Breakout

1

When the alarm went off, Parker and Armiston were far to the rear of the warehouse, Armiston with the clipboard, checking off the boxes they’d want. The white cartons were stacked six feet high to make aisles that stretched to the unpainted concrete block side walls of the building. A wider central aisle ran straight to the loading dock where they’d come in, dismantling the alarms and raising the overhead door.

Then what was this alarm, five minutes after they’d broken in? “That idiot Bruhl,” Armiston said, throwing the clipboard away in exasperation. “He went into the office.”

Parker was already loping toward the central aisle. Behind him, Armiston cried, “God damn it! Fingerprints!” and ran back to pick up the clipboard.

Parker turned into the main aisle, running, and saw far away the big door still open, the empty truck backed against it. George Walheim, the lockman who’d got them in here, stood by the open doorway, making jerky movements, not quite running away.

These were all generic pharmaceuticals in here, and Armiston had the customer, at an airfield half an hour north. The plan was, by tomorrow these medicines would be offshore, more valuable than in the States, and the four who’d done the job would earn a nice percentage.

But that wasn’t going to happen. Bruhl, brought in by Armiston, was supposed to have gotten a fork-lift truck, so he could run it down the main aisle to pick up the cartons Parker and Armiston had marked. Instead of which, he’d gone to see what he could lift from the office. But Walheim hadn’t cleared the alarm system in the office.

As Parker ran down the long aisle, Armiston a dozen paces behind, Bruhl appeared, coming fast out of the first side aisle down there. Walheim tried to clutch at him, but Bruhl hit him with a backhand that knocked the thinner man down.

Parker yelled, “Bruhl! Stop!” but Bruhl kept going. He jumped to the ground outside the loading dock, next to the truck, then ran toward the front of it. He was going to take it, leave the rest of them here on foot.

There was no way to stop him, no way to get there in time. Walheim was still on hands and knees, looking for his glasses, when the truck jolted away from the loading dock. Outside was the darkness of four A.M., spotted with thin lights high on the corners of other buildings in this industrial park.

The truck, big rear doors flapping, heeled hard on the right turn at the end of the blacktop lot, Bruhl still accelerating. The empty truck was top-heavy, it wasn’t going to make it.

Walheim was on his feet, patting his glasses into place, when Parker ran by. “What do we—?” But Parker was gone, jumping off the loading dock to run away leftward as behind him the truck crashed over onto its side and scraped along the pavement until it ran into a utility pole, knocking it over. The few lights around here went dark.

There was nothing in this area but the industrial park, empty at night. No houses, no bars, no churches, no schools. There were no pedestrians out here at four in the morning, no cars driving by.

Parker had run less than a block when he heard the sirens, far behind him but coming fast. There was nowhere to go to cover, no point trying to break into another of these buildings. Fleets of trucks here and there stood in lines behind high fences.

Parker kept running. Armiston and Walheim were wherever they wanted to be, and Parker tried to keep the sound of sirens behind him. But the sirens spread, left and right and then everywhere, slicing and dicing the night.

Parker ran down the middle of an empty street and ahead of him headlights came around a corner, a bright searchlight beam fastened on him. He stopped. He put his hands on top of his head.

2

“Do you want to tell me about it?” the CID man offered.

“No,” Parker said.

The CID man nodded, looking at him. He was small but bulky, a middleweight, carrot-topped, said his name was Turley. Inspector Turley. He had a dossier on the desk in front of him, Parker in the wooden chair opposite him, all of it watched by the two uniforms in the corners of this plain functional government-issue office. Turley opened the dossier and glanced at it with the air of a man who already knows what’s inside, the grim satisfaction of somebody whose negative prediction has come true. “Ronald Kasper,” he said, and frowned at Parker. “That isn’t your name, is it?”

Parker watched him.

Turley looked down at the dossier again, rapped the middle knuckle of the middle finger of his right hand against the information in there. “That’s the name on some fingerprints, belong to a fella escaped from a prison camp in California some years ago. Killed a guard on the way out.” He raised an eyebrow at Parker. “You’ve got his fingerprints.”

“The system makes mistakes,” Parker said.

Turley’s grin turned down, not finding anything funny here. “So do individuals, my friend,” he said. Looking into his dossier again, he said, “There is no Ronald Kasper, not before, not since. In the prison camp, out, left behind these prints, one guard dead. Do you want to know his name?”

Parker shook his head. “Wouldn’t mean anything to me.”

“No, I suppose it wouldn’t. We have some other names for you.”

Parker waited. Turley raised an eyebrow at him, also waiting, but then saw that Parker had nothing to say and went back to the dossier. “Let me know which of these names you’d rather be. Edward Johnson. Charles Willis. Edward Lynch. No? Nothing? I have here a Parker, no first name. Still not?”

“Stick with Kasper,” Parker said.

“Because we’ve got that one tied to your fingers anyway,” Turley said, and leaned back. “We’ve got you all, you know. I imagine you’ll be tried together.” Turley didn’t need his dossier now. “Armiston and Walheim are also in cells here,” he said. “You probably won’t see them until trial, but they’re here. This is a big place.”

It was. It was called Stoneveldt Detention Center, and it was where everybody charged with a state felony in this state spent their time before and during trial, unless they made bail, which Parker and Armiston and Walheim would not. No judge would look at their three histories and expect them to come back for their bail money.

Like the industrial park where things had gone wrong last night, Stoneveldt was on the outskirts of the only large city in this big empty midwestern state. Parker’s few looks out windows since being brought here last night had shown him nothing out there but flat prairie, straight roads, a few more buildings of an industrial or governmental style, and a city rising far to the east. If he were still here for the trial, it would be a forty-minute bus ride in to court every morning and back out every night, looking at that prairie through iron mesh.

“Steven Bruhl,” Turley went on, following his own train of thought, “is a little different. A local boy, to begin with.”

Armiston had brought Bruhl in, needing somebody good with machinery like forklifts, not knowing he was an idiot. Well, they all knew it now. And Turley had said they three were all here in Stoneveldt, so where did that put Bruhl? Dead? Hospital?

“If Bruhl lives,” Turley said, answering the question, “he’ll be tried later on, after you three. So, unlike you, he’ll already know what the future’s gonna bring. And also unlike you, he won’t have a chance to flip. Nobody left to rat on.”

They sat there and watched that thought move around the room. The two uniforms shifted their feet, rubbed their backs against the wall, and watched Parker without expectation; he would not make them earn their pay or prove their training.

“Now, you,” Turley said, “are in a better position. Out in front. You know game theory, Ronald?”

“Mr. Kasper,” Parker said.

Turley snorted. “What difference does it make? That isn’t your name anyway.”

“You’re right,” Parker said, and spread his hands: Call me whatever you want.

“Game theory,” Turley said, “suggests that whoever flips first wins, because there’s nothing left for anybody else to sell.”

“I’ve heard that,” Parker agreed.

“Now, we’ve got you, and we’ve got the others,” Turley said, “and you know as well as I do, we’ve got you cold. So what more do we want? What more could we possibly need, that we might want to bargain with you?”

“Not to walk,” Parker said.

Turley seemed surprised. “Walk? Away from this? No, you know what we’re talking about. Reduction in sentence, better choice of prison. Some of our prisons are better than others, you know.”

“If you say so.”

“Which means,” Turley said, “though nobody will admit this, that some of our prisons must be worse. Maybe a lot worse.” Turley leaned forward over the desk and the dossier, to impart a confidence. “We’ve got one hellhole,” he said, his voice dropping, “and I wish we didn’t, but there it is, where in that prison population you’ve only got three choices.” He checked them off on his fingers. “White power, or black power, or dead.”

“State should do something about that,” Parker said.

“It’s budget cuts,” Turley told him. “The politicians, you know, they want everybody locked up, but they don’t want to pay for it. So the prison administrators, they do what’s called assignment of resources, meaning at least some of the facilities retain some hope of civilization.” Turley leaned back. “One of you boys,” he said, “is gonna wind up in a country club. The other two, it’s a crapshoot.”

Parker waited.

Turley looked at him, getting irritated at this lack of feedback. He said, “You probably wonder, if the state’s already got me, what more can they want? What’s my bargaining chip?”

Parker already knew. He already knew this entire conversation, but it was one of the steps he had to go through before he would be left alone to work things out for himself. He watched Turley, and waited.

Turley nodded, swiveling slightly in his chair. “Those drugs you boys were after,” he said, “or medicines, I guess I should say, not to confuse the issue, where they’d really be worth your time and effort is overseas. But one of the reasons that distribution center was built in this area is because here we’re in the middle of America, you can get anywhere in the country in no time at all from here. But not overseas. We’re six hundred miles from an ocean or a border. Any ocean, any border. You boys were not gonna drive that truck six hundred miles. You had some other idea, and that other idea means there were more people involved. That’s what you can trade us. Where were you taking the truck, who was going to be there, and what was the route after that?”

Turley waited, and so did Parker. Turley leaned forward again, forearm on the open dossier on the desk. “No?”

“I’ll think about it,” Parker said.

“Meaning you won’t, not so far,” Turley told him. “But what about Armiston? What about Walheim? What about Bruhl, when he comes to?”

“If,” Parker said, because he wanted to know how bad Bruhl was.

Bad, because Turley nodded and shrugged and said, “All right, if. But he still could come through, he’s a young strong guy. The point is, you. You know these friends of yours, Armiston and Walheim. Is one of them gonna make the jump before you?”

“We’ll see,” Parker said.

Turley stood, ending the session. The uniforms stood straighter, away from the walls. Parker looked around, then also stood.

