Free Deadly Edge: A Parker Novel by Richard Stark

rebuilding them.
    “Can I spend some of it on the house?”
    “You can spend it any way you want.”

    “I want to get some better furniture. And a decent kitchen.”
    “Do we have a basement?”
    “Just under part of the house. You get into it through the garage.”
    “We’ll want to have a place to stow some of this.”
    “I started a checking account in town. It’s about six miles back toward New York.”
    “We can’t go there with twelve grand in a suitcase.”
    She laughed, shaking her head. “No, I thought I’d deposit two or three hundred a week, whatever we need. There’s something solid and dependable about a checking account. I want this house to have such a perfectly legal and normal look to it that nobody will ever even think twice about it.”
    “For me?”
    She looked sharply at him, then smiled and said, “All right. For both of us. But partly for you.”
    “I appreciate it.”
    “And if I have a nesting instinct, that’s part of what makes me a woman.”
    “I didn’t argue.”
    She looked around the room, looked at him again, shook her head. “You make me feel like I’m trying to domesticate a gorilla.”
    He closed the lid down over the money. “Gorillas have mates.”
    “You aren’t a gorilla,” she said. “And I’m not trying to domesticate you. It’s just strange to have you here, that’s all.”
    Parker looked at her. Most of the time he didn’t think about it, but every once in a while he realized she wasimportant to him. He made his voice and his face softer, and said, “We’ll both get used to it.”
    “I know we will.”
    “I’ll take the shower now.”
    The final quarter of the house, behind the kitchen and beside the living room, contained the bedroom and adjoining bath. Both rooms had windows overlooking the lake, and a door led from the bedroom out onto the same broad porch he’d been to before from the living room. Both rooms were connected to the kitchen, and had a connecting door between them as well. The bathroom, being in the corner, had windows in two walls, both glazed.
    These rooms, too, were old-fashioned, with a brass double bed and tall wooden chifforobe in the bedroom and a lion-foot tub with a plastic shower curtain hanging from a rod over it in the bathroom. Parker put both suitcases away in the bedroom closet, stripped, and took a hot shower, standing on a rubber mat in the white tub. While he was still there, the shower curtain opened and Claire stuck her head in. “Is there room for two?”
    “Plenty.” He put his hand out to help her, and she stepped over the side of the tub and in.
    “Steamy.” She turned in a circle, getting completely wet. Then he kissed her, sliding his hand down the long slick line of her back, the hot water streaming down their faces, and she raised her dripping arms lazily to close them around his neck.

2
    Parker sat looking into the fire. A night wind had come up, and wood made small creaking noises in the top of the house. There was a low attic up there, he’d looked it over earlier today, and it was as full of noises now as a ship at anchor.
    Claire had turned off all the lights in the living room, so their only sources of illumination were the fire and light-spill from the kitchen. It made Parker nervous, the semi-darkness and the anonymous sounds, but he understood there was nothing to beware of here, and he knew the atmosphere would make Claire happy, so he said nothing.
    She was sitting beside him on the sofa, leaning her shoulder against his, and after a long silence she said, “What are you thinking about?”
    “I have to call Handy McKay.” Handy, who used to be in the same profession and was retired to his owndiner now in Presque Isle, Maine, was Parker’s contact with the rest of the bent world. Anybody who wanted to get in touch with Parker about a job or anything along those lines had to call Handy, who would pass on the message.
    “Don’t call him tonight.”
    “I don’t intend