The Man With the Getaway Face (2 page)

"Aw, now, Parker--"

"I need cash," Parker said. "I'm in the job, on one condition."

"Name it."

"We throw that plan away and start from scratch. She gave us the set-up, and it's a good one. Bracketing the wagon with trucks is good, too. From there on, we got to work something out from the beginning."

Skimm twitched all over trying not to show his relief. He'd never worked an armoured car before, and he hadn't been sure of himself. He'd probably talked himself into a bind with the woman Alma, loud-talking about what an artist he was so he couldn't admit to her he didn't know whether her ideas were any good or not. He'd wanted Parker because he wanted somebody else to take over the operation.

Parker lit a new cigarette. "We'll do it with three men, not five. The pie's too small for five. You and Handy and me, and we split it three ways even. You and Alma can share your third between you any way you want."

"What about her ten per cent?"

"Give it to her out of your third. What the hell, she's travelling with you."

"Jesus, I don't know, Parker. I'd have to check with Alma on that."

"You two figured to take a third anyway, didn't you? And leave the other two-thirds for a four-man split. So what's the difference? You get the same dough as before, but with a cleaner, safer job."

"I guess so," Skimm said doubtfully. "I'd have to check with Alma."

Skimm worried it over, staring anxiously at the empty pint. Finally, he said, "Okay, Parker. Three ways, even."

"All right. Let me see that map." Parker came over and took it from the bed. "Newark," he said. "There's a bar named the Green Rose. It's on Division Street. I'll meet you there next Monday night, ten o'clock."

"Okay, sure." Skimm got up from the bed, his lips twitching again. Parker knew he was anxious to go buy another pint. "Okay, Parker, I'm glad to have you in, I really am. I'll send word to Lew and Little Bob to forget it."

"Good."

"What you going to do now?"

'See about bankrolling. I know a couple of people in Baltimore. I'll figure three grand to cover it."

"Okay, fine. Listen, you want Handy with me? At the bar I mean."

"Sure."

"I'm glad to have you in, Parker."

"The Green Rose," Parker reminded him. "Next Monday, ten o'clock."

Ahead of him, a weaving drunk fumbled with his car keys, trying to get into a car with Ohio plates. The car was a Ford, cream-coloured, two years old. Except for Parker and the drunk the block was empty and deserted.

Parker came along, arms swinging loose at his sides, and when he was alongside the drunk he turned and chopped him in the kidney. That made it impossible for the drunk to cry out. Parker turned him and clipped him, and caught the car keys as they fell from the drunk's hand. The drunk hit the pavement, and Parker unlocked the car door, slid behind the wheel, and drove away.

He took the bridge back across the river to Cincinnati and parked near the railroad depot. He went into the depot and got the suitcase and typewriter case from the locker where he'd stashed them. Then he went back to the car and drove north through town and out the other side and headed northeast on 22 towards Pittsburgh. It was now three o'clock Thursday morning. He had till Monday night to get to New Jersey and look the situation over for himself. If the set-up looked as promising as Skimm had made it sound, fine. Otherwise, Skimm would have a long wait at the Green Rose.

Parker covered the three hundred miles between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh in under seven hours, crossing into Pennsylvania at Weirton a little after nine. He circled Pittsburgh, not wanting to go through town, and when he got back to 22 on the other side it was after ten. He slowed down, then, looking for a motel.

When he found one he stopped. He slept most of the day, getting up at quarter to seven. He took a shower and shaved and dressed, and then opened the typewriter case on the bed. He counted out three thousand dollars, then closed the typewriter case again. He needed money badly, so he'd decided to bankroll the job himself. So far as Skimm was concerned, the money was coming from the contacts in Baltimore.

Parker stowed the three thousand in his suitcase, then carried the typewriter case down the row of doors to the motel office. This was a secondary route now that the Pennsylvania Turnpike was in existence, and the motel was seedy and run-down. The interior walls needed a new coat of paint, and half the neon sign out by the road Wasn't working.

The man who ran the motel was short, fat, and balding. His eyes shone behind glasses with plastic frames patched by friction tape. He sat at the counter in the motel office, dressed in a rumpled suit and a frayed white shirt and a wrinkled tie. He had sullen lines around his mouth, and he was surly whenever his customers spoke to him.