“Think about it,” Turley said. “If you want to talk to me, any time at all, tell the guard.”

“Right,” Parker said.

3

“It isn’t just this cell,” Williams said. “The whole place is overcrowded.”

Parker could believe it. The cell he was in, with Williams and two others, here on the third tier of a four-tier cage built inside an outer shell of concrete block, was eight feet by six, meant to house two short-term prisoners, but double-decker bunks had been put in to crowd four men into the space, and the court dockets were also crowded, so much so that inmates weren’t here for the month or two the architects had counted on but for eight months, ten months, a year.

This was a strange place because it was a prison and yet it wasn’t a prison. There was no stable population, no long-termers to keep it cohesive. Everybody was transient, even though the transit was longer and more uncomfortable than it was supposed to be.

This was the place before the decisions were made, so this was the place of hope. There was always that chance; a witness would disappear, the lab would screw up, the court would buy your lawyer’s argument. When this transient period was done, when your time in court was finished, you’d leave here, either for the street or to go deeper into the system, into a penitentiary, and until the last second of the last day of your trial you could never be absolutely sure which way it would go.

But because it was a place of hope, of possibilities, of decisions not yet made, it was also a place of paranoia. You didn’t know any of these guys. You were all strangers to one another, not here long enough to have developed a reputation, not going to stay long enough to want to form into groups. The only thing you knew for sure was that there were rats in the pop, people ready to pass on to the law anything they might learn about you, either because they’d been put here specifically for that purpose, or because they were opportunists, ready to market in pieces of information because it might put them in good with the authorities; push themselves up by pushing you down. And it would probably work, too.

So people didn’t talk in here, not about anything that mattered, not about what they’d done or who they were or what they thought their prospects might be. They’d bitch about their court-appointed lawyers or about the food, they’d talk religion if they were that kind, or sports, but they’d never let anybody else put a handle on their back.

The one good thing about all this isolation was that no gangs formed, no race riots happened. The Aryan Nations guys with their swastika tattoos and the Black Power guys with their monks’ hoods could glower and mutter at one another, but they couldn’t make a crew, because anybody could be a rat, anybody, even if he looked just like you.

In the cell with Parker were one black guy, Williams, plus an Hispanic and a white, Miscellaneous, neither of whom volunteered their names or anything else when Parker arrived and flipped open the mattress on the top bunk, right. Williams, a big guy, medium brown, with a genial smile and reddened eyes, was a natural talker, so even in here he’d say something; introducing himself when Parker was first led in: “Williams.”

“Kasper,” Parker told him, because that’s the name the law was using.

Neither of them had much more to say at that point, and the other two, both short scrawny guys with permanent vertical frown lines in their foreheads, said nothing and avoided eye contact. But later that day, their section got library time, and those two trooped off with perhaps half the tier to the library.

“Working on their cases,” Williams said, with a grin.

“Law library in there?”

“They aren’t readers.”

“They aren’t lawyers, either,” Parker said.

Williams grinned again. “They’re dumbfuck peons,” he said. “Like you and me. But it keeps them calm. They’re working on their cases.”

Yes, it was the dumbfuck peons who’d gone off to work on their cases, but Parker could tell the difference between them and Williams. The whole pop in here was in white T-shirt and blue jeans and their own shoes, so it shouldn’t have been possible to say anything about people’s backgrounds or education or anything else just from looking at them, but you could tell. The ones who went off to work on their cases wore their clothes dirty and wrinkled and sagging; their jaws jutted but their shoulders slumped. Looking up and down the line, you could see the ones who were brighter, more sure of themselves. You still couldn’t tell from looking at a guy if he was square or a fink, but you could make an accurate class judgment in the snap of a finger.

Parker would usually be as silent in here as the other two, but he wanted to know about this place, and the sooner the better. Williams, an educated guy — no telling what he, or anybody else, was in here for — clearly liked to take an interest in his surroundings. And he also liked to talk, about the overcrowding or anything else that wasn’t personal.

Parker said, “A couple others came in with me. I’m wondering how to get in touch with them.”

Williams shook his head. “Never happen,” he said. “I come in with another fella myself. I understand he’s up on four, heard that from my lawyer.”

Parker hadn’t been reached by a lawyer yet; that was the next necessity. He said, “So my partners are gonna be on different floors.”

“It’s a big joint,” Williams said, “and they do that on purpose. They don’t want you and your pals working out your story together, ironing out the little kinks. Keep you separate.” Williams’ grin was mocking but sad; knowing the story but stuck in it anyway. “They can go to your pal,” he said, “tell him, Kasper’s talking. Come to you, say, your pal’s talking.”

Parker nodded. They had the cell doors open this time of day, so he stepped out and leaned on the iron bar of the railing there, overlooking the drop to the concrete floor outside the cage. Heavy open mesh screen was fixed along the face of the cage, top to bottom, to keep people from killing themselves.

Parker stood there awhile, watching guards and prisoners move around down below, and then he went back in and climbed up to sit on his bunk. Williams was in the lower across the way. He looked up at Parker and said, “You’re thinking hard.”

“I’ve got to,” Parker said.

4

The second day, the loudspeaker said, “Kasper,” and when Parker walked down the aisle past the cages in the cage to the gated stairwell at the end, the guard at the metal desk there said, “Kasper?”

“Yes.”

There was another guard present, standing by the stairs. He said, “Lawyer visit.”

The first guard pressed the button on his desk, the buzzer sounded, and the second guard pulled open the door. Parker went through and down the stairs, the second guard following. The stairs were metal, patterned with small circular holes, and loud when you walked on them.

At the bottom, Parker and the guard turned right and went through a locked barred door into a short broad windowless corridor painted pale yellow, with a black composition floor. A white line was painted down the middle of the floor and everybody walked to the right. There was a fairly steady stream of foot traffic in the corridor, because this was the only way in to the cells; prisoners, guards, clerks, a minister, a doctor.

One more guard seated at a table beside one more barred door to be unlocked, and they could go through into the front part of the building, with an ordinary broad corridor down the middle of it, people walking however they wanted. The doorways from this corridor had no doors. The wide opening on the right led to the mess hall, which took up all the space on that side. The first doorway on the left was the library, with the inmates in there lined up in front of the electric typewriters, waiting their ten-minute turn to work on their case. The doorway at the far end led to the visitors’ room, and the doorway halfway along on the left was for lawyer visits.

“In there,” the guard said, and Parker went through into a broad room with a wide table built into it that stretched wall-to-wall from left to right. At four-foot intervals, plywood partitions rose from the table to head-height, to create privacy areas. Chairs on this side faced the table between the partitions, numbered on their backs. Three of the chairs were occupied by inmates, talking to people across the table, lawyers presumably, blocked from Parker’s sight by the partitions. “Number three,” the guard said, and Parker went over to chair number three. In the chair on the other side, facing him, was a black man in a brown suit, pale blue shirt, yellow tie, all of it wrinkled. He wore gold-framed glasses and his hair was cropped short. He was looking in the briefcase open on the table, but then looked over at Parker and said, “Good morning, Ronald.”

“Good morning.” Parker sat facing him and put his forearms on the table.

“I’m Jacob Sherman,” the man said, “I’ll be your attorney.”

“You got a card?” Parker asked him.

Surprised, Sherman said, “Of course,” and reached into his suit-coat pocket. The card he handed Parker showed he was alone, not with a firm. Parker looked at it and put it away.

Sherman said, “I wish I had good news for you.”

“I don’t expect good news,” Parker said.

“George Walheim,” Sherman said, and paused, then, seeming embarrassed, said, “had a heart attack. He’s in the hospital.”

A heart attack. Walheim hadn’t expected things to go wrong. Parker said, “So that’s two of us in the hospital. Is Bruhl still alive?”

“Oh, yes,” Sherman said. “He’ll be all right, eventually.”

“Is Armiston in here?”

“I really wouldn’t know,” Sherman said. “He’s being represented by someone else.”

So that string was gone. The four down to two, the two separated. Parker didn’t think he could work this next part single-o, but how do you build a string in a place like this? He said, “How long, do you think, before trial?”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Sherman said.

Parker said, “You don’t think a trial is gonna happen?”

“Well, California is certainly going to request extradition,” Sherman told him.

“No,” Parker said. “We fight that.”

Sherman seemed surprised. “Why bother? You’ll have to go there sooner or later.”

Any other environment they put him in would be worse than this, harder to handle. Particularly if he was in a jurisdiction where he was known as someone who had both escaped and killed a guard. He said, “I’d rather deal with the local issue first.”

“California,” Sherman said, “will argue that their murder charge takes precedence.”

“But I’m here,” Parker said. “That should take precedence. We can argue it.”

It was clear that Sherman didn’t want the work involved; it was too pleasant to think of this case as a simple one, a fellow here today, on his way to California tomorrow. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

“You can do something else for me,” Parker said.

“Yes?”

“There’s a woman doesn’t know what’s happened to me. She’ll worry. I don’t want to phone her from here, or write her through the censors, because I don’t want her connected to me, don’t want to make trouble for her.” He pointed at the briefcase. “You’ll have some paper in there, and an envelope. I want to write her, so she’ll know I’m still alive, and put it in the envelope, and address it. I’ll ask you to put the stamp on it and mail it, and not show it to the people here. I won’t ask her to do anything illegal, this is just so she won’t worry, but I won’t get the law complicating her life.”

Sherman looked away, toward the guards at the doors, the prisoners’ door and the lawyers’ door. Then he looked at Parker and nodded. “I can do that.”

