They went out to Philadelphia Road and headed south. Twenty-five minutes later, Parker took the Airport exit from the Baltimore-Washington Expressway, turned off onto Fort Meade Road, and then went on more slowly, having trouble seeing street signs in the dark. Claire did better than Parker had expected, staying a good distance back, making them less of a caravan.
It was quarter to three when he finally stopped the truck in front of a squat white concrete block building bearing the many-colored sign PALETTE AUTO PAINTING. An overhead garage door in the building front immediately opened, and a short round man in a black suit came out, cigar in the middle of his face, waving his arms frantically for Parker to drive on inside. Parker did, and the round man slid the door down again and came trotting over to say, “They’s a station wagon out there.”
“It’s with me,” Parker said. He shut off the engine and climbed out of the cab.
“Well, they ought to turn off their lights,” the round man said.
“Go tell her yourself.” Parker took out the envelope of pictures, saying, “This is what I want it to look like.”
“Not me,” said the round man, waving his hands back and forth. “Not me, I’m not the man for that.” Raising his voice, he shouted past Parker, “Hey, Wemm!”
Parker turned and saw coming toward him a Negro in green coveralls. He had the self-contained movements of a man about to be asked to show how good he is, a man who knows he’s more than good enough. His hair was gray, but he had the face of a young man.
“Show your stuff to Wemm,” the round man said. “He’s the one knows all about this.”
“What do you do?” Parker asked.
“I’m the boss,” the round man said. “Is she gonna leave those lights on out there?”
“I don’t know.” Parker turned his back on the round man and said to Wemm, “You want to see these pictures?”
“They might help,” Wemm said.
Parker handed them over, Wemm skimmed through them briefly, and then shook his head. “Come along,” he said, and started away.
The room they were in was large and open, with a cement floor. Pipes and hoses crisscrossed on the ceiling. Fluorescent lights made the place as bright as day. Over on the right, three late-model automobiles were masked and taped, waiting for the spray.
Wemm led Parker to a small glass-windowed cubicle on the left. Inside were a cluttered desk and two chairs. Wemm motioned to Parker to take one chair, while he took the one at the desk. He spread the photographs out on the clutter atop the desk and bent the fluorescent desk lamp closer to them. After squinting at the pictures a minute, he said to Parker, “How’s this color reproduction? Any good?”
“How do I know?”
“You might look. Is this the same color as the real truck or isn’t it?”
Parker leaned over and studied the nearest photo, then said, “I think it’s brighter. Not much.”
Wemm nodded. “I thought so,” he said. “It’s what you might call institutional orange. All the same people that put that puke green in all the hallways, when it comes time to paint a truck, this is the color they use.”
“You know the color, then.”
“It ain’t gonna be easy to match.”
“Why not? If you already know it—”
“This is a private place. What we do is cars, private passenger cars.” He tapped one of the photos. “This isn’t what you could call a popular color for private passenger cars.”
Parker sat back. “Can’t you do it?”
“Sure I can do it.”
“Then what’s all the talk?”
Wemm spread his hands. “I want you to understand the problems we got to face here.”
“Why?”
“What’s that?”
“Why do I have to understand the problems you got to face here?”
“Well—” Wemm blinked, and looked at the photos, and shook his head. “Be damned if I know,” he said. He gave Parker a small wondering smile. “Just shooting off my mouth, I guess.”
Parker said, “When will it be done?”
“You want to take it out tomorrow night, don’t you?”
“If I can.”
“You can.”
“I’ll need it covered with a tarp or something.”
Wemm nodded. “The body. That’s no problem. And over the name on the doors, we put a piece of cardboard with masking tape, put some other company name on it. You got any favorites?”
“No.”
“Then that’s it. I’ll need to keep the pictures.”
“Naturally.” Parker got to his feet. “I’ll want it delivered.”
“You talk to the boss about that,” Wemm said. “That, and money.”
“All right.”
Parker found the boss out by the overhead door. “I’ll want it delivered tomorrow night,” he said..
“Delivered? What’s the matter with your chauffeur out there?”
“She won’t be here.”
“Delivered.” He took the cigar out of his mouth, shook his head. “That’s extra.”
“Five,” Parker said.
“I don’t know—”
“Don’t push so hard,” Parker told him. “You’ll get another customer some day.”
The round man shrugged with sudden irritation and said, “The hell with it. It’s all in the same price. Don’t worry about it.”
“Good.” Parker handed over a hundred and fifty of Billy’s dollars, and the round man said, “You want a receipt?”
“No,” Parker said.
“Of course not,” said the round man. “That was a dumb question, you know that?”
“Yes,” Parker said.
He gave the round man the name of the motel in Towson, and then went out to the car. Claire had already moved over, and when Parker slid in she said, “How’d it go?”
“Good. They’ll deliver it tomorrow night.”
“You don’t want me to drive you down?”
“You can go back now, everything’s set. And I’ll take longer in the truck than you in this.”
She said, “You want me to go back now?”
“Why not?”
“Tonight, you mean?”
He looked at her, and finally understood what she was driving at. His mood of exhilaration from this afternoon had worn off by now, he was back to concentrating on the job, but she had no way to know that.
There were times when you had to push yourself a little to keep somebody else in the string content, and this was one of the times. In a way Lempke had been right, after all; Claire was valuable, if only to keep Billy in line.
Parker squeezed her knee. “Not tonight,” he said. “Tomorrow morning’s soon enough, isn’t it?”
The look she gave him was knowing. “Tomorrow morning’s fine,” she said, a touch of irony in her voice.
Six
THE TRUCK was delivered at one-thirty in the morning, driven by a skinny young kid in T-shirt and glasses. He was full of repressed excitement, a kid in the middle of a game of cops and robbers.
What Parker could see of the paint job looked good, but he couldn’t see much. The entire body was covered with a dirty gray tarp, tied down along the sides. The pieces of cardboard on the doors said, in black letters on white, THE WEMM CORPORATION.
Parker looked the truck over by the light from the motel sign, and told the kid, “It’s okay.”
“Mister Reejus said you’d give me cabfare.”
“He did, huh.” Parker gave the kid a five, and the kid took off at a half-trot, looking over his shoulder, on his way fast to tell somebody about his adventure. Parker just hoped he’d been brought in after the truck was already masked.
His bag was packed, the room all paid for. He preferred to do as much of his driving as possible at night, since the plates on the truck were probably no good, and in any case he had no papers for it. They were D.C. plates; he could replace them with Indiana plates the day of the job.
Parker took Interstate 83 up to Harrisburg, then headed west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The truck was a little better than he’d expected. Above fifty-five it had a bad front-end shimmy, but right on fifty-five it seemed ready to roll forever. He made good time, all things considered, and didn’t mind the cars that streamed by him on his left.