Parker16 Butcher's Moon (23 page)

"Not here? Where is he?"

"He went out this morning. He's supposed to be back pretty soon."

That wasn't satisfactory, but Simms could see it was the only answer he was going to get, so he gave an irritated shrug and went on into the living room, where he found Frank Faran standing by the window, swirling a colorless drink in a tall glass. A bit of lime in the drink suggested it was probably a vodka- tonic.
7

Faran turned and gave Simms his professional smile and a salute with the glass. "How de do, Nate. Your hair's wet."

"I was in the pool."

"Harold!" Faran shouted. When the houseman appeared in the doorway, Faran gestured to him, saying to Simms, "Have a drink."

"No, thanks," Simms said. He was worrying about the meeting, the reason for it, and he wanted to ask Faran as soon as they were alone. But then he suddenly thought that a drink might calm him, and he said, "Wait. All right. I'll have one of those."

Holding the glass up, Faran said doubtfully, "It's made with rum."

"All right. No, vodka. No, wait, I'll try the rum."

The houseman left, and Faran grinned at Simms, saying, "You seem nervous, Nate. Trouble at home?"

"I'm fine," Simms said. "What's this meeting all about, anyway?"

Faran shrugged. "Beats me. Probably something with that Parker and Green."

"I wish to Christ those two had never showed up."

"Amen," Faran said, and Jack Walters waddled in, looking absurd in a short-sleeved white shirt open at the collar and a pair of trousers left over from some suit. A balled-up handkerchief was in his right hand, and when he lifted it to pat his damp forehead, he made it look as though he'd never attempted that particular movement before in his life and was finding it very unnatural to his body. "Good afternoon," he said.

"You look hot," Faran told him. "When Harold gets back, get yourself a drink."

"No, thank you. Where's Al?"

"Out somewhere. We're supposed to wait."

Simms said to Walters, "Jack, do you know what this is all about?"

"No idea."

The houseman brought the drink and Simms took it, while Faran made cheerful small talk with Walters. They were all standing, like an underattended cocktail party. Simms tried the rum and tonic and found it sweeter than he would have guessed, but not cloying. He lowered the glass, and discovered with astonishment that he'd downed half the drink.

"I'll be right back," he said, and put the glass on an end table. But as he was about to leave the room Ernie Dulare walked in, and he changed his mind again.

Dulare ran the important gambling concessions in town, everything except Simms' own stepchild, policy. A tall, smooth, self-contained man in his fifties, he usually dressed in casual jackets and no tie, and his frequent trips to Las Vegas and the Caribbean had given him a deeper and glossier tan than was possible for people limited to the summer sun of Tyler. He had what Simms thought of as a radio-announcer's voice, smooth but with a kind of mellifluous gravel in it. His presence always made Simms very nervous, for no rational reason.

There were hellos back and forth, through which Simms waited impatiently, until he could say, as though casually, "Ernie, what's this meeting all about, do you know?"

"No idea," Dulare said. His ignorance didn't seem to bother him. "I got a call, and I came. I haven't seen Al for quite some time. Where is he?"

"Due back pretty soon," Faran said.

"Excuse me," Simms said, and went out to use the phone in the front hall, but Dulare's bodyguards were there, two burly men in pastel jackets, talking pro football with one another.

The bodyguards were, so far as Simms knew, Ernie Dulare's only affectation. Nobody traveled like that any more, nobody had to. Even Al Lozini didn't cart bodyguards around with him wherever he went. But Dulare, who did a lot of traveling and hosted a lot of parties and spent a lot of time in public, never made a move without his two sluggers. There was no need for them, but Dulare apparently liked the idea of them; like a professional gunslinger in the Old West having pearl-handled revolvers even though a normal grip was safer and less likely to draw the wrong kind of attention.

Well. With the bodyguards in the hall, Simms went in search of another phone. He heard faint movement sounds from upstairs; probably Mrs. Lozini, and her resident married daughter, whose husband was in prison on check-kiting charges. It had been a first offense and he would have gotten off with probation if he hadn't been an in-law of Al Lozini; the judge had "gone out of his way to demonstrate that he hadn't been bought.

There was a phone in the library, a room full of magazines and religious books. Simms called Donna, and when she answered, her voice clear and happy, he found himself smiling at the phone. "Hi, honey," he said. "It's me."

"Well, hi." He could visualize her in her yellow and red kitchen, leaning against the wall by the phone, one ankle crossed over the other. "Long time no see, stranger."

"You know how things are sometimes," he said. "Listen, I'm in a meeting now, but why don't I come over as soon as it breaks?"

"Sure, honey. How long?"

"I don't know. We're waiting for Mr. Lozini now. It shouldn't be too long, and I'll call you the second it's over."

"Just come on when you can," she said. "I'll be here."

She likes me,
Simms thought, and felt warmth spreading through his chest. "You're a sweet girl," he said.

She laughed. She really did like him. "Don't be too long," she said.

"I won't."

He hung up and went back through the hall to the living room. On the way by, the bodyguards gave him flat incurious glances. In the living room, Dulare and Walters and Faran were standing in a group near the window, talking. Dulare was just finishing Simms' drink.

Thirty-three

When Parker got back to Lozini's house, two burly men in the front hall stopped their conversation to look at him. One said, "You looking for somebody, friend?"

Parker glanced at them. "Which one brought the army? Not Faran, not Simms, not Walters. You're with Dulare."

"You want to see somebody?"

"Not you," Parker said, and headed for the living room. When they made a move at him he showed a gun. "Go in ahead of me," he said.

They glared at the gun and frowned at one another. Slowly they started to raise their hands.

