How could Parker and the others make use of these things? Put a top layer of hymnals over the cash underneath? But at a roadblock, any cop was likely to lift at least one book.
Parker heard movement downstairs, looked over the front railing, and saw the other two starting to rouse. Dalesia looked up, saw him, and said, “Anything interesting up there?”
“I don’t think so.”
Parker went downstairs, and McWhitney said, “After I go out and take a leak, I’ll drive somewhere and find us something to eat. Then we gotta figure out what we’re gonna do around here.”
“How we’re gonna get
McWhitney shook his head. “With the profits? I don’t think so. I’ll be back.”
“I’ll walk you out,” Dalesia said.
They left the building, and Parker went back downstairs, switching on the lights. There were closets and cabinets down here, and a storeroom and a room with the furnace and water heater. Parker searched everywhere and found nothing of use. Anything that could be removed without structural damage had been taken out of here.
He went back upstairs, and Dalesia was in the choir loft. He called down, “You see these boxes?”
“Yeah.”
“Like ours.”
“Doesn’t help.”
“Yeah, I know. Only it’s like a coincidence.”
Except it wasn’t; those were the boxes you got when you needed boxes and when, like a bank or a church, you didn’t get your boxes from your neighborhood liquor store.
Dalesia came downstairs. Inside the chipper manner, he looked worried. “It wasn’t supposed to go like this,” he said.
“I know.”
“We were supposed to get out right away.”
“We couldn’t.”
“But the longer we stick around, the worse it gets. What if it’s a week before they call off the search?” With a gesture at the open, empty church, he said, “We can’t stay
“I know it.”
“We don’t have a base, Parker,” Dalesia said. “We need a base.”
“We need to get
McWhitney brought coffee and pastries and news: “I heard it on the radio in the pickup; they got Jake.”
The three were sitting on pews at the front of the church to eat their breakfasts. Dalesia said, “What do you mean, they got Jake? He’s in the hospital.”
“He went outa there last night,” McWhitney said. “Don’t ask me why. The cops found him this morning, wandering around in his hospital pj’s. They said he was disoriented.”
“Sounds it,” Dalesia said.
“But then,” McWhitney said, “they said he was cooperating.”
“Oh?” Dalesia frowned. “Disoriented
“His sister’s with the cops,” McWhitney said. “She’s the one they quoted on the radio. Her brother’s cooperating.”
Parker said, “
“Sure,” Dalesia said. “Trying to help her brother, soften the blow.”
“Well, what do they know, those two?” McWhitney asked. “They don’t know me at all. They could describe you guys.”
Dalesia said, “Jake could make a little trouble for me. Not for Parker. But I’ll have to move around some.”
Parker said, “They’ll sink the wife.”
“Christ, they will,” Dalesia said. “And the doctor, you think?”
Parker shook his head. “The doctor didn’t do anything. He thought he was gonna do something, but then he didn’t have to. If he just keeps his mouth shut now, he’s fine.”
McWhitney finished his coffee and threw the plastic cup at the wall where the altar used to be. “
Dalesia said, “We’ve got to get out of this part of the country. We’ve just got to.”
“You haven’t been out there,” McWhitney told him. “I was just a few minutes each way, stayed on little nothing roads, I was stopped twice, show ID, search the car, thank you very much. One of the cops, I said I’m headed back to Long Island, he gave me a friendly advice, stay away from the MassPike, it’s a horror scene down there, roadblocks every exit, traffic backed up to Boston.” He laughed, without much humor. “There’s a lot of drivers out there this morning, Nick,” he said, “don’t like us guys at all.”
