He was long and thin and made of gristle, and his stiff dark hair was grey over the ears. He lipped his cigarettes so badly the brown tobacco showed through the paper for half an inch, and he used wooden matches, the little ones, not the big kitchen matches. Whenever he got cigarettes from a machine, he threw the pack of paper matches away. Between cigarettes, he poked at his teeth with the plain end of one of the wooden matches.
“Hello, Handy. Move your knee.”
Handy turned his head slowly and raided an eyebrow at Skimm. Skimm grinned, though otherwise he was acting nervous. “That’s Parker.”
“Son of a bitch,” said Handy thoughtfully. He moved his knee and watched Parker sit down. “Did a good job on you,” he said.
“Yeah.”
Alma said suddenly, “You were in the diner Saturday.” Her voice was harsh, but low.
Parker looked at her. “That’s right.”
Skimm was very nervous. “Parker, this is Alma. Alma, Parker.” He looked at them both as though he wanted to say, “Don’t fight.”
Alma turned to Skimm, “We need more beer. How come he was in the diner Saturday?”
“Looking it over,” said Skimm. “Here comes the bartender now. He had to look the set-up over first, ain’t that right, Parker?”
Parker nodded. Skimm ordered four more bottles of Bud and the bartender went away.
“It’s a good set-up,” Parker said.
“Like I told you,” Skimm answered. He sounded relieved, but still nervous.
“You figure just the four of us, Parker?”
“It’s a small pie, Handy,” Parker replied.
“I want to talk about that,” Alma said. She seemed ready for a fight about anything.
“Not here,” Parker said.
There was a cigarette in the ashtray that had been lipped very badly. Handy picked it up and said, “I haven’t seen you in a while, Parker.”
“Few years,” Parker answered.
“What do you hear from Stanton?”
“He went to jail a couple years ago. Out in Indiana.”
Handy puffed thoughtfully on his cigarette, holding it from force of habit in his cupped fingers so the light wouldn’t show. “How’d it happen?”
“They shot his gas tank as he pulled away from the bank. It didn’t blow, but it drained out before he could make the switch. He tried walking to the other car, and they picked him up.
Three of them, Stanton and Beak Weiss and one other guy.”
Handy shook his head. “Bad.”
“It wouldn’t of happened,” Parker said quietly, “but their driver ditched while they were in the bank. A kid, new at the game.” He glanced at Skimm, and back to Handy. “That held them up, having to start the car.”
“You got to be careful who you work with,” Handy said. He put his cigarette out, bending the lipped end on to the ember, making a small fizzing sound.
The bartender brought the new round and Skimm paid. He was more nervous than ever. They waited while he counted out change and added a bill. The bartender scooped it off the formica and went away, and Skimm said, bright and nervous, “This is a nice place, Parker. You picked a nice place.” Beside him, Alma was glaring, still ready for the fight.
They sat there and drank the beer, and Parker and Handy talked about people they knew. Skimm sat stiff, elbows on the table, not quite bouncing up and down, with a nervous grin on his face. He wanted to talk with them, because he knew most of the same people, but he didn’t want Alma to feel left out, so he didn’t talk, just smiled and grinned and looked nervous.
When they finished the beer, Parker said to Skimm, “You got a place in town?”
“In Irvington. It ain’t far.”
“We’ll go there.”
They went outside to the sidewalk and Parker said, “You got a car?”
Alma answered. “Over there, the green Dodge.”
“I’ll follow you.” Parker turned to Handy. “You got a car?”
“No.”
“Ride along with me.”
They walked down the street. Parker’s car was down at the end of the block, facing the wrong way. They got in, and he made a U-turn and waited till the green Dodge passed him. Alma was driving. They could see her mouth moving, angry talk, and Skimm looking worried. Parker pulled out behind the Dodge and followed it to Springfield Avenue and down Springfield towards Irvington.
When they’d ridden a few blocks, Handy said, “She’s going to try a cross.”…> “I know that.”
Handy nodded. “I figured you did.” He pulled a box of matches out of his pocket, took one of the matches, and poked at his teeth with it. He held the box in his other hand and shook it a little, to make the matches rattle inside. “So then what?”
“We split two ways,” Parker said.
Handy grunted. “What about Skimm?”
“Either she’s talked him over, or she figures to bump him.”
“Why not do it without her?”
“She’s the finger, she could finger us. Besides, we need her in the set-up. She blinds one side during the job.”
Handy nodded, and kept poking at his teeth. “You got the cross figured?”
Parker nodded. “I’ll take you over the route.”
They rode a while longer, and Handy said, “You nervous, Parker?”
“There’s too much to watch. I don’t like this Alma thing. If it gets worse, I pull out.”
“I’ll go with you.”
They followed the green Dodge when it turned off Springfield Avenue. They drove along secondary streets a while. Handy lit a new cigarette, using the match he’d been poking against his teeth. “I been meaning to ask you about something.”
When he didn’t go on. Parker said, “What?”
“I heard you was dead. I heard your wife done it. Then Skimm told me you done your wife in, and the syndicate was after you.”
“Outfit,” said Parker.
“What?”
“They call it the Outfit. I was in an operation that went sour. This guy Mal, you wouldn’t know him, he put Lynn in a squeeze. Either she dropped me or he’d drop her. She did her best, and this guy Mal thought it was good enough. Then he went to New York and used my share to pay off an old debt to the Outfit. They took him on in some kind of job, and when I got on my feet I settled him and got my money back from the Outfit.”
Handy grunted again. It was the way he laughed. “They didn’t like it much, huh?”
“I had to louse up their business day a little bit.”
“What about your wife? Lynn. I heard you settled with her, too.”
Parker shook his head. “I wanted to, but I didn’t. When she found she hadn’t done me, she killed herself.”
Handy grunted. “Saved you the trouble, huh?”
Parker shrugged. He’d wanted to kill her, to even things, but when he’d seen her he’d known he couldn’t. She was the only one he’d ever met that he didn’t feel simply about. With everybody else in the world, the situation was simple. They were in and he worked with them or they were out and he ignored them or they were trouble and he took care of them. But with Lynn he hadn’t been able to work that way.
He’d felt for her what he’d never felt for anybody else or anything else, not even himself, not even money. She had tried her level best to kill him, and even that hadn’t changed anything, the way he felt about her or his helplessness with her. He didn’t want that to happen again, ever, to feel about anybody that way, to let his feelings get stronger than his judgment. Oddly enough, he missed her and wished she were still alive and still with him, even though he knew that sooner or later she would have found herself in the same kind of bind again and done the same thing.
Ahead of him, the green Dodge turned into a driveway next to a small faded clapboard house. This was an old section here; all the houses were small and faded — most of them with sagging porches.