There was one bit of public access below the casino; restrooms, fore and aft. Broad carpeted staircases led down from both vestibules outside the casino, to wide hushed low ceilinged areas that looked like hotel lobbies, scattered with low sofas and armchairs, with the men’s and women’s rooms off that.
In the aft lobby, near the stairs, an unmarked and locked door led to a simpler staircase that went down to the corridor that led to the money room. A guard would be on duty at all times, the other side of that door, to keep people from coming in. He wouldn’t worry, until too late, about keeping people from coming out.
The aft section also contained a small elevator from casino vestibule down to restroom lobby, for people who’d have trouble with the stairs. Once every evening, Noelle and Carlow would take that elevator down and, while Noelle waited outside, Car-low would take the bowl into the men’s room and tip the attendant there very well to clean it out.
In the course of the evening, Parker ate small meals in both restaurants, when he could get window tables. He also walked the glassed-in promenade, and the top deck open-air promenade, where he was completely alone. Although the ship produced a lot of light, with a creamy nimbus around it on the disturbed water, it was very hard to see in close at the side of the ship. From above, the view was outward, not down. If Hanzen came up from behind, and stayed close to the flank as he approached the open door, no one would see him.
When the ship docked at Albany at two in the morning, Parker was among the first off. He stepped back on the pier, out of the way of the others debarking, and watched that door open in the side of the hull. An armored car was already parked there, facing away from the ship, and once that doorway gaped black the armored car backed up to it until it was snug against the metal side of the ship.
Parker watched Noelle and Carlow go by, both looking solemn, as though what they’d just come out of was church. Neither looked in his direction, but Noelle waggled two fingers as they went by. She was having fun.
8
The man who had the guns was named Fox. Maurice Fox,it said on the window of the store, Plumbing Equipment,on a backwater side street in the former downtown of New Brunswick, New Jersey. This wasn’t the kind of business to move out to the mall with all his former neighbors, so here he stayed, now with a storefront revivalist church on one side and a candle-and-incense shop on the other.
Parker left the Subaru in the loading zone in front of the store and went from the sunny outside to the dim interior, where the store was long and narrow and dark. Dusty toilets were lined up in one row, porcelain sinks in another, and bins full of pipe joints and faucets lined one wall.
A short balding man in a rumpled gray suit and bent eyeglasses came down the aisle between the rows of toilets and sinks. “Yes? Oh, Mr. Flynn, I didn’t recognize you, it’s been a while.”
“I phoned you.”
“Yes, sure, of course. You don’t go through Mr. Lawson anymore.” James Lawson was a private detective in Jersey City who fronted for people like Fox, on the bend.
Parker said, “Why should I? We already know each other.”
With a sad smile, Fox said, “Cut out the middleman, that’s what everybody does. In my business, most of the time, I’mthe middleman, why should I love this philosophy? I think I got what you want, come look.”
There was a way to talk to this man on the telephone about plumbing equipment and wind up with guns, but when you have to be so careful about listening ears, sometimes it’s hard to get the exact details right. But, as Fox turned away to lead Parker deeper into the store, he said, “What I heard, you want two revolvers, concealment weapons such as plainclothes police might carry, and the shoulder holsters to go with them.”
“That’s right.”
At the back of the shop, Fox led them through a doorway, which he shut behind them, and down a flight of stairs with just steps and no risers to a plaster-walled basement. At the bottom, Fox clicked a light switch on a beam, and to the left a bare bulb came on.
Now he led the way across the concrete floor, mounds of supplies in the darkness around them, to a wooden partition with a heavy wooden door. He took a ring full of keys from his pocket, chose one, and unlocked the door. They went inside, and Fox hit another light switch that turned on another bare bulb dangling from the ceiling. He closed this door, too, when they were inside.
The room was small and made smaller by the cases lining it on all four sides. The floor was wooden slats over concrete, except for one two-foot square in the middle, where there was no wood over the drain. Along the back wall the crates were crowded together onto wooden shelves, and Fox went directly over to them and took out a white cardboard box. The label pasted on the end claimed, with an illustration, that the box contained a bathroom sink faucet set.
A square dark table, paint-stained, stood in one corner. Fox carried the cardboard box to it, opened it, and inside, nestled in white tissue paper, was a nickel-plated .357 Magnum revolver, the S&W Model 27. This was the kind of gun developed for the police back in the thirties, when the mobsters first took to wearing body armor and driving around in cars with bulletproof glass, making the normal .38 almost useless. The .357 Magnum had so much more power it could go through a car from the rear and still have enough strength to kill the driver. One .357 slug could put out a car engine.
While Parker looked it over, Fox went away to his shelves and came back this time with a box claiming to contain a toilet floatball; inside was another S&W 27. “And holsters, one minute,” he said, and went away again.
When he came back, with two cartons of “icemaker tubing,” Parker held up the second of the revolvers and said, “The serial number’s off this one. Acid, looks like.”
Fox looked faintly surprised. “Isn’t that better?”
“It’s got to be shown like a lawman would show it, hand it over and take it back. Maybe they’re sharp-eyed, maybe they’re not.”
“Ah. A problem.” Fox brooded at his wall of boxes. “For the same reason,” he said, “you’d probably like them both the same.”
“That would be good.”
“I got an almost,” Fox decided. “The Colt Python. Looks the same, same size, same caliber. Could you use that?”
“Let me see it.”
Another bathroom sink set. The Python was as Fox had described, and looked a close relative of the 27. “I’ll take it,” Parker decided.
“You’ll want to check them?”
Parker knew how that worked with Fox. Under the drain plate in the middle of the room was loose dirt. To test-fire Fox’s merchandise, you stood above the drain and shot a bullet into the dirt. It made a hell of a racket here in this enclosed room, but Fox claimed the boxes absorbed all that noise and none of it was heard outside.
There were times when you expected to use a gun, and then you’d try it first, but this time, with what they planned on the ship, if they had to use one of these guns, the situation would already be a mess. The revolvers were both clean and well oiled, with crisp-feeling mechanisms; let it go at that. “No need,” Parker said. “I’ll take them as they are. Let me see the holsters.”
They were identical, stiff leather holsters without a strap across the chest. They fit the 27 and the Python, and they were comfortable to wear. “Fine,” Parker said.
“The whole thing is three hundred,” Fox said, “and when you’re done with them, if they haven’t been used, you know, you understand what I mean”
“Yes.”
“Well, we done business before,” Fox said. “So, if you just use them for show, afterwards I’ll be happy to buy them back at half price.”
Afterwards, no matter what happened, these guns would be at the bottom of the Hudson. “I’ll think about it,” Parker said.
9