The Handle Read online

  While they were waiting, Parker said, “What I want now is a hotel. Not a Hilton, but not a dive. A small quiet hotel where they mind their own business. Away from the centre of town, if possible.”

  “Most of the big tourist hotels are around the Alameda,” the kid said. “You want to be away from them?”

  “Right.”

  “Then there's some others right off Insurgentes, down near Reforma. Back in around the jai alai frontón. Small, but they speak English, most of them.”

  “That's what we want. You lead the way.”

  A pesero family came and they rode it back toward the middle of town, getting off at Avenue Gomes Farias, heading east toward the Plaza de la Republica. They tried two hotels but both were full, and finally found one behind the frontón on Edison.

  “The room isn't for me,” Parker explained. “I'm getting it for a friend of mine. This is his luggage.”

  “So you sign his name,” said the clerk. He spoke English with a combination of Greenpoint and Mexican accents.

  Parker wrote “Joseph Goldberg, New York City,” and the clerk himself took them up in the elevator to the room, carrying the two suitcases. Parker gave him a five-peso note, stashed the suitcases in the closet, and said to the kid, “Now we do some buying.”

  For the next hour and a half they went from store to store, while Parker bought clothing and other stuff. He got two suits, four white shirts, two belts, five ties, two pairs of shoes and six of socks, five sets of underwear, a raincoat, a toothbrush and tube of toothpaste, a hairbrush, a razor and a packet of blades, a can of shoe polish, two Mexican guidebooks and an English-Spanish dictionary, two cheap silver bracelets gift-wrapped, two quarts of tequila, a straw ladies’ handbag, an expensive leather suitcase, a small original oil painting in a wooden frame all about a foot square, an high-priced carton of American cigarettes, a Zippo lighter, and a can of lighter fluid. The kid guided him from place to place, translated when necessary, and toted the goods.

  Back at the hotel, with the boxes and bags of stuff all spread out on the bed, Parker took a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and said, “You been a big help. I'm done now.”

  “It was a pleasure,” the kid said. “Trying to figure out what the hell you're doing, it's better than the puzzle in the Sunday Times.”

  Parker gave him the ten and said, “You here on a tourist visa or a passport?”

  “Tourist visa.”

  “You want to make some more dough?”

  The kid grinned. “You know it.”

  “Fifty bucks,” Parker said.

  “Fifty? What do I do this time?”

  “Lose your wallet.”

  The kid blinked. “What?”

  “Lose your wallet, before you leave this room. Tomorrow you go to the American Embassy, you tell them somebody stole your wallet with all your papers in it. You do that tomorrow afternoon, not before then.”

  “Mister, I could get in a lot of trouble do—”

  “For losing your wallet? Red tape, that's all. It happens all the time.”

  The kid took his wallet out and looked at it. “You don't need the wallet, do you? Just the papers.”

  “I'll make it sixty,” Parker told him, “you can buy a new wallet.”

  “I've got pictures in—”

  “Get new copies. If the wallet is lost it's lost.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I guess so.” The kid hefted the wallet. “I sure wish I knew what was going on.”

  “I'm a counterspy,” Parker told him. “I got to get to Washington before the Russkis start World War Three.”

  “It's something like that,” the kid said. He took his new ten-dollar bill and a few pesos from the wallet and tossed it on the bed. “How do you like that?” he said. “I lost my wallet.”

  “You report it not before tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Got it.”

  Parker fed him sixty dollars, in tens, and the kid went away.

  For the next few hours Parker was very busy. He took the suitcases out of the closet and opened them on the bed and started counting, and when he got to one hundred and twenty-seven thousand, five hundred sixty, he was finished. That was sixty-three thousand, seven hundred eighty dollars apiece. Not the two hundred grand Karns had guaranteed him, but he wouldn't bother about hitting Karns for the rest. The diamonds would have covered that much, probably, and even so his half was more than the fifty thousand dollars his quarter would originally have been.

  He put Grofield's share back in one of the suitcases and stowed that one in the closet. Then he phoned the airport and booked passage on an eight-thirty flight that evening to Los Angeles, and after that he packed.

  The packing took a long while. He had two suitcases, the old one and one he'd just bought, and all his new purchases. The clothing he'd been wearing went in first, and he put on all fresh things, and after that he worked slowly.

  He had a large mass of money, and what he had to do was break it into a lot of small masses of money and make those small masses of money disappear. There were bills rolled in the new socks, each sock around a little stack of money large enough to make one rolled sock look like two. He tucked bills in the toes of the spare shoes, and filled all pockets of the suits. The new shirts, with the wrapping taken off, looked as though they'd just come back from the cleaners, and into each he stuffed more bills. Each piece of underwear was rolled up with a chunk of money inside it like a pearl in an oyster. The ladies’ handbag was crammed with bills. The raincoat pockets were filled with bills and the clothing Parker was wearing was packed full of bills. It took work and it took time, but when he was done the cash was all packed away and out of sight. With the painting, the handbag, the bottles of tequila and all the other stuff, he looked exactly like a tourist, and obvious tourists get a quick runthrough at customs.

  At six o'clock he went back to the doctor's house, paid the tab, and picked up Grofield. Grofield was conscious and shaky, but grinning. He looked a mess in his clothes, but that couldn't be helped.

  They took a pesero back downtown, and walked the three blocks to the hotel. “That was a good man,” Grofield said. “That doctor.”

  “He did a good job on you.”

  “I'm not ready to travel yet, though. Not yet.”

  “I know.” Parker nodded. “That's your hotel, ahead. You're Joseph Goldberg there.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Nobody.”

  Parker didn't explain any more till they were up in the room, where Grofield immediately stretched out on the bed, saying, “I'm weak as a kitten, you know that?”

  “You're checked in here alone,” Parker told him. “I'm leaving tonight. Your share's in the suitcase in the closet. They'll be looking for us together, so the sooner we split the better.”

  Grofield nodded. “Sure.”

  “Sooner or later they'll find the jeep and know we came down here, so play it tight.”

  “I will.”

  Parker looked around. “That's all of it,” he said. He picked up the suitcases, was carrying the raincoat tucked under his left arm. “I'll be seeing you,” he said.

  Grofield said, “I appreciate this.”

  “Appreciate what?”

  “You didn't leave me up there. You carried me along, got me my share.”

  Parker didn't understand what there was to appreciate about that. “We were working together,” he said.

  “That's right,” Grofield said. “I'll be seeing you.”