The Score: A Parker Novel (4 page)

F
ire department,” said Parker. “They got to be in touch with other fire departments around the state.”

Edgars frowned around his cigar. “God damn it,” he said. “I forgot about that.”

They were sitting around the dining-room table again, the five of them. Paulus was taking notes. The screen was up, at the far end of the room. The projector stood slightly up-angled on the table like a naval gun, but they weren't using it right now, so the spaceship ceiling light was on.

Wycza said, “That's another man. To sit by the phone in the firehouse. And now we got firemen to keep on ice. Firemen, policemen, gate guards, telephone girls, the whole goddam town.”

Parker nodded. “There's too many angles.”

Paulus looked up from his note-taking. “Why not just take
the payroll? In and out fast. We five here could do it, keep it simple and neat.”

Edgars shook his head. “No good at all,” he said. “Don't you remember that map?” He put his hands down on the tabletop. “Here's your payroll, with a cliff in back, a cliff on the right, a cliff on the left, and the whole city spread out in front. You couldn't get through the city in the first place, and if you did there's still only one road out.”

“Past that goddam state police barracks,” said Wycza.

Edgars said, “That's right. Nobody's ever even tried to steal that payroll, because it just can't be done.”

Parker said, “It's no good trying for any one thing in that town. The payroll or a bank. You've got to hit the whole town, or nothing.”

“What about the fire department?” asked Paulus. “That's an eleventh man.”

Grofield said, “Not necessarily. Give them a diversion.”

Wycza looked at him. “A what?”

“A fire.”

They all looked at him. Grofield grinned and shrugged, then turned to Paulus, sitting next to him on the right. Still grinning, he drove his left fist at Paulus' face. Paulus cried out and threw his hands up. Grofield's left stopped in midair, and his right hand dug painfully into Paulus' ribs. “Feint,” he said. “Feint and attack. Give the boys of the fire brigade a real ripsnorter to think about, in a quiet corner of town where they'll see no evil, hear no evil, get wise to no evil.”

Paulus said, “You keep your hands to yourself, buddy.”
He'd dropped the pencil he was taking notes with, and stooped over to get it.

Grofield grinned at his back. “Just a graphic illustration of the point, dear heart,” he said. “Essence of theater.”

“That's not a bad idea,” said Edgars.

Parker shook his head. “A six-hour fire? They'll be done before we are.”

Wycza said, “We need an eleventh man, that's all.”

“We need one, anyway,” Parker told him. “We need one man loose, to troubleshoot anyplace something unexpected comes up. If we need another one for the fire department, that's twelve.” He turned to Edgars. “Where's the firehouse?”

“Across the street from the police station.”

Paulus said, “So we've
got
to cover them. Twelve men. We're going right back up to twenty-five again.”

Edgars took the cigar out of his mouth and looked insulted. “Why? Twelve men, what's so bad about that? Twelve men to take a whole city.”

“Maybe we're not done yet,” Paulus told him.

“Night people,” said Grofield, “that's what we've got to think about. Who are the night people? Cops, firemen, telephone girls, we've got them. What about milkmen?”

Edgars shook his head. “They're union, they deliver in the daytime.”

“Post office,” said Grofield. “They've got to have somebody around for special-delivery letters. Western Union office. Railroad station. Cabdrivers.”

“You don't have to worry about cabdrivers,” Edgars told him.
“I told you there was a curfew. There's no taxi customers after midnight.”

“What about emergencies?” Grofield asked him. “Ladies having babies, children swallowing pins, men with appendicitis. Ambulances racing back and forth amid the booming safes.”

Parker said, “That's right. Hospital. You got a hospital in this town?”

“No. The fire department has an ambulance, to take any emergency cases to the hospital in Madison, fourteen miles away on the highway.”

Paulus said, “So the fire department man covers the ambulance, too.”

Parker asked Edgars, “You know the train schedules? Anything going in or out between midnight and six in the morning?”

“No. It's just a spur line in. There's one passenger train a day, and two freight trains. The railroad station is closed between eight at night and eight in the morning.”

“Good,” said Paulus. “That takes care of the railroad station.”

