them.”
“No, that’s true.”
“We’re giving them the choice, that’s all.”
Briggs looked troubled, but then he said, “Let me tell you something I learned about retirement, I mean, besides it’s boring.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s expensive. Where in New England am I meeting you?”
2
Dalesia picked Parker up at Bradley International Airport in his Audi, and they drove north toward Massachusetts. Along the way, Parker said, “Briggs is aboard. He’s got stuff we can use, he’ll drive it up, but he doesn’t want to be in on the job.”
“I was thinking, though,” Dalesia said, “we could use a third man.”
“You say that,” Parker said, “as though you’ve got him.”
“Well, don’t you think we do?”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” Parker said. “Who’ve you got?”
“McWhitney.”
“McWhitney? Where did he come from? The last time I saw him, he was carrying Harbin out on his back.”
“Remember the bounty hunter braced you a little while ago?”
“Keenan or something.”
“He made a mistake with McWhitney,” Dalesia said. “He came on like one of the guys, but he didn’t know anything about anything, so when he told McWhitney
“No, he wouldn’t.”
“He let Keenan know, and then he came looking for me.”
Parker looked at Dalesia’s deadpan profile. “He believed Keenan?”
“He did for a while.” Dalesia grinned, as though there’d never been a real problem. “We worked it out,” he said, “and I asked him aboard. It seemed to follow. If you don’t like the idea, I think we’ll have to sneak up behind him. He’s a jumpy kind of guy.”
“No, McWhitney seemed all right,” Parker said. “We gotta talk a little, though.”
“Yeah, he’ll meet us there.”
“There?”
“Turns out,” Dalesia said, “this is a good time to slip some extra guests into that motel where Jake works, without bothering the official records.”
“I told Briggs we’d put him up there, while the job was going down.”
“We’re all there,” Dalesia said, “you and me and McWhitney. Seems right now there’s an annual slump in their business there.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“The truckers they got all the time, but the civilians taper off around now. The people that did their summer vacation in Maine, the people bringing their kids back to college, that’s all done. Now there’s nothing till next week, when they have what they call the leaf peepers, the people that come out from the cities to watch the leaves turn red. We’re outa here before they show up.”
“Good.”
“I’ve been doing some other stuff, too,” Dalesia said. “I found the intersection where we do it, it’s perfect for us, I’ll show it to you this afternoon. That and the church.”
“The church?”
Dalesia was enjoying his surprise. “Wait for it. We’ll have some lunch with McWhitney, and then I’ll show you around.”
“You’ve been busy,” Parker said.
“Well, we’ve only got four days.”
Since they weren’t actually registered at Jake Beckham’s place, Trails End Motor Inne, they didn’t have lunch there but at a “family” restaurant nearby. McWhitney drove his own car to meet them there, arriving second, and when the hostess walked him toward their table, Parker said, “He looks irritable.”
“He doesn’t know if you’re gonna love him.”
Neither did Parker. He hadn’t picked up much of a sense of the man in that first meeting that Stratton had set up; only McWhitney’s wide-eyed dumb show of innocence when it had turned out that Harbin was wired, and the immediacy of his silent acknowledgment that it was his responsibility to make Harbin disappear. Which he had done, well enough to confound even a professional bounty hunter.
But was this irritable look also an irritable nature, and would it matter? Dalesia had described him as a “little jumpy,” and Parker could well believe it. But, if his jumpiness wouldn’t get in the way, it would be a good thing to have a third in the string, particularly when there were armored car guards to handle, and later, when the faster they switched the cash to their own vehicle the better. And Parker could see where, at a moment when McWhitney had been not only jumpy, but suspicious that Dalesia had ratted him out, it had seemed to Dalesia a good idea to offer him a job.
