At six-thirty, Dalesia got into his Audi and maneuvered it back out of the building, on his way to meet Briggs, who was supposed to arrive at the motel at seven. He would be taking over Dalesia’s room, and then Dalesia would lead Briggs and his van back to the mill. An evening chill had settled in, so after Dalesia left, Parker and McWhitney moved back inside, sitting in the Dodge, Parker in front, McWhitney in back.
The four armored cars lumbered like costumed circus elephants out of the Harbor Coin secure area onto city streets until they reached the Northeast Expressway. They took that west, over the Mystic-Tobin bridge to Interstate 93, and then took 93 and 95 in the long loop south and west and north around Boston and up to Interstate 90, which would take them across the state. They couldn’t make much time in this early part of the drive, because the Boston area roads were full, but once they got west of Newton, the traffic thinned out enough so they could get into a line in the right lane and do a steady sixty-five while all the traffic around them snapped by at eighty.
Dalesia came back at ten to seven, trailed by a dark green Ford Econoline van with Florida plates. Briggs, when he got out of the van, looked as fussy and dissatisfied as ever, but offered no complaints beyond saying, “Long drive.” He was still neat, though, in white dress shirt open at the collar, a tan zippered cotton windbreaker hanging open, and dark gray work pants. He looked like an office-machine repairman.
Briggs and Dalesia and Parker had worked together some years before, in the failed job that had led Briggs to opt for retirement, but Briggs and McWhitney were now meeting for the first time. Dalesia made the introductions, and Briggs and McWhitney shook hands while eyeing each other with some skepticism. Both were generally dissatisfied people, in different ways, and couldn’t be expected to take to each other right away.
While Briggs and McWhitney were sizing each other up, Wendy Beckham was leaving the hospital, fretful, no closer than before to figuring out how to save her brother from his own carelessness. And Elaine Langen was on her way from home down to the former bank headquarters in Deer Hill. Her husband had been there all day, working with Bart Hosfeld, the professional who’d been hired to be in charge of the move, but Elaine only had to be there for the part she dreaded most, which was the farewell dinner.
The Deer Hill branch would continue as a bank, a part of Rutherford Combined Savings, but it would now be a Rutherford bank branch in the old-fashioned marble space of the bank building’s main floor. The former Deer Hill Bank offices upstairs would be rented to other concerns, one of which would pay for the right to rename the building after itself.
For tonight, however, a different kind of transition would be taking place. For tonight only, the marble hall of the Deer Hill Bank, with its high ceiling and glittering chandeliers installed back in the twenties, was going to be a banquet hall.
Caterers were even now wheeling in round tables, chairs, tablecloths, place settings for eighty, and a wheeled rostrum for speeches, and the branch manager’s office tonight would be the caterer’s base of operations, with warming ovens and portable refrigerators and many trays lined with canapés.
At eight tonight, old-line bank employees and important local citizens would gather in this original branch of Deer Hill Bank to say farewell to that bank and to watch it be eaten in one giant gulp by Rutherford Combined. Speeches would be made, maudlin and tedious. Promises would be made, never to be kept. Memories would be stirred with many boring anecdotes of the old days of Deer Hill and the sweet little bank that kept the town going through thick and thin, mostly thin. Elaine’s father, Harvey, would be remembered in ways that would make him unrecognizable.
It was going to be absolute hell, but longer. Elaine took a Valium with scotch and drove south, telling herself that at least the ending of tonight’s activities would be a surprise for those pompous bastards.
When Briggs opened the side door of his van, they looked in at five long, lumpy rolls of thin army blankets, tied in two places each with clothesline. In addition to those, looking like too-small body bags, there were three liquor cartons in there that had been opened and reclosed.
“Let me show you these things,” Briggs said, considering which one he wanted to bring out first, actually squeezing one to feel what was inside. Making his choice, he pulled it closer and started to untie the lengths of clothesline. McWhitney, sounding suspicious, said, “These things aren’t new?”
“Oh, no,” Briggs said. “You’ll never get a new one, they’re much too controlled for that. They have to get out into the world, where they can be stolen and sold and lost and borrowed and mixed up in the paperwork.” Now unrolling the blanket, he said, “These have all been reconditioned. I don’t know if any of them has ever been fired, except maybe in practice. Mostly, you know, particularly when they’re owned by governments, these items are mostly for show.”
The last of the blanket was rolled back, and there was the 84mm Carl-Gustaf. Fifty-one inches long, grayish-tan metal, it was blunt and unlovely, a thick length of plain pipe that flared out like a megaphone at the butt. There were two pieces of wood attached, one under the trigger guard and the other screwed to a metal strap near the front.
“You load it here,” Briggs said, and snapped open the cone at the rear, which was hinged to the left. “It’s all normal,” he told them, and shut the weapon again. “There are three sights, open here, telescopic here, which I don’t think you’re going to need, and infrared here.”
“That we’ll use,” McWhitney said. “Let me heft the thing.”
“Of course.”
Briggs handed the weapon to McWhitney, who hefted it and said, “Heavy.”
“Thirty-six pounds,” Briggs told him. “Six pounds more with the rocket in it.”
McWhitney shook his head. “I don’t want to have to fire this thing more than once.”
Dalesia, grinning, said, “It’s all in the aim, Nels.”
McWhitney opened the butt again, raised the weapon to his face, and sniffed. Briggs said, “It won’t smell.”
“Oil,” McWhitney said.
“They’re reconditioned,” Briggs told him. “As I said.”
Parker said, “What else have you got in there? The rockets are in those boxes?”
“Yes, but let me show you the rifle I got.”
Parker said, “You said Valmets.”
“Yes, but I got something else,” Briggs said, feeling through the rolled blankets, making another choice. As he untied the clothesline, he said, “The problem with the Valmet, I could only get the M-sixty, not the M-sixty-two, and you don’t want that.”
McWhitney said, “Why not?”
“The Finnish army, it’s cold up there,” Briggs told him, “they use thick gloves, so the M-sixty doesn’t have a trigger guard. You don’t want that.”
Parker said, “So what are we getting instead?”
“The Colt Commando.”
Dalesia said, “An American gun?”
“That’s right, developed for Vietnam. It’s a short version of the M-16, and it’s light, and you won’t be worrying about long-range accuracy anyway, so it’s fine for you.”
Dalesia said, “I’ve seen these before.”
“Sure you have.” Opening the blanket, Briggs said, “The middle section is the same as the M-16, but the barrel’s only ten inches instead of twenty, and the butt’s only four inches long. There’s an extender in the butt you can pull out to make it seven inches long if you’re going to do shoulder-firing, which I don’t think you are.”
McWhitney said, “The front of the barrel is threaded. What’s that for?”