Stubbs’s voice came through the thick door faintly, “Go to hell.”
Parker took the bar down and went back to the card table, where the automatic lay next to the canned goods. He picked up the automatic and called, “Come on out.”
There was a pause, and the door pushed slightly open. Another pause, and the door jolted back and slammed against the wall and Stubbs came out with a grey chunk of two-by-four lifted over his head.
Parker motioned with the automatic. He watched Stubbs decide whether or not to throw the two-by-four at him, but Stubbs decided against it. When he dropped it, Parker said, “Let’s go out in the air.”
He would rather have just left Stubbs locked away in the fruit cellar for two weeks, but if he did Stubbs might get sick and die. He couldn’t afford yet to have Stubbs die. He had to waste some time now getting Stubbs out in the sunlight.
They went outside and Parker sat down on the ground, his back against the wall of the farmhouse. “Go on, walk around a little,” he said.
Stubbs stood blinking in the light. There was no window in the fruit cellar, and he’d been in pitch-dark. He looked around, blinking in the light. “I got to go.”
“Over there.” Parker pointed with the automatic. “Away from the house, over by that tree there. And cover it up.”
Stubbs stood around, undecided. “I’m out of cigarettes.”
Parker tossed him his pack, and some matches. He had more in the glove compartment of the Ford. Stubbs picked them up from where they’d fallen at his feet, and slowly lit a cigarette. He stuffed the pack and the matches in his pants pocket and looked sullenly at Parker. “You can’t kidnap me like this.”
Parker shrugged. It didn’t need an answer.
Stubbs screwed his face up, the way he did when he was trying to think. He wanted to tell Parker this whole thing was impossible, you just don’t lock a man away in a fruit cellar for two weeks with no electricity and no plumbing. But Parker was doing it, and that didn’t leave Stubbs much to say. After a minute, he turned and trudged over towards the tree.
They stayed outside for half an hour, and then they went back into the basement and Parker let Stubbs make himself some beans and instant coffee at the camp stove. There was bread, too, but no butter, and a can of peaches for dessert. Stubbs thought about tossing a can of beans at Parker’s head, but Parker told him to forget about it, so Stubbs forgot about it.
After he’d cleaned up his dinner utensils, Parker let him go outside again for a while. Then he put him back in the fruit cellar, put the bar across the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he called through the door.
There wasn’t any answer, so Parker shrugged and walked away. It was just about sundown, darker in the cup around the farmhouse than up along the ridge. Parker got into the Ford, started the engine, and drove carefully through the dusk back to the road. He turned right and drove back towards the motel where he was staying, stopping off at a diner for a chicken dinner.
Handy showed up a little after ten in Alma’s green Dodge. Alma didn’t like him using it, but he needed it for the stakeout and after a while she’d given in. He’d spent the day and part of the evening at various spots on route 9 working out the state trooper beats. They talked it over for a while, and then Parker said, “Let Skimm take over Thursday. I want to show you the doublecross.”
Handy nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that.”
Then they went out to a nearby bar and drank some beer. After a while they split, and Parker went back to the motel. He was in bed by one o’clock.
Chapter 2
PARKER slowed as he neared the toll booths, and fumbled in his pocket for change. The toll booth structure was pale stucco with a green California Mission roof. It should have been on a road in Italy or Spain, rather than at the eastern end of the bridge from Perth Amboy to Staten Island.
The fare was fifty cents. Parker handed over two quarters, and went three-quarters of the way around the circle, then straight for about a hundred yards on cracked concrete, and took a right turn. This was 440, headed towards St George, where the ferries docked.
The road was four lanes wide, made of concrete, with a centre mall. But it looked abandoned. Old breaks had been lumpily covered with blacktop, and the more recent breaks had been ignored. Bushes and weeds grew wild on the mall, and the land to either side of the road was scrub.
“This is the way she’ll come,” he said to Handy. “After the job, she’ll take the dirt road back of the diner, just the way she says. But she’ll turn right instead of left, and come up just the way we did, up 9 and over 440 to the Outerbridge Crossing. She can take it easy along here, she’s out of New Jersey.”
Handy twisted around in the seat and looked behind them. “We’re the only ones on the road.”
“This route doesn’t get much play. On a Monday, around noon, we’ll have it all to ourselves.”
“You’re sure this is the way she’ll come?”
“She’s got to. It’s the most direct way.”
“What about those other two roads? Back there by the bridge, at the circle?”
Parker shrugged. “They don’t go anywhere. This is the way to the ferry. There’s what I want, up there.”
He hit the brake, and the Ford slowed. At an angle off to the right was a cross street, or the beginning of a cross street. When this road was built, the curbs were put down with provisions for cross streets in the future, when Staten Island would be as big as Brooklyn.
The curb curved back on either side, and concrete started off to the right, going into the scrub about ten feet and stopping. Beyond was a gravel road for about a hundred feet, and beyond that a dirt road that curved back towards the main road but didn’t come all the way. From 440, though, all you could see was the concrete starting out and then the gravel going off into the bushes.
Parker slowed the car, turned the wheel a little, and stopped just at the edge of the gravel. “Right here,” he said. “The way I told you. We cut her off into this thing, take the dough, and go on to the ferry. Monday, around noon, we’ll have ten or fifteen minutes before another car shows up. Besides, we’re already in New York State.”
They got out of the car. Handy tramped back and forth on the concrete, looking the situation over. He peered down at the gravel part, and stood there a minute, poking at his teeth with a wooden match. Then he shook his head and turned back.
“You know what bothers me?”
“What?”
“Skimm.” Handy left the match in his mouth while he dug out a cigarette, talking around the match. “If he’s on the outside and she figures to cross him, too, okay, then it’ll work out like you say. But if she’s sweet-talked him over, I don’t like it. Skimm’s no dummy. He’ll try to think the way we think, and he’ll come up with the idea they should stay away from Staten Island.”
“Do you think he’s in?”
Handy took time to light the cigarette and throw the match away. “I don’t know. I’ve known Skimm twelve years. I’ve worked with him four, five times. I always figured Skimm was a little guy who didn’t have much brains but you could trust him, m you know what I mean?”
Parker nodded. “You think Alma wants him? After the job, I mean?”
“It doesn’t figure.”
“All she wants,” said Parker, “is the money. Not half of it, all of it. She won’t even try to sweet-talk Skimm.”
“That’s the way it plays,” Handy answered. He looked around, at the empty road, and the gravel road that went nowhere. “We’re taking a big chance on how it plays.”
“She takes it out of Jersey for us, then we take it away from her. If the law stops her, that’s one thing. If it doesn’t, she’ll come this way.”
“It does figure,” said Handy. His cigarette was all wet, where he’d lipped it. He stuck it back in his mouth. “All right, this is the way we do it.”