Dalesia said, “Tell him it’s Nick.”
“He says it’s Nick.”
Dalesia said, “Could I talk to him?”
“Hold on, Jake, he wants to talk to you.”
Dalesia, full of good-fellowship, said into the phone, “Whadaya say, Jake? We’re in the neighborhood, we thought we’d come by, say hello. If this isn’t a bad time? Great. Nah, we’ll come back to you, we’re just driving through. See you in a minute.” Handing the phone back to the woman, he said, “Thanks.”
“Any time.” She put the phone away and said, “You can’t drive back there, though, we don’t have room for cars inside. Even the residents, they park out here and walk in. Some keep little wagons behind here to carry their groceries.”
“We don’t mind walking,” Dalesia assured her.
She turned and pointed at the wall behind her. “You go out there and walk straight, you’re on Cans Way. First you cross is San Tropays Lane and the next is Nice Lane.” She pronounced it like “a nice day.” “Nice Lane is what you want,” she said. “Go down there to the right, Jake’s house is second on your left, a very nice pea green.”
“Thank you,” Dalesia said, and they went back out the door they’d come in, around to the back of the onetime trailer, past a bunch of rusty red wagons chained to a long iron bar fastened to concrete blocks in the ground, and past an ordinary street sign, white letters on green, reading Cannes Way.
The road was not much wider than the mobile homes parked to both sides. Dalesia said, “They must get themselves a river pilot to bring these things in and out.”
“Maybe so.”
“Or airlift them.”
They passed a cross street signed St. Tropez Way, then turned right on Nice Lane, and there was Jake Beckham waiting for them, standing in the open doorway of his pea-green mobile home.
“I know what you’re gonna say,” he said as they approached. “And don’t say it.”
Dalesia went on inside, but Parker stopped in the doorway, looked at Beckham, and said, “I was going to say, the job works just as good with you dead.”
Beckham blinked, and Parker walked past him into a long, narrow living room with dark paneled walls and, on the small windows, red and white checked curtains like tablecloths in a French restaurant.
Dalesia had gone off to the right, to look in the bathroom and both bedrooms, while Parker turned left, to look at an empty small galley kitchen, the brushed-chrome built-ins neat but the dirty dishes piled on them not.
Dalesia and Parker both returned to the living room, shook their heads, and turned to Beckham, who had shut the door and stood with his back to it, warily watching them. Parker said, “Tell us about it.”
“You didn’t have to say that,” Beckham told him. The usual boyishness that was such a misfit on him had been rattled now. He was acting his age. “That was unnecessary,” he said, “you didn’t have to say it.”
“So far,” Parker told him, “you’re putting yourself at risk, and you’re putting the job at risk. Is there any way you can put me at risk? I don’t think so, but now I’ll wait and see.”
Pursuing his own thought, Beckham said, “And it isn’t even true, what you said. You don’t need me? Of course you need me. If I’m dead, Elaine gives you nothing. If Elaine doesn’t give, what’ve you got?”
“Jake,” Dalesia said, sounding sad for his friend, “what Parker was saying was, you disappointed us. You disappointed me, Jake, and I’m the one told Parker you were all right, the job was all right. He counted on me, Jake, and I counted on you.”
“It’s all figured out,” Beckham said. Still with wary looks toward Parker, he took a step into the room. “Why don’t we all sit down?” he suggested, and fluttered a hand at the plaid-and-maple furniture.
“Not yet,” Parker said. “It was all figured out that you had to take yourself out of the job in a way the law would believe, or they’d be all over you and then all over our backtrail. That was what was figured out.”
“It still is,” Beckham insisted. “Dr. Madchen—”
Exasperated, Dalesia said, “Back with that, Jake? We already know that doesn’t work.”
“I can’t do prison again,” Beckham said. “I don’t care if it’s just a county jug somewhere, I can’t do it, I can’t go back, not again.”
“Then there’s no job,” Parker said.
“There is. Will you listen to me about the doctor? We worked it out, I went to him, we got it worked out. Jesus Christ, fellas, come on, will ya? Sit down, we’ll all sit down, let me tell you what we got, and if you don’t like it, you don’t like it, but no matter what happens, me being dead doesn’t help, you know that.”
“Maybe it relieves our feelings,” Dalesia said, but he sat down, and so did Parker, and then so did Beckham.
Parker said, “You went back to this doctor.”
“Yeah, I needed something except jail, I needed—”
“What does he know, this doctor?”
Beckham took a deep breath. “He knows I’m on my way to a score, so when I can retire. He knows the guys he saw in his office are in it.”
“Does he know what the score is?”
“Yes, but he’s all right, he isn’t a problem for us, he’s a help. I’m gonna give him a piece out of my share and you guys don’t have to have anything to do with him. And in the meantime, he’s solved this problem here.”
Dalesia said, “How did he solve it, Jake?”
“The first change is,” Beckham said, “I stay in the hospital.” Now that he was getting to tell his story, the irrepressible kid inside him was beginning to emerge again, giving him more animated gestures. In that chair, his feet touched the floor, but he acted as though they didn’t. “You remember,” he said, “the original idea was, I was gonna sneak out of this private room, be part of the operation.”
“That was never going to fly,” Parker said.
“Okay, I’ve accepted that,” Beckham said, moving his arms and his shoulders around. “I’m away from it, but I still get my taste.”
“If you’re locked up,” Parker told him, “as a parole violator.”
“This is just as good,” Beckham insisted. “See, I go to the doctor about these stomach cramps, he does tests, he can’t find the problem, it could be a bunch of things. Believe me, he knows what to put down for the diagnosis.”
“We believe that, Jake.”
“Fine. He puts me in the hospital for tests and observation, I’m going in next Monday, he’s doing all the paperwork now, all the stuff to show the law, if anybody comes around—I even told my parole lady about it this morning. See, this was a long-term medical problem, the time was right to put me in the hospital, do the tests. If they don’t find anything, fine, it was nerves, still shook up from being inside and then outside. Bring on all your second opinions in the world, nobody’s gonna find a thing.”
Dalesia said, “Parker? What do you think?”
Parker said, “Beckham, he was your doctor before you went inside, right?”
“Oh, yeah, we already knew each other, I was already his patient.”
“Still a private room?”
“No! An eight-bed ward, man, it’s all I can afford with the insurance I get at the motel.”
“You’re going in Monday.”
“And today, in fact,” Beckham said, “the doctor’s started making the appointments for me, the date, the bed, the tests. I mean, the alibi’s already started.”
Dalesia said, “Parker? Okay?”
Parker shrugged. If it was going to happen, this would have to be the way. “It sounds good,” he said.
“It is good,” Beckham insisted.
“And not wanting to go back inside . . .” Parker spread his hands. “I can understand that.”