"I didn't tell you to put your hands up," Parker said. "I told you to go into the living room."

They were reluctant to do it, to walk into their employer's ^presence at the end of somebody else's gun, but there just wasn't any choice. Looking twice as tough as usual, hunching their shoulders so they looked as though they were wearing football equipment, they turned and went through the archway into the living room.

The four men in conversation over by the far window glanced casually, and then with curiosity and surprise, toward the new arrivals. Only one of them had a face Parker didn't know, so that one must be Dulare. Talking to Dulare, Parker said, "Are these yours?"

Dulare, a tall tanned man with an autocratic manner, frowned deeply, saying, "What's the problem?"

Frank Faran was suddenly grinning. "Mr. Dulare," he said, "meet Mr. Parker. Mr. Parker, Mr. Dulare."

"1 know who it is," Dulare said. "I want to know what he thinks he's doing."

One of the tough boys said, "We didn't know who he was, Mr. Dulare."

Faran, still grinning, said, "They braced him, Ernie, that's what happened."

It was clear that Dulare didn't like any of this. He was mad at his bodyguards and mad at Parker, but he obviously realized he couldn't say anything to either of them without somehow making a fool of himself, so he turned on Faran, saying, "I don't need your help, Frank."

Faran, offended, stopped grinning. After a second he shrugged and turned away and ostentatiously sipped from his drink.

Parker said to Dulare, "Send these two home."

"They stay with me," Dulare said. "And put that gun away, nobody's showing guns around here."

A pair* of imitation Victorian chairs flanked an imitation Sheraton drop-leaf table on the opposite side of the room. Parker pointed the pistol toward them, saying, "Tell them to sit over there. I'm here to talk, not waste time."

Frowning again, Dulare said, "Who called this meeting, you or Lozini?"

"I'm doing Lozini's talking for him."

Walters said to Dulare, "When I got here, Harold told me we were supposed to wait for either Al or Parker."

Dulare hesitated, then made an angry sweeping gesture with his arm, telling his two men, "Go on over there, take a seat."

They hulked away, aggravated and upset, and Parker put his pistol back out of sight. He said to Dulare, "How much do you know about what's going on?"

"I know about you," Dulare said. "You're causing trouble. Where's Al Lozini?"

Parker said, "Have you heard from Buenadella?"

"Dutch? What about?"

Parker looked at Faran, then Simms, then Walters. He said to Walters, "Doesn't anybody tell this man anything?"

Walters spread pudgy hands. "We didn't know, of course, if he, uh . . ." He gestured helplessly; it was intended to be a delicate motion, a subtle one, but with Walters' ungainliness it came out as a kind of lumpish dance movement.

Still, Parker got the idea; Lozini hadn't known whether he was being attacked by Buenadella or Dulare, so he'd kept them both in the dark.

Dulare had turned on Walters. "What's going on, Jack?"

"Dutch is trying to take over," Walters said.

"From Al?" Dulare sounded unconvinced.

"It's true, Ernie," Faran said. He seemed to take a vindictive pleasure in giving Dulare bad news. "Dutch has been setting it up for a couple years."

Dulare frowned around at everybody, then said to Walters, "Tell me about it."

"Let Parker tell you," Walters said. "I think he knows more about it than I do."

Dulare gave Parker a suspicious look. "All right," he said. "What is it?"

Parker said, "The reform candidate, Farrell, is Buenadella's man. The finish of the scheme is Farrell taking over as mayor from Wain. Buenadella already talked to some of the other people around the country that he needs okays from. I figured maybe he talked to you, too."

Dulare's attention had been caught; he was no longer irritable because of the defusing of his bodyguards. He said, "Who says Farrell belongs to Buenadella?"

"He does. I asked him."

"And he just told you?"

"I had a gun in my hand."

"Christ Almighty." Dulare looked around at the other three. "What the hell is going on around here?"

Walters said, "We wouldn't have known anything about it until it was too late, except for Parker and his friend stirring things up."

Parker said to Dulare, "You're sure Buenadella didn't talk to you?"

"No," Dulare said. Then he said, "I see what you're driving at. No, he wouldn't come to me in front. Dutch and I aren't that close, and he knows I'm a good friend with Al. He'd come around afterwards, when Al was out and he was in and everything was set. Then I'd go along with him, because it would be stupid to start a war after the game's over."

"All right." Parker turned to Simms. "How much has Buenadella got?"

Simms blinked at him, terror hiding behind confusion. "What?"

"He's been skimming from Lozini's take," Parker said. "Plus my seventy-three thousand: He's had expenses, with Farrell's campaign and some of Lozini's people he's bought, so how much does he have left?"

"How should I know?" Simms jittered inside his dudish clothing like a dressed-up turkey.

"Because you went over to him," Parker said. "He couldn't have skimmed from Lozini without you."

"That's a lie!"

The others all looked at Simms, and Parker said, "Don't waste time, Simms. How much does he have left?"

Faran suddenly said, wonderingly, "It's that honey blonde of yours."

Simms, as though grateful at the chance to concentrate on anyone but Parker, turned his head toward Faran, saying, "What? What, Frank?"

"What's her name? Donna. You brought her around to the club a few times, Nate, you were happy as a nun with a new habit."

"Frank, I didn't—"

Dulare said, "Nate, if you tell another lie, I'll have my two boys over there redeem themselves by walking on your head."

"Ernie, you don't think I'd—"

Simms stopped talking when Dulare pointedly turned toward the two burly men over on the Victorian chairs. There was a little silence while Simms worked it out in his head. Parker was impatient and angry, but this was a moment when it was better to hang back, let the group find its own pace, work things out for itself.