Of course, he couldn’t be sure yet, and anyway this was doing it backwards. If Devers couldn’t cover his embezzlements there wouldn’t be a job anyway. And even if he could, there was still the base to be looked at. The whole thing might be impossible because of some element long before the getaway or hideout.
On the way back, Fusco said, “What if he can’t do it?”
“Like you said before,” Parker told him. “If Devers isn’t solid, the job’s off.”
Fusco frowned. Parker could feel him pushing for Devers to come up with something.
6
Ellen opened the door again, gave them a sour look. “You two.” She stepped out of the way.
Parker and Fusco went inside. As Ellen was shutting the door, Parker said to her, “What’s the problem?”
Not looking at him, turning away, being busy about something else, she said, “Problem? No problem at all.” She walked away across the living room.
Devers, sitting at the kitchen table with the remains of a pancake breakfast in front of him, waved his fork and called, “Be right with you.”
Parker ignored him, saying after Ellen, “Is it just Devers? What’s on your mind?”
She kept moving away, and Fusco, in the manner of somebody embarrassed and trying to avoid a scene, said quickly, “Parker, let it go.”
“No.” Parker pointed at Ellen and said, “Stop right there. I want to know what’s stuck in your craw.”
Ellen turned around, at the far end of the room, moved her chin in a contemptuous nod toward Fusco, and said, “Let him tell you.” But she didn’t leave the room.
Parker looked at Fusco, who shrugged and said, “She’s just a little bugged, Parker, that’s all. It don’t mean a thing, it’s just the way she gets.”
“About the job?”
Fusco looked scared. “Parker, I swear to God she’s no problem. She always takes the dim view, that’s all it is.”
“She was this way before?”
“That’s why she left me,” Fusco said, “the time I took the fall. Because that time she was right.”
Ellen’s lip curled, but she didn’t say anything.
Devers had walked in from the kitchen, carrying a coffee cup in his hand. “And now she’s sore,” he said, “because this time her ex-husband’s got me involved in it. Gonna get me in trouble.” Standing there, he drank coffee, with Ellen glaring at him.
Parker said, “What will she do about it?”
Ellen answered him. “Nothing,” she said, biting the word off. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“That’s straight, Parker,” Fusco said.
Parker looked at them, Fusco scared, Devers confident, Ellen angry. He considered, and finally shrugged, letting it go. For now he’d take their word for it, and just keep his eyes open. Over the years he’d come to accept the fact that the people involved in every heist were never as solid as you wanted them. They always had hang-ups one way or another, always had personal problems or quirks from their private lives that they couldn’t keep from intruding into the job they were supposed to be doing. The only way to handle it was to watch them, know what the problems were, be ready for them to start screwing up. If he sat around and waited for the perfect string, cold and solid and professional, he’d never get anything done.
“All right,” he said. “She’s your woman.”
Grinning, Devers said, “Which of us you talking to?”
Shocked, Fusco said, “Stan!”
Ellen said to Parker, “You finished with me now? Can I get back to what I was doing?”
“I’m finished,” Parker told her. “Thanks.”
She left the room, and Parker turned to Devers. “What about that checking account?”
The way Devers was smiling, he’d thought of something. He said, “You know the song about the little tin box?”
“No. What’s the idea?”
“I didn’t want to put all my cash in the bank,” Devers said. “All I’d do was put in enough money to cover my checks and keep a small steady balance. But most of my money keep in in a box in the closet in the bedroom here.”
Parker said, “Why?”
Devers grinned and shrugged his shoulders, being boyish and innocent. “I don’t know, it’s just the way I’ve always done it. I guess I’m like King Midas or something. I like to have my money where I can look at it. You have to have a checking account these days, you can’t send bills through the mail and money orders are too much trouble, so what the heck I’ve got an account. But the money isn’t real to me if it’s in the bank. I like to be able to open my box and see the money there.”
Fusco was frowning at Devers as though he couldn’t understand what the boy was up to, but Parker could see it. It was the kind of offbeat approach to money a kid might have. If Devers could pull it off.
Parker said, “Let’s see this little tin box.”
Devers held up a hand. “Give me time,” he said. “I’ll have it when it’s needed.”
“You going to go buy a new box?”
“Hell, no. I’m going to have the little old box I’ve carried with me ever since high school, the battered old box that went with me to Texas, to New Mexico, to the Aleutians, and now here. Don’t you worry, Mr Parker, that box is going to look right.”
“Not overdone.”
“You mean, decals from the different places?” Devers laughed. “I can be subtle, Mr Parker,” he said.
Parker said, “How much you got left in this little box?”
Devers frowned. “I’m not sure. Not much, after all the stuff I bought. It depends when we do it. If it’s the next Payroll, that’s next Tuesday—”
“Too soon.”
“Fine. Then I’ll have maybe six, seven hundred.”
You’ve got the math worked out? So they can add up your income and your outgo and it’ll work?”
Oh, sure. I could go up to twelve hundred and still be within the possible.” Devers grinned and said, “But I like to leave a little slack, it adds that touch of credibility.”
“Give me a list of people at these different places,” Parker said, “that saw the box.”
Devers looked startled, but recovered quickly, saying “Nobody. I didn’t let anybody know I had it.”
“Why not?”
“Here and there in the Air Force, Mr Parker, you run into a thief.”
Parker considered, and then nodded. “All right,” he said. “It should cover. If you can run it right.”
“I can run it,” Devers said.
“With a cop leaning on you?”
“Cops have leaned on me before,” Devers said.
“For something this big?”
“No. But I can do it.”
The worst thing about the boy was his confidence. He was smart, he was fast, he was capable, but he knew he was all those things and that could hurt. But he’d been running his dodge at the finance office almost a year without being caught out, so maybe his confidence wouldn’t be a liability. Parker was now willing to take a chance.
He said, “Answer me one question. Straight.”
Devers spread his hands. “If I can.”
“You’ve got a nice thing going at this finance office. It seems safe and sure and profitable. This knockover’s got to be risky. Why not stick with what you’ve got?”
“First,” Devers said, “I’ve only got seven more months of this gravy train. If I re-enlist I’m bound to get transferred out pretty soon, probably overseas again. Besides, I’m not all that happy with Air Force life. So when I get out, where am I? I’ve got a car, some clothes, a few hundred in cash, and a nice way to cut the pot in an Air Force finance office. Big deal. I go to work someplace else, maybe in a bank or something, and it takes me a while to figure an angle. Maybe they’re tougher than the Air Force, in fact they probably are, so maybe I don’t figure an angle at all. The point is, what I’ve got is fine for right now, but what about the future?”