The Green Eagle Score

1

Parker looked in at the beach and there was a guy in a black suit standing there, surrounded by all the bodies in bathing-suits. He was standing near Parker’s gear, not facing anywhere in particular, and he looked like a rip in the picture. The hotel loomed up behind him, white and windowed, the Puerto Rican sun beat down, the sea foamed white on the beach, and he stood there like a homesick mortician.

Parker knew him. His name was Fusco.

Parker rolled over and called to Claire, a wave away, “I’m going in.”

“Why?” But then she looked toward the beach, and didn’t need an answer. She paddled over near Parker and said, “My God, he’s inconspicuous. Who is he?”

“Business, maybe. You can stick around down here.” He knew she wouldn’t want to hear about business.

“I’ll work on my tan,” she said. “Will you come back?”

“Yes. Don’t get too much sun.”

He let the long waves glide him in toward the beach, and when he waded out onto the sand Fusco was gone. He walked up to his chaise longue, toweled himself dry, slipped into his sandals, draped the towel around his shoulders, and crossed the sand to the rear entrance of the hotel. He was a big man, blocky, with a big frame and an efficient graceless way of moving.

It took him a second to adjust to the darkness inside the door. He stood on the carpet until he could see, then walked down the long corridor to the hotel lobby. As he crossed the lobby Fusco got up from one of the black leather chairs and strolled obliquely across Parker’s route and into the cocktail lounge. Parker went on to the elevator, rode up to seven and went down the hall to his room. The air conditioning was on and the room was as cold as a piece of tile. Parker called room service, ordered tonic and ice, and got dressed. Then he stood at the window, looking down at the tourists walking along Ashford Avenue, until the knock sounded at his door.

It was the tonic and ice. He signed for it, got a glass from the bathroom and the gin from the dresser, and made himself a drink.

The glass was half-empty before Fusco arrived. Parker opened to his knock and Fusco came in saying, “Christ, it gets hot down here.”

“That’s what it’s for.” Parker shut the door. “Make yourself a drink.”

“What’s that, gin? I can’t touch it.” Fusco shook his head and patted his stomach. “It’s a funny thing,” he said. “Since I got out I can’t touch the hard stuff, it makes me double right up.”

There was nothing to say to that. Parker went over to the chair by the window and sat down.

Fusco said, “Maybe some ice water. Okay?”

“Go ahead.”

Fusco was medium height and very thin. His face was lined as though he worried a lot. Parker hadn’t seen him in ten years, but he didn’t seem to have aged at all. Having been inside had affected his stomach, and maybe was making him act so hesitant, but it hadn’t been bad for his appearance.

Parker waited while Fusco built himself a glass of ice water, and then he said, “You could of tried looking like a tourist.”

Fusco frowned like a man worried about constipation, his forehead laddering, and said, “Christ, Parker, not me. I put them Bermuda shorts on, hang a camera around my neck, I look like a pickpocket headed for Aqueduct. I got to stay who I am.”

Parker shrugged. “Anyway, you’re here.”

“I got the address from Handy.”

That was unnecessary to have said; Handy McKay was the only one Parker had given the address to. Parker had some of his drink and waited.

Fusco said. “I don’t like letters through the mails, you know? And telephone calls when it’s a complicated thing like this. So I figured I’d come down myself, personally, tell you about it.”

Parker sat there and waited to be told.

Fusco looked worried again. “Handy said you were looking for work. I wouldn’t of come down otherwise.”

Fusco had to have some kind of reassurance, or he’d never get to the point. Parker said, “I’m available.”

Fusco flashed a brief nervous smile of relief. “That’s good,” he said. “I’m glad.” But then he didn’t say anything more.

Parker prodded a little, saying, “You’ve got something on?”

“Right. You remember that wife I had? Ellen?”

Parker vaguely remembered hearing that Fusco had married, but it had been only five or six years ago, long since Parker’s last meeting with him. But it was simpler to nod and say, “Yeah, I remember.”

“I don’t know if you ever met her—”

“I didn’t.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so. Anyway, she divorced me when I got sent up. A little over three years ago. You know I got a daughter?”

Parker shook his head, not giving a damn. “I didn’t know that,” he said.

“Three years old,” Fusco said. “Four in July.”

Afraid Fusco was going to come out with baby pictures in a minute, Parker said, “What’s this got to do with the job?”

“I’m getting to it,” Fusco promised. “Ellen, now, after she divorced me she went back home to Monequois, that’s a little town in upstate New York, near the border. You know, the Canada border.”

Parker nodded, holding his impatience in check. The only thing to do with these run-off-at-the-mouth people was wait them out, they’d get it all said sooner or later. Try to rush them and they’d just get derailed and leave out half the things you should know.

“She lived with her folks for a while,” Fusco said, “but I guess they gave her a bad time. About me, or something. So she went off on her own and got a job at a bar outside of town there. See, there’s this Air Force base there, it’s huge, and across the road from the gate there’s all these bars, you know?”

Parker nodded.

Fusco said, “After a while she started shacking up with one of the guys from the base. Stan Devers, his name is. What the hell, I don’t blame her. She’s divorced in the first place, and I’m in stir, so why not?”

Where was all this leading? Parker couldn’t see a job anywhere in the story yet, and it was spreading out wider and wider all the time, getting more and more soap opera. Parker said, “What’s the point of all this?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” Fusco said. “You got to understand the background, is all.”

Parker shrugged. “All right, Let’s hear the background.”

“The main thing,” Fusco said, “is this guy Stan Devers. He’s just a kid, you know, maybe twenty-three, twenty-four. Younger than Ellen, you know? But he’s okay. When I first got out, and went up to see Ellen and the kid, and there’s all these uniforms and things in the closet, I got mad, you know? Naturally. Also I was a little short, I didn’t have nothing stashed away when I took the rap. So I tried to lean a little on this Devers kid, and he was a real surprise. He’s a sharp kid, he knows his way around. He’s never been in on anything like our stuff, you know, but he’s cool.”

“You couldn’t badger-game him, you mean.”

Fusco shrugged, not seeing any humor in it. “It was worth a try,” he said, “but with Stan it wouldn’t work out. But we got to know each other, you know? Sit around, have a Coke or whatever, throw a little bull. He’s a good kid.”

Parker said, “So now you’re buddies. And he’s got an idea for a heist.”

“It was my idea,” Fusco said. “He wasn’t sure at first but I talked him into it and now he’s a hundred per cent. And I know what you’re thinking about amateurs, but not in this case. Stan’s as good as half the pros in the business.”

Parker said, “Half the pros in the business are in the big house.”