“Western Union,” said Grofield. “Post office.”

“The post office closes,” said Edgars. “I'm sure it does. I don't know what they do about special-delivery letters. Maybe they drive them in from Madison.”

“But Western Union?”

“They've got an office on Raymond Avenue. I don't know if it closes nights or not. I should, but I don't.”

“We have to know,” Parker told him. “You got a contact in that town?”

“No.”

“If everything else closes down,” said Paulus, “the Western Union office probably does, too. They wouldn't have much business at night.”

“No business at all,” said Edgars. “Most likely any telegrams that come at night are driven in from the Madison office, the same as special-delivery letters. I can't remember if I've ever seen the Western Union office open at night, but I don't see why it would be.”

“We have to know,” Parker repeated. “If it's open, it's got to be covered, and that means another man.”

“The only way to find out,” Edgars told him, “is to go to Copper Canyon and look for yourself.”

“I know.”

“I'll write it down,” said Paulus.

“More night people,” said Grofield. “Who can think of more night people? You say there's no all-night diner?”

Edgars shook his head. “No. No business stays open at all, because of the curfew.”

“That's a very small-town thing, a curfew,” said Grofield. “Big cities talk about it, but small towns do it.”

Wycza said, “What about a newspaper?”

“A weekly,” Edgars told him. “It comes out on Thursday, for the convenience of the shoppers.”

“No reporters on at night?”

“No. Most of the paper is written by the secretaries of women's organizations.”

They were all silent, then, all trying to think of other people who might be out and around late at night. After a minute, Paulus said, “That's it, then. We need another man, to cover the fire department. And we have to find out about the Western Union office.”

Wycza said, “What about the getaway?”

“I got the two maps like Parker suggested,” Edgars answered. “There's no other way to get out of town except the road, but I think I've found the hideout.”

“I don't like that barracks,” Wycza said.

Grofield said, “An idle thought. What about the mine?”

They looked at him. Edgars said, “What about it?”

“Are there no entrances other than at the back of the canyon? No shafts leading out anywhere else? No emergency exits?”

Edgars shook his head. “I don't think so. All the shafts go straight down in from the canyon. There's no reason for any other way in.”

“Just a thought.” Grofield smiled. “I visualized us trundling away on ore carts with the loot, like the seven dwarfs.”

“We have to go past the barracks,” Parker said. “There's no other choice. We space it so we don't have a convoy go by all at once, and we'll be all right.” He turned to Edgars. “What about the hideout?”

“Let me get the maps.” He stood up. “More beer?”

They all wanted more beer, five went away and came back with a double handful of beer cans. He set them down on the table, and took two maps out of his hip pocket. He spread them out on the table, covering most of the table's surface. One was a state road map, the other a topographical map.

They were all standing now, leaning over the maps. Edgars pointed to the topographical map, saying, “See, there's Copper Canyon. That's a mesa back of it, it gradually levels down again. Out in front, it's lowland for over a hundred miles. Down in here is one of the coal beds, lignite coal. This is just about the edge of the Badlands here. This whole section here is full of lignite coal. Some of it's right out on the surface, burning, been burning for years.”

Parker didn't give a damn about lignite coal burning or not. He said, “The hideout.”

“I'm getting to it. Like I said, this section here is just about the edge of the Badlands, so it's away from the tourist areas and it's away from the mining operations. There was a strip mine working there a few years ago, but they're gone now; they cleaned out what they could get and left. There's an eighty-foot-deep ravine there now, where they scraped the topsoil off and took the coal out. There's nobody there now at all. There's some kind of sulphur by-product oozes out of the ground, pollutes the water, and stinks the place up, so nobody goes near it. But the mining company built a road into it, and their old sheds should still be there, on the lip of the ravine.”

“What kind of road?” Parker asked him.

“Dirt. But passable. They brought trucks in and out.”

“How do we get to it?”

Edgars switched over to the other map. “See, here's 22A here, coming out of Copper Canyon. We pick up the highway here, and turn left. Then there's this smaller road here, goes off to the right. We'd be on the highway maybe three miles. This small road we stay on for five or six miles, and then the mining company road goes off that to the left.”

