The Sour Lemon Score

One

Parker put the revolver away and looked out the windshield. The bank was half a block away along the sunny street. Andrews hadn’t come out yet.

Next to Parker the driver, a man named George Uhl, rubbed his palms on the steering wheel and said, “What’s taking him so long? Where is he?” It was a cool day, the temperature around seventy, but there was sweat on his forehead.

From the back seat Benny Weiss leaned forward and put a hand on Uhl’s shoulder, saying, “Take it easy, George. Phil knows what he’s doing; he’s a good man. He’s got to be sure nobody sees him do it, that’s all.”

Uhl nodded rapidly. “I’m just worried about the armored car,” he said. “It’ll be here and gone—”

“No, it won’t, George. We’ve got a good five minutes. Relax, boy. Phil’s a good man.”

Parker listened to them, gauging them from the conversation. If Uhl was going to fall apart the whole operation was out the window. When Andrews came out of the bank they’d just turn around and drive away.

George Uhl was the only one Parker had never worked with before. A fairly young man of about thirty, tall and very thin and with receding black hair, he was Weiss’s man, brought in and guaranteed by Benny, and that was why he worked so hard now to soothe Uhl and keep him calm.

Benny Weiss himself was always calm. A short man, stocky, his clothing generally as rumpled as if he’d just taken a cross-country bus trip, he’d been in this line of work thirty years now and was as excitable as a tailor facing a ripped seam. Parker had worked with him a few times over the years, and Weiss had always been solid, dependable and sure.

Still, Uhl was going to have to support his own weight. He was the driver and he had to be reliable. It had happened more than once in the world that a driver had gotten spooked and taken off in the middle of a job, leaving the rest of the string to dangle on a sidewalk someplace, loot in their hands and nowhere to go. So Parker listened to the other two talk, and considered scratching this entry right now.

Benny Weiss said, “Here he comes, George.” He patted Uhl’s shoulder. “See? Everything’s okay.”

“I see him,” Uhl said. He sounded sullen, as though mad at himself for having gotten edgy. “I’m okay, Benny,” he said.

“Sure you are,” Weiss said.

Parker looked out through the windshield at Phil Andrews walking down the sidewalk toward the car. With the red wig and the sunglasses on, he was hard to recognize even when you knew it was him. Parker had watched him make himself up at the farm before they left, and it had been a good job, a subtle changing of the planes and textures of his face, using theatrical makeup in addition to the wig. When he’d finished he’d turned to Parker, grinning slightly, and said, “Meet my friend the bank robber.” Because it was the face he put on before every job.

Phil Andrews was younger than Benny Weiss but had been a pro fifteen years at least, and the strange thing about him was that he’d never taken a fall. He’d never even been picked up on suspicion. The pro who never fell at all was the rarest of rare birds, and the reactions of other pros to Phil’s streak took two extremes. There were those who wanted him in on every job they did, considering him good luck and a guarantee of safety for everybody else involved, which he wasn’t; and there were those who refused to work with him on the grounds that he was overdue for a fall, the law of averages was going to have to catch up with him someday. As for himself, Parker didn’t believe in luck, good or bad. He believed in nothing but men who knew their job and did it, and Phil Andrews was one of those.

He got into the car now, sliding into the back seat beside Benny Weiss, saying, “All set.” He was the only one in any kind of disguise. The others all had prints and pictures on file and warrants out against them under one name or another. Being connected to one job more or less wouldn’t make that much difference if they ever did get picked up.

Parker turned sideways in the seat, facing Uhl, so he could see everybody. “The question is,” he said, “is George going to spook?”

Uhl looked at him in astonishment. “Me? Why?”

Weiss said, “Parker, of course not. George is okay.”

Andrews said, “What’s wrong?”

Parker told him, “George was being nervous.”

Uhl said, “You aren’t nervous?”

“My face is dry,” Parker said.

Uhl’s hand went to his wet forehead. “I sweat a lot,” he said. “It don’t mean anything.”

Weiss said, “Parker, a case of the jitters ahead of time, that’s only natural. I get butterflies myself.”

“I don’t want to come out of that bank,” Parker said, “and find no car.”

Uhl said angrily, “What are you talking about? You think I’m an amateur, for the love of God? I’ve driven half a dozen times. I drove for Matt Rosenstein — you think he’d take a chance on somebody? You come out of that bank, I’ll be right out front. Right in front of the armored car, where we said.”

Parker turned and looked at Andrews. Phil was studying Uhl’s face. He met Parker’s eye and shrugged. “It’s just stage fright,” he said. “I think he’s probably okay.”