“Thank you.”

What Sherman gave him was a yellow lined sheet of paper from a long legal pad, and a pen, and an envelope with Sherman’s office address on it for the return. Parker wrote, “This place is called Stoneveldt. I’m here as Ronald Kasper. Get me a mouth I can use.” No heading and no signature. He folded the paper, put it in the envelope, sealed it, wrote “Claire Willis, East Shore Rd., Colliver’s Pond, NJ 08989” on the front, then said, “You got Scotch tape in there?”

“I think so.”

Sherman rooted around in the briefcase, came up with a roll of tape, handed it over. Parker taped the flap, then folded a length of tape along all four edges. Now it couldn’t be opened without leaving traces. He pushed the envelope and the roll of tape over to Sherman, saying, “I appreciate it. I’ve been worried about her.”

Sherman looked at the envelope. “New Jersey. Long way from here.”

“Yes.”

“You’d have been better off staying there.”

“I didn’t know that then,” Parker said.

“No.” Sherman tapped the return address on the envelope. “If your friend has questions, she can get in touch with me.”

“She probably will.”

Putting letter and tape away, Sherman said, “We haven’t talked about the arraignment. I assume you want to plead not guilty.”

“Sure. When is it?”

“It’s scheduled now for a week from Thursday.”

Parker frowned at him. “That long? For an arraignment?”

“The courts are really quite clogged,” Sherman told him. “But it doesn’t matter that much, whatever time you do in here counts on your sentence.”

“Yeah, there’s that,” Parker said. “And it gives us more time to argue the extradition thing. They can’t start that until after the arraignment.”

“We’ll do what we can,” Sherman said. “Do you have any other questions? Anything else I should do? People to contact?”

“No, if you just send that to Claire so she knows I’m alive, then I won’t worry about things.”

“Good.” Sherman stuck his hand out. “Nice to chat with you, Ronald.”

“Thank you, Mr. Sherman.”

They both stood, and Sherman said, “See you at the arraignment.”

“Right,” Parker said, knowing he’d never see Mr. Sherman again.

5

The first week is the hardest. The change from outside, from freedom to confinement, from spreading your arms wide to holding them in close to your body, is so abrupt and extreme that the mind refuses to believe it. Second by second, it keeps on being a rotten surprise, the worst joke in the world. You keep thinking, I can’t stand this, I’m going to lose my mind, I’m going to wig out or off myself, I can’t stand this now and now and now.

Then, sometime in the second week, the mind’s defenses kick in, the brain just flips over, and this place, this impossible miserable place, just becomes the place where you happen to live. These people are the people you live among, these rules are the rules you live within. This is your world now, and it’s the other one that isn’t real any more.

Parker wondered if he’d be here that long.

The stolid regularity of the routine helped in this process of turning the inmate into a con. In Stoneveldt, the day began at six, when the cell gates were electrically rolled open, loudly, but then nothing happened until seven-twenty, when everyone on three was to line up by the door to the stairs. It was opened, and in single file they thudded down the flights and through the corridor with the white line on the floor into the main building and on into the mess hall there. They arrived at seven-thirty and had to be out by seven fifty-five. The inmates on four had breakfast there at seven, those from two at eight, and those on the ground floor at eight-thirty.

After breakfast they were trooped back up to their floor, but the cell gates were left open, and there was a game room with playing cards and board games and a television set down at the opposite end from the stairs. This was the time when those who felt sick could be escorted to the dispensary.

At ten-thirty they were led downstairs again, but this time down the long concrete floor between the outer wall and the ground floor cells to iron doors at the rear that opened onto the exercise yard. Armiston wasn’t on the ground floor, those cells being given to the nondangerous sad sacks, the drunk drivers, domestic disputes, deadbeat dads. The exercise yard, enclosed by high unpainted concrete block walls, was packed dirt, with a weight-lifting area and one basketball hoop.

Three’s lunch period was twelve forty-five to one-thirty, and afternoon outside time three-thirty to four-thirty. Also in the afternoon was the time when the prisoners could go off to the library to find something to read or to work on their case.

Morning and afternoon, after breakfast and after lunch, a group of names was called on the loudspeaker, and those cons went off on assignments. The way it was structured, everybody was given work to do, a half day three times a week, in the kitchen or the laundry or paint detail or mopping the floors. Skilled men fixed toilets and television sets. During those times, Parker found people to talk with, get a sense of, remember for later.

Dinner six-thirty to seven-thirty. At nine, everybody had to be back in his cage. The cell gates rolled shut. The lights went out.

6

The fifth day, the loudspeaker said, “Rasper,” and the guard said, “Lawyer visit,” but it wasn’t wrinkled Jacob Sherman, looking to duck the work of fighting extradition. It was an older man, Asian, hair sleeked back and flesh gleaming, who rose in Armani and pastels on his side of the table. “I am Mr. Li,” he said, and extended a card without being asked.

The card was full of names and addresses, all in blue print on ivory, with “Jonathan Li” in gold on the bottom right. Parker put it away and said, “You’ve got me now.”

“Transfer complete.” Li was amused, not by Parker in particular but by his own entire life; it made him easy to be around, but suggested there were circumstances when he might not be completely reliable. “We should sit,” he said. “For the quiet.”

They sat, and Parker waited, watching him. His smoothly sheathed forearms on the tabletop, wrists delicately crossed, Li leaned a bit forward as he talked, to keep the conversation within their space. “Your friend Claire wants me to assure you she’s fine.”

“Good.”

“And that she expects to see you soon.”

“We can only hope,” Parker said.

“Oh, we can do more than hope,” Li told him.

“I understand California wants me,” Parker said.

“California must wait its turn.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Oh, yes,” Li said. “My professional opinion is, you should not leave this place until you want to leave this place.”

“That’s good,” Parker said.

“Also, as you may know,” Li went on, “if you are to have any visitor other than immediate members of your family, you must put in the request yourself, from this end, and the authorities will or will not approve of it. Unfortunately, you have no immediate family nearby—”

“No.”

“—but it happens that your former brother-in-law is working on a construction job not terribly far from here and would be happy to have that opportunity to visit you while you’re in confinement.”

“My former brother-in-law,” Parker said.

“I believe at one time he was married to your sister Debby.”

Parker had no sister Debby. He said, “Oh, sure.”

“So your former brother-in-law, Ed Mackey—”

“Ah,” Parker said. That was more real than sister Debby.

Li smiled at him. “Yes, I thought you’d be pleased.”

“Even surprised,” Parker said.

“As I understand it,” Li said, “you and your brother-in-law have been partners in business enterprises in the past, and he believes you might be interested in a similar business enterprise once your current legal problems have been resolved.”

“He’s probably right about that,” Parker said.

Li also had a briefcase, like Sherman, but his was on the floor and was much more glossy and polished. Dipping into it, Li came out with a thin sheaf of forms. “This is the application,” he said. “I’ve filled in Mr. Mackey’s part.”

Parker took the form. He hadn’t expected anybody else to take a hand in this. “I’m looking forward to seeing Ed,” he said, meaning it, then looked at Li: “I understand the arraignment’s next Thursday.”

“Oh, I don’t think we’ll be ready by then,” Li said. He seemed comfortable with the idea.

Parker said, “We’ll delay it?”

Li unfolded his wrists to open expressive hands, like lily pads opening. “You are, after all, the client,” he said. “I believe you’re in no hurry to alter your situation, in regard to these charges and so on. Am I right?”

“You’re right.”

“I thought so.” Rising, putting out a hand to shake, he said, “I won’t take up any more of your time unless I have news.”

Shaking that firm hand, Parker said, “There won’t be news for a while.”

“Only your brother-in-law.”

Parker grinned. “I’m looking forward to that.”

7

“It looks to me,” Ed Mackey said, “as though you zigged when you should have zagged.”

“There was a local hand,” Parker said, “dumber than he had to be.”

Mackey nodded. “I read about it in the local papers.”

This was a different place from where he’d met with the lawyers, farther along the same corridor in the same building, a more open place like a cafeteria, with bare metal tables and metal chairs, and soda and snack vending machines in a row on one wall. There were family groups and single visitors, with a steady surf sound of conversation, guards walking around but nobody standing over you.

The rules in here were few and simple. The prisoners were not to put their hands under the table, and no object of any kind, not even an Oreo cookie, was to pass between a prisoner and any visitor, not even an infant. To break either rule was to be removed from the visitor room immediately and strip-searched; and probably to lose visitation rights, at least for a while

When Parker had been led in here, Mackey was already seated at a small square table away from the vending machines and the loudest family groups. Mackey, stocky, blunt-featured, and blunt-bodied, didn’t rise but grinned and waved a greeting. Parker went over and sat with him, and when Mackey said he’d been reading the local papers, he asked, “You reading up on more than one thing?”

“Not around here.”

“Good.” Parker frowned at him. “I didn’t know you’d be in this part of the world.”

Mackey laughed. “I didn’t know you’d be here either,” he said. “You wanna know why I’m here?”

“Yes.”

“There was a fella we used to know named George Liss.”

“That’s right.”

“And because you were there, too,” Mackey said, “I’m still alive.” What he didn’t add, not in a place like this, was that Liss was not still alive, and Parker’d done that, too.

So Mackey felt he owed Parker one, because in truth Liss had tried to kill them both, and in saving himself Parker had saved Mackey as well. Parker didn’t keep scorecards like that, but he didn’t mind if Mackey wanted to. He said, “I appreciate it.”

“De nada,” Mackey said. “Anything I can do to make life a little brighter?”