“This land is all flat here?”

“Its plains land. Rolling land.”

“When we turn off the small road on to the mining company road, can we be seen from the highway?”

“No, not a chance. That's wild country in there, and there's some trees.”

“How many miles in on the mining company road?”

“Maybe seven.”

“And how many miles from Copper Canyon to the highway?”

“Eight.”

Parker ran his finger along the map. “Eight miles to the highway, then three miles to the secondary road, six miles to the mining company road, seven miles in from there. Twenty-four miles.”

“Looks good,” said Paulus.

Grofield said, “How much traffic on that highway early in the morning?”

“Six in the morning?” Edgars shook his head. “None.”

“Good,” said Paulus. “We won't be seen.”

“No good,” Parker told him. “If anybody does see us, we'll
stick out like a sore thumb. Four cars in a row on an empty highway, all turn off together. All it needs is one trooper to see us.”

Wycza said, “What about a truck? A big-ass tractor trailer. We stash it outside of town and switch to it when the job's done.”

“Too much loot to be transferred.”

Grofield said, “We bring the tractor trailer into town with us. Instead of loading two cars along the main drag, we load the tractor trailer. Then we have a car at the plant, the way we figured, and another car parked near the town line for a lookout. We leave that one, and just take the tractor trailer and the other car. They space five minutes apart, and it doesn't look so bad. You see tractor trailers all hours.”

Wycza said, “All right, that's even better.”

“It would work,” said Edgars. “It would sure work all right.”

Parker stood looking at the two maps and thinking it over. Twelve men. In at midnight, out by six in the morning. Everything covered, if they'd thought of everything, and if Edgars had his facts straight.

It was a job. It would work. The thing looked like idiocy at first, but it would work.

He nodded. “All right,” he said. “Who's financing?”

Edgars looked blank. “Financing?”

“This is going to cost,” Parker told him. “Walkie-talkies, the truck, the cars. Transportation out there. Food and water
stashed at the hideout ahead of time. Guns. It'll cost dough to get this thing set up.”

Edgars still looked blank, and now a little worried besides. Paulus explained it to him. “Every job has to be financed,” he said. “Whoever puts up the dough gets it back doubled if the job works out.”

“You mean, one of us?”

Parker shook his head. “No. It's better to get your financing done by somebody outside the operation. Otherwise the man who put the money in tries to run things.”

“This is all new to me,” Edgars told them.

“I'll go over to New York tomorrow,” Grofield said. “I've got a couple contacts over there. How much you figure?”

Parker frowned, thinking it out. “Four thousand,” he said.

Edgars said, “Four
thousand!”

“I told you, it's going to cost. The truck, the cars, the—”

“Why not just steal the truck?”

“You want to leave Copper Canyon in a hot truck on every state trooper's list for a thousand miles around?”

“You mean, you just go to a used-truck dealer and buy a truck?”

“No, not that either. Then you got problems with registration. There's outlets where you can pick up a mace pretty cheap.”

Edgars couldn't seem to get the bewildered look off his face. “A mace? What's a mace?”

“A car with papers that look good and license plates that look good.”

“But they aren't really?”

“They aren't really.”

Edgars sat down, shook his head, and drank some beer. “I didn't know there was this much to it,” he said. “How many people have to know about this deal?”

“Just the ones in on it. Twelve men.”

“But Grofield's going to go talk to somebody about financing, and you're going to buy a stolen truck—”

“The man that finances doesn't know what the job is. Just that there's a job, and it needs so much to get set up, and it should be done by such and such a date.”

“How you going to get a man to put money into a deal without knowing what it is?”

“He relies on the men in the deal. If he knows them, knows they do good work, he takes a chance on them.”

“What about where you buy the truck? You don't tell him anything either?”

“Why should we?”

Edgars shrugged and spread his hands. “All right,” he said. “You people know what you're doing.”

“We rather hope so,” said Grofield. He turned to Parker. “Come along with me tomorrow, okay? I know one guy in particular, he knows you. If he sees you're in he'll cover us with no trouble.”