Butcher's Moon

Thirty-eight

There are three planes a day from La Guardia Airport in New York City to Tyler National Airport in Tyler, the second one leaving just before noon. Stan Devers, having spent the night before with a girl he knew in Manhattan, took a cab at eleven in the morning and reached the airport with plenty of time to spare.

Stan Devers was in his late twenties, muscular and smiling and self-confident, with a clean strong jawline and curly blond hair. He had an easy long-strided walk and a manner of open honesty that was maybe just a little too good to be true. For as long as he could remember he’d been a swimmer upstream, a rebel for the sake of rebellion, opposed to everything that plain stolid ordinary society stood for. He’d been thrown out of two high schools and one college—having already, in the college, been thrown out of ROTC—he’d been fired from most of the jobs he’d ever held, but he’d survived nearly three and a half years of enlisted service in the Air Force before making the move that had thrust him out of square society forever.

He had been a finance clerk in the Air Force, on a base where the payroll had still been in cash, a thing that didn’t happen anywhere at all now. He’d worked out a way to take a month’s payroll and had involved himself with some professional thieves to pull the job, including Parker. They’d succeeded in getting the money, but then things had gone wrong and Devers’ connection with the robbery had become known by the authorities. He’d had to take off, and Parker had sent him to Handy McKay in Presque Isle, who had finished the job of turning him into a professional thief. He’d worked six robberies in the last five years, with varying success, including one with Parker last year, a hijacking of paintings that had gone very badly, with no profit for anybody. He’d had a minor score since then with some other people, but not enough to make him really easy in his mind about his money cushion. Which was why he’d been happy to hear from Parker again, even with Parker’s cryptic warning that this wasn’t an ordinary job.

The girl at the airline counter seemed mildly surprised that Devers was buying a one-way ticket. He hadn’t bought one round-trip ticket in the last five years, and doubted that he ever would again. In a way, it symbolized the kind of life he lived, the theme of it that he enjoyed: never go back to anything, never move anywhere but forward.

A noon plane on a summer Monday to a third-level city in the hinterlands; there weren’t many passengers. The tourists had done their traveling on the weekend, the businessmen had taken the earlier morning plane, and all that was left was oddities like Stan Devers. Checking in at the gate, he saw no more than a dozen other passengers in the plastic seats there, all gazing moodily out the big windows at the white plane waiting to take them aboard. Of course, it was still fifteen minutes before takeoff time, but he doubted the plane would be very full when it left.

He carried a black attache case and a black raincoat. Between them, they contained everything he needed to travel with. Getting his ticket back from the check-in clerk, he walked over to the side wall of the waiting area and sat in a chair that gave him equal views of the windows and the check-in desk. Five minutes later he saw a huge bald man arrive and hand over his ticket, and he grinned to himself. Now why would a man mountain like that be going to Tyler this fine morning, unless he was another member of Parker’s team?

* * *

Dan Wycza accepted his ticket back, muttered a thank you, and moved into the waiting area, looking around for a seat away from the other passengers. He saw a kid sort of grinning at him from over by the side wall, ignored him, and sat down in the front row, right near the plate-glass view of the airplane. Putting his old brown-leather bag on the floor at his feet, he took out the health magazine he’d been reading and went on with the article about the skin-drying effects and other disadvantages of sunlight.

Wycza hadn’t seen Parker in almost ten years, not since the time a bunch of them had knocked over a whole town together —banks and jewelry stores and everything. Copper Canyon, North Dakota. What a mess they’d made of that place, even more than they’d intended. Since then Wycza had done a number of jobs, none of them as big or as gaudy as that Copper Canyon business, but they’d kept him in wheat germ and yogurt. Whenever things had gotten slow he’d gone back to his other trade, wrestling, but given his choice, he preferred armed robbery. It was always better to be paid in thousands than in hundreds.

