Free Plunder Squad by Richard Stark

I’ll explain the situation.”
    “Good,” Parker said. He got to his feet. “You ready?”
    Mackey was stuffing things from the dresser top into his pockets: wallet, cigarettes, matches, keys. “Ready.”

Two
    When they got out of the car they could hear rock music, very loud, coming from the other side of the house. There were a dozen automobiles parked on the curving drive, most of them foreign sports cars. The house was two stories high, white, rambling, with white pillars in front.
    Mackey said, “I don’t know should we go through the house or around it.” It was warmer today than yesterday; he pulled out a white handkerchief and patted his forehead.
    “Through it,” Parker said. He wanted to know who Griffith was, and his house would be a part of him.
    Brenda said, “Is my skirt wrinkled in back?” and turned around. She was a slender girl, mid-twenties, good-looking, with a lot of leg. And just as Mackey was a hundred times better than Beaghler, Brenda was a thousand times better than Sharon. She knew who she was, she didn’t have to struggle with anybody, there was never any sense of tension between her and Mackey, no tug of war as to which one of them would run her life. She ran it herself, and she did a good job of it.
    Now Mackey smiled happily at the rump she’d turned toward him and said, “Yeah, baby, it’s awful wrinkled. Maybe you oughta take it off and leave it in the car.”
    She didn’t see the humor. Very serious about it all, shetugged at the hem of the short skirt in the back, saying, “No, really, is it? We sat in the car so long.”
    “It’s okay, Brenda,” Mackey said, still with the same happy grin on his face. “Don’t worry about it, nobody’s gonna hate to look at you.” And he patted her on the behind.
    Parker stood there and waited for Mackey to get done with his clowning, so they could move on. Griffith had only agreed to this meeting if it could be handled as though it were a social occasion, which was why Brenda was along. That had been the compromise Mackey had worked out, and Parker was willing to ride with it as long as it didn’t become inconvenient.
    Brenda was the first to realize that Parker wasn’t being an amused spectator of the horsing around, but was simply waiting for them to stop; she grew at once brisk and efficient, turning around to face Mackey again, saying to him, “Now cut it out, Ed, you’re supposed to be here on business.”
    Mackey glanced over at Parker, and his grin faded. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “So let’s go.”
    Parker went up between the middle pair of pillars to the porch. A screen door was closed, but the main door inside it stood open, and chilled air drifted out. Parker opened the screen door, looked into a large square entrance hall empty of people and dim after the sunlight outside, and stepped in, followed by Mackey and Brenda.
    It was a big house, expensively but thinly furnished, each room looking as though one or two important pieces had recently been removed from it. A wide variety of paintings hung on the light-colored walls. The floors tended to dark woods, sometimes parquet, infrequently covered by small rugs. Light and almost fragile-looking furniture was the rule.
    Parker moved directly toward the rear of the house, from the entrance hall through a small airy parlor, down a hall past broad arched doorways showing more airy rooms to left and right, and at the end of the hall into another parlor, this one broad and full of plants. French doors on the opposite side led out to a slate patio and an expanse of lawn sloping gently downward toward a high thick bamboo hedge.
    The music was live. When Parker stepped through the open French doors, he saw four musicians at work to his right, methodically pumping away in front of banked amplifiers lined up along the rear wall of the house. Electric guitar, electric organ, Fender bass and drums. The musicians were all very young, and all looked serious and