Read Online Plunder Squad by Richard Stark - Free Book Online Page A

at the mimeographed sheet again: painted by, loaned by, purchased in 1968 for eighteen thousand dollars.
    He moved on. There were twenty-one paintings in the exhibit, mounted on the white walls and on a temporary divider down the middle of the room. Adding up the numbers on the mimeographed sheet, a total of three hundred seventy-five thousand dollars had been paid out at one time or another in the last eight years for these paintings.
    Parker studied every one of them. He also studied the seven private guards—gray uniforms, revolvers on right hip—standing around the room like seven more exhibits, and the other two armed guards moving back and forth in the hall outside, constantly passing the doorway. The fifteen or twenty other visitors to the exhibit at the moment all seemed to be ordinary citizens, none of them having that aura about them of the plainclothes cop.
    When he had seen everything, Parker folded the mimeographed sheet and put it in his suit-coat pocket and left. The exhibit was being housed for this temporary show in a second-floor room in a downtown bank building, and he had his choice of elevator or stairs to the first floor. He went down the stairs and outside, and a municipal police car was parked by the fire hydrant in front of this entrance. It had been there when he’d gone in, and for the second time the two cops inside it gave him a casual once-over. He turned left, went down to the corner, left again, and half a block to the rented car. Sunlight glistened off everything; the time was two-ten.
    It took twenty-five minutes to drive out to the motel. Mackey and his woman were the only ones in the pool area when Parker turned in from the highway. Mackey, standing on the diving board in his flower-patterned trunks, waved a big hello. Parker lifted a hand from the steering wheel, put it back, and drove on in past the office, while Mackey dove into the blue water, swam the length of the pool, climbed out, grabbed his towel, and came padding toward his room. His woman stayed at the pool.
    Parker was leaning on the front of the rental car when Mackey got there. Mackey said, “You saw it?”
    “I saw it.”
    Mackey had his towel around his shoulders and his room key in his hand. Opening the door, he said, “It isn’t really warm enough to swim, you know? Not quite warm enough.” He pushed open the door, stepped in, hit the light switch beside the door. Parker followed him in and shut the door behind him.
    It was night in here. Heavy draperies with an autumn-leaf design covered the window, and the switch Mackey had touched had turned on two table lamps and a floor lamp, showing a motel room like any other, with gold filigree on the dresser front. The air conditioner was going, high in the rear wall, and the air in the room was as cold and dead as a tile floor.
    “Jesus, it’s cold!” Mackey said, but he didn’t touch the air conditioner. Standing in the middle of the room, shivering, he peeled off his wet bathing suit, tossed it through the open bathroom doorway, and started to towel himself dry. He was hairy, stocky, just under average height, and about forty years of age. His hair was a little thin on top. There was a puckered scar on his back, high and to the right, just under the shoulder. He said, “Scotch and ice on the dresser there, help yourself.” He kept patting himself with the towel.
    “I didn’t eat lunch yet,” Parker said. When you’re maybe going to work with a man, give him reasons for things, don’t be overly curt. Parker went over and sat down in a somewhat Danish chair near the door.
    “Yeah? Neither did I, I’ll join you.”
    “All right.”
    “We’ll leave Brenda here. She never eats lunch anyway. Keeps herself down to fighting weight, you know?”
    Parker nodded.
    Mackey wadded up the towel, threw it into the bathroom after his bathing suit, and went over to the dresser. He opened the top drawer, pulled out some clothing, and started to dress. “What do you