Parker followed his guide through this to Meany’s office, off to the right, a roomy space but not showy. The guide held the door for Parker, then closed it after him, as Meany got up from his desk and said, “I didn’t know you were coming. Sit down over there.”
It was a black leather armchair to the right of the desk. Parker went to it and Meany sat again in his own desk chair. Neither offered to shake hands.
Meany said, “What can I do you for today?”
“You liked the sample.”
“It’s very nice money,” Meany said, “Too bad it’s radioactive.”
“Do you still want to buy the rest of it?”
“If we can work out delivery,” Meany said. “I got no more reason to trust you than you got to trust me.”
“You could give us reason to trust each other,” Parker said.
Meany gave him a sharp look. “Is this something new?”
“Yes. How that money came to me, things went wrong.”
Meany’s smile was thin, but honestly amused. “I got that idea,” he said.
“At the end of it,” Parker told him, “my ID was just as radioactive as that money.”
“That’s too bad,” Meany said, not sounding sympathetic. “So you’re a guy now can’t face a routine traffic stop, is that it?”
“I can’t do anything,” Parker told him. “I’ve got to build a whole new deck.”
“I don’t get why you’re telling me all this.”
“For years now,” Parker told him, “I’ve been working for your office in Canada.”
Meany sat back, ready to enjoy the show. “Oh, yeah? That was you?”
“A guy named Robbins is gonna call you, ask for some employment records. I know you do this kind of thing, you’ve got zips, you’ve got different kinds of people your payroll office doesn’t know a thing about.”
“People come into the country, people go back out of the country,” Meany said, and shrugged. “It’s a service we perform. They gotta have a good-looking story.”
“So do I.”
Meany shook his head. “Parker,” he said, “why in hell would I do you a favor?”
“Ten dollars for one.”
Meany looked offended. “That’s a deal we got.”
“And this is the finder’s fee,” Parker said, “for bringing you the deal.”
Sitting back in his chair, Meany laced his fingers over his chest. “And if I tell you to go fuck yourself?”
“Tell me,” Parker said, “you think there’s anybody else in this neighborhood does export?”
“You’d walk away from the deal, in other words.”
“There’s no such thing as a deal,” Parker told him. “There never was, anywhere. A deal is what people say is gonna happen. It isn’t always what happens.”
“You mean we didn’t shake hands on it. We didn’t do a paper on it.”
“No, I mean, so far it didn’t happen. If it happens, fine. If it doesn’t, I’ll make a deal with somebody else, and it’ll be the same story. It happens, or it doesn’t happen.”
“Jesus, Parker,” Meany said, shaking his head. “I never thought I’d say this, but you’re easier to put up with when you have a gun in your hand.”
“A gun is just something that helps make things happen.”
“What I don’t get,” Meany said, “is how this finder’s fee that you call it is gonna give us reason to trust each other. That’s what you said, right?”
“You’re gonna know my new straight name,” Parker pointed out. “And how I got it. So then we’ve both been useful to each other, so we have a little more trust for each other. And I know, if sometime you decide you don’t like me, you could wreck me.”
“I don’t like you.”
“We’ll try to live with that,” Parker said.
Meany gave an angry shake of the head, then reached for notepad and pen. “The guy that’s gonna call me, he’s named Robbins?”
“Kazimierz Robbins.”
Meany looked at the notepad and pen. “Robbins will do,” he decided.
As Meany wrote, Parker said, “The other thing is the money switch.”
Meany put down the pen. “You wouldn’t just like to drop it off here.”
“No. Tomorrow, at one p.m., one of your guys in the maroon coats drives onto the ferry at Orient Point out on Long Island that goes over the Sound to New London in Connecticut. He’s got our money in boxes or bags or whatever you want. On the ferry, he gets out of the car and one of us gets into it. If that doesn’t happen, he drives off, turns around, takes the next ferry back. At some point, we’ll take the car. He stays on the ferry while it goes back and forth, and after a while the car comes back with the money for you in it, and he takes it and goes.”
Meany said, “And what if the car doesn’t come back? You’ve got our money, but we don’t have yours.”
“Then how do you help me get my new ID? See?” Parker spread his hands. “It’s how we build trust,” he said.
4
On the way back to Claire’s place, Parker stopped at the usual gas station, phoned McWhitney’s bar, and when the man came on said, “I’m in a phone booth.” When McWhitney called back five minutes later Parker said, “It’s worked out with Meany.”
“The ferry switch? No snags?”
“Nothing to talk about. I’ll have Claire drive me to the city tomorrow morning, and then I’ll take the train out to your place.”
“Doesn’t that get old?”
“Yes. I’m working on that problem, too. I told Meany we’d do the switch around one. You call Sandra.”
“Why do we want to bring her in?”
“Because Meany doesn’t know her. If they try something after all, she can be useful.”
“All right. I suppose it makes sense.”
“She can earn her half of Nick. She can come to Orient Point and take the same ferry as us and not know us.”
“I’ll see you in the morning,” McWhitney said, and hung up.
When he got to Colliver’s Pond, the body of water Claire’s house was on, he drove past her place and a further mile on around the lake to another seasonal house where he had a stash. More than half of the money in the duffel bag from upstate New York had been spent.
With a green Hefty bag on the seat beside him, he drove back to Claire’s house, and as he came down the driveway she stepped out the front door and signaled him not to put the car in the garage. He rolled his window down and she said, “I’ve been needing the car, I’ve got some shopping to do.”
“We won’t have this crap much longer,” he said, getting out of the Toyota.
“I know. Don’t worry about it.”
He carried the Hefty bag through the house into the garage, then didn’t feel like being indoors, so went out around the back to the water. There were two Adirondack chairs there, on the concrete jetty beside the boathouse. He sat there and looked out over the lake and didn’t see any other people. Three months ago this whole area had been alive with vacationers, but now only the few year-rounders were left, and they were all in their houses.
The strong breeze that ruffled the lake and blew past him had hints of frost in it. It was past five on an early November day, and the light was fading fast. Once these two problems were taken care of, the money and the new identification, it would be time for them to head somewhere south.
He didn’t hear the car coming back, but he heard the garage door lift open, and got up to go inside, help her unpack the groceries, and then go sit in the living room while she went to her office to listen to her messages. They’d eat out tonight; when she came back, they’d decide where.