Two boys on bicycles rode by, looking at him curiously.
He couldn’t leave. He couldn’t stay. He couldn’t bull his way in.
Which left only one thing to do. He put the car in gear and drove three curving blocks before he found a telephone booth on a corner. He stopped the car, stepped into the booth, and dialed Saugherty’s house.
Brock answered, and Parker said, “Hello, Brock, this is Parker. Put Rosenstein on.”
All he got was a gasp.
“Come on, Brock, we’re all in a hurry. Put your angel on, let’s go.”
Brock didn’t say anything, but Parker heard the receiver thud down on a piece of furniture. He thought he could vaguely hear conversation going on far from the phone. He waited, and the next voice he heard was the same one that had questioned him that time at Brock’s place:
“Parker?”
“Rosenstein?”
“Yeah. You the one called before?”
“Yes.”
“Had us a little confused here. What’s on your mind?”
“I’ve got Uhl,” Parker said.
“That’s good,” Rosenstein said. “Have fun with him.”
“I used that serum of yours on him.”
There was a little pause, and Rosenstein said, “You did?”
“So now I know the situation,” Parker said. “I know I need Saugherty.”
Rosenstein laughed. “Ain’t that the truth. Sorry, baby, he isn’t for sale.”
“But you need Uhl,” Parker told him.
Another little silence, and Rosenstein said, “How do you figure that?”
“You don’t have the money, and you won’t get it without Uhl. Just like I won’t get it without Saugherty. You’ve got Saugherty. I’ve got Uhl.”
“Are you talking deal?”
“Better we each get half than nobody gets anything.”
“Maybe. Maybe I don’t need Uhl at all.”
“If you didn’t,” Parker said, improvising, “You’d have the money by now and be gone from there.”
“If I had that damn serum— “
“You need Uhl.”
“Hold on a minute.”
Parker held on. He didn’t know what Saugherty had done with the money, or why it was taking Rosenstein and Brock so long to get it out of him, but unless Saugherty fell apart in the next thirty seconds this idea ought to work.
Rosenstein came back. “Just for the sake of argument, what’s on your mind?”
“Fifty-fifty split.”
“I know that. How do you want to work it?”
“We’ll meet and talk things over,” Parker said, and knowing Rosenstein would object, he said, “We’ll figure out some place we can meet, and— “
“You mean I leave here? That’s damn likely, isn’t it? Don’t be stupid, Parker.”
“All right then. You tell me.”
“Just tell me what Uhl told you. We’ll get the dough and leave you half. You’re in the neighborhood, right?”
“I’m a few blocks away.”
“In a phone booth on the corner? Yeah, I know that one. So just give me the story.”
“And you’ll leave me half,” Parker said.
There was a little silence, and then Rosenstein chuckled. “It was worth a try,” he said.
“We can’t stall around forever,” Parker said. “Neither of us is going to get more than half, so let’s face it.”
Rosenstein sighed. “All right. But I’m not leaving here.”
“Then I don’t know,” Parker said. He wanted the suggestion to come from Rosenstein so he wouldn’t be suspicious of it.
It finally did. “Why don’t you come here?” Rosenstein said. “We can work out a way you can come in without exposing yourself. I don’t suppose you’ll take my word for a safe conduct or anything.”
“I won’t.”
“All right. Set it up any way you want.”
Parker nodded, having gotten where he wanted to go. He said, “Is there a car in the garage?”
“What? Yeah.”
“Remove it. Park it down by the curb and leave the garage door open. But neither you nor Brock is to be in the garage. I’ll drive straight in. What room does the garage connect to?”
“The kitchen.”
“Is there a table in there?”
“Yeah.”
“You two be sitting at it with your hands where I can see them. You can leave the door to the garage open or shut, it’s up to you. I’ll come in empty-handed. You can have one gun on the table so you’ll know I won’t come in shooting.”
“All right. What about Uhl?”
“He’s in the trunk of my car. Don’t worry, he’s out of the play.”
“Good. Anything else?”
“Not here.”
“All right. We’ll empty the garage for you.”
“I’m on my way,” Parker said.
Six
The garage was at the left end of the house, its door like an open mouth. Parker drove into it with no hands on the wheel, looking for the doorway that had to be somewhere in the right-side wall, the one leading into the kitchen. His left hand was on the door handle beside him, and his right hand had a revolver in it.
There was a slight blacktop slope up from the road, and then the flat garage floor. Parker went up, fast, into the garage too fast, stood on the brake at the last second, saw that interior doorway empty in the middle of the wall to his right, shoved the car door open with his shoulder, and went out of the car backwards, dropping toward the floor as the first bullet came from that doorway over there into the car through the windshield and out this side, six inches over Parker’s head.
The car bumped into the rear wall. It was still in drive; the motor kept turning over, it kept pushing against the wall, but not hard enough to do any damage.
Parker hit the floor between the car and the exterior wall, folded his arms in close against his body, and rolled under the car. He kept himself rolling across the cement floor, the car rumbling over his head.
The garage door was sliding down. It must be run electrically, with a switch somewhere in the house.
Parker rolled out from under the right side of the car. Brock, startled, was standing in the doorway on the landing there with the open kitchen doorway on his right and the cellar stairs behind him. Parker had been in the garage less than ten seconds. He fired, lying on his back, and Brock jerked and toppled backwards down the cellar stairs.
Parker lunged for the wall as a shot was fired from the kitchen. It came through the angle of the two doorways and slapped into the side of the car.
The garage door was down. There’d been three shots, only one with the door open. With any luck the neighbors were all too busy and too far away to have noticed anything, but there couldn’t be a lot of noise from here on.
Exhaust was beginning to stink up the garage already. The car engine was still growling, pushing against the rear wall of the garage.
There was a faint call from the cellar: “Matt! Help me, Matt!”
“Damn you, Parker!”
That was Rosenstein’s voice from somewhere in the kitchen. Parker was pressed against the wall to the right of the doorway. There were two steps up to the doorway, and then the little landing inside and the kitchen doorway on the left.
There couldn’t be a stalemate now. He had to keep moving, keep Rosenstein from getting himself reorganized. There was a pegboard mounted on the wall to Parker’s right, the other way from the door, with tools hanging on it. He grabbed a hammer, stepped away from the wall so he could see on a diagonal through the two doorways into the kitchen, and threw the hammer at the far wall in there to give Rosenstein something else to think about for two seconds. He followed the hammer in, running low, diving across the threshold, firing blindly to his right as he went in. Not to hit anything, just to keep Rosenstein off balance, surround him with movement and noise.
A bullet ripped cloth above Parker’s shoulder blade, and then he was on the floor, on his side. Rosenstein was in the doorway at the far end of the right-hand wall. Parker had two hands on the gun for stability, his arms were outstretched and he fired as Rosenstein dove out of the doorway. Rosenstein roared and crashed somewhere out of sight.