Parker turned from his scanning of the apartment to study its tenant instead. The room distracted one from the man who lived in it, made him tend to disappear into the background, and maybe that was a part of the intention.
Because Paul Brock wasn’t very much. Slightly under medium height, very thin, he had a long, bony neck and an Ichabod Crane sort of face, except that there was a well-worn expression of friendliness and amiability on this face. Brock wore heavy horn rimmed glasses that made his eyes look huge and his cheeks look as though they sagged. He was about thirty. He was wearing loafers and grey slacks and a pale blue short-sleeved polo shirt, and he looked like the kind of guy in the office who’d go around with a cigar box to take up the gift collection every time one of the secretaries was quitting to get married.
He shut the door now and said, “Do you have a name you give out, or do I just clear my throat when I want to attract your attention?”
“Parker.”
“Parker. Nosy or pen? Ha! Well, that wasn’t very funny. It’s too early to offer a drink, but I— it is too early to offer a drink, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Parker said.
“I thought it was. Coffee?”
“I don’t have the time,” Parker said.
“Then let’s get down to business, Mr. Parker. Have a seat.”
Parker sat in a wooden-armed chair with an orange seat-cushion, and Brock settled opposite him on the black leather sofa. Brock tucked his legs under himself like a woman, but it seemed an unselfconscious gesture, and in no other way did he behave overtly like a faggot. The position was somehow more childlike than sexual.
Parker leaned forward and put his elbows on knees. “First of all,” he said, “I’m in the same business as Matt Rosenstein. He doesn’t know me, but we’ve got some mutual acquaintances also in the profession. If you want, I can give you some names till we come to one you know, and then you can check me out to see if I’m what I say I am.”
“I have no doubt you’re what you say you are,” Brock said. “You couldn’t be anything else. In fact, you remind me of Matt in a lot of ways. Not in appearance so much, and probably with more personal control, but still you two are obviously both in the same bag. I don’t have to check on you.”
“Good. There’s another guy also in the same business, and I know he worked with Rosenstein once. I want to find this guy, and I don’t have any way to get in touch with him. Maybe Rosenstein does. That means I have to ask Rosenstein. I asked around and I found out that if I want any answers from Rosenstein I have to ask the questions of you.”
Brock nodded. “That’s true,” he said. “I am Matt’s post office. Who is the man you want to find?”
“George Uhl,” Parker said. “U-h-1.” He watched Brock’s face and saw nothing happen there.
“I wouldn’t know him,” Brock said, “but then I don’t know all of Matt’s friends. Why do you want to find him?”
“Business reasons,” Parker said.
“None of mine, eh?” Brock smiled amiably. “That’s fair enough. So what you want me to do is ask Matt how you get in touch with this man Uhl, is that right?”
“Or send me to Rosenstein,” Parker said, “and I’ll ask him myself.”
Brocks smile got thinner. “I don’t think that would be the way to handle it. Though I see no reason not to make a phone call for you. You say this man’s name is George Uhl?”
“Yes.”
“Odd name,” Brock said. He untucked his legs and put his feet on the floor. “I’ll make the call,” he said, “and then we’ll wait a while before Matt calls back. You understand that.”
“I’ll wait.”
“You’re making me a nervous host,” Brock said. “May I at least offer you some coffee while you wait?”
“Make the call first,” Parker said.
“Naturally.”
Brock slid to his feet, made a smiling half-bow to excuse himself, and left the room.
Parker sat in the chair and waited. The room forced itself on his attention much more than an ordinary room. His eyes kept traveling from detail to detail, distracting his mind.
He vaguely heard the murmur of speech from deeper within the apartment. That would be Brock on the phone. Then there was silence for a while, and then Brock came in with a silver coffee service on a silver tray with a dish of chocolate chip cookies. “The cookies are homemade,” he said, putting the tray down. “I think you’ll find them quite good. How do you take your coffee?”
“Black.”
Brock poured. The cups were ornate, with tiny, slender curved handles and fragile saucers. The spoons were smaller than ordinary. Brock put a cookie on the saucer with the cup and passed it over to Parker.
It was like Madge again. Waiting for a phone call and spending the meantime in somebody else’s idea of social fun. Coffee and cookies. Parker ate some of the cookie, and it had a good taste to it.
Brock perched on the edge of the sofa, stirring milk and sugar into his own coffee, said, “Artie phoned me back, you know. After you left the store.”
“He did?”
“He said you tweaked his nose.” Brock smiled merrily. “What a strange thing to do,” he said.
Parker shrugged. He drank some of the coffee, and that was good,too.
Brock kept a small conversation going awhile longer, talking about Artie, about the record store, about the rain beating down outside, and Parker answered him the way he’d answered Madge, with nods and monosyllables. But the combination of small talk, hot coffee, and the distracting detail-full room were soporific. Also the vague shush of rain outside the shuttered windows. Parker sat back in the chair and let his body relax while he waited.
After a while Brock said, “Excuse me. I’ll be right back.”
Parker nodded, and Brock left.
The room was full of details. The rain whispered outside. The coffee was warm in his stomach. His eyelids were drooping When he realized he’d been drugged it was too late to do anything about it. He was too weak to stand. A swirling dizziness was spinning up from his stomach, clouding his sight. befuddling his brain.
He managed to turn his head and look at the doorway to the dining room, the rough plaster arch. It was empty. The dining room beyond, heavy with wooden furniture like a room in a monastery, was empty.
The guns were heavy, his pockets confining, but he got the guns out, he got them out. He pushed forward and went to his knees onto the rug, the rug muffling the thump. He swayed forward and made it to the sofa, a revolver loosely held in each hand. He stuffed the guns under the pillows, deep in under tin pillows.
Night was closing in, full of swirling mists. On hands and knees he moved his heavy dead body away from the sofa, back toward the orange chair. He wasn’t making it. He lunged forward, and miles away some rocky cliff that was his forehead blundered into the wooden chair arm, and he fell, turning, and darkness wrapped a black wool blanket around him hours before he hit the floor.
Four
Floating. Floating. Blue and blue and black. Bottom of the ocean. Outer space, between the stars. Tiny winking lights millions of miles away. Soft floating, wrapped in dark blue cotton candy. Soft blankets. Endlessly turning. Slow.
“Can you hear me?”
Irritation. A rip in the fabric. But still the floating.
“Can you hear me?”
Answer. Easier that way. “Yes.”
“What do you want with George Uhl?”
“Money.”
“What money?”
“My money. Our money.”
“George Uhl has money belonging to you? Does he?”