“One thing now.”

“Sure.”

“This is all transient,” Parker told him. “The whole population, everybody moving through. Tough to get a read on anybody.”

“You need histories,” Mackey suggested.

“And if it’s somebody I can talk to,” Parker said, “then I need a friend of his on the outside to tell him I’m all right.”

Mackey wore a zippered jacket, and now he took from its inner pocket a memo pad and pen, which attracted the attention of a guard. The guard watched, but Parker kept his hands flat on the table and Mackey leaned back, pad on the palm of his left hand. “Go,” he said.

“Brandon Williams. Bob Clayton. Walter Jelinek. Tom Marcantoni.”

Putting the pad and pen away, Mackey said, “This is tricky. Very roundabout.”

“All I got is time,” Parker said.

That was the seventh day. Two days later, Mackey was back, looking pleased. “Brenda says hello,” he said. Brenda was his lady, had been for a long time.

Parker said, “She with you?”

“Always,” Mackey said. “She’s never far away. She’s somebody else saved my life once.”

“You must be a bad risk,” Parker said.

Mackey grinned. “Not if I keep hanging out with the right people.”

Some years ago, Brenda had trailed Mackey and Parker, though she hadn’t been asked to, when they went to deliver some stolen paintings in a deal that then went very bad. At the end, Parker left a lumberyard’s burning main building, with the paintings destroyed, and he’d believed Mackey was dead, shot by one of the people who’d been waiting in there. Brenda, seeing Parker take off alone, went into the building, found Mackey on the concrete floor, and dragged him out and into her car before the fire engines arrived.

“Fortunately,” Mackey said, “life is usually quieter than that.”

“We like it quiet,” Parker said.

“We do. Williams and Marcantoni might be good to talk to. They’re both facing hard time like you, both got stand-up histories.”

“Not the other two?”

“Clayton’s in on a Mickey Mouse,” Mackey said, “do a nickel tops. He doesn’t need alternatives. And Jelinek’s ratted people out before.”

“Then we don’t talk to Jelinek,” Parker said.

8

There was the day Parker went on sick call, and the day he went to the library to work on his case, and the afternoons he spent on work detail in the kitchen, a long windowless bright-lit space in the basement under the mess hall, with siren-alarmed iron doors at one end where supplies were delivered.

The eleventh day, after the other two from the cell went off to work on their case, Williams got up from his bunk and tossed away his magazine and came out to where Parker leaned on the railing to watch the movement down below. Williams said, “I hear you know Chili Greebs.”

Parker shook his head. “Never heard of him.”

Surprised, Williams turned away to see what Parker was looking at down there. Watching the guards as they shifted their charges around, he said, “Then why should Chili tell me to talk to you?”

“Probably,” Parker said, “it was after he talked with a friend of mine.”

“Would he be a friend of mine?”

“Not yet. His name’s Ed Mackey.”

Williams grinned. Now that the tension was gone, you could see where it had been. He said, “That’s the name I heard.”

Parker said, “Ed told me you’re all right, and he’d find somebody to tell you the same about me.”

“Now we know and love each other,” Williams said, “what next?”

“You’re facing twenty-five to life,” Parker told him.

Williams turned his head to look at Parker’s profile. “Your friend Ed got this on the outside.”

“Nobody gets anything in here.”

Williams shrugged. “And so what?”

Parker said, “I’m not good at prison.”

Williams laughed. “Who is?”

“Some are,” Parker said.

Williams sobered, looking away again at the scene below. “And that’s true,” he said. He sounded as though he didn’t like the thought.

“I don’t think you are,” Parker said.

Williams shook his head. “I can feel myself gettin smaller every day. You fight it, but there it is.” He turned his head to study Parker’s face. “You aren’t thinking about breaking out of here.”

“Why not?”

“This is not an easy place,” Williams said.

“Better than some,” Parker told him. “It’s transient, it wasn’t built to house this big a population, or for people to stay this long. The system’s strained, and when I look around, they’re short some guards. A state pen could be tougher, and you’ve already been beaten down for a few months.”

“Jesus.” Williams looked off. Beyond the mesh fence, out over the air, the concrete block wall featured long lines of plate-glass windows that bore no relationship to the levels of the floors inside the cage. “I’ve been setting it aside,” he said. “Thinking I’d wait till I was in a stable place, where I could be part of a crew. I bet a lot of guys figure that way.”

“I need the crew here,” Parker said. “That’s why I asked Ed Mackey to look around, find me somebody wasn’t going to rat me out.”

Williams shook his head. “Two guys? Is that enough?”

“I have a line on one more. Three should do it.”

“Depends what we do. Who’s this other one?”

“Do you know Tom Marcantoni?”

“Sounds white.”

“He is.”

“Then I wouldn’t know him,” Williams said. “I know you because we got a stateroom together.”

“When you see me talk to somebody,” Parker said, “that’ll be Marcantoni.”

Williams laughed. “You don’t do a lot of talking, do you?”

“Only when I have to,” Parker said.

9

Tom Marcantoni said, “Let’s play a game of checkers.” It was the first time he’d spoken to Parker, who had walked into the game room a while after his conversation with Brandon Williams. So Ed Mackey had been busy.

“Fine,” Parker said.

The tables and chairs in the game room were metal, bolted to the floor. Marcantoni got a checkerboard and an open cardboard box of men from a shelf on the back wall while Parker found an empty table and sat at it. Marcantoni came over to join him and they started to play.

Parker waited, but for a while Marcantoni had nothing to say. He was a big man with a bullet head and a thick black single eyebrow that made him always look pissed off about something. Now he looked pissed off at the checkerboard and had nothing to say until he yawned hugely in the middle of a move, covering his mouth with the back of the hand holding the checker. Yawn done, he blinked at the board and said, “Shit. Where’d I get this thing from?”

Parker pointed at the square, and Marcantoni finished his move, then said, “I can’t sleep in a place like this.”

“I know,” Parker said.

“It keeps me awake, this place, like a weight on my chest,” Marcantoni said. He frowned at the board, didn’t look directly at Parker. He said, “Any time I’m in a place like this, when I get out, the first thing I do, I sleep for a week. It isn’t a natural environment, this.”

“It isn’t an environment,” Parker said. “It’s a body cast.”

Now Marcantoni did look at Parker, peering at him from under that eyebrow as though looking out at a field from the edge of the woods. “You got that right,” he said, then looked down at the board. “Whose move is it?”

“Mine,” Parker said, and moved.

Marcantoni said, “A friend of mine says I should talk to you.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you know why?”

“Maybe,” Parker said, “we could figure out a way to get a night’s sleep.”

Marcantoni nodded, and jumped one of Parker’s pieces. “This game’s too easy,” he said. “Not like some games.”

“The harder games take more concentration,” Parker said.

“And more risk,” Marcantoni said.

Parker said, “You’re facing life. Not much risk left for you.”

Marcantoni sat back, ignoring the board. “You know things about me,” he said. “But I don’t know diddly about you.”

“Ask your friend.”

“I will. You’re thinking about a game for two?”

“Three,” Parker said. “It wouldn’t be a polite game. More a power game.”

Marcantoni looked around at the other inmates in the room, playing their games, reading their magazines. “A lot of mutts around here,” he said.

“There are,” Parker agreed.

“You can’t be too careful.” Marcantoni nodded, agreeing with himself. “That’s why you had your friend check me out and then go talk to my friend.”

“That’s right.”

“So you’ve got a third guy?”

“One of my cellmates. Williams.”

Marcantoni frowned, trying to place that, then said, “He’s a black guy.”

“Right.”

Marcantoni made a sour face and shook his head. “You wanna work with a black guy?”

“Why not?”

“Group loyalty,” Marcantoni said. “One of the first things I learned in life, stick with the group where there’s a chance for loyalty. There’s never a guarantee, but a chance. A black guy doesn’t feel loyalty for you and me. He’d trade us for chewing gum, and we’d do the same for him.”

Parker said, “I’ve been here eleven days. I got the population on this floor to work with. Like you say, a lot of it’s mutts. Some of it, all they’re facing’s a nickel-dime, it’s not worth it to them, try a different game. From the rest, only two have a reputation I can take a chance on. You, and Williams. He isn’t afraid to stand with you, so if you’re afraid to stand with him I’ll just have to look around, try to find somebody else.”

“Instead of me, you mean,” Marcantoni said.

Parker waited, looking at the board.

Marcantoni sighed, then yawned again, then laughed at himself. “I’m groggy, is what it is,” he said. “Okay, fuck it, a new experience. Get outa your neighborhood, meet new friends.”

“Good,” Parker said.

“King me,” Marcantoni said.

10

Because of the black-white thing, it was hard for them to meet, make a plan. If a black guy and a white guy who weren’t cellmates talked to each other, people would want to know why. The guards would want to know, and some of the inmates would want to know. What have those guys got to talk to each other about? What’s going on?

The answer was to work out with the weights. Only Marcantoni had been doing that before, but now Parker and Williams went over there, too, and could be in a little separate group without snagging anybody’s interest.

The first thing Marcantoni and Williams had to do was get a sense of each other. Lifting hand weights in alternate moves, like walking up the air, not looking at anybody in particular, Marcantoni said, “I never had to rely on anybody your tone before.”

“Same here,” Williams said. Seated on a wooden bench, weights strapped to his shins, he was lifting and lowering both feet together, from the knee.

“Maybe we got something we can share,” Marcantoni said. “You got a religion?” Then he laughed at himself, lost his rhythm with the hand weights, found it again, and said, “Never mind, you were brought up Baptist, I don’t even wanna know about it.”

