They turned around and he motioned at the suitcase. “Open it.”
They looked at each other and licked their lips. They didn’t know if it was bugged or not. Finally, one of them opened the two catches and lifted the top. There was nothing inside but money.
They sighed with relief, and Parker said, “Fine.4Close it again.” They did so, and walked away down the platform and through the exit and out to the street.
There were three ways away from here. There was the subway. There was the bus that came in at the end of the platform by the turnstiles, free transfer from and to the subway. There was the exit and the walk to the street. They would be ready for him whichever way he went.
He walked down by the Coke machine and set the suitcase down. He transferred the Luger from the lunch bucket to his side pants pocket and the target pistol from the briefcase to under his belt by the right hip pocket. He still had Mr. Carter’s pistol, and this he held in his left hand.
He picked up the suitcase again, walked to the outer end of the platform and down the steps past the sign saying TRANSIT EMPLOYEES ONLY. There was a wooden strip raised over the third rail.
Parker stepped carefully over this and over the track and toward the yards. It was dark out here and no one paid any attention to him.
He moved carefully across the yard, stepping high over each third rail, not wanting even to touch the wooden cover, and finally got past them all to a wide grass-grown gravel driveway. There was more light here, along the driveway, and he walked carefully, keeping to the darkest side. Glenwood Road was ahead, with cars parked along it and the row of houses stretching away down the cross streets. He couldn’t see if there was anyone in the cars.
The driveway went through an opening in the fence around the yard. Parker paused at the fence, watched, listened, then stepped through and turned left, away from Rockaway Parkway and the subway entrance. The suitcase was heavy in his right hand, the pistol comforting in his left, held close against his side.
He crossed the street, because three colored boys were walking in his direction on this side, wearing raincoats and porkpie hats and singing in falsetto. He went on down two blocks and turned right where the project began, and tossed Mr. Carter’s gun into a litter basket. Whoever fished it out in this neighborhood, it would be a long while before it got to the law.
He transferred the suitcase to his left hand, and walked along with his right hand close to the Luger in his pants pocket. A car squealed around the corner behind him, headed his way.
There was a bulldozed field to his right, where the row houses hadn’t been put in yet. He ducked across that, pulling the Luger out of his pocket, and somebody in the car fired too early. He dropped to the ground, and the car raced on, screaming around the far corner and away.
He got to his feet and strode deeper across the field. A high wooden wall separated the field from the backyards of row houses facing on the next street. He crouched down by the wall, the Luger in his hand, and waited.
The same car came around the block again, moving more slowly now, and stopped opposite him. He was in pitch blackness against the wall and couldn’t be seen. After a minute, the back door of the car opened and two men got out. They strolled across the field to where he had dropped, wandered around in a small circle, and strolled back.
They stood by the car, and after a minute two more cars came down the street and parked. Men got out of them, and they had a conference. Then two of the cars took off agaiif, going down to the corner, at Flatlands Avenue, both moving slowly. One turned right, and the other turned left.
The third car stayed where it was. Thr南 men got out of it and strolled across the street to the project and disappeared in the darkness among the buildings. The driver stayed in the car, his cigarette glowing faintly from time to time, and watched the field.
Parker moved along the fence back to Glen wood Road, leaving the suitcase behind. The Luger was in his right hand, the target pistol in his left. He kept his hands close to his body as he moved. When he got to Glenwood Road, he stepped out onto the sidewalk and started to whistle.
He walked along, still whistling, and turned at the corner and walked down the block toward the car. The driver watched him in the rearview mirror, but he wasn’t carrying a suitcase, and he was whistling.
The car window was open. When Parker reached it, he turned and set both gun barrels on the sill, pointing at the driver, and murmured, “One word.”
The driver froze, both hands clenched on the wheel.
Parker said, “Slide over and get out on this side.” He stepped back, and the driver obeyed. “Now walk out across the field there.”
The two of them walked back to where he’d left the suitcase. He reversed the Luger and swung it, and the driver went down.
He left the target pistol with him, picked up the suitcase, and hurried back to the car.
He slid in, started the engine, and roared away. As he was turning the corner, a man came running out from one of the project buildings half a block back.
He parked the car off Flatbush Avenue near Grand Arrny Plaza and took a cab into Manhattan.
Chapter 4
On the bed were sixteen hundred slips of green paper, banded in stacks of fifty. There were twenty stacks marked ten, ten stacks marked fifty, two stacks marked one hundred. The numbers on all the slips of paper added up to forty-five thousand.
Parker sat on the chair beside the bed and looked at the money. The suitcase, empty now, lay on the floor at his feet. He had counted the money and it was all there, and now he sat and looked at it and wondered how he had happened to get it.
But it wasn’t really that hard to figure out. He could follow Branson’s reasoning with no trouble at all. There was this mosquito, this Parker, causing trouble and disruptions. He wants forty-five thousand dollars. All right, give him the forty-five thousand dollars.
Try to get him when the delivery is made, but if you don’t get him the hell with it, he’s got forty-five thousand dollars. So then he won’t cause any more trouble and disruptions. And the organization has all the time and all the facilities to get him later on. He won’t be bothering the organization any more, and the organization can take care of him at its leisure. Forty-five thousand isn’t so much, when you consider the benefits.
So. That was Branson’s side. His own side was simple, too; he had eighteen years of a pattern, and the pattern had been ripped apart. One job, the island job, had gone wrong and ripped the pattern apart. Now they were both dead, Lynn and Mal, the two who had done it to him. And he had made the job right again by getting his share back. He couldn’t go back to the pattern while that one job was still wrong.
Now he could go back. He had money to last him two or three years of the old life, and a plastic surgery. He’d have to go out to Omaha, to Joe Sheer, and find out the name of that doctor that had done the job on him. That was when Joe had retired, three years ago. He’d had his face changed because you never knew when you’d run into somebody who saw your face on a job ten years ago and still remembered.
With a new face, with forty-five thousand dollars, the organization could look forever and never find him. He’d have to be a little more careful than before about the people he worked with on jobs, but that was no problem. He liked to pick and choose his jobs and his partners anyway.
A job had soured and now it was straight again. It was as simple as that.
He roused himself, putting out his cigarette, and picked up the suitcase from the floor. He carefully packed the bundles of money back into it, closed it, slid it under his bed. Then he picked up the phone and asked for American Airlines, and made a reservation on the 3:26 p.m. plane for Omaha.