He was alone at the desk when Parker came in, staring glumly across the counter through the plate-glass window at the road. A semi passed, headed east, and then the road was empty again.

Parker put the typewriter case up on the counter and said, "Want to make half a G?"

The owner looked at him. "Why don't you go to hell?"

Parker lit a cigarette and dropped the match on the counter, still burning. The owner made a startled sound and reached out, slapping the match. Parker said, "One of these days, somebody's going to break your head."

"You get the hell out of here!" the owner said angrily. "Who do you think you are?"

"Five hundred," Parker said. "You could get the sign fixed."

The owner got off his stool, looking back at the phone on the wall. Then he looked at Parker again. "You mean it?"

Parker waited, smoking.

The owner considered, gnawing on the inside of his cheek. He stood next to his stool, one hand flat palm down on the counter. His fingernails were ragged and dirty. He thought about it, gnawing his cheek, and then he shook his head. "You're talking about something illegal," he said. "I don't want no part of it."

Parker opened the typewriter case. "See? Five grand. And it isn't hot money. I want to stash it some place where I know it's safe. If I ask you to hold it for me and you look in it and see the dough you might be tempted. So I pay you five hundred. You've made a nice piece of change, and you don't get tempted."

"Five thousand." He said it with a kind of heavy contempt. "What would I do with five thousand? Where would I go? What would it get me? I'd need a lot more than that. I'm stuck in this rat-trap for the rest of my life."

"You want the five hundred?"

"If a state trooper comes in looking for that money, I'll hand it right over. I don't go to jail for no five hundred dollars. Or any five thousand, either."

"I told you, it isn't hot."

The owner looked at the money. "For how long?" he asked.

Parker shrugged. "Maybe a week, maybe a year."

"What if it gets stolen off me?"

Parker smiled thinly, and shook his head. "I wouldn't believe it," he said.

"I don't know." The man looked at the money doubtfully. "Why don't you put it in a bank?"

"I don't like banks."

The owner sighed and nodded. "All right," he said. "I'll get the sign fixed."

Parker reached into the typewriter case and counted five hundred dollars on to the counter. Then he closed and locked the typewriter case and slid it across to the owner. "I'll stop back for it sometime," he said.

Then he went back to the room and picked up the suitcase. He stashed it in the Ford and left the motel, heading east.

It was after midnight when he reached New Jersey. He stayed north of Philadelphia and crossed the Delaware River from Easton to Phillipsburg, still on 22. He stayed with 22 all the way to Newark. When he reached Newark he drove around the side streets for a while, and made two stops.

The first time, he took a screwdriver and removed the Jersey plates from a five-year-old Dodge. The second time, he took a razor blade from his shaving kit, and walked three blocks until he found an unlocked parked car. The street was deserted, so he slid behind the wheel and spent three minutes with the razor blade carefully removing the state inspection sticker from the windshield. It tore in a couple of places, but not badly. He went back to the Ford, found route 9, and drove out of Newark.

About twenty miles south he passed the Shore Points Diner, all lit up, with three trucks and a station wagon parked at the sides. He continued south, nearly to Freehold, and when the highway narrowed to two lanes pulled off on to the shoulder. He removed the Ohio plates and put the Jersey plates on and stowed the Ohio plates under the mat in the trunk. He smeared red Jersey mud on the bumpers and licence plates, so the numbers could still be read, but only with difficulty, and then turned around and drove north again, stopping at a motel in Linden. He borrowed some mucilage from the woman who ran the motel, attached the inspection sticker to the windshield of the Ford, and went to bed.

One was soft-plump with frilly blonde hair and big blue eyes, the helpless magnolia-blossom type that works out best in the south and fails almost completely on the Jersey flats. Another was thin and stringy, with thin and stringy grey hair and a thin and stringy mouth; she surely had a school-age daughter or two at home, and her husband surely deserted her nine or ten years ago. The third was the German barmaid type, with sullen eyes and fat arms and a habit of throwing plates on to tables. The last was the horsy clumsy type, a young girl who couldn't stop thinking about sex; she got the orders wrong from all the male customers, and spent most of her nights knees-up on the back seats of Plymouths.