“And you’re a fish-eater,” Williams said. “I could tell from your nose.”

“We don’t do that any more,” Marcantoni said.

Parker pressed a weighted bar up to his chest. “You don’t have to like each other,” he said.

Williams stood and jogged in place, the weights still on his shins. “But we have to trust each other,” he said.

Marcantoni said, “How come you trust Kasper, that’s what I don’t get. He’s a white guy.”

“He looks like a door to me,” Williams said. “I never did care what color a door was.”

Parker lowered the bar, lifted it again. “We ready to talk?”

“Let’s do it,” Marcantoni said.

Williams said, “The only way out is through the front building.”

“Well, you’re right about that,” Marcantoni told him. “This place’s only got two exits. The back comes here, and we don’t get through or over or under those walls, and the front goes to the front building, with all the ways out.”

Parker said, “We can forget the kitchen. It’s under the mess hall and the only way out from there is kept solid locked, unless they’re bringing supplies in or garbage out.”

“Some places,” Marcantoni said, “some guys got out in garbage cans. A little messy, but there you are, out.”

“Here they know about that,” Parker said. “They use plastic bags, and they back the compactor truck into the door opening, toss in the bags, compress them right there, before they go.”

“Squish,” said Williams.

Marcantoni grinned at him. “That was funny,” he told him. “What you said.”

Williams grinned back. “You think so?”

Parker said, “The dispensary is in the prison building, down by the foot of the stairs, before any doors at all, so there’s no point doing sick call.”

Williams said, “The laundry’s in the basement, across the way from the kitchen. Just as impossible.”

Marcantoni said, “If that leaves nothing but the visitors’ room and the lawyers’ room, I don’t see us doing it without a tank.”

Parker said, “There’s the library.”

Marcantoni put the hand weights on the shelf, stood contemplating the other possibilities lined up there. He said, “What does the library do for us?”

Parker said, “When you first go into the front building, there’s the mess hall on the right, and the first thing on the left is the library.”

“Sure,” Marcantoni said.

“But it isn’t the first thing,” Parker told him. “Before that, at the very start of that wall on the left, there’s another door.”

“Closed and locked,” Marcantoni said, and Williams, taking off his shin weights, said, “I’ve never seen anybody use it.”

Parker said, “It’s the way the guards come to work, a hall there next to the library, goes back to the offices. I think the way it works, the volunteer lawyer in the library, back in the stacks there where we’re not allowed to go—”

“That’s right,” Williams said. “You tell the lawyer what you’re looking for, he goes back and gets it, and you sign out for it.”

“Back there,” Parker said, “I think he’s got a door to the guards’ hall, a side door. He doesn’t come around to the main corridor when he comes to work.”

Marcantoni, sounding surprised that he remembered this detail, said, “He doesn’t come outa there at all. When the library closes, he locks the door from the inside, stays in there.”

“Goes out the back,” Williams said.

Parker said, “We should all talk to our friends on the outside, get what floor plans we can’t see for ourselves.”

“And a car and driver waiting when we come out,” Marcantoni said. “I don’t wanna be calling a cab.”

“When we get a route,” Parker said, “we’ll get a car.”

“Good,” Marcantoni said. “There’s one thing more. I was working on a better thing when I was nabbed on this thing. Half my crew came in with me, they’re lost to me now. The rest will help us get out. But I’m gonna need cash, so I’ve gotta do this other thing, right away. I want you two in with me.”

“Replacements,” Williams said.

Parker didn’t like where this was going. He said, “Is this something near here?”

“In the city, yeah.”

“It’s not smart,” Parker told him, “to break out of here, then hang around the neighborhood, pull a job.”

“It goes down easy,” Marcantoni promised. “And I can keep you both out of sight, for just a few days. Then you’re off wherever you go, with cash in your pocket.”

Parker considered. He couldn’t expect Marcantoni to describe the job to him, inside here, but it wasn’t good to make a jump into the unknown. Still, he needed Marcantoni. So he’d go along with it, and if it looked bad, he could make adjustments.

Marcantoni said, “I’m trusting you in here. I’m asking you to trust me out there.”

Parker nodded. “I’m in,” he said.

“Me, too,” Williams said. “Why not?”

Marcantoni said, “Good. You’re gonna like it.” He grinned at Williams. “You’re okay for a Baptist,” he said.

11

Ed Mackey said, “Marcantoni’s friend was in on the armored car with him. Every day Marcantoni keeps his mouth shut, his friend owes him his life.”

Parker said, “Does that make him grateful, or scared?”

“Grateful,” Mackey said. “They did some things together, like you and me, they trust each other, he’d like his pal outside, be a help here and there.”

“Sometimes,” Parker said, “a guy wants to help somebody get to the outside, it turns out, he just wanted a clear shot on him.”

“Not Marcantoni.”

“Meaning what about Williams?”

Mackey shrugged and shook his head. “There it’s family,” he said. “So that’s a little different, harder to read. Who I’m talking to is a neighbor of Williams’ sister, a guy in a different line of business entirely.”

“What line of business?”

“Import-export,” Mackey said, and touched the tip of his nose. “You know what I mean.”

“Mostly import?”

“I’d say so, yeah.”

“Trade?”

“No, he sells to the trade.” Mackey grinned. “You seen those signs on the stores. ‘To the trade only.’ Wholesalers. He’s like that.”

“But Williams isn’t part of it.”

“No, Williams is strictly a heavy, like you or me. He doesn’t deal in anything and he doesn’t taste anything.”

“And his sister?”

“A simple girl, I think an innocent. Loves her brother.”

“I hate not being able to see these people,” Parker said. “Is there any way she can shop me and not shop her brother?”

“Not that I can see,” Mackey said, and offered a slow smile. “And at this point,” he said, “she and the neighbor are a little afraid of me.”

Parker looked at him. “Just a little?”

“So far,” Mackey said.

That was the twelfth day. The thirteenth, Mackey gave him a verbal map. “From what I hear,” he said, “that doorway you use, when you come in here, that’s a corridor straight down from the cells, mess hall on the right, the other side of that wall there with the kids’ pictures of trees and airplanes and shit.”

“I visit the lawyers across the same corridor,” Parker told him, “beyond that wall with the long table and the drinking fountain.”

“Right,” Mackey said. “And from what I understand, the library’s beyond that, the hallway you want beyond that.”

“Right.”

“Okay, tilt it all on its side,” Mackey told him, because they wouldn’t be able to write any of this down or make any drawings. “You know those metal change things the conductors carry on the front of their belt, where they can give you coins out of?”

“Right.”

“Okay. Then if this whole thing is on its side with that corridor out there on the bottom, then where we are is the row of half dollars, and the lawyers’ room next to it is the row of quarters, and the library is the row of dimes, and the hallway you want to know about is the row of nickels. Okay?”

“Right,” Parker said.

“Near the top of the dimes, the library,” Mackey said, “back where the law books are kept, there’s a side door to the hallway, the row of nickels.”

“That’s what I hoped.”

“It’s kept locked, and the lawyer doesn’t have the key. In fact, there is no key. When he wants out, he phones, and the guard at the far end of the hallway, top of the nickels, buzzes him out. Same going in, buzzes him in.”

“What’s beyond the guard at the far end of the hallway?”

“Above the nickels and the dimes is a couple offices and the guards’ locker room, where they change for work. And a side door to the guards’ separate parking lot.”

“Good. What else?”

“Above the lawyers, and you see the corner of this room where the door is that I come in, above all that is the hall down from the front entrance at the very top of the building. The rest up there is offices and johns.”

“So the best route out,” Parker said, “looks as though it’s into the library, into that side hallway, in the guards’ locker room, into the guards’ parking area. Is the parking area kept guarded and locked?”

“You know it is.”

“So I need,” Parker said, “people coming in while I’m coming out.”

“I can talk to Marcantoni’s pal,” Mackey said.

“And Williams’ sister, and her friend?”

“I don’t think I’ll mention many details to them,” Mackey said.

12

Walter Jelinek was a man, but he looked like a car, the kind of old junker car that had been in some bad accidents so that now the frame is bent, the wheels don’t line up any more, the whole vehicle sags to one side and pulls to that side, and the brakes are oatmeal. Half the original body is gone, the paint job is some amateur brushwork, and there’s duct tape over the tail-lights. That was Walter Jelinek, who Mackey had told Parker not to talk to, since he had a reputation for carrying tales to teacher, but now Jelinek on his own wanted to talk to Parker.

It was the fourteenth day, two weeks in this hard world, progress but slow, and Parker was on his way to join Marcantoni and Williams over by the weights in the exercise yard when all at once Jelinek was beside him, gimping along with him, trying to keep in step. His left shoulder was low, his left knee had a ding in it that made it click outward when he walked, and his jaw hadn’t been rewired very well, so that he always showed some spaces and some teeth. His hands were big but bunchy, and when he talked he sounded as though something was knotted too tight around his neck. He said, “Kasper, you and me, we never talk somehow.”

Parker stopped, to look at him. Guards always kept their eyes on Jelinek, because he was like a garden to them, something always ripening. Aware that guards now watched him talk to Jelinek, Parker said, “We never talk because we got nothing to say to one another.”

“Couple old lags like us?” Jelinek’s left eye closed when he tried for a smile. “Long-term guys, gonna be in a long time? Why, you and me, we could spend the first ten years just gettin caught up on the old days.”

“The past doesn’t interest me,” Parker said, and moved on.

