Watching Henry’s arms swing as he marched away, Mackey said, “The simplest thing, of course, is a bullet in the head. But you know, it’s hard to go with the bullet in the head once a guy’s made you lunch.”
“We can go,” Parker said.
They left the house, pulling the breached door shut behind them, and crossed the porch, headed for the garage. “They become real,” Mackey explained.
Williams had turned the Saab around before he put it away, backing it into the garage, so they could leave fast if they needed to. They needed to. As Mackey slid behind the wheel, Parker got into the small backseat and curled down sideways to be out of sight, so nobody would have two males in a car with out-of-state plates to think about.
Three blocks later, that turned out to have been a good idea, because four police cars, two of them from Rosetown and two from the city, went tearing by, toward Darlene’s house, Tootsie Roll lights flashing on their roofs. As he watched them recede in the rearview mirror, Mackey said, “They’re not using their sirens.”
Parker sat up and looked out the back window. “Sneaking up on us,” he said.
13
The only sensible way to drive from the Park Regal, the hotel Brenda was checking out of, to the airport was to cut across downtown to a highway called the Harrick Freeway. It was more complicated to get to the Harrick from Rosetown, but Parker, in the backseat, gave directions from Darlene’s map, and a little after two Mackey took an on-ramp and joined the traffic headed west. Twenty minutes later they saw the exit sign for McCaughey International and took it, Mackey saying, “What we need now is a place we can wait.”
That turned out not to be a problem. The four blocks of city street between the freeway and the airport entrance were lined with motels. Mackey pulled in at one in the second block, where the parking area for the attached restaurant was in front, just off the street. Parked to face the traffic, he said, “Now we wait.”
“I should do the driving, this part,” Parker told him. “When we get there, you follow Brenda in, I stay with the car. The cops here would make me right away.”
“Fine,” Mackey said. “Circle the airport and come back for me. Either I’ll shake her loose, or I’ll see what plane she takes.”
They switched places, Parker at the wheel and Mackey beside him, and watched the traffic, which seemed to be about half cabs. They waited a quarter of an hour, and then Mackey said, “There she is,” and they watched Brenda go by in the backseat of a taxi, sitting forward, looking in a hurry to be somewhere else.
“There’s her tail,” Parker said.
“And there’s her other one. They put two on her.”
The unmarked police car is unmarked, but it’s still a police car, still with police equipment, built to government specifications. They’re always large American sedans, heavy, four-door, in the lower price range, Ply-mouths or Chevrolets. They’re usually painted some drab color that civilians would never choose but that’s supposed to make them less noticeable, and they have the same tires municipalities buy for all their official vehicles, making them the only apparently civilian cars on the road without a white stripe on the tires.
Now, when Parker pulled out from the motel parking lot to follow the followers, both cars were Ply-mouths, one a dull green, the other a dull tan. Two bulky men rode in the front seat of each. He couldn’t see Brenda’s cab, but that was all right; the cops could.
They all drove to the airport entrance and in, taking the loop past the terminal buildings. Ahead, first one unmarked car and then the other flashed right-turn signals, so Brenda was going to the terminal for Great Lakes Air, a regional carrier. Parker also pulled over, behind everybody else, stopping just long enough for Mackey to hop out, then angling back into the traffic. One cop was getting out of each car to follow Brenda, the other staying at the wheel. Mackey trailed them all.
This road would eventually circle back to the entrance, where he could swing back to go past Great Lakes Air again. If Mackey was there, he’d stop.
He was taking the left ramp that would lead him around and into the airport again when he glanced in the mirror and saw the green Plymouth behind him. The cop had been hiding in the traffic, but no one else was taking the turn to go back into the airport, so there he was. He’d made a very quick and sure ID as Parker had driven by him. Parker couldn’t see him well enough, inside the car back there, but he knew the guy would be on his radio.
This little red car was too identifiable. He couldn’t stay in it, but how could he get clear of it without the cop being all over him?
He completed the left-turn U, and this time he noticed the additional lanes that went off to the right, before the terminals, with a big sign above: cargo.
Those lanes were empty. Parker accelerated into them, widening the distance from the pursuer, the Saab giving him just that much more juice than the Plymouth could deliver. But he wouldn’t have the advantage for long.
This road curved rightward away from the passenger terminals and soon had large storage buildings on its left side, each with an airline name prominent on it. On the right were a high chain-link fence and scrubby fields. A few trucks moved along this road, and Parker snaked through them, looking for an out.
There. On the left, a building with a large open hangar-type entrance on the front. Parker hit the brakes, spun the wheel, hit the accelerator, and roared into the building.
There were trucks in here, too, being loaded or unloaded, with one narrow lane among them and stacks of goods piled high on both sides. Too many workmen moved among the trucks; Parker held down the horn, accelerated, saw the broad open door at the far end, cluttered with electric carts for carrying cargo out to the planes, and braced his forearms on the steering wheel as he slammed down onto the brake, then pushed open his door and slid out of the Saab as it continued to travel at ten miles an hour, straight toward that far opening.
Parker hit the floor rolling, under a truck and out the other side, coming to his feet with the Terrier in his hand. He ran to the front of the truck, saw that the Saab had stopped when it ran into the carts just outside the building, and the Plymouth was just braking to a stop behind it. He ran toward the Plymouth, and its door opened, and the cop got out, and was Turley.
The CID man from Stoneveldt, student of game theory. Of course the law would have him part of this detail, since he knew Parker, had sat across a desk from him twice, told him nobody had ever escaped from Stoneveldt. A small bulky red-haired middleweight, now reaching inside his windbreaker as he slammed the Plymouth’s door and took a step toward the Saab.
“Turley!” Parker yelled.
Turley spun around, astonished, and Parker took a flat stance, the Terrier held out in front of himself with both hands. “Hands where I can see them!”
Turley stared all around, not sure what to do. His hand was still inside the windbreaker, but he had to know what would happen if it came out full. Half a dozen workmen, wide-eyed, backed away.
Parker yelled, “I’m a police officer! This man is under arrest!”
“For Christ’s sake!” Turley yelled. Now his hand did come out from inside his windbreaker, empty, so he could wave his arms in outrage, “Tm the cop!” he yelled. “This man’s an escaped—”
Parker had reached him now. “Stop yelling,” he said.
Turley blinked at him, trying to catch up.
Parker shook his head. “Game theory,” he said. “Chapter two.”
“You’ll never get out of the airport,” Turley told him. “Do you want to add murder one?”