The Jugger (15 page)

Parker hit him, open-handed. 'Don't tell lies,' he said. 'You're too young.'

The kid was going to cry in a second. He put a shaking hand up to where his cheek was turning red, and he said, 'I don't know why you—'

'You're a watcher,' Parker told him. 'I've seen you on the porch, I've seen you at the window in the living-room. You stand and watch.'

'There's nothing wrong with that. What's wrong with that?'

Parker said, 'Younger was putting pressure on Joe, on the old guy that lived here. You watched. Sometimes, at night, you snuck over by a window here and listened.'

The kid was shaking his head. His mouth was open, his eyes were wide open.

Parker said, 'You believed that crap about the half million dollars. You're as dumb as Younger.'

'Cr-crap?'

'It doesn't exist. Joe didn't have any cash buried anywhere. All his dough was invested, just like he told Younger.'

'B-but he, he did all those—' The kid stopped abruptly,

and put his other hand up to his face, too. Both hands covered the lower half of his face, and above them he stared at Parker.

Parker nodded. 'He did all those robberies. And spent it. Spent it faster than you or Younger could dream.'

'I didn't—'

'You did. You were down there digging. You heard me come in, and you waited, and you clubbed me when I opened the cellar door, and you ran back home and hid in a closet. You were so scared you forgot to drop the shovel, that's why you had it to give to Younger. Afraid to hold on to it, so you told him you found it. Younger's dumb, but he'll catch on after a while.'

'I didn't do it.' The kid shook his head back and forth, back and forth. 'I didn't do it. I listened, I heard what they were saying, but I didn't do any of that, I swear it.'

Parker said, 'There's just one thing I want to know. Why you went to my room in the hotel, I can't figure it.'

'No, I didn't do any of that, I didn't—'

Parker slapped him twice, forehand and backhand. The kid blubbered, and Parker said, 'I want to know. I don't like things I can't figure.'

The kid wailed, 'You'll tell the police! You'll turn me in to the police!'

'No. I don't talk to the law.'

The kid blinked, and blinked, and stared at Parker. 'Do you mean that? Do you mean it?'

'I worked with Joe, in the old days. I don't talk to the law.'

The kid rubbed his eyes with a trembling hand, and licked his dry lips. 'I didn't mean to do any of it,' he said. 'Hit you, or that other man, or any of it. I just wanted the money.'

'Why'd you go to my hotel room?'

'I wanted to know who you were. I forgot to look in your wallet when I knocked you out, and I was afraid to come back, because maybe you weren't still unconscious. I figured I had to know who you were, because of you searching the house and all. I didn't know, maybe you were with the FBI or something.'

'How'd you find my room?'

'I was following Captain Younger, and he was following you. Before that, before I hit you.'

'So you went in and Tiftus caught you there.'

'He came in the window. I hid, behind the dresser, but he saw me. He started to holler and run, and I was scared, and I hit him with the ashtray. I didn't know that could kill him, honest. I just wanted to knock him out, I didn't know it could kill him.'

All along Tiftus had thought Parker knew more about Joe's goods than he did. The inside track, he'd said one time; Parker had known Joe well and so had the inside track. Tiftus must have thought there might be a letter from' Joe or something like that, something to give Parker that inside track, and he'd gone looking for it.

The kid was shivering, like he'd just been doused with cold water. He said, 'You won't tell the police, will you? Will you?'

The kid was trouble. He knew everything, he'd heard everything that Joe had told Younger. And he'd be grabbed; sooner or later he'd be grabbed. He'd done one moronic thing after another, even to giving Younger the shovel and burlap bag. Sooner or later Younger or Regan, more likely Regan, would get to the kid, and the kid would do nothing but talk. He'd talk three days straight, and not repeat himself once.

Parker shook his head. Another item to cover. He said, 'There's nobody home at your place?'

'No. My mother's out—'

'All right. You got to clear out of town for a while. I'll give you some money.'

'You will?' The kid lit up with hope.

'Write a note, so your mother doesn't get the law looking for you.'

'Oh. Sure. That's easy.'

'We'll do that first.'

Parker took him to the kitchen and found pencil and paper, and the kid wrote the note. Parker read it. It would do. He said, 'Move fast. Go next door, pack a few things, not much. Then come back here.'

'Yes, sir.'

The ten minutes the kid was gone were bad. Parker paced back and forth, back and forth. Too many things could go wrong.

But the kid came back, carrying a small satchel. 'I'm packed,' he said. 'I left the note on the dining-room table.'

'Good,' Parker said, and hit him twice.

He buried him in the cellar in the hole the kid had dug himself.

PARKER went out the back way. He knew Younger had men on stake-out, to see he didn't try to clear out of town, but he didn't figure Younger's troops to be any brighter than their leader. He'd long since marked the grey Plymouth parked down the block that was used by the man watching the front of the house, and the green Dodge parked beside the road across the fields would be the guy watching the back. If there'd been a third station he'd have found it by now, so all he had to do was go between the Plymouth and the Dodge.

He went the back yard route, keeping close to the houses, and went a block and a half before coming out on to the street. Then he walked directly downtown.

He got into the hotel the same way he'd come out the first time; the fire escape around back. He remembered Tiftus' room number and knew the woman Rhonda would be in the room next door.

She opened the door right away when he knocked. 'It's you,' she said. 'It's about time.'

He stepped in and shut the door. She was wearing black stretch pants and a pink sweater and she was completely made up. He said, 'Where were you going?'

