Dirty Money

1

Tuesday afternoon, Parker tried calling the phone number in Corpus Christi that had once belonged to Julius Norte, the ID expert, now dead. Had his business been taken over by somebody else?

No; it was a Chinese restaurant now. And when he looked for Norte’s legitimate front business, a print shop called Poco Repro, through information, there was no listing.

So he’d have to start again. The guy who’d given him Norte’s name in the first place was an old partner named Ed Mackey, who didn’t have a direct number but did have cutouts, where messages could be left. Parker used the name Willis, which Mackey would know, left the gas station phone booth number, and said he could be called there Wednesday morning at eleven.

He was seated in position in the car at that time, when the phone rang, and got to it before it could ring again. “Yes.”

“Mr. Willis.” It was Mackey’s voice. “I guess you’re doing fine.”

“I’m all right. How’s Brenda?”

“Better than all right. She doesn’t want me to take any trips for a while.”

“This isn’t about that. Remember Julius Norte?”

“Down in Texas? That was a sad story.”

“Yeah, it was. I wondered if anybody else you know was in that business?”

“Time for a new wardrobe, huh?” Mackey chuckled. “I wish I could say yes, but I’ve been making do with the old duds myself.”

“Well, that’s okay.”

“No, wait. Let me ask around, there might be somebody. Why don’t I do that, ask some people I know, call you tomorrow afternoon if I’ve got anything?”

“That would be good.”

“If I don’t get anything, I won’t call.”

“No, I know.”

“Three o’clock all right?”

“I got another phone thing at three tomorrow. Make it two forty-five.”

Again Mackey chuckled, saying, “All at once, you sound like a lawyer. I hope I have reason to call you tomorrow.”

“Thanks.”

On Thursday afternoon, he was parked beside the phone-on-a-stick a few minutes early. At quarter to three the phone did ring and it was Mackey. “I got a maybe,” he said.

“Good.”

“It’s a friend-of-a-friend kind of thing, so there’s no guarantees.”

“I got it.”

“He’s outside Baltimore, the story is he’s a portrait painter.”

“Okay.”

“You call him, it’s because you want a picture of yourself or the missus or the dog or the parakeet.”

“Uh-huh. What name do I use?”

“Oh, with him? Forbes recommended him, Paul Forbes.”

“Okay.”

“Here’s his cell.” Mackey gave him a phone number. “His name, he says his name, is Kazimierz Robbins. Two Bs.”

“Kazimierz Robbins.”

“I don’t know him,” Mackey warned. “I only heard he’s been around a few years, people seem to trust him.”

“Maybe I will, too,” Parker said.

“Hell-lo.” It was an old man’s voice, speaking with a heavy accent, as though he were talking and clearing his throat at the same time.

“Kazimierz Robbins?”

“That’s me.”

“A friend of mine told me you do portraits.”

“From time to time, that’s what I do, although I am to some extent retired. Which friend told you about me?”

“Paul Forbes.”

“Ah. You want a special portrait.”

“Very special.”

“Special portraits, you know, are special expensive. Is this a portrait of yourself, or of your wife, or of someone close to you?”

“Me.”

“I would have to look at you, you see.”

“I know that.”

“Are you in Baltimore?”

“No, I’m north of you, but I can get there. You give me an address and a time.”

“You understand, my studio is not in my home.”

“Okay.”

“I use the daylight hours to do my work. Artificial light is no good for realistic painting.”

“Okay.”

“These clumpers and streakers, they don’t care what the color is. But I care.”

“That’s good.”

“So my consultations are at night, not to interfere with my work. I return to my studio to discuss the client’s needs. Could you come here tonight?”

“Tomorrow night.”

“That is also good. Would nine o’clock be all right for you?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent. And when you come here, sir, what is your name?”

“Willis.”

“Willis.” There was a hint of “v” in the name. “We will see you then, Mr. Willis,” he said, and gave the address.

Five minutes later, Parker called Cosmopolitan Beverages and was put through to Meany, who said, “Mr. Albert said, if I want to deal with a son of a bitch like you, it’s okay with him.”

“Good.”

“The price is acceptable, and we’ll work out delivery.”

“Good.”

“One step first.”

“What’s that?”

“We have to see what we’re getting. We need a sample.”

“Fine. It’s still ten for one.”

Meany sounded doubtful. “Meaning?”

“We give you ten K, you give us one K.”

Meany laughed. “I love how we trust each other,” he said.

“Or,” Parker said, “you could just give me your cash, and hope for the best.”

“No, we’ll do it your way. How do you want to work this?”

“I’m busy the next couple of days,” Parker told him. “A guy I know will call and set up the switch.”

“I’ve probably seen this guy.”

“Maybe.”

“In a red pickup?”

Parker waited.

“Okay,” Meany said. “This guy will call me. What’s his name?”

Parker thought. “Red,” he said.

“Red. I like that. You’re easier to deal with,” Meany said, “when you’re not trying to prove a point.”

“Red will call you.”

Hanging up, Parker dialed McWhitney’s bar, got him, and said, “I’m on a pay phone,” and read off the number. Then he hung up.

It was five minutes before the phone here rang. Parker picked up and immediately reeled off Meany’s name and phone number, then said, “Ten grand for one. They need a sample, I’m busy, so you work out the switch. Your name is Red.” When he hung up, McWhitney hadn’t said a word.

2

Before the Massachusetts armored car job went sour, Parker had had clean documents under a couple of names, papers that were good enough to pass through any usual level of inspection. In getting out from under that job, he’d burned through all of his useful identification, and made it very tough to move around. He had to deal with that right now, make it possible to operate in the world.

How much of a problem this lack of identification meant was shown by the fact that Claire had to drive him to Maryland Friday afternoon. With no driver’s license and no credit cards, he couldn’t rent a car, and if he borrowed hers and drove it himself and something went wrong, it would kill her identity as well.

Early in the evening of Friday they checked into a motel north of Baltimore and had an early dinner, and then she drove him to Robbins’ address on Front Street in a very small town called Vista, near Gunpowder Falls State Park. They’d driven several uphill miles of winding road, but if there was a vista it was too dark to see.

The town, when they got there, wasn’t much: one crossroads, a church and firehouse, and half a dozen stores, a couple of them out of business. Robbins’ building in this commercial row, two stories high and narrow, with large plate-glass windows flanking a glass front door, still bore a wooden sign above the windows reading vista hardware. Inside, through the front windows, the interior was brightly lit, but had not been a hardware store for a long time.

Parker said, “You want to come in or wait?”

“Easier if I wait.”

She had parked at the curb in front of the place, the only car stopped along here. Getting out to the old uneven slate sidewalk, Parker saw that the interior of the building was now a kind of gallery, a high-ceilinged room with large paintings on both white-painted side walls. In the middle of the room stood a large easel with a good-size canvas on it, in profile to the windows so that the subject couldn’t be seen. In front of the canvas, stooped toward it, brush in right hand, was what had to be Robbins, a tall narrow figure dressed in black, head thrust up and forward as he peered at his work. What he most looked like, the thin angular dark figure in the brightly lit room, was a praying mantis.

Parker rapped a knuckle on the glass of the front door. The painter looked this way, tapped his forehead with the handle end of his brush in salute, put the brush down on the tray beneath the canvas, and walked over to unlock and open the door. His walk looked painful, a little crabbed and distorted, but it must have been that way a long time, because he didn’t seem to notice.

He pulled the door open, his leathery face welcoming but wary, and said, “Mr. Willis?”

“For now.”

He smiled. “Ah, very good. Come in.” Then, looking past Parker, he said, “Your companion does not wish to join us?”

“No, she doesn’t want to be a distraction.”

“Very astute. I find all beautiful women a distraction.” Closing the door, he said, “I think you would prefer to call me Robbins. Kazimierz is not easy for an American to pronounce.” He gestured toward the rear of the long room, where a couple of easy chairs and small tables made a kind of living room; or a living room set.

As they walked down the long room, on an old floor of wide pine planks, Parker said, “Why didn’t you change the first name?”

“Ego,” Robbins said, and motioned for Parker to sit. “Many are Robbins, or my original name, Rudzik, but from earliest childhood Kazimierz has been me.” Also sitting, he leaned forward onto his knees, peered at Parker, and said, “Tell me what you can.”

“I no longer have an identity,” Parker said, “that’s safe from the police.”

“Fingerprints?”

“If we’re at the point of fingerprints,” Parker said, “it’s already too late. I need papers to keep me from getting that far.”

“And how secure must these be?” He gave a little finger wave and said, “What I mean is, you want more than a simple forged driver’s license.”

“I want to survive a police computer,” Parker said. “I don’t have a passport; I want one.”

“A legitimate passport.”

“Everything legitimate.”

Robbins leaned back. “Nothing is impossible,” he said. “But everything is expensive.”

“I know that.”

“We are speaking of approximately two hundred thousand dollars.”

“I thought it might be around there.”

Robbins cocked an eyebrow, watching him. “This number does not bother you.”

“No. If you do the job, it’s worth it.”

“I would need half ahead of time. In cash, of course. All in cash. How soon could you collect it?”

