The Outfit (3 page)

There were six of them in it: a Canadian named Chester, who'd originally found out about the deal; a man named Ryan, who knew how to fly a plane; a methodical, reliable gunman named Sill; Parker's wife, Lynn; Mal Resnick and Parker. With Lynn waiting in the abandoned house they'd chosen as their California base, the five men had flown to the island, turned the trick with a minimum of fuss, and flown back to the mainland. And that night, in the California house, the double-crossing had started.

Mal had begun by talking to Ryan, telling him Parker was planning a cross. Then he'd killed Chester in his sleep, and had gone to Ryan to tell him Parker had started, had already done for Chester, and that Sill was siding with Parker. Ryan wasn't a subtle man; he accepted the story the way Mal fed it to him. Later it was Ryan who finished Sill.

Then Parker's wife, Lynn, had been brought into it. Mal had wanted her from the first minute he'd seen her. He now saw a way to get her. He used the threat of death to force her to kill Parker herself, and she did her best. But her first bullet slammed into Parker's belt buckle and he dropped; and she emptied the gun over his head.

So far as Mal knew, the operation was still sweet. He put a torch to the house, shot Ryan in the back, and took off with Lynn and the ninety-thousand-dollar haul. He had a purpose for that money. Four years before he'd worked in Chicago for the Outfit, but he'd loused up, dumping forty thousand dollars of uncut snow when he mistook the Outfit tail for a plainclothesman. The Outfit had let him live, which had surprised him, but had told him not to come back without the cash to pay for his mistake. Now Mal had the cash.

He took Lynn with him. She was now a silent block of ice, but he thought he could eventually thaw her out. They went to New York, and he gave the Outfit back every penny – with interest and penalties – a little over fifty thousand. He invested the rest, and sat around waiting for the Outfit to offer him something. He got a job, a better one than he'd had before, and settled in New York to live the way he thought he should.

But Parker wasn't dead. Badly bruised by the bullet that had slammed his belt buckle into his stomach, he'd managed to crawl out of the burning house wearing nothing but a pair of trousers and had wandered, half-delirious, three days before being picked up. He had no identification on him and no money. He refused to tell the law anything, and wound up with a six-month vag stint on a prison farm – his one and only fall. It also caused him to lose some of his anonymity – his fingerprints went on file, under the name he'd grudgingly given them: Ronald Kasper. Even when he'd been in the Army – '42 to '44, when he got his BCD for blackmarketeering – he'd managed to avoid having his fingerprints recorded by bribing a file clerk to replace them with his own. So now he had one more reason to get hold of Mal.

Finally, he broke out of the prison farm, bummed his way across the country, and went to New York to look for Mal and Lynn. They were separated now, Mal having given up trying to get Lynn to respond to him. Parker found Lynn – and she killed herself. He couldn't have finished her off, but she did it herself. Then he found Mal, and evened the account.

So Lynn and Mal were both dead, but Parker was still broke. Mal had given his share – forty-five thousand – to the Outfit, so Parker went to the Outfit to get it back. They hadn't wanted to give it to him, so he used pressure, disrupting the New York organization, and threatening to cause them trouble all across the country if he didn't get his money.

"I've worked my particular line for eighteen years," he told them. "In that time, I've worked with about a hundred different men. Among them, they've worked with just about every pro in the business. There's you people with your organization, and there's us. We don't have any organization, but we're professionals. We know each other. We stick with each other. And we don't hit the syndicate. We don't hit casinos, or lay-off bookies, or narcotic caches. You're sitting there wide open, you can't squeal to the law, but we don't hit you.

"If you don't give me my money I write letters, to those hundred men I told you about. I tell them: 'the syndicate hit me for forty-five
G
. Do me a favour and hit them back once, when you've got the chance.'

