“She didn’t find any walkie-talkies, any wallets.”
“I’m not a complete idiot,” McWhitney said. “You want to find those things, you have to walk into Long Island Sound.”
Dalesia said, “Parker, go back to your question. What does she want?”
McWhitney said, “She wants to know what happened to her guy.”
“I don’t think so,” Parker said. “She knows Keenan is dead. She’s not gonna be into revenge, or justice, or take care of your partner, or any of that. She’s a pro. She’s here because she wants something else.”
Dalesia said, “Maybe she just wants to know what we’re all up to.”
McWhitney, growling again, said, “We all know what she wants. It’s the same as ever. She wants Harbin.”
They studied that. “The reward,” Dalesia said. “It’s still the reward. We’re busy over here, and she’s still working her agenda.”
McWhitney said, “She thinks what’s going on, we’re protecting Harbin. We think Harbin is in the past, she thinks he’s in the present.”
Parker walked to the door, opened it, looked out, saw running lights now on the trucks streaming along the highway. He shut the door and said, “We can’t have her here when we’re working.”
Dalesia looked at McWhitney, who nodded, then shrugged. “I always think,” he said, “it’s a waste to kill a good-looking woman.” He shrugged again. “But we live in a wasteful world.”
9
The phone rang. Parker opened his eyes, and the LED readout on the bedside clock radio read 2:17. The red numbers also gave enough light so he could see the phone. He unhooked it, put it between pillow and ear while he looked around to be sure nothing had changed since he’d switched the lights out, and said, “Yes.”
It was McWhitney’s voice: “Your Sandra’s here. She drew down on me. She wants a meet, the four of us. She says, don’t bring a gun.”
“Of course I’ll bring a gun.”
Sitting up, Parker kicked the crumpled newspapers away from the bed while he listened to McWhitney breathe and then say, “Hold on.”
There were faint voices away from the phone in McWhitney’s room, and then the clatter of the receiver being put down; and then a female voice, hoarse and impatient, said, “If you carry it in your hand, I’ll kill you. If you carry it in your pocket, what’s the point?”
“I don’t leave home without it.”
“If you make me nervous,” she said, “it won’t be good.”
He had nothing to say to that, and after a bit the receiver clattered again and then McWhitney said, “I gotta call Nick.”
“I’ll be there.”
Parker walked down the line of green motel doors. Off to the right, the running lights on the highway had thinned out but still drew a yellow-white-red scarf across the throat of the night.
Ahead of him, a door opened. He paused, but it was Dalesia coming out. He saw Parker, grinned, and said, “The lady’s taking things into her own hands.”
“I don’t need this,” Parker said. Twenty-four hours from now, they would be waiting for the armored cars. No, Parker would be at the stop sign, waiting for Elaine Langen and the number of the truck they’d want.
“Nobody needs it,” Dalesia said, as they walked down the line together. “But it’s what we got.”
Dalesia knocked, and the door was opened by McWhitney. He was barefoot, wearing dark trousers with a white T-shirt hanging loose, and his expression was disgusted. “Do you believe this shit?”
They entered, and the hard-faced blonde was seated at the round table, which she’d pulled back into the front corner opposite the door, leaving the hanging swag light to dangle over air. She wore black leather slacks and boots, a bright green high-neck sweater, and a black leather jacket with exaggerated shoulders. Her left hand was on the table, palm down. Her right hand held a pistol, loosely, pointed no-where, its butt on the back of her left hand.
“Come in, gentlemen,” she said. “I like you all over there.”
Meaning the diagonally far corner of the room, straight back from the door. They went over and stood in a row, leaning their backs against the rear wall of the room, the bathroom door immediately to their left, and the bed beyond it.
McWhitney said, “Okay, we’re all here. Just say it.”
“I’ve got a mortgage,” she said, “on a nice little house on the Cape. I’m helping to keep my friend’s daughter in private school. I made good money with Roy Keenan, all in all, sometimes fat, sometimes thin, but now that’s done.”
Dalesia said, “You need another Roy Keenan.”
“As a matter of fact,” she said, “I was always better than he was, and we both knew it. The way the business works, it was better for him to be in front. I’ll find another front man, that isn’t the problem. The problem is, the current job. I need it for my cash flow, before I can move on to something else, but there’s been too much time wasted on it.”
McWhitney, surly and rebellious, said, “What the fuck do we care about
“You made my problems,” she said. “That asshole Harbin should have been in our kill jar weeks ago. There’s no way for him to go that far out of sight and still be breathing. It’s been obvious for a long time that one of you put him down and knows where the remains are, and that’s all I need. I don’t need to point any fingers, I just need to get this job off the books.”