“You’ll have to see the kid for yourself,” Fusco said. “If you don’t think you can work with him, naturally you don’t stick around. But like I told him, what we need is an organizer. Neither of us could set this thing up right, and I don’t ever again go into a job that isn’t set up right. That’s what happened the last time, and it isn’t going to happen again. I told Stan I’d try to get you, I told him you were the best blueprinter in the business. He’s the one sprang me for me flying down here, a hundred twenty bucks. He’s a good kid, and he’s serious, and this thing can work.”

Parker said, “Why do you need him?”

“He’s the inside on the thing,” Fusco explained earnestly. “He’s a clerk in the base finance office, and—”

“Wait a second. The base finance office?”

Talking fast, Fusco said, “Parker, they got five thousand men on that base, they pay twice a month, they pay cash, the whole thing’s—”

Parker broke in, saying, “Wait a while. This is the job you came down here to offer me? Go steal an army payroll right off the post?”

“It isn’t Army, Parker, it’s Air Force. And besides, they—”

“What do you mean it isn’t Army? Have they got a fence around the post?”

“Base, they call it a base.”

“Have they got a fence around it? And gates? And armed sentries on the gates?”

“Parker, it can be done. There’s better than four hundred grand in there, Parker, twice a month, ours for the taking.”

“Yours for the taking,” Parker told him. “I don’t take money away from five thousand armed men.”

“It isn’t five thousand armed men, Parker. Christ, you know what Stan calls the Air Force? The saluting civil service, he says. You know what they carry on their practice alerts? Empty carbines. They don’t even get bullets, for Christ’s sake.”

“Somebody’s got bullets,” Parker told him. “Somewhere on that post, base, whatever they call it, somewhere there’s somebody doesn’t want us to take that four hundred grand. I’ll leave that somebody alone.”

“Parker, we got an inside man!”

“That’s right. So if we do go in, and we do get back out again with the cash, who’s the first guy the law talks to? Your pal.”

“I told you,” Fusco said urgently, “Stan’s okay. He’d carry it off, Parker, I know he would.”

“You don’t know anything about him,” Parker said, “until he’s gone through it. That’s what the word amateur is for. It means somebody you don’t know about because he hasn’t gone through it before and you can’t tell what a guy’s going to do until he’s done it once.”

Fusco spread his hands. “Parker, what can I say? I’m convinced.”

Parker looked at him. Fusco was convinced, all right, but what did it mean? Was it the pro in him that was convinced, or was he locked into the kind of desperation that hits a lot of men, even the good solid pros, when they first make the street after a stretch on the inside? Lack of money has something to do with it, because most men fresh from stir have spent whatever they used to have on lawyers, but there’s also the need they feel to get back on the horse, to prove to themselves they can still operate, the fall they took was nothing but a fluke, a one-in-a-million shot that can’t possibly happen again. So they get impatient and they take the first thing that comes their way and they wind up back inside.

But Parker wasn’t impatient. He had a stake, and reserves stashed here and there, and no need to prove anything to himself, and he could wait till the right thing came along. His reserve fund wasn’t deep enough to satisfy him, particularly with Claire along now, and that’s why he was looking for work, but the search had in it no overtones of urgency.

Claire was responsible for a lot of the absence of urgency. For the last few years before her, he’d been finding himself moving more and more in the direction of work-for-work’s sake, work to relieve the boredom of being alive and not involved in a job, and that was a habit of mind just as dangerous as the ex-con’s desperation. It was on a job that he’d taken in spite of knowing it was bad, a job set up like this one of Fusco’s by a recent ex-con and an amateur inside man, that he’d met Claire. The job had gone sour in a lot of different ways, but at least out of it he’d gotten her, and calmness, and the ability to look at this thing Fusco was offering him, and decide whether or not it was something he wanted to get involved in.

Parker finished his drink, got to his feet, walked over to where the ice and gin were on the dresser, and made himself another. When he sat down again he said, “Tell me about your inside man.”

“A kid,” Fusco said. “Maybe twenty-four. College boy. Got kicked out of ROTC for some reason, that’s why he’s an enlisted man. Works in the finance office, clerk there.”

“He’s got keys?”

“Sure. He isn’t supposed to, you know, but he got himself a set.”

“Who knows he has them?”

“Me and Ellen. Now you.”

Parker shook his head. “What about his buddies on the base?”

“He ain’t that kind,” said Fusco. “He’s a loner, Parker. He’s got a couple buddies he drinks with sometimes, but he wouldn’t tell them nothing.”

“You sure? Maybe he wants them in on it.”

“Hell, no.” Fusco was very emphatic. “Parker, I tell you the kid’s sharp, he knows you get professionals to do a professional job. He already told me, the string we put together doesn’t look good we can forget it, he’s out.”

Parker said, “What about when the law leans on him afterward? They will, you know.”

“He’ll keep his head.”

“How do you know?”

Fusco made vague hand movements. “Because I know the kid. You’ll know it yourself, when you see him.”

“It doesn’t necessarily kill the job if we have to do it the other way,” Parker reminded him.

Fusco was too far inside his own ideas to get what Parker meant. He said, “What other way?”

“If we have to lose the kid when the job’s over.”

“You mean, bump him?” Fusco seemed really shocked. “Christ, Parker, I told you he’s okay.”

“Any record?”

“I don’t think so. He’s only a kid.”

“Kids can have records.”

“You’ll have to ask him, I don’t know.”

Parker shrugged, said, “All right, let it go. What about this ex-woman of yours?”

“Ellen? What about her?”

“She’s in on it, isn’t she?”

“Sure,” said Fusco, throwing it away, as though he didn’t know why Parker would bring it up at all. “She knows about it, if that’s what you mean.”

“Does she sit in, or just kibitz?”

“Oh, no,” Fusco said, “Ellen wouldn’t want to work. But it’s okay her knowing. What the hell, she used to be with me, she knew all about everything I worked. She’s reliable, guaranteed.”

“What’s the set-up between you and her?”

Fusco shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “Ellen don’t want me back, so that’s the way it is. She’s seeing some headshrinker, she’s got it all doped out, we shouldn’t of got married in the first place, it’s nobody’s fault, nobody should get mad at nobody.”

“And between you and Devers?”

“I got no jealousy, Parker. You know me better than that.”

“That’s you. How does he act, you, the ex-husband, hanging around?”

Fusco shrugged. “He’s cool. What the hell, he knows the score, he knows I’m not trying to freeze him out.”

“All right. Tell me about this base. You say it’s Air Force.”

“Yeah.” Fusco leaned forward, elbows on knees, expression earnest and intent. “It’s some kind of training base, it’s all schools. They get a big turnover of people, most of them only stay two or three months.”

“What kind of planes do they have there?”

Fusco seemed surprised at the question. “I don’t know,” he said. “You want to go in by plane?”

“How do I know? I’m not sure I want to go in at all. Do you know anything about this base or don’t you?”

“Stan would be the one to tell you about that,” Fusco said. “I don’t know this military stuff, Parker.”

“You never cased it?”

