“What about bankrolling?” Handy asked.
“I got it,” Parker said. “Three grand.” He pulled a long white envelope from his jacket pocket. “I brought five C with me,” he said, “in case there was any need for it.”
Handy nodded. “You going to equip us?”
“Yes.”
“Then I don’t need any.”
Alma was staring at the envelope. “Skimm could use some money,” she said.
“This isn’t for personal expenses. This is bankrolling. That means to buy what we need for the operation.”
Skimm said, in a small voice, “I don’t need any.”
Parker put the envelope back in his pocket. Alma watched it disappear, a vertical anger line between her brows. Parker asked, “Is there anything else?”
Alma blinked, and said, “When do we do it? Next Monday?”
“Dry run next Monday. The week after that, maybe, if it looks right. Or the week after that. Whenever it looks right.”
“I don’t want too much delay,” Alma said.
Parker got to his feet. “We do the job when we know it’ll come off right. That’s why we don’t go to jail.” He turned to Handy. “I’ll give you a lift.”
Handy stood up. “Fine.”
Parker turned back to Skimm. “You got a phone?”
“Yeah. Clover 5-7598.”
“I’ll give you a call.”
“All right.” Skimm looked at Parker for just a second, and then his eyes slid away. He still looked worried.
Parker drained the beer can and tossed it into the chair he’d just left. “Nice to meet you, Alma.”
She struggled, and said, “Nice to meet you, too.”
Parker and Handy walked through the house to the kitchen and out the back door. They got into the Ford and drove out to the street, and Handy said, “I’ve got a room in Newark.”
“Right,” Parker said. He headed back toward Springfield Avenue.
Handy poked at his teeth with a match. After a while, he said, “That’s garbage, that stuff.”
“About the two cars?”
“Yeah.”
“You know why I went along.”
“You’ve got her figured.”
Parker nodded. “I wonder where Skimm is.”
“I’ve always trusted that little bastard,” said Handy. “We worked together a couple times. Once in Florida, once in Oklahoma.”
“I never work in Florida,” said Parker. “I play there.”
“You got a good system.” He poked at his teeth some more. Then he said, “I’d like to know about Skimm, though.”
“I don’t think he’s in it. She’s got him tight, but not that tight. She figures to cross him too, and take the whole pie for herself.”
“That poor bastard.”
“You want to wise him?”
Handy considered, the match working in his mouth. “I don’t know,” he said. “He’ll be in the car with her.”
“He wouldn’t believe you.” Parker shrugged. “You fall in love with a woman, you’ve got a blind spot.”
Handy glanced at him, and away. “I suppose.” They rode a while longer and then he said, “You think she’ll bump him?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe she’ll flub it. Then Skimm’s got the boodle.”
“He’ll split.” Parker shrugged. “Skimm’s getting old. Old and worried. I don’t think she’ll flub it.”
“That poor bastard.”
“He’ll be better off,” Parker said. “Hooked the way he is.”
“I suppose so.”
They rode a while longer, and then Handy said, “I wish it was simple, Parker. I wish to Christ it was simple. Can you remember the last time a job was simple?”
“A long time ago.”
“It sounds like a good setup.” Handy reached for his cigarettes. “The way you talked about it, it sounds fine. But there’s this Alma.” He lit the new cigarette, lipping it. “There’s always an Alma. Every damn time. Why can’t we put together a job without an Alma in it?”
“I don’t know,” Parker said. He was thinking of a guy named Mal, the reason he’d had to change his face.
Handy sat for a while, thinking “This is the last one for me.”
“Uh huh,” said Parker. There was an Alma in every job, an Alma or a Mal or whatever the name was. And there was a Handy in every job, too. There was always one that was ready to quit; this was the last job and he was going to take the dough from this one and buy a chicken farm or something and settle down. There was a Handy in every job, and he always showed up for a job again a year or two later.
Thinking about it, it surprised him that there were always the same people in every job. There was always one that had to be watched, like Alma. There was always one who was quitting after this grab, and this time it was Handy. And there was always one who had probably a hundred thousand dollars to his name, buried in fields and forests here and there across the country in tin cans and metal boxes, and this one was probably Skimm. Skimm always looked and acted like a bum, so he was probably the kind that buried it, buried it all.
Parker had known others like that, there was one in almost every operation. They took their share and peeled off of it two or three thousand, just enough to carry them for a while, and then they went off by themselves somewhere and buried the rest of it. They figured to dig it up again some day, but they never did. The day never got rainy enough and that was why bulldozer operators working on new housing developments every once in a while turned up a metal box with thirty or forty thousand dollars in it.
After a while, Handy said, “You turn right the next corner.”
They turned right, and the car behind them turned right, too.
Parker watched it in the rearview mirror and said, “Son of a bitch.”
It didn’t make any sense, and that bothered him.
The next street was one way the wrong way, but the one after that Parker made a left. So did the car behind him. He went two blocks and made a right and then another right and then a left. The car stayed with him. He drove along until he saw a “Dead End Street” sign and turned into it. He slowed down to almost a crawl, going around the corner, and stayed slow like that, so the car behind him came around the corner and was all of a sudden a lot closer.
It was a short street, with a railroad embankment crossing it at the end. The street was a kind of valley, with the houses on high land on either side, stone or concrete steps leading up from the sidewalk to the house level.
Parker turned into a driveway on the right, going very slowly, the Ford straining against going up the steep slope of the driveway so slowly. The other car went on by, down toward the embankment. Parker pushed the clutch in suddenly, and the car rolled back down the embankment and out across the street. It was a narrow street; with the parked cars, the Ford blocked it completely.
“Back me,” Parker said.
He left the motor running, and pulled the emergency brake on. Then he got out of the Ford and walked down to the end of the street, where the other car was stopped facing the embankment. It was a black Lincoln. Looking through the rear window as he walked forward, Parker could see the driver alone in the car. He came around the lefthand side, and opened the door.
Stubbs was wearing his chauffeur’s costume, complete with hat, and he was holding a .45. He pointed it at Parker, and said, “Hold it right there!”