Uhl gave him a belligerent grin. “I wouldn’t want to bust your string,” he said.

Andrews looked at him without humor. “That’s right,” he said. “You wouldn’t.”

Parker said, “Here it comes.”

They looked out of the window and saw the dark blue armored car roll by. It pulled into the “No Parking” space in front of the bank, and two men got out of the cab.

Andrews said, “If we’re going to do it, I’ve got to move.”

Parker nodded. “Go ahead,” he said.

Two

Parker was the last one into the bank. Andrews had gone first, getting out of the car again and walking down to the bank, going in just as two men in suits and with clipboards came out of the bank to meet the men from the armored car. They’d conferred out in the sunlight a minute, studying their clipboards, and then all four went inside again.

That was when Weiss moved. Getting out of the car, he clutched Parker’s shoulder and muttered in his ear, “George is okay.” Parker just nodded, and Weiss got out, shut the door, and went away to the bank, getting there just as the two uniformed armored-car guards came back out of the bank. There was a little mix-up at the door, and then Weiss was in and the guards were out. They went over and knocked on the rear door of the armored car.

Parker and the others had cased this one for three weeks and they knew the system cold by now. The coins went in first, in gray canvas sacks. The olive-green strongbox went last, carrying paper.

He watched the guard inside the armored car hand out the sacks of coins to the two outside. One of the men with the clipboards had hurried out after them and stood beside them now, pencil poised, checking things off.

The grenade was on the seat between Parker and Uhl. Parker patted it and said, “You remember how this works?”

“I’m all right now,” Uhl said irritably. “I had a touch of the jitters. It never happened to you?”

“Never,” Parker said. He opened the door and got out of the car and walked down to the bank. The guards had carried the coins in now, escorted by the man with the clipboard, and the guard inside the armored car had locked his door again.

Parker went into the bank. Weiss was standing at one of the counters on the left wall, making out a deposit slip. Andrews was talking to the lone bank officer at the desks on the right, asking him about traveler’s checks. There was nobody at the state lottery window in the far corner.

The guards came out of the vault area empty-handed, followed by the man with the clipboard. They walked past Parker and went outside again.

Three tellers’ windows were open, two regular and the lottery window, all with female tellers. Two more female employees were at the calculating machines in back. Beside the clipboard men — one in the vault, the other outside with the armored car — and the bank officer to whom Andrews was talking, the only other male employee was the bank guard, an elderly man with a puffed-up pigeon chest and a dark blue uniform full of fold creases. His wife had ironed the shirt and folded it and put it away in a drawer, so when he took it out and put it on it had a checkerboard of creases all over it.

Parker stood looking around the room. It was a new bank with a low ceiling, which was good. There were only three straight customers in the bank, which was also good.

The two guards came back in, carrying the strongbox between them, one hand each. The clipboard man followed them, looking prissy and bored. Weiss crumpled up his deposit slip, put it in his pocket, and walked to the door. Parker went over to the bank guard and said, “Do you have a notary public here?”

His talking to the guard was the signal for Andrews to reach into his pocket and push the button on the little radio machine in there. Weiss was standing by the door, behind the armored car men and the clipboard man. If all was going right, Uhl was driving slowly down the block toward the bank right now, one hand holding that grenade.

The guard said, “Are you a deposi—” and the wastebasket by the lottery window blew up.

It was a huge noise, loud enough to give everybody in the bank a brief headache, and with it came a flash of yellow and white, and then flames were licking up the front of the counter toward the lottery window. On the heels of the explosion, one of the women employees screamed.

Parker had been standing so the guard’s back was to the lottery window. At the explosion the old man spun around, startled, and Parker took out his revolver and clipped him with it behind the ear.

While the old man was still falling Parker spun around and held down on the two armored-car men. He shouted, “No heroes!” He knew Andrews had a gun on the bank officer and would quickly herd him into a corner away from telephones. He knew Weiss was behind the armored car men to let them know they were in a crossfire. And Uhl, at the sound of the explosion, was to drop the grenade out of the passenger-side window so it would roll under the armored car and was then to pull directly in front of the armored car and wait. In ten seconds, the grenade would start spewing black smoke. There wasn’t much breeze today; the smoke would quickly billow out and surround the armored car and puff all around the bank entrance.

While Parker was shouting, Weiss was shouting also. Andrews was on his feet, waving an automatic and shouting at the employees, “It’s a stickup! Don’t move! Don’t move!”