Parker studied them one by one, trying to decide. He crossed off the horsy nymphomaniac right away; when the armoured car guards came in here for coffee and danish, that one would spend too much time thinking about their sex organs to wonder about the money they were guarding. The magnolia blossom might yearn for the goodies that money could bring, but if she were Alma she wouldn't offer Skimm any complicated plans for hitting the armoured car – that type let the man do the thinking. The thin and stringy one had more than likely been married to a drifter who looked like Skimm, and she wouldn't trust him anyway since he was a man. And that left the German barmaid.

So that was Alma. She passed him, white waitress skirt rustling and nylons scraping together at the thighs, and went on down behind the counter to draw three cups of coffee. He watched her, frowning, not liking what he saw.

She was in her mid-thirties, and her waitress-short hair, a mousy brown in colour, was crimped all around in a frizzy permanent. Her eyes were sullen and angry, glaring out at a world that had never given her her due. She was heavily built, with broad hips and full bosom and thick legs, all of it solid and hard. She had a double chin and a pulpy nose and a surprisingly good mouth, but the mouth was obscured by the hardness of the rest of her.

He looked at her, and he didn't like what he saw. There is no honour among thieves, perhaps, but there has to be trust among thieves when they're working together or they'll be too busy watching each other to watch what they're doing. And Parker didn't trust this Alma at all.

He watched her a while, seeing nothing to modify his opinion, then paid for his coffee and went out to the Ford. There was a Chevvy wagon parked in the spot where the armoured car always stopped. Parker looked up and down the highway, wandered once around the parking lot, then climbed into the Ford and backed it out of its slot. He turned the wheel and drove around behind the diner, and saw the double dirt track angle off away from the parking lot through stubby undergrowth and occasional trees. He turned the Ford that way and followed the tracks up a gentle slope and down the other side. The road was in better condition than he'd expected. A car could make time on that road, and this would be important.

It was less than a mile north to the cross road, extravagantly called the Amboy Turnpike. Parker turned left and travelled a little more than five miles to Old Bridge. He didn't know where the deserted farmhouse was supposed to be, so he turned around and drove back north on the Amboy Turnpike again. This time he by-passed the road from the diner and kept on northward. Another mile brought him back to route 9, about half a mile north of the diner.

Less than five miles later, he left 9 on a long loop up to 440.

Eastward on 440, it was three miles to Staten Island, via the Outerbridge Crossing. Parker stopped shy of the bridge, and pulled over against the curb. He smoked a Lucky as he watched the cars pass him and belt across the bridge. On the other side there was a toll-booth construction across the road, built in California Mission style. Fourteen miles from there was the Staten Island Ferry, either to Manhattan or Brooklyn.

After a while he finished the cigarette, threw it out the window, and turned the car around. He went back to 9, back to the Amboy Turnpike, back to Old Bridge. He parked outside a bar and pulled the New Jersey roadmap out of the glove compartment.

He studied it for a while, but there was no faster way to do it. In any kind of smash and grab, the object is to cross a state line as quickly as possible. The state where the crime took place is alerted first, with state police crawling over all the roads; it usually takes a while to get a neighbouring state on its toes. If the states get along as badly as New Jersey and New York, it takes even longer.

He folded the map again, stowed it back in the glove compartment, and locked up the car. He went into the bar, drank draft beer for two hours, and then looked up at the revolving Budweiser clock. "For God's sake," he said, "I've got to get to Brooklyn. What's the quickest way from here?"

"For Brooklyn?" The bartender thought it over. "You go out of here and take this street here straight out, to the left. That'll take you to route 9, and you take a left there till you see the sign for Outerbridge Crossing. That'll take you to Staten Island, and then you cross the Island and take the ferry."

"What if I take the Holland tunnel?"

"That's the long way around for Brooklyn, mister. That'll lead you into Manhattan."

"Then that's the fastest way, huh? Go by Staten Island?"

"If you're going to Brooklyn."

"Thanks," said Parker. He left the bar and drove back to Newark.