Firebreak

1

Parker changed planes at O'Hare, called Wiss from there to pick him up later in Great Falls, and then walked toward his next terminal. Abruptly he stopped, in the pedestrian traffic, to look in at an open-faced snack bar beside the corridor. On a television set behind the bar was a picture of Larry Lloyd.

Parker stepped closer, but he couldn't hear what was being said behind that picture. It was a mug shot, a few years old, head-on to the camera, with the usual look of a mug shot; urgent, but defeated. Then it was replaced by a picture of a burning apartment house.

Farther along the corridor was a newsstand. There was nothing about Lloyd in the New York Times or USA Today, but an extensive piece in the Boston Globe. Parker bought it, and read about Lloyd on the next plane.

It was the emotional thing again. The guy who'd

screwed Lloyd had got an early release, and that tipped him over the edge. But all the way over this time; no more playing computer games, pretending to be here when you're there. There was no way to cover these tracks.

What would Lloyd do? Parker didn't think he was the suicidal type, he was too self-righteous for that. He couldn't leave the country, and he had no history as a lamster. There was already a reward posted, from somebody called George Carew, the brother-in-law that Lloyd's enemy and victim had been released to. It was only five thousand so far, but Carew was rich, and would up the ante if he had to, though he probably wouldn't have to.

Where would Lloyd turn? To somebody he'd known on the inside? Almost any one of them would trade him in for five thousand without thinking twice.

What did that mean for the heist? Could they get in without Lloyd running interference on the computer? If they had to just smash in, noisy and direct, that wouldn't be any good, because it would leave them with just the one exit, back down the private road to the state highway. They couldn't repeat Elkins' and Wiss's stunt of going up over the mountain into Canada, because this time the law would know about that route.

When Parker got off the plane in Great Falls, he was thinking the job was dead and the best thing for Wiss and Elkins to do was whack their former partners to keep from getting sold. Wiss waited for him outside, turning away as soon as he saw Parker, headed off for the short-term parking, but he didn't walk like a man with a sudden new set of troubles. Following, Parker wondered if maybe Wiss didn't know about Lloyd yet.

But he did. When Parker joined him in the car, a rental Taurus, he said, "You heard about Lloyd?"

Wiss grinned. "I sure did. From Larry himself."

"He came here?"

"He was already here when you called. I didn't want to say anything on the phone."

"What's the story?"

"He doesn't want to play footsie any more." Wiss seemed calm about it, driving them up route 87 toward Havre, but Parker had noted before that Wiss had taken a kind of mentor shine to Lloyd; maybe not a good thing.

Hunting season would start soon, and the road was dotted with SUVs full of guys wearing orange and red. Driving among them, looking like any other hunter, but not yet changed out of dark blue, Wiss said, "He saw his chance, deal with the guy messed him up, then forget the past, come out here. He figured to use his share of this thing to set himself up as Mister New."

"Not everybody can do that," Parker said.

"Oh, I know." Wiss grinned, driving around a little old lady doing her grocery shopping before hunting season started. "I couldn't, for one. But I think Larry could. Except now we got this complication."

Parker said, "Your old partners."

Wiss laughed, but shook his head. "I know what you mean, I keep expecting them to show up, but they're not as fucked over as Larry. If they've got a shot at keeping the straight world, they'll take it. Not that they can't show up, when you least want them."

Parker shrugged the ex-partners away, saying, "What's the complication?"

"Yesterday," Wiss told him, "the lodge filled up with law. Federal first, ATF, then state, then county."

"What the hell for?"

Wiss shook his head, but couldn't keep down a grin. He was like somebody who'd made a bad-news prediction, not wanting it to come true, and now it has, so he wins by being right but he loses by being in the middle of the bad news. He said, "It's the firebreak thing again. Remember, when we first described this setup, we said it was a firebreak."

"I remember."

"We went in the first time," Wiss explained again, "but we didn't get what we went in for, so then they upgraded their security, made it tougher."

"You said law."

'That's the other part of the firebreak," Wiss told him. 'The robbery attracted attention, it made somebody somewhere in law enforcement think there was something more in there than Paxton Marino was talking about. Let me tell you what happened."

"Go ahead."

'Those three paintings we recognized, when we went into the secret rooms," Wiss said, "they were a special order, we told you."

"Yeah."

'The customer was an art dealer down in Dallas named Horace Griffith," Wiss said. "We dealt with him before, he was always okay. This time it was to grab these three special pictures from this traveling museum show, a special order from a customer of his. He didn't say who his customer was, but we didn't care."

"Paxton Marino."

"Sure. Yesterday, Griffith shows up at the lodge with a bunch of empty wooden crates, just the right size to carry paintings."

"I get it," Parker said. 'That's your firebreak again. Now they're gonna move the stuff."

"But they don't get a chance," Wiss told him. "Right after Griffith gets there the place fills up with ATF, maybe thirty, forty of them, you'd think they're after terrorists."

"But they're not."

"When Larry told us, we said, what are they doing there, and he said, They're looking for our paintings.'" Wiss laughed. "Is that a pisser? They're looking for our paintings. Larry's gonna be okay, Parker."

That didn't matter, not now. "But there isn't a job any more," Parker said, meaning, if the job did still exist, they'd have to think very hard, should Lloyd still exist.

"We don't know yet," Wiss said. "The general feeling is, let's stick around, see what happens next."

"Until when?"

"Until the dust settles." Wiss shrugged. "Who knows, maybe they'll truck the pictures outa there, we can hijack them on the road, we're the only ones know what and where they are."

"Possible," Parker agreed.

"At this point," Wiss said, "everything's possible. Listen, I forgot to ask. Did you deal with that problem?"

'Yes," Parker said.