McWhitney carried Harbin to the hall door, looked out, and left, carrying the body. At twenty after one on a weekday morning, there wasn’t likely to be much traffic out there.
They continued not to play, to discuss how cold the cards were, and to suggest they might all make an early night of it. They hadn’t been together in the room long before Parker had made his discovery, and so hadn’t yet started to talk about anything that the wire shouldn’t know. They were mostly new to one another, and would have had to get acquainted a while before they started to talk for real.
Stratton was back from the other room in five minutes, with one suitcase. He took his former chair and said, “Deal me out.”
The others all made comments about breaking up early, the cards not interesting, try again some other time. Fletcher, who, it turned out, could sound something like Harbin, with that same rasp in his voice, said, “You guys go ahead, I’ll clean up in here.”
“Thanks, Harbin,” Stratton said, and as they left, they all said, “See you, Harbin,” to the transmitter on the cushion.
2
Parker and Dalesia and Fletcher and Mott and Stratton rode the elevator down together. Mott said, “Which of us is in their sights, do you think?”
“I hope not me,” Stratton said. “I took that room. Not as me, but still . . .”
Parker said, “Most likely McWhitney, he brought him.”
“Or maybe,” Fletcher said, “just any target of opportunity. Decorate him like a Christmas tree, send him out to get them somebody else, because they’ve already got him.”
“That sounds right,” Stratton said. “They love to turn people. Tag, you’re it, now you’re on my side, go turn some of your friends.”
“They’re like vampires,” Fletcher said, “making more vampires.”
The lobby door opened and they went out to a big space empty of people except for one green-blazered girl clerk behind the check-in desk. Fletcher and Mott had come together, and went off together. The other three had all arrived alone. “See you,” Stratton said, and left.
Parker was also going to leave, but Nick Dalesia said, “You got a minute?”
Dalesia, a thin man with tense shoulders, was the one who’d invited Parker here, and the only one present he’d known before, and that not very well. “Yes,” Parker said.
“Let’s find a bar.”
At a booth in an underpopulated bar, the few other customers either male-female couples or male singletons, Dalesia said, “This means I’m still out of work.”
“Yes,” Parker said.
“And you, too.”
Parker shrugged.
Dalesia said, “I came here because the only other thing I had for a possible is maybe a little iffy and farther down the line. But now I’m thinking maybe I’ll look into it, and maybe you’d like to check it out, too. It’s good to have somebody with you where there’s a little history.”
“Not much history,” Parker said.
Nick Dalesia was a driver brought into a job Parker was on some years ago, brought in there by a guy named Tom Hurley, who Parker had known better. But Hurley got himself shot in the arm that time, and hadn’t ever gotten over it completely, and had gone away to life in retirement somewhere offshore, maybe the Caribbean. Dalesia had been competent that one time, but Parker hadn’t met up with him again until Dalesia had made the phone call that had brought them both here.
“A little history is enough,” Dalesia said, “if you feel you can trust the guy. This gold thing is dead, I think.” Meaning Stratton’s target, which they hadn’t gotten around to talking about: a shipment of dental gold.
“It’s dead as far as I’m concerned,” Parker said. “What’s this other thing?”
“It’s a bank,” Dalesia said, “in western Massachusetts.”
Parker shook his head. “A small-town bank? There’s not much there.”
“No, what this is,” Dalesia told him, “it’s a transfer of assets. These two local banks merged, or one of them bought the other one, so they’re shutting one of the main offices down, so they’re emptying a vault.”
“Heavy security,” Parker said.
“You’re right.”
Parker frowned toward the bar. “The reason it’s iffy,” he said, “is it comes with somebody inside.”
“Right again.”
“You know,” Parker said, “the amateur on the inside is what usually makes a good thing go bad.”
“What they’re doing,” Dalesia said, “they’re doing an all-night move, four armored vans, state police, private security. Moving everything, the bank’s records, the commercial paper, the cash. What Mrs. Inside gives us is not only what night do they do it, but which van has the cash.”
“Mrs. Inside?”
“The wife of the bank that’s being merged,” Dalesia said. “Don’t ask me what her problem is. The point is, nobody can take down four armored cars in a convoy, and what are the odds of getting the right one? But if you
“And if that happens,” Parker said, “not only do they know there was somebody on the inside, pretty soon they know who.”