“I brought it with me in the car.”

Robbins gave a surprised laugh. “You are serious!”

“I’m always serious,” Parker told him. “Now you tell me how you’re gonna do it.”

“Of course.” Robbins thought a minute, looking out over his studio. The paintings on the walls, mounted three or four high, were all portraits, some of well-known faces ranging from John Kennedy to Julia Roberts, some of unknown but interesting faces. All were slightly tinged with a kind of darkness, as though some sort of gloom were being hidden within the paint.

Finally, Robbins nodded to himself and said, “You know I come from the East.”

“Yes.”

“I did this kind of work for the authorities back there,” he said. “For many years. False identities, false papers. There was much work of that kind to be done in those days.”

“Sure.”

“I imagine there is work of that kind to be done in this country as well,” Robbins said, and spread his hands in fatalistic acceptance. “But I am a foreigner, and not that much to be trusted. And I am certain there are Americans who can do the same work.”

“Sure.”

“I still retain many contacts with my former associates, and in fact travel east two or three times a year. When a change as complete as you need is called for, my old friends are often of assistance.”

“Good.”

“Yes.” Robbins leaned forward, “When my part of the world was the proletarian paradise,” he said, “unfortunately, the infant mortality rate was higher than one would prefer. Many children, born around the same time as yourself, are memorialized by nothing more than a birth certificate and a small grave.”

“I get that.”

“We start with such a birth certificate,” Robbins told him. “To explain your lack of accent, we add documentation that your family emigrated, I think to Canada, when you would have been no more than thirteen years of age. Do you know people in Canada?”

“No.”

“Unfortunate.” Robbins shook his head at the difficulty. “What we must do,” he said, “is bring you to this country very recently, so you will be applying for a Social Security card only now.”

Parker considered that. “I was the Canadian representative of an American company,” he decided.

“You can do that?”

“Yes. I’ll have to phone the guy to tell him about it, that’s all.”

“Good. Do you have an attorney you can trust?”

“I can find one.”

“I think,” Robbins said, “you changed your name many years ago, when you were first in Canada. Because of your schoolmates, you see. But never officially. So now that you are in the US, you will first go to the court to have your name legally changed from whatever is on that birth certificate to whomever you would rather be than Mr. Willis.”

“Go through the court,” Parker said.

“If we are going to legitimize you,” Robbins said, “we must use as many legitimate means as possible. What state do you live in?”

“New Jersey.”

“They process many name changes there,” Robbins assured him. “It will not be a problem. So with your birth certificate and your court order for the name change, you will apply for and receive your Social Security card. After that, there is no question. You are who you say you are.”

“You make it sound pretty easy,” Parker told him.

“And yet, it is not.” Robbins’ smile, when he showed it, was wintery. Reaching for a yellow legal pad and a ballpoint pen on the table beside himself, he said, “Your employer while you lived in Canada?”

“Cosmopolitan Beverages. They’re based in Bayonne, New Jersey.”

“And the man there I would talk to? To get some employment documents, you see.”

“Frank Meany.”

“You have his e-mail address?”

“No, I have his phone number.”

“Ah, well, that will do.”

Parker gave him the number and, as he wrote it down, Robbins said, “E-mail has the advantage, you see, that it has no accent. The only three things left for right now are the money, and I must take a photograph of you, and you must tell me your choice of a name.”

“I’ll bring the money in,” Parker said, and went outside, where Claire lowered the passenger window so he could lean in and say, “It’s gonna be all right. We’re still happy with the name?”

“I am. You want the money from the trunk?”

“Yes.”

Opening the trunk, he brought out the duffel bag he’d brought down with him from upstate New York and carried it into Vista Hardware, where Robbins had moved to stand beside a refectory table along the right wall, beneath portraits of Kofi Annan and Clint Eastwood. In all the pictures, the eyes were as wary as Robbins’ own.

He seemed amused by the duffel bag. “Usually,” he said, “people who traffic in large quantities of cash carry briefcases.”

“The money’s just as good in this.”

“Oh, I’m sure it is.”

Robbins picked up from the floor under the table a cardboard carton that had originally contained a New Zealand white wine. “it will be just as good in this as well,” he said.

Parker started lifting stacks of currency from the duffel bag. They were both silent as they counted.

3

Driving east across New Jersey on Interstate 80 Monday afternoon, Parker passed a car with the bumper sticker drive it like you stole it, which was exactly what he was doing. On long hauls like last weekend’s trip down to Maryland, it would be too risky for him to drive, but for the sixty-mile run across the state from Claire’s place to Bayonne there shouldn’t be a problem. He held himself at two miles above the speed limit, let most of the other traffic hurry by — including drive it like you stole it — and stayed literally under the radar.

To get to Cosmopolitan Beverages, he had to drop south of the interstates just before the Holland Tunnel, and drive down into what was still called the Port of New York, even though years ago, with the changeover from longshoremen to containers, just about all the port’s activity had moved over to the Jersey side of the bay: Newark, Elizabeth, Jersey City, and Bayonne.

Bayonne, being at the southeast edge of northern New Jersey, with Staten Island so close to its southern shore there was a bridge across, was protected from the worst of the Atlantic weather and out of the way of the heaviest of the shipping lanes. This was the home of the legitimate part of Cosmopolitan Beverages, in an area totally industrial, surrounded by piers, warehouses, gasoline storage towers, freight tracks, chain-link fences, and guard shacks. Most of the traffic here was big semi trailers, and most of those were towing the large metal containers that had made this port possible.

In the middle of all this, standing alone on an island of frost-heaved concrete spottily patched with asphalt, stood a broad three-story brick building long ago painted a dull gray. On its roof, in gaudy contrast, a gleaming red-and-gold neon sign proclaimed cosmopolitan in flowing script and, beneath that, beverages in smaller red block letters.

A chain-link fence stretched across the concrete-and-asphalt area in front of the building, extending back on both sides toward the piers and Upper New York Bay. Gates in both front corners of the fence stood open and unguarded, the one on the left leading to a mostly full parking lot beside the building, the one on the right opening to a smaller space with only two cars in it at the moment, and with a sign on the fence near the gate reading visitor parking.

Parker turned in there, left the Toyota with the other visiting cars, and followed a concrete walk across the front of the building to the revolving-door entrance. Inside was a broad empty reception area, containing nothing but a wide low black desk on a shiny black floor. Mobbed-up businesses do try to look like normal businesses, but not very hard. It hadn’t occurred to anybody there to put visitor seating in the reception area because they really didn’t care.

The wall behind the desk was curved and silver, giving a spaceship effect. Mounted on that wall were bottles of the different liquors the company imported, each in its own clear plastic box, with that brand’s Christmas gift box next to it.

The man seated at the desk was different from the last time Parker’d been here, a few years ago, but from the same mold; thirties, indolent, uninvolved. The only thing professional about him was his company blazer, maroon with CB in ornate gold letters on the pocket. He was reading a Maxim magazine, and he didn’t look up when Parker walked over to the desk.

Parker waited, looking down at him, then rapped a knuckle on the shiny black surface of the desk. The guy slowly looked up, as though from sleep. “Yeah?”

“Frank Meany. Tell him Parker’s here.”

“He isn’t in today,” the guy said, and looked back at his magazine.

Parker plucked Maxim from the guy’s hands and tossed it behind him over his shoulder. “Tell him Parker’s here.”

The guy’s first instinct was to jump up and start a fight, but his second instinct, more useful, was to be cautious. He didn’t know this jerk who’d just come in and flipped his magazine out of his hands, so he didn’t know where in the pecking order he was positioned. The deskman knew he himself was only a peon in the grand scheme of things, somebody’s nephew holding down a “job” until his parole was done. So maybe his best move was not to take offense, but to rise above it.

Assuming a bored air, the deskman said, “You can bring back my magazine while I’m calling.”

“Sure.”

The deskman turned away to his phone console and made a low-voiced call, while Parker watched him. When he hung up, he was sullen, because now he knew Parker was somewhere above him in importance. “You were gonna get my magazine,” he said.

“I forgot.”

Sorely tried, the deskman got to his feet to retrieve the magazine himself, as a silver door at the far right end of the silver wall opened and another guy in a company blazer came out. This one was older and heavier, with a little more business veneer on him. Holding the doorknob, he said, “Mr. Parker?”

“Right.”

Parker followed him through the silver door into another world. Beyond the reception area, the building was strictly a warehouse, long and broad, concrete-floored, with pallets of liquor cartons stacked almost all the way up to the glaring fluorescents just under the ten-foot ceiling. There was so much clatter of machinery, forklifts, cranes, that normal conversation would have been impossible.

Parker followed his guide through this to Meany’s office, off to the right, a roomy space but not showy. The guide held the door for Parker, then closed it after him, as Meany got up from his desk and said, “I didn’t know you were coming. Sit down over there.”

It was a black leather armchair to the right of the desk. Parker went to it and Meany sat again in his own desk chair. Neither offered to shake hands.

Meany said, “What can I do you for today?”

“You liked the sample.”

“It’s very nice money,” Meany said, “Too bad it’s radioactive.”

“Do you still want to buy the rest of it?”

