The Man with the Getaway Face

1

When the bandages came off, Parker looked in the mirror at a stranger. He nodded to the stranger and looked beyond at the reflection of Dr. Adler.

Parker had been at the sanitarium a little over four weeks now. He had come in with a face that the New York syndicate wanted to put a bullet in, and now he was going back out with a face that meant nothing to anyone. The face had cost him nearly eighteen thousand, leaving him about nine from his last job to tide him over till he got rolling again. The syndicate trouble had been a bad time, but that was over now.

Parker stood a while longer at the mirror, studying the stranger. He had a long narrow nose, flat cheeks, a wide lipless mouth, a jutting jaw. There were tiny bunchings of flesh beneath the brows, forcing them out just a bit from the forehead, subtly changing the contours of the face. Only the eyes were familiar, flawed onyx, cold and hard.

It was a good job. Paid for in advance, it should be. Parker nodded again at his new face, turned away from the mirror, and watched the doctor drop the bandaging into a wastebasket. “When can I get out of here?”

“Any time you’re ready.”

Dr. Adler was tall and bony and gray-haired. From 1931 till 1939 he had worked with the California Communist Party, setting up strike camps. After the Second World War, in which he had done plastic surgery in an Army hospital in Oregon, he had set up private practice in San Francisco. But in 1949 a Congressional Committee had exploded his past in his face. He wasn’t stripped of his license, just of his livelihood. Since 1951 he had made his living as a plastic surgeon to those outside the law, operating a sanitarium front near Lincoln, Nebraska.

Dr. Adler crossed the room again, going to the door, where he paused. “When you’re dressed, come down to the office. I have a letter for you.”

“From Joe Sheer?”

“I think so.”

Joe Sheer was the retired jugger who’d vouched for him with the doctor. When the doctor left, Parker opened the closet door and took out the new suit, a dark brown he’d bought on the way here and never worn. He chucked out of the white pajamas and into his clothes, and took one last look at himself in the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door. He was a big man, flat and squared-off, with boxy shoulders and a narrow waist. He had big hands, corrugated with veins, and long hard arms. He looked like a man who’d made money, but who’d made it without sitting behind a desk.

The new face went with the rest of him as well as the old one had. Satisfied, he picked up his suitcase and left the room and went downstairs to the office. The sanitarium was one large building, office and waiting room and staff living quarters on the first floor, patients’ rooms on the second. There was space for twenty-three patients, and Dr. Adler maintained a staff of four — two nurses, a cook, and a handyman. There was rarely more than one patient in the place and half the time there were no patients at all. But he had state licenses to worry about, and Federal taxes, so a large part of his take went for false front.

Parker went into the doctor’s office. “I left some old clothes upstairs. You can throw them away for me.”

“All right. Here.” He held out an envelope.

Parker took it and ripped it open. Inside was a brief pencil-scrawled note:

Parker read the letter, then turned the envelope over and studied the flap. Dr. Adler said, “Yes, I steamed it open.”

“You did a bad job,” Parker told him. He dropped letter and envelope on the desk.

The doctor shrugged. “I get bored sometimes,” he said. “So I read other people’s mail.”

“Joe said I could trust you.”

“With your face. Not with your mail.” He smiled, thinly. “I am a doctor, Mr. Anson. That is all I want to be. If circumstances had been different, I’d be a doctor in San Francisco today with more reputable patients and a more lucrative practice. It doesn’t matter, I’m still a doctor. And that’s all. A doctor, not an informer, not a thief. I’ve taken all the money from you I intend to take, and once you leave here we will undoubtedly never have dealings again. Unless you recommend someone else, of course, or need yet another face. I read that letter on a whim.”

“You get whims often?”

“I never get whims that would cut off my supply of patients, Mr. Anson.”

Parker considered, studying him. Joe had said he was a little off, but that it was nothing to worry about. Parker shrugged. “All right. Do you know what the letter meant?”

“I have no idea. I’d be fascinated to know, however.”

“It’s an armored car holdup. Three guards. The job is figured to make the grab while it’s on a highway, instead of in a city. Fifty grand is what they figure my share would be.” Parker reached down and flipped the letter closer to the doctor. “You see it there?”

The doctor read the letter, slowly, holding it in both hands. His hands were so clean they looked bleached. He nodded. “Yes, I see.”

“Can your man give me a ride to town?”

“Of course. You’ll probably find him in the kitchen.”

“Thanks. I’ll take my case.”

“Oh, yes. I forgot.” The doctor stood up, went over to the dark green safe in the corner and twisted the combination. He opened the door and took out a light brown typewriter case. The typewriter case contained eight thousand five hundred dollars, all of Parker’s cash.

Parker took the case and picked up the suitcase. “I’ll be seeing you around.”

“I doubt it.”

When Parker left, the doctor was studying the letter again, a thin smile on his lips.

2

Dr. Adler’s handyman was punch-drunk, though he’d never been in the ring. He’d been a Party organizer in the thirties, among the migrant crop harvesters, and scab-wielded two-by-fours had scrambled his brains. His former fluency with dialectic was gone; these days the driving of a hydromatic Chrysler was the most complicated exercise his brain could handle. He was fifty-four and his face was lumpy, with scar tissue around the eyes. The doctor called him “Stubbs.”

Parker found him in the kitchen, a stainless-steel room kept spotless because most of its equipment was never used. Stubbs sat on a steel table against one wall, holding a white coffee mug in both hands. The cook, a thin ex-whore named May, was reading the back of a box of Fab.

Parker said to Stubbs, “You’re supposed to drive me into Lincoln.”

Stubbs frowned at him. “We got a Chrysler.”

“Am I being kidded, friend?”

“No,” May said. To Stubbs, she said, “To the city, Stubbs. He wants you to drive him to the city.” She turned back to Parker. “Did the doctor say it’s okay?”

“Yeah.”

Stubbs got down from the table, laboriously. “I never drove a Lincoln,” he said. “I drove a Rolls once. It belonged to a sympathizer. That was down south someplace, near Dago. They killed a Joe Goss that time, blew the whole thing wide open. It would of been a good strike up to then, a deputy drove over this little girl, broke her leg. But then — the guys had to kill that Joe Goss, and it was all over.” He scratched his cheek. The flesh was soft, and gave like dough under his fingernails. “Where you want to go?”

May answered him. “Down into town, Stubbs. The freight yards, I guess.”

“You betcha.”

Stubbs led the way through the garbage room and out the back door. The sanitarium property, wooded, climbed up a slope back of the building. The garage was a separate brick structure to the left of the building, with a cock weather vane atop the peaked roof. There was room for four cars, but aside from the Chrysler there was only one other vehicle, a Volkswagen MicroBus.

Parker stowed his suitcase and typewriter case on the back seat of the Chrysler and climbed in front next to Stubbs. Stubbs backed out, left the car long enough to pull down the garage door, and then maneuvered in a wide U-turn and around the building and down the blacktop road to the three-lane concrete highway to the city.

They rode in silence, Parker smoking and watching the scenery. The new face was beginning to feel strange. His forehead and cheeks were tight, as though glue had dried on them.

Before they reached the city, Stubbs pulled over to the shoulder of the road and stopped. He carefully shifted to neutral and put on the emergency brake, and then turned to Parker. His face was creased in concentration, as though he was having a hard time remembering the words. “I want to talk to you,” he said. “I talk to all the patients, when they’re ready to go.”

Parker flipped his cigarette out the window, and waited.

“One time,” said Stubbs, “there was a guy came here to get a new face. Doc gave it to him, and then he figured the best thing was to kill Doc, because then nobody’d know who it was under the new face. He didn’t have to do that, because the Doc is one man you can trust with your life. But this guy wouldn’t take that, so I had to take the new face away from him again. You follow me?”

Parker smiled at him. “You think you could take this face away from me?”

“No trouble at all,” said Stubbs. “Don’t come back, mister.”

Parker studied him, but challenges were for punks. He shrugged. “A fella named Joe Sheer told me the doctor was straight. It’s his word I take.”

Stubbs’ belligerence faded. “I just wanted you to know.”

“Sure,” Parker said.

They rode the rest of the way in silence. Stubbs let him off at the railroad station, and Parker bought a ticket for Cincinnati. He had a three-hour wait, so he checked his luggage and went to a movie.

