lights as he went, and in the living room he dialed New York information for the number he wanted, then dialed it. Not out of any expectation, but just to be doing something.
“Rilington Hotel.”
“Hello, this is Thomas Lynch. You have any messages for me?”
“One moment, sir.”
He waited, sitting on the edge of the chair, free hand dangling between his knees. He was tired, but he knew he couldn’t sleep. His shoulders ached; the back of his neck ached.
“Sir?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you registered with us?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Well, we do have a message here, Mr. Lynch, but I have no record of your having made a reservation.”
“I sent a wire. You’ve got a message for me?”
“I have no record of the wire, sir. But if you could give me the information now, I’d be happy to see to the arrangements.”
There was a message there. He wasn’t using that hotel for a drop with anybody but Joyce Langer. Sometimes the unexpected happens.
But he had the desk clerk’s game to play first. He said, “I wanted a single for four days from Tuesday. What’s the message?”
“That would be this coming Tuesday, sir?”
“Naturally. Now if you don’t mind, it’s late and I’m tired. What’s the message?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. A Miss Langer called for you, not more than an hour ago. I didn’t take the message myself. Let me sec— She said she has what you were looking for, and if you will come by between eight and eleven in the morning the superintendent will have the key for you. She will not herself be at home.”
“Good,” Parker said. His watch said nearly one o’clock. It was four hours back to New York; that meant five. Four hours sleep, he could be up to her place by nine-thirty. He said, “That means a change in the reservation. I want it to start tonight.”
“Tonight, sir?”
“I’ll be there in four hours.”
“That would be five in the morning, sir.”
“I know that.”
“We’d have to charge you the full rate for tonight, sir. I hope you understand that.”
“I understand that,” Parker said.
“Very well, sir. We’ll be looking forward to serving you.”
Parker hung up and went back to the bedroom. The woman hadn’t moved. Her breathing was still slow and faint. He switched off the lamp beside the bed and then left the apartment, turning out lights as he went. He paid no attention to his reflection as he crossed the long studio to the jimmied door. He went out, closed the door behind him as far as it would go, went back to his car, and started to drive again.
Two
Parker poked George Uhl in the stomach with the barrel of the pistol. “Wake up,” he said.
Uhl groaned and thrashed a little in the rumpled bed, not wanting to be awake. Then his eyes did open, unfocused, as though his sleeping brain was just starting to listen to the voice that had spoken to him, listen to it and identify it.
Uhl jolted up to a sitting position, wide-eyed. He’d been sleeping naked. He stared at Parker, and for a long minute neither of them said anything. Then Uhl said, “No.”
Parker had backed away a few steps, and now he motioned with the gun, saying, “Get up out of there. Get dressed.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Up,” Parker said.
Uhl looked around as though just now noticing where he was. “That bitch,” he said and showed a sudden flare-up of anger. “That little bitch, she turned me up.”
“Don’t let it worry you, George,” Parker said. “Just get out of bed. Don’t make me lose my patience.”
Uhl glanced at him as though Parker were suddenly the secondary problem, as though he didn’t want to be distracted from thinking about Joyce Langer. He said, “You don’t have any patience to lose. You never had any patience.” He threw the covers back and got out of bed.
Parker leaned against the wall and kept the gun pointed generally in Uhl’s direction while Uhl dressed. Uhl was wrong about his not having any patience. He’d been impatient up till now, impatient since Uhl had turned the robbery sour Monday morning, just this time of the morning five days ago, but now that he had Uhl in front of him again he wasn’t impatient at all. He was very relaxed, very calm, ready to take his time and do the rest of this right.
He’d gotten here fifteen minutes ago, at nine forty. The super had given him the key and he’d come up, let himself in quietly, found Uhl asleep in the bedroom, and proceeded to search the place. If Uhl was carrying the money with him, it was all over and Uhl would never wake up again.
But the apartment was clean. He hadn’t been able to give it the kind of thorough frisk he’d given Paul Brock’s place, but it didn’t need it. That wad of money Uhl had taken off with was large and bulky, no matter what sort of container it was put in. If it had been anywhere in the apartment Parker would have found it in the ten minutes he’d spent looking. But it wasn’t here, and that meant George Uhl got to greet one more morning.
They didn’t say anything while Uhl dressed, but obviously he’d been thinking things over because once he was dressed he looked at Parker and said, “You want the dough or I’d be dead now.”