"Maybe half of them will say the hell with it. The other half are like me – they've got a job all cased. A lot of us are like that. You organized people are so wide open. We walk into a syndicate place and we look around, and just automatically we think it over, we think about it like a job. We don't do anything about it, because you people are on the same side as us, but we think about it. I've walked around for years with three syndicate grabs all mapped out in my head, but I've never done anything about it. The same with a lot of the people I know. So all of a sudden they've got the green light, they've got an excuse. They'll grab for it."

They weren't sure whether it was bluff or not, but they agreed to pay. Parker was causing them too much trouble anyway. He'd killed Carter, one of the two men in charge of the New York area, and then managed to get a gun on the surviving boss, Fairfax. With Parker standing over him, Fairfax telephoned Bronson, head of the national organization, and Bronson came to terms. He put the forty-five thousand in a trap, and Parker walked through the trap and came out on the other side with the money. Knowing that the Outfit – and Bronson personally – would now try to hunt him down and kill him, Parker had gone to a plastic surgeon who worked outside the law, and came out with a new face.

But now the Outfit knew about the new face. And they also knew about his cover name, Willis.

It was time to bring it to an end, time to write the letters, and time to talk to Bronson. He was somewhere in the country. Parker would find him, and make an end to it.

1

Yesterday, after checking out of the hotel, Parker had taken a plane to Atlanta, and then doubled back, taking a bus south to Macon, and another bus farther south to Cordele. A bus headed for Columbus had taken him west of Cordele along an empty black-top road to the twin-rut turnoff, and carrying his suitcase, he'd walked the three miles in to the house.

It was November, but the land was still dry and the air was hot. After three miles, the suitcase got heavy. The rutted road made walking difficult. It would have been easier if he'd left the suitcase in Cordele, but he didn't want to go through there again.

As he walked past the dead tree with the pulley on it, a lean mongrel rose up on the porch next to the chair the woman was sitting in. The hound stretched and yawned, then looked up at the woman and looked out at Parker. He watched Parker and waited, not barking or moving or doing anything.

Parker stopped where he was and dropped the suitcase on to the ground. He said, "Chemy around?"

The woman asked, "Who wants him?"

"Parker."

"Parker, you say?"

"Parker."

She lifted her head and called, "Elly!"

A boy of about fourteen, as lean and silent as the dog, came out of the house and stood there. The woman said to him, "Go on over to the garage see if Chemy ain't there. Fella name of Parker lookin' for him."

Parker said, "Tell him I got a new face."

The boy turned his head and gazed at him, the same way the dog gazed. The woman frowned and said, "What the hell kind of talk is that?" She was very fat, forty or forty-five, with a fat white face under the orange hair. She was wearing a dark-blue dress with pink flowers on it.

"Plastic surgery," Parker told her. "He'll have to recognize me by voice and build and what I know."

The woman shook her head. "Go on, Elly," she said. To Parker she said, "You can wait right there."

The boy came down off the porch and walked around to the garage. He was wearing dungarees and nothing else. He was tanned as dark as an Indian, and his sun-faded blond hair was shaggy and long. He opened a door in the side of the garage and went inside, closing the door after him. The door squealed loudly in the silence, and seemed to affect the light oddly. Instead of a shaft of sunlight angling through the opening and lighting the interior of the garage, it was as though a shaft of darkness pooled out on the ground outside the door when it was opened.

Parker asked, "You want a cigarette?"

"Thank you, no."

"I think I'll have one," he said.

He had wanted her to know what he was reaching for. She nodded, and he slowly took cigarettes and matches from his pocket. Then he stood smoking in the hot, dry air. The dog watched him, unwinking.

The squealing door opened again, and the boy stood in the pool of darkness, gazing at him. Then he turned and said something to somebody inside. Parker waited.

The boy came into the sunlight again, and a short, skinny man in overalls came out after him. The man had dry black hair and a narrow face. His bare shoulders were pale and covered with freckles. He came walking over and stood studying Parker for a minute.

Then he said, "Well, I'll be darned. Got yourself a new face, eh?"