3

The man calling himself Lasker was sitting on the edge of the bed when Parker came into the room. The Warwick was a fourth-rate Transient & Permanent hotel with a dirty stone face and no marquee, and Lasker’s room was what Parker had expected, complete with green paint on plaster walls and a faded imitation Persian on the floor. The wood of the window frame was spreading along the grain, looking like eroded farmland.

The man calling himself Lasker, but whose name was really Skimm, looked up as Parker came into the room. He dropped the pint and reached under the pillow. Parker said, “Didn’t Joe tell you about the new face?”

Skimm paused with the Colt Woodsman half out from under the pillow. He squinted and said, “Parker?”

“That’s right.”

Skimm held onto the Woodsman. “What name’d you use in Nebraska?”

“Anson.”

Skimm nodded and shoved the Woodsman back under the pillow. “They did a good job on you,” he said. “You made me drop my whisky.”

Parker went over to the window and looked out — at brick building backs and rusted black metal constructions on roofs. Down below he could see a trapezoidal concrete-covered yard, scattered with garbage cans and bits of paper. “You picked a bad neighborhood, Skimm,” he said.

Skimm was picking up the pint. Some had spilled, soaking into the carpet. He looked over at Parker and shrugged in embarrassment. “We haven’t been bankrolled yet.” He held the pint up and squinted at the inch of whisky left in the bottom of it. “I need this job,” he said. “I admit it.”

Parker knew about that. Skimm, like most men on the bum, lived from job to job; he spent more in one year than most make in five and was always broke, dressing and looking like a bum. How he did it, where it all went, Parker didn’t know.

He worked it differently, spending the money and time between jobs living at the best resort hotels and dressing himself in the best clothes. There was no overlap between people he knew on and off the job. He owned a couple of parking lots and gas stations around the country to satisfy the curiosity of the Internal Revenue beagles, but never went near them. He let the managers siphon off the profits in return for not asking him to take an active part in the business.

He came back from the window. The room sported a green leather chair, the rip across the seat patched with masking tape. Parker settled into the chair gingerly.

“All right. Who else is in it?”

“So far, only me and Handy McKay. I’ve got the earie out for Lew Matson and Little Bob Foley. Maybe we’ll need more; it’s all how we set it up.”

“You want me to angle for the bankroll, huh?”

“You got the connections, Parker,” Skimm said. He had watery eyes, of a pale blue. They looked at Parker when Parker was talking, but when Skimm was talking they looked everywhere else — up at the ceiling and over at the window and down at the near-empty pint and over at the pillow and then the other way at the door with the hotel regulations pasted on the back.

“I’ve got the connections,” Parker agreed. “Who’s the bird dog on this one?”

“It’s a frill.” Skimm looked embarrassed. “She’s a busher,” he said, “but she’s okay.”

“If she never worked this route before,” Parker said, “where’d she get the connections?”

“Through me. I met her one time.” Skimm now looked more embarrassed than before. He was a thin stub end of a man, all bones and skin with no meat. His head was long and thin, set on a chicken neck with a knotty Adam’s apple, and his face was all nose and cheekbones. The watery eyes were set deep in the skull, the jaw small and hard. “We get along,” he said, “her and me.” He said it apologetically, as though he knew an off-the-wall like him shouldn’t be getting along with any woman. “She works in a diner. In Jersey.”

Parker dragged his Luckies out of his pocket, shook one out and lit it. “I don’t know,” he said.

“She’s straight, Parker. I been in this business long enough.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I heard about what happened with your woman. That was a tough bit.”

Parker shrugged. “She got in a bind, that’s all. So now she’s dead.”

“Alma is okay, believe me.”

“It isn’t she’s a woman,” Parker said. “It’s she’s new, that’s what I don’t like. When a new fish does the fingering, most of the time the job goes sour.”

“Sure,” said Skimm. “I know that. Because they want their piece of the pie, but they got to be covered because they’re known. But this time it’s different, Alma’s going to take off with me after it’s over.”

“We’ll see. What’s the setup?”

“Hold on, I’ll show you.” Skimm tilted the pint, emptied it, and set it on the night table. Then he went over to the dresser, opened the bottom drawer, and took out a manila envelope. There wasn’t any table or writing desk in the room, so he went back and spread things out on the bed. Parker stood beside the bed and watched.

The first thing Skimm took out of the envelope was an Esso roadmap of New Jersey. “Here it is,” he said. He opened the map and pointed a finger to the right hand side of it, near New York. “Here’s where it is here, where it says Perth Amboy. See it? Route 9 comes south here, see, and down here a couple miles below Perth Amboy it splits. See? 9 keeps on south, and 35 heads off to the east and follows the shore.”

Parker nodded. He could have seen it better if Skimm had kept his fingers out of the way, but he didn’t say anything. He wasn’t in any hurry, and every man has his own rate and style of telling a story. Try to hurry Skimm or make him talk without covering the map with his fingers and he’d just get confused.

“Okay,” Skimm was saying. “Now, two miles farther south, 34 takes off. To the east again, same as 35. Right there, see it?”

“I see it.”

“Okay. Now, about midway between those turnoffs there’s the Shore Points Diner, on the west side of the road. Right in there, see? Between where those two red lines go off to the right.”

“I’ve got it, Skimm. And that’s where this Alma’s a waitress.”

“Right! Now, down here—” His fingers moved southward down the map. “Here’s Freehold, down here, where 9 crosses 33. Now, there’s the Dairyman’s Trust, this bank, see, it’s up here in Elizabeth, and they got a branch in Newark, and they got a branch down here in Freehold, too. Now every other Monday there’s this Wells Fargo armored car comes down from the main branch in Elizabeth down to Freehold, see? Down along route 9, here.”

“And they stop at this Shore Points Diner,” Parker said.

“That’s it! This Freehold, it ain’t much of a town, but the Dairyman’s Trust is the biggest bank, I mean with branches in Newark and Elizabeth and all, so most of the business accounts all around Freehold are in that bank, see? So when the armored car comes down every other Monday, it carries enough dough to pay off two weeks of payrolls around Freehold, and any other dough the bank needs down there. We figure maybe fifty G, maybe more.”

Parker frowned. “That’s all? The way I read the letter, fifty thousand figured to be my split.”

Skimm looked up, worried and apologetic and embarrassed. “Oh, no, Parker! I never told Joe nothing like that.”

“Okay, I read it wrong, that’s all.”

“I mean, fifty G is the minimum figure, you see? It might be seventy, eighty, who knows?”

Parker dragged on his cigarette, flicking ashes onto the whisky stain on the carpet. “That means if I’m lucky I clear ten. Maybe only eight.” He shook his head. “It isn’t worth it.”

Skimm’s eyes flicked toward the empty pint, then looked back at the map. “It’s an easy haul,” he said wistfully. “If there was something better on the fire, I’d think that way, too. But I got no other jobs building, and I need the dough.” He looked up at Parker, his mouth opened because of the lifted angle of his head. “You know of anything else?”

“No.” That was the trouble. He had nothing else on the fire either, and he only had the nine grand. He couldn’t pick and choose and plan, the way he’d want to. He had to build a stake, he had to have a money cushion.

“I’d like to have you in it, Parker,” Skimm was saying, wistful again. “I know your work.”

“Maybe it doesn’t really need five men,” Parker said thoughtfully. “That’s a big crowd for an armored car heist. What’s the play?”

“Yeah.” Skimm reached for the envelope. “We figured to do it at the diner,” he said. “Here, let me show you.” He was all activity again, talking in a rush, as though he were afraid Parker would walk out on him before he was done. He pulled more paper out of the manila envelope, and found the sheet he wanted. “Here, here it is. See, this is the diner here, and the highway, and the parking lot.”

Parker looked in among the pointing fingers. On the sheet of paper was a rough pencil drawing of the diner area, as seen from above. The diner was set back off the highway about six yards, with parking lots on both sides and at the rear. Across the front, between diner and roadway, was a patch marked ‘Grass.’ There was an X scrawled on one of the parking lots at the side, up close against the side of the building.

“Now they come in,” said Skimm, pointing all over the sheet of paper, “every other Monday morning between ten-thirty and eleven. They never miss. There’s the driver, and a guard sitting up in front with him, and the other guard in back. They’ve all been on this route for years, see? And they’ve got a pattern, they never change. They come in between ten-thirty and eleven, and they park right there where the X is.” He tapped the X with his finger and looked up at Parker. “See it there?”

“I see it.”