“If we can work out delivery,” Meany said. “I got no more reason to trust you than you got to trust me.”

“You could give us reason to trust each other,” Parker said.

Meany gave him a sharp look. “Is this something new?”

“Yes. How that money came to me, things went wrong.”

Meany’s smile was thin, but honestly amused. “I got that idea,” he said.

“At the end of it,” Parker told him, “my ID was just as radioactive as that money.”

“That’s too bad,” Meany said, not sounding sympathetic. “So you’re a guy now can’t face a routine traffic stop, is that it?”

“I can’t do anything,” Parker told him. “I’ve got to build a whole new deck.”

“I don’t get why you’re telling me all this.”

“For years now,” Parker told him, “I’ve been working for your office in Canada.”

Meany sat back, ready to enjoy the show. “Oh, yeah? That was you?”

“A guy named Robbins is gonna call you, ask for some employment records. I know you do this kind of thing, you’ve got zips, you’ve got different kinds of people your payroll office doesn’t know a thing about.”

“People come into the country, people go back out of the country,” Meany said, and shrugged. “It’s a service we perform. They gotta have a good-looking story.”

“So do I.”

Meany shook his head. “Parker,” he said, “why in hell would I do you a favor?”

“Ten dollars for one.”

Meany looked offended. “That’s a deal we got.”

“And this is the finder’s fee,” Parker said, “for bringing you the deal.”

Sitting back in his chair, Meany laced his fingers over his chest. “And if I tell you to go fuck yourself?”

“Tell me,” Parker said, “you think there’s anybody else in this neighborhood does export?”

“You’d walk away from the deal, in other words.”

“There’s no such thing as a deal,” Parker told him. “There never was, anywhere. A deal is what people say is gonna happen. It isn’t always what happens.”

“You mean we didn’t shake hands on it. We didn’t do a paper on it.”

“No, I mean, so far it didn’t happen. If it happens, fine. If it doesn’t, I’ll make a deal with somebody else, and it’ll be the same story. It happens, or it doesn’t happen.”

“Jesus, Parker,” Meany said, shaking his head. “I never thought I’d say this, but you’re easier to put up with when you have a gun in your hand.”

“A gun is just something that helps make things happen.”

“What I don’t get,” Meany said, “is how this finder’s fee that you call it is gonna give us reason to trust each other. That’s what you said, right?”

“You’re gonna know my new straight name,” Parker pointed out. “And how I got it. So then we’ve both been useful to each other, so we have a little more trust for each other. And I know, if sometime you decide you don’t like me, you could wreck me.”

“I don’t like you.”

“We’ll try to live with that,” Parker said.

Meany gave an angry shake of the head, then reached for notepad and pen. “The guy that’s gonna call me, he’s named Robbins?”

“Kazimierz Robbins.”

Meany looked at the notepad and pen. “Robbins will do,” he decided.

As Meany wrote, Parker said, “The other thing is the money switch.”

Meany put down the pen. “You wouldn’t just like to drop it off here.”

“No. Tomorrow, at one p.m., one of your guys in the maroon coats drives onto the ferry at Orient Point out on Long Island that goes over the Sound to New London in Connecticut. He’s got our money in boxes or bags or whatever you want. On the ferry, he gets out of the car and one of us gets into it. If that doesn’t happen, he drives off, turns around, takes the next ferry back. At some point, we’ll take the car. He stays on the ferry while it goes back and forth, and after a while the car comes back with the money for you in it, and he takes it and goes.”

Meany said, “And what if the car doesn’t come back? You’ve got our money, but we don’t have yours.”

“Then how do you help me get my new ID? See?” Parker spread his hands. “It’s how we build trust,” he said.

4

On the way back to Claire’s place, Parker stopped at the usual gas station, phoned McWhitney’s bar, and when the man came on said, “I’m in a phone booth.” When McWhitney called back five minutes later Parker said, “It’s worked out with Meany.”

“The ferry switch? No snags?”

“Nothing to talk about. I’ll have Claire drive me to the city tomorrow morning, and then I’ll take the train out to your place.”

“Doesn’t that get old?”

“Yes. I’m working on that problem, too. I told Meany we’d do the switch around one. You call Sandra.”

“Why do we want to bring her in?”

“Because Meany doesn’t know her. If they try something after all, she can be useful.”

“All right. I suppose it makes sense.”

“She can earn her half of Nick. She can come to Orient Point and take the same ferry as us and not know us.”

“I’ll see you in the morning,” McWhitney said, and hung up.

When he got to Colliver’s Pond, the body of water Claire’s house was on, he drove past her place and a further mile on around the lake to another seasonal house where he had a stash. More than half of the money in the duffel bag from upstate New York had been spent.

With a green Hefty bag on the seat beside him, he drove back to Claire’s house, and as he came down the driveway she stepped out the front door and signaled him not to put the car in the garage. He rolled his window down and she said, “I’ve been needing the car, I’ve got some shopping to do.”

“We won’t have this crap much longer,” he said, getting out of the Toyota.

“I know. Don’t worry about it.”

He carried the Hefty bag through the house into the garage, then didn’t feel like being indoors, so went out around the back to the water. There were two Adirondack chairs there, on the concrete jetty beside the boathouse. He sat there and looked out over the lake and didn’t see any other people. Three months ago this whole area had been alive with vacationers, but now only the few year-rounders were left, and they were all in their houses.

The strong breeze that ruffled the lake and blew past him had hints of frost in it. It was past five on an early November day, and the light was fading fast. Once these two problems were taken care of, the money and the new identification, it would be time for them to head somewhere south.

He didn’t hear the car coming back, but he heard the garage door lift open, and got up to go inside, help her unpack the groceries, and then go sit in the living room while she went to her office to listen to her messages. They’d eat out tonight; when she came back, they’d decide where.

But when she walked into the living room, there was a troubled look on her face. “One’s for you.”

It was McWhitney. “Evening, Mr. Willis. I hope I’m not interrupting anything. This is Nelson, the bartender from McW, and I’m sorry to have to tell you you left your briefcase here. Your friend Sid found it and turned it over to me. He doesn’t want a reward or anything, but he and a few of his pals are waiting around outside to be sure everything’s okay. I hope to hear from you soon. I hope there wasn’t anything valuable in there.”

5

Parker had had enough. But he knew this was exactly the kind of situation that makes an angry man impatient, an impatient man careless, and a careless man a convict. He was angry, but he would control it.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I got to ask you to drive me to the city.”

She gave him a curious look. “But that’s the place we went to, isn’t it? Where I met Sandra.”

“Right.”

“But that’s out on Long Island.”

“I’ll take a train.”

“You will not,” she said. “Come on, let’s go.”

“One minute,” he said, and went through to the pantry, where he took down from a shelf an unopened box of Bisquick. He turned it over and the bottom had been opened and reclosed. He popped it open and shook out, wrapped in a chamois, a Beretta Bobcat in the seven-shot .22, a twelve-ounce pocket automatic, which he put in his right pants pocket, then returned the chamois to the box and the box to the shelf.

Claire had her coat on, standing by the door between kitchen and garage. Parker chose a loose dark car coat with several roomy pockets, and transferred the Bobcat to one of them. “Ready.”

As they went out to the car, she said, “You can tell me what this is along the way.”

“I will.”

He waited till they were away from the house, then said, “This is about doing something with that money.”

“Overseas. You told me.”

“That’s right. On his own, Nels talked to a guy he knew that could maybe do that, but Nels didn’t know him as well as he thought.”

“Is this Sid?”

“You mean Nels’s message just now. The guy’s name is Oscar Sidd. I’ve never seen him, but he’s been described to me. It turned out, when Nels went up to New England to get the money, Oscar Sidd followed him.”

“To see if he could get it all for himself.”

“That’s right. Sandra saw what he was up to, and cut him out of the play.”

“But now he’s back,” Claire said.

“He has to know the money’s somewhere around Nels. So what Nels was saying is, Oscar Sidd’s outside the bar with some friends of his, or some muscle he bought. To keep things quiet, he’s waiting out there until the other customers leave. Then they’ll go in and ask Nels where the money is. They’ll have plenty of time to ask.”

Claire nodded, watching the road. Full night was here now, oncoming traffic dimming its lights. “When will the customers leave?”

“On a Monday night in November? No later than nine o’clock.”

She looked at the dashboard clock, “It’s five-thirty.”

“We’ll get there.”

“Not if you take a train.”

“Nels will hold them off for a while. It won’t be that sudden.”

“That’s why I’ll drive you there.”

“You don’t want to be at that bar, not tonight. Or anywhere near it. Let me off a block away.”

“Fine. I can do that.”

“And don’t wait for me, Nels and I were going to make the money transfer tomorrow anyway. So you just let me off and go back.”

“I might stay in the city. Have dinner and go to a late show.”

“Good idea.”

“And if anything comes up, call me on my cell.” She looked at him and away, “All right?”

“Sure,” he said.

6

At eight thirty-five on this Monday night McW was the only establishment showing lights along this secondary commercial street in Bay Shore. Parker walked down the block toward the place, seeing a half dozen cars parked along both sidewalks, including, across the way and a little beyond McW, a black Chevy Tahoe parked some distance from the two nearest streetlights. There were some people sitting in the Tahoe, impossible to say how many.

