The Split by Donald E. Westlake

Author:Donald E. Westlake [Westlake, Donald E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Criminals, Mystery & Detective, Hard-Boiled, Crime, Fiction, General, Parker (Fictitious character)
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2009-08-14T23:00:00+00:00

P09 The Split

One

He was standing in a small square room with beige walls.

The room was nine feet long, ten feet wide, nine feet high. Paint was peeling from the ceiling. A gray carpet covered most of the floor. The furniture was old and nondescript.

He was looking out the window at the night-dark city, feeling Parker’s eyes. Somewhere, looking out. from some other window in some other part of this city, were Parker’s eyes, searching for him.

He didn’t know Parker’s name, didn’t know his history, but it wasn’t necessary. He had seen Parker. He had tried once to frame Parker, and twice to kill Parker. He had taken an awful lot of money from Parker, money which must connect Parker with that robbery out at the stadium.

He was terrified of Parker.

At the beginning of it, he hadn’t really been aware of Parker at all. He’d known Ellen was living with another one, someone new, but his rage and hatred and sense of loss, all because of Ellen herself, had been so strong in him that he hadn’t had the thought or the inclination to wonder about this new one, or care about him, or even consider him in his plans.

Except to wait for him to leave the apartment.

For two days he’d snuffled around that building, loping and looking, waiting for Parker to come out of there. He’d been out of town for awhile, ever since Ellen had screamed at him that time, ranted and raved, cut him up with her tongue like slicing a piece of paper with a razor blade. She’d said things to him no one had ever said before in his life, things he would have killed a man for saying. She made fun of his triumphs, detailed his failures. She mocked his manhood, described the extent of his stupidity. She told him he was lousy in bed and worse out of it. She threw his electric razor out the window and told him to take the rest of his things and get the hell out of there. And when he went after her, driven beyond endurance, she’d run to the kitchen and grabbed a sharp knife out of the drawer there and held him at bay with it, screaming at him and taunting him all the time.

So he’d finally gathered up his gear and left the apartment, and she slammed the door after him. Standing in the hallway, he heard her slap the police lock into place. He had a key for the other lock, but not for that one.

He left town that same night, wound up in Mexico for a while. He knew Ellen would talk, would tell everyone how she’d routed him and why, and what she’d said to him, and how she’d held him off with a knife. He couldn’t face them, face anyone he knew in that city, knowing they would know, Ellen would tell them.

After months in Mexico, humiliation and rage gradually hardened into something colder and more dangerous than either, and

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