To obey the fire code, the door at the back of his building had to be openable from inside at all times during business hours, but from outside it took a key to get in. McWhitney unlocked the door and they went through his small but neat living quarters to the bar, where McWhitney said, “You want a beer for the road?”
“Later.”
“I don’t trust later, I’ll take mine now. You want to call Sandra?”
“Sure. Give me the phone.”
McWhitney slid the phone across the bar to Parker, drew himself a draft, and watched the conversation.
“Keenan.”
“Hello, Sandra.”
“I’m on my way,” she said. “I think I should be there ahead of everybody so I can see if anybody has extra company.”
“Good idea. We’ll be in the same van, but it doesn’t have any words on it any more.”
“Oh, you got the news. If that cop didn’t have her girlish memories of that church, she wouldn’t have any reason to remember us or the van.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter any more. See you later.”
Parker hung up, and McWhitney said, “What doesn’t matter any more?”
“The cops at the church.”
“I don’t intend to drive through their territory for quite a while,” McWhitney said, and opened the drawer in the backbar beneath the cash register. “This piece we took from the fella last night,” he said. “I don’t feel like I want it in my joint any more, and on the other hand, where we’re going, what we’re doing, it might not be a bad idea to bring along an extra gun.”
“Sure. Bring it.”
McWhitney tried to stuff it into the inside pocket of his jacket, but it was too large and too heavy. “I’ll carry it in the glove compartment,” he decided. “Then drop it off the ferry. If things are going well.”
10
From where they were in Bay Shore on the south shore of Long Island, it was about seventy miles to the Orient Point ferry farther east and up on the north shore. Half of that trip was on highway, starting with the Sagtikos Parkway north, and then the Long Island Expressway east, but at Riverhead the Expressway, which had been getting thinner and thinner of traffic, ran out and from there they were on smaller roads on this less populated end of the island, with the ferry terminal still thirty-five miles ahead.
They’d been driving beyond the Expressway for about five minutes, first on Edwards Avenue north almost to Long Island Sound, and then east on Sound Avenue, when McWhitney, looking alert, said, “Yeah?” He cocked his head, listening, and Parker knew Sandra was calling him on his hands-free phone. Around them now was mostly sand and scruffy wasteland, with a mix of small homes and businesses, some of them already shut for the season.
“Sure,” McWhitney told the space in front of him, and took his foot off the accelerator. The van dropped about ten miles an hour in speed, and then he tapped the accelerator again, maintaining that new speed, for two or three minutes.
Parker watched and waited, not wanting to interrupt if Sandra had anything else to say, and then McWhitney said, “Okay, got it. Let me know if they do anything else.”
Parker said, “Somebody following us?”
“A black Chevy Suburban with dealer plates,” McWhitney said. “Whatever speed I like, he likes.” Gradually he was accelerating back up to his previous speed.
“The car Sidd and the others had last night,” Parker said, “was also a Chevy with dealer plates. This is Sidd’s pals.”
McWhitney grinned. “They got a friend in the car business.”
“They came along after us,” Parker said, “because they wanted to know where we were going.”
“Then they’ve pretty well got it figured out by now,” McWhitney said. “Once you get out here past Riverhead, there’s only three things you can do. Take the ferry, swim, or turn around.”
“The question is,” Parker said, “do we take them out, or do we ignore them?”
“It’s a public highway in the middle of the day,” McWhitney said. “Not a lot of traffic, but there’s some. It just makes more trouble to try to deal with them. And they’re not gonna want to try to mess with us either, not while we’re moving out here in the daylight.”
“What about on the ferry?”
“No privacy.” McWhitney shrugged, “I’ll stay with the van. There’s other people gonna stay in their cars, not go upstairs. They read their paper, do some work, I won’t be alone. You go find the blazer and get his keys.”
“A time is gonna come,” Parker said, “when we’ll have to deal with those people.”
“That’s the time,” McWhitney said, “they’ll be delivered into our hands. What?”
That last wasn’t directed to Parker, but to the voice in his ear, because after listening McWhitney laughed and said, “That’s very nice. You just make it up as you go along.”
Parker said, “She’s gonna move on them?” He didn’t like that idea. It would be better if they didn’t know about Sandra until and unless she was really needed.
But McWhitney said, “No. She wanted me to slow down again because she’s gonna accelerate out ahead of them to be in front when they board.”
Parker nodded. “That’s good.”
“Then,” McWhitney said, “we’ll see what trouble she can make.” Again he laughed. “I bet she can make a little,” he said.
11
At the ferry terminal, a large flat open space at the end of the North Fork of Long Island, facing south though the ferry would travel north, the drivers first paid their fares, and then the cars were lined up in rows on a large parking area with lanes painted on it. There they would wait for the southbound ferry to come in and unload its group of cars and foot passengers, before they’d be boarded in the order in which they’d arrived.
The van’s position was halfway down the third occupied lane. That lane filled up pretty fast, and then more cars came down on the right beside them, filling in the next lane. Out in the water, the large white-and-blue ferry could be seen slowly maneuvering itself toward the dock.
Into a silence, in the van, McWhitney suddenly said, “What?” Then, to Parker, he said, “She says to look over our shoulder.”
Parker tried to look back through the van’s rear window, but there was nothing to see except the front of the car tucked in close behind them. So he bent to the side until he could look in his outside mirror, and there, two cars behind them, was Sandra’s black Honda with its whip antennas. Behind it he could just see a black Chevy Suburban.
“She’s back there and so are they,” he said.
“I hate to be followed,” McWhitney said. “It makes me antsy.”
“We’ll tell them,” Parker said.
It was about fifteen minutes more before the ferry was loaded for the trip to Connecticut. Once everybody was aboard and the ferry was moving out of its slip into Gardiner’s Bay, Parker said, “I’ll find the guy now.”
“I’m keeping the doors locked,” McWhitney said. “No point being too carefree.”
Parker got out of the van and McWhitney clicked the door locked behind him. He made his way up the metal stairs to the upper deck, where there were lines at the refreshment stand. Big windows looked out onto the view of sea and sky, and there was bench seating both inside and out.
Parker didn’t see the bulky guy from last night, and he didn’t see Sandra, but looking through a side window he saw a maroon blazer out there, the guy strolling along the rail. When he stepped out, it was the same guy who’d led him back to Meany’s office at Cosmopolitan Beverages last week.
Parker said, “So here we are.”