The simplest thing for the problem at hand — and for the anger — would be to go over there and put the Bobcat to work, starting with the driver. But it was better to wait, to take it slow.

To begin with, the people in the Tahoe wouldn’t be likely to let somebody just come walking across the street toward them with his hand in his pocket. And he didn’t know what the situation was right now inside the bar. So he barely looked over at the Tahoe, but instead walked steadily on, both hands in his pockets, then turned in at McW.

Other than McWhitney, there were four men in the bar. On two stools toward the rear were a pair of fortyish guys in baseball caps, unzippered vinyl jackets, baggy jeans with streaks of plaster dust, and paint-streaked work boots; construction men extending the after-work beer a little too long, by the slow-motion way they talked and lifted their glasses and nodded their heads.

Closer along the bar was an older man in a snap-brim hat and light gray topcoat over a dark suit, with a small pepper-and-salt dog curled up asleep under the stool beneath him as he nursed a bronze-colored mixed drink in a short squat glass and slowly read the New York Sun; a dog walker with an evening to kill.

And on the other side, at a booth near the front, facing the door, sat a bulky guy in a black raincoat over a tweed sports jacket and blue turtleneck sweater, a tall glass of clear liquid and ice cubes on the table in front of him. This last one looked at Parker when he walked in, and then didn’t look at him, or at anything else.

“I’ll take a beer, Nels,” Parker called, and angled over to sit at the club-soda-drinker’s table, facing him. “Whadaya say?”

“What?” The guy was offended. “Who the hell are you?”

“Another friend of Oscar.”

The guy stiffened, but then shook his head. “I don’t know Oscar, and I don’t know you.”

Parker took the Bobcat from his pocket and put it on the table, then left it there with his hands resting on the tabletop to both sides, not too close, “That’s who I am,” he said. “You Oscar’s brother?”

The guy stared at the gun, not afraid of it, but as though waiting to see it move. “No,” he said, not looking up. “I got no brothers named Oscar.”

“Well, how important is Oscar to you, then? Important enough to die for?”

Now the guy did meet Parker’s eyes, and his own were scornful. “The only thing you’re gonna shoot off in here is your mouth,” he said. “You don’t want a lotta noise to wake the dog.”

Parker picked up the Bobcat and pushed its barrel into the guy’s sternum, just below the rib cage. “In my experience,” he said, “with a little gun like this, a body like yours makes a pretty good silencer.”

The guy had tried to shrink back when the Bobcat lunged at him, but was held by the wooden back of the booth. His hands shot up and to the sides, afraid to come closer to the gun. He stared at Parker, disbelieving and believing both at once.

McWhitney arrived, with a draft beer he put on the table out of the way of them both as he said, calmly, “How we doing, gents?”

“Barman,” Parker said, keeping his eyes on the guy’s face and the Bobcat in his sternum, “reach inside my pal there and take out his piece.”

“You cocksucker,” the guy said, “you got no idea what’s gonna hit you.” He glowered at Parker as McWhitney reached inside his coat and drew out a Glock 31 automatic in .357 caliber, a more serious machine than the Bobcat.

“Put it on the table,” Parker said. “And your towel,” meaning the thin white towel McWhitney carried looped into his apron string.

McWhitney draped the towel on top of the Glock. “What now?”

“Our friend,” Parker said, “is gonna move to the last booth, and sit facing the other way. He does anything else, I kill him. And you bring him a real drink.”

“I will.”

Parker brought the Bobcat back and put it in his pocket, his other hand on the towel on the Glock. To the guy he said, “Up,” and when the guy, enraged but silent, got to his feet, Parker said, “You got anything on your ankles?”

“No.” The guy lifted his pants legs, showing no ankle holsters. Bitterly, he said, “I wish I did.”

“No, you don’t. Go.”

The guy walked heavily away down the bar, working his shoulder muscles as though in preparation for a fistfight.

Parker said to McWhitney, “Time to close the place.”

“Right.”

McWhitney went away behind the bar again and Parker put the Glock and the towel in another of his pockets. He closed a hand around his beer glass but didn’t drink, and McWhitney called, “Listen, guys, time to drink up. I gotta close the joint now.”

The customers were good about it. The two construction guys expressed great surprise at how late it was, and comic worry about how their wives would take it. Livelier and more awake once they were on their feet, each assured the other they would certainly tell the wife it was the other guy’s fault.

The newspaper reader simply folded his paper and stuffed it into a pocket, got to his feet, picked up his dog’s leash, and said, “Night, Nels. Thank you.”

“Any time, Bill. Night, guys.”

Down at the rear, the bulky guy’s back was to the room, as he’d been instructed. Quietly the newspaper reader and more loudly the construction men left the place, Parker trailing after. All called good night again through the open door.

The other three all went off to the left, the dog walker more briskly, his dog trotting along beside him, the construction men joking as they went, weaving a little. Parker angled rightward across the street, then down that sidewalk past the Tahoe, hands in his pockets.

When he was a few paces beyond the Tahoe, he heard its doors begin to open. He turned, taking the Glock and the towel from his pocket, and three men were coming out of the Tahoe, both sides in front and the sidewalk right side in back. All were concentrating on what was in front of them, not what was behind them.

The guy from the front passenger seat was tall and skinny, to match the description of Oscar Sidd. He shut his door and took one pace forward toward the front of the car when Parker shot him, holding the Glock straight-armed inside the towel.

Sidd dropped and the other two spun around, astonished. Parker held the Glock in the towel at waist height, pointed away to the right, and called, “Anybody else?”

The two stared at him, then across the Tahoe roof at each other. The guy on the street side couldn’t see Oscar. The other one looked down at the body, looked at his partner, and shook his head.

The driver jumped behind the wheel and the other one into the backseat. The engine roared and the lights flashed on, showing the Tahoe had dealer plates. The driver at first accelerated too hard, so that the wheels spun and smoked, but then he got under control and the Tahoe hurried away from there.

Parker carried the Glock and the towel back into the bar. The bulky guy was still in position in the rear booth. Parker called to him, “Come here,” and the guy, sullen-faced, came down along the bar to stand in front of him, look at the Glock, and say, “Yeah?”

“I hope you got your own car here.”

The guy frowned at the front door. “Where are they?”

“Gone. Except for Oscar. He’s dead out there. He was shot with this gun of yours.” Putting it on the bar, Parker said, “Hold on to it, Nels.”

“Will do.”

Parker looked at the guy. “Did somebody hear me fire one shot? I don’t know. Did somebody call the cops? I don’t know. Will Oscar be there when they get here? That’s up to you.”

“Jesus Christ,” the guy said, and it was equal parts curse and prayer. He hurried out the door and Parker said to McWhitney, “Let me use your phone.”

“Sure.”

Parker called Claire’s cell phone. “Are you still on the Island?”

“Yes. Are you finished already?”

“Come back, we’ll get dinner around here somewhere together—”

“I’ll tell you where,” McWhitney said.

“—and spend the night down here, and then you go home tomorrow and I’ll come back to Nels.”

“What happened?” she said.

“I’m not angry any more,” he said.

7

The sign in the window of the door at McW read closed at nine-thirty the next morning, and the green shade was pulled down over the glass, but the door was unlocked. Parker went in and McWhitney was seated at the first booth on the left, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the Daily News. He looked up when Parker walked in and said, “Claire get off?”

Parker sat on a stool with his back against the wood of the bar. “Yes.”

McWhitney nodded at the wall above the backbar, where a television set on a shelf was switched on with the sound turned off. “There’s news on the news.”

“For us?”

“They found Nick’s body.”

Parker shrugged. “Well, that’s all right.”

“You want coffee, by the way?”

“No, Claire and I ate.”

“Well, maybe the Nick thing is all right and maybe it isn’t.” McWhitney waggled his palm over the newspaper, to indicate the question.

Parker said, “Why wouldn’t it be all right? We’re done up there.”

“The hymnbooks,” McWhitney said. “I was gonna drop them off at a church around here. Just to get rid of them, but now I don’t know. Can they be traced back to the church up there? I don’t want anything anywhere around me that hooks to anything in Massachusetts.”

“We’ll dump them somewhere else,” Parker said.

McWhitney shook his head, “I never thought I’d sit around,” he said, “and try to figure out what to do to get rid of a load of hot hymnbooks.”

“The money’s mostly what we have to deal with,” Parker said. “Make the load lighter. Hefty bags are good for that.”

“Maybe three of them. It’s a lot of cash.”

“Where’s the truck?”

“In an open parking lot a couple blocks from here. I figured,” McWhitney said, “a piece of crap like that little truck, if we give it a lotta security, it’ll look like something might be inside there.”

“Hymnbooks.”

“Right.” McWhitney yawned and pushed the News away from himself, “I talked on the phone with Sandra this morning,” he said. “She checked the ferry on the Web. The one we want’s at one o’clock. Takes an hour and twenty minutes, we come back on the three.”

“Fine,” Parker said. “But now I’m thinking about another complication from Nick.”

