The hell with Negli for now. The amateur was the important thing, he couldn’t be permitted to get away again. Three times and out; this was the end of the amateur’s string.
Parker moved as quickly and as silently as he could around the edge of the cabin and along the grass that flanked the gravel driveway. He kept watching for Negli, looking down every vista between cabins, past the bushes growing against some of the cabins, down toward the pine woods that flanked Vimorama on three sides. He didn’t see Negli, not a sign of him, but all at once, ahead of him, he saw the amateur go pelting by, running out of Vimorama entirely, heading for the trees, trying to get away again.
Parker took off after him, jumping across the gravel driveway in two steps, angling through between the cabins to try to head the other one off. Behind him, Negli shouted something he didn’t try to understand. A cabin window to his right shattered in time with the sound of a shot from back there. Parker half turned, still running, and snapped a shot in Negli’s direction, not to hit him but just to slow him down, distract him. The important thing now was not Negli, it was the goddam amateur.
The amateur went through the woods without looking back, and across the front of a gas station. Parker went after him, running flat out, determined this time not to lose him. And knowing Negli would never be able to keep up to this pace, so he wouldn’t have to worry about his back for a while.
Parker was fast, but the amateur was faster, and the gray Ford parked down the road there had to be his. He reached it and flung open the near door, and Parker stopped long enough to put a bullet into the door. He’d been trying for the amateur’s leg, but his aim was off because of the running and the lack of time.
But the miss was almost as good as a hit. It deflected the amateur from the car anyway, and sent him off into the woods instead.
Parker got to the car a minute later and looked in and saw the suitcases on the back seat. The same ones. So he’d found the cash at last.
But he couldn’t do anything about it yet. There was still the amateur in front of him and Little Bob Negli behind him. Looking down to his left, Parker saw Negli running along on his bantam legs like some sort of silly lunatic from a silent movie comedy, his fancy clothing all rumpled up and torn, the tiny Beretta glinting in his hand, his face dark with thunderclouds.
Which first? If he took the time for Negli, the amateur might be able to circle back and get the car and the loot and take off again. But if he went on after the amateur, why wouldn’t Negli do the same thing, just hop into the car and take off after the whole bundle?
No, not Negli. One look at him, running along there like somebody’s idea of a joke about vengeance, was enough to tell Parker he didn’t have to worry about Negli taking off with the cash. It wasn’t cash Negli wanted anymore, it was Parker’s scalp. Why he wanted it Parker didn’t know, but he could take time to find out later on.
The amateur first.
The whole thing, looking into the back seat of the Ford and looking back at Negli and making up his mind which idiot to go after first, the whole thing had taken only a couple of seconds. The amateur could still be heard crashing and blundering through the woods, headed straight away from the road and the car, so scared he wasn’t even remembering the cash.
Parker went in after him.
The woods, at first, were like that around Vimorama: well-spaced pine trees with a thick mat of needles covering the ground, darkness and muffled silence, shadows flitting past the black trunks. But the farther they moved from the road, the thicker the going became. Some birch and maple trees began to show up between the pines, clogging the paths more. Dead leaves were mounded around the tree trunks, and the entwined branches of the birches and maples were bare and jagged looking.
As the pines thinned and the birches and maples increased, more and more bushes began to grow between the trunks. Vines and creepers, rose like bushes covered with thorns, thick rubbery bushes with intertwined branches, clumped hedge like bushes autumn-stripped of their leaves; they all slowed Parker down, slowed him down.
But they slowed the amateur more. He had to hack and claw his way through the stuff up ahead there, and where he had passed the going was easier for whoever would come through next.
Parker was next, close behind the amateur, moving after him with grim and steady speed. This wasn’t going to be like the first time, outside Kifka’s place, when night and surprise and a good head start had made it possible for the bastard to get away. Nor like the second time, when the presence of the law there had forced Parker to help him get away.
This time it was clear and simple. This time it was straightforward, the way Parker liked it.
The amateur was running, leaving a broad trail. Parker was following him, and gaining on him. When he caught up with him, he’d kill him.
The land was sloping gradually downward, and now the trees were thinning out and the bushes getting larger and thicker and even harder to light through. There was still some greenery on some of the underbrush that was green all year round, and here and there bushes sported hard inedible bright red berries, but the color of the forest was mostly black, accented by the white trunks of the birches. Between the trunks swelled the under brush, sharp and gamy.
Now and again Parker came to clumps of bushes the amateur hadn’t been able to go through at all; he could see the marks where the amateur had fought his way part-way in and had then been forced to back out again and go around.
That slowed the amateur too, and helped Parker gain on him.
From time to time Parker caught glimpses of him through the trees and brush; a bobbing head, a straining back. But they were just moving glimpses, and he made no attempt to hit him from this range, given such a bad target. He’d catch up with him sooner or later. The amateur might be faster on open level ground, but not in here.
Parker was so sure that he even stopped at one point and listened for Negli. The little man would be coming along too, he was positive. Being smaller, following this trail after two men bigger than himself had already forced it open, Negli should be able to make fine time in here.
But there was no sound.
Parker frowned and listened. Off the other way, he could hear the amateur still blundering away through the underbrush like a frightened range cow, but back toward the highway there was silence.
The silence was split open by a gunshot. Something thudded into the tree beside Parker’s head.
That was the second time Negli’s gun had fired off to the right; sooner or later Negli would notice it himself and start compensating.
But he was back there, anyway. Moving more slowly and silently than he had to because he was afraid of being ambushed.
Parker turned and went on after the amateur before Negli had a chance to try for another shot.
He’d lost ground in those few seconds he’d been stopped, but it didn’t matter. The end was inevitable anyway.
His topcoat was an annoyance, snagging branches, slowing him down. He stopped again and transferred the pistols to his trouser pockets and stripped off the topcoat. He threw it over a bush and went on.
Abruptly, trees and underbrush stopped. Along a straight line running from left to right there was a sudden border to the forest as clear and neat as though someone had cut the earth with a scissors and in fixing things again had seamed two mismatched parts together at this spot like getting a jigsaw puzzle wrong.
On one side of the seam was the forest, black and red and green, verticaled with birch and maple, jagged-armed at the top, cluttered with underbrush at the bottom. On the other side of the seam was blasted dirt, dry tan in color, so light as to almost be cream. Moisture had eroded and drained from the soil, a few late autumn frosts had done their work, and the ground now was baked and cracked like the surface of the moon. Zigzag lines ran here and there across the powdery dirt. Nothing grew.