“Engine or body?”
“Body.”
Lawson nodded. “I think I know the place for you. Anything else?”
“No.” Parker got to his feet. “That’s all we need. You can leave messages with Skimm.”
Lawson ripped the top page from the notepad, stuffed it in his side pocket. “You ought to leave something with me. Sort of a drawing account.”
Parker took out his wallet, peeled off four fifties, and dropped them on Lawson’s desk.
Lawson picked them up and grinned. “You want a receipt? You know, for tax purposes?”
“No,” Parker said. “Leave the word with Skimm.”
“Will do.”
Parker went back downstairs in the green elevator and walked back to the Ford. It had a parking ticket on it. He threw the ticket into the gutter and drove away, back to Hudson Boulevard and then to the Pulaski Skyway and down 9. Because of the trooper, and not wanting to be near the diner too soon before the job, he turned on 1 when it branched away to the right. At New Brunswick, he turned left on 18, then right at Old Bridge, heading down towards Spotswood. But before he got there he turned left up a winding dirt road.
The land here was red clay and white sand mixed together, with a fuzz of wild grey grass and here and there thick-trunked trees. The road seemed to end shortly but Parker went up an overgrown slope, and the dirt road angled sharply around a tree and then dropped away down the dip into a kind of cup.
Down in the indentation stood a grey farmhouse, nearly invisible on days the sun didn’t shine. Someone had once tried to make the land grow something beside wild grasses and occasional trees. But the farmhouse was slowly rotting away now, becoming a part of the land. It couldn’t be seen from any road, and most people in the area probably didn’t even know it existed. The dirt road leading in was sometimes used as a lovers’ lane, but those people never even came in very far. They didn’t care what was over the slope; they just wanted not to be seen from the road.
When Parker had first come, the road had been impassable. The turn around the tree at the top of the slope had been choked with underbrush and dead branches. They would not have cleared it until the day before the job, but now there was Stubbs, so Parker had hacked away at it with an axe and cleared enough room for the Ford to just get through. He made it now on the first try and came down the grassed-over double track on the other side.
He drove around to the back of the farmhouse, left the Ford up close against the house — he would have liked to park it in the barn, but that had already fallen in — and went down the steps into the basement. The flooring upstairs was unsafe, so they used only the basement.
It didn’t smell like a basement. The windows were all broken out, and sand had sifted in over the years. It smelled mummified. There were two cots set up along one wall, a card table and three folding chairs on the other side, and a camp stove by the ruins of the furnace so the smoke would go up the chimney.
Parker went over to the door to the fruit cellar and hit it with his fist. “You in there?”
Stubbs’s voice came through the thick door faintly, “Go to hell.”
Parker took the bar down and went back to the card table, where the automatic lay next to the canned goods. He picked up the automatic and called, “Come on out.”
There was a pause, and the door pushed slightly open. Another pause, and the door jolted back and slammed against the wall and Stubbs came out with a grey chunk of two-by-four lifted over his head.
Parker motioned with the automatic. He watched Stubbs decide whether or not to throw the two-by-four at him, but Stubbs decided against it. When he dropped it, Parker said, “Let’s go out in the air.”
He would rather have just left Stubbs locked away in the fruit cellar for two weeks, but if he did Stubbs might get sick and die. He couldn’t afford yet to have Stubbs die. He had to waste some time now getting Stubbs out in the sunlight.
They went outside and Parker sat down on the ground, his back against the wall of the farmhouse. “Go on, walk around a little,” he said.
Stubbs stood blinking in the light. There was no window in the fruit cellar, and he’d been in pitch-dark. He looked around, blinking in the light. “I got to go.”
“Over there.” Parker pointed with the automatic. “Away from the house, over by that tree there. And cover it up.”
Stubbs stood around, undecided. “I’m out of cigarettes.”
Parker tossed him his pack, and some matches. He had more in the glove compartment of the Ford. Stubbs picked them up from where they’d fallen at his feet, and slowly lit a cigarette. He stuffed the pack and the matches in his pants pocket and looked sullenly at Parker. “You can’t kidnap me like this.”
Parker shrugged. It didn’t need an answer.
Stubbs screwed his face up, the way he did when he was trying to think. He wanted to tell Parker this whole thing was impossible, you just don’t lock a man away in a fruit cellar for two weeks with no electricity and no plumbing. But Parker was doing it, and that didn’t leave Stubbs much to say. After a minute, he turned and trudged over towards the tree.
They stayed outside for half an hour, and then they went back into the basement and Parker let Stubbs make himself some beans and instant coffee at the camp stove. There was bread, too, but no butter, and a can of peaches for dessert. Stubbs thought about tossing a can of beans at Parker’s head, but Parker told him to forget about it, so Stubbs forgot about it.
After he’d cleaned up his dinner utensils, Parker let him go outside again for a while. Then he put him back in the fruit cellar, put the bar across the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he called through the door.
There wasn’t any answer, so Parker shrugged and walked away. It was just about sundown, darker in the cup