"It's your brother I wanted," Parker told him.

The skinny man frowned. "What's that you say?"

"I asked for your brother."

"The hell," said the skinny man. "You asked for Chemy."

"And you're Kent."

"What makes you think so?"

"Go tell your brother I want to buy a car. Like the Ford with the bullet holes in the trunk."

The skinny man scratched his head. "You sound like Parker," he said. "You sure as hell act like Parker. And you know the right stuff to
be
Parker. But you don't look like Parker."

"Plastic surgery. I told your wife."

"Lemme see if Chemy's here."

"I'll come along. It's hot out in the sun."

The skinny man frowned and said, "You got all Parker's brass, I'll give you that much. What would you do if that dog there took to leap at you?"

Parker glanced at the dog. "Break its neck," he said.

"Yuh. And what if I was to whip out a pistol and start shooting down on you?"

"I'd take it away like Handy McKay did that time."

The skinny man flushed, and on the porch the woman started to laugh. She had a high Betty Boop sort of giggle, completely different from her speaking voice. The skinny man turned to her and said, "Shut your face!" She stopped immediately. He spun back to Parker. "I think you're a phony, mister," he said. "I think you better get off this property."

Parker shook his head. Over the skinny man's head, he called to the woman, "You want to keep that dog right there next to you." Then he started walking towards the garage. The skinny man hollered and made as if it come after him, but then he stopped. The woman rested her hand on the dog's head and watched Parker cross the yard.

The side door of the garage opened again, and a man came out with a shotgun cradled on his arm. He was short and skinny, like the other one, with the same kind of narrow face and dead hair. He was similarly dressed in faded blue, bibbed overalls. They were obviously brothers, but what was petulance in Kent's face became strength in Chemy's. He came out, closed the door after him, and said, "Stop right there, friend."

Parker stopped. "Hello, Chemy," he said.

Chemy looked past him at Kent. "Well? Is he Parker or ain't he Parker?"

Kent didn't answer at first. Parker half-turned and looked back at him. "Am I, Kent?"

"Yuh," said Kent. He said it reluctantly, and glared at the woman, as though daring her to laugh again. But she was silent, her face carefully blank as she watched them, her fingers scratching the top of the dog's head between its ears.

To his brother, Chemy said, "Get us a drink. Come on in, Parker." He led the way back into the garage, and set the shotgun against the wall beside the door.

The garage was big enough to hold four cars. At the moment, there was a fifteen-year-old, red Ford pickup truck parked down by the far wall, and an orange Volkswagen next to it. The Volkswagen's rear lid was open and the engine had been removed and was lying on two-by-fours behind the car. The back seat had been taken out, too, and was leaning against the side of the pickup truck. All along the back wall was a workbench, littered with tools, small parts, lengths of wire, and pieces of metal. Automobile body parts were stacked here and there in the remaining space, and two engines hung by chain and pulley from the roof beams. A small plastic radio on the work-bench was blaring country and western music; a girl singer with a twang as bad as a harelip was singing about unrequited love.

"Well, now," said Chemy. "You sure changed your face around. But you're still just as mean as ever."

"That brother of yours needs a talking to."

Chemy shrugged, and grinned faintly. "If you were Parker, you'd do what you done. If you weren't, you'd let him chase you off the place."

Parker shrugged. It didn't matter one way or the other. He was just hot from the walk.

Chemy said, "Take a look down here at this VW. What do you think of this? A '57 Ford straight-six engine in there in back, and re-did Chevy brakes. Think she'll move?"

Parker frowned at the Volkswagen. "No," he said.

"No? Why in hell not?"

"Where's your cooling system?"

"Right where the back seat used to be, with scoops down through the floor. '51 Plymouth radiator assembly that fits real nice."

Parker knew he was supposed to think of every objection he could, so Chemy could show him how smart he was. He said, "Not enough weight for the power. She'll go like a motorboat with her nose up in the air. You'd have to take corners at ten miles an hour."

