finally got it all the way open to where it would catch. Then he shoved the satchel out and climbed out after it.
It was a mess. The siren was close now, and screaming closer. There was no other traffic, no car to commandeer. Parker stood in the snow beside the Ford, its wheels now turning the way the armored car’s had done, and looked around, and the only thing he-saw was the main entrance to the amusement park, on an angle across the way. High metal gates were shut across there, and ticket booths and drawings on walls could be vaguely seen beyond them. Above the gates tall free-standing letters said FUN ISLAND.
What about this side? The amusement park’s parking lot, that was all, with the Ford now sprawled against its fence. Down a little way, just about opposite the Fun Island entrance, was the parking-lot entrance, flanked by a one-story small clapboard building that probably didn’t contain much more than the parking lot office and a couple of rest rooms.
And the other side of the main road? Nothing but that blank gray fence, no way into the ball park along this road at all.
The only possibility was Fun Island. Parker grabbed up the satchel and ran through the ankle-deep snow and across the road and up to the gates. There were faint tire tracks in the snow, probably meaning a watchman who made occasional rounds, but there was no car here now, neither inside nor outside the gates. Parker looked back and saw he was leaving tracks of his own, but that couldn’t be helped. The first thing to do was go to ground, get out of sight. Then he could see what possibilities were left.
The gates were eight feet high. He tossed the satchel over and climbed over after it, dropping on all fours on the cement inside. This area was roofed, and free of snow.
The siren screamed by, down at the corner. Going to the armored car first, and not to the wrecked Ford. That was good, it gave him another couple of minutes. He straightened, reached for the satchel, and happened to glance across the way.
There were two cars there, parked next to each other beside the small building at the parking-lot entrance. They were on the opposite side from where he’d been, and must have been there all along. One of the cars was a black Lincoln, as deeply polished and gleaming as a new shoe. The other one was a police prowl car.
Standing in front of the two cars were four men, two uniformed policemen and two bulky men in hats and dark overcoats. They were just standing there, looking over in this direction at Parker. One of the policemen had a long white envelope in his hand, as though he’d just gotten it and had forgotten he was holding it.
Parker was the first to break the tableau. He grabbed the satchel, turned, jumped over the turnstiles, and ran off into Fun Island.
Two
TWO WEEKS ago Parker had come out to look at the operation and see if it was feasible. The man who was selling it to him was named Dent, and a long time ago he’d been in this kind of work himself. But he was an old man now, with blue-white parchment skin, and long since inactive. Partly inactive; he and his wife traveled around the country in a blue Ford pulling a trailer, what was now called a mobile home, and they stopped here and there at trailer camps around the country, and Dent kept his eyes open. His body had aged but his mind was as good as ever, and from time to time he saw jobs that were there to be done, things he would have done himself in the old days. And now he called this man or that man, younger than himself, and told them the job, and if they liked it they paid him for it. A kind of finder’s fee.
Dent had met Parker at the airport, with his blue Ford but without his wife or his trailer. “Good to see you,” he said, in his uncertain old man’s voice, and they shook hands, and Parker sat be,side him in the Ford while Dent drove. Dent drove carefully, maybe a little too slowly, but mostly well.
And he felt like reminiscing. “What do you hear from Handy McKay?” he said.
“Still retired,” Parker said. He wasn’t good at small talk, but he’d learned over the years that most people needed it, to give them a feeling of assurance about who and where they were. Like a dog circling three times before lying down, people had to talk for a while before saying anything.
“You and Handy sure pulled a lot of jobs together,” Dent said, and grinned out the windshield and shook his head.
“Yeah, I guess we did,” Parker said.
“He’s got a diner now someplace in Maine, don’t he?”
“Presque Isle.”
“Maybe I’ll get up there next summer, drop in. Think he’d like that?”
“Sure,” Parker said.
“It’s a pity about Joe Sheer,” Dent said next, talking about somebody else who’d retired and was now dead.
“Yeah, it is,” Parker said. Dent didn’t know the half of it. Sheer had been the only man who could connect Parker with the name he was using in those days for his legal front, and the manner of Sheer’s death, five years ago, had made it impossible for Parker to use that name any more or collect any of the money he had stashed here and there under that name in resort hotel safes. This was Parker’s eighth job in the five years since that had happened, which was more often than he liked to work, but he was still trying to catch up with himself, still trying to rebuild his reserve funds.
Dent was still talking, still going on with his own thoughts. “It’s a pity about a lot of people,” he was saying, and his grin turned sour as he glanced at Parker. “Be a pity about me pretty soon.”
“Why? You feel sick?”
“No, I feel okay. But I got me a haircut at the barber shop last week, and I looked in the mirror, and I saw the back of my head in the other mirror behind me, and the elevens are up. You know what that means, Parker.”
“It means you’re thin,” Parker said.
“It means you’re finished,” Dent said. He sounded grim, but not as though he was complaining.
Parker said nothing, but glanced at the back of Dent’s neck, and the two tendons were standing out there, just as Dent had said. The elevens are up. When the number eleven shows in the tendons on the back of a man’s neck, he’s finished, everybody knew that. Parker didn’t waste time trying to lie to the old man.
