Except that Stubbs was gone, and the spiel would never be delivered. He didn’t like sloppiness, loose ends that unravelled, complications of things that ought to be simple. Stubbs was a complication in what should have been a simple job, and now he was complicating the complication. So Parker did what he always tried to do — keep it simple, keep close to the plan, don’t let yourself get knocked off balance.
First things first. The boodle had to be unloaded, that came first. The cook in Nebraska would wait two more weeks before blowing the whistle, and it might take Stubbs a while to find the other two men he was looking for. So first things first.
At New Brunswick, he picked up route 1, and that took him southward again. The afternoon sun lowered to his right. At Trenton he switched to 206, and got on the Jersey Turnpike at Mansfield Square. He hadn’t seen a single roadblock, and that made sense. The robbery was more than three hours old when he’d left the farmhouse, and the law would have to figure that the thieves were either out of the area by then or holed up somewhere in it. Parker had used the principle of the delayed getaway before, but never quite this way — getting out of the area fast and%then going back into the area and coming out again.
He took the most direct route south, sometimes on 1 and sometimes on quicker roads. He bypassed Washington the same way as when he’d come north with the truck, and when he passed through Richmond it was ten o’clock at night. He stopped in a motel on the other side of town, and brought both his suitcases into the room, the one with his clothes and the one with the money.
He picked a stack of twenties, all used bills, stuffed fifty of them back into the suitcase with the rest of the money and the other fifty into his wallet. The wallet was so thick then it didn’t want to fold. Then he went to the motel office and got a cardboard box and some string and wrapping paper.
Eleven thousand went into the box, which he then wrapped up and addressed: Charles Willis, c/o Pacifica Beach Hotel, Sausalito, California, Please Hold. Unless the Pacifica Beach had changed hands in the three years since he’d last been there, they would know enough to stick the carton into the hotel safe and forget about it till Parker showed up again.
There was stationery and envelopes in the drawer of the writing desk in the room, and Parker addressed five envelopes to Joe Sheer in Omaha and put ten twenties in each envelope, wrapped in sheets of blank stationery. Joe wasn’t a drop and it wasn’t any kind of a debt, just a friendly gesture.
There was still sixteen thousand in the suitcase. In the old days, before Lynn and the syndicate trouble had loused things up, he’d had small bank accounts here and there across the country. After a job he’d send off a lot of hundred-dollar money orders from different towns, and spread a few thousand of the take that way. Then when he needed money all he had to do was withdraw a little from here and a little from there, and avoid the kind of unexplained large bank transaction that might call attention to itself. But Lynn had closed out all those accounts when she’d thought she’d killed him and had run off with Mal. So now he had to start all over again.
After he was finished distributing the money, he locked up the suitcase and went to bed. He fell asleep right away but within half an hour he was awake again, and he wasn’t sure why. He lay on his side, trying to go back to sleep, and finally he rolled over on to his back and smoked a cigarette and stared at the ceiling, wondering why he couldn’t sleep.
And when he thought about it, it was simple. Another change from the years when he’d had Lynn. During the planning of a job, the build-up and the waiting, he’d never been any good with a woman, not even Lynn. But as soon as the job was done and turned out right he was always as randy as a stallion with the stud fee paid. After the jobs, before this, there’d always been Lynn, and before Lynn there had always been someone. This time there wasn’t anyone at all.
He finished his cigarette, and then he gave up and got out of bed. He dressed in the dark, took all but a hundred dollars from his wallet, and stuffed the other nine hundred under the mattress. Then he went out to the Ford and drove back north to Richmond.
He didn’t know Richmond very well, only having been through the town once or twice before, but finding a woman was never hard in any town big enough. You just go where the neon is mostly red.
Chapter 2
IN THE MORNING he left her and went back to the motel. He picked up his gear and headed south again. He stopped in Petersburg and opened a checking account in the Petersburgh & Central Trust Co., with an initial deposit of four hundred dollars. A bank in Raleigh got three hundred sixty and a bank in Sanford four seventy. After that it was too late in the day, the banks were all closed.
He crossed into South Carolina that night and stopped at a motel just north of Columbia. He locked the money in the trunk of the car, so he could bring the whore from Columbia back to the motel. He sent her to the motel lunch counter alone for breakfast in the morning while he got some more cash from the car. Then he drove her back to town and stopped off to deposit four hundred twenty dollars in a Columbia bank.
Augusta got three fifty, and for the rest of the day the towns were too small to take a chance. He crossed into Florida at nine-thirty and got just south of Callahan before picking his motel for the night. Jacksonville was twenty miles away, so that’s where he went for a whore. She was the same as the Richmond whore and the Columbia whore, disinterested all he hurt her a little. He didn’t get his kicks from hurting whores, it was just the only way he knew to get them interested.
Thursday morning he put four hundred forty dollars into a bank in Jacksonville, and Thursday afternoon he deposited three hundred eighty more in a bank in Daytona Beach.
The stopping at banks and the late starts because of the whores were slowing him down, so he didn’t make Miami Thursday night the way he’d planned. Around midnight he M stopped at Fort Pierce, a hundred and thirty miles north of the city. He slept alone that night, having rid himself of most of the urgency. He could now wait for something decent in Miami, something that wouldn’t have to be slapped before she’d get interested.
A Fort Pierce bank got three hundred ten the next morning, and around noon he stopped at West Palm Beach, off the Sunshine State Parkway, long enough to leave three hundred and seventy more. Then he got back on to the Parkway, with thirteen thousand five hundred still in the suitcase.
He hit Miami in mid-afternoon, got back on to route 1, went south past Coral Gables, and stopped at the Via Paradise Hotel, a huge lumbering white sand castle that looked like a pueblo rebuilt by Frank Lloyd Wright. The doorman who helped him out of the car and the bellboy who ran to get the two suitcases both looked dubious, because he was rumpled and mean-looking from the trip. But both had been working there long enough to know you couldn’t tell a guest by the way he looked when he showed up.
Parker gave the doorman a half and asked him to take care of his car. Then he went inside, following the bellboy. This was a resort hotel, which meant too many bellboys, so they had to work the guests’ luggage in a sort of relay race. Parker was ready with another half dollar when the bellboy abandoned his suitcases at the desk.
Tourists tip quarters and spenders tip dollar bills and people who live in resort hotels as a way of life tip half dollars. Now both the doorman and the bellboy knew that the rumpled clothing and the unprepossessing Ford could be discounted.
The desk clerk caught the tone in the bellboy’s “Thank you, sir,” and came over smiling. “You have a reservation?”
“Yes, I have.” Parker’s voice was softer now, his expression more civil. He wasn’t working now. “The name is Willis. I wasn’t expected till Monday, but there was a change in plans. I hope it isn’t inconvenient?”