The Jugger (3 page)

Parker said, 'I can find my own way out.'

TIFTUS was on the lawn, sitting on the sign that said FUNERAL HOME.

He got to his feet when Parker walked out to the sunlight, and came over towards Parker smiling and tapping his head. 'Am I smart?' he wanted to know.

Parker said, 'No.'

'I'm in your room there, you've got the local paper. I says to myself, what the hell does Parker want with a crummy local paper? What else but the obituary, the undertaker's address? Now, am I smart?'

Parker stood in front of him and said, 'Already today I hit you twice. Once I knocked the wind out of you, once I knocked the consciousness out of you. Here you are back the third time. You call that smart?'

'I told you you could count on me this time, Parker, and I meant it.' The little man was smiling his cocky grin, but underneath it there was steel; something new and different for Tiftus. He said, 'if you want us to be partners, that's okay. If you want us to be competitors, that's okay, too. It's up to you.'

Parker said, 'Good-bye.' He started down the street.

But Tiftus hadn't been giving an ultimatum after all. He trailed along, bright as a counterfeit penny, trotting to keep up with Parker's long stride. 'You really put a scare into Rhonda,' he said, as though it were something funny but slightly naughty Parker had done. 'You really scared her.'

Rhonda. She must have picked up the name the same place she got the tan.

'We're both in this,' Tiftus said, panting a little because of having to move so fast. 'Don't think I'll quit.'

Parker kept walking, ignoring him.

Tiftus trotted and panted, skipping along in Parker's wake like a Scottish terrier. He said, 'Where you going now, Parker? You going out to Joe's house? You know where it is?'

Parker strode on.

Tiftus said, 'You been here before, haven't you? You and Joe was good buddies, wasn't you?'

Parker had nothing to say to him.

Tiftus said, 'I know it, Parker, I know all about it. You used to come up here and visit him all the time, I heard about that. You think you got the inside track now, don't you?'

Parker said nothing, but he was listening. Tiftus might say something useful after all.

Tiftus said, 'I'm not greedy, Parker, you know me, you know I'm not the greedy type. We could work something out. You hear me?'

Parker didn't slacken his pace, but he said, to see if Tiftus would tell him anything, 'Work what out?'

'The split,' Tiftus said, as though that explained anything. As though it explained everything. 'The split.' He said it twice. 'I don't ask fifty-fifty,' he said, and his voice showed he knew how generous he was being. 'I know Joe was your friend, you got more of a claim than me, I know that. But I'm here, too, Parker, you got to accept that. I got a claim, too, because I'm here. You got to work out a split with me.'

'How much?'

'Make me an offer.'

Damn Tiftus! He kept talking all the time, talking as though he knew exactly what he was talking about, but he never said anything. Jabber jabber jabber, and nothing coming out.

Some things were obvious: Tiftus was here because he thought there was money to be made here somewhere, and his hope for money was connected with Joe Sheer somehow, and he figured Parker was here for the same reason. But did Tiftus' hopes and expectations have anything to do with Joe's troubles? Or with the way Joe died? Or with why Captain Younger was hanging around?

There were too many questions, too few answers, and not enough time.

It was too bad Tiftus was such a loser, so unreliable, such a mistake. If it had been somebody with brains and dependability, somebody like Handy McKay or Salsa, Parker would have worked an arrangement with him by now and they'd all know where they stood. But not Tiftus; Parker wouldn't link up with Tiftus ever.

Take the business of the woman. Tiftus is supposed to be coming here to work, and he brings a woman along. Parker had a woman, too, and he'd left her in Miami when he'd come up here. But Tiftus brought his along; a man who won't give up comfort for success makes a bad partner.

Tiftus said again, 'Make me an offer, Parker.'

The only thing to do was get away from Tiftus, ignore him, find out what there was to know from other sources. Parker stopped, turned, and grabbed a handful of orange shirt. 'Here's the offer,' he said. 'Third time today.'

'Don't!'

Parker clipped him, enough to feel but not enough to knock him out. When he let the little man go, Tiftus sat down on the sidewalk like a baby.

Parker stood over him, hands closed into fists. The next time you show up,' he said, 'I'll fix you so you don't show up any more. You know me, Tiftus, you know I don't say things for fun.'

Tiftus didn't say anything. He just sat there.

Parker looked around. They were on a residential street, houses with porches. A few cars went by, and the people in them looked curiously at Parker and Tiftus but didn't stop. There were no pedestrians in this block.

Parker said, 'Good-bye, Tiftus.'

He turned around and walked away. Behind him, Tiftus just sat on the sidewalk. The people in the cars going by looked at the brightly dressed little man sitting on the sidewalk. After a few minutes he got to his feet and went away. He didn't follow Parker.

IT looked like a private home, except for the small metal sign on the lawn:

Parker went up on the broad porch and saw the other sign beside the front door. This one simply said OFFICE and had an arrow pointing away to the right. Parker went that way, his steps echoing on the bare boards of the porch. The porch was freshly painted but empty of furniture, as though the house were vacant. At the side of the house he saw that the porch went around to a little cubby-hole where there was another door.

And another sign, this one above the doorbell: RING AND WALK IN.

He rang; then tried the knob. The door was locked. Exasperated, he rang again, longer this time.

He was just about to go back to try the main door when this one opened, and an angry nurse, glaring at him through the screen door said, 'Office hours are not until
two
.'

Parker shook his head. 'I'm not a patient,' he said. 'I want to see the doctor on another matter.'

'I can't help that,' she said. 'Office hours are not until two.'

'Then I'll try him at home,' Parker told her. He turned around and went away, and behind him she called, 'It won't do you any good. Office hours are not until
two
.'