“Sure I did.” Fusco’s professional pride was hurt. “I been on the base a couple times, Stan fixed me up with a fake ID.”

“How far’s the finance office from the gate?”

“Well, there’s three gates. It’s a hell of a distance from the main gate, but there’s this other one, the South Gate, it’s only like two blocks from there. It’s like a back entrance.”

“How many guards on each gate?”

“Two. Just kids, you know?”

“And the payroll’s four hundred grand?”

“Around that. Sometimes a little more, a little less.”

“How’s it come in?”

“They fly it in, the day before.”

Parker said, “Give me the sequence.”

Fusco said, “The plane comes in the day before, in the morning. The payroll’s in two metal boxes. They put it on this truck, drive it to the finance office. Then they—”

“What kind of truck?”

“Regular armored car. A tough nut, Parker.”

“All right. What next?”

“They split it up,” Fusco said, “into the payrolls for all the outfits on the base. The money and a payroll sheet goes into a small metal box for each outfit, and it all goes into their vault overnight. Then in the morning they load it all into the armored car again and drive it around the base. There’s one officer in each outfit takes care of the payroll. He signs for his box, takes it, gives out the cash.”

“What’s the overnight surveillance?”

“Two AP’s inside the building, in the room next to the vault.”

“AP’s?”

“Air Police.”

“How many people work in the finance office during the day?”

“I don’t know for sure. Maybe twenty. That’s the kind of thing Stan could tell you.”

“Maybe he should of come down here.”

Fusco grinned. “Would you listen to a kid you didn’t know?”

“I’m not sure I’ll listen to you either,” Parker told him. “What do you want from me now?”

“Come back with me. Talk to Stan, look it over, make up your mind. If you don’t like it, Stan pays your round trip. And the lady’s, if you want.”

Parker emptied his glass again, got to his feet. “I’ll let you know,” he said, and went over to the dresser to get out his other bathing-suit. While changing he said, “You registered here?”

“No. I’m at the Holiday Inn out by the airport.”

“What room?”

“Forty-nine.”

Wearing the bathing-suit, Parker went into the bathroom for a dry towel. When he came out he said, “You go back there, I’ll get in touch with you.”

“It’s solid, Parker,” Fusco said. “I’m sure of this one.”

“Take your time with the ice water,” Parker told him. “Make sure the door’s locked on your way out.”

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.

3

“Stan,” said Fusco, “this is the fella I told you about. Parker, Stan Devers.”

It was raining in New York, drizzling down on the airport in the darkness, cold and wet and a million miles from the heat of Puerto Rico. People with intent faces were hurrying by, bumping into each other, carrying luggage, in a hurry, not happy. In the middle of the brightly lighted floor Parker and Fusco and Devers made an island that the bustle eddied around, the hurriers managing to miss them without quite seeing them.

Devers stuck out his hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Mr Parker.” He was a pretty beach boy, muscular and smiling and self-confident, with a clean strong jawline and curly blond hair. His handshake was self-consciously firm, and he was in civilian clothing, in threads a little too good for somebody who’s supposed to be living on Army pay. He made Parker think of the kind of insurance salesman who peddles his policies on the golf course, except this specimen wasn’t quite old enough for that yet.

“I’ve got a car outside,” Devers said.

Fusco had explained to him on the way up that the fastest way to get to Monequois from New York was to drive. There was local airline service, but it was slow and unreliable. That’s why Devers had been contacted to drive down and meet them at Kennedy Airport.

They started now toward the exit, Devers leading the way through the crowd, saying over his shoulder, “It’s about a five-hour drive, so if you want to make any kind of stop now, go right ahead.”

“We’ll stop on the way,” Parker said.

“Fine.”

The doors opened for them and they went out to moist cold air. There was a roof over this area, but everything was wet just the same, glistening with a clammy sheen of moisture. A Carey bus was picking up passengers to the left, and a stream of taxis was inching along the ramp, letting out arriving passengers and picking up new ones.

Devers had illegally parked his car, a two-year-old maroon Pontiac, in a loading zone just to the right. He unlocked the trunk and stowed the luggage while the others got into the car. Fusco started to get in front but Parker stopped him, saying, “Sit in back. I want to talk to your boy.”

“Sure thing.”

Devers showed surprise for just a second when he got into the car and saw Parker in the front seat with him, but all he said was, “The longest stretch’ll be getting out of this damn city.” He started the engine, cut off a taxi, and they rolled down the ramp into the rain.

Devers was a good driver, if a little fast and cocksure. He out-distanced most of the cabs he met while circling around Kennedy Airport and out on to Van Wyck Expressway, and from there on he maintained a steady seven or eight miles above the posted speed limit. It was just a little after midnight now, and traffic was pretty light once they moved away from the airport. Devers stayed on good roads all the way, Grand Central Parkway and the Triborough Bridge and then over to the Major Deegan Expressway, and despite the rain they were only about half an hour getting to the beginning of the Thruway at the New York City line.

Parker waited until then, until Devers was on the Thruway and settled in for the straight run north, the tires whining on the wet concrete, the wipers ticking back and forth, and then he said, “What are your payments on a car like this?”

Devers was surprised at the question. He looked at Parker, seemed about to ask him why he wanted to know, but then shrugged and looked back at the highway and said, “I don’t know exactly. I paid cash.”

Parker nodded, and looked out the window, and when a minute later Devers asked him if he minded a little music he said no. Devers found a rock-and-roll station, but he kept the volume down and the tone control toward bass, so it wasn’t bad. Most of the time, the beat of the music worked against the pace of the windshield wipers.

They stopped at the Ramapo service area near Sloatsburg. Sitting in a booth over a late dinner, Parker said, “That’s a good-looking suit you’ve got.”

Devers smiled in pleasure, glancing down at himself. “You like it?”

“Where’d you get it? Not in Monequois.”

“Hell, no. Lord & Taylor, in New York.” Devers spoke like a man justifiably proud of his store.

Parker nodded and said, “You go there much?”

“I got a charge account there,” Devers told him. “Lord & Taylor and Macy’s, between the two I can get anything I want.”

“I guess so,” said Parker, and went back to his meal.

When they went out to the car, the rain had stopped. The Pontiac glittered in the lights from the restaurant, looking almost black. This time Parker had Fusco get in front while he sat in back. Devers glided them back out to the almost-deserted Thruway, took it up a little above seventy, and turned on the radio again. It was a different station now, but it was playing the same music.

Nobody talked. The dashboard lights were green, the night outside the windows was rarely punctured by headlights. From time to time Parker saw Devers looking at him in the rearview mirror; the boy kept studying him, with curiosity and respect and some puzzlement.

Parker shut his eyes and listened to the night whine by under the tires.

4

Cold bright sunlight flooded in when Parker opened the door. He gestured and Fusco came in, saying, “You had breakfast?”

