“You cocksucker,” the guy said, “you got no idea what’s gonna hit you.” He glowered at Parker as McWhitney reached inside his coat and drew out a Glock 31 automatic in .357 caliber, a more serious machine than the Bobcat.
“Put it on the table,” Parker said. “And your towel,” meaning the thin white towel McWhitney carried looped into his apron string.
McWhitney draped the towel on top of the Glock. “What now?”
“Our friend,” Parker said, “is gonna move to the last booth, and sit facing the other way. He does anything else, I kill him. And you bring him a real drink.”
“I will.”
Parker brought the Bobcat back and put it in his pocket, his other hand on the towel on the Glock. To the guy he said, “Up,” and when the guy, enraged but silent, got to his feet, Parker said, “You got anything on your ankles?”
“No.” The guy lifted his pants legs, showing no ankle holsters. Bitterly, he said, “I wish I did.”
“No, you don’t. Go.”
The guy walked heavily away down the bar, working his shoulder muscles as though in preparation for a fistfight.
Parker said to McWhitney, “Time to close the place.”
“Right.”
McWhitney went away behind the bar again and Parker put the Glock and the towel in another of his pockets. He closed a hand around his beer glass but didn’t drink, and McWhitney called, “Listen, guys, time to drink up. I gotta close the joint now.”
The customers were good about it. The two construction guys expressed great surprise at how late it was, and comic worry about how their wives would take it. Livelier and more awake once they were on their feet, each assured the other they would certainly tell the wife it was the other guy’s fault.
The newspaper reader simply folded his paper and stuffed it into a pocket, got to his feet, picked up his dog’s leash, and said, “Night, Nels. Thank you.”
“Any time, Bill. Night, guys.”
Down at the rear, the bulky guy’s back was to the room, as he’d been instructed. Quietly the newspaper reader and more loudly the construction men left the place, Parker trailing after. All called good night again through the open door.
The other three all went off to the left, the dog walker more briskly, his dog trotting along beside him, the construction men joking as they went, weaving a little. Parker angled rightward across the street, then down that sidewalk past the Tahoe, hands in his pockets.
When he was a few paces beyond the Tahoe, he heard its doors begin to open. He turned, taking the Glock and the towel from his pocket, and three men were coming out of the Tahoe, both sides in front and the sidewalk right side in back. All were concentrating on what was in front of them, not what was behind them.
The guy from the front passenger seat was tall and skinny, to match the description of Oscar Sidd. He shut his door and took one pace forward toward the front of the car when Parker shot him, holding the Glock straight-armed inside the towel.
Sidd dropped and the other two spun around, astonished. Parker held the Glock in the towel at waist height, pointed away to the right, and called, “Anybody else?”
The two stared at him, then across the Tahoe roof at each other. The guy on the street side couldn’t see Oscar. The other one looked down at the body, looked at his partner, and shook his head.
The driver jumped behind the wheel and the other one into the backseat. The engine roared and the lights flashed on, showing the Tahoe had dealer plates. The driver at first accelerated too hard, so that the wheels spun and smoked, but then he got under control and the Tahoe hurried away from there.
Parker carried the Glock and the towel back into the bar. The bulky guy was still in position in the rear booth. Parker called to him, “Come here,” and the guy, sullen-faced, came down along the bar to stand in front of him, look at the Glock, and say, “Yeah?”
“I hope you got your own car here.”
The guy frowned at the front door. “Where are they?”
“Gone. Except for Oscar. He’s dead out there. He was shot with this gun of yours.” Putting it on the bar, Parker said, “Hold on to it, Nels.”
“Will do.”
Parker looked at the guy. “Did somebody hear me fire one shot? I don’t know. Did somebody call the cops? I don’t know. Will Oscar be there when they get here? That’s up to you.”
“Jesus Christ,” the guy said, and it was equal parts curse and prayer. He hurried out the door and Parker said to McWhitney, “Let me use your phone.”
“Sure.”
Parker called Claire’s cell phone. “Are you still on the Island?”
“Yes. Are you finished already?”
“Come back, we’ll get dinner around here somewhere together—”
“I’ll tell you where,” McWhitney said.
“—and spend the night down here, and then you go home tomorrow and I’ll come back to Nels.”
“What happened?” she said.
“I’m not angry any more,” he said.
7
The sign in the window of the door at McW read closed at nine-thirty the next morning, and the green shade was pulled down over the glass, but the door was unlocked. Parker went in and McWhitney was seated at the first booth on the left, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the Daily News. He looked up when Parker walked in and said, “Claire get off?”
Parker sat on a stool with his back against the wood of the bar. “Yes.”
McWhitney nodded at the wall above the backbar, where a television set on a shelf was switched on with the sound turned off. “There’s news on the news.”
“For us?”
“They found Nick’s body.”
Parker shrugged. “Well, that’s all right.”
“You want coffee, by the way?”
“No, Claire and I ate.”
“Well, maybe the Nick thing is all right and maybe it isn’t.” McWhitney waggled his palm over the newspaper, to indicate the question.
Parker said, “Why wouldn’t it be all right? We’re done up there.”
“The hymnbooks,” McWhitney said. “I was gonna drop them off at a church around here. Just to get rid of them, but now I don’t know. Can they be traced back to the church up there? I don’t want anything anywhere around me that hooks to anything in Massachusetts.”
“We’ll dump them somewhere else,” Parker said.
McWhitney shook his head, “I never thought I’d sit around,” he said, “and try to figure out what to do to get rid of a load of hot hymnbooks.”
“The money’s mostly what we have to deal with,” Parker said. “Make the load lighter. Hefty bags are good for that.”
“Maybe three of them. It’s a lot of cash.”
“Where’s the truck?”
“In an open parking lot a couple blocks from here. I figured,” McWhitney said, “a piece of crap like that little truck, if we give it a lotta security, it’ll look like something might be inside there.”
“Hymnbooks.”
“Right.” McWhitney yawned and pushed the News away from himself, “I talked on the phone with Sandra this morning,” he said. “She checked the ferry on the Web. The one we want’s at one o’clock. Takes an hour and twenty minutes, we come back on the three.”
“Fine,” Parker said. “But now I’m thinking about another complication from Nick.”
McWhitney laughed. “That Nick,” he said. “He’s one complication after another, isn’t he? What now?”
“The troopers that stopped by when we were unloading the boxes out of the church,” Parker said.
“Sure. The woman went to that church when she was a little kid.”
“And now they found Nick,” Parker said. “Do they start to wonder about that truck?”