Read Online Wilderness by Robert B. Parker - Free Book Online Page B

sign language.
She can tell herself she isn’t begging
, Newman thought. He stuck the card in a crack in the defroster vent.
    Chris Hood came out of Union Furniture and walked slowly down Portland Street toward Newman. He got in the car.
    “Nothing,” he said.
    “Karl in there?”
    “If he was I didn’t see him. There were a couple of salesmen. Then there’s some stairs along the left wall in the back, and like a balcony of offices across the back on the second floor. I would assume Karl was up there.”
    “Did it look like a place we could hit him?”
    Hood shrugged. “Got to see the upstairs layout. In the store itself it doesn’t look promising.”
    “Do we really need to see upstairs too?”
    Hood looked at him for a span of ten seconds. “Yeah, we have to see upstairs. We have to see everything. This isn’t Capture The Flag, Aaron. You don’t go in unprepared. Here, anywhere. You gotta know what you can expect.”
    Newman said, “Okay. You’re probably right. How we going to do it?”
    Hood picked the card off the defroster slot and read it. “First let’s park this thing,” he said.
    Newman found a meter past the store on the right.
    “First off, it’s gotta be you,” Hood said. He put the card back in the defroster slot. “The salesmen have seen me in there. They’ll be too suspicious if I’m caught trying to go up to the offices.”
    Newman felt the fear again. It surged in his stomach and flashed along his arms and into his fingertips. He kept his face still.
    “How about I use that card?”
    Hood looked at the card again.
    “Go in and pretend to be a deaf-mute beggar and go upstairs and wander around?”
    “Yes,” Newman said. His throat was stiff. “And if anyone catches me I hand them the card.”
    Hood pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows. “Not bad,” he said. “But you look too good.”
    He reached into the glove compartment and brought out a felt fishing hat. “Try the crusher,” he said. “Just put it on and let it be as wrinkled and mangy as it is. Don’t smooth it out.”
    Newman put the hat on. “Okay,” Hood said. “And we’ll have to do something with the shirt.” He tookthe skinning knife from his pocket and opened the blade. “Mind if I ruin the shirt? I’ll cut the sleeves off almost at your shoulders.”
    “Go ahead,” Newman said. His breath was short.
    Hood cut the sleeves off. When he finished Newman leaned over and rolled his pants legs up over his ankles. His bare legs were pale above his blue Pumas. He put the deaf-mute card in his hat band.
    “I’ll go in first,” Hood said. “I told them I wanted to shop around and I might be back. Then you come in and head for the back left. You’ll see the stairs.”
    Newman nodded.
    “If there’s trouble, start yelling. I’ll be up in half a second. And don’t be afraid to use the gun. That’s what you got it for.”
    “Okay.”
    Hood grinned. “Okay, I’m going. You come right behind me.”
    “Okay.”
    Hood grinned again. Made a thumbs-up gesture and got out of the car. Newman sat in stillness. He felt thick, as if there were insulation around him and reality were distant and unclear. Hood went into the store and Newman got out of the car and went to the store behind him.
    The store was shabby and the furniture was cheap and garish, imitation plush in bright reds and blues. Wooden love seats with small print slipcovering that pretended to be colonial. To his right as he went in, Newman had a sense of Hood talking to a salesman. In the far right back corner of the store another salesman bent over a table, writing in a notebook. Newman walked straight to the back left and up the stairs. Nobody said anything. At the top of the stairs therewas a balcony that ran off at right angles to the stairs across the back of the store. There were three frosted glass doors at intervals in the back wall of the balcony. The salesman who’d been writing was now out of sight under the balcony, the other was