“Yes.” Parker shut the light out again and said, “Sit down.”

It was a room in a motel in a town called Malone, about fifteen or twenty miles from Monequois. It was a standard small-town motel, with the concrete block walls painted green, the imitation Danish modern furniture, the tough beige carpeting, not enough towels. Parker had learned years ago that you don’t take up residence in the place where you’re going to make your hit, so this would be home for him either until the job was over or until he decided he wanted to bow out of it. Fusco was already staying in Monequois, had been for the last few months since he’d gotten out, so there was nothing to be done about that, but he and Devers had let Parker off here last night on the way in, arranging for Fusco to borrow the Pontiac and come back for him this morning.

Now, sitting down in the room’s only chair, Fusco said, “You want to talk about Stan.”

“He’s either very good or very bad,” Parker said. “I want to know which one it is.”

“He’s good Parker. What makes you think he’s anything else?”

“How long’s he been tapping the till?”

Fusco looked blank. “Tapping the till?”

“Come on,” Parker said. “He’s got himself an angle going in that finance office, he’s bleeding off a couple hundred a month, maybe more.”

“Parker, he never said a word to me, honest to God.”

“Would he have to tell you?” Parker asked him. “He goes to New York to buy a suit at Lord & Taylor, on his charge account. How much you think that suit set him back?”

Fusco spread his hands. “It never even occurred to me. I don’t think that way, Parker, I take a man at his word.”

“You used his car to come here just now?”

Fusco frowned, rubbed a knuckle across his jawline. “That’s a pretty good car, isn’t it? I never thought about it. You think he’s been hooking the company, huh?”

“He didn’t tell you about it,” Parker said. “That’s good. Buying the car with full cash down was stupid, but if he keeps his mouth shut maybe he’s all right anyway. How well do you get along with this ex-wife of yours, what’s her name?”

“Ellen. She still calls herself Ellen Fusco.”

“You get along with her?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Well enough to ask her a question about Devers?”

Fusco shook his head. “I’m not sure, Parker, that’s the honest to God truth. What kind of question?”

“I want to know did he ever tell her what he’s got going.”

“You want to know how he works it?”

Parker shook is head in impatience. “I want to know if he opened his mouth to her.”

“Oh.” Fusco nodded, saying, “Sure. I can find out something like that. Not directly, you know what I mean?”

“Any way you want to do it.” Parker lit a cigarette, walked over to drop the match in the ashtray on the nightstand. Looking at Fusco again, he said, “Back in San Juan, I said the job could be done maybe even if Devers wasn’t solid. You didn’t like that.”

“Because he is solid, I know he is.”

“I don’t know it,” Parker told him. He waited a second, and said, “How important is Devers to you?”

“Important?” Fusco looked confused. “What do you mean, important?”

“I mean, what if Devers looks like a problem to me? What if I say the job is good but Devers is bad? What if I say we run it and bump Devers? Do we go ahead, or do we forget the job?”

Fusco spread his hands, for just a second at a loss for words. Then he said, “Parker, the question won’t come up, I know it won’t.”

“I’m bringing it up now.”

Fusco shook his head, looked at his outspread hands, looked over at the window where sunlight made bright slits across the Venetian blind. Finally, not looking at Parker, he said, “What it is, I’ll tell you what the problem is. It’s Ellen, it’s — I don’t want Ellen to — I wouldn’t want her to think it’s because of her. That I rigged the whole thing to bump Stan because of her. That’s what she’d think.”

“What does it matter what she thinks?”

Fusco shrugged, kept looking away toward the window. “She’d want to get even, get back at me. She’d blow the whistle.”

“You mean they’d both be unreliable.” Parker flicked ashes into the ashtray. Watching Fusco, he said, “We could handle her the same way.”

Now Fusco did look at Parker, surprised and shocked. “For Christ’s sake, Parker! She’s got my kid, I told you that! For Christ’s sake, you can’t — you don’t just—”

Parker nodded and walked toward the door. “That’s what I wanted to know,” he said. “What the rules are.”

Fusco was still sputtering. “Parker, we’re not going to—”

“I know we’re not. But I have to know the limitations. Now I know. Devers has to be all right, or the job’s no good.”

Fusco looked at him.

Parker shook his head. “I don’t want to kill your kid’s mother,” he said. “I want to know what we can do and what we can’t do, what kills the job and what keeps it alive.” He opened the door, and sunlight sliced in. “Let’s go.”

“You scared the crap out of me,” Fusco said. He got to his feet, grinning weakly. “The next thing I thought you’d say, I thought you’d say, okay, we’ll bump the kid, too.”

“I didn’t think you’d go for it,” Parker told him.

5

“Ellen,” said Fusco, “this is Parker. Parker, my ex-wife.”

Ellen Fusco said, “How are you?”

Parker nodded. “Good.”

Ellen Fusco was something different from what he’d expected. A short intense bony girl, she would have been good-looking except for the vertical frown lines gouged deep into her forehead and the way she had of looking at the world as though challenging it to a spitting contest. She looked as though she should go through life with her hands always on her hips.

Her home reflected this attitude of belligerence. It was shabby, but clean, as though neither fancy frills nor dirt would ever dare enter here. The furniture was usual enough, from the swaybacked sofa to the table-model television set on its wheeled stand, but the bookcase was maybe a little larger than in the average living room, and the books it contained were for the most part fairly heavy reading, Sartre and de Beauvoir, the James brothers, Uwe Johnson, Edmund Wilson.

Her clothing showed the same truculent plainness. She was wearing black slacks, a short-sleeved gray pullover sweater, brown loafers, no socks. Her hair was black and long and straight, held together with a rubber band at the nape of her neck. She wore no makeup or nail polish, as though the image she was trying to get across lay somewhere between a Greenwich Village bohemian and a Nebraskan farm wife.

Fusco said to her, “Is Stan up yet?”

“He’s in the bathroom.”

Parker looked at his watch. Ten-forty.

Ellen Fusco said, “You want some coffee?”

“Sure thing,” said Fusco. “What about you, Parker?” He was somewhat eager, somewhat nervous, and couldn’t make up his mind whether he should play host or not. He’d been married to this woman, he’d brought Parker here to her house, but there was another man in the bathroom.

“Black,” Parker said, talking directly to Ellen.

“Make yourselves comfortable,” she said, and went through the arched doorway into a small crammed white-and-yellow kitchen. This kitchen opened directly from the living room, so she could be seen moving around in there, getting the coffee ready.

As Parker sat down in the armchair near the door, Fusco said, looking around, “I guess Pam’s out in the back yard. That’s my kid.”