The armored-car men were professional enough to know when to fold a hand. Neither of them reached for a gun.

Parker said, “Put the box down. Now move over that way. Hands on top of your heads.” He motioned the gun at the clipboard man. “You too.”

“You can’t—”

Weiss kicked the clipboard man in the butt. “Hurry up, shorty,” he said. The clipboard man was about four inches taller than Weiss.

Parker and Andrews hurried over to the strongbox and each grabbed a handle. Weiss kept everybody covered. Parker went first, the heavy strongbox dragging him back, bumping into the back of his legs. He could see the smoke through the glass door, so Uhl was doing his job.

The smoke was everywhere, greasy and black, smelling of creosote. You couldn’t see a thing, but Parker didn’t have to see anything. He angled to the right, Andrews in his wake with the other end of the box, and they plunged through the smoke, Parker’s hand out in front of him, till the heel of his hand hit the side of the car.

It took him a few seconds to figure out what part of the car he had, but then he moved quickly forward to the rear door, opened it, and clambered in with the strongbox banging against his heels. Andrews came piling in after it, and then Weiss rushed up out of the smoke, blundered the front door open, and jumped in.

Uhl burned rubber, taking off before either door was shut. For the first second or two he couldn’t have been able to see a thing, but he tore out of the smoke as though God had told him personally there wasn’t going to be anything in front of him, and there wasn’t.

Everybody was done working now but Uhl, and Uhl had rehearsed his part so often he could almost do it asleep. Right at the corner, left at the alley halfway down the block, right at the next street, and then four blocks straight. They wouldn’t hit a traffic light till then, and Uhl would be able to judge it from four blocks away and not have to stop for it. It was twenty minutes past ten in the morning, a dead time for traffic, so they’d be able to make any speed they wanted.

At that traffic light they’d make a left turn, and from there it was less than half a mile to the outskirts of town, where they’d stashed the other car. And after that a ten-minute drive to the farm, where they could hole up and wait for the fever to cool in the outside world.

Parker and Andrews straightened themselves out in the back seat, the strongbox lumping huge between them, leaning half on the seat and half on the floor. Andrews patted it, smiling, and said, “How much do you think?”

“Maybe forty,” Parker said. “Maybe sixty. Maybe a little more.”

“Not bad for a morning’s work,” Andrews said, forgetting the three weeks preparation.

Uhl, relaxed at the wheel now, glanced in the rear view mirror and said, “Shoot the lock off. Let’s see how much it is.”

“When we get to the farm,” Parker said.

“Why not now?”

Weiss, up front with Uhl now said, “George, you want a bullet ricocheting around in the car? Where’s your sense?”

“Oh, yeah,” Uhl said, and made the right turn out of the alley. Four blocks away the light was red. Uhl drove at about thirty.

Parker turned his head and looked out the rear window. A couple of cars way back, moseying along. No pursuit. It would take them a while to get organized in all that smoke.

A siren. Everybody tensed, and then a police car shot across their path two blocks ahead, going from left to right, not slowing or anything. Everybody relaxed again.

Weiss said, “Going to the bank.”

“Too late,” Uhl said. “All the money’s gone.” The light turned green up ahead, and he accelerated.

Three

Parker kept one hand pressed flat on the strongbox. The last half mile to the farmhouse was over rutted dirt road, and the box tended to jounce. Parker said, “You can take it easy now.”

“I’m anxious to know how much we got,” Uhl said, but he slowed down some.

Everything had gone fine. The stolen car with its stolen plates had been abandoned behind the burned-out diner on the highway where they’d left the other car, this two-year-old Chevy, pale blue. They’d switched cars, carrying the strongbox over to this one, and then Uhl had driven sedately the rest of the way, never more than a couple of miles over the speed limit. One other police car had gone by, siren screaming, racing into the town they’d just left, but that was all the law they’d seen.

The farmhouse was gray, small, old, leaning, and weather-beaten. The porch roof was half fallen in, and only two window-panes were still unbroken. It stood on top of a bare hill, the dirt road passing at the foot of the hill and continuing on who knew where. Vague old grooves in the grass led upward to the right from the road, showing where another dirt road had once existed between here and the house. If you looked closely you could see where the grass had been recently mashed down by tires going up there, but the dirt road was seldom traveled and too bumpy to allow the people in a passing car to watch anything very closely. And at the top, around behind the sagging house, stood a sagging barn, big enough and empty enough inside for both this Chevy of Uhl’s and Andrew’s Mercury.

