Nobody Runs Forever

Parker said, “Nick says you did time.”

“Seven to ten, served three. Well, two years, eleven months, four days.” With the boyish grin that seemed strange on that heavy face, he said, “You know yourself, there’s some things you don’t round off.”

“No.”

“My history is simple,” Beckham said, “but I guess you oughta know it. Into the army at eighteen, they made me an MP, based in Germany for a while, saw how an MP could supplement his income. But I didn’t really like the army, so after a couple close calls—I never did get caught at anything, but I got suspected a lot—after a couple of those, end of my second enlistment, I quit. Seemed to make sense to go into policing, so I did. Not big towns—I don’t want to spend my life doing shootouts with drug dealers—small cities like this. But I think my army years made me a little too rough-and-ready for those civilians, so after a while I didn’t have any more police jobs, and that’s when I went to work doing security for Deer Hill. The president was a hard-drinking old guy named Lefcourt, Harvey Lefcourt, and him and me got along just fine. Harvey’s daughter Elaine was married to a smarmy piece of shit named Jack Langen, and Harvey was bringing him into the business, vice president and all, because on his own Jack Langen would starve to death in a supermarket and take Elaine down with him. So I was in charge of security, I hired and fired the guards, hired the companies that maintained the vaults and the deposit boxes, did all of that, found some ways to dip in here and there, but I’m afraid I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was.”

Beckham grinned and shook his head. He seemed mostly amused at himself, as though he were observing his own raffish kid brother and not himself. He said, “An audit found my footprints, followed them to me. Harvey didn’t want to prosecute, he’d of just let me go without a recommendation, but Jack Langen pressed it all the way. I don’t think he knew I was putting it to his wife, I think it was just the natural evil of a useless piece of shit handed a little authority. So in I went, and two years, eleven months, four days later out I got, and called Elaine, and we went back to seeing each other from time to time while I took a crap assistant manager job at a motel down by the MassPike. Harvey had died while I was inside and pissant Jack Langen was the president now, and when Rutherford Combined come along he was more than happy to sell out to them for lowball dollar and a make-work place on their board. Deer Hill doesn’t even get to keep its name, it just becomes part of the Combined.”

Parker said, “This doesn’t sit well with the wife.”

“With the daughter,” Beckham said. “She’s more Harvey’s daughter than she is Jack Langen’s wife. I think she’d have left him long ago except he had the bank, and the bank, as far as she was concerned, was Harvey. So she stuck around to watch out for the company the way Harvey would, and if he was alive Harvey would rather get swallowed up by some Chink from Hong Kong than the tight-asses of Rutherford Combined, that’s how Elaine sees it, and I think she’s right. So once Deer Hill is gone, she’ll be gone, too. Not with me, she’s got more sense than that, but gone somewhere she can do some good for herself. And for that, she’ll need money. She wouldn’t wind up very far ahead just divorcing Jack Langen, she knows what he’s like, so what the hell. She called me, we did some pillow talk, and the idea was, I put a string together and take Deer Hill’s cash and give her a third. That way, she screws Jack Langen and Rutherford Combined, and she can still divorce the weasel and get on with her life. And two-thirds of Deer Hill’s bank money would be a very comfortable amount for us boys.”

Beckham looked around at them, bright-eyed, pleased with himself. “Well, Mr. Parker,” he said. “What do you think?”

5

I don’t like it,” Parker said.

Surprised, Beckham said, “You don’t? What’s wrong with it?”

“Most things,” Parker told him. “The hinge of the thing is an amateur. Even a calm amateur is usually trouble, and this one is all emotion. It isn’t about money, it’s about revenge and anger and family pride. I can’t use any of those things.”

“No, you’re right,” Beckham said. He had nodded all the way through Parker’s statement, and now he nodded another minute more, as though mulling over in his mind the rightness of what Parker had said. Finished nodding, he said, “It may be I’m kidding myself, I hope not. It may be you can talk me out of a big mistake that’d put me right back inside, where I do not want to be. Because you’re right about the whole thing, Elaine is one pissed-off lady, and if I’m just some pussy-whipped clown she’s using to get revenge on her husband then I oughta be told about it by somebody before I do myself an injury.” He shook his head and turned to Dalesia to say, “The reason I went up last time, I wasn’t careful enough, didn’t take everything into consideration. Am I doing that again? I sure hope not.”

“Well, Jake,” Dalesia said, “so far, it sounds to me as though maybe that’s what’s happening.”

“Shit,” said Beckham. “Mr. Parker, let me try something here. Let me walk you through it the way I see it, how the details go down, and you tell me if there’s any more sense in it once you know what I have in mind. If you still say it’s no good, I’m gonna have to rethink here, and I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t have a plan B.”

Parker said, “How long can we stay in this room?”

“This won’t take long. Honest.”

Parker shrugged. “Go ahead, then.”

“The first thing you have to know,” Beckham told him, “is that Elaine isn’t any part of it. Not what we’re doing. The bank is gonna make this move, close down the Deer Hill office, no sooner than two weeks from now and no later than the first of November, because they don’t want to get all mixed up with weather and skiers. It all depends on weather, and when the armored cars and the private security are available. They won’t know for sure until about five days before they make the move. As soon as Elaine finds out through her husband when that will be, and which car the cash will be in, she’ll get word to me, and that’s the last she has to do with anything. I already know the route, so that’s taken care of. The night comes, we make our move, we disappear.”

“Well, you don’t disappear,” Parker told him. “You’re on parole, aren’t you?”

“And I’m being a very good boy, believe me. And Dr. Madchen is gonna see to it I’m in the hospital that night, I’m gonna come down with something not too serious. He’ll put me in a private room, so I can sneak out of there to do the job and then back, and that’s my alibi.”

Parker and Dalesia looked at each other, expressionless. Then Parker said, “Beckham, what’s this Dr. Madchen to you?”

“There’s a cousin of his,” Beckham said, “got into drugs, wound up in the same can as me. I knew the doctor from before, you know, just as a patient, and he wrote to me, asked me to help with his cousin, he was afraid the cousin wasn’t up to taking care of himself on the inside, and let me tell you, was he ever right. So I did help, and took care of the guy, and now the good doctor feels he owes me one, and this is it.” Beckham grinned again, in that boyish way that seemed so at odds with who he was. “So there you are,” he said. “There’s my alibi. I’m in the hospital when it happens, I couldn’t be involved.”