Parker16 Butcher's Moon (20 page)

twenty-four thousand—he would only be paying forty-nine thousand out of his own pocket. And since the seventy-three hadn't been his to begin with, he could look at it that he was making a twenty-four-thousand-dollar profit on the deal.

Buenadella finally broke the silence. He seemed uncertain whether to talk to Parker or Grofield, and looked at Parker first, but then turned to Grofield instead; probably because Grofield seemed friendlier. "I can't pay you all at once," he said.

Grofield grinned; he couldn't help himself. As an actor, and as a summer-theater producer, he had dealings from time to time with the business mentality, and by God, if this wasn't it in full flower. A hood would either pay up or start shooting, it was impossible to think of a hood in terms of time payments. Buenadella, regardless of the business he was in, was more merchant than crook, and that was why it was going to be possible to deal with him.

But not this way. "Sorry," Grofield said. "We couldn't keep coming back for the payments. It has to be all at once."

"Seventy-three thousand," Buenadella pointed out, "that's a big bite."

"You can do it."

"You're going to strap me at a time when I really need the cash."

Parker said, "Stop it, Buenadella. There's only one way to pay us, and you know it."

Grofield saw Buenadella getting his back up again; the very sound of Parker's voice irritated the man. Now, with negotiations finally having been opened, and moving along pretty smoothly considering the circumstances, there was no point going back to the old hostilities. So, to soothe Buenadella, Grofield said, "I'm sure we can work something out, Mr. Buenadella. We don't want to be unreasonable."

"You call yourselves reasonable?" But it was said truculently, not angrily, so no real damage had been done.

"Well," Grofield said, "of course, we're pretty well locked into two conditions here. We have to have a lump-sum payment, and we have to have it in cash. You can see the reasons for that."

Buenadella, the businessman, could see the reasons, but didn't want to. "We could have a paper between us," he grumbled. "We could make a legal thing, that you could take me to court if I missed a payment. If I agree to pay you, I'll pay you."

"It just wouldn't work, Mr. Buenadella," Grofield said, sounding mournful about it. "To have a legal document, you'd have to have my real name, for instance, and I'd rather you didn't have it. Not to mention an address."

"Christ." Buenadella tapped his fingers on the desk blotter; they made small muffled noises, as for a midget's funeral. "Where'm I going to get that much cash right away? I might as well tell you go fuck yourselves, do your worst."

"You haven't seen our worst, Mr. Buenadella," Grofield said gently.

Buenadella cocked his head and squinted at Grofield, and it seemed to Grofield that for the first time Buenadella was taking the threat seriously. Underplay, Grofield thought, always underplay, that's the way to get your effects every time.

Buenadella was still working things out. "It's possible," he said. "But it'll take a couple days."

"Now," Parker said.

Grofield said to Parker, "Wait a minute, let's hear him out. He's got problems too."

"Only you people," Buenadella said. He rubbed the line of his jaw with a knuckle, thinking. "I can't do anything today, right? It's Sunday, everything's closed. Tomorrow first thing I start. But you're talking cash, that's going to take a couple days."

Parker said, "One day."

Buenadella looked back and forth at the two of them, and decided to talk to Grofield again. "You can't collect cash that fast," he said. "You know what I'm talking about, it takes time, liquidating things, converting to cash. I'm in a bad cash flow situation anyway, what with the summer, attendance down, this election—"

"Well," Grofield said, "I sort of think the election is what my partner had in mind. That's Tuesday, right?"

"Sure, Tuesday." *

"Day after tomorrow." Grofield shrugged, shaking his head, as though truly sorry to be the bearer of bad news. "See, that election's important to us. It's part of the pressure we have on you."

"You don't pay up by Tuesday morning," Parker said, "your man loses. One way or another, he loses."

"It can't be done that fast!"

"You can if you really try," Grofield said. "I tell you what; I'll give you a call tomorrow morning, say ten-thirty, see how you're coming along."

Bitterly Buenadella said, "I wish I'd never heard of that money."

"That would have been better," Grofield agreed. "We can find our own way out." He glanced at Parker, who nodded.

Grofield went first. He opened the French doors, stepped through to the cluttered rear lawn with its overcrowded plantings of bushes and hedges and small trees, and he saw the man with the gun just as the gun sparked white and red at the end of the barrel.

There wasn't time to do a thing, not even time to think. He never heard the sound of the shot, but he felt the punch high on the left side of his chest; it felt as though he'd been hit by something as big as a fist, a metal fist.

It spun him around. Everything went out of focus as he turned, like a special effect in a movie.
He killed me!
Grofield thought despairingly, and slid down the invisible glass wall of life.

Twenty-seven

When Grofield jerked back against the doorjamb, Parker didn't need to hear the sound to know he'd been shot. From outside, from people hidden in the shrubbery out there, waiting. Signaled by Buenadella, somehow, since Parker and Grofield had come in here, then setting themselves up outside and waiting for their targets to come out.

But they'd started shooting just a second too soon. Parker moved to his right, crouching, getting away from the open doorway as he clawed out his own pistol. Finish off Buenadella first, retreat through the house. No telling how many of them were out there in the yard.

But when his movement brought him around to face Buenadella, the blank terrified bewilderment of the man made it obvious this wasn't his idea. The people outside were operating on orders from somebody else—Farrell maybe, or Calesian.

" Buenadella wasn't that good an actor, to have negotiated the way he had with Grofield or to be faking right now that look of stunned horror.

Another shot was fired out there, on the heels of the first, the bullet chunking into the paneling somewhere on the far side of the room. Grofield wasn't moving. He was body hit, probably dead. This room would fill up with them in a minute; Parker turned some more, showing Buenadella the gun in his hand, and headed for the interior door.