Uhl drove up the hill now, in low gear so the tires wouldn’t leave skid gouges in the grass, and at the top he steered around the house and came to a stop in front of the barn. Weiss hopped out and dragged open the barn doors, and Uhl drove into the clammy, cool darkness inside the barn. He turned the key in the ignition and smiled over his shoulder at Parker and Andrews saying “Home free.”

“Maybe,” Andrews said.

Uhl looked at him. “What’s the matter? We’re here, we’re home free.”

“We’re home free,” Andrews said, “when the last cop has quit looking and gone on to some other case.”

“Oh, well,” Uhl said, “if you’re going to pin it down like that...”

“That’s the only way to pin it,” Andrews said. “You ready, Parker?”

“Ready.”

They wrestled the strongbox out of the car and carried it across the strip of sunlight to the house. Behind them, Weiss and Uhl shut the barn doors.

Parker and Andrews carried the box into the kitchen. There were four chairs and a card table there, all brought up by Uhl and Weiss while provisioning this place. There was a pump at the sink, and it would still bring up water. Camping equipment was scattered throughout the house because they might be here for several days.

They put the box on the floor near the door while Uhl and Weiss came in, and Uhl went over and turned on their portable radio. They’d had the car radio on without yet hearing any report of the robbery, so this radio now played for them the end of the tune they’d been listening to in the car.

Andrews said, “Turn it down a little, George.”

“Sure.” Uhl turned it down, but then the announcer came on, gave the name of the record that had just played and then said, “This just in. The Laurel Avenue branch of the Merchants and Farmers Trust was robbed this morning of nearly thirty-three thousand dollars. In a daring daylight holdup, four men—”

“Thirty-three thousand?” Weiss looked tragic.

“Hush,” Uhl said, and turned the radio up again.

The announcer had more to say, mostly in a daring-daylight holdup vein, all the journalistic clichés pouring out, even finishing with the authorities confident of early arrests.

“They’d better arrest each other,” Uhl said, grinning, and as another record started he turned the radio down again.

Weiss was gazing at the strongbox as though it had betrayed him. “Thirty-three thousand,” he said. “A crummy eight grand each.”

“We knew it could be low,” Andrews said. “We knew it could be in the forty-thousand-dollar range.”

“Range? You call that a range? It could’ve been in the sixty-thousand-dollar range, too! Fifteen thousand a man!”

“Eight thousand isn’t bad,” Andrews said. “Not for one morning’s work.”

This time Weiss wasn’t going to let him forget the time spent in preparation. “What one morning’s work? Three weeks’ work, dammit, and a huge risk, a goddam huge risk, and for what? Eight thousand stinking dollars.”

“I’ll take your share, you don’t want it,” Uhl said.

“You shut up, George,” Weiss said.

Andrews said, “Let’s open it up. Who knows, maybe they counted wrong.”

“They didn’t count wrong,” Weiss said, “and you know it. But go ahead, open it up. We might as well look at the damn stuff.”

Parker opened the box with a hammer and screwdriver, and it took a while. In the meantime Uhl got cans of beer out of their portable refrigerator and opened them for everybody. Then they all sat around in the chairs and watched Parker pound the locks.

When at last the box was opened it was only half full, lined with neatly wrapped stacks of bills. Parker stuck a hand in among them, messing up the stacks and said, “The singles and fives are all new. We’ll have to leave them.”

Weiss said, “You got more good news? It wouldn’t be Confederate money, would it?”

“It won’t add up to much,” Parker told him.

“You know what kind of day this is?” Weiss said. “I’ll tell you what kind of day this is. The kind of day this is, we’ll come down off this hill a couple days from now, the government will have devalued the dollar. How much is singles and fives?”

“Maybe a thousand,” Parker said.

“Another two hundred fifty dollars bye-bye,” Weiss said, and Uhl shot him in the head.

Four

Parker dove through the window elbows first, the rotted wood and shards of glass spraying out in front of him. He ducked his head, landed hard on his right shoulder, rolled over twice, and was running before he was well on his feet. He heard shots behind him but didn’t know if they were coming at him or not. He ran for the corner of the barn, and as he went around it a bullet chunked into the wood beside his head, spitting splinters at his cheek.

He hit the dirt, rolled some more, and wound up against the side of the barn and out of sight of the house. He reached inside his coat, and his hand closed on an empty holster.

Where was it? There were no more shots from the house. Parker stood there a few seconds more, his hand still touching the empty holster, and then he moved up to the edge of the barn and cautiously looked around.