Jelinek hopped along with him. “I bet the present interests you,” he said. “I bet the future’s what you talk about with Marcantoni and the schvug all the time.”

Parker stopped. He looked at Jelinek. “What do you think you know?”

“I think I know you stopped,” Jelinek told him. “That’s one thing I think I know.”

“Tell me another thing.”

“They want you in Cal,” Jelinek said. “Es-cap-ing. Killing a guard.” He grinned, and the eye shut. “They hate it when you kill a guard.”

“They don’t mind when we kill each other,” Parker told him.

“Oh, some of us, they do,” Jelinek said. He was pleased with himself. “Some of us,” he said, “they like to see alive, moving here and there.”

Parker said, “Is there a point to this?”

“You and those boys,” Jelinek said, “have travel plans.” He waited for Parker to comment, but Parker merely looked at him, giving him nothing, so Jelinek shrugged and said, “You got plans, and why not? All three of you are looking at heavy time. I don’t have to know what the plans are, I just have to know you got em.”

“Think what you want to think.”

“I do.” Jelinek looked around, then pretended he was being confidential. “Me, I wanna travel, too,” he said. “I been livin this life too long, I wanna settle down. You believe I got a daughter?”

“If you say so,” Parker said.

“Well, I do. She’s forty-one years of age, runs a nursing home in Montana. My own daughter. Would I be happy there?”

“Probably so,” Parker said.

“Need help getting there, that’s the thing,” Jelinek explained. “Hitch a ride on a bus with somebody.”

Parker waited. Jelinek squinted at him. “You boys got a bus,” he said. “I don’t have to know what it is, when it is, where it is, all I got to know is, you boys got a bus. And here’s what I think. When you fire up that bus, I’m on it. I’m riding along with you.”

Again, Jelinek waited, and again Parker simply stood and looked at him. Jelinek didn’t like the lack of feedback. “Not gonna argue with me?” he demanded. “Not gonna go all innocent, you don’t have any bus, you and them other two? Not gonna go all tough guy, warn me keep my mouth shut or you’re gonna do all kindsa shit, and how’d I like that?”

“You’ve heard all that before,” Parker said.

“Yes, I have,” Jelinek agreed. “There isn’t a goddam thing I haven’t heard before, Ronnie Kasper. When that bus of yours is ready to roll, be sure to give me the word, because some word is going somewhere. Either I’m on that bus, or that bus doesn’t roll.”

13

“We have to kill him,” Marcantoni said. He was lifting the hand weights again, but bunching his arms more, because he was mad.

“Not now,” Parker said. He stood by Williams’ head, where Williams lay on his back on the bench, lifting and lowering the weighted bar, resting it between times on the vertical metal posts.

“The longer he’s alive,” Marcantoni said, “the more sure it is he’ll rat us out.”

“He doesn’t know anything yet,” Parker said. “And the guards saw him talk to me today. If he dies now, it draws attention right at us.”

Williams rested the bar on the posts. “But Tom’s right,” he said. “He saw us together. That’s what he does, he prowls around like that, looks for something he can deal in. He might not wait until he’s got everything in a package.”

Parker said, “What does he give them? At this point, what’s he got to sell?”

“You listened to him,” Marcantoni said. “That means you got something to protect.”

Parker nodded. “He made the same point. But if I duck away from him, that’s even worse, because then I don’t know how much he’s got. The reason he braced me is because he’s already got his eye on us. That doesn’t change. But what does he know? He knows we’re long-termers and we’re together, and it isn’t natural for us to be together.”

“Damn it,” Williams said.

“So,” Parker said, “he asks me questions, and I give him nothing. He’ll keep watching us, try to see what we do, where we go, try to figure out what our idea is. While he’s doing that, he won’t talk to the guards because he doesn’t have anything to give them yet.”

Williams said, “You think there’s any chance he really does want to come along?”

“None,” Parker said.

“Jelinek doesn’t want life on the run,” Marcantoni said. “All he wants is to build up some merit badges, make his time on the inside easier.”

Parker said, “That’s right. He doesn’t want to be on the outside. He’s got everything he wants right in here.”

“Or the place he gets sent, after his trial,” Marcantoni said. “And he’s angling for that place to be a nice retirement village.”

“On our backs,” Williams said.

“You got it.”

Williams hefted the weight again, put it back. “But what we do now is nothing.”

Parker said, “And watch him watching us.”

“But the last thing I do before I leave this place,” Marcantoni said, “I put him down.”

14

When the loudspeaker said, “Kasper,” next morning, the fifteenth day here, it was too early for visitors. Parker and Williams exchanged a glance, and then Parker dropped down from his bunk and walked down to the end of the line of cages, where a second guard waited. “I’m Kasper,” Parker said.

No conversation. The first guard buzzed the gate open, and the second one led the way, down the clanging stairs, through the locked door into the corridor with the white line painted down the center of the floor, through the next locked door into the main building, and there the guard said, “Wait.”

Parker waited. The guard turned to his left, to that first door, the one nobody ever noticed, the one that was supposed to lead to a hall down past the library and the volunteer lawyer’s exit. The guard pressed a button on the wall, then spoke into a grid beside the door, and the door buzzed open. The guard gestured for Parker to go first.

This was the route. This was what he’d been wanting to see, and now that he was looking at it he realized he’d already seen it once before, from the other direction, when they’d first brought him in. At that time, he’d been concentrating too much on too many other things, hadn’t paid attention to the route coming into this place because he hadn’t expected he’d ever go out the same way.

But this was the way. The locked and guarded parking area was just outside this wall to the left, not only for the guards’ personal cars but also for delivering fresh fish. The hall was a little narrower than the other one, with no windows, nothing on the left but a yellow-painted concrete block wall, and the same wall on the right with a gray-blue metal door in it, down toward the far end. The volunteer lawyer’s door; had to be.

Parker was now completely alert, not to where he was going, but to where he was. This was the route he’d been trying to dope out, and now they were handing it to him, giving him a guided tour. He didn’t know yet why, but he would remember every bit of it.

At the far end was another barred door, which another guard buzzed them through once he’d eye-balled them, and past that door was a square foyer with a jumble of exits. The metal door to the left would lead out to the parking area. Beyond the barred door to the right stretched a normal office hallway. And straight ahead, the open doorway on the left showed the guards’ locker room while the shut gray metal door on the right was marked, in black block letters, CONFERENCE.

That last was the door Parker’s escorting guard knocked on. Another buzz sounded, and the guard pulled open the door with one hand while he gestured Parker inside with the other.

Inspector Turley. Same office, same man, a small bulky red-haired middleweight. He sat at the same desk and the same steno sat at the same small table in the corner.

Turley looked at Parker without expression. He said, “Come in, Kasper. Sit down.”

Parker entered, the guard following, shutting the door, leaning against it. Parker sat in the same chair as before. Turley looked at him, waiting, and then said, “You do remember me, don’t you?”

“Two weeks ago,” Parker said. “In here.”

“I told you your friend Armiston would talk if you didn’t,” Turley said. “Remember that?”

“Game theory,” Parker said.

Turley started to smile, proud of his student, then frowned instead, realizing the student wasn’t a student. He said, “Armiston’s coming around, I have to tell you that.”

Parker nodded.

“Nothing to say?”

“Not yet.”

“All right,” Turley said. “I’ll tell you what the situation is, so you don’t think I’m trying to play off one fella against another fella.” He cocked his head, bright-eyed. “All right?”

“Fine,” Parker said, because some sort of statement was required.

“So here’s the situation,” Turley said. “Armiston’s beginning to make noises like he’d maybe come around, but so far, it’s just negotiation, you know what I mean? Jerking off, in other words.”

Parker didn’t really care what Armiston did, because it wouldn’t affect what he himself was going to do. It would be better for Armiston, maybe, to make a deal with these people, tell them whatever he knew about the guys with the plane, the customer, and then the customer’s customer; though Parker doubted Armiston knew enough to be really useful.

Still, it seemed to him Armiston wasn’t the sort to plot out a break for himself, particularly from a place filled with loners like this one. He was more of a team player and a follower. Also, he was probably facing nothing more than the warehouse break-in; no California, no extradition, no murder one.

In fact, now that Turley had made him think about the situation, it made sense to Parker that Armiston had already made his deal, whatever it was going to be. He’d had two weeks for it, and nothing he did or said could make things worse for Parker, so why not?

Which meant this meeting was for a different reason. Turley had something else in mind. Parker sat there and waited for it.

Turley let him wait awhile, half-smiling, and then said, “No? Still don’t wanna get involved in game theory?”

“Not right now,” Parker said.

Turley sat back, toying with a pencil on his desk. “You’ve settled in pretty good here,” he said.

It’s coming now, Parker thought. He said, “You don’t settle in here. This is a bus depot.”

“Granted,” Turley said. “That’s perfectly true. In fact, most people in here never really make connections with one another at all.”

This is it, Parker thought. It’s Jelinek who’s started the negotiation, “beginning to make noises like he’d maybe come around,” as Turley had said of Armiston. It was Jelinek who’d passed on his observations to the authorities here, so naturally they were hoping to cut out the middleman, get the story without Jelinek’s help.

“But you,” Turley was going on, “you surprised me, Kasper.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yes, you did. I figured you for the silent type, not the gregarious hail-fellow sort, not the kind of fella who makes friends that easy.”

Parker shrugged at that; what else?

“But here you are,” Turley said, “you got a couple buddies already.”

“I do?”

Turley consulted a sheet of paper on the desk in front of himself, the sheet of paper he’d been rolling that pencil on, though the consultation was clearly just a part of the play-act. Turley knew what names he was looking for. “Thomas Marcantoni,” he read; or said. “Brandon Williams.”