He felt eyes on him. He was sensitive to that kind of thing, being a big man and completely bald, sensitive to being stared at, and he didn’t like it. He glanced around, irritated, and it was the young guy over by the wall. Grinning at him, as though he knew something about something. And not shifting his eyes away when Wycza glowered at him. In the end, it was Wycza himself who looked away, facing front again and trying unsuccessfully to go on reading the article in the magazine.

That was the only thing wrong with this life, the fear of arrest. Could that possibly be a cop over there, could some old score have suddenly blown up, could he be on a wanted list without knowing it? This wouldn’t be the first time a guy squealed on everybody else he knew in order to keep from doing a little time himself, and an airport was a natural place to look for a wanted man.

Guardedly, Wycza looked around the waiting area, but he couldn’t see any more of them. Just the one grinning clown over by the wall, who was still looking at him.

Waiting for the boarding to start? Waiting to collar him when he started toward the plane?

Wycza found himself wishing he had a gun in his luggage, despite the danger of air marshal searches.

He had never taken a fall, had never spent even one night in jail, and he wanted it to stay that way. Because he knew what would happen to him in jail, he would die there. A year, two years at the most, and Dan Wycza would be dead.

There were things he needed in order to stay alive, things beyond the simple food and shelter and clothing the prison would supply. Exercise, for instance. He needed to be able to run, to run for miles and to do it every day. He needed to work out in gyms whenever he wanted. He had to keep using his body, or it would dry up and die, he knew that with utter certainty.

And women. He needed women almost as much as he needed exercise. And special foods: steak, and milk, and green vegetables, all properly cooked and not steam-tabled till all the nutrition was out of them. And food supplements, vitamin pills and mineral pills and protein pills.

Not in jail. In jail he wouldn’t be able to exercise, not properly. And there’d be no women, and none of the food or pills he needed. In jail he would shrivel up, his teeth would rot, his muscles would sag, his body would shrink in on itself and start even before he was dead to decay.

He wasn’t going to jail. If it came down to it, if it was down to it right here and now, he wasn’t going to jail. There are two ways to die, fast and slow, and he’d rather go out the fast way. He wouldn’t go to jail because in order to put him in jail they’d have to lay hands on him, and before they could lay hands on him they’d have to kill him.

Movement. Wycza lifted his head, and faintly reflected in the plate glass in front of him he could see the young guy coming this way. Wycza carefully folded his magazine and put it away in his jacket pocket. Every muscle in his big body was tensed.

The young guy passed between groupings of plastic seats and stopped in front of the glass, just to Wycza’s right, looking out at the plane. Wycza kept his head down, watching the guy from under his brows, and after a minute the guy turned and gave him a cheerful smile and said, “Hello, there.”

Wycza lifted his head. He felt dangerous, and he looked dangerous. He said, “Something?”

The young guy didn’t seem troubled. Still smiling, he said, “I wonder if you know a friend of mine in Tyler.”

What’s this? Wycza, frowning massively, said, “No. I don’t know anybody in Tyler.”

“This friend is named Parker,” the young guy said.

A cop. A definite cop. “Never heard of him,” Wycza said.

“He lives on Elm Way,” the young guy said.

“Don’t ring a bell,” Wycza said.

The young guy’s expression began to change; doubt was creeping in. “Are you sure? I could have sworn you were somebody on your way to see my friend.”

“Not me, friend,” Wycza said. “You got the wrong guy.”

The guy shook his head, obviously all at sea. “Well, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I troubled you.”

“Yeah, sure.”

The guy started away, and Wycza reached in his pocket for a magazine. Then the guy suddenly laughed aloud, and turned back, and gave Wycza a huge happy grin. “Well, of course!” he said.

Now what? Wycza waited, saying nothing.

The guy came over closer, bent down so no one else in the waiting area would be able to hear what he had to say, and whispered, “You thought I was a cop!”

Wycza still did. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he said.

The guy dropped down into the seat on Wycza’s right, and said, quietly but excitedly, “My name’s Devers, Stan Devers. Parker never told you anything about me?”