A bullet whistling by made him duck back again, but not before he saw his revolver lying in plain view in the dirt outside the window. It had come out when he’d landed.

Uhl hadn’t seen it yet — he’d had too much else to think about so far — but he would. And when he did he’d come out of that house and hunt Parker down.

Andrews must be dead. And Weiss was definitely dead.

Parker moved away from the corner of the barn. If he could get inside this structure, get into one of the cars, be ready to run Uhl down with it when Uhl came in, there’d be a chance. But the only window on his side was high up in the wall, too high to reach. The only ground-floor openings into the barn were on the two sides Uhl could see from the house.

It was no good. He couldn’t fight Uhl. With all this open ground around the barn and house he couldn’t sneak up on Uhl.

The only thing left to do was get away from here.

On this side of the house the land fell away again into woods. There was maybe forty yards of open ground, and then the trees. Heavy woods covered the entire valley on this side.

“Parker! You left your gun behind!”

Parker moved away from the barn. He began to run down the hill.

“Parker! Come back for your gun!”

Parker bent low, and just before he reached the trees shooting started behind him. He heard the bullets snicking and scratching through the leaves over his head; like most people, Uhl was aiming too high when firing downhill.

It was cooler, damper, dimmer in under the trees. Almost like the smell and feel of the air inside the barn. There were a lot of bushes, but it was possible to work your way through. The bushes made him hard to see, and the tree trunks made him hard to hit.

He veered to the right as he went on. The shooting had stopped again, and after a minute he stopped too. He listened and heard nothing.

Would Uhl come down here to get him? It would almost even the odds, the two of them in the woods. He might get behind Uhl, he might get the edge on him. Or he might even get out of the woods with Uhl still in them, get back up the slope to the house, get one of the other guns in there. If Uhl wasn’t carrying all four guns with him.

Parker moved again. He still could hear nothing from Uhl. He headed back at a sharp angle so he’d come out far to the right of where he’d gone in. He wanted to know what Uhl was up to. He had to know what Uhl was up to. Could he afford to leave Parker alive, could he take a chance on that? Or would he think it a bigger chance to come in here after Parker? Which chance would he want to take?

Ahead, through the trees, Parker could see the grassy slope. He moved more cautiously, bent forward, his suit and shoes the wrong clothing for this place and this kind of stalking. But he needed to leave the suit jacket on — the white shirt would be too obvious a target. And black street oxfords were still better than no shoes at all.

He heard the car start. He went forward to the edge of the woods, looking up, and saw Uhl back his Chevy out of the barn. He left the motor running and hurried into the house, and a minute later he came out with two small cardboard suitcases. They’d had four of those, one for each of them to carry his share away in, but it had apparently taken only two to transport the entire haul.

Uhl put the two cases in the trunk of the Chevy and then came by the side of the barn to look downslope at the woods. He didn’t see Parker, and Parker couldn’t make out the expression on his face. After a minute he turned and went back into the house.

Go up the slope? Try to get to the car? It looked too much like a trap, left out there running with the money in it. Parker waited.

Uhl came running back out. Why running? He suddenly seemed to be feeling much more urgency than before. He ran around the Chevy and into the barn.

What was he up to? Parker’s hands were closed into his fists, but there was nothing he could do; he could only stand and watch and wait to see what Uhl did next.

Smoke. Curling out the broken windows of the house.

The son of a bitch had set the house on fire.

Parker moved out of the woods and ran crouching to the right until the barn was between him and the house, and then he ran up the hill. He knew what Uhl was up to in the barn, and if he could get there before Uhl was set, there was still a chance.

He couldn’t. He heard the roar of Uhl’s car before he got up as far as the barn, and as he came running around the barn he saw the Chevy bumping and slewing down the farther slope toward the dirt road.

The house was really burning now, the old wood catching fast and burning hot. Flames stuck their tongues out all the empty windows. He could feel the heat on his face.

The barn. He turned toward the entrance to the barn, and when the car in there blew up it knocked him flat.

Five

Nighttime. Parker sat in darkness, his back against a tree. It was cold now, and even damper in the woods than it had been in daytime.

The fire was long since out, but there was still light on top of the hill. Arc lights had been set up around the perimeter of the hilltop, all pointed inward, glaring their harsh, shadowless light on the burnt-out wreckage like the illumination of the infield during a night game. In that glare men moved back and forth like actors in the movie, and it was impossible to believe there were any rational reasons for all that activity up there. It was as though a director somewhere had told them to mill around, and that’s what they were doing, but none of them knew why.

