The Man With the Getaway Face (4 page)

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 it 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 armoured 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 on to 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 towards 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 set-up." 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," Parked 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 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 rear-view 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 towards 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 left-hand 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's 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's 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 become 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's back, while Parker dialled 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 on to 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?"