Parker 01 - The Hunter Read Online Free PDF Page B

cheek.
    Stegman said, "He's scared of the girl. That's the way it looks to me."
    "He must have left you a way to get in touch with him."
    "No. He said he'd see me around." Stegman exhaled sharply, shaking his head. "Mister," he said, "I don't know nothing about this. I don't know who you are, or the girl, or why the payoff. Mal and I used to hang around together in the old days, before he went out to California. So he shows up three months ago and says do him a favor. I'll pick up an extra C a month, and there's no problem, no law, nothing. So I'll do him the favor, what the hell. But now you come around and talk about killing me. That much a buddy of Mal I'm not. If I knew where he was, I'd tell you. That's straight. If he was setting me up for this, some guy coming around going to kill me, he should have picked another boy. He should have told me what might happen. You think I'd come out for a ride with you?"
    Parker shrugged. "All right."
    "I'll tell you this much. He's in New York, that I know."
    "How do you know?"
    "He said so. When he come around for me to do this little favor. I asked him how he liked it out west, and he said he was through out there. From now on, he was staying in the big town. He got like lonesome, he said."
    "So where would he be? You know him from the old days. Where would he hang out?"
    "I don't have any idea. He was gone a long time."
    "You could check."
    "I could say I'd check. Then you'd get out of the car, and I'd mind my own business some more. And I'd tell my drivers, they see you around again, they should jump on you with both feet." He shrugged. "You know that as well as I do."
    Parker nodded. "So I'll find him some other way. You want Sidney back, you send somebody up to Lynn Parker's place. I got him locked in the bedroom."
    "I thought you said he was dead."
    "He isn't."
    "Is the girl there, too?"
    "No. She's in the morgue. All right, let's go back. You can drop me off at the subway."
    "Sure." Stegman stopped for a red light and shook his head. "This'll teach me. No more favors."
    "You came out all right. So far."
    Stegman turned his head. "What do you mean, so far?"
    "You happen to run into Mal somewhere, you don't want to mention me."
    "Don't worry, friend. No more favors!"

Chapter 6
    He changed trains three times, but there wasn't anyone following him. He was disgusted. It meant Stegman was telling the truth, and it was a dead end. Otherwise, a tail would have led to the connection.
    He wanted Mal. He wanted Mal between his hands. . . .
    It had started ten months ago. There were four of them in it: Parker and his wife and Mal and a Canadian hotshot named Chester. Chester was the one who set it up. He'd heard about the arms deal, and he saw the angle right away. He brought Mal into it, and Mal brought in Parker.
    It was a sweet setup. Eighty thousand dollars' worth of munitions, with over-writes along the way bringing the total up to ninety-three grand and change. The goods were American, picked up here and there, and trucked piecemeal into Canada. It was easier to get the stuff into Canada than either into Mexico or out of a United States port, and once in Canada there was no trouble getting it airborne.
    There was a small airfield up in Keewatin, near Angikuni Lake, and at the right time of year the roads were passable. There were two planes, making two trips each, heading first westward over MacKenzie and Yukon and B.C. to the Pacific, and then turning south. One island stop for refueling, and then on southward again. The buyers were South American revolutionaries with a mountain airfield and a yen for bloodshed.
    Chester learned about the transaction through a friend of his who'd gotten a job driving one of the trucks north into Canada. He learned the details of the operation and knew that, in a deal like this, payment would have to be in cash. That made it a natural for a hijacking. There would never be any law called in, and there was nothing to fear from a bunch of mountain