He looked around at Parker, seemed about to say something more, and then to realize this was neither the time or the place — nor was Parker the man — to ask him if he wanted to go out in the backyard and take a look at a three-year-old girl. Fusco turned away, moved vaguely in the direction of the kitchen, or maybe just toward the back window there, but then abruptly turned back and sat down in the middle of the sofa. They sat in silence then, Fusco fidgeting slightly and looking this way and that, Parker unmoving, waiting.

Ellen’s coming in from the kitchen with the coffee was simultaneous with Devers’ arrival through the other doorway, dressed in fatigue trousers and T-shirt. He was barefoot and looked still half-asleep. He saw the coffee and said, “One of those for me?”

“Get your own,” she said.

Devers stood with a pained smile on his face, trying to find something to say, while she put the two coffees on tables handy to Parker and Fusco. She didn’t look directly at anybody while doing this, and left the living room right away, going out the door Devers had come in.

Devers beamed his painful smile at Parker and said, “Domestic bliss. It’s just a funny game we have.” But when Parker just looked at him without saying anything, Devers shrugged and got rid of the embarrassed smile and went over to sit on the sofa beside Fusco. He picked up Fusco’s coffee cup, drank some, made a face, and said, “You know I like it with sugar.” He put the cup down, looked at Parker, and said, “You want to see the base today, right?”

“That’s right.”

“We’ll take a run out there. You mind if I make myself some breakfast first?”

Parker shrugged. “We’re in no hurry. I want to know some things first anyway.”

“Name it.”

“How long have you been stationed here?”

“Eleven months.”

“Finance office the whole time?”

“Right.”

“You RA or US?”

Devers frowned. “What’s that?”

“Maybe they changed things,” Parker said. “It used to be, RA on your serial number meant you enlisted, US meant you were drafted.”

“Oh. That’s Army. There’s no draftees in the Air Force.”

Fusco said, “You enlisted?” He couldn’t believe it.

Devers grinned at him. “I’m no place getting shot at, am I?”

“What’s your term?” Parker asked him.

“Four years.”

“How much to go?”

“Seven months. I did a year in the Aleutians before I came here.”

Parker said, “You want to hold this job up till you get out?”

“That’d be smart. I leave the office, then they get held up. They’d come looking for me.”

Parker nodded. He knew that was true, but he hadn’t known whether Devers would understand it or not. He said, “What about the way it is now? Only seven months to go.”

“There’s two short-timers in the office,” Devers said. “One’s getting out in three weeks, the other one in two months.”

“So the law will look at them before they look at you.”

“That’s what I figure.”

Parker said, “But they will look at you.”

Devers nodded. “I figured that, too.”

“How long’ve you been working your dodge in the office?”

“What dodge?”

“The dodge you bought the Pontiac with.”

Devers grinned and shook his head. “I saved my money while I was in the Aleutians.”

“You got bank records to prove it?”

“Do I need them?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t keep it in the bank.”

“Where did you keep it?”

Devers was getting irritated despite himself, the smile was slipping slowly from his face. “What’s the point?” he said. “We’re talking about robbery, not embezzlement.”

“The law,” Parker told him. “They’ll check out everybody in your office. They’ll say, ‘There’s a kid with charge accounts in New York, expensive clothes, expensive car. How’d he do all that on Air Force pay?’ Then they look very closely at you, just to see what happens.”

Devers bit a knuckle, frowning, thinking. Finally he said, more as though it were a question than a statement, “I had my grandmother hold it?”

“Your grandmother? Why?”

“I always got along with her best,” Devers said. “My mother and father split up, I wouldn’t trust my mother with the prize from a Cracker Jack box. So I gave my money to my grandmother, and when I got back to the ZI she gave it back to me.”

Fusco said, “Back to the what?”

“The States,” Devers told him. “ZI. Zone of Interior.”

“Christ,” said Fusco.

Parker said, “Your grandmother’s going to cover for you?”

Devers grinned. “Guaranteed. She died in April.”

Parker said, “What if they check with your mother?”

“What my mother says is her business. She’d say something different from me just out of spite.”

“Would she?”

Devers hesitated. “Who am I talking to now? Parker or the law?”

“Does it matter?”

“No. No, you’re right. I’ve told you the straight story.”

Parker said, “You got a checking account?”

“Sure.”

“Let me see the checkbook.”

“Oh.” Devers nodded. “Yeah, I see what you mean.”

Fusco said, “What’s the problem?”

“My deposits,” Devers said. “Like, I put in a hundred thirty last week, so where did it come from?”

Parker said, “Where did it come from?”

“Give me a minute,” Devers said.

Parker waited, but when Devers kept on concentrating he said, “You’re a sitting duck, Devers. You aren’t covered at all. They could land on you any time.”

“They’ve never had any reason to look me over.”

Parker said, “What if somebody else in the office tries something, and he’s clumsy? So they find out there’s something wrong, they start looking around, and you stick out like the Empire State Building.”

“God damn it.” Devers gnawed his cheek. “There’s got to be some way to cover.”

“Not the old lucky at cards routine,” Parker told him. “That way, you’ve got to get half a dozen other people to say yeah, they played cards with you, they lost to you. That’s too many people.”

“I know. I wouldn’t try that one anyway. Let me think about it while I make some breakfast.”

Parker finished his coffee. “All right, we’ll be back at twelve.”

“Fine.”

Parker got to his feet, and Fusco bounced up after him. They went out to the sunlight and got into Devers’ Pontiac. Fusco said, “Which way?”

“Gas station. We want gas and a roadmap.”

“Right.”

As they drove, Fusco said, “You were right about him. I mean, hitting the company.”

“The question is,” said Parker, “can he work out a cover.”

“He’s a smart boy, Parker.”

“Maybe.”

They came to a gas station and Fusco pulled to a stop beside the pumps. While the attendant pumped gas, Fusco went into the office and got a map. He brought it out and handed it to Parker, already folded to the area around Monequois.

They were in an out-of-the-way northern corner of New York State, close to the Canadian border, about fifteen miles west of Malone, north of Route 11. The nearest city of any size was called Massena, farther west, large enough to have a commercial airport. The border was about twelve miles to the north. Dannemora, the New York State penitentiary, was about forty miles to the east.

Fusco paid for the gas while Parker looked at the map. They drove out of the station and Parker said, “Let’s go north, toward the border.”

Fusco looked at him in surprise. “We won’t want to go crossing any borders, Parker.”

“I know that. But they’ll figure us to try, so let’s see what the road looks like.”

Fusco shrugged and went back to driving.

Monequois was a small town, overbalanced by the Air Force base just outside the town limits. There were more people on the base than in the town, so the influence showed up everywhere, in the names of bars and diners and motels, in the heavy preponderance of blue uniforms on the downtown streets, in the number of bars and movie houses. If the majority of people at the base had been permanent rather than transient, the effect on the town would have been even greater, but as it was the place was unmistakably a camp town.