McWhitney laughed. “That Nick,” he said. “He’s one complication after another, isn’t he? What now?”

“The troopers that stopped by when we were unloading the boxes out of the church,” Parker said.

“Sure. The woman went to that church when she was a little kid.”

“And now they found Nick,” Parker said. “Do they start to wonder about that truck?”

“Well, shit,” McWhitney said.

“They didn’t write anything down,” Parker said. “They looked at your license but they didn’t do anything about it.”

“No, that’s right.”

“But they’re going to remember those words on the door. Holy Redeemer Choir.”

“And they’ll look here, and they’ll look there, and they won’t find any Holy Redeemer Choir.”

“At least, not the same one.”

McWhitney looked bleak. “And we’re gonna take that same truck on a ferry to New England.”

“That place where you had the name painted on,” Parker said, “is he around here?”

“Yeah, walking distance. In fact, I walked it.”

“Could he paint the name out again?”

Getting up from the booth, McWhitney said, “Let me call him, I mean, why not?”

“We should have just time before we have to go get the ferry. And if not, we’ll get the next ferry.”

Walking around the end of the bar to the phone, McWhitney said, “When this is over, I’m gonna be nothing but a bartender for a long long time to come.”

8

On the phone the car painter told McWhitney he could do a quick spray job of the body color over the names on the doors in five minutes, so he and Parker walked to the parking lot where McWhitney had left the truck. Along the way, Parker said, “The only thing we’ve got to do today is the money switch, get that stuff out of our hands. The hymnbooks is something for later.”

“I don’t like it,” McWhitney said, “but I know you’re right.”

“Where’s your pickup?”

“Behind my place. If there was room, I’d have put the truck back there, too, but it’s too tight.”

“We’ll switch the boxes of books to the pickup,” Parker said, “then take care of the money.”

“Okay, fine.”

Along their walk they came to a deli, where Parker bought a box of ten large Hefty bags. Then they went on to reclaim the van and drive it the four blocks to the body shop and auto paint place, a sprawling low dark-brick building taking up most of this industrial block. The closed garage door in the middle of the otherwise blank wall had a big sign, red letters on white, honk, so McWhitney honked, and in a minute a smaller door that was part of the garage door opened and a guy in coveralls looked out.

McWhitney called, “Tell George it’s Nelson,” and the guy nodded and went back inside, shutting the door.

They waited another two or three minutes, and then the full garage door lifted and another guy in coveralls came out, this one also wearing a baseball cap, black-framed eyeglasses, and a thick black moustache. He came over to McWhitney at the wheel of the van, grinned at him, grinned at the name on the door, and said, “Well, it looks like you got religion and then you lost it again.”

“That’s about it.”

“It’s a quick job, but I need to do it inside, I need the compressor.”

“Sure.”

George leaned closer to McWhitney’s window, “The job may be quick,” he said, with a friendly smile, “but it isn’t cheap.”

McWhitney slid a hundred-dollar bill from his shirt pocket, and extended it, palm down, toward George, saying, “A quick job like this, it doesn’t even have to show up in the cash register.”

“That’s very true,” George said, and made the hundred disappear. “You can both stay in the car,” he said. “Follow me.” And he turned away, walking back into the building, McWhitney following.

Inside, the building was mostly one broad open space, concrete-floored, full of racket. Auto-body parts were being pounded or painted, other parts were being moved on metal-wheeled dollies over the concrete floor, and at least two portable radios were playing different ideas about music. A couple of dozen men were working in here, all of them in coveralls, most of them either shouting or singing.

There was no way to have a conversation in here, not once you got half a dozen feet in from the door. George directed them with hand gestures. While the first guy shut the door behind them, George guided them on a path through automobiles, automobile parts, and machinery to a large oblong cleared area with a big rectangular metal grid suspended above it. From the grid, large shiny metal ductwork extended up to the ceiling.

George had McWhitney park directly beneath the grid, then went away and the loud whine of an air compressor joined the mix of noise. George came up the left side of the van from behind, carrying a spray gun attached to a black rubber hose, and hunkered down beside McWhitney’s door. The whining went to a higher pitch, then lower again, and George walked his spray gun and hose back down the left side and up the right side to do the same to the other door. He stepped back, looked at his work, nodded to himself, and carried the spray gun away again.

When he next came into view, he motioned to them to follow him, and McWhitney steered the van along more lanes through the work to a different garage door that opened onto the side street. They drove out and stopped on the sidewalk, so both Parker and McWhitney could get out and look at the doors.

The words were gone, without a trace. The fresh paint was darker and shinier than the rest, but nevertheless the same color.

George, standing beside McWhitney to look at his work, said, “It’ll dry pretty fast, and then it’ll be the same color as the body.”

“Good.”

“Being out here and not in the shop, it’ll get some dust and dirt on it, so it won’t be as perfect as it might be. You’ll get some little roughness.”

“George,” McWhitney said, “that really doesn’t matter. This is fine.”

“I thought so,” George said. He was still happy. “Any time we can be of service,” he said, “just give us a call.”

9

The alley beside McW led to a small bare area behind the building, paved long ago with irregular slabs of slate. The area was confined by the rear of McWhitney’s building, the flank of the building next door across the alley, and by two eight-foot-high brick walls on the other two sides. The local building code required two exits from any commercial establishment, and in McW’s case the second exit was through the door that led to this area from the bedroom of McWhitney’s apartment behind the bar. The space was large enough for McWhitney to park his pickup back there and K-turn himself out again, but not much more.

Now McWhitney backed the van down the narrow alley until he was past his building, with the pickup in the clear area to the left. He and Parker got out of the van, McWhitney backed the pickup closer to the van’s rear doors, and they started emptying the van.

The first boxes out were filled with hymnals, heavy but not awkward to move. Then there were the money boxes.

The money inside the boxes was all banded into stacks of fifty bills, always of the same denomination. The bands, two-inch-wide strips of pale yellow paper, were marked deer hill bank, deer hill, ma. The stacks made a tight fit inside the boxes.

It turned out to be easiest to dump a box over, empty the money onto the floor of the van, and then stuff it all into the Hefty bags. The emptied box, with its cover restored, would be stacked with the others in the bed of the pickup.

As they worked, McWhitney said, “It’s a pity about this stuff. Look how beautiful it is.”

“It’ll tempt you,” Parker said. “But it’s got a disease.”

“Oh, I know.”

When they were finished, the pickup, sagging a bit, was crammed with boxes, empty and full, and three roundly stuffed Hefty bags squatted in the back of the van. McWhitney looked at his watch. “My barman’ll be here in fifteen minutes,” he said, “and then we can take off. Come on inside.”

To obey the fire code, the door at the back of his building had to be openable from inside at all times during business hours, but from outside it took a key to get in. McWhitney unlocked the door and they went through his small but neat living quarters to the bar, where McWhitney said, “You want a beer for the road?”

“Later.”

“I don’t trust later, I’ll take mine now. You want to call Sandra?”

“Sure. Give me the phone.”

McWhitney slid the phone across the bar to Parker, drew himself a draft, and watched the conversation.

“Keenan.”

“Hello, Sandra.”

“I’m on my way,” she said. “I think I should be there ahead of everybody so I can see if anybody has extra company.”

“Good idea. We’ll be in the same van, but it doesn’t have any words on it any more.”

“Oh, you got the news. If that cop didn’t have her girlish memories of that church, she wouldn’t have any reason to remember us or the van.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter any more. See you later.”

Parker hung up, and McWhitney said, “What doesn’t matter any more?”

“The cops at the church.”

“I don’t intend to drive through their territory for quite a while,” McWhitney said, and opened the drawer in the backbar beneath the cash register. “This piece we took from the fella last night,” he said. “I don’t feel like I want it in my joint any more, and on the other hand, where we’re going, what we’re doing, it might not be a bad idea to bring along an extra gun.”

“Sure. Bring it.”

McWhitney tried to stuff it into the inside pocket of his jacket, but it was too large and too heavy. “I’ll carry it in the glove compartment,” he decided. “Then drop it off the ferry. If things are going well.”

10

From where they were in Bay Shore on the south shore of Long Island, it was about seventy miles to the Orient Point ferry farther east and up on the north shore. Half of that trip was on highway, starting with the Sagtikos Parkway north, and then the Long Island Expressway east, but at Riverhead the Expressway, which had been getting thinner and thinner of traffic, ran out and from there they were on smaller roads on this less populated end of the island, with the ferry terminal still thirty-five miles ahead.

They’d been driving beyond the Expressway for about five minutes, first on Edwards Avenue north almost to Long Island Sound, and then east on Sound Avenue, when McWhitney, looking alert, said, “Yeah?” He cocked his head, listening, and Parker knew Sandra was calling him on his hands-free phone. Around them now was mostly sand and scruffy wasteland, with a mix of small homes and businesses, some of them already shut for the season.

“Sure,” McWhitney told the space in front of him, and took his foot off the accelerator. The van dropped about ten miles an hour in speed, and then he tapped the accelerator again, maintaining that new speed, for two or three minutes.

