Cathman stared at him, first in astonishment, then in fear, and then, when he understood the glass that was extended toward him, in bewilderment. “What what are you”
“Take the glass, Cathman.”
Cathman finally did, but didn’t immediately drink. And now, because of having been startled and scared, he was moving toward anger. “You broke in here? You just come in my house?”
“We’ll talk in the living room,” Parker told him, and turned away, and Cathman had no choice but to follow.
The electric company jacket and the clipboard were on the sofa. Parker sat next to them, drank some wine, put the glass on the end table beside him, looked at Cathman standing in the doorway unable to figure out what to do next, and said, “Sit down, Cathman, we got things to talk about.”
Cathman blinked at him, and looked around the room. Trying to sound aggrieved, but coming off as merely weak, he said, “Did you searchin here?”
“Naturally.”
“Naturally? Why? What did you want to find?”
“You,” Parker said. “You don’t add up, and I want to know why.”
“I told you who I am.”
Parker said nothing to that. Cathman looked at the glass in his hand, as though just realizing it was there. He shook his head, walked over to sit in the easy chair to Parker’s right, and drank a small sip from the glass.
Parker wanted to shake him up, disturb him, see what fell out, but at the same time not to spook him so much he couldn’t be useful any more. So he’d come in here and show himself, but not make a mess. Not sit in the living room in the dimness when he comes home, but stand in the kitchen and offer him a glass of wine. Give a little, then get hard a little. Watch the reactions. Watch him, for instance, just take that tiny sip of wine and put the glass down. So he’s under good control, whatever’s driving him it isn’t panic.
Cathman put the glass down, and frowned at Parker. “Did you learn anything, coming in here like this?”
“You aren’t a consultant, you’re a guy out of work.”
“I’m both, as a matter of fact,” Cathman said. “I know your type, you know. You want to be just a little menacing, so people won’t try to take advantage of you, so they’ll do what you want them to do. But I don’t believe it’s just bluff, or I’d wash my hands of you now. It’s habit, that’s all, probably learned in prison. I’ll do you the favor of ignoring it, and you’ll do me the favor of not being more aggravating than you can help.”
“Well, you’re pretty cool, aren’t you?” Parker said. “I came in here to read you, so now you’re gonna read me.”
“I see you disguised yourself as a meter reader or some such thing,” Cathman said. “But I’d rather you didn’t do it again. If something goes wrong and you get arrested, I don’t want to be connected to a criminal named Parker.”
Ignoring that, Parker said, “What I need is ID, two pieces.”
Cathman frowned. “What sort of ID?”
“You tell me. If an assemblyman is out on an official job of some kind, he might ask for bodyguards, right?”
“Not bodyguards, not exactly,” Cathman said. “Oh, is that what you’re going to do, go on board as assemblyman Kotkind? Is that why I gave you his letterhead stationery?”
“What do you mean, not exactly bodyguards?”
“He might ask for a state trooper, to drive him, if it’s official.”
“In a patrol car?”
“No, a state car, with the state seal on the doors. Black, usually.”
“Trooper in uniform?”
“Probably not,” Cathman said. “He’d be a plain-clothesman from the security detail.”
“Then that’s the ID I want,” Parker said. “Two of them.”
“They’d be photo IDs.”
“Then get me blanks. Get me something I can adapt.”
Cathman picked up the wine glass, took a sip, brooded at Parker. He said, “When are you going to do it? The robbery.”
“Pretty soon. So get me the IDs.”
“No, I mean when.”
“I know what you mean,” Parker told him. Leaving his wine unfinished, he got to his feet and said, “I’ll call you here, next Monday, in the evening, tell you where to bring them.”
Cathman also stood. “Are you going to do it next week?”
Parker shrugged into the jacket, picked up the clipboard. “I’ll call you Monday,” he said, and left.
6
“I bet that’s her,” Carlow said.
Parker looked, and it was. Among the people getting off the Chicago Trailways bus here at the Albany terminal, that was the remembered face and figure of Noelle Braselle. She looked to be about thirty, tall and slender and very together, but she also looked like a college girl, with her narrow-legged blue jeans and bulky orange sweater crossed by the straps of a dark blue backpack, and her straight brown hair pulled back from her oval face to a black barrette and a short ponytail. She saw Parker and Carlow across the street from the terminal and waved, and as the other disembarking passengers crowded around the driver while he pulled their luggage out from the bus’s lower storage area, she came across to them, smiling. Noelle traveled light. “Long time no see,” she said to Parker.
“You haven’t changed,” he told her.
“I sure hope not,” she said, and raised a curious eyebrow at Carlow.
Parker said, “Noelle, this is Mike Carlow. He’s your driver.”
“Mydriver?”
“We’re taking different routes, on the night. Come on, I’ll tell you about it.”
They’d borrowed Wycza’s big Lexus, for comfort, because it was almost an hour drive from here to Tooler’s cottages, and it was parked now a block from the terminal. As they walked, Noelle said, “You still got that nice lady stashed?”
“Claire,” Parker agreed. “Yeah, we’re together.”
“Good. Tommy and I split, you know.”
“I heard.”
“Funny,” she said. “I used to think there wasn’t anything would scare him, then all at once everything did, and goodbye, Harry. Is this it? Nicer than a bus.”
“Very like a bus,” Carlow told her.
Carlow drove, Noelle beside him, Parker in back. They had to cross the river on one of the big swooping bridges here, and then head south. Parker said, “You remember Lou Sternberg.”
“From that painting disaster? Angry guy, overweight, drove the big truck.”
“That’s him. He’s with us on this. And a guy I don’t think you know, Dan Wycza.”
She turned to grin at Parker in the back seat and say, “I hope this one comes out a little better.”
“It will,” he said.
Wycza, in shorts and sneakers, was doing push-ups on the weedy grass in the sun in front of the cottage. Noelle, seeing him as they drove in, laughed and said, “Is this supposed to be my birthday?”
“Dan Wycza,” Parker told her, and Carlow said, “For the heavy lifting.”
“I can see that,” she said. “Is Lou Sternberg here?”
“Not yet. He’s in Brooklyn, watching a guy for later.”
Wycza got to his feet when he saw the car coming. He offered a small wave and went into the house, while Carlow parked the Lexus. They got out, Noelle carrying her backpack slung over one shoulder, and went into the house, where Wycza stood now in the living room, rubbing his head and neck with a tan towel.
Parker said, “Noelle Braselle, Dan Wycza.”
“Hi,” Wycza said, and Noelle frowned at him and said, “I know you. Don’t I know you?”
Grinning, Wycza said, “I wish you did, honey.”
“No, I’ve seen you somewhere,” she said. The two wheelchairs were in this room, one still together, the other mostly apart; she hadn’t remarked on them yet, but she did put her backpack on the complete one now as she continued to frown at Wycza, trying to place him.