The Man With the Getaway Face by Richard Stark Read Free Book Online Page A

other car was stopped facing the embankment. It was a black Lincoln. Looking through the rear window as he walked forward, Parker could see the driver alone in the car. He came around the left-hand side, and opened the door.
    Stubbs was wearing his chauffeur's costume, complete with hat, and he was holding a -45. He pointed it at Parker, and said, "Hold it right there!"
    Parker stood where he was, with his hand still on the door handle.
    Stubbs said, "I got to know where you was Saturday."
    Parker kept looking at Stubbs, not to the right where Handy was crawling along the pavement, coming up alongside the car, keeping low out of Stubbs's range of vision.
    "What for?" Parker asked.
    "The Doc was killed Saturday," Stubbs said. "One of you bastards did it."
    "I was here in Jersey," said Parker, as Handy reached up and plucked the automatic out of Stubbs's hand. Parker leaned in and clipped him on the side of the neck. While Stubbs was getting over that, Handy got to his feet pointing the automatic. "Get out of the car."
    Stubbs got out, holding his neck. "You better not kill me," he said. "If May don't hear from me, she sends letters about your new face."
    It irritated Parker, another useless complication. He slid in behind the wheel of the Lincoln and parked it in an open slot by the embankment. Then he came back and said to Handy, "Your place?"
    "It's the closest."
    They put Stubbs in the front seat of the Ford, next to Parker, who was driving. Handy sat in the back seat, watching Stubbs, the automatic in his lap. He gave Parker directions the rest of the way to his place.
    Handy had a room in a building that had started out as a private home and then become a boarding house and now was just a place with furnished rooms. But the furniture was clean, and not quite as ugly as at Skimm's place.
    The phone was out in the hall. They stood there, Handy holding the automatic in Stubbs's back, while Parker dialled Skimm's place. The ring came in his ear three times, and then Skimm answered, sounding sleepy. Parker told him who it was. "Alma there?"
    Skimm hesitated. "Yes. She was just leaving."
    "Sure. I got somebody here I want her to talk to. He'll ask her when she saw me in the diner. It's okay for her to tell him."
    "What's going on, Parker?"
    "I'll tell you sometime. Put Alma on."
    "Okay, wait a second." There was mumbling, away from the phone, and then Alma came on the line. She sounded snappish.
    "Hold on," said Parker. "Tell this guy when I was in the diner." He handed the phone to Stubbs.
    Stubbs took the phone, frowning in concentration. It was getting too complicated for his battered brain. He said. "Hello? What time Saturday? Where is this diner?"
    After that he frowned some more, staring heavily at the phone box on the wall, until he said, in answer to something from Alma, "I'm thinking," and hung up.
    "You happy?" Parker asked.
    Stubbs turned around, looking like somebody trying to answer a tough question. "She says you was in there around noon."
    "That's right."
    "The Doc was killed maybe four o'clock in the afternoon, while I was washing the cars."
    Parker shook his head, disgusted. "You know how far Nebraska is from here?"
    Stubbs chewed on that for a while and then said, "Okay, it wasn't you." That settled, he turned to Handy. "Gimme the gun back, will ya?"
    Handy looked at Parker, wondering if this clown was kidding. "Just wait a minute, Stubbs. I think we've got to talk."
    "Sure," said Handy. He held on to the automatic.
    "There's nothing to talk about. You didn't do it."
    "This way," said Handy. He motioned with the automatic.
    Stubbs wanted to argue some more, but Parker hit him openhanded on the ear, where a punchy could feel it. Stubbs screwed his face up and hunched his shoulder and cupped his hand over his ear, and then he went where Handy told him.
    They walked into the apartment, and Parker told Stubbs to sit down on the leather chair. Handy sat over to the side, in the maroon overstuffed chair, and Parker