Parker watched and waited, not wanting to interrupt if Sandra had anything else to say, and then McWhitney said, “Okay, got it. Let me know if they do anything else.”

Parker said, “Somebody following us?”

“A black Chevy Suburban with dealer plates,” McWhitney said. “Whatever speed I like, he likes.” Gradually he was accelerating back up to his previous speed.

“The car Sidd and the others had last night,” Parker said, “was also a Chevy with dealer plates. This is Sidd’s pals.”

McWhitney grinned. “They got a friend in the car business.”

“They came along after us,” Parker said, “because they wanted to know where we were going.”

“Then they’ve pretty well got it figured out by now,” McWhitney said. “Once you get out here past Riverhead, there’s only three things you can do. Take the ferry, swim, or turn around.”

“The question is,” Parker said, “do we take them out, or do we ignore them?”

“It’s a public highway in the middle of the day,” McWhitney said. “Not a lot of traffic, but there’s some. It just makes more trouble to try to deal with them. And they’re not gonna want to try to mess with us either, not while we’re moving out here in the daylight.”

“What about on the ferry?”

“No privacy.” McWhitney shrugged, “I’ll stay with the van. There’s other people gonna stay in their cars, not go upstairs. They read their paper, do some work, I won’t be alone. You go find the blazer and get his keys.”

“A time is gonna come,” Parker said, “when we’ll have to deal with those people.”

“That’s the time,” McWhitney said, “they’ll be delivered into our hands. What?”

That last wasn’t directed to Parker, but to the voice in his ear, because after listening McWhitney laughed and said, “That’s very nice. You just make it up as you go along.”

Parker said, “She’s gonna move on them?” He didn’t like that idea. It would be better if they didn’t know about Sandra until and unless she was really needed.

But McWhitney said, “No. She wanted me to slow down again because she’s gonna accelerate out ahead of them to be in front when they board.”

Parker nodded. “That’s good.”

“Then,” McWhitney said, “we’ll see what trouble she can make.” Again he laughed. “I bet she can make a little,” he said.

11

At the ferry terminal, a large flat open space at the end of the North Fork of Long Island, facing south though the ferry would travel north, the drivers first paid their fares, and then the cars were lined up in rows on a large parking area with lanes painted on it. There they would wait for the southbound ferry to come in and unload its group of cars and foot passengers, before they’d be boarded in the order in which they’d arrived.

The van’s position was halfway down the third occupied lane. That lane filled up pretty fast, and then more cars came down on the right beside them, filling in the next lane. Out in the water, the large white-and-blue ferry could be seen slowly maneuvering itself toward the dock.

Into a silence, in the van, McWhitney suddenly said, “What?” Then, to Parker, he said, “She says to look over our shoulder.”

Parker tried to look back through the van’s rear window, but there was nothing to see except the front of the car tucked in close behind them. So he bent to the side until he could look in his outside mirror, and there, two cars behind them, was Sandra’s black Honda with its whip antennas. Behind it he could just see a black Chevy Suburban.

“She’s back there and so are they,” he said.

“I hate to be followed,” McWhitney said. “It makes me antsy.”

“We’ll tell them,” Parker said.

It was about fifteen minutes more before the ferry was loaded for the trip to Connecticut. Once everybody was aboard and the ferry was moving out of its slip into Gardiner’s Bay, Parker said, “I’ll find the guy now.”

“I’m keeping the doors locked,” McWhitney said. “No point being too carefree.”

Parker got out of the van and McWhitney clicked the door locked behind him. He made his way up the metal stairs to the upper deck, where there were lines at the refreshment stand. Big windows looked out onto the view of sea and sky, and there was bench seating both inside and out.

Parker didn’t see the bulky guy from last night, and he didn’t see Sandra, but looking through a side window he saw a maroon blazer out there, the guy strolling along the rail. When he stepped out, it was the same guy who’d led him back to Meany’s office at Cosmopolitan Beverages last week.

Parker said, “So here we are.”

“Here we are,” the guy agreed. Out here, he was smiling, relaxed. “I want to thank you,” he said. “You got me a day off and a nice jaunt on the ocean.”

“That’s fine,” Parker said, and looked around. He still didn’t see anybody else he knew.

The guy picked up on his tension. “Everything okay? Is it all right to give you the keys?”

“Yeah. Do it now.”

The guy pulled keys from his pocket and handed them to Parker, saying, “About the middle, on the left. It’s a Subaru Forester, green. Anything I should know about?”

“No. A couple of people are trying to deal themselves in. We’ll take care of it.”

“Frank would like his car back,” the guy said, and grinned again, this grin a little less relaxed. “And the other, too, of course.”

“It’s taken care of,” Parker said. “I gotta go. If they see me talking to you, they say, who’s that?”

The guy’s grin this time was self-confident. “They don’t wanna know.”

“Hold the thought,” Parker said, and went back inside.

Now he saw the bulky guy from last night, on line at the refreshment stand. Parker skirted the line without being seen, went on down to the cars, found the Forester, and unlocked his way in. On the backseat were two liquor cartons. He didn’t bother to look in them.

From here, the Chevy Suburban was almost parallel to him, two cars over, with Sandra’s Honda in front of it, and McWhitney in the van closer to the front of the ship. Parker put the key in the ignition, and waited.

There was a glitch in unloading the ferry in New London. The first cars got off all right, including McWhitney in the van, but then Sandra couldn’t seem to start the Honda. She ground the starter, and people behind her began to honk and shout and get out of their vehicles. Other lines of cars moved, but that one was stuck. When Parker drove off, the bulky guy and one other from the Suburban were pushing the Honda.

McWhitney had waited beside the road. He was laughing when Parker went by, and rolled in to follow him. They drove into town, found a supermarket, and Parker went to the rear of its parking lot. McWhitney stopped next to him, still laughing, and got out of the van to say, “She got them to help. You believe the balls on that woman?”

“Let’s do this fast,” Parker said. “We’ve got half an hour before the ferry goes back.”

As they started the transfer of the three Hefty bags and the two liquor cartons, McWhitney said, “I’ve been thinking about this. We’re still gonna have money in this van. Not the dirty two mil, the clean two hundred K.”

“That’s right,” Parker said.

“So they’ll still have something to go after,” McWhitney said. “So what I think, I don’t take the ferry back. You do and Sandra does, you give the beverage guy this Subaru and you travel with Sandra, come back together to my place.”

“It’ll take you five hours to come around,” Parker said, “Almost all the way back to the city, and then out onto the Island.”

“But they know this van,” McWhitney said, “And we rubbed their noses in it pretty good last night, so now they got an extra motivation. You know I’m not gonna skip out on you because I’m not gonna skip out on my bar. You’ll be there by five-thirty, I’ll be there by eight. And Sandra can keep in touch with me.”

“All right,” Parker said. “I’ll see you there.”

12

It was a shorter wait this time for Parker to board the ferry, driving the Forester up the ramp, following the hand signals of the ferry crew, coming to a stop very near the front of the boat. The three large Hefty bags filled most of the space behind him, one on the rear seat and two squeezed into the cargo area.

Once again he waited for the ferry to move away from the land and make its turn before he got out of the Forester, locked it, and headed for the stairs. He didn’t look for Sandra’s Honda yet, but would find it when he needed it.

Frank Meany’s man was promenading on the same side deck as last time. He looked relaxed enough to retire. Seeing Parker, he smiled and said, “Everything all right, your end?”

Handing him the car keys, Parker said, “About all you’re going to see in your rearview mirror is Hefty bags.”

“Frank loves Hefty bags,” the guy said. “Nice to see you again.”

Parker went back inside, and saw Sandra coming up the stairs. He went over to her and said, “I’m traveling with you.”

“Not yet,” she said. “I’m here for the ladies’. I’ll be right back.”

She went on to the restrooms, and Parker waited near a window in a spot where people coming up the stairs would face the other way. But none of the trio from the Suburban came up, and a few minutes later Sandra returned, waved to Parker, and the two of them went down the stairs to the cars, he saying, “Nelson didn’t like bringing the good money back on the boat with those other guys around, so he’s gonna drive.”

“That’ll take him forever.”

“He figures to get to his place by eight. We’ll wait for him there.”

“Okay, good,” she said, and pointed. “I’m over this way.”

“I’m not seeing the Suburban,” he said.

“What?” She looked around. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. They’ve gotta be here.”

“You go that way, I’ll go this way, but I don’t think so.”

They moved among the cars and met at the Honda. Looking across it at him, she said, “What are we gonna do?”

“First we get in the car.”

She unlocked them in, and when both doors were shut he said, “Call Nelson.”

“I can’t,” she said. “With the steel hull on this thing, I get no reception.”

“Go out on a deck.”

“It’s still no good.”

Parker looked at her. “You can’t call Nels till we get to Long Island?”

“I hate it as bad as you do,” she said.

He shook his head. “Over an hour before we can call him.”

“He’ll be all right,” she said. “He’s a big boy.”

“Yeah, he is,” Parker said. “And they’re three big boys.”

At Orient Point, once they were off the ferry, Sandra pulled onto the verge of the road, out of the flow of debarking cars, and called McWhitney. Parker watched her face, and saw that McWhitney wasn’t picking up.