“Right,” said Skimm. He looked down at the drawing again. “Then, the driver and the guard from in back go into the diner and have coffee and danish and take a leak, see, and then they go back to the car and the other guard comes in. Then when he’s done they take off again. Maybe fifteen minutes for the whole thing.”

Parker nodded.

Skimm took a deep breath. “Now,” he said, “here’s the way we figured it. We need two tractor-trailers, big ones. They trial the armored car down 9, see, hanging back a little so when they get to the diner the first two guys are already inside. They pull in and they park on each side of the armored car, see, they bracket it like, so you can’t look into the armored car from either side. Alma works it in the diner so that side is closed to be mopped, see, so there won’t be any customers close enough to the windows on that side to be able to see what’s going on. And the trailers stick back far enough so you’d have to be right behind the armored car to tumble to anything, you see what I mean? But nobody will anyway because right after the trailers come in our car parks right behind the trailers, facing across them, you see the way it works? Here, I’ll show you.” Unnecessarily, he threw a U-shape, and explained.

Parker waited through it, nodding, beginning to lose his patience. He didn’t like the job with an amateur doing the fingering and five guys cutting up a fifty thousand dollar pie after the finger’s ten percent and the bankroller’s two-for-one were already taken out, and with the job already requiring two tractor-trailers and a car. And Skimm didn’t even have them into the armored car yet.

Skimm finished his explanation and said, “Now, we’ve got two guys in the head, inside the diner. The driver and the guard always take a leak when they stop off there, it never misses, they’re regular as clockwork. So they go in, and the two guys in there tap them and stow them away in a stall, see? And outside we got the other three, from the trucks and the car. They pump tear gas into the air vent on top of the cab — you know what that looks like? They got this thing on top—”

“I know what it looks like,” Parker said.

“Okay.” Skimm hurried even faster, sensing Parker’s impatience. “That forces the guy out, see? We take the keys off him, tap him, transfer the dough to the car, and we all take off. The one truck goes up 9 here, see? North, up to South Amboy, it’s maybe a mile, and cuts back south on 535, this little blue road here. The other truck goes south to 516, that’s maybe four miles, and then cuts east. And the car, with the dough, takes this old dirt road — it isn’t on this map, it goes from behind the diner across here to this unmarked road, this little one here — and south on the unmarked road to Old Bridge. We all come together at Old Bridge, see, and back off east of the town there’s this falling-down old farm. We meet there. We split up the boodle and take off. And see, the thing is, we get vehicles going off in three directions, so they don’t know which way to look for us.”

He looked up at Parker, hopeful and expectant. “What do you think?”

Parker shook his head and crossed the room to toss his cigarette out the window. When he turned back, he said, “You ever work an armored car job before, Skimm?”

Skimm’s lips twitched. “No, I never did.”

“That’s what I figured. They got two-way radios, boy. You drop tear gas in there, right away he calls. Before he has to take a deep breath, there’s state police all over us.”

Skimm looked down at the map and papers, as though they’d betrayed him. “I didn’t know that.”

“And you don’t make a getaway in a semitrailer,” Parker went on. “They’d catch you before you reached fourth gear.”

“Jesus, Parker—”

“Who worked up this scheme? Alma?”

“Most of it was her idea, yeah.”

“Sure. She spent a lot of time leaning on the counter looking out there at that tin box wishing she could get her hands on the green inside and working it all out in her head, not knowing a thing about heisting or armored cars or anything else except how to draw a lousy cup of coffee.”

“Aw, now, Parker—”

“I need cash,” Parker said. “I’m in the job, on one condition.”

“Name it.”

“We throw that plan away and start from scratch. She gave us the setup, and it’s a good one. Bracketing the wagon with trucks is good, too. From there on, we got to work something out from the beginning.”

Skimm twitched all over trying not to show his relief. He’d never worked an armored car before, and he hadn’t been sure of himself. He’d probably talked himself into a bind with the woman Alma, loud-talking about what an artist he was so he couldn’t admit to her he didn’t know whether her ideas were any good or not. He’d wanted Parker because he wanted somebody else to take over the operation.

Parker lit a new cigarette. “We’ll do it with three men, not five. The pie’s too small for five. You and Handy and me, and we split it three ways even. You and Alma can share your third between you any way you want.”

“What about her ten percent?”

“Give it to her out of your third. What the hell, she’s traveling with you.”

“Jesus, I don’t know, Parker. I’d have to check with Alma on that.”

“You two figured to take a third anyway, didn’t you? And leave the other two-thirds for a four-man split. So what’s the difference? You get the same dough as before, but with a cleaner, safer job.”

“I guess so,” Skimm said doubtfully. “I’d have to check with Alma.”

“Check with the finger? Skimm, give me an answer now or the deal’s off.”

Skimm worried it over, staring anxiously at the empty pint. Finally, he said, “Okay, Parker. Three ways, even.”

“All right. Let me see that map.” Parker came over and took it from the bed. “Newark,” he said. “There’s a bar named the Green Rose. It’s on Division Street. I’ll meet you there next Monday night, ten o’clock.”

“Okay, sure.” Skimm got up from the bed, his lips twitching again. Parker knew he was anxious to go buy another pint. “Okay, Parker, I’m glad to have you in, I really am. I’ll send word to Lew and Little Bob to forget it.”

“Good.”

“What you going to do now?”

“See about bankrolling. I know a couple of people in Baltimore. I’ll figure three grand to cover it.”

“Okay, fine. Listen, you want Handy with me? At the bar I mean?”

“Sure.”

“I’m glad to have you in, Parker.”

“The Green Rose,” Parker reminded him. “Next Monday, ten o’clock.”

4

Across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio is Newport, Kentucky. Parker took the bus over and walked to Whore Row. Cincinnati is a clean town, so the Cincinnati citizens in search of action go across the river to Newport, which is a dirty town. Parker wandered around, walking up and down the streets, looking. It was eleven-thirty at night when he got to Newport, and nearly two in the morning before he found what he was looking for.

Ahead of him, a weaving drunk fumbled with his car keys, trying to get into a car with Ohio plates. The car was a Ford, cream-colored, two years old. Except for Parker and the drunk the block was empty and deserted.

Parker came along, arms swinging loose at his sides, and when he was alongside the drunk he turned and chopped him in the kidney. That made it impossible for the drunk to cry out. Parker turned him and clipped him, and caught the car keys as they fell from the drunk’s hand. The drunk hit the pavement, and Parker unlocked the car door, slid behind the wheel, and drove away.

He took the bridge back across the river to Cincinnati and parked near the railroad depot. He went into the depot and got the suitcase and typewriter case from the locker where he’d stashed them. Then he went back to the car and drove north through town and out the other side and headed northeast on 22 toward Pittsburgh. It was now three o’clock Thursday morning. He had till Monday night to get to New Jersey and look the situation over for himself. If the setup looked as promising as Skimm had made it sound, fine. Otherwise, Skimm would have a long wait at the Green Rose.

Parker covered the three hundred miles between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh in under seven hours, crossing into Pennsylvania at Weirton a little after nine. He circled Pittsburgh, not wanting to go through town, and when he got back to 22 on the other side it was after ten. He slowed down, then, looking for a motel.

When he found one, he stopped. He slept most of the day, getting up at quarter to seven. He took a shower and shaved and dressed, and then opened the typewriter case on the bed. He counted out three thousand dollars, then closed the typewriter case again. He needed money badly, so he’d decided to bankroll the job himself. So far as Skimm was concerned, the money was coming from the contacts in Baltimore.

Parker stowed the three thousand in his suitcase, then carried the typewriter case down the row of doors to the motel office. This was a secondary route now that the Pennsylvania Turnpike was in existence, and the motel was seedy and run-down. The interior walls needed a new coat of paint, and half the neon sign out by the road wasn’t working.

The man who ran the hotel was short, fat and balding. His eyes shone behind glasses with plastic frames patched by friction tape. He sat at the counter in the motel office, dressed in a rumpled suit and a frayed white shirt and a wrinkled tie. He had sullen lines around his mouth, and he was surly whenever his customers spoke to him.

He was alone at the desk when Parker came in, staring glumly across the counter through the plate-glass window at the road. A semi passed, headed east, and then the road was empty again.

Parker put the typewriter case up on the counter and said, “Want to make half a G?”

The owner looked at him. “Why don’t you go to hell?”

Parker lit a cigarette and dropped the match on the counter, still burning. The owner made a startled sound and reached out, slapping the match. Parker said, “One of these days, somebody’s going to break your head.”

