Robert B. Parker by Wilderness

knothole again.
    Hood took a box of shells from the cabinet and handed them to Newman.
    “It breaks here,” he said, taking the revolver from Newman and opening it. Newman fed five bright cartridges into the cylinder, closed the gun, and slipped it into his holster under his shirt.
    “What about a permit?” Newman said.
    Hood said, “I’ve got one.”
    Newman said, “But I haven’t. All I’ve got is an FID card. I can’t carry this on your permit.”
    Hood smiled. “We’re setting out to commit murder, Aaron. I wouldn’t sweat the unlicensed gun too much.”
    Newman nodded. Hood put on a shoulder holster and slipped the P-38 in it. He put an extra clip of ammunition in his hip pocket and the folding knife in his side pocket. He handed the carbine to Newman.
    “Remember how to fire this?”
    “Yes,” Newman said. “It’s one of the things you don’t forget. Like bike-riding.”
    “Or sex,” Hood said. He picked up the Winchester and a box of ammunition. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get to it.”
    “I think Karl might catch on,” Newman said, “if he saw us walking up his driveway like this.”
    “We’ll stash the long guns in the car. I just figured we’d be better to have them handy.”
    “And you might want to put on something over the shoulder holster.”
    “Smart,” Hood said. “You writers are a smart breed.”
    They walked through Hood’s small immaculate kitchen. On a peg by the back door was a short-sleeved cotton safari jacket. Hood put it on. They put the carbine and Winchester, wrapped in a blanket, behind the back seat in Hood’s red and white 1976 Bronco.
    “You got the address?” Hood said.
    “473 Lynn Shore Drive. If it’s the same Adolph Karl. It was the only one in the phone book.”
    “Probably him.”
    “Would he be listed?”
    “Why not. Don’t thugs make phone calls?”
    Newman said, “Yes they do. Sometimes they make house calls.”
    They drove from Smithfield to Lynn and through Lynn to the road that ran along the ocean. Number 473 was a three-story brick house on the Lynn-Swampscott line. Around it was a strip of dry lawn no more than three feet wide. On either side the neighbors’ houses were close. There was a two-car garage and in the cement driveway that connected it to the street was parked a dark blue Lincoln with an orange vinyl top.
    “That’s the car,” Newman said. He felt the tension again in his solar plexus. He put his hand down on the butt of the gun under his shirt. “It must be the right place,” he said.
    Hood drove on past and turned left at a drugstore a block beyond Karl’s house. He parked.
    “Karl ever see you?”
    Newman shook his head.
    “How about the guys that laid it on Janet? They see you?”
    Newman shook his head again.
    “Then nobody in this group should know what you look like.”
    “True,” Newman said. His voice was hoarse.
    “So let’s stroll back and look at the building a bit.”
    They got out. Hood locked the car. They walked back a block along the seawall side of the street. Below them the beach was littered and beyond the beach waves rolled in from the open ocean. Across the harbor the turtle back of Nahant rose at the end of its causeway. Behind them a massive restaurant looked out over a cove where fishing boats rocked at tether.
    They leaned against the seawall and looked at Karl’s house. On the ocean side there was a sunporch, the windows closed by venetian blinds. Above the sunporch the house rose two more stories. The third story looked cramped beneath the slate mansard roof. The house actually fronted on a small side street. Four windows on the first floor, five on the second, two A-dormers through the slate roof on the third. There were venetian blinds in each of these windows.
    “Nice-looking house,” Hood said.
    “No land, though,” Newman said. “Right up against the neighbors.”
    “Yeah, you could reach out your window and into theirs.”
    “No place to sneak around and shoot