He went back around the empty porch to the main door and rang the bell, and after a minute the door was opened by a stocky man in paint-smeared trousers and a grey undershirt. 'Yes? Can I help you?'

'I'm looking for Dr. Rayborn.'

'That's me, oddly enough,' the stocky man said, and smiled down at the clothes he was wearing. 'I've just been puttering around.' He was about fifty, with a sort of professional joviality about him, but not bad enough to be offensive. He looked up from his clothing and said, 'If this is a medical visit, my normal office hours are from two till five. Unless there's some sort of emergency?' He said it with the air of a man not discounting any possibility, no matter how remote or how troublesome.

'It isn't a medical visit,' Parker told him. 'I want to talk to you about one of your patients, Joe Shardin.'

'Oh, Joseph Shardin!' He seemed unaccountably pleased. 'You knew him?'

'We were old friends. My name is Willis, Charles Willis.'

'Come in, then, do come in, I'd love to chat with you.' He smiled, and patted Parker's arm, and closed the door after him. 'This way, come into the parlour.' As he led the way into a large, airy room full of overstuffed furniture and complicated doilies, but with no carpet on the waxed floor, he said, 'Joseph Shardin was a fine man, a fine man. The kind of man you hate to lose, if you know what I mean. Sit down anywhere.'

Parker was assuming that Gliffe had called to warn the doctor Parker was coming. In a town this size, everybody knowing everybody else so well, Gliffe would do that whether there was anything to cover or not. And the doctor would make believe he hadn't got any call; that he was being polite.

Settling himself in an armchair that just kept sagging downward till he was almost sitting on the floor, the doctor said, 'You say you were an old friend of Joseph Shardin?'

'We were in business together,' Parker told him. 'Years ago.' He wasn't being evasive for the hell of it; it was just he didn't know much about Joe Sheer's cover story, what Joe had been claiming around here to have retired from.

The doctor said. 'He was retired now, you know.'

'I know. He retired five or six years ago.'

'When he moved here.' The doctor nodded, as though they'd come to an important agreement about something or other, and then he said, 'I believe he had relatives in Omaha; that's only thirty-five miles from here, you know. Or, no, wait a minute, he didn't have any relatives at all, did he?'

This was complicated, and for a minute Parker wasn't sure how to handle it. Joe Sheer had divided his time between a house in this town here and an apartment down in Omaha. It was in Omaha, in the safer privacy of a good-sized city, that he'd met with old friends from time to time, or occasionally took on the role of advisor to some group planning a tricky score. Here, in this little town, he'd just been a retired old man, a fisherman, a checkers player, a porch sitter, a pipe smoker. If he'd explained his trips to Omaha by letting it be known around town he had relatives down there, then by his death he'd blown that part of his cover sky-high. He didn't have any relatives in Omaha; he didn't have any relatives at all. None that would claim him, anyway.

The best way out of this was to plead ignorance: 'I never knew much about his family.'

'He was a solitary man,' said the doctor, being a trifle portentous now, 'but not a lonely one. That is, he never struck me as being lonely, the way some elderly folk are, wistful, just waiting around for the grave. It never seemed to him he'd had his fill of life, or that's the way it looked to me.'

'Did you treat him long?'

'The last three years, about,' said the doctor, and nodded, agreeing with himself.

'How long—' But the question didn't get to be asked

yet; a telephone started ringing. The doctor raised a hand for silence, and his head to listen. Looking into the middle distance, his head up and alert as a hunting dog, he listened to the phone ring, and then the murmuring silence that followed it. Parker waited with him, not saying anything.

Rubber shoes squeaked in the hallway outside, the nurse appeared in the doorway. She glanced at Parker, was affronted at his having got into the house after all, and turned her head away, saying, 'It's for you, Doctor.'

'Thank you. I'll take it here.'

The nurse went away again, and the doctor got to his feet saying, 'Excuse me just one minute, won't you?'

'Sure.'

The doctor walked over by the windows — the curtains a patterned silhouette cutting off the brightness of the day outside — and sat down on what looked like an uncomfortable antique chair next to a gleaming small table. The telephone, sitting on this table, was for some reason almost invisible; maybe because of the dark wood of the table and the pattern of the curtain behind it.

The doctor picked up the receiver and said, mildly, 'Rayborn here.' He listened, sitting half-turned away from Parker, the bright daylight outside the window making it difficult to make out details of his form or face. Parker had only the voice to go by.

The doctor said, 'Is this who I think it is?' Then he said, 'Yes, he called.' While listening this time, he turned his head and smiled at Parker, reassuring him he wouldn't take long, then turned back and said, 'Yes, he is.' He listened, and said, 'Of course not.' Another space, and he said, 'I'll try. I don't promise anything.' A wait again, and then, 'You do that. Good-bye.

There was no reason to suppose the call had anything to do with Parker, but if it had he could supply the other half of the conversation. If Gliffe and Rayborn and Younger were all in this together, whatever it was, then Gliffe wouldn't just call Rayborn, he would call both the other two. But it would take him a while to get in touch with Younger, because Younger was probably still standing in front of the hotel. But eventually word would get to Younger, and Younger would check the room and see that he was gone. Then he would call Rayborn. When Rayborn said, 'Yes, he called,' that meant yes, Gliffe called. When he turned and looked at Parker and then said, 'Yes, he is,' that meant yes, Parker is here. When he said, 'Of course not,' he meant of course he hadn't told Parker anything. When he said, 'I'll try. I don't promise anything,' he meant he'd try to keep Parker from leaving here before Younger could show up.