“You get the hell out of here!” the owner said angrily. “Who do you think you are?”

“Five hundred,” Parker said. “You could get the sign fixed.”

The owner got off his stool, looking back at the phone on the wall. Then he looked at Parker again. “You mean it?”

Parker waited, smoking.

The owner considered, gnawing on the inside of his cheek. He stood next to his stool, one hand flat palm down on the counter. His fingernails were ragged and dirty. He thought about it, gnawing his cheek, and then he shook his head. “You’re talking about something illegal,” he said. “I don’t want no part of it.”

Parker opened the typewriter case. “See? Five grand. And it isn’t hot money. I want to stash it someplace where I know it’s safe. If I ask you to hold it for me and you look in it and see the dough, you might be tempted. So I pay you five hundred. You’ve made a nice piece of change, and you don’t get so tempted.”

“Five thousand.” He said it with a kind of heavy contempt. “What would I do with five thousand? Where would I go? What would it get me? I’d need a lot more than that. I’m stuck in this rattrap for the rest of my life.”

“You want the five hundred?”

“If a state trooper comes in looking for that money, I’ll hand it right over. I don’t go to jail for no five hundred dollars. Or any five thousand, either.”

“I told you, it isn’t hot.”

The owner looked at the money. “For how long?” he asked.

Parker shrugged. “Maybe a week, maybe a year.”

“What if it gets stolen off me?”

Parker smiled thinly, and shook his head. “I wouldn’t believe it,” he said.

“I don’t know.” The man looked at the money doubtfully. “Why don’t you put it in a bank?”

“I don’t like banks.”

The owner sighed and nodded. “All right,” he said. “I’ll get the sign fixed.”

Parker reached into the typewriter case and counted five hundred dollars onto the counter. Then he closed and locked the typewriter case and slid it across to the owner. “I’ll stop back for it sometime,” he said.

Then he went back to the room and picked up the suitcase. He stashed it in the Ford and left the motel, heading east.

It was after midnight when he reached New Jersey. He stayed north of Philadelphia and crossed the Delaware River from Easton to Phillipsburg, still on 22. He stayed with 22 all the way to Newark. When he reached Newark, he drove around the sidestreets for a while, and made two stops.

The first time, he took a screwdriver and removed the Jersey plates from a five-year-old Dodge. The second time, he took a razor blade from his shaving kit, and walked three blocks until he found an unlocked parked car. The street was deserted, so he slid behind the wheel and spent three minutes with the razor blade carefully removing the state inspection sticker from the windshield. It tore in a couple of places, but not badly. He went back to the Ford, found route 9, and drove south out of Newark.

About twenty miles south, he passed the Shore Points Diner, all lit up, with three trucks and a station wagon parked at the sides. He continued south, nearly to Freehold, and when the highway narrowed to two lanes he pulled off onto the shoulder. He removed the Ohio plates and put the Jersey plates on and stowed the Ohio plates under the mat in the trunk. He smeared red Jersey mud on the bumpers and license plates, so the numbers could still be read but only with difficulty, and then turned around and drove north again, stopping at a motel in Linden. He borrowed some mucilage from the woman who ran the motel, attached the inspection sticker to the windshield of the Ford and went to bed.

5

Sitting at the counter over a cup of coffee, Parker tried to figure out which waitress was Alma. Since it was Saturday, just after noon, the place was nearly full, and the four waitresses were kept constantly on the move. Parker watched them, one at a time, trying to decide.

One was soft-plump with frilly blonde hair and big blue eyes, the helpless magnolia-blossom type that works out best in the south and fails almost completely on the Jersey flats. Another was thin and stringy, with thin and stringy gray hair and a thin and stringy mouth; she surely had a school-age daughter or two at home, and her husband surely deserted her nine or ten years ago. The third was the German barmaid type, with sullen eyes and fat arms and a habit of throwing plates onto tables. The last was the horsy clumsy type, a young girl who couldn’t stop thinking about sex; she got the orders wrong from all the male customers, and spent most of her nights knees-up on the back seats of Plymouths.

Parker studied them one by one, trying to decide. He crossed off the horsy nymphomaniac right away; when the armored car guards came in here for coffee and danish, that one would spend too much time thinking about their sex organs to wonder about the money they were guarding. The magnolia blossom might yearn for the goodies that money could bring, but if she were Alma she wouldn’t offer Skimm any complicated plans for hitting the armored car — that type let the man do the thinking. The thin and stringy one had more than likely been married to a drifter who looked like Skimm, and she wouldn’t trust him anyway since he was a man. And that left the German barmaid.

So that was Alma. She passed him, white waitress skirt rustling and nylons scraping together at the thighs, and went on down behind the counter to draw three cups of coffee. He watched her, frowning, not liking what he saw.

She was in her mid-thirties, and her waitress-short hair, a mousy brown in color, was crimped all around in a frizzy permanent. Her eyes were sullen and angry, glaring out at a world that had never given her her due. She was heavily built, with broad hips and full bosom and thick legs, all of it solid and hard. She had a double chin and a pulpy nose and a surprisingly good mouth, but the mouth was obscured by the hardness of the rest of her.

He looked at her, and he didn’t like what he saw. There is no honor among thieves, perhaps, but there has to be trust among thieves when they’re working together or they’ll be too busy watching each other to watch what they’re doing. And Parker didn’t trust this Alma at all.

He watched her a while, seeing nothing to modify his opinion, then paid for his coffee and went out to the Ford. There was a Chevy wagon parked in the spot where the armored car always stopped. Parker looked up and down the highway, wandered once around the parking lot, then climbed into the Ford and backed it out of its slot. He turned the wheel and drove around behind the diner, and saw the double dirt track angle off away from the parking lot through stubby undergrowth and occasional trees. He turned the Ford that way and followed the tracks up a gentle slope and down the other side. The road was in better condition than he’d expected. A car could make time on that road, and this would be important.

It was less than a mile north to the cross road, extravagantly called the Amboy Turnpike. Parker turned left and traveled a little more than five miles to Old Bridge. He didn’t know where the deserted farmhouse was supposed to be, so he turned around and drove back north on the Amboy Turnpike again. This time he bypassed the road from the diner and kept on northward. Another mile brought him back to route 9, about half a mile north of the diner.

Less than five miles later, he left 9 on a long loop up to 440. Eastward on 440, it was three miles to Staten Island, via the Outerbridge Crossing. Parker stopped shy of the bridge, and pulled over against the curb. He smoked a Lucky as he watched the cars pass him and belt across the bridge. On the other side there was a toll booth construction across the road, built in California Mission style. Fourteen miles from there was the Staten Island Ferry, either to Manhattan or Brooklyn.

After a while he finished the cigarette, threw it out the window and turned the car around. He went back to 9, back to the Amboy Turnpike, back to Old Bridge. He parked outside a bar and pulled the New Jersey roadmap out of the glove compartment.

He studied it for a while, but there was no faster way to do it. In any kind of smash and grab, the object is to cross a state line as quickly as possible. The state where the crime took place is alerted first, with state police crawling over all the roads; it usually takes a while to get a neighboring state on its toes. If the states get along as badly as New Jersey and New York, it takes even longer.

He folded the map again, stowed it back in the glove compartment, and locked up the car. He went into the bar, drank draft beer for two hours and then looked up at the revolving Budweiser clock. “For God’s sake,” he said, “I’ve got to get to Brooklyn. What’s the quickest way from here?”

“For Brooklyn?” The bartender thought it over. “You go out of here and take this street here straight out, to the left. That’ll take you to route 9, and you take a left there till you see the sign for Outerbridge Crossing. That’ll take you to Staten Island, and then you cross the Island and take the ferry.”

“What if I take the Holland tunnel?”

“That’s the long way around for Brooklyn, Mister. That’ll lead you into Manhattan.”

“Then that’s the fastest way, huh? Go by Staten Island?”

“If you’re going to Brooklyn.”

“Thanks,” said Parker. He left the bar and drove back to Newark.

6

Across the road from the diner there was a discount store in a concrete block building. At quarter after ten on Monday morning, Parker drove the Ford into the furniture store parking lot. There was cyclone fencing all around the black-top parking lot, and Parker stopped the Ford with its nose to the fencing, facing the road. He could look straight out through the windshield at the diner across the way. He checked his watch, saw it wasn’t twenty after ten yet, and lit a cigarette.

The armored car was red, and so short it looked stubby. It jounced into the diner lot at seventeen minutes to eleven, and stopped where Skimm had said it would. A Pontiac convertible was already there, in the spot between the armored car and the road.