They had to go through town and out past the air base to Route 95. It was scrub country out here, hilly but not mountainous, heavily forested. Very little of the base could be seen from the road, only a few drab slant-roofed buildings glimpsed through the trees and then the sudden complex busy structure of the main gate, like a stage set in the sunlight, with a dark blue billboard on one side giving, in gold letters, the names of the military organizations here, all done in incomprehensible abbreviations.

Fusco turned north on 95, went up to Bombay and took the unnumbered road up to Fort Covington. This was a smaller and less traveled road than to continue on to Massena or to take the bridge across the St. Lawrence from Rooseveltown to Cornwall on the Canadian side.

They went through Fort Covington, but stopped on the other side before reaching the border. Parker said, “All right, let’s go back.”

It didn’t look good. No place had shown itself readily as a hideout. The forest was thick between the little towns, but it wasn’t empty. Most of the woods were posted against hunters, and the rest would be full of them. It didn’t look likely for them to come up here after the job and cool out somewhere short of the border.

Of course, he couldn’t be sure yet, and anyway this was doing it backwards. If Devers couldn’t cover his embezzlements there wouldn’t be a job anyway. And even if he could, there was still the base to be looked at. The whole thing might be impossible because of some element long before the getaway or hideout.

On the way back, Fusco said, “What if he can’t do it?”

“Like you said before,” Parker told him. “If Devers isn’t solid, the job’s off.”

Fusco frowned. Parker could feel him pushing for Devers to come up with something.

6

Ellen opened the door again, gave them a sour look. “You two.” She stepped out of the way.

Parker and Fusco went inside. As Ellen was shutting the door, Parker said to her, “What’s the problem?”

Not looking at him, turning away, being busy about something else, she said, “Problem? No problem at all.” She walked away across the living room.

Devers, sitting at the kitchen table with the remains of a pancake breakfast in front of him, waved his fork and called, “Be right with you.”

Parker ignored him, saying after Ellen, “Is it just Devers? What’s on your mind?”

She kept moving away, and Fusco, in the manner of somebody embarrassed and trying to avoid a scene, said quickly, “Parker, let it go.”

“No.” Parker pointed at Ellen and said, “Stop right there. I want to know what’s stuck in your craw.”

Ellen turned around, at the far end of the room, moved her chin in a contemptuous nod toward Fusco, and said, “Let him tell you.” But she didn’t leave the room.

Parker looked at Fusco, who shrugged and said, “She’s just a little bugged, Parker, that’s all. It don’t mean a thing, it’s just the way she gets.”

“About the job?”

Fusco looked scared. “Parker, I swear to God she’s no problem. She always takes the dim view, that’s all it is.”

“She was this way before?”

“That’s why she left me,” Fusco said, “the time I took the fall. Because that time she was right.”

Ellen’s lip curled, but she didn’t say anything.

Devers had walked in from the kitchen, carrying a coffee cup in his hand. “And now she’s sore,” he said, “because this time her ex-husband’s got me involved in it. Gonna get me in trouble.” Standing there, he drank coffee, with Ellen glaring at him.

Parker said, “What will she do about it?”

Ellen answered him. “Nothing,” she said, biting the word off. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

“That’s straight, Parker,” Fusco said.

Parker looked at them, Fusco scared, Devers confident, Ellen angry. He considered, and finally shrugged, letting it go. For now he’d take their word for it, and just keep his eyes open. Over the years he’d come to accept the fact that the people involved in every heist were never as solid as you wanted them. They always had hang-ups one way or another, always had personal problems or quirks from their private lives that they couldn’t keep from intruding into the job they were supposed to be doing. The only way to handle it was to watch them, know what the problems were, be ready for them to start screwing up. If he sat around and waited for the perfect string, cold and solid and professional, he’d never get anything done.

“All right,” he said. “She’s your woman.”

Grinning, Devers said, “Which of us you talking to?”

Shocked, Fusco said, “Stan!”

Ellen said to Parker, “You finished with me now? Can I get back to what I was doing?”

“I’m finished,” Parker told her.

“Thanks.”

She left the room, and Parker turned to Devers. “What about that checking account?”

The way Devers was smiling, he’d thought of something. He said, “You know the song about the little tin box?”

“No. What’s the idea?”

“I didn’t want to put all my cash in the bank,” Devers said. “All I’d do was put in enough money to cover my checks and keep a small steady balance. But most of my money I keep in a box in the closet in the bedroom here.”

Parker said, “Why?”

Devers grinned and shrugged his shoulders, being boyish and innocent. “I don’t know, it’s just the way I’ve always done it. I guess I’m like King Midas or something. I like to have my money where I can look at it. You have to have a checking account these days, you can’t send bills through the mail and money orders are too much trouble, so what the heck I’ve got an account. But the money isn’t real to me if it’s in the bank. I like to be able to open my box and see the money there.”

Fusco was frowning at Devers as though he couldn’t understand what the boy was up to, but Parker could see it. It was the kind of offbeat approach to money a kid might have. If Devers could pull it off.

Parker said, “Let’s see this little tin box.”

Devers held up a hand. “Give me time,” he said. “I’ll have it when it’s needed.”

“You going to go buy a new box?”

“Hell, no. I’m going to have the little old box I’ve carried with me ever since high school, the battered old box that went with me to Texas, to New Mexico, to the Aleutians, and now here. Don’t you worry, Mr Parker, that box is going to look right.”

“Not overdone.”

“You mean, decals from the different places?” Devers laughed. “I can be subtle, Mr Parker,” he said.

Parker said, “How much you got left in this little box?”

Devers frowned. “I’m not sure. Not much, after all the stuff I bought. It depends when we do it. If it’s the next payroll, that’s next Tuesday—”

“Too soon.”

“Fine. Then I’ll have maybe six, seven hundred.”

“You’ve got the math worked out? So they can add up your income and your outgo and it’ll work?”

“Oh, sure. I could go up to twelve hundred and still be within the possible.” Devers grinned and said, “But I like to leave a little slack, it adds that touch of credibility.”

“Give me a list of people at these different places,” Parker said, “that saw the box.”

Devers looked startled, but recovered quickly, saying, “Nobody. I didn’t let anybody know I had it.”

“Why not?”

“Here and there in the Air Force, Mr Parker, you run into a thief.”

Parker considered, and then nodded. “All right,” he said. “It should cover. If you can run it right.”

“I can run it,” Devers said.

“With a cop leaning on you?”

“Cops have leaned on me before,” Devers said.

“For something this big?”

“No. But I can do it.”

The worst thing about the boy was his confidence. He was smart, he was fast, he was capable, but he knew he was all those things and that could hurt. But he’d been running his dodge at the finance office almost a year without being caught out, so maybe his confidence wouldn’t be a liability. Parker was now willing to take a chance.

He said, “Answer me one question. Straight.”

Devers spread his hands. “If I can.”

