One was soft-plump with frilly blonde hair and big blue eyes, the helpless magnolia-blossom type that works out best in the south and fails almost completely on the Jersey flats. Another was thin and stringy, with thin and stringy grey hair and a thin and stringy mouth; she surely had a school-age daughter or two at home, and her husband surely deserted her nine or ten years ago. The third was the German barmaid type, with sullen eyes and fat arms and a habit of throwing plates on to tables. The last was the horsy clumsy type, a young girl who couldn’t stop thinking about sex; she got the orders wrong from all the male customers, and spent most of her nights knees-up on the back seats of Plymouths.
Parker studied them one by one, trying to decide. He crossed off the horsy nymphomaniac right away; when the armoured car guards came in here for coffee and danish, that one would spend too much time thinking about their sex organs to wonder about the money they were guarding. The magnolia blossom might yearn for the goodies that money could bring, but if she were Alma she wouldn’t offer Skimm any complicated plans for hitting the armoured car — that type let the man do the thinking. The thin and stringy one had more than likely been married to a drifter who looked like Skimm, and she wouldn’t trust him anyway since he was a man. And that left the German barmaid.
So that was Alma. She passed him, white waitress skirt rustling and nylons scraping together at the thighs, and went on down behind the counter to draw three cups of coffee. He watched her, frowning, not liking what he saw.
She was in her mid-thirties, and her waitress-short hair, a mousy brown in colour, was crimped all around in a frizzy permanent. Her eyes were sullen and angry, glaring out at a world that had never given her her due. She was heavily built, with broad hips and full bosom and thick legs, all of it solid and hard. She had a double chin and a pulpy nose and a surprisingly good mouth, but the mouth was obscured by the hardness of the rest of her.
He looked at her, and he didn’t like what he saw. There is no honour among thieves, perhaps, but there has to be trust among thieves when they’re working together or they’ll be too busy watching each other to watch what they’re doing. And Parker didn’t trust this Alma at all.
He watched her a while, seeing nothing to modify his opinion, then paid for his coffee and went out to the Ford. There was a Chevvy wagon parked in the spot where the armoured car always stopped. Parker looked up and down the highway, wandered once around the parking lot, then climbed into the Ford and backed it out of its slot. He turned the wheel and drove around behind the diner, and saw the double dirt track angle off away from the parking lot through stubby undergrowth and occasional trees. He turned the Ford that way and followed the tracks up a gentle slope and down the other side. The road was in better condition than he’d expected. A car could make time on that road, and this would be important.
It was less than a mile north to the cross road, extravagantly called the Amboy Turnpike. Parker turned left and travelled a little more than five miles to Old Bridge. He didn’t know where the deserted farmhouse was supposed to be, so he turned around and drove back north on the Amboy Turnpike again. This time he bypassed the road from the diner and kept on northward. Another mile brought him back to route 9, about half a mile north of the diner.
Less than five miles later, he left 9 on a long loop up to 440.
Eastward on 440, it was three miles to Staten Island, via the Outerbridge Crossing. Parker stopped shy of the bridge, and pulled over against the curb. He smoked a Lucky as he watched the cars pass him and belt across the bridge. On the other side there was a toll-booth construction across the road, built in California Mission style. Fourteen miles from there was the Staten Island Ferry, either to Manhattan or Brooklyn.
After a while he finished the cigarette, threw it out the window, and turned the car around. He went back to 9, back to the Amboy Turnpike, back to Old Bridge. He parked outside a bar and pulled the New Jersey roadmap out of the glove compartment.
He studied it for a while, but there was no faster way to do it. In any kind of smash and grab, the object is to cross a state line as quickly as possible. The state where the crime took place is alerted first, with state police crawling over all the roads; it usually takes a while to get a neighbouring state on its toes. If the states get along as badly as New Jersey and New York, it takes even longer.
He folded the map again, stowed it back in the glove compartment, and locked up the car. He went into the bar, drank draft beer for two hours, and then looked up at the revolving Budweiser clock. “For God’s sake,” he said, “I’ve got to get to Brooklyn. What’s the quickest way from here?”
“For Brooklyn?” The bartender thought it over. “You go out of here and take this street here straight out, to the left. That’ll take you to route 9, and you take a left there till you see the sign for Outerbridge Crossing. That’ll take you to Staten Island, and then you cross the Island and take the ferry.”
“What if I take the Holland tunnel?”
“That’s the long way around for Brooklyn, mister. That’ll lead you into Manhattan.”
“Then that’s the fastest way, huh? Go by Staten Island?”
“If you’re going to Brooklyn.”
“Thanks,” said Parker. He left the bar and drove back to Newark.
Chapter 6
ACROSS THE ROAD from the diner there was a discount store in a concrete-block building. At quarter after ten on Monday morning, Parker drove the Ford into the furniture store parking lot. There was cyclone fencing all around the blacktop parking lot, and Parker stopped the Ford with its nose to the fencing, facing the road. He could look straight out through the windshield at the diner across the way. He checked his watch, saw it wasn’t twenty after ten yet, and lit a cigarette.
The armoured car was red, and so short it looked stubby. It jounced into the diner lot at seventeen minutes to eleven, and stopped where Skimm had said it would. A Pontiac convertible was already there, in the spot between the armoured car and the road.
Parker lit a fresh cigarette and watched. The driver got out, on the near side, and carefully closed the door behind him. He walked back the length of the truck and unlocked the rear door. The guard climbed out and waited while the driver locked the rear door again. Then the two of them walked into the diner.
Two minutes gone; fifteen minutes to eleven exactly.
They came back out at three minutes to eleven, and they both went to the rear of the truck. The driver unlocked the door, the guard climbed back in, the driver shut and locked the door again. Then he went to the cab. The other guard opened the door for him from the inside, stepped down to the gravel, and the driver climbed up
