Parker went over to the teletype and looked at what was coming in. A dealer in Virginia wanted a left front door for a ‘61 Pontiac Bonneville convertible. As Parker watched, he got one from Wilmington, Delaware.
The door opened and Buster came in, grinning, saying, “Artie tells me you’re a redneck bastard.”
“How are you, Buster?”
“Just lovely. That your woman out there?”
“Yes,” Parker said, because it was easiest to say that.
“Good gash,” Buster said, and went over to the teletype for a quick look. He was a big man, with a weight-lifter’s body, all shoulder and chest, narrow in the waist. His trousers were stiff with grease, and the sport shirt he wore was no particular color. His hair was pale blond, crewcut, and beneath the grime on his face and arms could be seen a deep tan. He shook his head at the teletype and said, “Nobody wants Plymouth parts. I’m up to the ass in Plymouth parts.” Turning away, he said, “Used to be Ford, now it’s Plymouth. You wouldn’t be after Plymouth parts, would you?”
Parker took out an envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it over. Inside were the color Polaroid shots Lempke had taken of the electric company work truck.
Buster looked at the photos and began to smile. “You’re up to something,” he said. He grinned at Parker. “Who you got driving?”
“Maybe Mike Carlow.”
“He’s okay,” Buster said grudgingly. “Not as good as I was.” When Parker didn’t say anything to that, Buster said, “Am I right, or am I right?”
Buster had bought this yard out of proceeds from half a dozen jobs he’d driven for. He’d been a conscientious driver, imaginative, unshakable in the clutch, but maybe a little too cowboy sometimes. Parker said, “You want to drive for us?”
“Little Bus ” He laughed and shook his head. “I’m where I like to be, pal.”
“What can you do me on the truck?”
“International Harvester. Cab’s no problem. Have to dummy up something in back. When do you need it?”
“Now.”
Buster grinned. “It’s always now.” He sat down at the desk, studied the photos some more. “Phone company,” he said. “Any gas and electric company. Some television repair guys. Maybe— Hold on a second.”
Parker waited while Buster made two phone calls. After the second, Buster said, “Screwed-up fender. Let’s see what we can do.” He went over to the teletype.
When Buster was done typing, Parker said, “You can do it?”
“Sure. Perfect match.”
“Paint job?”
Buster shook his head. “That’s not me. You get that done someplace else.”
“Where?”
“You don’t know anybody around here?”
“This is your town, not mine.”
Buster scratched his nose. “I don’t like to be connected,” he said. “You know how it is.”
“I can’t hit somebody cold. I need you to clear me.”
“Yeah, I know.” Buster lit a cigarette, made a face like it tasted bad, and said, “Okay. I’ll call the guy. But you make delivery.”
“Sure.”
“You’re going to have no papers on this beast,” Buster said. “She’s a scrapped truck, she don’t exist anymore.”
“Naturally.”
“Okay. You want anything special under the hood?”
“No.”
“The one I got, we’ll have to put a new engine in anyway. A different engine, I mean. It can be whatever you want.”
“I don’t figure to race any cops out of town.”
“Whatever you say,” Buster pulled a memo pad close. “About money,” he said.
“Do it in round numbers.”
“The roundest,” Buster said. “One G.”
“Delivery when?”
“Tonight. Two o’clock. It’ll be outside the gate, across the road there, by them trees. Key under the seat.”
“Good.” Parker took out another envelope, peeled ten hundreds of Billy’s money off the stack, dropped it on the desk. He said, “Where’s the painter?”
“Lemme check with him first.”
Parker waited through another phone call, and then Buster said, “Okay, it’s fine. You bring it straight there. He’ll want a C and a half.”
“That’s a hell of a lot for a paint job.”
Buster shrugged. “You know how it is,” he said. “It’s the lettering on the doors. And the risk. And the silence. You want to argue with him, fine by me.”
“He’s pushing the price a little.”
“You’re probably right. But he’s the only guy I know that I’d trust.”
“Then it’s good. Where do I find him?”
“He’s out by the airport. Take the Harbor Tunnel. You know Baltimore?”
“Not that good.”
Buster opened a desk drawer, took out a greasy city map, opened it onto his desk, and showed Parker how to get from there to the paint shop. As he was finishing up, the kid came in, carrying a rusty bumper guard. Pointedly ignoring Parker, he said to Buster, “This is the best I could find.”
“You can throw that in the bay,” Buster told him. “I told you clean.”
“This is the best I could find.”
Buster shrugged. Then, grinning, he said, “How come I come in here and the radio’s off? Don’t you like that music no more?”
Parker didn’t like pointless needling. While the kid was trying to find an answer, Parker went over and turned the radio on. Buster looked at him in amused surprise, and the kid just looked baffled.
Outside, the Dobermans watched Parker get into the car, waiting for somebody to tell them to stop him.
The car was full of smoke. Parker rolled a window down and started the engine and drove out of the yard.
Claire said, “Any luck?”
Parker looked at her. “You want to know, or you making small talk?”
“I’m in this, too,” she said. “You don’t have to push me out all the time.”
“We’ve got a truck,” he said. “We come back tonight and take it to where they paint it.”
“How are you going to take it back to Indianapolis? Won’t it look funny, an Indianapolis Power and Light Company truck on the Pennsylvania Turnpike?”
“We dummy it up with a tarp,” he said, and all at once he saw how to do the Diablo Tours wall.
She looked at him and said, “What’s the matter?”
“Matter? Why?”
“You’re smiling,” she said.
He put his hand on her knee. “Because things are good,” he said.
He drove one-handed a while, his other hand still resting on her knee.
Claire said, “Where are we going now?”
“Back to the room.”
Five
AT NIGHT the yard was floodlit, looking like some metallic moonscape where nothing had ever lived. The truck was in total darkness under the trees on the other side of the road.
When Parker stopped the wagon, lights off, near the truck, the two Dobermans came loping out of the yard wreckage to the fence. They did no barking, made no sound at all, but just kept moving restlessly back and forth the other side of the fence, trying to find a way through.
“Those dogs,” Claire said, shivering.
Parker touched her shoulder. “They’re all right. They mind their business, we mind ours.”
“All right.” She smiled nervously and squeezed his hand. “Let’s hurry out of here.”
“Right.”
Parker got out of the car and walked over to the truck. When he opened the door no interior light went on. He fumbled around on the dash, found the light switch, pulled it halfway on, and used the dashlight to help him look for the key. Once he got it, he slid behind the wheel and started the engine. The clutch seemed loose to him, and he was already anticipating bad brakes, but it didn’t matter. The truck had to be a prop for a while, and then it had to carry the goods away, that’s all anybody expected from it. That, and to get back to Indianapolis in the first place.
Claire had already made her U-turn, her headlights flashing over the restless pacing dogs behind the fence, so Parker shifted into first and started along the dirt road, the truck taking the bumps much harder than the wagon had. In the mirror mounted outside the door Parker could see the wagon’s lights jouncing along in his wake.