‘IF the deal is queer,’ said Grofield, ‘it’s queer. I say we get the hell out while the getting is good.’
‘Anything they’ll make on you,’ Parker told him, ‘they’ve already made. From now till the job’s done they’ll keep their distance.’
Salsa said, ‘What about after the job?’
‘It’s a big coastline.’
The fourth man in the room, Ross, said, ‘Up to now they haven’t made me at all, is that right?’
Parker nodded. ‘That’s right.’
Ross was the boatman; Salsa had turned him up. He was big, stocky, florid, with heavy pale eyebrows and thick pale hair and thick freckled hands. He said, ‘I could leave this building right now, the way away I came in, just as careful, and they’d never make me at all.’
‘That’s right.’
‘But if I stay, it’s fifty thousand dollars guaranteed minimum.’
‘That’s right.’
‘If I stay,’ said Ross deliberately, ‘I’ll be very careful they never do make me.’
Parker nodded. ‘That’s sensible.’
‘Even if it complicates the work,’ Ross said. ‘I want you to know that. This adds another element, this makes the situation tricky. If I agree to do something, and then it turns out I can’t do that something without tipping my mitt to your friends, you’re just gonna have to count me out.’
‘I already figured that,’ Parker told him.
Ross said, ‘I just wanted to make it clear.’
Grofield said, ‘Parker, I’ve never seen you anything but cautious. How come you’re still in this? The job is tipped to the Federal law, why aren’t we all the hell out of here?’
Parker told him, ‘About this job, this island thing, from a law standpoint they don’t give a damn. It’s not their jurisdiction, not their fight. That island is Cuban territory, so it’s up to the Cuban cops to get after us, and right now the Cuban cops and American cops don’t get along too good. About anything else, anything they might have on me or you from the past, they aren’t interested because it isn’t their department.’
Grofield said, ‘They can send an interoffice memo.’
Parker nodded. ‘I know that. That’s why we say we’ll play along but when the job is done we find some other piece of coast to land at.’
Grofield said, ‘They’ve got helicopters, they’ve got a whole goddam Navy, not to mention the Coast Guard and the Air Force. Why should they let us go there and come back without them watching?’
Parker said, ‘No reason. They’ll be tailing us the best they can.’
‘It’ll be a pretty good best.’
‘Not good enough. It’ll be at night, and the island will be going up in flames, and there’ll be thirty boats heading away from there at once, maybe more, all Baron’s customers getting the hell out. The Federals know we mean to knock over that island, but they don’t know we mean to knock it all the way out, and that’s our edge.’
‘I like wide edges,’ Grofield said. ‘That one looks narrow to me.’
‘If you’re in,’ Parker told him, ‘we’ll talk about it. If you’re out, what difference does it make?’
Grofield frowned, thinking about it. He said, ‘Salsa, what about you? You still in this?’
Salsa said, ‘I think about it. What do they have now, so far? My name. My fingerprints, I suppose, from something in the motel. But they don’t have me, and they won’t come to get me till after this job. So what do I care? Police have had my name, my fingerprints, a hell of a long time. They’ll be looking for me after this job, but once more what do I care, they’ve been looking for me already half a dozen years.’
Grofield said, ‘They’ve been tapping our phones. That’s the only way they could have known I’d be trying to get in touch with Heenan. They heard me talk to Wymerpaugh, heard him say Heenan. They checked Heenan fast, found him in stir already, put a band on his leg and sent him to us.’
Parker said, ‘We’ve got to find safe phones, call back everybody we called before, tell them what’s up so they can protect themselves.’
Ross said, ‘What about this bird Heenan?’
‘I already called Wymerpaugh,’ Parker said. ‘He’ll take care of that.’
Grofield said, ‘If we can widen that edge, make it surer we’ll get out from under any watch they’ll have on us, then I’m still in.’
Salsa said, ‘One thing we could do.’ When they all looked at him, he said, ‘Every night we lose our shadows. Right after dark every night. We get new places to stay at night, and we don’t come back where they can pick us up again until the morning.’
Grofield said, ‘What good does that do?’
‘We do it five, maybe six nights,’ Salsa told him. ‘The fifth night, the sixth night, we go out to the island. Every night they have to guess we are going to the island, and they watch the island. Night after night, the fifth night, maybe the sixth night, they’re getting a little careless. Could be we get there and start the fuss before they even know it, catch them by surprise. They don’t know when we got there, how we got there, so they don’t know when or how we’ll leave.’
‘Easier than that,’ Parker said. ‘You and Grofield go out there every night. On the job, you’ll be going out in Baron’s boat anyway, so you do it every night. I disappear. They know the job’s still on because you two are around, but they can’t find me. Every night for a week you two go out to the island, eat a meal, lose a little dough we’ll get from the Outfit, come back. Then one night Ross and I go out and we do the job. They don’t know how we got there, they never even see Ross, and we’re away free and clear.’
Ross said, ‘I don’t want them seeing me at the end of it all, going back to the mainland.’
Parker told him, ‘They can see you and not connect you with us. We can work that out.’
‘How?’
Grofield said, ‘What if we hire some people, a few boys and girls to be like a party? Ross takes them out to the island, they keep out of the way while we’re working, and then they stand around on deck while Ross takes us all back to the mainland. We three stay down below.’
Ross nodded, saying, ‘That could work. You’d all have to be careful you weren’t seen coming to the boat, that’s all.’
‘We don’t have to hire anybody,’ Parker said. ‘There’ll be more people than boats out there. We just move some of the extra down to our boat, people who didn’t come in boats of their own.’
‘And where do we hit land?’ Ross asked. ‘Not back to Galveston.’
‘No city at all,’ Parker told him. ‘Just a beach, someplace like that. You and I, we pick the place beforehand, put a car there to be ready for us.’
Grofield said, ‘And our passengers?’
‘What about them?’
Grofield shrugged. ‘What do we do with them, once we land and it isn’t Galveston?’
‘We leave them,’ Parker said. ‘We get in the car and go. What’s the problem?’
‘Just asking,’ said Grofield.
Salsa said, ‘We still do it, then. The same as before, the same as we worked out, but with these extras.’
Parker said, ‘There’s no reason to walk out on it.’
‘Good luck to us,’ said Grofield. ‘Bonne chance to us. Parker, you get very funny jobs. Copper Canyon was only slightly crazy compared to this. This time, the law knows the job is going to be pulled, knows who’s going to do it and how, and doesn’t care. It’s like walking into a bank and the guard at the door hands you a piece of paper and on it is the combination to the vault.’
Ross got to his feet. ‘If we’re done
‘
They were done. Parker said to him, ‘I’ll be in touch with you tomorrow, after I shake my tail.’
‘Good. I’d like to leave first, boys, if it’s all right.’
Grofield said, ‘Sure. We’ll give you five minutes.’
After Ross left, Salsa said, ‘How many days?’
‘Eight. We’ll hit at ten forty-five the eighth night.’ Parker got to his feet. ‘Wait a second.’ He went back to the bedroom, where Crystal was waiting for them to be finished, and said, ‘Come in here a minute.’