road. Down below them to their left, through pine trees, was a fast, twisty stream that the road followed.
As they drove, Dalesia said, “Jake’s problem is, he’s still part amateur himself.”
“He is,” Parker said.
“I like him, don’t get me wrong, but he didn’t start out to be one of us. He started out to be a soldier boy, obey orders, get drunk, chase girls. He got turned and turned, and he’s with us now because he’s got no place else to be.”
“He brings us a job,” Parker said, without emphasis, “he got from the woman he’s in bed with.”
“I know. It’s worse than a soap opera. Do you think you got him to back out of this?”
“Maybe. If not,” Parker said, “you’re the one he can finger.”
Dalesia laughed, but then he said, “No. I put one in his head before that.”
“Then her head, too.”
Dalesia, considering, said, “You think so?”
“Never trust pillow talk.”
Dalesia thought about that for a while, then said, “We could just keep driving.”
“We could.”
“I got nothing else.”
“Neither of us has anything else.”
Dalesia nodded. “For Jake’s sake,” he said, “I hope he can keep himself under control.”
After a while, the road they were on descended to a flatter, more open area at stream level, and that was where they found the town, or what was left of it: a few old wooden houses with junked cars around them and clothes drying on lines extended back toward the encroaching pines. There were no stores or other commercial establishments.
Then the road made a left turn over a small concrete bridge, with just beyond it the hulk of the factory building on the right and an abandoned old wooden hotel and bar on the left; even the For Sale sign on the hotel had an antique look.
Dalesia turned right onto the weedy gravel on the far side of the factory and stopped at a sagging, rusty chain- link fence. They sat in the Audi a minute, looking out at the brick hulk, and Dalesia said, “To get here, you gotta go past those houses back there. On this road, at night, you don’t do that without lights.”
“Those people don’t call the law,” Parker said.
Dalesia thought that over, then nodded and said, “You’re right. Also, we can see where this road goes next. You want a look at the place?”
It was seven in the evening now, twilight just setting in, but still bright enough to see. Parker considered the dark hulk of the factory building, then shook his head. “I take Beckham’s word for it.”
“Me, too.”
They drove on, and after another four and a half miles they came to a numbered county road. There had been no more occupied buildings since the town.
“So what we do,” Dalesia said as they turned south, “we bring the armored car in from the other way, because that’s where their route is between the banks, but the vehicles to take things out again come this way.”
“Stashed ahead of time,” Parker said. “Right. It’s just the one trip that night.”
They drove south a while in silence, toward the general area of the MassPike, and then Dalesia said, “If it’s just you and me and the armored cars and the state cops and the private security, we’ll be fine.”
“That’s right,” Parker said.
8
They chose a motel that was not the one where Beckham worked these days, and in the morning they checked out and went back to where Parker had left his car. Dalesia put the Audi near it and went on into the restaurant to find a booth, while Parker leaned against the driver’s door of his Lexus to wait for Elaine Langen.
At ten in the morning, the parking area was nearly empty—too late for breakfast and too early for lunch; everybody was on the road. Except for the truckers, who had their own parking area around to the side of the building. As Parker waited, a thin but steady trickle of semis arrived and departed, snorting in and groaning out.
She was a few minutes late, which was to be expected, but when she arrived, the white Infiniti would have stood out even if the lot had been full. Watching her roll tentatively down the lane, looking at him but not yet sure he was the right one, Parker nodded first at her, then at the restaurant, then turned to walk indoors.
The interior was cafeteria style, with a mix of freestanding tables and booths along the windowed walls. Truckers and a few civilians ate at widely scattered tables. Dalesia had taken a booth near the back, beyond the windows. Parker walked toward him and saw Dalesia’s expression change, meaning she’d followed him in.
Dalesia was on the side of the booth that faced the front and the entrance, so that whoever sat on the other side would be invisible from most parts of the restaurant. Parker slid in next to him and only then looked toward Elaine Langen.
Well. The first impression was of a slender, stylish, well-put-together woman in her forties, but almost instantly the impression changed. She wasn’t slender; she was bone thin, and inside the stylish clothes she walked with a graceless jitteriness, like someone whose medicine had been cut off too soon. Beneath the neat cowl of well- groomed ash-blond hair, her face was too thin, too sharp-featured, too deeply lined. This could have made her look haggard; instead, it made her look mean. From the evidence, what would have attracted her husband most would have been her father’s bank.
She walked directly to the table, looked at them both, and said, “Say a name.”