It had been a long wait down here, and it wasn’t over yet. When the Mercury had blown up it had spread the fire to the grass all around, and when Parker had come out of a semi-daze and staggered back to his feet it was to find both the barn and house sheets of flame and the whole hilltop running orange. He’d been standing on bare ground in the middle of it all, the heat evaporating the sweat off his face.

He’d come leaping and jumping through the flames and down the slope into the woods again, knowing some sort of fire department would have to respond to this sooner or later before it got downslope and set the whole woods ablaze. A man dressed in a suit and white shirt and tie, carrying identification that could quickly be proved phony, should not be found here with the burned bodies of two murdered men and one blown-up car — not half an hour after a robbery in a town twelve miles away. Parker worked his way deep into the woods, the ground sloping gradually downward, till he came to a small, quick, cold, shallow stream that ran down the bottom line of the valley. He went across that and a little ways farther, and when he found a dry grassy spot he sat down to wait.

He heard the sirens when the fire engines arrived, but he was too far away to see them or see how much work they had to do. He waited, listening, hearing nothing more, and by early afternoon he was hungry. Were there any edible berries in season now? He didn’t know. He’d been born and raised in cities; these woods were another world.

When his watch said three o’clock he got up and stretched and moved again. He drank some water at the stream, washed his face, and moved on. He came to the edge of the woods and looked up, and both house and barn were gone; nothing left but a few blackened sticks jutting up. The grass was charred and black halfway down the slope.

The fire engines were gone too, but they had been replaced. The hilltop was full of police cars, and as Parker watched, a white closed van arrived with blue lettering on the sides: mobile lab.

So it was going to be a wait. But he wasn’t likely to get anywhere striking off blindly into those woods behind him. It was the road or nothing, and until the law finished up there it was going to be nothing.

But it was taking them a while. They swarmed over the hill like ants. Cars came and went, trucks arrived, men roamed back and forth, and at one point toward twilight a roaring, fluttering helicopter even dangled down out of the sky and visited for a few minutes before being reeled up and away again like a noisy fishing lure.

In a way, the length of time they were taking up there irritated Parker, because they were delaying him and causing him trouble; but in another way it pleased him, because it meant Uhl and the money were still at large. They were hunting here for something to tell them where to look next, and Parker knew they wouldn’t find a thing.

Parker usually could be patient, but this was the worst kind of waiting. He was cold and stiff, the air was damp, he hadn’t eaten since this morning before the robbery plus one can of beer after, and he had no way of knowing how much longer the wait would last. It was now past midnight, and they were still there.

From time to time he moved around at the edge of the woods only to keep limber and help the circulation. He was moving now, when light suddenly flashed past the trees all around him, and he dropped at once to the ground and lay there not moving.

The flash wasn’t repeated. He waited and nothing more happened, and finally he raised himself up behind a tree and looked up the slope and saw that the arc lights were being taken down and stored in a truck. One of them, being moved while still lit, had happened to be pointed in his direction for a second; that’s all it had been.

It took them ten minutes more, but finally there were no lights left but the headlights of a few cars and trucks, and then those swung away and disappeared down the farther slope and there was darkness.

Parker cautiously came up the slope. The night was clear, with a quarter moon giving silver-blue light, enough so he could make out shapes in the darkness. Parker made it to the top, saw nothing but beaten-down emptiness and burned-down husks, and moved on.

There was no point looking for the thin track up here. He went wading down through thick dew-wet grass until he came to the dirt road and then turned left. He walked half a mile to the highway and turned left again. He didn’t like going back to the town where they’d knocked over the bank, but it was the only one close enough to walk to.

He saw headlights far away and got off the road and crouched behind bushes in a field. The car went by, red taillights receding, and then he got up and moved on again. Far away he could see the pale dome of light in the sky where the town was.

Six

Parker let the police car go by and then stepped out of the doorway and moved on around the corner. It was after midnight — cars on the streets were few, all the bars were shut, there was no one out walking.

In the center of town there would still be some activity. The bus depot would be open, and an all-night diner. There would be plenty of action around police headquarters. But Parker was staying away from all that. He was a stranger in town; he had thirty-seven dollars in his pockets; he carried identification claiming he was Thomas Lynch from Newark, New Jersey, but one phone call would expose that as false. He wasn’t about to show himself if he could help it.

A block away he could see a gas station, shut for the night. He’d tried two already, but neither had been any good, and the longer he walked around this town the more risk he ran. He moved quickly toward the corner.

