“Five thousand.” He said it with a kind of heavy contempt. “What would I do with five thousand? Where would I go? What would it get me? I’d need a lot more than that. I’m stuck in this rattrap for the rest of my life.”
“You want the five hundred?”
“If a state trooper comes in looking for that money, I’ll hand it right over. I don’t go to jail for no five hundred dollars. Or any five thousand, either.”
“I told you, it isn’t hot.”
The owner looked at the money. “For how long?” he asked.
Parker shrugged. “Maybe a week, maybe a year.”
“What if it gets stolen off me?”
Parker smiled thinly, and shook his head. “I wouldn’t believe it,” he said.
“I don’t know.” The man looked at the money doubtfully. “Why don’t you put it in a bank?”
“I don’t like banks.”
The owner sighed and nodded. “All right,” he said. “I’ll get the sign fixed.”
Parker reached into the typewriter case and counted five hundred dollars onto the counter. Then he closed and locked the typewriter case and slid it across to the owner. “I’ll stop back for it sometime,” he said.
Then he went back to the room and picked up the suitcase. He stashed it in the Ford and left the motel, heading east.
It was after midnight when he reached New Jersey. He stayed north of Philadelphia and crossed the Delaware River from Easton to Phillipsburg, still on 22. He stayed with 22 all the way to Newark. When he reached Newark, he drove around the sidestreets for a while, and made two stops.
The first time, he took a screwdriver and removed the Jersey plates from a five-year-old Dodge. The second time, he took a razor blade from his shaving kit, and walked three blocks until he found an unlocked parked car. The street was deserted, so he slid behind the wheel and spent three minutes with the razor blade carefully removing the state inspection sticker from the windshield. It tore in a couple of places, but not badly. He went back to the Ford, found route 9, and drove south out of Newark.
About twenty miles south, he passed the Shore Points Diner, all lit up, with three trucks and a station wagon parked at the sides. He continued south, nearly to Freehold, and when the highway narrowed to two lanes he pulled off onto the shoulder. He removed the Ohio plates and put the Jersey plates on and stowed the Ohio plates under the mat in the trunk. He smeared red Jersey mud on the bumpers and license plates, so the numbers could still be read but only with difficulty, and then turned around and drove north again, stopping at a motel in Linden. He borrowed some mucilage from the woman who ran the motel, attached the inspection sticker to the windshield of the Ford and went to bed.
5
Sitting at the counter over a cup of coffee, Parker tried to figure out which waitress was Alma. Since it was Saturday, just after noon, the place was nearly full, and the four waitresses were kept constantly on the move. Parker watched them, one at a time, trying to decide.
One was soft-plump with frilly blonde hair and big blue eyes, the helpless magnolia-blossom type that works out best in the south and fails almost completely on the Jersey flats. Another was thin and stringy, with thin and stringy gray hair and a thin and stringy mouth; she surely had a school-age daughter or two at home, and her husband surely deserted her nine or ten years ago. The third was the German barmaid type, with sullen eyes and fat arms and a habit of throwing plates onto tables. The last was the horsy clumsy type, a young girl who couldn’t stop thinking about sex; she got the orders wrong from all the male customers, and spent most of her nights knees-up on the back seats of Plymouths.
Parker studied them one by one, trying to decide. He crossed off the horsy nymphomaniac right away; when the armored car guards came in here for coffee and danish, that one would spend too much time thinking about their sex organs to wonder about the money they were guarding. The magnolia blossom might yearn for the goodies that money could bring, but if she were Alma she wouldn’t offer Skimm any complicated plans for hitting the armored car — that type let the man do the thinking. The thin and stringy one had more than likely been married to a drifter who looked like Skimm, and she wouldn’t trust him anyway since he was a man. And that left the German barmaid.
So that was Alma. She passed him, white waitress skirt rustling and nylons scraping together at the thighs, and went on down behind the counter to draw three cups of coffee. He watched her, frowning, not liking what he saw.
She was in her mid-thirties, and her waitress-short hair, a mousy brown in color, was crimped all around in a frizzy permanent. Her eyes were sullen and angry, glaring out at a world that had never given her her due. She was heavily built, with broad hips and full bosom and thick legs, all of it solid and hard. She had a double chin and a pulpy nose and a surprisingly good mouth, but the mouth was obscured by the hardness of the rest of her.
He looked at her, and he didn’t like what he saw. There is no honor among thieves, perhaps, but there has to be trust among thieves when they’re working together or they’ll be too busy watching each other to watch what they’re doing. And Parker didn’t trust this Alma at all.
He watched her a while, seeing nothing to modify his opinion, then paid for his coffee and went out to the Ford. There was a Chevy wagon parked in the spot where the armored car always stopped. Parker looked up and down the highway, wandered once around the parking lot, then climbed into the Ford and backed it out of its slot. He turned the wheel and drove around behind the diner, and saw the double dirt track angle off away from the parking lot through stubby undergrowth and occasional trees. He turned the Ford that way and followed the tracks up a gentle slope and down the other side. The road was in better condition than he’d expected. A car could make time on that road, and this would be important.
It was less than a mile north to the cross road, extravagantly called the Amboy Turnpike. Parker turned left and traveled a little more than five miles to Old Bridge. He didn’t know where the deserted farmhouse was supposed to be, so he turned around and drove back north on the Amboy Turnpike again. This time he bypassed the road from the diner and kept on northward. Another mile brought him back to route 9, about half a mile north of the diner.
Less than five miles later, he left 9 on a long loop up to 440. Eastward on 440, it was three miles to Staten Island, via the Outerbridge Crossing. Parker stopped shy of the bridge, and pulled over against the curb. He smoked a Lucky as he watched the cars pass him and belt across the bridge. On the other side there was a toll booth construction across the road, built in California Mission style. Fourteen miles from there was the Staten Island Ferry, either to Manhattan or Brooklyn.
After a while he finished the cigarette, threw it out the window and turned the car around. He went back to 9, back to the Amboy Turnpike, back to Old Bridge. He parked outside a bar and pulled the New Jersey roadmap out of the glove compartment.
He studied it for a while, but there was no faster way to do it. In any kind of smash and grab, the object is to cross a state line as quickly as possible. The state where the crime took place is alerted first, with state police crawling over all the roads; it usually takes a while to get a neighboring state on its toes. If the states get along as badly as New Jersey and New York, it takes even longer.
He folded the map again, stowed it back in the glove compartment, and locked up the car. He went into the bar, drank draft beer for two hours and then looked up at the revolving Budweiser clock. “For God’s sake,” he said, “I’ve got to get to Brooklyn. What’s the quickest way from here?”