“I’m staying with Tom Lindahl,” Parker said.
“Thirty-eight-fifty. I recognized the car.”
“On a little vacation.”
“That right?” Hopwood made the transaction in the cash register and handed Parker a dollar bill and two quarters.
Parker said, “It says you close today at four.”
“That’s right.” Squinting at the round white wall clock next to the service area entrance, Hopwood said, “You had plenty of time. An hour.”
“When you close,” Parker said, “is that it, you’re closed, nobody here in case somebody shows up a little late? Or do you stay and work on the cars a little more?”
“Not me,” Hopwood said, sounding almost outraged, as though somebody had asked him to lie under oath. “Four o’clock, I shut down, go home, say hello to the missus, have my shower, read the Sunday funnies until suppertime. I don’t know what Tom Lindahl told you, but I’m not a nut.”
“Tom said you were a good mechanic.”
“Well, thank him for me.” Nodding toward the Ford out by the pumps, he said, “I’ve managed to keep that thing going. Rides okay, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” Parker agreed. He pocketed his change, said, “Enjoy the funnies,” and turned to leave.
11
Just a minute,” Hopwood said, and when Parker turned back, his hand not quite touching the doorknob, Hopwood had opened a drawer in his messy desk and now there was a tiny automatic pistol in his hand, its eye looking at Parker. Flat in the still-open drawer was a smudged copy of the artist’s rendering.
“Maybe you’ll put your hands on your head,” Hopwood said.
Parker didn’t. Instead, he gestured toward the picture in the drawer. “You don’t think that’s me, do you? This isn’t even a joke any more.”
“I’m not foolin, mister,” Hopwood said. The automatic that almost disappeared inside his fist was small but serious, the Seecamp LWS32, with a magazine of six .32-caliber cartridges. With its one-inch barrel, it couldn’t have much effect across a highway, but inside this room it would do the job.
Now Hopwood moved the gun-holding hand in a small arc, downward and to the right, to aim at Parker’s left leg. “If I have to wing you, I will.”
“I told you,” Parker said, “I’m staying with Tom Lindahl. Call him if you want. That’s his car right—”
“Last chance. Hands on top of your head.”
With no choice, Parker started to lift his arms when the door directly behind him opened and somebody walked in. Hopwood lost his concentration as Parker took a quick step to his left, turning to see that the newcomer was the nosy woman who’d driven past him last night and stopped to ask him if she could help.
She was confused by the scene she’d walked into, reacting to the tension in the air but not yet noticing the small automatic closed in Hopwood’s fist. “I’m sorry, did I—”
With both hands, Parker took her by the left elbow, spun, and threw her hard across the room and into Hopwood, who tried too late to backtrack out of the way, hitting the corner of his desk instead, knocking himself off balance. Then the woman crashed into him, and they fell diagonally in a jumble from the desk onto the floor. By the time they were separated and turned around and staring upward, Parker’s pistol was in his hand.
“Stay right there,” he said, and showed Hopwood the Ranger. “I don’t wing.”
“What is—what’s—” She was still more bewildered than anything else, but then she saw the Ranger in Parker’s hand and her eyes widened and she cried, “You! You’re the one stole Jack’s gun!”
THREE
1
Of the three men who’d pulled the bank job in Massachusetts, Nelson McWhitney was the only one who’d left the place carrying his own legitimate identification and driving his own properly registered pickup truck. The cops at the various roadblocks where he’d been stopped and the pickup searched had warned him against driving south toward the Mass Pike, because the heavy police activity had backed up traffic in all directions, so, even though his goal was Long Island, McWhitney drove steadily westward for hours, into the same areas where Parker found himself bogged down and Nick Dalesia found himself arrested.
He heard the news of the arrest on the truck radio and gave the radio an ironic nod and salute in response, saying, “Well, so long, Nick.” A couple of miles farther on, having thought about it some more, he nodded and told the radio, “And so long money, too.” That would be Nick’s only bargaining chip, wouldn’t it?
After Syracuse, McWhitney turned south, keeping to smaller roads because they were less backed up, but still making slow progress. He finally gave up and found a motel outside Binghamton, then early Sunday morning got up into a still-police-infested world and made his way southeast toward Long Island, where his home was and where the small bar he owned was and where he had an appointment coming up with a woman named Sharon.
On even a normal day, he would have known better than to drive through New York City to get to Long Island, and this was far from a normal day. It was amazing how much fuss three guys with a simple bank plan could create. And, of course, having grabbed Nick Dalesia, the law was now hungrier than ever to gobble up the other two.
Driving down across New York State, he found himself wondering, was he himself maybe a bargaining chip for Nick? He thought back, and he didn’t believe he and Nick had shared that much private detail, not enough so that Nick could pinpoint McWhitney on Long Island. He hoped not.
What he’d do, when he finally got to the neighborhood, was case it first. If Nick did know enough about him to turn him up, the surveillance on his home and bar would be far too large for him not to notice. Just go there and see.
He stopped for lunch at a diner in Westchester, then headed south to the Throgs Neck Bridge to take him across to Long Island. The roadblock inspection at the bridge was the most thorough and intense yet, but then, once he got on the Island, life suddenly became much calmer. There were only a limited number of routes on and off the Island, so clearly the authorities believed they hadn’t so far let any of the bank robbers through.
His neighborhood was quiet, like any Sunday afternoon. His bar, where he’d left a guy he knew in charge while he took his little “vacation,” was also very quiet, almost empty-looking, which was also standard for a Sunday afternoon.
McWhitney parked the truck in the alley behind his building, went into his empty and stuffy-smelling apartment, opened a few windows, opened a beer, and switched on CNN. No further news on the bank-robbing front.
He wondered how Parker was doing among the straights.
2
Brian Hopwood, asprawl on his back on his dirty office floor, grinding pain in his left side where his rib cage had smacked into the sharp corner of his desk, useless little toy automatic still clutched in his fist, stared up past Suzanne Gilbert’s thick mass of wavy auburn hair at the hardcase he’d been stupid enough to try to get the drop on, and he thought, Well, I’m not dead, so that’s good.
Yes, it was good. If this hardcase here, this bank robber, had just wanted to clear these two pests out of his path, he’d have shot them without a word, without a warning like, “I don’t wing.” So in fact, he didn’t want to shoot them, not unless they made it necessary.
Brian Hopwood had lived this long a time partly by never making it necessary for anybody to shoot him, and he was prepared to go on that way the rest of his life. Which meant shutting up Suzanne here. Heavier than she looked, now draped across him like a deer carcass lashed to a fender, half-twisted around with her elbow propping her torso up by bearing down into Hopwood’s stomach, she glared in discovery and outrage at the hardcase who had their lives in his hands, yelling at him, “You! You’re the one stole Jack’s gun!” As though this were Twenty questions or something.