The Green Eagle Score

2

Claire was lying face up on her chaise longue, arms at her sides, eyes closed, one knee raised. Her suit was yellow and two-piece, her skin was tanning nicely, her face was made anonymously beautiful by her sunglasses, and the men watching her looked at Parker with disgust when he sat down beside her and said, “I’m back.”

She opened one eye, nodded, and closed it again. “He’s a funny-looking little man.”

“His ideas are funny too.”

“Don’t tell me,” she said, and her body seemed to have tensed slightly, without actually moving.

“I won’t tell you,” Parker said. Claire’s one involvement in a heist had been too much for her, and now they had a deal; she would never ask him what he was working on, and he would never volunteer to tell her. It was a perfect arrangement for both of them.

She said, after a minute, “Are you going away?”

“I don’t know yet.” He put his towel down beside him on the chaise longue and said, “I’m going in and get wet.”

“I’ve had enough for a while. I’ll stay in the sun.”

He walked down across the sloping hot sand to the water. Two tanned women in white bathing-suits, coming out together, pulling off their bathing-caps and shaking out blonde hair, looked at Parker through their lashes, trying to upstage one another, but he ignored them both. There was a time when women had been a brief antidote for the itch to work, but now that he had Claire the quick anonymous lay was no longer necessary. He walked on past them and into the water, and when it was thigh-deep he stretched forward into a breaking wave, rode the trough and up the face of the next one, and rolled over to coast with the motion of the sea.

He kept one eye on the beach, not wanting to lose his orientation. The ocean here could turn bad all at once, and he wanted always to know where land was. Just yesterday a young couple had been caught in some kind of backwash, the waves refusing to ride them in but instead keeping them imprisoned out there, slowly pulling them away until they’d had to call for help, and fresher swimmers had gone out after them and towed them in to where they could stand. Parker respected the sea, as he respected any powerful opponent, and was in no hurry to challenge it.

Was he going to join Fusco in challenging the United States Air Force? On the face of it it didn’t seem sensible, but every job seemed impossible before it was done. This one was being presented to him by a professional he’d known for years, so even though Fusco was recently out of prison Parker had to think about his proposition, he couldn’t dismiss it out of hand.

And maybe Fusco really did have something. He was still a pro, with a pro’s eye and a pro’s judgment, so maybe up there in upstate New York with the ex-wife and the payroll clerk and the United States Air Force there was a workable job to be done after all.

And if it could be, if the details could be found, the right string put together, all the dangers thought of and defended against, if they really could walk into that Air Force base and walk out with the payroll, what a sweet one that would be.

It wouldn’t cost anything to take a look. If it didn’t feel right he didn’t have to stay. Claire would be here, he could come back, rest again, relax again, wait again for somebody to come along with an offer that sounded better.

All right. He rolled over, drifted lazily in to shore, walked up the beach in the sunlight to where Claire was lying now on her stomach, propped up on her elbows as she read a paperback book.

Parker sat down beside her, put his sunglasses on, leaned back on his chaise longue with his face in the sun, and said, ”I’m going away for a while.”

Still looking at the book, she said, “I knew.”

“It may just be for a day or two. If I’m not back in two days figure me to be gone for a couple weeks at least.”

“Or maybe for ever,” she said.

He looked at her, but her eyes were still on the book. He said, “I’m not walking out on you.”

“Maybe not on purpose,” she said. “I’ve known men like you before.”

She might have been talking about her airline pilot husband, who wound up smeared like raspberry jam across some mountaintop. Parker didn’t like the analogy.

“You’ve never known anybody like me before,” he said. “I only walk where the ice is thick.”

“You walk on ice,” she said. “That’s what I mean.”

“That’s a surprise? You knew that all along.”

“I know.”

“Then why this?”

She turned her head, looked at him through the green lenses of her glasses. After a minute she shook her head and looked back at the book. “I don’t know. No reason.”

“All right.” He faced front again and said, “The room’ll be paid for a month. If I’m not back by then, there’s a package in the hotel safe, enough to carry you for a while.”

“If you’re not back in a month, I shouldn’t wait any more, is that it?”

“Right.”

“You won’t be contacting me at all.”

“Probably not. I might, if there’s a reason, but I won’t just to say hello the weather’s fine.”

“I know,” she said.

Parker got to his feet. “Don’t get too much sun.”

“I’ll be going in in a while,” she said.

Parker took his towel and walked across the sand to the hotel. He looked back when he reached the door, but Claire wasn’t looking at him. Her head was down on the book now, and her hands were covering her face. Parker went on into the hotel.