“Yes, from New Jersey, but I didn’t know that then, I don’t think it had been reported yet. But since, by that time, I had the feeling there was something wrong with Mrs. Langen, although I didn’t yet know what, when I saw that landscape designer’s car at another time, I decided to take a look at him.”
The other woman chortled over this. “Some landscape designer, eh?” Then, looking at the camera, she said, “This is Detective Reversa’s memory of that landscape designer,” and the mug shot drawing came on again.
They think that’s me, Parker thought, and studied it, as the interviewer’s voice, over the picture, said, “This is almost certainly one of the robbers.”
An 800 number appeared, superimposed over the drawing. “If you see this man, phone this number. Rutherford Combined Savings has posted a one-hundred-thousand-dollar reward for the capture and conviction of this man and any other member of the gang, and the recovery of the nearly two million, two hundred thousand dollars stolen in the robbery.”
Parker looked up and down the counter. Half a dozen other people were gazing at the television set. None of them looked to be ready to go off and make a phone call. It seemed to him, if you told one of those people, “This picture is that guy. See the cheekbones? See the shape of the forehead?” they’d say, “Oh, yeah!” But if it wasn’t pointed out, they’d just go on eating lunch.
The screen showed the two women again. The interviewer said, “Detective Reversa, what was the result of your meeting with this man?”
“I obtained an identification, in the form of a New York State driver’s license, in the name of John B. Allen.” She spelled it.
The interviewer nodded, and produced another smile. “Detective, would you like to meet up with John B. Allen again?”
Reversa laughed. “If I had the appropriate backup.”
“Check,” Parker said.
He paid and started for the door, then stopped. Outside, off to the right, a police car was stopped behind the Dodge. Parker studied the newspapers in the rack beside the entrance, and the police car moved away to the right and stopped again, at the end of the lot, facing the road.
John B. Allen. One computer talks to another, and it doesn’t take long. He’d been moving through the roadblocks just ahead of the news. John B. Allen is wanted for robbery over here. John B. Allen rented a car over there. Let’s find the car, and wait for Allen to come back to it.
That was the only identification he had on him. He had cash, but nothing else. He couldn’t drive the Dodge away from here. He couldn’t walk away from the diner onto a rural road past those cops, because they’d want to have a word with him.
The diner’s parking area was across the front and both sides. The Dodge and the cops were to the right. Parker stepped out the door and turned left, walking as though to his car. When he made it around the corner of the diner and out of sight of the cops waiting for him, he looked ahead and saw that behind the diner was a patch of weedy ground, and then scrub trees like the ones McWhitney had hoped to hide his pickup in among, and then a slope upward into more serious woods, some of them already rich with fall’s yellows and reds.
Casual but steady, Parker walked out away from the parking lot and toward the trees. No one noticed or called to him.
7
It starts with technology, but it still ends with tracker dogs.
At first, Parker climbed up the slope through the thin trunks of the second-growth trees, wanting only to get high enough to see without being seen. He moved left and right across the slope until he found a spot where he could look down and get a clear view of the diner and its parking lot. The Dodge was still there. So was the police car. He leaned against one of the thicker trees to wait and watch.
So the bank said they’d been hit for two million. He knew from experience that that would be a lie. Because of the insurance, the company that got taken down always pumped the loss by between a quarter and a third. The money hidden back in the church would be closer to one million five.
That was less than they’d expected. What would Dr. Madchen have gotten out of it, if things had worked the way they were supposed to work? A third of Jake’s third, less the piece for Briggs. Two hundred thousand at most, probably less. He was better off giving the wife a little injection.
Down below, one of the cops got out of the police car and went into the diner. It had been twenty minutes since Parker had come up here.
What he wanted to do now was wait for them to decide he’d gone away, seen their car, and decided to leave his own. Once they were gone, he could come back down and decide what to do next.
The cop was inside the diner ten minutes, and came out with a paper bag. He got back into his car, but it didn’t move. Which meant they weren’t going away. They were waiting for reinforcements. They were going to start the search from right down there.
Yes. When the police bus and the enclosed police van drove into the parking area a good half hour later, he knew what it meant, and turned away, moving uphill. He didn’t have to stick around long enough to see the hounds come out of that van.
Soon he heard them, though. There was an eager echo in their baying, as though they thought what they did was music.
Parker kept climbing. There was no way to know how high the hill was. He climbed to the north, and eventually the slope would start down the other side. He’d keep ahead of the dogs, and somewhere along the line he’d find a place to hole up. He could keep away from the pursuit until dark, and then he’d decide what to do next.
He kept climbing.
Table of Contents
By Richard Stark
ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
