“Good.” She gathered up her bag, but paused before she got out of the booth. “You didn’t even buy me a cup of coffee,” she said, then rose, and walked away.
9
In this part of New Jersey, three hours south of Massachusetts, the September days were sometimes summer, sometimes fall. This was one of the summer days. Parker thumbed the garage opener on the Lexus visor and drove in from bright afternoon sunlight to the cool, dim interior. As the garage door noisily slid downward again, he got out of the car and went through the door into the kitchen, then on into the living room. Looking out past the screened porch toward the lake, he saw Claire swimming strongly back and forth out there beyond the boathouse. A little later in the season, after the summer people had closed up their “cottages” for the year, leaving only a fifth of the houses around the lake occupied, and on those rare autumnal days of strong sun, it would be possible to swim nude, but in mid-September half the houses were still in use, so as Claire swam, Parker caught glimpses of a bright blue two-piece suit.
He carried his bag to the bedroom, changed into his own swimsuit, and went out to the lake. She saw him and smiled and lifted an arm in greeting, but didn’t break off from the rhythm of her movements; she was doing laps, competing with herself.
Parker dove in from the end of their concrete dock and swam beside her a while, working his muscles. The long hours in the car had left him stiff, too aware of his body.
The water was cold and clear and slid over the skin like velvet. If you put your head beneath the surface, you could see the muddy bottom, quickly sloping away toward the deep middle. If you looked around, there was no one else on the lake, either swimming or boating.
This was the earliest in the year they would ever occupy their house. From Memorial Day till Labor Day, when the summer people were here, running their motorboats and their barbeque parties, Parker and Claire traveled. Without a passport, he couldn’t leave the country, except occasionally to Canada or Mexico, but they found places to interest them.
The best times here at the house were in the depths of winter, with the lake frozen solid enough to drive a car on, and no other lights to be seen anywhere around the nine-mile perimeter of the shore after the brief twilight was done. But this now in mid-September was all right, too, when swimming and privacy both were possible.
Neither spoke till Claire was finished counting her laps and they paddled together to the dock. Then, climbing out, she said, “Was everything all right?”
“So far.”
They toweled themselves, moving toward the house and the bedroom. She said, “When do you go again?”
“They’ll call me.”
“Good,” she said. “You’ll be here a while.”
It wasn’t really cool enough for a fire that night, but Claire liked the look of it, so after dinner she laid one as he made drinks. He brought them to the living room and they offered one another a silent toast. They were both in their dark satin robes, which gleamed dully in the firelight.
They sat a while on the side sofa, where they could see the red-black of the fireplace to their left and the white-black of the moonlit lake to the right. An open window competed with the fire, and the night sounds of insects competed with the crackle of the burning wood.
He told her about Elaine Langen, and Claire said, “She’s unhappy.”
“She could have folded the hand.”
“No, I mean, if she’s unhappy, you don’t know who she’s going to take it out on.”
“We’re keeping her at a distance.”
“Good.”
He said, “How about here? Everything all right?”
“The checking account is getting low.”
“I’ll get some cash, later on.”
When Parker scored, he stashed part of it away for use later, when needed. At times like this, when he hadn’t earned for a while, he would visit one of those stashes.
They were handy, but they were not in the house. At one-thirty that morning, in black polo shirt, chinos, and rubber-soled black deck shoes, he left the darkened house and went out the driveway to the road that circled the lake. Turning left, he walked in the darkness past houses already boarded up for the winter and others that would still be occupied for a few more weekends. There were no streetlights out here, nor could he see any other light.
The residents of several of these houses would never know that thousands of dollars in cash were salted within, behind paneling or under floors. If there were a few of these stashes he didn’t get around to reclaiming, somebody doing new construction work years from now would be in for a happy surprise.
The house he chose tonight, a broad black shape against the moon-reflecting lake, was empty but not yet closed up for the season. He’d arranged simple entry for his storage houses, and didn’t need light for what he was doing. When he came back out, the four Ziploc bags beneath his shirt contained five thousand dollars in cash each. Claire could deposit it, three and four thousand at a time, in the checking account she used to keep this place going. He didn’t use it; he didn’t sign checks.
The next Tuesday afternoon, Parker was seated in a chaise on the deck, in the sunshine, thinking about nothing, when he heard the phone ring in the house. He stood, and was halfway across the lawn when Claire came out, the cordless phone in her hand. “Nick,” she said, with a rising inflection: Did he want to be home?
“That’s good,” he said, and reached for the phone.
As she handed it over, she said, “Does this mean you’re going now?”
“Not yet.”
But when he spoke into the phone, Dalesia’s voice said, “A glitch.”
“What kind?”
“Jake was a good boy. He kept his parole appointment.”
10
This time there was no nonsense about doctors’ offices. Dalesia knew that Beckham lived in a mobile home park near the motel where he worked, so they drove there, this time in a Saab from the long-term parking at Bradley International Airport, north of Hartford, less than an hour away.
They pulled in at the parking lot in front of the mobile home park office just as twilight was settling in. Behind a large wooden sign reading Riviera Park were several rows of mobile homes in pastels and silver and white, like a cross between a lineup of Monopoly houses and a display of beehives. The office itself was a similar structure, but smaller and simpler; if it still had its wheels instead of those concrete blocks, it would be called a trailer.
They went into the former trailer through the metal-and-glass door under the red neon OFFICE sign, and a very old and very wiry woman in jeans and gray sweatshirt looked up from the crossword puzzle book she had spread open on her counter, to say, “I hope you fellas aren’t lookin for a place to park. I’m full up.”
Dalesia said, “An old pal of ours is a tenant of yours. We thought we’d come by and say hello.”
She put down her pen and straightened up. “Who would he be?”
“Jake Beckham.”
She smiled, pleased at the name. “Oh, Jake! Very nice fella.”
“Sure is,” Dalesia said. “We know he works over at that motel, so we didn’t know if we should look for him here or there. What is it now?” He looked up at the round clock on the wall above and behind her. “Almost seven-thirty. I think he works days, doesn’t he?”
“Lemme call him,” she said, “see is he in.”
“Thanks.”
She had to look up the number in a ledger book from under the counter, then dialed it, listened, and perked up when she said, “Oh, Jake! There’s a couple fellas here for you.”