Parker lit a fresh cigarette and watched. The driver got out, on the near side, and carefully closed the door behind him. He walked back the length of the truck and unlocked the rear door. The guard climbed out and waited while the driver locked the rear door again. Then the two of them walked into the diner.

Two minutes gone; fifteen minutes to eleven exactly.

They came back out at three minutes to eleven, and they both went to the rear of the truck. The driver unlocked the door, the guard climbed back in, the driver shut and locked the door again. Then he went back to the cab. The other guard opened the door for him from the inside, stepped down to the gravel, and the driver climbed up behind the wheel. The guard pushed the door closed and went into the diner.

He didn’t take so long, probably because he didn’t have anybody to talk to. At eight minutes after eleven, he came back out and went around to the far side of the armored car. The driver reached over and opened the door for him. He climbed in and the driver backed out of the space and bumped across the gravel to the concrete and headed south again on 9.

Parker got rolling right after him, coming out of the furniture store lot and heading north a quarter mile to the next place where he could make a U-turn. He hit sixty-five for a couple of minutes, coming back southward, and when he saw the red of the armored car far ahead of him he slowed down to fifty, matching the armored car’s speed.

The road was four lanes wide for a while, and then it narrowed down to two. There was very little traffic, only one Chevy station wagon between Parker and the armored car. The wagon turned off on 520, and Parker hung back farther. He was watching the sides of the road and the road itself, but he didn’t see anything that looked good. No blind turns, no hills, no valleys. The road was flat and straight, the curves wide and looping.

Parker quit before they reached Freehold, and turned the Ford around. He drove north a couple of miles and pulled onto the shoulder of the road. He shut the engine and got out of the car and opened the hood. Then he went back and sat behind the wheel again and lit a cigarette. He made himself comfortable in the seat and watched the rearview mirror.

A little after noon, a state patrol car pulled onto the shoulder just ahead of him, and a trooper got out looking like a modernized cowboy, only better fed. Parker rolled the window down and the trooper looked at him through his sunglasses and said, “Any trouble here?”

“She heated up,” Parker answered. “My brother took a walk up to the Esso station for some water.”

The trooper nodded. “That’s all right, then.”

“Thanks for stopping,” Parker said.

The trooper hesitated, and then took one glove off. “May I see your license and registration, please?”

“I don’t drive,” Parker told him. “My brother drives. I’m just sitting here till he comes back.”

This was beginning to irritate him, but he didn’t show it. The hood being up was supposed to answer all the questions, was supposed to keep cops from stopping to ask what he was parked on the shoulder for. But it was a dull day and a quiet road and not much traffic, so they’d stopped anyway — for the hell of it, to break the monotony.

“What about the registration?” the trooper asked.

“He’s got that, too,” Parker answered. “He keeps them both in his wallet.”

“It’s supposed to be in the car.” The trooper wasn’t suspicious or angry, just breaking the monotony. “He should have left it with you.”

“I guess he didn’t think,” Parker said. He hoped the armored car wouldn’t go by now, while he was bottled up with this idiot cop. “He was sore about the heating up and everything.”

The trooper hesitated again, glancing through his sunglasses at the back seat. “How come he went for the water, instead of you? Seeing you don’t drive.”

Parker said, “I’ve got a game leg. That’s why I can’t get a driver’s license.”

The trooper was suddenly embarrassed. He pulled his glove back on and said, “You tell your brother about the registration.”

“I will,” Parker promised.

The trooper walked back to his own car, still looking like an overfed cowboy. He even had a rolling, slightly bow-legged walk. His black boots glistened in the sun. He got into the car and after a minute it pulled away and dwindled out of sight on the concrete road.

Parker watched it till it disappeared, and then lit a new cigarette and frowned at the rearview mirror.

That shouldn’t have happened. To have a cop working the area of a job notice you, that was bad. The hood being up should have taken care of things; if the damn cop hadn’t been bored, it would have. From now on, he’d have to watch two things at once, the job and that state trooper car. It wouldn’t do for that trooper to see him driving.

He touched his fingers to his face, over his upper lip. His beard had been coming in spotty since the plastic surgery — the doctor had said that would straighten out after a while — but the hair on the upper lip grew the same as always. It might not be a bad idea to grow a moustache. If the same cop stopped him again, he could be his own brother. Amazing family resemblance. Parker grinned sourly at the thought, still watching the rearview mirror.

He saw the red in the mirror at twenty after one, coming like a bat out of hell. He got out of the Ford and closed the hood and was getting back behind the wheel when the armored car went by. He started the engine and took off after it. The armored car was staying between fifty-five and sixty now; these guys were probably quitting work as soon as they reported in. Watching for the trooper’s car, Parker stayed with the red tin box, without getting too close.

They went by the Shore Points Diner and over the Raritan River and straight on up 9 — four lanes all the way now — to Elizabeth. When the armored car turned off, in town, Parker kept going straight, on up to Newark. He’d seen all he wanted to see. The diner was where it would have to be done. There wasn’t any place at all along the road where they could flag if for the toby, so that meant they’d have to use Alma.

Parker didn’t like it. First Alma, and then the bored cop. It was beginning to smell sour. There were too many things to watch, all at once. But he needed the stake, so he’d go to the Green Rose tonight, but if the job got any more sour anywhere along the line he’d drop it. He was figuring on splitting half, plus the bankroller’s cut, and that made it a boodle worth going after.

In Newark, he parked on a side street. He had time to kill, so he went to a movie. It was the fourth double feature he’d seen since Saturday.

7

The Green Rose was oblong, and very dim. A trough high around the wall contained indirect lighting, alternate red and green lengths of fluorescent tubes. Some of the mechanical beer and whisky display ads on the bar back were lighted, and there was a light over the cash register, but the rest of the place was like a tomb.

Coming in the door, the dark mahogany bar was to the left, extending back to the wall projection for the rest rooms. Booths with dark red leather seats and black formica on the tables were on the right. Parker walked down the line between the bar and the booths to the back, where there was a bigger booth across from the rest rooms. They were there, all three of them.

Skimm and Alma sat facing the front of the bar, with Alma on the outside, so she’d been to the head already. They both had beer in front of them, a glass and a thin bottle and a glass and a thin bottle, and Alma’s glass and bottle were almost empty. Handy McKay was sitting on the other side, half-turned, with his back against the wall.

He was long and thin and made of gristle, and his stiff dark hair was gray over the ears. He lipped his cigarettes so badly the brown tobacco showed through the paper for half an inch, and he used wooden matches, the little ones, not the big kitchen matches. Whenever he got cigarettes from a machine, he threw the pack of paper matches away. Between cigarettes, he poked at his teeth with the plain end of one of the wooden matches.

“Hello, Handy. Move your knee.”

Handy turned his head slowly and raised an eyebrow at Skimm. Skimm grinned, though otherwise he was acting nervous. “That’s Parker.”

“Son of a bitch,” said Handy thoughtfully. He moved his knee and watched Parker sit down. “Did a good job on you,” he said.

“Yeah.”

Alma said suddenly, “You were in the diner Saturday.” Her voice was harsh, but low.

Parker looked at her. “That’s right.”

Skimm was very nervous. “Parker, this is Alma. Alma, Parker.” He looked at them both as though he wanted to say, “Don’t fight.”

Alma turned to Skimm, “We need more beer. How come he was in the diner Saturday?”

“Looking it over,” said Skimm. “Here comes the bartender now. He had to look the setup over first, ain’t that right, Parker?”

Parker nodded. Skimm ordered four more bottles of Bud and the bartender went away.

“It’s a good setup,” Parker said.

“Like I told you,” Skimm answered. He sounded relieved, but still nervous.

“You figure just the four of us, Parker?”

“It’s a small pie, Handy,” Parker said.

“I want to talk about that,” Alma said. She seemed ready for a fight about anything.

“Not here,” Parker said.

There was a cigarette in the ashtray that had been lipped very badly. Handy picked it up and said, “I haven’t seen you in a while, Parker.”

“Few years,” Parker answered.

“What do you hear from Stanton?”

“He went to jail a couple years ago. Out in Indiana.”

Handy puffed thoughtfully on his cigarette, holding it from force of habit in his cupped fingers so the light wouldn’t show. “How’d it happen?”