“You’ve got a nice thing going at this finance office. It seems safe and sure and profitable. This knockover’s got to be risky. Why not stick with what you’ve got?”

“First,” Devers said, “I’ve only got seven more months of this gravy train. If I re-enlist I’m bound to get transferred out pretty soon, probably overseas again. Besides, I’m not all that happy with Air Force life. So when I get out, where am I? I’ve got a car, some clothes, a few hundred in cash, and a nice way to cut the pot in an Air Force finance office. Big deal. I go to work someplace else, maybe in a bank or something, and it takes me a while to figure an angle. Maybe they’re tougher than the Air Force, in fact they probably are, so maybe I don’t figure an angle at all. The point is, what I’ve got is fine for right now, but what about the future?”

“What will you do with your chunk?”

“Live on it,” Devers said. “Not loud, but comfortable.”

“And when it’s gone?”

Shrugging, Devers said, “I’ll worry about that when the time comes. What this does, it buys me a year or two. Then I’m where I would have been when I got out anyway.”

Parker knew he was looking at a new recruit to the profession, knew he was aware of it before Devers. Devers had been tapping the Air Force for money for this month, next month, the month after that. Now he was coming into the heavy racket to take care of this year, and next year he’d be coming back, looking up Parker or Fusco or whoever else might be getting into this string, saying, “You need a boy any time, I’m available.”

If things went well this time. Devers hadn’t been tried yet, not one hundred per cent. He could still blow, he could still fail to have the nerve for it. But Parker thought the odds were with the boy.

“All right,” he said. “You were going to show me the base.”

“Right,” said Devers, “Hold on, I’ll get your ID.”

7

This was the bad moment, walking up the blacktop toward the gate. Devers went first, a little ahead of Parker and Fusco. They were all in their normal civilian clothing, which Devers had told them would cause no comment. “Most guys are in civvies any time they’re off duty,” he’d said. He’d also explained that because the base was full of technical schools, which ran on shifts, it wasn’t unusual to see men off-duty at any time of the day or night.

They were coming to the main gate rather than the one nearer the finance office because here the traffic was heaviest and they were the least likely to get any kind of close study. Parker in particular had an ID card with a picture far from his own appearance, though the relationship between Fusco’s face and that on his card was also slight. “They won’t look,” Devers had said. “You just open your wallet and wave it at them as you go by.” He’d demonstrated, holding his wallet open at arm’s length.

Parker had thought they would go in Devers’ car, but the boy had been against it. “We’ll be noticed,” he said. “There’s a bus out from town, it’s always full of guys. We take that, get off with them, everybody goes through the gate in a bunch.” So they’d driven downtown, parked the Pontiac a block away, and boarded the civilian-operated bus out to the air base. It was about half-full, and as Devers had said, most of the passengers were in civilian clothes.

Now they’d reached the base. The three of them were in the middle of the straggling group of twenty-five or so walking up to the gate in the sunlight. The two APs stayed inside their shack, looking through the window at the IDs held up for their inspection, nodding, their expressions bored.

You could only go by the shack in single file. Devers went first, Fusco second, Parker third. Parker noticed that most of the men ahead of him barely glanced at the APs on their way by, so he did the same. Their bored expressions didn’t change as they looked at his card, and a second later he was inside, putting his wallet away.

“We’ll take the bus,” Devers said. “This is a damn big base, the office is way to hell and gone over there.”

“There’s a special bus just for inside the base?”

“Sure. Run by the Air Force. Actually there’s three routes, but they all come by here. We want a number one.”

“They run all night?”

“Yeah.” Devers looked at him. “You thinking of something?”

“I’m just asking questions,” Parker told him.

It was true. He didn’t know whether a bus would work into this heist any more than he’d known whether or not they’d use a plane when Fusco had asked him about it back in San Juan. He wanted to know about transport, vehicles everything that moved and traveled and had reasonable justification for being on this base. What he could use and what not he’d find out later on.

The first bus that came they didn’t want, but most of the others waiting with them did. As they all climbed aboard, Devers said, “That’s the bus goes to the transient barracks area. Those are all our scholars.”

“What kind of schools?”

Devers shrugged. “Everything. Everything from Personnel Technician to A & E mechanic.”

“Translate both of those.”

“Okay,” Devers said, grinning. “A Personnel Technician is a clerk typist in the orderly room. A & E is aircraft and engine. A greasemonkey.”

“What about military police? Do they have a school here?”

Devers looked surprised, and said, “Be damned! That’s one they missed.”

“Good.”

Fusco said, “Here comes our bus.”

The bus was dark blue and rickety, with the engine in front, like a truck. The driver was wearing fatigues, with Airman First Class stripes on his sleeve. There were only about ten people in the bus, scattered here and there. Parker sat by a window on the right side, about halfway along. Devers sat beside him and Fusco slid into the next seat back and leaned forward to listen.

Devers gave them a running commentary as they went along, pointing out the PX, the mess hall, the NCO club, building after building. They were all similar, as though one set of plans had been used for every structure with only very slight alterations made for the different requirements of each. Even the base theater, lacking a marquee, had only a row of glass doors across the front to distinguish it from all the other buildings. They were uniformly stucco, painted grayish green, surrounded by neat narrow strips of grass and neat pale squares of concrete sidewalk.

The bus started and stopped, started and stopped. People got on and off, about half in uniform, most of the uniforms the casual workwear of fatigues. Only two officers rode the bus during the time Parker was on it, and both of them seemed to feel out of place.

There was a great deal of coming and going out there, people walking along the sidewalks, going in and out of the buildings, riding by in cars and trucks. Down the cross-streets where the barracks were, lines of cars were angle-parked, other cars moved slowly in the sunlight.

Parker said, “Is there always this much activity?”

“Sure,” Devers said. “See, the schools run on three shifts. Six in the morning till noon is A shift. Noon to six, B shift. And six to midnight, C shift. So there’s always two-thirds of the students off-duty. And a lot of the permanent party works shifts, too, so some of them are off-duty now.”

The finance office was a hell of a distance from the main gate; Parker counted sixteen blocks, with the bus only having made one right and one left turn.

When Devers said, his voice suddenly just a bit more tense, “That’s it there,” Parker told him: “We’ll wait two blocks, and walk back.”

“Good.”

They got off the bus two stops later. No one else got off with them, and after the bus pulled away Parker said to Devers, “You better stay here. We don’t want your friends inside to look out a window and see you with two guys they don’t know.”

“I was thinking about that,” Devers said. “You’re right. So when you go by, the finance offices are on the second floor. The first floor is the Red Cross on the left and the re-enlistment office on the right. Major Creighton’s office is way to the left upstairs, that’s where the safe is.”

“All right. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”

It was a bright day but cool. It was like walking along the sidewalk in some clean little town, except for the uniforms on so many of the passersby. About a quarter of them were women, some in WAF uniform and some in civilian clothing.