There were two cars parked against the fence beside the station building. That was a hopeful sign, maybe. He went over to them and checked, but neither had the keys in the ignition. He could jump the wires, but that way was messy and complicated if he had to stop for gas or something to eat. He’d prefer keys if he could get them. One of the cars, the old Ford, had a jack handle on the floor in back. Parker took that and went over to the station building. The main office door was all one sheet of glass, so he went to the overhead garage door, which was smaller panes of glass, broke one pane, and reached through to unlock the door. He slid it up, stepped inside, and shut the door again.

The cash register was empty as he’d assumed it would be. On a pegboard on the side wall were hung two sets of keys. The first included a Ford key, so he put it back. The other included a Chrysler company key, and the second car parked outside was a Dodge Polara, about a year old.

Parker took the Dodge key and left the others on the chain. He went out the way he’d come in, got into the Dodge, and started the engine. It turned over right away. He had no idea what sort of work it had been left here for or if the work had been done, but the engine ran and that was all that mattered. He backed out in a tight U-turn, drove out to the street, and three minutes later was out on the highway again, headed out of town.

Twenty miles away there was an interstate road. Parker made it in sixteen minutes, seeing no traffic along the way, and went up the ramp and headed east. He drove seven hours with one side trip for gas. He crossed two state lines, and when he was over five hundred miles from the town where the hit had taken place he took an exit ramp and a blacktop road, and as the sun was coming up in his eyes he drove into a good-sized city. He left the car on a side street in a residential section and took a local bus. It carried him downtown with a lot of working people. He got off, asked directions to the railroad station, and walked there. He checked the schedules and found there was a train leaving for Cleveland at ten past nine, not quite two hours from now. He bought a ticket and then went and had breakfast, and then he had nine dollars left.

He slept on the train. Going through the station in Cleveland he picked up a suitcase that was standing there. He walked to a hotel and checked in as Thomas Lynch, saying he would be staying three days. He went up to his room and slept again and came down that evening to send a wire to his woman, Claire, in New Orleans:

Then he went and had dinner. Afterwards he went upstairs to his room again and looked in the suitcase. He’d picked it up just to have luggage for the sake of the desk clerk, but on the other hand it would be nice to know what was in it. It wasn’t locked. He put it on the bed and opened it.

Two suits, a dark gray and a medium brown, both meant for a short and very wide man who still believed in eighteen-inch cuffs. Three white shirts with wide collars and French cuffs. Four ties, all with diagonal stripes and muted colors. Boxer shorts. Undershirts. Black socks and dark green socks. Three sets of cuff links, one with Roman emperors, one with rabbit silhouettes, one with horses’ heads, and three matching tie clasps. A deck of cards with pornographic pictures on the back in red and blue. Various Jade East toiletries. A toothbrush and toothpaste for sensitive gums. Electric razor. A packet of business cards:

A pint of Ballantine Scotch. An address book full of business firms. Bottles of aspirin and Alka-Seltzer, and a tube of unidentified prescription ointment.

Parker put everything back except the scotch and stowed the suitcase in the closet. Then he watched television awhile before going back to sleep.

Late the next morning he picked up his five hundred at the Western Union office in the lobby. He went out of the hotel and walked four blocks to an antique store in a run-down side street. The inside of the place was packed and crammed and dusty. It looked to be mostly junk, antique only in the sense that it was old.

An old bell had rung the door when he’d pushed it open and after a minute a very thin, straight old woman came out of the back somewhere. She had gray hair tightly gathered in a bun at the back of her head, her dress was black and dusty, and her bifocals had thin metal frames and round lenses. Her lips were thin. She said, “May I be of service?” Briskly, not caring much.

Parker looked at her. “I wanted to talk to Dempsey,” he said.

“Mr. Dempsey passed on,” she said. “I’m in charge now.”

Parker was doubtful. He said, “I’m interested in guns.”

“Antique guns?”

“Sure.”

“Well, we do have some,” she said. She seemed somewhat doubtful herself now. “Some very nice old derringers, for instance.”

“I had something a little different in mind,” Parker said.

She looked at him through the lower part of the bifocals, then the upper part again. “Were you a customer of Mr. Dempsey’s?”

“I was recommended by a customer of his,” Parker said.

“Who would that be?”

“Fellow named Grofield.”

“Oh, the actor.” She smiled. “Yes, I remember Mr. Grofield. A charming young man.”

Parker didn’t care about that. He said, “He’s the one told me about Dempsey.”

“Of course,” she said. “Then you’ll want to see some of our special stock, won’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“Come along,” she said.