“They shot his gas tank as he pulled away from the bank. It didn’t blow, but it drained out before he could make the switch. He tried walking to the other car, and they picked him up. Three of them, Stanton and Beak Weiss and one other guy.”

Handy shook his head. “Bad.”

“It wouldn’t of happened,” Parker said quietly, “but their driver ditched while they were in the bank. A kid, new at the game.” He glanced at Skimm, and back to Handy. “That held them up, having to start the car.”

“You got to be careful who you work with,” Handy said. He put his cigarette out, bending the lipped end onto the ember, making a small fizzing sound.

The bartender brought the new round and Skimm paid. He was more nervous than ever. They waited while he counted out change and added a bill. The bartender scooped it off the formica and went away, and Skimm said, bright and nervous, “This is a nice place, Parker. You picked a nice place.” Beside him, Alma was glaring, still ready for the fight.

They sat there and drank the beer, and Parker and Handy talked about people they knew. Skimm sat stiff, elbows on the table, not quite bouncing up and down, with a nervous grin on his face. He wanted to talk with them, because he knew most of the same people, but he didn’t want Alma to feel left out, so he didn’t talk, just smiled and grinned and looked nervous.

When they finished the beer, Parker said to Skimm, “You got a place in town?”

“In Irvington. It ain’t far.”

“We’ll go there.”

They went outside to the sidewalk and Parker said, “You got a car?”

Alma answered. “Over there, the green Dodge.”

“I’ll follow you.” Parker turned to Handy. “You got a car?”

“No.”

“Ride along with me.”

They walked down the Street. Parker’s car was down at the end of the block, facing the wrong way. They got in, and he made a U-turn and waited till the green Dodge passed him. Alma was driving. They could see her mouth moving, angry talk, and Skimm looking worried. Parker pulled out behind the Dodge and followed it to Springfield Avenue and down Springfield toward Irvington.

When they’d ridden a few blocks, Handy said, “She’s going to try a cross.”

“I know that.”

Handy nodded. “I figured you did.” He pulled a box of matches out of his pocket, took one of the matches, and poked at his teeth with it. He held the box in his other hand and shook it a little, to make the matches rattle inside. “So then what?”

“We split two ways,” Parker said.

Handy grunted. “What about Skimm?”

“Either she’s talked him over, or she figures to bump him.”

“Why not do it without her?”

“She’s the finger, she could finger us. Besides, we need her in the setup. She blinds one side during the job.”

Handy nodded, and kept poking at his teeth. “You got the cross figured?”

Parker nodded. “I’ll take you over the route.”

They rode a while longer, and Handy said, “You nervous, Parker?”

“There’s too much to watch. I don’t like this Alma thing. If it gets worse, I pull out.”

“I’ll go with you.”

They followed the green Dodge when it turned off Springfield Avenue. They drove along secondary streets a while. Handy lit a new cigarette, using the match he’d been poking against his teeth. “I been meaning to ask you about something.”

When he didn’t go on, Parker said, “What?”

“I heard you was dead. I heard your wife done it. Then Skimm told me you done your wife in, and the syndicate was after you.”

“Outfit,” said Parker.

“What?”

“They call it the Outfit. I was in an operation that went sour. This guy Mal, you wouldn’t know him, he put Lynn in a squeeze. Either she dropped me or he’d drop her. She did her best, and this guy Mal thought it was good enough. Then he went to New York and used my share to pay off an old debt to the Outfit. They took him on in some kind of job, and when I got on my feet I settled him and got my money back from the Outfit.”

Handy grunted again. It was the way he laughed. “They didn’t like it much, huh?”

“I had to louse up their business day a little bit.”

“What about your wife? Lynn. I heard you settled with her, too.”

Parker shook his head. “I wanted to, but I didn’t. When she found she hadn’t done me, she killed herself.”

Handy grunted. “Saved you the trouble, huh?”

Parker shrugged. He’d wanted to kill her, to even things, but when he’d seen her he’d known he couldn’t. She was the only one he’d ever met that he didn’t feel simply about. With everybody else in the world, the situation was simple. They were in and he worked with them or they were out and he ignored them or they were trouble and he took care of them. But with Lynn he hadn’t been able to work that way.

He’d felt for her what he’d never felt for anybody else or anything else, not even himself, not even money. She had tried her level best to kill him, and even that hadn’t changed anything, the way he felt about her or his helplessness with her. He didn’t want that to happen again, ever, to feel about anybody that way, to let his feelings get stronger than his judgment. Oddly enough, he missed her and wished she were still alive and still with him, even though he knew that sooner or later she would have found herself in the same kind of bind again and done the same thing.

Ahead of him, the green Dodge turned into a driveway next to a small faded clapboard house. This was an old section here: all the houses were small and faded — most of them with sagging porches.

There was no garage. The green Dodge turned into the backyard and stopped, Parker pulled up beside it, and he and Handy got out. Alma and Skimm were waiting for them, by the back door. There were three warped steps up, and a small back porch half the width of the house. The kitchen door had masking tape over a break in the window. Skimm lived in places where broken things were patched with masking tape.

They all went into the kitchen and Alma told Skimm to open up some beer.

“Sure,” said Skimm. He wasn’t nervously happy anymore, he was sullen now.

Alma told the others to come on into the living room. She’d argued most of the belligerence out on the drive. She was sure of herself now, and in charge.

They went through the dining room, going around a scarred table. The house was one story high, with a living room and a dining room and a kitchen and two bedrooms. One bedroom was off the dining room and the other one was off the kitchen. The bathroom was off the kitchen on the other side, next to the steps to the basement.

Alma clicked a wall switch and a ceiling light went on, four forty-watt bulbs amid a cluster of stained glass. Alma led the way into the room. “Look at this lousy place. Just look at it.”

It wasn’t very good. The sofa was green mohair, worn smooth in some places and spiny in others. The two armchairs both rested the weight of their springs on the floor, and one of them had an old deep cigarette burn in one overstuffed arm. The rug was faded and worn, showing trails where people had done the most walking, to the front door and the dining room archway. There was an old television set with an eleven-inch screen and a wooden cabinet with a folded match-book under one leg.

Alma pulled the wrinkled shades down over the three living room windows. “Sit down.”

Parker and Handy took the armchairs. Skimm came in, carrying four cans of beer, and passed them around. Then he and Alma sat on the sofa.

Alma started. “Skimm tells me you don’t like the plan.”

“Did he tell you why?” Parker asked.

“I don’t mean the tear gas,” she said. “The rest of it.”

“Which rest of it?” Parker asked.

“We need five men,” she said. “We can’t do it with less. For God’s sake, it’s an armored car.”

“You want to lay a siege and starve them out?” Parker asked.

“Don’t be a wise guy.”

Handy didn’t have a cigarette going, he had a match poked into his mouth. He took it out and said, “Who’s running this operation?”

Nobody answered him. Parker looked at Skimm, and Skimm looked at the floor. Alma looked at Handy.

Handy pointed the wet end of the match at Alma. “You’re the finger.” He pointed the match at Skimm. “You brung us in. You running it, Skimm?”

Skimm looked up, reluctantly. “I never worked an armored car before.”

“I ain’t running it,” said Handy. “I’m not the type. So that leaves Parker.”

Parker said, “I don’t like this situation. More and more, I don’t like it. The finger sitting in, doing a lot of talking. I just don’t like it.”

“I’ve got a stake in this too, you know,” Alma said. She was getting hot again, a slow flush creeping up her face.

“Skimm, who’s running this operation?” Parker asked.

Skimm was even more reluctant to answer this time. When he finally spoke, it was to Alma. “Parker knows this kind of job.”

Alma said, “Let’s hear what he has to say.”

“It’s simple. Three men. One in a uniform like the guards wear. We get the two trucks, and one car. One of the trucks we rig up so we can lock the guards in it, keep them cooled for a while. The driver and the guard from the back go in first. While they’re in the diner, we get in position. When they come out, we grab them at the back of the armored car, where the other guard in the cab can’t see us. We wait till they open the back door. Then we grab them, and the one in the uniform takes the driver up to the cab. The guard inside opens the door when he recognizes the driver, and the other one — that’s one of us — hangs back, so the guard’ll just glimpse the uniform out of the corner of his eye. He opens up, and we’ve got him, too. We sap all three of them and lock them in the truck. Then we transfer the cash and take off in the car. We leave the trucks there because we don’t need them anymore.”

“That’s what I don’t like,” said Alma. “That’s the part I don’t like.”

Parker drank some beer and looked at her.