Then she said, “I’m getting his voice mail. What the fuck, I might as well leave a message. Nelson, call me.” She broke the connection and said, “Shit. I needed that money.”

“They’re still out there,” Parker said. “They haven’t gone to ground anywhere, not yet. They’ve got to come back to the Island. If nothing else, they’ve got to give the car back.” Looking out the windshield, he said, “If we knew what the dealer was, we could be waiting for them.”

“Oh, well, I can do that part,” she said.

“You can?”

She gestured to the notepad she kept mounted on the top of the dashboard. “Any car I’m following, or I’m interested in, every time, I write down their plate number.”

Parker looked at it. “And you can get the dealer from that?”

“Sure, Keenan and I always cultivated cash-only friendships at the DMV. Hold on.”

From her bulky purse she drew a slender black book, opened it, and dialed a number. “Hi. Is Matt Devereaux there? Thanks.”

She waited. Beside them, the last of the cars from the ferry were trickling by.

“Hello? Hey, Matt, it’s Sandra Loscalzo, how you doing? Well, I’ve got a cute one here, if you could help me. It’s a dealer’s plate, so I’m not talking about the car this time, I’m talking about the dealer. Sure.” She reeled off the number, then also gave him her cell number, and hung up.

“He’ll call back in five minutes,” she said, and put the Honda in gear. “We might as well start. Wherever the dealer is, he isn’t gonna be this far out on the Island.”

Matt did call her back in five minutes, while they were still in the cluster of traffic from that ferry, everybody westbound on Route 25. “Keenan. Hey, Matt. That’s terrific. Say again.”

She nudged Parker and pointed at the pad on the dashboard. He picked up the small magnetized pen she kept there, and she said, “DiRienzo Chevrolet, Long Island Avenue, Deer Park.” She spelled “DiRienzo,” then said, “Thanks, Matt. I’ll catch up with you later. Roy? I haven’t seen him for a while.” Breaking the connection, she said, “Well, that’s true. Deer Park’s just a little beyond Bay Shore. Any point going there now?”

“Every point,” Parker said, “but not yet. We’ll go to that neighborhood, find a diner, get something to eat, get in position before eight.”

“What if they don’t bring it back till tomorrow?”

“They don’t want it any more,” Parker said, “and their friend at the dealer’s gonna get nervous if it stays out overnight.”

Sandra frowned out at the slow-moving traffic all around them. They wouldn’t get clear of this herd from the ferry for another half hour or more, when they reached the beginning of the Expressway. “You’re a strange guy to partner with,” she said.

“So are you.”

“Do me a favor. Don’t kill anybody.”

“We’ll see,” he said.

13

Half a dozen car dealers were clustered along both sides of the wide road in this neighborhood, all of them proclaiming, either by banner or by neon sign, open til 9! All the dealerships were lit up like football stadiums, and in that glare the sheets of glass and chrome they featured all sparkled like treasure chests. This was the heart of car country, servicing the after-work automotive needs of the bedroom communities.

At seven thirty-five, when Sandra drove down the road to see DIRIENZO writ large in neon on their side, she said, “What do you want to do?”

“Pull in. We’ll look at cars.”

There were three separate areas for cars at the DiRienzo lot: new, used, and the customers’. Sandra followed the signs and put the Honda in with the customer cars, then said, “Now I’m shopping with you. I need this to come to an end.”

He shook his head and got out, and she followed suit, and immediately a short clean young fellow in suit and tie appeared, smiled a greeting, and said, “You folks looking for a family sedan?”

Sandra’s smile was sweeter than his. “We’re just looking around.”

“Go right ahead,” he said, with a sweeping arm gesture that offered them the whole place.

“Thank you.”

“I’m Tim, I work here.” He produced a business card, which he handed to Sandra, who took it. “Take your time. If I can help you with anything, I’m right here.”

“Thank you.”

They walked away from him, and Sandra said, “Do we want a new family sedan or a used family sedan?”

“We want to get over near the building. I need to see how they’re going to come in, what they’ll do.”

The building was broad, one tall story high, the front mostly wide expanses of plate glass, the rest a neutral gray concrete. A few of the most special cars were given their own spaces on the gleaming floor of the inside showroom, with desks and cubicles and closed-off offices behind. On the right side of the building, farther back than the plate glass, the gray concrete wall continued, with three large overhead doors spaced along the way, all of them at the moment shut.

Parker and Sandra saw that, then moved on past the front of the building, Parker saying, “They’ll bring it in there, by the doors. Their own car will be back with the customer parking. We’ll see what happens when they make the transfer.”

“We’ve got at least half an hour to wait,” she said. “What do we do in the meantime?”

“Look at cars.”

It was more like fifty minutes, and twice in that time they could see the fellow who’d first greeted them look over in their direction, frowning. But he never quite made the move to find out what they were up to.

Sandra said, “Is that it?”

It was. They were walking among the new cars, and the Suburban had to circle around that area to get to the side entrances. They angled to move toward where it would finish up, and as it drove by them Sandra said, “That’s weird.”

Parker had been looking the other way, not wanting the bulky guy from last night to see and recognize him, but now he turned back, watched the Suburban move slowly among the cars and customers, and said, “What’s weird?”

“Only the driver in front, three others in back. What would they do that for?”

Ahead, the Suburban made the turn to go around the corner of the building, putting itself into profile, and Parker could see the middle man of the three in back. “It’s Nelson,” he said.

“My God,” she said, staring, “it is! Did he go over to them?”

“No.”

“Well, why lug him around?”

The Suburban stopped in front of the middle overhead door as another suited salesman, a little older, smiling broadly and making gestures of greeting, came around toward it from the front entrance. The driver stepped out to the macadam. The three in the backseat stayed in the car.

“I’ll tell you why,” Parker said. “Oscar Sidd told them it was going to be two million dollars of poisoned money. They opened the boxes and they only found two hundred thousand. They think it’s the same money, and they want to know where the rest of it is.”

Sandra stared toward McWhitney. “He’s their prisoner in there.”

“And that’s why he’s alive.”

Across the way, the driver and the salesman had shaken hands, and now the driver was explaining something. The salesman looked toward the Suburban’s backseat, then bowed his head and seriously listened. The driver, finished, patted his arm and walked away toward the customer parking area. The salesman stood waiting, hands clasped in front of himself, like an usher at a wedding.

Parker, watching the Suburban, said, “Go get your car, bring it here.”

“I’m better as a spectator,” she said, “than a participant.”

“Not this time. Do it.”

She went away and the salesman conferred with a guy in work clothes, who’d come out a side door and who now bent down to start removing the front license plate.

Now a white Buick Terrazza came out of customer parking and angled over to stop beside the Suburban. Parker moved in closer as the two in back, one of them the bulky guy from last night, hustled McWhitney out of the backseat of the Suburban, wanting to move him quickly and smoothly across to the backseat of the Terrazza.

It didn’t happen. Because there were so many other people around, and so much bright light was shining down, they couldn’t grasp him as they might have liked. In that instant when all three men were between cars, the two on the outside crowding McWhitney but not quite touching him, he suddenly swept his bent left arm up and back, the elbow smashing into the cheek of the guy on that side, who staggered back into the side of the Suburban and slid sideways to the ground, unmoving.

While the bulky guy on the right was still figuring out a reaction, McWhitney used the same cocked left arm to drive a straight hook into his face, while his right hand lunged inside the guy’s jacket.

Parker trotted forward, the Bobcat in his hand inside his pocket. The driver, with his Terrazza between him and the action, drew a pistol and yelled at McWhitney, “Hold it! Hold it!” He fired the pistol, not to hit anybody but to attract attention, which he did, from everywhere on the lot.

“Not the model!” yelled the salesman. “Not the model!” Behind him the workman stood, bewildered, the front license plate and a screwdriver in his hands. People everywhere on the lot were craning their necks, trying to see what was going on.

McWhitney was having trouble with the bulky guy. The two of them were struggling over the gun, still half in the guy’s jacket pocket.

Parker knew he was too far away with this little gun, but he aimed and fired the Bobcat, then hurried forward again. He almost missed completely, but he saw it sting the bulky guy’s left ear, making him first lose his concentration on McWhitney and then lose the gun.

It was the same one Parker had taken from him last night, which McWhitney had put in the glove compartment of the van. Now McWhitney clubbed the guy with it and, as he fell, stooped and fired one shot through both backseat windows of the Terrazza and into the driver, who dropped backward, his own gun skittering away.

“NOT THE MODEL!”

McWhitney shoved the salesman back into the workman, and both fell down, as he jumped behind the wheel of the Suburban. He had to back around the Terrazza to get away from the building, as Sandra in the Honda stopped beside Parker, who slid aboard. The two men McWhitney had clubbed were both moving; the one he’d shot was not.

With people all around yelling and waving their arms and jumping out of the way, McWhitney slashed through the lot and bumped out to the roadway, forcing a place for himself in among the traffic already there. Demurely, Sandra and the Honda trailed after.

