Deadly Edge by Donald E. Westlake

Author:Donald E. Westlake [Westlake, Donald E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Criminals, Mystery & Detective, Hard-Boiled, Crime, Fiction, Thrillers, General, Parker (Fictitious character)
ISBN: 9780226770918
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2010-08-31T23:00:00+00:00

P13 Deadly Edge

PART FOUR

The plane circled Newark for fifteen minutes, and had been late getting there in any event. It was nearly eight o'clock before they landed and the passengers could get off.

At night, Newark Airport looks like Newark: underilluminated, squat, dirty. The terminal building seemed to be full of short people speaking Spanish, all of them excited about one thing or another. Parker went through them like a panther through geese, and trotted across the blacktop street out front to the parking lot and the Pontiac.

He had major highway to drive on most of the way, with country blacktop for only the last ten miles or so. He drove by the turnoff to the road that circled the lake, knowing that just over a mile farther on, the other end of the same road came around to intersect with the one he was on.

There'd been a lot of traffic coming the other way, eastbound, weekenders on their way back to the city, and a car was waiting to come out at the second turnoff. Parker steered around it, and met two others coming out while he drove in. He would have preferred a week night, when there'd be a lot less activity around the lake.

He picked a likely-looking house on the lake side of the road, one that showed no lights or any sign of recent activity, but which didn't have its windows boarded up for the winter. He left the Pontiac in the driveway, looked through one of the windows in the garage door, and saw a fairly large outboard motorboat in there, on a wheeled carrier. So the owner hadn't started coming up yet this year at all, or the boat would be in the water and room would have been left in the garage for their car.

Parker walked around the side of the house and down the slope of weedy lawn at the back to the water's edge, and looked out across the lake. There were maybe fifteen houses showing light over there; one of them would be Claire's. He was too far away now to make out anything but light and darkness.

The house here was built on land that sloped pretty steeply down toward the water, so that what was the first floor on the road side was a good eight feet above the ground back here, held up by a series of metal posts. Part of the underneath section had been closed off to form a sort of workshop, and the rest was left open and used for storage of various things: a lawnmower, jerry cans, an oildrum-and-wood-platform float, and two aluminum rowboats.

Parker wrestled one of the rowboats out of the storage space, turned it right side up, and dragged it down to the water's edge. Then he went back and found several wooden oars, their green paint flaking off, leaning against the rear of the storage space. He brought them down to the rowboat, fit them into the oarlocks, and pushed the boat into the water.

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