Fox put one bullet in the cylinder of the .32 and another in the cylinder of the .38, and Parker tried them both. When he had finished, his ears were ringing. The .32 was in somewhat ragged shape — he nicked concrete at the edge of the hole when he fired it — but usable, and the other two were fine. He nodded. “How much?”
Fox pointed at the three guns lying on the crate. “Seventy-five and seventy-five and sixty. Two hundred and ten. And including the ammunition.”
“The .32 isn’t very good. It isn’t worth sixty.”
Fox shrugged. “Fifty, then. Two hundred even.”
“All right.”
Parker counted out the money, and Fox stowed it away in an old wallet. Then he carefully packed the three guns and the ammunition in a small wooden box with excelsior padding around them, and tacked the lid on tight. “You should clean them when you get home.”
“I will.”
They went back upstairs, and Parker went out the front door and got into the Ford. He drove to Irvington and left the guns with Skimm to clean and hide. Then he went down to the farmhouse to walk Stubbs.
6
They got the other truck that Thursday, from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Handy went for it, because that was the day Parker fixed up a license for himself and a registration. It was a printer he went to, and once again the contact was through Lawson. It took three hours, and then Parker went to the body shop to wait for Handy and the truck.
The body shop was in Dover, and the owner, a sullen man in an undershirt, had heard from Lawson that Parker would be coming. Parker introduced himself as Flynn, and then waited around for Handy.
Handy got there at seven-thirty that evening. The truck was six years old. The cab was a wide International Harvester, painted green, and the trailer another Fruehauf. This one had cost more — fifteen hundred — and was a much better truck. It had been stripped of heater and mudguards and floor mats and all but the legal minimum of lights, but at least it was in sound running condition and the trailer was in good shape. The original plates had been Pennsylvania and as hot as it was possible to get, so Handy had had to pay a hundred extra for safe plates from Indiana.
Parker studied the trailer, and it would work out fine. There were two rear doors plus one door on each side at the midpoint. The wooden inner shell was scuffed up but intact. Parker told the body shop owner what he wanted — the rear doors and the right side door sealed permanently, and a lock on the outside of the left side door which would be guaranteed to keep people in. He and Handy went off to a diner and had coffee and then to a movie.
When they came back, just before midnight, the job was done. The owner wanted a hundred, but they gave him eighty. The bankroll was getting low, less than five hundred left.
They drove to Newark, and Handy left the truck in a street already lined with trucks. Then he and Parker drove to where they’d parked the other truck yesterday, and Handy drove it eight blocks away and parked it again. It wasn’t good to leave a vehicle in one spot more than twenty-four hours. After they moved the second truck, they drove down to the Shore Points Diner.
It was now nearly four o’clock, Friday morning. The diner was closed and there was practically no traffic on route 9. Handy kept the watch in his hand, looking at it by the dash light, and Parker gunned out of the lot. He had to go south first, make a U-turn, and then go north again. There were only two traffic lights along this stretch of 9, and they slowed when they reached the first one, to be sure they caught it red.
When it changed, Parker jumped to fifty and they flew past the second one. He had to slow to make the turn to 440, where there was a looping circle that went away to the right after 9 passed under 440. The turnoff came up a rise and stopped at 440, and you could make either a right or a left. There was a stop sign, and they would have to make a left.
They stopped, though there was no traffic, and Handy counted slowly to ten, looking at the watch in his hand. Then Parker made the left and they coasted at forty-five, the speed limit here, to the next light. They reached it just before it turned green, and had to come to a complete stop.
“Fifteen next time,” Handy said.
“Right.”
Next, there came a circle, and then another light, which turned red when they were about fifty yards away.
“This one’s going to be a bitch,” Handy said.
“I’ll be going through the other one faster,” Parker said. “I’ll hit it a little heavier coming around the circle. Thirty instead of twenty-five.”
“It’ll be daytime. There’ll be traffic.”
“It’s a bitch doing it this way,” Parker said.
Ordinarily, they would have made this dry run on a Monday morning at eleven o’clock, but either Alma or Skimm would have seen them at it and wondered what they were doing.
When the light changed, Parker drove on down to the bridge but didn’t bother to go across. There were no more lights from here to the turnoff. He circled around and went back to the diner, once again making sure he was stopped by the first light. When it changed to green, he pulled away and was making fifty by the time they passed the diner.
“Seventeen seconds,” Handy said.
“All right.”
They went around again, waited for the light to turn red before coming back down. Parker tore into the gravel parking lot, squealing the brakes at the last second, and swung around in the position they’d be in during the job.
“Thirteen,” Handy said. “Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen.”
Parker made the trip again, out of the diner, south to the U-turn, then north. They went through the first light and Handy looked back at it, counting. It changed ten seconds after they went by. They went through the middle of the second light, made the turn to 440, and Handy counted to ten again, because the timing was different now. They went through the first light just after it went green, and the second one just before it went red.
“That’s all right, now,” Parker said.
“If the lights work the same in the daytime.”
“They might change them at rush hour. Not at eleven in the morning.”
“Still—”
“I’ll try it once more tomorrow morning, just to be sure.”
Parker drove Handy back to his place in Newark, then turned around and went back to his motel. He wrote a note asking to be called at ten o’clock, and dropped it through the mail slot in the office door. It seemed as if he was barely asleep when the woman who ran the motel was knocking at the door.
He got up and showered and ate breakfast and drove to the diner. Skimm was stationed in the furniture store parking lot and he went over and talked to him for a few minutes, leaving the Ford parked beside the diner. Then he went back over to the Ford, backing out of the parking space so he was in the position he’d be in during the job.
He paused to light a cigarette, watching the road. Traffic went by, headed south, and as the leader went by, Parker pulled out of the lot and fell in behind him. He went over the course again, and the lights worked the same in the daytime.
Satisfied, he went to the farmhouse and let Stubbs out in the air for two hours. Stubbs was surly and nervous. He’d refused to talk for the last two days, and he still refused to talk. The tic in his left cheek that had started yesterday was worse.
7
Saturday, Handy went shopping around in different stores and pieced together a dark blue guard’s uniform. That after-noon, to keep Skimm and Alma happy, they all got together and made a timed dry run of the getaway.