“They’re going to see your car,” Alma said. “It’s going to be at the back of the U, blocking vision, so they’re going to see it. That’s why I wanted the trucks to be in it, too. We’d have vehicles going off in all different directions and they wouldn’t know which way to go to look for us.”

It didn’t matter which way they went, or how many people saw them go. Parker knew that but he didn’t say anything about it. This Alma was a busher, a new fish, she didn’t know how this kind of operation was handled. Parker knew this, because this was his line of work, but he didn’t say anything about it. All he said was, “Tractor-trailers don’t outrun police cars. We leave them at the diner.”

“I still want cars going off in different directions.”

Parker nodded. He knew why she wanted it, but she didn’t know he knew. He said, “So what’s your idea?”

“My car,” she said, “my car, that’s the Dodge out there. It’ll be parked behind the diner, like always. When you get the money out of the armored car, you put it in my car. Then you take off on route 9, going south, and circle around back to Old Bridge. When I know the job’s finished, I’ll get in my car and take the back road. Then we meet at the farmhouse outside Old Bridge. That way, even if you get stopped they’ve got nothing on you because you aren’t carrying the money.”

Parker glanced at Skimm. He was studying the carpet, lines of worry creasing his forehead. Parker said to Alma, “I don’t like it. That leaves you holding the cash, and the rest of us holding the bag. I know Skimm, and I trust him, and I know Handy, but I don’t know you.”

“So one of you rides with me,” she said. “Skimm. He can ride with me. All right?”

It was bad. The whole idea was stupid. It was sloppy, it was bad business.

But Parker nodded. “That’s all right. Just so one of us goes along with the money.”

If he let her keep her original plan he could be sure of getting the money back. If he forced her to change by making the grab more sensible, then maybe he wouldn’t be able to figure out her cross in time. He’d had to argue so she wouldn’t get suspicious. The only one he had to worry about was Skimm. Skimm, if he was thinking sensibly, had to know the two-car scheme was nonsense. He would have to wonder why Parker was going along with it. If Alma had talked him into her plans, that would make him dangerous because he’d realize that Parker was onto the cross. But it made more sense that Alma was playing a lone game, that she was figuring to cross Skimm, too.

“What about bankrolling?” Handy asked.

“I got it,” Parker said. “Three grand.” He pulled a long white envelope from his jacket pocket. “I brought five C with me,” he said, “in case there was any need for it.”

Handy nodded. “You going to equip us?”

“Yes.”

“Then I don’t need any.”

Alma was staring at the envelope. “Skimm could use some money,” she said.

“This isn’t for personal expenses. This is bankrolling. That means to buy what we need for the operation.”

Skimm said, in a small voice, “I don’t need any.”

Parker put the envelope back in his pocket. Alma watched it disappear, a vertical anger line between her brows. Parker asked, “Is there anything else?”

Alma blinked, and said, “When do we do it? Next Monday?”

“Dry run next Monday. The week after that, maybe, if it looks right. Or the week after that. Whenever it looks right.”

“I don’t want too much delay,” Alma said.

Parker got to his feet. “We do the job when we know it’ll come off right. That’s why we don’t go to jail.” He turned to Handy. “I’ll give you a lift.”

Handy stood up. “Fine.”

Parker turned back to Skimm. “You got a phone?”

“Yeah. Clover 5-7598.”

“I’ll give you a call.”

“All right.” Skimm looked at Parker for just a second, and then his eyes slid away. He still looked worried.

Parker drained the beer can and tossed it into the chair he’d just left. “Nice to meet you, Alma.”

She struggled, and said, “Nice to meet you, too.”

Parker and Handy walked through the house to the kitchen and out the back door. They got into the Ford and drove out to the street, and Handy said, “I’ve got a room in Newark.”

“Right,” Parker said. He headed back toward Springfield Avenue.

Handy poked at his teeth with a match. After a while, he said, “That’s garbage, that stuff.”

“About the two cars?”

“Yeah.”

“You know why I went along.”

“You’ve got her figured.”

Parker nodded. “I wonder where Skimm is.”

“I’ve always trusted that little bastard,” said Handy. “We worked together a couple times. Once in Florida, once in Oklahoma.”

“I never work in Florida,” said Parker. “I play there.”

“You got a good system.” He poked at his teeth some more. Then he said, “I’d like to know about Skimm, though.”

“I don’t think he’s in it. She’s got him tight, but not that tight. She figures to cross him too, and take the whole pie for herself.”

“That poor bastard.”

“You want to wise him?”

Handy considered, the match working in his mouth. “I don’t know,” he said. “He’ll be in the car with her.”

“He wouldn’t believe you.” Parker shrugged. “You fall in love with a woman, you’ve got a blind spot.”

Handy glanced at him, and away. “I suppose.” They rode a while longer and then he said, “You think she’ll bump him?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe she’ll flub it. Then Skimm’s got the boodle.”

“He’ll split.” Parker shrugged. “Skimm’s getting old. Old and worried. I don’t think she’ll flub it.”

“That poor bastard.”

“He’ll be better off,” Parker said. “Hooked the way he is.”

“I suppose so.”

They rode a while longer, and then Handy said, “I wish it was simple, Parker. I wish to Christ it was simple. Can you remember the last time a job was simple?”

“A long time ago.”

“It sounds like a good setup.” Handy reached for his cigarettes. “The way you talked about it, it sounds fine. But there’s this Alma.” He lit the new cigarette, lipping it. “There’s always an Alma. Every damn time. Why can’t we put together a job without an Alma in it?”

“I don’t know,” Parker said. He was thinking of a guy named Mal, the reason he’d had to change his face.

Handy sat for a while, thinking “This is the last one for me.”

“Uh huh,” said Parker. There was an Alma in every job, an Alma or a Mal or whatever the name was. And there was a Handy in every job, too. There was always one that was ready to quit; this was the last job and he was going to take the dough from this one and buy a chicken farm or something and settle down. There was a Handy in every job, and he always showed up for a job again a year or two later.

Thinking about it, it surprised him that there were always the same people in every job. There was always one that had to be watched, like Alma. There was always one who was quitting after this grab, and this time it was Handy. And there was always one who had probably a hundred thousand dollars to his name, buried in fields and forests here and there across the country in tin cans and metal boxes, and this one was probably Skimm. Skimm always looked and acted like a bum, so he was probably the kind that buried it, buried it all.

Parker had known others like that, there was one in almost every operation. They took their share and peeled off of it two or three thousand, just enough to carry them for a while, and then they went off by themselves somewhere and buried the rest of it. They figured to dig it up again some day, but they never did. The day never got rainy enough and that was why bulldozer operators working on new housing developments every once in a while turned up a metal box with thirty or forty thousand dollars in it.

After a while, Handy said, “You turn right the next corner.”

They turned right, and the car behind them turned right, too.

Parker watched it in the rearview mirror and said, “Son of a bitch.”

It didn’t make any sense, and that bothered him.

The next street was one way the wrong way, but the one after that Parker made a left. So did the car behind him. He went two blocks and made a right and then another right and then a left. The car stayed with him. He drove along until he saw a “Dead End Street” sign and turned into it. He slowed down to almost a crawl, going around the corner, and stayed slow like that, so the car behind him came around the corner and was all of a sudden a lot closer.

It was a short street, with a railroad embankment crossing it at the end. The street was a kind of valley, with the houses on high land on either side, stone or concrete steps leading up from the sidewalk to the house level.

Parker turned into a driveway on the right, going very slowly, the Ford straining against going up the steep slope of the driveway so slowly. The other car went on by, down toward the embankment. Parker pushed the clutch in suddenly, and the car rolled back down the embankment and out across the street. It was a narrow street; with the parked cars, the Ford blocked it completely.

“Back me,” Parker said.

He left the motor running, and pulled the emergency brake on. Then he got out of the Ford and walked down to the end of the street, where the other car was stopped facing the embankment. It was a black Lincoln. Looking through the rear window as he walked forward, Parker could see the driver alone in the car. He came around the lefthand side, and opened the door.

Stubbs was wearing his chauffeur’s costume, complete with hat, and he was holding a .45. He pointed it at Parker, and said, “Hold it right there!”

Parker stood where he was, with his hand still on the door handle.

Stubbs said, “I got to know where you was Saturday.”

Parker kept looking at Stubbs, not to the right where Handy was crawling along the pavement, coming up alongside the car, keeping low out of Stubbs’ range of vision.

“What for?” Parker asked.