14

Traffic on this commercial road, headed straight south across the Island, was fairly heavy, which meant no one could get much of an edge. Parker could see the black Suburban most of a long block ahead of them, seven or eight cars between, with no way to close the gap. Then the Suburban went through a yellow light, the traffic behind it stopped, and Parker watched the Suburban roll on out of sight.

Was there any pursuit? He twisted around to look out the Honda’s rear window just in time to see the Terrazza make the left at the intersection behind them, the lack of glass in its back side window obvious even at this distance. “They’re up,” he said.

Sandra looked in her mirror, but too late. “Who’s up?”

“Somebody in the Buick. One or both of those guys are still in play.”

“But they turned off?”

“They know this part of the Island, and they know where McWhitney’s headed. They’ll get there first.”

“And we’re too far back to let him know.”

“We’ll just go to his place and see what happens,”

McW and its entire block were dark, though there were lights on in some of the apartments above the stores. There was no traffic and no pedestrians in this part of Bay Shore at nine o’clock on a Tuesday night. But a black Suburban with a missing front license plate was parked in front of the bar. The white Buick Terrazza was nowhere in sight, but if they’d gotten here before McWhitney they would have tucked it away somewhere.

Parker and Sandra left the Honda and went over to McW. The green shade was pulled down over the glass of the entrance door and the CLOSED sign was in place. Deeper in the bar, the faint nightlights were lit, but that was all.

Parker listened at the door, but heard nothing. They had to be inside there, but somewhere toward the back.

He turned to her. “You got lockpicking tools?”

“It would take a while,” Sandra said, looking at the door. “And what if somebody comes along?”

“Not for here, for the back,” Parker nodded at the alley beside the building. “And we’ll need a flashlight.”

“Can do.”

They went back to her car, and from the toolbox next to the accelerator she removed a black felt bag of locksmith’s tools, plus a narrow black flashlight.

Parker said, “You know how to use those?”

“I took a course,” she said. “It’s standard training in my business. Show me the door.”

Parker led the way down the alley and around to the back, where the pickup truck could barely be made out in the thick darkness. Faint illumination from the sky merely made masses of lighter or darker black.

“I’ll hold the light,” he said. “The door’s over here.”

He held the flashlight with fingers folded over its glass, switched on the light, then separated his fingers just enough to let them see what they needed to see. Sandra went down to one knee and studied the lock, then grunted in satisfaction, and opened the felt bag on the stone at her feet. Then she looked up. “What’s the other side of this?”

“His bedroom. They’re most likely farther to the front, the living room. More comfortable.”

“Not for Nelson,” she said, and went to work with the picks from the felt bag.

It took her nearly four minutes, and at one point she stopped, sat back on her heels, and said, “I am rusty, I must admit. I took that course a while ago.”

“Can you get it?”

“Oh, sure. I’m just not as fast as I used to be.”

She bent to the lock again, Parker keeping the narrow band of light on her tools, and at last, with a slight click, the door popped a quarter inch toward her. That was the other part of the fire code: exit doors had to open outward.

While she put her tools away, Parker pulled the door a little farther open, pocketed the flashlight, put the Bobcat in his hand, and eased through. Sandra rose, put the felt bag in her pocket, brushed the knees of her slacks, and followed. Now her own pistol was in her hand.

Voices sounded, and then a strained and painful grunt. The bedroom door, opposite them, was partly open, showing one side of the kitchen, the room illuminated only by the lights and clocks on the appliances. The sounds came from beyond that, the living room.

Parker went first, silently crossing the room toward the kitchen doorway. Sandra followed, just behind him and to his right, so that she and her pistol had a clear view in front.

They stepped through into the kitchen. The sounds came from the living room, lit up beyond the next doorway, but only one vacant corner of it visible from here. Parker skirted the table in the middle of the room, and made for that doorway.

“You cocksucker, you make us mad, we won’t split with you.” It was the bulky guy’s voice.

“Yeah.” A second man, probably the other one in the Buick.

More sounds of beating, and then the bulky guy, exasperated, said, “We’re trying to be decent, you son of a bitch. You’re gonna tell us, and what if we’re mad at you then?”

There was no talk for a few seconds, only the other sounds, and then the bulky guy said, “Now what?”

“He passed out.”

“Get some water from the kitchen, throw it on him.”

Parker gestured for Sandra to stay back, and stood beside the doorway. The Bobcat was too small to hold by the barrel and use the butt as a club, so he simply raised it above his head with the butt extending just a little way below his fingers. When the other one came through the doorway, Parker clubbed straight down at his head, meaning to next step into the doorway and shoot the bulky guy.

But it didn’t work. The Bobcat was an inefficient club, and his own fingers cushioned the blow. Instead of dropping down and away, leaving the doorway cleared for Parker, he lurched and fell leftward, toward Parker, who had to push him away with his left hand and club again with his right, this time backhanded, scraping the butt across the bridge of his nose.

The guy crashed to the floor, at last out of the way, but when Parker took a quick look into the living room the moment was gone. McWhitney was slumped in a chair from the kitchen, tied to the chair with what looked like extension cords. The bulky guy was out of sight. Was he in some part of the living room Parker couldn’t see, or farther away, in the bar?

The guy on the floor was dazed, but moving. “Mike!” he called. “Mike!”

“Who the hell is it?” The question came from the corner of the living room down to the right of the doorway.

The one on his back on the floor skittered away until his head hit the stove, while he called, “It’s the guy killed Oscar!”

“And who else?”

“Some woman.”

Parker moved along the kitchen wall toward the spot where Mike would be just on the other side.

“Mike! He’s gonna shoot through the wall!”

Parker looked at him. “I don’t need you alive,” he said.

The guy on the floor lifted his hands, offering a deal. “We can all share,” he said. “That’s what we were trying to tell your pal there.”

Sandra said, “Make him come over here.”

Parker nodded. “You heard her.”

“No,” the guy said.

“You go over there, you live,” Parker told him. “You stay where you are, you die.”

The guy started to roll over.

“No,” Parker said. “You can move on your back. You can get there.” Over his shoulder to Sandra, he said, “This is taking too long.”

She said, “Don’t kill anybody unless you have to.”

“I think I have to,” Parker said.

“Mike!” cried the guy on the floor. “Mike! What the hell are you doing?”

That was a good question. Parker went to the doorway, flashed a quick look through, then had to duck back again when Mike fired a fast shot at him, very loud in this enclosed space, the bullet smacking into the opposite wall. But in that second what he saw was that Mike had pulled the extension cords off McWhitney, and had the groggy McWhitney sagging on his feet with Mike’s left arm around him to hold him as a shield.

Parker looked again and Mike was dragging McWhitney backward toward the door to the bar. He didn’t waste a shot in Parker’s direction this time, but called, “You come through this door, you’re dead,” then backed through the doorway, shoved McWhitney onto the floor on this side of it, and slammed the door shut.

Parker turned on the one on the floor. “The money?”

Now that Mike had quit him, the guy was trying to figure out how to change sides, “in the bar,” he said. “He carried the boxes in before we jumped him.”

Parker turned to Sandra. “You let this thing move,” he told her, “I’ll kill you.”

“I’ll kneecap him twice,” Sandra offered.

But Parker was already on his way, back through the bedroom and out the door to the darkness. He found his way down the alley to the street, turned toward the bar, and its door was propped open, Mike just carrying the first carton of money out, in both arms.

Parker stepped forward and pushed the barrel of the Bobcat into Mike’s breadbasket. He fired once, and there was very little noise. “It works,” he said, and Mike, eyes and mouth open, darkness closing in, fell down, and back into the bar. Parker kicked his legs out of the way, pulled the liquor carton full of money back inside, and shut and relocked the door.

Going through the bar to the apartment, he stopped in the living room to pick up the extension cords Mike had used to truss McWhitney and brought them to the bedroom, where nothing had changed. Tossing the extension cords onto the floor next to the guy, Parker said to Sandra, “Tie him up. Let’s get this over with.”

Sandra put her pistol away. “On your stomach. Hands behind your back.” As he did so, and she went to one knee beside him, she said to Parker, “What about the other one?”

“He wasn’t so lucky.”

“Jeeziz,” said the guy on the floor.

“Stay lucky,” Sandra advised him. When she was satisfied he wasn’t going anywhere, she stood and said, “What now?”

“Let’s see what Nels looks like.”

He didn’t look good, but he looked alive, and even groggily awake. The two guys working him over had been eager but not professional, which meant they could bruise him and make him hurt, but couldn’t do more permanent damage unless they accidentally killed him. For instance, he still had all his fingernails.

Parker lifted him to his feet, saying, “Can you walk?”

“Uuhh. Where...”

With Parker’s help, McWhitney walked slowly toward the bedroom, as Parker told him, “One of them’s dead in the bar, the other one’s alive right there. Tomorrow, you can deal with them both. Right now, you lie down. Sandra and me’ll split the money and get out of here.”

He helped McWhitney to lie back on the bed, then said to Sandra, “If we do this right, you can get me to Claire’s place by two in the morning.”

“What a good person I am,” she said.

“If you leave me here,” the guy on the floor said, “he’ll kill me tomorrow morning.”

Parker looked at him. “So you’ve still got tonight,” he said.