“Williams is my cellmate,” Parker said. “Why be rude to a cellmate?”

“Very wise,” Turley agreed. “And you play checkers with Marcantoni.”

“It makes the time pass.”

“And the three of you do weights together.”

“Sometimes,” Parker said. “You can get out of shape in here, just sit around, wait for your trial to come along. I’m still waiting on my arraignment.”

With a down-turning smile, Turley said, “I think your lawyer’s mostly the cause of that. I see, by the way, you weren’t happy with the lawyer the court provided.”

Parker said, “Mr. Sherman? He looks to me like he was overextended. I didn’t want to take up a lot of his time.”

Turley laughed, and it sounded real. He said, “What are you and Marcantoni and Williams up to?”

“Staying in shape,” Parker said. “Passing the time.”

“I hope you don’t have anything else in mind,” Turley said. He gave Parker his bright-bird look, then said, “Did you know this place was built seven years ago? Would you believe that? Seven years, and already look how it’s crowded.”

“Too many bad people around,” Parker suggested.

“That must be it,” Turley agreed. “But even with this overcrowding, this situation here being less than ideal, do you know how many escapes there’ve been from Stoneveldt since it opened?”

“Escapes? No. Why would I want to know about escapes?”

“Zero,” Turley said. He nodded to the guard. “Take Mr. Kasper back to his cell,” he said.

15

“We’ve got to do it soon,” Parker said. “They’ll give us a few days, just a few, but if they don’t figure anything out, they’ll move us, put us on three different floors.”

Marcantoni looked up from the checkerboard. “I told you, Jelinek has to die.”

“On our way out,” Parker said. “Otherwise, he’ll see us move, and start to talk.”

“That, too,” Marcantoni said.

16

“Looks like Thursday,” Parker said. “Five P.M.”

Mackey nodded. “I was wondering when you’d get around to it,” he said.

Thursdays, the third tier worked on its cases late in the day, starting at two-fifteen, finishing at four forty-five. At any time before four-fifteen you could decide to go down to the library, get a little work in on your case.

Jelinek didn’t work on his case, not in the same way the bozos did. Thursday afternoon, just a little before four, he was almost alone in the game room, spread on his back on a couch in the corner, reading Car & Driver. On the wall to the left of his head was a set of shelves where the games were kept.

He looked up when he saw Parker cross the room toward him, and would have gotten to his feet except that Parker made a down-patting motion in the air; stay there, no big deal, I just want to talk with you a minute. So Jelinek put the magazine down, looked expectant, and reacted just a bit late when he saw Marcantoni moving in from the other side, not hurrying but striding, diagonally across the room toward Jelinek’s feet.

“What—”

That was as far as he got before Parker’s left hand closed on his windpipe and pressed him down onto the couch. Jelinek’s hands snapped up to clutch at Parker’s wrist, straining to lift that arm. His legs started to writhe, but then Marcantoni casually sat on his legs, reached his hand leftward past Parker, and plucked Jelinek’s right hand from Parker’s wrist. Pushing that hand down onto Jelinek’s stomach, Marcantoni reached across himself with his free hand to pick up the magazine from Jelinek’s chest and start reading it himself, one-handed. He didn’t seem to notice the convulsions of Jelinek’s legs beneath him or the tense quivers of Jelinek’s wrist grasped in his hand.

Jelinek’s eyes and mouth were all wide open. He wanted to say something that nobody wanted to hear. His left hand gave up on the wrist pressed down on his throat, and he reached up to claw at Parker’s face. Parker’s free right hand plucked Jelinek’s hand from the air and forced it down onto the couch arm, behind Jelinek’s head, just as Williams arrived. Williams hunkered down in front of the shelves, in order to study the games on offer. His left hand reached over to take Jelinek’s left hand from Parker and continue to hold it tight against the arm of the couch.

Jelinek was going, his face turning red, the struggles of his limbs getting weaker. Parker watched him, waiting for the moment. They didn’t want a strangulation death, with eyes bulged and tongue protruded and flesh the color of raw beef. They needed to leave something that looked more natural than that. Inmates fell asleep on these couches all the time, with so little to do. No one would try to wake him until everybody was supposed to line up for dinner.

Now. Parker lifted his hand from Jelinek’s throat. Jelinek stirred, trying to breathe, to cry out, to do something to save himself. Parker clutched Jelinek’s jaw in his left hand and lifted. His right hand slid under Jelinek’s head, feeling the greasy hair. Both hands clamped to that head, he snapped it hard to the left. They all heard the crack.

Parker straightened, Marcantoni stood, Williams got up from the shelves of games. They all glanced around, but the few other people in the room were involved in their games or their reading.

Marcantoni sniffed. “He shit,” he said.

Parker said, “Cover him with a blanket. Williams, you go first.”

Williams left the game room, while Marcantoni went to the low table where a few thin gray blankets were kept folded, for when people napped in here rather than in their cells. He threw it over Jelinek, said to Parker, “See you later,” and left.

“You’re running it pretty close,” the guard at the stairway door said, looking at his watch.

“I just thought of something might help,” Parker told him.

The guard shook his head, but didn’t bother to point out that nothing was going to help any of these losers in here. Turning to his radio, he clicked it on and said, “Got another librarian coming down.”

“Make that the last,” squawked the radio.

“Absolutely.”

The guard buzzed the gate open, not bothering to look at Parker again, and Parker went down the clanging stairs for the last time. The guards below passed him on, along the standard route, and when he went into the inmates’ part of the library there were only five other cons there, including Williams and Marcantoni. Williams typed something or other at one of the electric typewriters, Marcantoni was in discussion with the volunteer lawyer at the chest-high counter separating the inmates’ space from the volunteer’s space, and the other three cons all doggedly typed, with just a few fingers.

Parker went over to stand on line behind Marcantoni, and to hear him say to the volunteer, “I’m gonna need one of those typewriters.”

“So am I,” Parker said.

There were three or four different volunteer lawyers. This one was white, tall, skinny, midthirties but already balding, and wore a yellow tie that made his pale face look even paler. Now, with a look at his watch, he called over to the cons at the typewriters, “Time’s up, fellas. You can come back tomorrow.”

Williams said, “I just got here.”

“I know you did,” the volunteer assured him. “But these other three fellas.”

The three fellas were used to being ordered around. Without any argument, they gathered up their materials into the folders or envelopes they used as briefcases, and one by one made ready to leave.

Meantime, Marcantoni discussed his case with the volunteer, giving him a very complex story about missing witnesses and prejudiced ex-wives. The volunteer nodded through it all, listening, taking notes, and finally the three other cons left, trailing out, all of them trying to look hopeful. The door closed behind them at last, and Marcantoni reached out across the counter to grasp the volunteer’s yellow tie, yank him forward, and head-butt him so hard the volunteer slumped, eyes out of focus, and would have fallen to the floor on his side of the counter if Marcantoni hadn’t kept hold of the necktie.

Williams went over to lock the corridor door as Marcantoni and Parker pulled the volunteer up far enough onto the counter to go through his pockets, pulling out wallet, thick key ring, notepad, two pens, comb, cellphone, pocket of tissues, eyeglass cleaner cloth, and a state police ID card to put on your dashboard when illegally parked.

“Jesus,” the volunteer gasped, flopping draped over the counter like a fish over the gunwale, “what are you, what are you fellas, what can you, what can you possibl...”

They ignored him, Parker going over the counter to see what was available on the other side, while Marcantoni kept hold of the volunteer’s tie and Williams took a quick scan through his wallet, then hunkered down close to the counter so he could look the volunteer in the eye and say, “Jim? You okay, Jim?”

“What?” Hearing his name both calmed the volunteer and focused him, so that he quit flopping around and blinked at Williams. “What did you say?”

Williams tapped the open wallet, showing it to the volunteer. “Says here you’re gonna be an organ donor, Jim,” he said. “That’s a wonderful thing, I want you to know that.”

“Yes,” the volunteer said, still trying to catch up.

“I mean it, Jim,” Williams told him, while Parker went through the rear half of the library. “Being an organ donor’s just about the most generous thing a person can do.”

“It’s the least,” the volunteer said. He was still groggy, but focusing more on Williams now.

“No, it’s the most, man,” Williams insisted. “That you want to be an organ donor.” He leaned closer, almost nose to nose with the volunteer. Low-voiced, confidential, he said, “But not today, Jim.”

The volunteer flinched, and Marcantoni had to yank him down again by the necktie. Wide-eyed, the volunteer stared at Williams. “I don’t want to die!”

“Of course you don’t, Jim.” Williams went on in that low, soft, confidential manner, saying, “These two guys I’m with, I’ve got to tell you, they’re the meanest people I ever met in my life. I come along because they asked me to, and whatever they ask me to do I’m gonna do, you know what I mean? Jim? Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes,” said the volunteer.

“Now, listen, Jim,” Williams said. “I made these boys promise me one thing before we started. I made them promise me no killing, unless it’s absolutely necessary. I mean, none of us have guns, and you don’t have a gun, and any guard that comes in here, they don’t carry guns, not in the part where the cons are.”

“That’s right,” the volunteer said.

“So there won’t be any killing,” Williams assured him, “there won’t even be any danger for anybody, if we all just stay calm and do it by the book. And Jim, what I mean here is their book. They’re gonna ask you to do a couple things pretty soon, nothing bad, nothing hard to do. Jim, I want you to promise me, you’re not gonna make me look bad. Just do what these fellas say, and you’ll be outa this mess in no time.”