The finance office was in a building like all the rest; two-story, stucco, rectangular, A-roof, gray-green, casement windows, off-white woodwork. Signs were in the windows flanking the main entrance, which was in the middle of one of the long walls. The signs on the left were dominated by red crosses, those on the right by the word bonus. The last two second-story windows on the left were covered by wire mesh and vertical bars.

Parker and Fusco turned the corner, walked around the building, and saw nothing more except that the second-story windows all across the left side were also screened with mesh and bars. They walked back to Devers, and Parker said, “Does the finance office work on shifts?”

“Hell, no. Eight to five. Eight to noon on Saturday.”

“What about the offices downstairs? The Red Cross open all the time?”

Devers grinned and shook his head. “The Red Cross is shut more than it’s open. There’s only two people in there, an old guy and a nice-looking chick, and half the time they’re down to the snack bar having coffee.”

“What about the re-enlistment office?”

“Same hours as us.”

Parker nodded, stood looking around. This part of the base was laid out in a grid of streets, every block an absolute square, with two long buildings on each side. Parker said, “Is the whole base set up like this? These streets like this?”

“Mostly. Except around the flight line.”

“Can we walk to this other gate?”

“Sure. It’s down that way, to the right.”

The South Gate turned out to be three blocks from the finance office; one over and two down. It was a smaller gate, less pretentious, with no billboard outside. They stood half a block away and watched a few trucks and cars go in and out. There was no pedestrian traffic at all.

Parker said, “Where’s that gate lead to?”

Devers said, “Something called Hilker Road. Down that way it meets up with the road we took out here on the bus. The other way it goes off into the woods someplace. Comes out around Cooks Corners, I think.”

“There’s no bars out there, no diners, nothing like that?”

“Nothing but woods.”

“What about a bus stop?”

“You mean outside? A civilian bus?” Devers shook his head. “The only bus away from here is that one we took out from town, stops at the main gate.”

“So there’s no reason for anybody to walk off the base in that direction.”

Devers looked towards the gate. “I guess not,” he said. “I never thought about it, but you’re right. You’d only go out that way if you were in a car and this was closer than the main gate.”

“What about these trucks coming in?”

“I guess they’re headed for places nearer here than the main gate. Maybe there’s some kind of shortcut in from the highway, I don’t know.”

“We’ll want to know,” Parker said. “We’ll want to know what trucks come in, where they go, which ones are regular arrivers, what times of day they come in. We’ll want to know what route they take to get here.”

Devers said, “That just means sitting and watching for a few days, and then following a couple of trucks away when they leave.”

“That’s what we’ll do, then,” Parker said. He looked around. “Is there any building overlooking this that we could get into without any static?”

Devers considered, and then pointed to a building off to the left, the second rank in from the fence. “There’s some kind of technical library in there,” he said. “You could hang around in there without anybody paying any attention, as long as you kept a book in your hand.”

“Good. All right, let’s go back.” They started walking, and Parker said, “Does that number one bus make a belt? If we get on it, can we go completely around and come back where we started?”

“Sure,” said Devers. “They’re all belts.”

“I want to look at the base,” Parker said.

They walked back to the bus stop where they’d gotten off, and when the next bus came along in the same direction they boarded it and sat as before. Devers kept up a low-voiced running description as they went, with Parker asking an occasional question.

It took twenty minutes to get back to the main gate. They got off the bus there and Devers said, “Anything else you want to see?”

“Not today. Let’s go back and talk.”

“Fine.”

They went through the gate without trouble, and there was a civilian bus waiting out by the road. They climbed aboard and a few minutes later the bus started for town.

8

Ellen Fusco met them at the door, furious and showing it. “You know my session’s at one o’clock,” she told Devers.

“I forgot,” he said. “Sorry, sweetheart, I was thinking about other things. Here’s the keys.”

She took them without comment. “Pam’s in the yard,” she said, and went out to the car.

The three men went into the house and Devers shut the door, saying to Fusco, “If that ex-wife of yours doesn’t come off it pretty soon, I’ll be trading places with you.”

“Ellen wouldn’t take me back,” Fusco said. “Even if I wanted,” he added, and headed for the kitchen. “I need something to eat. Parker?”

“Coffee.”

“There should be hamburger,” Devers said. “Why don’t you make us all some?”

“Coming up,” Fusco said, and went on out to the kitchen. A minute later he was moving around out there with an apron on.

Devers said to Parker, “You’ve got more questions.”

“A few now. I’ll have more later, when I’ve thought about it a little more.”

“Naturally.”

“Sit down,” Parker said, and himself went to the chair he’d been sitting in the last time. When Devers was settled on the sofa, Parker said, “The building next door to the finance office, facing the barred windows on the side. What’s in there?”

“Legal department,” Devers said. “They’ve got the entire building and they work eight to five.”

“Can you get me a map of the base?”

“Sure. There’s one they give the new boys when they arrive, it’s only got a few things listed on it, like the Post Office and Supply Building, but we can fill in whatever else we need.”

“Good. Do you have a Polaroid?”

“A camera?”

“A Polaroid,” Parker insisted. “We don’t want any drugstore developing our prints.”

“I don’t have one myself,” Devers said, “but I know a couple guys on base who do. I can borrow one for a day or two.”

“Good. I’ll want pictures of the finance building, every side. And the offices inside, if you can manage it.”

“That could be tricky,” Devers said.

“Don’t do it if it’ll blow things.”

“I’ll see what I can work out. Anything else?”

“Probably. I’ll let you know.”

Fusco came walking in with three cups of coffee on a tray, distributed them, said to Devers, “If I was you, I’d quit paying for that analyst of hers. All she does is make you babysit while she’s at the sessions.”

Devers shrugged, saying, “What the hell. She’s nervous about this, that’s all. She was married to you when you got yourself caught. She doesn’t want to see the same thing happen to me.”

“Maybe you ought to be her analyst,” Fusco said. “I’ll bring the burgers in in a minute.”

“Take a look at the kid, will you?” Devers asked him.

“I already did. She’s fine.”

Fusco went back into the kitchen, and Devers said to Parker, “Is this weird? I’m shacked up with a broad, she’s got a kid, her ex-husband is around the place as much as I am, I’m in on a goddam robbery with him, I’m paying for the broad’s analysis, I swear to God I never thought I’d get involved in anything this complicated in my life.”

“The robbery part is simple,” Parker told him. “We look it over, we see if it can be done, we work out the method, we do it, we split. We don’t let other things come in and make complications.”

“I follow you,” Devers said. “Don’t worry, Mis — sorry. Don’t worry, anyway. There won’t be any complications.”

Fusco came back in with the hamburgers, “I been listening,” he said. “You think it can be done, Parker?”

“Maybe.”

“But it looks good?” Fusco said.

“So far,” said Parker.