'Nowhere. You told me to come here and stay put, I come here and stay put. I was beginning to think you forgot me.'

She was being cute. She must figure he was here for sex. He said, 'We both want out of this town, right?'

She nodded, and then shrugged her shoulders. 'It ain't the sort of place I'm used to, let's put it that way.'

'We can't go until the law gets whoever did for Tiftus, right?'

'That's me, baby,' she said. 'Not you. You're in the clear, remember? Your buddy cop give you an alibi.'

'It's straight,' he said. 'I wouldn't kill Tiftus, I got no reason. Killing him just loused things.'

'Boy, I'll say. And let me tell you something, I liked that guy. He was little, and he had a kind of a funny name, but I liked him. He appreciated me, that's why.'

'Sure.'

'He told me some things about you,' she said. 'What he told me, it didn't seem like you'd be the guy killed him. I mean, even if you were going to, you know? You'd have more sense than do it right in your own room like that.'

'Fine.' He had to let her ramble a minute; if he tried to hurry her, she'd just get her back up.

She said, 'So I don't see why you got to stick around.
I
got to, because that cop, that Regan, he told me to. But you're in the clear.'

'Not all the way,' he said. 'Not till Regan's satisfied.'

'Listen,' she said, 'who's in charge around here, anyway? Is it Regan, or is it your buddy, the fat one?'

'Younger's in charge, but Regan's the cop.'

'Well, that's just dandy. Are they ever gonna get the guy that did it?'

'No.'

She hadn't expected that answer. She shook her head and said, 'What? Why the hell not?'

'Because I got him,' Parker told her. 'It's a long story, you don't want to hear it.'

'Are you kidding? Sure I want to hear it.'

'You don't.'

She looked at his face, and for a second or two she was going to argue, and then she changed her mind. 'Okay, I don't,' she said. 'So what's the point?'

'The point is, we've got to give Regan somebody else.'

'Like who, for instance?'

'Anybody. Somebody not here any more.'

'And he's supposed to swallow it?'

'Younger is, and he will. It's got to be just a good enough story so Younger can get away with accepting it and closing the case. Once Younger calls the case solved, there's nothing Regan can do any more. He's only in like on an advisory capacity, till they find out who did it.'

Doubtfully she said, 'All right, if you say so. How do we tell this story?'

'It depends. What did you tell Regan so far?'

'Hah. Which time? He wouldn't trust me across the street, that Regan. First I tell him one thing, then I tell him. something else.'

Impatience was getting to Parker. Younger might take it into his head to drop by Joe's house any time, and Parker didn't want Younger upset. He wanted Younger thinking he had everything under control.

He said, 'Just tell me what you told him.'

She shrugged and waved her arms and said, 'The first time, I told him the truth. The second time, I told him I made a mistake.' She walked across the room and got herself a cigarette from the dresser.

'Get me one, too,' he said. This was going to take a while.

She smoked a filter brand. She gave him one and he ripped the filter off it before he took a light from the match she held up for him. She looked at him with brown eyes, steadily, while he lit his cigarette. She still thought he was there for sex.

He wasn't. Maybe later, when this was all cleared up. He still had one woman waiting for him in Miami, but he'd been getting tired of her anyway. Later on he'd make up his mind, not now.

He sat down in the leatherette chair and said, 'Tell me what you told him the first time. Detail by detail. Tell me like I'm him and you're doing it just like you did.'

'I don't see the point, but why not?' She sat down in the other chair, crossed her legs, and looked up at the ceiling. 'Dear Inspector Regan,' she said, 'it all began when I was five years—'

'I don't have time for that, Rhonda.'

Something in his voice drained the cuteness out of her. 'All right,' she said, flat. 'This is what I told him. Adolph and I come here on vacation, just passing through. Adolph saw you in the lobby when we came in, and said he knew you and he was going to go say hello. I don't know what went on between you, but you beat him up and threatened to kill him. That's it.'

'What about bringing him back to his room? What about running into you there?'

She shook her head. 'No. I didn't say anything about that, I just did it straight and simple. You beat him up and he came back to the room afterwards and told me you were the one did it.'

'You told Regan that? That Tiftus came back to the room afterwards and told you I beat him up?'

'Yes.'

'How did you say Tiftus said it? Did you say he used my name, or said it was the guy he'd seen in the lobby that beat him up, or what?'

Details seemed to bother her. She was getting irritated, and now she shrugged her shoulders, blew cigarette smoke, and said, 'How do I know? I didn't give the cop a play by play.'

'All right, listen. This is what you told Regan: You and Tiftus came here, saw a guy in the lobby that Tiftus said he knew, Tiftus went away to see the guy and came back and said the guy beat him up. Right?'

She nodded. 'Just what I said.'

'All right. So what did you tell him the second time?'

'That you weren't the guy. When I first saw you in that office there, I figured you'd done it, and I did like that guy whether you believe it or not, so that's why I fingered you like I did. But then I got to thinking, and you come up with the alibi and the buddy-buddy with the cop, so when I saw Regan again I told him I made a mistake, you weren't the guy after all.'

'You told him I wasn't the guy Tiftus saw in the lobby.'

'Right.'

Parker thought it over. He'd already told Regan that Tiftus had gone to see him that morning, and that he'd seen Tiftus on the street a while later. He had to include that, plus what the woman had already told Regan, and make it all work out to a story that pointed off in some brand new direction.