“The doc was killed Saturday,” Stubbs said. “One of you bastards did it.”

“I was here in Jersey,” said Parker, as Handy reached up and plucked the automatic out of Stubbs’ hand. Parker leaned in and clipped him on the side of the neck. While Stubbs was getting over that, Handy got to his feet pointing the automatic. “Get out of the car.”

Stubbs got out, holding his neck. “You better not kill me,” he said. “If May don’t hear from me, she sends letters about your new face.”

It irritated Parker, another useless complication. He slid in behind the wheel of the Lincoln and parked it in an open slot by the embankment. Then he came back and said to Handy, “Your place?”

“It’s the closest.”

They put Stubbs in the front seat of the Ford, next to Parker, who was driving. Handy sat in the back seat, watching Stubbs, the automatic in his lap. He gave Parker directions the rest of the way to his place.

Handy had a room in a building that had started out as a private home and then became a boarding house and now was just a place with furnished rooms. But the furniture was clean, and not quite as ugly as at Skimm’s place.

The phone was out in the hall. They stood there, Handy holding the automatic in Stubbs’ back, while Parker dialed Skimm’s place. The ring came in his ear three times, and then Skimm answered, sounding sleepy. Parker told him who it was. “Alma there?”

Skimm hesitated. “Yes. She was just leaving.”

“Sure. I got somebody here I want her to talk to. He’ll ask her when she saw me in the diner. It’s okay for her to tell him.”

“What’s going on, Parker?”

“I’ll tell you sometime. Put Alma on.”

“Okay, wait a second.” There was mumbling, away from the phone, and then Alma came on the line. She sounded snappish.

“Hold on,” said Parker. “Tell this guy when I was in the diner.” He handed the phone to Stubbs.

Stubbs took the phone, frowning in concentration. It was getting too complicated for his battered brain. He said, “Hello? What time Saturday? Where is this diner?”

After that he frowned some more, staring heavily at the phone box on the wall, until he said, in answer to something from Alma, “I’m thinking,” and hung up.

“You happy?” Parker asked.

Stubbs turned around, looking like somebody trying to answer a tough question. “She says you was in there around noon.”

“That’s right.”

“The Doc was killed maybe four o’clock in the afternoon, while I was washing the cars.”

Parker shook his head, disgusted. “You know how far Nebraska is from here?”

Stubbs chewed on that for a while and then said, “Okay, it wasn’t you.” That settled, he turned to Handy. “Gimme the gun back, will ya?”

Handy looked at Parker, wondering if this clown was kidding. “Just wait a minute, Stubbs. I think we’ve got to talk.”

“Sure,” said Handy. He held onto the automatic.

“There’s nothing to talk about. You didn’t do it.”

“This way,” said Handy. He motioned with the automatic.

Stubbs wanted to argue some more, but Parker hit him openhanded on the ear, where a punchy could feel it. Stubbs screwed his face up and hunched his shoulder and cupped his hand over his ear, and then he went where Handy told him.

They walked into the apartment, and Parker told Stubbs to sit down on the leather chair. Handy sat over to the side, in the maroon overstuffed chair, and Parker stood in the middle of the brown rug. He looked at Stubbs for a while, and then he made a disgusted sound. “All right. Now what?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Stubbs said. His face was still screwed up, and his hand was still up protecting his ear. “I’m willing to go.”

“That’s it,” Parker said. “Go where?”

“I got two more suspects.”

Parker nodded. “That’s what I thought.” He went over to the sofa and sat down and lit a cigarette. “All right, tell me about it.”

“The Doc only did three jobs in the last year,” Stubbs said. “We figured it has to be one of them three, or the guy wouldn’t have waited so long. If it was a guy from two years ago, see, and he was going to go for the Doc, he’d of done it already.”

“You and May,” said Parker. “You worked that out?”

“May, mostly,” Stubbs answered. “I figured, I got to get the guy. There’s nobody else to do it, because the Doc was a Red.”

Parker glanced at Handy, and shook his head. Handy shrugged. From listening, he was beginning to understand.

“And if May doesn’t hear from you, she blows the whistle, is that it?”

“Yeah.”

“On who?”

“The last three. She wouldn’t be able to know which one it was, which one got me. So she’d blow the whistle on the last three.”

“Including me,” said Parker.

“But you didn’t do it,” said Stubbs, frowning. He’d missed something somewhere. “You’re out of it, you didn’t do it.”

“What if number two did it?” Parker asked. “And instead of getting him, he gets you. Then May blows the whistle on me. Right?”

Stubbs hadn’t thought of that. He frowned heavily, scrubbing his hand over his face. Then he brightened a little. “Don’t you worry. He won’t get me, I’ll get him.”

Handy laughed. He tossed Stubbs’ gun in the air and caught it. “The way you got Parker?”

Stubbs looked at him, not understanding, and Parker explained. “He knew me by the name of Anson,” he said to Handy.

“Oh.”

Parker said, “Listen, Stubbs. What if you phone May and tell her I’m in the clear?”

Stubbs shook his head. “We talked about that. How it could be faked, maybe. She’s got to see me in person.”

“God damn it,” Parker said, “I don’t have time for this crap.”

Handy shrugged. “You’ll have to go back to Nebraska with him.”

“I don’t have time,” said Parker angrily. “The job’s set up for two weeks from now. We’ve got to set up the cars, the routes, we’ve got to chart the state troopers, we’ve got to buy guns—” He mashed his cigarette out and got to his feet. “There’s too much to do. Stubbs, when’s the deadline?”

Stubbs blinked at him. “What?”

“The deadline, the deadline. When does May blow the whistle if she doesn’t hear from you?”

“Oh. A month from now. From yesterday. Four weeks from yesterday.”

Parker paced back and forth, looking down at the carpet. “Two days,” he said. “Even if we fly out. One day out and one day back. Two days for Alma to fast-talk Skimm, two days with nothing getting done.”

“We could hold the job off for a week.”

Parker shook his head. “It’s sour enough already. I want to get it over with. Another week for Alma to think up some more cute ideas? Another week for that damn cop to see me driving by?”

“What cop?”

Parker shrugged. He didn’t feel like talking about it. “A cop paid attention to me on route 9.”

“Near the diner?”

“South of it.” He turned and studied Stubbs. “The easiest thing,” he said, “would be to bump you and drop you in a pool by one of the refineries. Then two weeks from now I go cut May.”

Stubbs doggedly shook his head. “She’s got her common-law husband with her,” he said. “And his brother. They figure something might happen like that.”

“What if you just let him go?”

“Look at him,” Parker said. “He’s punchy. He goes up against the guy who killed that doctor, he’s dead. Then I’m dead.”

“I can take care of myself,” Stubbs said.

“Sure,” Parker answered.

“So what do you want to do?” Handy asked.

“There’s too much to watch. I’m ready to pull out of this damn thing, there’s too much to watch.”

“I could use the cash,” Handy said. “This is my last job, you know.”

“Yeah. That’s the thing, I need it too.” Parker looked at Stubbs and shook his head. “I’ve got to hold onto this beetle for two weeks. I’ve got to put him on ice.”

Handy considered that. “What about the farm?”

“What farm?”

“Outside Old Bridge. Where we’re supposed to meet after the job. You been out there yet?”

“Not yet.”

“We could stash him there, maybe.”

Parker thought about it. So many things to watch. The job, Alma, the state trooper, and now Stubbs. But he didn’t have anything else on the fire. “That’s a bad way to work it. To hang around the hideout before the job.”

“Do you figure we’re going there after it?”

“That’s right. I forgot about Alma.” Parker shrugged. “All right. We’ll put him on ice out there.”

Handy stood up, and waved the automatic at Stubbs. “Come along.”

Stubbs said, “Listen, what are you trying to pull?”

“Look,” Parker said. “Look at him, he wants to argue.”

Handy turned to Stubbs. “How’s your kneecaps? In good shape?”

Stubbs caught the message. He got to his feet and shut up. They took him downstairs and back to the Ford. They drove over to 9 and headed south, Parker driving, with Stubbs beside him and Handy in the back seat.

On the way Parker asked, “How’d you get to me?”

“That letter you got,” Stubbs said. “I looked up that Lasker fella in Cincinnati, and he left a forwarding address. I went there and hung around till I saw you.”

“He left a forwarding address,” repeated Parker. He shook his head and kept driving. He didn’t know if this was Handy’s last job, but he knew it was Skimm’s.