The volunteer nodded. “I know what you’re saying,” he said. He sounded better now.

Parker walked back toward the counter. “There’s a chair back here.”

“I think Jim would like to sit awhile,” Williams said.

“Time,” Marcantoni said.

“Oh, you’re right,” Williams said. “Jim, I’m not gonna steal your watch, but I would like to look at it. Could you twist your arm around here? Thanks. It’s twelve minutes to five. You gonna be okay if Tom lets go of your tie?”

“Yes,” said the volunteer, so Marcantoni released the tie and the volunteer slid backward off the counter until his feet were on the floor, then stood there reeling a bit, holding to the counter edge with both hands.

Williams, sounding concerned, said, “Your vision a little blurry, Jim?”

“Yes.”

“What you’ve got there,” Williams told him, “you’ve got a slight concussion. Nothing serious. But when this is done, just a few minutes from now, you’ll take my advice, you go straight to your family doctor. Not the ones in the dispensary here, they’re not that good, if you want the truth. You go to your family doctor, right?”

“Yes,” the volunteer said.

Marcantoni said, “Have somebody drive you. Don’t drive yourself.”

Williams said, “Good thinking.”

While Parker looked around the back library area for anything useful, he listened to Williams and Marcantoni herd the volunteer. They knew how to go about it, hard and soft, a menace but not quite a mortal threat. He’d needed to find a crew in this place, and he’d found one.

Williams said, “Jim, whyn’t you sit down in your chair.”

The volunteer made it across the clear space from the counter to his small desk and chair, tucked away in a corner out of sight of anybody in the inmates’ area. He dropped there, both forearms on the desk, mouth slightly open.

Marcantoni was fooling with the volunteer’s cellphone. Now he said, “How do I get this thing to work?”

“It doesn’t work in here,” the volunteer told him. “You have to take it outside.”

“Well, that’s where I’m going,” Marcantoni said, but when he and Williams hoisted themselves over the counter he left the cellphone behind with the rest of the volunteer’s stuff.

Parker told them, “There’s cartons back here. Some kind of legal boxes.”

“Good,” Marcantoni said, looking at them. Stacked in a corner were four empty white cardboard cartons with separate cardboard tops, like the boxes used to carry evidence into court. They’d most likely been used here to bring books in.

Williams said, “What have we got for persuasion?”

“This desk lamp,” Marcantoni said, and picked up from in front of the volunteer a heavy metal lamp with a pen trough in its broad base and a long green glass globe around the bulb. Marcantoni yanked the end of the cord from the outlet, then took the base of the lamp in one hand and its neck in the other and jerked them back and forth against each other until something snapped. Then he started to separate them and said, “Damn the cord. Jim, you got scissors?”

“In the top drawer,” the volunteer said. He looked mournfully at his lamp.

Opening the drawer, taking out the scissors, Williams told the volunteer, “They still make those lamps, the state’ll buy you another one.” Turning, he snipped the cord, so Marcantoni could drop the glass globe in the wastebasket and heft the base. With a conspiratorial grin at the volunteer, Williams put the scissors back in the drawer and shut it.

Meantime, Parker had found the supplies closet; a metal stand-alone armoire with two doors on the front. Inside were mostly forms, papers, various kinds of tape. But on one shelf was a green metal file box, sixteen inches long, meant for 3×5 cards. It was full of the cards, half in use for various records, the rest still in their clear packaging. The file box was unwieldy, but heavy; Parker ran duct tape over the front of it, to keep it closed, so he could carry it by the front handle.

Williams said, “Is it time?”

“Might as well,” Marcantoni said.

Williams sat on the corner of the volunteer’s desk. “Jim,” he said, “this is where you’ve got to do it right, or you’re in big trouble.”

The volunteer looked at him, tense, waiting.

“You’re gonna call out to the guards at the end of the corridor,” Williams told him. “The way you do every day, phone to them to unlock your door here so you can go home. But today you’re gonna tell them you’ve got two heavy cartons of law books to be carried out of here, and you’d appreciate it if a couple guards could come down and give you a hand. You’ve done that kind of thing before, the guards carrying the heavy stuff for the civilians like you, am I right?”

“Sometimes,” the volunteer said.

“And today is one of those times. Do you want me to repeat the story,” Williams asked him, “or do you have it?”

“Oh, I have it,” the volunteer said. He sounded very depressed. He said, “Please don’t kill them, they’re just working guys.”

“Come on, Jim,” Williams said, “nobody’s gonna kill nobody, I already told you that. Because we’re all gonna do our part. So if we all do our part, why should there be any extra mess?”

“More trouble for you,” the volunteer suggested.

“Exactly! Do it now, Jim, while the story’s fresh in your mind. Pick up the phone.”

The volunteer picked up the phone. Williams gently touched a finger to the back of the hand holding the phone, and the volunteer flinched. His voice softer than ever, Williams said, “But just remember, Jim. If you do anything at all except what I told you, anything at all, then I’m sorry. You’re an organ donor.”

Jim did very well.

17

The guards were one white and one black, which was useful but not necessary. Their replacements wouldn’t be standing around for inspection.

Williams crouched under the little desk, where he could come out fast into the volunteer’s back if it looked as though he were coming unstuck. Parker and Marcantoni waited around on the far side of the supplies closet, its one door opened out in front of them, the stacked cartons just a few feet away across the room.

“It’s the top two there,” the volunteer said, pointing at the boxes, hanging back to hold the door ajar the way Williams had whispered just before the guards got here. He sounded nervous and shaky, but not too much so.

“No problem,” the white guard said, and they moved forward, the white first, reaching for the top box, jerking upward with it in surprise when it didn’t carry the expected weight, saying, “This is—” He would have said “light,” but Parker and Marcantoni came boiling out from behind them, Parker swinging the file box at the white head, Marcantoni aiming at the black.

The guards were big guys, and strong. Both went down to their knees when they were hit, but neither of them was out. Standing in the middle of the room, with more space to swing and aim, Parker and Marcantoni slammed those two heads again, and the guards dropped.

Parker spun away as the volunteer recoiled, letting the hall door go, Williams coming fast out from under the desk to jam a book into the opening to keep the door from closing itself completely, which would automatically lock them in again. Pointing at the volunteer, voice low and fast, Parker said, “Give me your clothes.”

The volunteer stared at Parker in owlish surprise. “But you’re a lot bigger than I am.”

“Tom’s bigger,” Parker told him, “so it’s me.” He was already peeling off his jeans. “Come on, Jim.”

Marcantoni and Williams ripped off their own jeans and stripped the guards, then put on their uniforms. Keeping his own T-shirt, Parker forced himself into the volunteer’s slacks, shirt, yellow tie and sports jacket. He looked like something from a silent comedy when he was done, but nobody would have a lot of time to study him.

The volunteer stood there in his undershirt and shorts and socks and shoes, holding Parker’s jeans in both hands as though not sure what they were. The others were ready. Parker moved to his right, away from the others, and whispered, “Jim.”

Jim turned his head, and Marcantoni cracked the lamp base across the back of his head. Parker broke his fall, to keep him from making a racket, while the other two each picked up one of the empty boxes, carrying it high as though it were full and heavy, obscuring whatever was ill-fitting about their uniforms or wrong about their faces. Parker followed, trusting the two large men in front of him to keep him from too close inspection.

The empty hall. At the far end, as they approached, the door was buzzed open. Straight ahead was the conference room, where Inspector Turley sometimes lurked. To the right was the civilian office space. To the left was the parking lot.

A volunteer lawyer and, later, two guards had walked in. Now the same seemed to come back out, doing what was expected of them, turning left after the first door. The two guards on duty, hardly noticing them at all, buzzed them through and they went out that final door to the parking lot.

The door slid shut behind them. “Walk toward the gate,” Parker said.

The big square blacktop area, surrounded by its high walls on three sides, was half full, haphazardly parked with Corrections buses and private cars. The gate, on the fourth side, a tall electronically run chainlink rectangle with razor wire along the top, was to their right. They walked toward it.

Marcantoni said, “They should be here.” He sounded very tense, holding the box too tight, so that it might crumble in his hands.

“They’ll wait to see us,” Parker said.

They kept walking, not in a hurry. Parker was aware of guard towers up and behind them, of eyes casually on them but on them. They kept walking, diagonally toward the gate, the two guards carrying the big white boxes high like offerings, followed by the ill-dressed attorney. Beyond the gate were farmland and woods. No traffic.

A blue-black van appeared in the road beyond the chain-link gate. It angled to the gate and jolted to a stop and honked, as the driver leaned out to shout into a speaker mounted on a metal pole out there. “I’m late, goddamit!” Parker heard Mackey yell, and saw that the van had STATE CORRECTIONS ID on its side door.

Slow, ponderous, the gate began to slide open. Somebody behind them at the building began to yell. With the widening of the gate barely broad enough, the van nosed itself through, scraping against the fixed post on its left side.

More shouting. The van was half in and half out, the gate jerking to a stop as the side door of the van slid open.

“Now!” Parker yelled, and the three ran for the van, hurling away the boxes, a flurry of firecrackers going off behind them, Mackey already backing out as they dove headfirst through the side opening onto the metal floor.

Struggling upward as the van jounced and its side door slammed shut, Parker stared out the meshed rear window as Mackey backed them in a tight U-turn, then jammed them forward. The gate back there was closing again, just as slow, just as certain, but too late. It stopped. Before it could open once more, to permit pursuit, Mackey had taken a forested curve on two wheels and Stoneveldt was out of sight.