It had all gone so fast there hadn't been time for words, but Buenadella croaked out something as Parker pulled the door open and ran through. He couldn't make out the words or the meaning, and didn't slow down to worry about it. Slamming the door behind himself, he trotted down a corridor, went through a doorway on the right that should lead toward the front of the house, and strode across an empty family room with a ping- pong table at one end, a bar at the other, and a television set in the middle. He carried the pistol in his right hand, but kept the hand close in against his leg in case he should run into members of Buenadella's family.

Then he almost walked into a dining room full of them, but just in time heard the clinking of silverware and the sounds of voices in idle conversation. The shots from the yard had not been very loud, and had apparently not been heard at this end of the house.

Parker veered away from the doorway, found another hall, and walked quickly along it. There was no sound of pursuit from behind him, probably meaning that Buenadella wouldn't permit a shoot-out in his own house, but Parker moved fast anyway, wanting to be long gone by the time they'd decided what to do next.

He came to a living room, also empty, and then finally the front door. Opening it slightly, he looked out at a semicircle of blacktop driveway, a meticulously neat lawn dotted with small shrubs, and a genteel residential street. A dark blue Lincoln went by, purring. A television-repair truck was parked across the way.

There was no one in sight. The shrubs were too small for a man to hide behind, nor was there any place else out there to hide, except in the television-repair truck, and that was surely some sort of police stakeout; more likely to be state or federal than local.

And the truck would give Parker his safe passage. There just might be men with guns in the upstairs windows who would see Parker leaving, but they wouldn't fire, not with that truck out there. Any cop hidden in there would just love to watch somebody shot down on Buenadella's front lawn; it would give them all the excuse they needed to enter the house and give it a complete toss, end to end.

So there wouldn't be any shooting in front of the house, though they'd have to try following him, hope to catch up with him someplace safer. He'd deal with that when it happened.

He opened the front door, went out into the sunlight and the overly warm air, walked briskly but casually out the driveway to the street. He turned fight, headed down the block with no change in the regular pace of his movements.

Back to Lozini, now. Time to mobilize him, use him to break this town open.

It was too bad about Grofield.

Twenty-eight

Calesian fired a second time, over the falling man's head at the guy coming out behind him. But it was a harder shot, the second target still being in the semi-darkness inside the room, and with a few seconds' warning to start moving out of the way. He knew without looking that he'd missed, so he ran forward toward the open doors, crouching and weaving, making himself as difficult as possible to aim at.

He had come here directly after the phone conversation with Buenadella. Knowing that at least two police agencies kept routine watch on Buenadella's house, just to have a general idea who his visitors were, Calesian had come around the back way, across several well-tended spacious rear yards, having to deal with one Great Dane along the way, and when he'd arrived here he'd gone directly to the French doors leading to Buenadella's office. He'd almost opened the doors, but with his hands on the fancy handles he had heard voices from inside, and he'd wanted to know who it was talking to Buenadella before he showed himself.

There were spaces between the orange drapes covering the French doors on the inside; Calesian had stooped to peer through, and when he'd seen Parker he'd immediately backed away from the house, taking shelter amid the hedges so he could think things over.

So; Parker too had figured things out, but unlike Lozini, he had chosen to go directly to the top. Was he here because he wanted to find out if Buenadella was the man organizing the takeover, or was it because he already knew?

Whichever it was, they were obviously just talking in there. Parker wanted his money, not a lot of corpses, so he wouldn't - shoot Buenadella. On the other hand, it wouldn't be good for Calesian to jump him inside Buenadella's house. Better to wait for him to come out.

Which was what he'd done. Except that it hadn't been Parker all by himself in there; the other one, Green, had also been present, though Calesian hadn't been able to see him in looking through the space between the drapes. And that was why Calesian had made his mistake.

If he'd known Parker and Green were both in there, he would have stayed out of sight until both men had emerged completely from the house into the outer daylight. He was fast and he was accurate, well-trained on the pistol range in the basement at headquarters, and he had no doubt he could step out from concealment and drop any two men on earth before they could reach for their own weapons. Even fast-draw artists from rodeos or movies; anybody.

But he hadn't known about Green. So the French doors had opened, a man had come out, and Calesian had stepped out from behind the hedge to kill him, to finish him off once and for all. And it was as he was coming out, raising his arm in the formal shooter's posture, elbow locked, entire arm and hand and gun pointing at that man's heart, that he saw the second one coming out behind the first and realized his mistake.

And by God, they were fast. Both men were moving when he squeezed off that first shot. There wasn't a chance in hell for the first man to get away, but the second one was still inside the house, and he moved fast, and the second shot missed.

So Calesian ran forward, crouching, weaving, and burst through the French doors to see the interior door slamming on the other side of the den. And Dutch Buenadella was on his feet behind his desk, yelling something Calesian didn't hear and didn't pay attention to.

Goddammit. In the house, actually inside the house, with Buenadella's family present. The situation couldn't be worse, but the guy couldn't be allowed to get out of here alive. Calesian crossed the room on the dead run, yanked open the door, and something grabbed his arm, spun him backward around off balance, and shoved him away toward the side wall.

Buenadella. Calesian, flinging his arms out to get his balance back, saw Buenadella slamming the door again, and he couldn't believe it. "Dutch!" he yelled, and surged once more at the door. "He's getting away!"

Buenadella stiff-armed him. "God damn you son of a bitch bastard asshole, stop where you are or I swear to God I'll rip your head off your shoulders and kick it into the street!"

The tone of voice got to Calesian more than the words. He stopped, panting, adrenalin pumping, and finally saw that Buenadella's face was purple with rage, and that the rage was directed at him, at Calesian. "Jesus Christ, Dutch," he said, still panting, "I could have had them both."