Free Parker16 Butcher's Moon by Richard Stark Page A

identification, no fingerprints, just the name Parker. We've queried Washington, and we'll see what happens."
    Lozini peered at him. "You don't think much will."
    With a small smile, Calesian said, "No, I don't."
    Ted Shevelly said, "What do we do about tonight?"
    But Lozini was thinking about something else. "There may be a way I can find out who he is. Something about him, anyway."
    Shevelly said, "How's that?"
    "I'll get in touch with you people later," Lozini said. "I have to make a phone call."
    Shevelly said, "What about tonight?"
    "I'll call you this afternoon," Lozini told him. To Faran, he said, "Frankie, you keep yourself available. You gonna be at the club or home?"
    "Home," Faran said. "I feel crappy, to tell you the truth. I'm gonna try to sleep a little."
    "Just stay available."
    "Oh, I will."
    Walters said, "Anything special for me to do?"
    Lozini gave him an irritable look. "About what?"
    Walters gestured with the sheet of paper. "These losses."
    "Unexplained robberies," Lozini told him. "Deal with them straight. Give that driver from the garage a little something for his trouble."
    "Scoppo," Walters said, and nodded.
    Getting to his feet, Calesian said, "Let me know, Al, if you want any change in what we're doing. Right now, we're full out looking for them."
    "I'll call you," Lozini said.
    The four men left the room, saying so long, Lozini giving each of them a short angry nod. When the door closed and he was alone, he sat brooding out the window for a minute, staring at the sunny morning.
    He was reluctant to make the call. Doing anything the bastard wanted him to do seemed somehow like a defeat, like knuckling under. Still, it was the only move that made sense right now.
    The hell with it. Lozini reached for the phone.
    But it wasn't that easy. It took twenty minutes just to find out what city Walter Karns was in right now—Las Vegas—and another half-hour to track him down on a golf course there. But finally the heavy authoritative voice did come on the line, saying, "Lozini?"
    "Walter Karns?"
    "That's right. You wanted to talk to me."
    "I need to ask you about somebody."
    A small hesitation, and Karns said, "Somebody I can talk about, I hope."
    "He said I should talk to you," Lozini said. "I should ask you about him."
    "He did? What's his name?"
    "Parker. He says."
    "Parker?" There was surprise in Karns' voice, but not displeasure. "You don't mean anybody that works for me," he said.
    "No, I don't."
    Karns said, "You don't sound happy about this fellow Parker."
    "I'd like to see him in a pine box," Lozini said.
    "What's he done to you?"
    "Claims I owe him money."
    "Do you?" It sounded as though Karns were smiling.
    "No, I don't." This conversation was making Lozini uncomfortable; he had a sense of Karns laughing at him. He said, "But what difference does it make? Who is this guy?"
    "You remember Bronson from Buffalo, a few years ago?"
    "You took his place," Lozini said. He was too irritable to be anything but blunt.
    "I did. But I didn't force his—retirement." Bronson had been shot, Lozini remembered, in his own home. "That was Parker," Karns said.
    "You mean he's the one—" Lozini stopped, trying to figure out how to phrase the question on the phone. Had Parker killed Bronson?·
    "That's what happened," Karns said. "He claimed our outfit owed him some money. Forty-five thousand, to be exact. The whole situation was ambivalent, and Bronson decided not to pay him. So he made various kinds of trouble and—"
    "That's what he's doing here," Lozini said.
    Karns said, "Well, Bronson finally paid him off, but then he decided Parker shouldn't get away with that, and he sent some people to—annoy him. That was when Parker figured he'd be better off dealing with Bronson's successor."
    "You."
    "I had nothing to do with it," Karns said. "Though I admit I didn't mind it happening. But I didn't meet Parker myself until a couple years later, when he helped us with some competition we had off the Texas coast. Did