3
Down the dirt road, where you couldn’t see the light from the cottage any more, Wycza stood waiting. Parker joined him and said, “What’s up?”
“The three bikers, like you said, in three rooms. Set up for an ambush, but gunned down. Two dead, one not. Not then.”
“Wounded? Took a shot at you.”
“The young one. Been hit high on the chest, right side, lying in the living room behind the sofa. Lookeddead. I found the other two first, one in a bedroom, shot in the back of the head, one in the kitchen, shot in the chest. One shot each.”
“Economical.”
“I was keepin down, movin slow.” Wycza shook his head, remembering. “All of a sudden, this son of a bitch in the living room rolls over, he’s got a .22 in his hand. You know as well as I do, you can’t hit your own pocket with one of those.”
“They’re not for work,” Parker agreed. “For noise, and for show.”
“So he shot at me, hit the ceiling or some fucking thing, and I put him down.”
“Okay.”
“The thing is,” Wycza said, “he startled me, so I come upright, and I did him, and I’m standin there, and all at once I realize, I got windows on three sides of me. You know that living room, it’s all across the front.”
“But nobody killed you,” Parker said.
“Hell of a way to find out,” Wycza said. “So where’s the guy from the pickup? Those three in the cottage didn’t shoot each other, and the pickup’s still there, but nobody’s shooting at me. Is he hurt? Or is he just waiting? Did somebody maybe put a bullet into the pickup guy?”
“Not with a .22,” Parker said.
“The one in the kitchen,” Wycza said, “carried a .45 auto, been fired once tonight.”
“That’s different,” Parker said.
“So I figure,” Wycza said, “long as nobody’s shooting at me anyway, why not just waltz around, have a look?”
“I watched you,” Parker told him.
“You weren’t the only one, I’m pretty sure,” Wycza said. “So you saw me stop at the bedroom window.”
“You were interested in that screen.”
“Three fresh holes in it, two pushing in, one pushing out. The way it looks to me,” Wycza said, “those three were scattered in the house for the ambush. Our pickup guy came over, shot the one in the bedroom. The other one ran over through the kitchen, got to the doorway, saw the pickup guy in the window, took a shot at him, the pickup guy shot him back. Or the other way around. Anyway, the biker dead, the pickup guy wounded. Some blood drops on the wall, like it sprayed when he was hit.”
“But he went on after the third one.”
“Well, he had to,” Wycza said. “In a hurry, hurt, got him in the living room through the side window there, another hole in the screen. But he didn’t feel healthy enough to go in and finish the job. Went to hide, hope to feel better, wait for us. But from what I could see, it’s only the one guy.”
Parker turned and looked back toward the cottages. “So he’s there, probably in the cottage between ours and his truck”
“That’s where I’d put him,” Wycza agreed. “Where he can watch, but where he can also feel like he’s got a way out if he needs it.”
“And he’s wounded, or maybe he’s dead now,” Parker said. “Wounded bad, or just scraped.”
“He didn’t take a shot at me,” Wycza pointed out.
“Waiting for the money,” Parker said. “If he’s alive, that’s what he’s doing.”
Wycza nodded. “That’s what I’d do, I was him. And alive.”
“If we burn him out,” Parker said, “the flames’ll bring every volunteer fireman in a hundred miles. If we just go in to get him, he’s got too many chances to get us first.”
“Fuck him, leave him there,” Wycza said.
“I can’t do that,” Parker said. “Come on, let’s go talk to Lou.”
4
Before they reached the main road, they saw headlights turn in, then go black. “The money’s here,” Wycza said.
They continued on, and found the van stopped behind the Hyundai, its sliding side door open, spilling light onto the road. Mike Carlow, without his chauffeur’s cap and coat, stood beside the van listening to Lou Sternberg explain the situation, while Noelle sat in the van doorway, feet flat on the ground as she leaned against the side wall to her right. She was still in her invalid filmy white, and she looked like a ghost.
“Here they are now,” Sternberg said.
Wycza said, “Noelle? You okay?”
“Not yet,” she told him, “but I will be.”
“She got dried out,” Carlow explained. “What’s the situation back there?”
“Three dead bikers,” Parker said. “The one that got them’s holed up in another cabin, waiting for the money. He’s wounded, we don’t know how bad.”
Sternberg said, “They fought each other even before they got the goods?”
“No, it’s somebody else. No idea who.”
Carlow said, “He gunned down three bikers by himself, and now he’s in there waiting to take usdown?”
Wycza said, “He’s ambitious, we know that much.”
Sternberg said, “We’re here, the money’s here. Let him stay and rot, we’ll go somewhere else.”
Parker said, “I need to know who he is.”
“Idon’t,” Sternberg said.
Parker said, “But who is this guy? Where’d he come from? Is he going to be behind me some day?”
“He won’t be behind me,”Sternberg said. “I’ll be home in London.”
“What I’m thinking about,” Parker said, “is Cathman. I’ve been waiting for something from him, and I’m wondering is this it.”
Wycza said, “Cathman? Parker, from the way you describe that guy Cathman, that isn’t him back there.”
“No, but he could be fromhim.”
“Parker,” Sternberg said, “you understand the situation. You’ve got a link with this Cathman, the rest of us don’t. He may know your name and your phone number, but he doesn’t know a damn thing about me. You got a guy laying in ambush down in there? Fine, let him lay, I’m going home. We did good work tonight, and I’m ready to see the money, put it in my pocket, call British Air in the morning.”
“I’ve got to go along with Lou,” Noelle said. “I’m tired, and I feel like shit, and all I want to do is sleep and eat and drink. I don’t want to fight anymore.”
“Okay, you’re right,” Parker said. “Whoever this guy is, he’s my problem, not any of yours. Mike, can you get the van around this car or do I need to move it out of the way?”
Carlow said, “You need to move it, if I’m going in. Why am I going in?”
‘Just to get away from the road, so no county cop comes along while we’re splitting the take.”
Carlow laughed and said, “Thatwould be a moment. Yeah, move it over. Noelle, honey, you wanna get in or you wanna get out?”
For answer, she hunkered back and drew her legs up under her. Seated in the van doorway, cross-legged, slumped forward, she looked like an untrustworthy oracle.
Parker jigged the Hyundai forward and back to the side of the road, waited while Carlow drove around him, then got out and walked with the others after the van. They were all stained red when the brake lights came on, and then it was dark again, except for the van’s interior light, gleaming on the ghostly Noelle.
Carlow climbed from the driver’s seat into the back of the van and slid the box out from the wheelchair. It was crammed full of the white plastic bags, four of them.
“Excuse me, Noelle,” Sternberg said, and climbed up past her into the van. The rear seats had been removed in there, to make room for the wheelchair, which was now pushed as far back as possible, leaving a gray-carpeted open area. Carlow and Sternberg and Noelle sat on the carpet in this area, facing in, and began to count the money, while Parker and Wycza stood outside, sometimes watching, sometimes looking and listening up and down the road.
Three hundred nineteen thousand, seven hundred twenty dollars. Parker had had three thousand in expenses, that he took out first. Sternberg did the math on the rest, and said, “That’s sixty-three thousand, three hundred forty-four apiece.”