He went with her down the narrow aisle between the seatless chairs, the cracked vases, the chipped enamel basins, the scarred chifferobes. Everywhere there was frayed cloth, cracked leather, sagging upholstery, chipped veneer, and an overall aura of dust and disuse and tired old age.

The doorway at the back was low enough so Parker had to duck his head. The old woman led him through a narrow kitchen containing equipment almost as old and tired-looking as the wares in the shop, and then through another low door and down a flight of stairs into a low-ceilinged basement full of more ancient furniture. It was impossible to see how half of it had been maneuvered down the narrow stairs, or why anyone had bothered.

The old woman said, “What do you need?”

“Handguns. Two of them. Alike, if possible.”

“Well, let’s see. You wait here.”

He waited. She went away and disappeared into the dimness around a Victorian loveseat with a medallion back. Parker waited, occasionally hearing a small sound from the general area ahead of him, and then she came back carrying two shoeboxes. She set these down on a handy dusty surface and opened them up. “Both alike,” she said.

They were two Smith & Wesson Terriers, a five-shot .32 revolver with a two-inch barrel. A good gun for carrying unobtrusively, good in close quarters, but no good at any range at all and not packing a very hard wallop.

Parker said, “Nothing heavier than that?”

“Not two alike,” she said.

He picked up the guns and hefted them. They were both empty. They both looked in good shape, with their front sights, with no obvious scratches or dents. Parker clicked the triggers of both and said, “How much?”

She thought it over, frowning at the guns in his hands. Then, very doubtfully, she said, “A hundred for the two?” As though sure he’d argue with her. And before he could say anything she added hastily, “And a box of shells you get too.”

“That’s all right,” Parker said.

“It is?” She didn’t believe he wasn’t going to haggle with her.

“A hundred for the two,” he said. He put the guns back in their shoeboxes and reached for his wallet.

“That’s fine, then,” she said. “I’ll go get the shells.”

She went away and got the shells, and when she came back Parker had two fifties in his hand. She handed him the shells, and he handed her the money. She thanked him and said, “You know, I’d rather you didn’t load them in the store here.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“That’s fine. Shall I put some string around the boxes?”

“Yeah, do that.”

She put the lids on the boxes and started to carry them away, but Parker said, “Bring the string here, why don’t you?”

She looked surprised. “Oh, I see! Of course.” She went away, came back with a roll of twine, and said, “I wouldn’t give you empty boxes. Sooner or later you’d just find out and come back. And where else do I have to go but here?” She tied the two boxes together while she talked. “That’s the one kind of person you can trust,” she said. “The person who doesn’t have anyplace else to go.”

Parker didn’t say anything to that.

When the package was tied, the woman led the way back upstairs, Parker following with the shoeboxes under his arm.

Upstairs, Parker said, “You know where I can buy a car in this town?”

She nodded at the shoeboxes. “That way, you mean?”

“Where I won’t be asked questions,” Parker said.

“That’s what I meant,” she said. “Yes, there’s a very good place I know. It’s not very far from here.”

“Would you call them and tell them I’m on the way over?”

“Certainly.”

He waited while she made the call, and then she went outside with him and gave him the directions. It was another sunny day, and she looked out of place out here in the brightness with the dust and the age still on her. As though she were left over from some prior world.

Parker walked to the place she’d told him about, a used-car lot in a neighborhood of used-car lots. It took some dickering because what he wanted was a mace, a car with papers that looked good and plates that looked good, but half an hour later the deal was set on a two-year-old Pontiac with standard shift and a bad tendency to pull to the left. The car had been in an accident and had rolled, but it would take him where he wanted to go and it wasn’t on anybody’s list of hot cars and the plates would also be clean and cool, and that was all that mattered.

The dealer drove him to a Western Union office where he wired Claire for more money. He got it forty-five minutes later, went back to the lot, traded the cash for the car, and drove out of I he lot. He stopped in several downtown stores and bought a suitcase and gradually filled it with clothing and toilet articles. He didn’t bother to go back to the hotel because there was nothing there but a suitcase he didn’t own, and there was no point making a special trip to pay the bill. When he was done with his shopping he drove south out of Cleveland, and when he was near the entrance to the Ohio Turnpike he pulled off the road, opened the package of shoeboxes, took out the guns, threw the shoeboxes out the window, and loaded the guns. Then he got out of the car and walked a little ways into the woods beside the road and fired each gun twice into a nearby tree. They both worked all right. He reloaded, put the guns away in his pockets, and went back to the car.

Now to find Uhl.