“I told you before, you—”

“Wait a minute now,” Devers said; if that was his name. “Didn’t Parker tell you there were other people coming? Doesn’t it make sense there’d be one or two on this plane? I’ll tell you, I worked with Parker twice before this. I’m the one set up the air-base payroll job upstate here about five years ago. You ever hear of that?”

“You’re still making a mistake,” Wycza said, but he was no longer entirely sure that was true. He didn’t know anything about an air-base payroll job, but Devers’ line had a ring of reality to it.

“The other one,” Devers said, still talking low and fast, “was hijacking some paintings last year. We worked with, uh, Ed Mackey. You know him?”

”No.”

“Handy McKay.”

That was a name Wycza knew. He also knew that McKay had retired a few years ago. Meaning to be clever, he said, “You worked with Handy McKay last year?”

“Don’t be silly,” Devers said. “He’s up there in his diner in Presque Isle, Maine. I hid out with him when I first went on the bent. You want me to describe him to you? He lips his cigarettes something fierce.”

That was true. Wycza found himself grinning, then immediately sobered up again. “You got a good line of talk,” he said.

“You’re a tough man to convince,” Devers said. “What does it take?”

Wycza wanted to believe the kid, but caution was strong in him. It had to be. “Why brace me?” he said. “What’s the point?”

Devers shrugged. “Why not? We’re both going the same place for the same reason. Why not talk, have a pleasant trip?”

Wycza studied him a minute longer. “You’re a strange guy, Devers,” he said.

Devers’ smile broadened. “Stan,” he said, and held out his hand.

One more hesitation, a brief one. Then Wycza shook his head and said, “Yeah, I guess I believe you.” Taking Devers’ hand, he said, “I’m Dan Wycza.”

“Dan and Stan.” They shook on it, and Devers said, “Glad to know you, Dan.”

* * *

Fred Ducasse barely made the plane on time. The passengers were already boarding when he got to the gate. He submitted his small canvas bag to a luggage search, and was the last person to board the plane.

It was a fairly small plane, one class, with three seats to the left of the aisle and two to the right. Less than half the seats were occupied, so even though he was last, Ducasse could just about pick his spot. He preferred the rear, so he moved that way down the narrow aisle, holding his bag ahead of himself.

On the left, two men were in casual low-voiced conversation. One of them was a young good-looking guy with curly blond hair, and the other was a bald giant of about forty. They made a strange-looking pair, and Ducasse glanced at them curiously on the way by. The young one looked up at the same time, and for just a second their eyes met. It seemed to Ducasse, as he looked quickly away, that the guy had had a questioning look in his eyes, as though wondering if he maybe knew Ducasse from somewhere. Ducasse looked back at him again, but he wasn’t looking up any more. He was deep in his conversation with the bald one, and Ducasse was sure he’d never seen either of those two before.

He was just settling himself into a window seat well back of the wing when the plane started taxiing, and a minute later the stewardess started broadcasting safety announcements. Ducasse settled in, watched out the window as the plane took off, and then drifted away into his own thoughts.

He hoped this one was really it. He’d been living on his case money for over a year now, he definitely needed something good, and he needed something soon.

He was a little worried about this being Parker again. Not that he had anything against Parker, or Parker’s ability; it was just that Parker, too, seemed to be running a bad streak, and Ducasse was just superstitious enough to wish he was teaming up with somebody who’d been riding winners lately.

Two things with Parker last year, and both of them had gone to hell. A department-store robbery set up by a guy named Kirwan, and then an art-treasure robbery in California set up by a fool named Beaghler. Ducasse and Parker had been in on both of them, and neither one had happened. Then Ducasse had gone in on an armored-car job that hadn’t worked out, but while it was still on he’d tipped Parker to something involving hijacking paintings, and he’d heard that one, too, had fallen apart. So it had been a bad year all the way around, and all Ducasse hoped was that he and Parker wouldn’t between them jinx this new score, whatever it turned out to be. Something simple, that’s what he wanted, simple and clean and profitable and fast.

Gazing at that bald head up toward the middle of the plane, idly thinking his thoughts, Ducasse dropped off to sleep and didn’t wake up again till the plane set down at Tyler.