13.

The guy said, "I'm... I'm gut-shot," as though it should be a surprise to Parker, too.

Parker opened the wallet one-handed, looked at the ID in there, looked up. "Raymond Becker," he said. "You're a cop, Ray? I thought you might be a cop."

"I need an ambulance, man."

"Local cop, far from home. Sit down on the toilet there," Parker advised him. "Keep holding it in, you'll be all right."

"I'm gonna die! I need an ambulance."

Parker said, "I could shoot off your other ear, just to attract your attention. Or you could concentrate. Sit down there."

Ray Becker concentrated. His breathing came loud and ragged, bouncing off the tile walls. He looked at Parker, and saw no help. Slowly, both hands pressed to his bleeding gut, he slid along the cracked sink to his right, and dropped backward with a little bark of pain onto the closed toilet lid.

Meanwhile, Parker studied Becker's ID some more. "You don't act like most cops, Ray," he said. "Particularly far from home. You act more like a guy on the run, desperate for a stake."

"I played my hand," Becker said. He sounded weaker. "I lost. But I don't have to die." He was clenching his teeth now, pushing the words through them. The sweat drops that had started to form on his brow, silvery hobnails in the glare of the overhead light, reminded Parker of Marshall Howell.

He said the name aloud: "Marshall Howell."

The name seemed to sink slowly into Becker's consciousness, like a bone dropped into a lake. Parker watched him, and saw his eyes gradually focus, saw him at last look at Parker with a new kind of fear.

Parker nodded. He waved the wallet. "I see where you're from, Ray."

Becker said, "You were the other one in the car?"

"And walked off with the money, Ray. You were a little quicker, we could've met then."

Becker blinked, but he didn't have anything to say.

"You didn't have a lot of time," Parker told him. "I guess you were already in trouble, you look like that kind. He wouldn't give you me, but he gave you Cathman, and here you come, on the run, gonna kill the whole world if you have to, get your hands on f.u.c.k-you money."

"He was dying anyway," Becker said.

"He was not," Parker told him. "But he should have been. I knew it was a mistake to let him live."

He took the Python out of his pocket, put it an inch from Ray Becker's left eye. Becker was saying all kinds of things, panting and spitting out words. "We live and learn, Ray," Parker said, and shot him.

14.

Inside the cramped and crowded convenience store was one person, the kid seated on the stool in the narrow s.p.a.ce behind the cash register, reading a paperback book. A small black plastic portable radio, dangling by its handle from a hook on the wall above and behind the kid's head, played tinny rock music, pretty loud; another reason he hadn't heard the two shots in the men's room, at the far end of the building. Which was good, it meant he wasn't another problem to be dealt with.

Parker had come around to the store directly from finishing with Becker because he wanted to know if the clerk in here had heard anything and was about to raise an alarm, but the answer was no. So the thing to do was pay the ten dollars out of Becker's wallet for the gas Becker had pumped, meaning the kid still had no reason to remember him or even notice him, and then drive away.

He told himself he should find a motel soon, he was weary and sore, it was almost nine o'clock in the morning, but the adrenaline still pumped through him after Becker, and his exhaustion was offset by nervous tension. He'd left the.38 with Becker, along with the handcuffs, and now the Python was stashed inside the back seat of the Lexus. As he drove, he shredded Cathman's confession, dropping sc.r.a.ps of it out the window for miles.

He stopped the littering as he pa.s.sed the road in to Tooler's cottages, where a patrol car was parked along the verge and a bored cop walked around on the dirt road, there to keep the curious and the press and the mistaken away from the scene of murder and arson within.

A few miles later, the Lexus crested a hill, and off to the right he could see the river, looking sluggish and dark under the gray sky. At first it was just the river, mottled, slate gray, but then a sailboat appeared out there, a white triangle of sail.

The Lexus drove down the other side of the hill.

THE END.

About Richard Stark.

Richard Stark is one of the preeminent authors-and inventors-of noir crime fiction. Stark's recent Parker novels Comeback and Backflash were selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year. His first novel, The Hunter, became the cla.s.sic 1967 movie Point Blank. Thirty years later The Hunter was adapted again by Hollywood, in the hit Mel Gibson movie Payback.

Richard Stark is also, at times, mystery Grand Master Donald E. Westlake.

Also by Richard Stark The Hunter The Man with the Getaway Face The Outfit The Mourner The Score The Jugger The Seventh The Handle The Damsel The Rare Coin Score The Green Eagle Score The Dame The Black Ice Score The Sour Lemon Score Deadly Edge The Blackbird Slayground Lemons Never Lie Plunder Squad Butcher's Moon Comeback Backflash

end.