"No, sir. I've weighted down that front end, so your centre of gravity is right
here
." He touched a spot low on the side just behind the door.

"That's pretty far back."

"Oh, she'll jounce, I know she will. But the weight is just far enough up so you can take corners just about any damn speed you like."

Parker shook his head. "She'll jounce apart," he said. "She won't last a year."

"I know damn well she won't. But she'll last a month, and that's all she's wanted for. A car that looks slow but does like a bat out of hell. That's what this girl is. A special order."

"So everything's worked out then."

"No, it ain't." Chemy frowned at the car. "One damn thing – you know what that is?"

"What?"

"I can't make her
sound
like a VW. I've tried all sorts of mufflers; I've run pipe back and forth underneath there till she looked like a plate of spaghetti; but she never does sound like a VW. You know that little 'cough-cough' sounds the VW's got? Your VW fires slow, is what it is, and I be damned if I can get the effect." He glared at the car again, shaking his head. "I'll get it," he said.

"Sure." Parker knew he would. Chemy made cars do whatever he wanted them to do.

"Sure," agreed Chemy. He turned away from the Volkswagen. "So what do you want? A car? Anything special?"

"Just a car. With clean papers."

"How clean? To sell?"

"No. To show if I'm stopped for speeding."

"Takin' her out of the state?"

"Up north."

"All right then."

The garage door opened and Kent came in, carrying three glasses and a bottle of corn liquor as colourless as water. He glanced sullenly at his brother and Parker, then went over to the workbench, set the glasses down, and poured three drinks.

Chemy and Parker went over and they all drank. It was good liquor, leaving a harsh wood-smoke taste on the tongue and a bright burning at the back of the throat.

Chemy set his glass down and cleared his throat. "How new?" he asked.

"Doesn't matter. But I'll be going maybe a couple thousand miles in it, so I don't want one ready to fall apart."

Chemy nodded. "When?"

"Now."

"Always in a hurry." Chemy grinned at his brother. "This Parker," he said. "Always in a hurry, huh?"

"Huh," said Kent. He was being surly, staring into his empty glass.

Chemy winked at Parker, finished his own drink, and said, "I got two in the barn right now, but not what you got to have. Both hot, both no good. I got to take a ride. How much you want to pay?"

"I'll go a thousand – if I have to."

"Well, maybe you won't have to. You go set on the porch a while. Come on, Kent."

They went outside and Parker strolled over to the house while the two brothers went around behind the garage. He went up on the porch and sat on the other chair. The woman grinned at him, showing spaces where she'd lost teeth, and said, "I guess I must of heard about you."

"Maybe," said Parker.

A six-year-old Pontiac station wagon with Chemy at the wheel and his brother beside him appeared from behind the garage and went off down the rutted road. Parker sat and smoked, waiting. The woman tried to start a conversation with him once or twice, but he didn't encourage her, so she quit. The dog got up again after a while, went down off the porch, and loped away around the house. A while later Parker got to his feet, went into the house, and walked through rooms of sagging furniture to the kitchen, where he got himself a drink of water. He didn't see the boy. The woman followed him in, and stood in the kitchen doorway, smiling hesitantly at him, but not saying anything. When he started out of the kitchen, she murmured, "We got time."

He shook his head, and went back out on the porch. She stayed inside the house.

He waited three hours, and the sun was turning red way off near the western horizon when Chemy and Kent came back. Kent was driving the Pontiac this time, and Chemy was following him in a four-year-old blue Oldsmobile with Alabama plates. Kent took the Pontiac around behind the garage, and Chemy stopped the Olds-mobile in front of the house. He got out and patted the hood and said, "Well? What do you think?"

"What do
you
think?"

Chemy grinned, shrugging his shoulders. "I don't know yet. I figure maybe. The car's hot in Florida, and the plates are hot in Alabama, but the plates are off a LaSalle, so you got nothing to worry about."