"Westlake, Donald E as Stark, Richard - Parker 09 - The Split (The Seventh) 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Westlake Donald E)

'About nineteen grand.'

'Nineteen grand.' Kifka savored the words on his tongue. 'I could use nineteen grand,' he said.

'So could I.'

Kifka nodded. 'Sure. You want your seventh, too.'

'That's right.' Parker turned away again, opened the door, and went into the living room. He said to Janey, 'He's yours again.'

She immediately dropped the book and got to her feet. 'Good.'

Kifka was never going to get healthy with Janey around. But then, maybe he didn't care. Parker went on out and shut the apartment door.

He went downstairs and outside and started down the exterior steps to the sidewalk when a voice shouted from across the street, 'Hey!' and then there was the sound of a shot.

Parker dove the last four steps, rolled across the sidewalk, and came up against a parked car. A second shot sounded, and the side window of the car shattered, raining glass down on him.

Parker got to hands and knees and crawled hurriedly around the rear of the car. Across the way there was a narrow blacktop driveway hemmed in on both sides by the sheer walls of apartment buildings. With the third shot, Parker saw a muzzle flash in the darkness within that driveway. He dragged a gun out of his topcoat pocket, braced his arm on the bumper of the car, and fired at the muzzle flash.

Footsteps clattered, receding, somebody running away along the blacktop.

Parker ran over that way, flattened himself against a wall, and edged slowly around the corner till he could see into the driveway. At the far end the driveway split, going to left and right behind the apartment buildings. There was a wall at the far end, with a light attached to it. There was no one moving in the alley between Parker and the light. Whoever he was, he'd already made the turn, one way or the other, and was gone. Even the sound of his running footsteps was now gone.

But he'd left something behind, a bulky bundle lying against one of the side walls.

Parker approached it cautiously, but it didn't move. He bent and rolled it over. It was a man. It was the clown in the mackinaw, the follower, the one who wanted his thirty-seven dollars from Dan Kifka.

He'd been shot in the side of the head by a gun of too large a calibre for the job. Kifka now owed thirty-seven dollars to the clown's estate.

It had been the clown who had shouted. The voice had rung with familiarity, but at the time Parker hadn't been concerned with wondering who it was. Now he thought back and remembered it, and it had been the voice of the clown here.

None of it made sense. The clown had been alone before, and had obviously had nothing to do with anything but his own thirty-seven bucks. But now he'd been here with somebody else, and he'd obviously been involved in a lot more than thirty-seven dollars.

Parker's shot hadn't killed him. He'd been shot from close range, not from across the street.

The way it looked, the two of them had been waiting here for Parker to come out. When he did, the second man was going to kill him. But the clown here shouted a warning, and the second man shot him instead and then tried to get Parker anyway and missed.

That told what happened, by an educated guess, but not why.

Why was the clown here? Why did he shout? Why was he killed? And who was the second man?

Maybe it was an outsider after all. There was too much that made no sense; maybe it would start making sense if the guy who now had the cash wasn't one of the seven who'd worked the heist after all.

One thing was sure. This changed the plans.

Parker recrossed the street and went back upstairs to Kifka's apartment and knocked on the door. When the girl opened it this time she was wearing just the sweatshirt again and she looked a little flushed. Also irritated.

Parker went in and shut the door. 'Tell Dan I'm sleeping on the sofa,' he said. 'If you heard the shots out there, that's why. I'll talk to Dan again in the morning.'