Hanks saw him coming, and looked more puzzled than ever, and also a little alarmed. He started angling away from Kobler, not wanting to talk with him, but Kobler caught up with him and asked, “Where’s the others?”
“What? You got the wrong man, friend.”
“You’re Hanks, aren’t you?”
Hanks debated denying it. Was this guy law or what?
Kobler hurried on. “Where’s the others, god damn it? You want him to get away?”
“What? Who?”
“LaRenne! Didn’t you people get the telegram?”
“What telegram?”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” exclaimed Kobler. “LaRenne’s figuring to walk off with the seventy-five G’s. We just found out about it. I barely got on the same plane with him. He doesn’t know me, see, he’s never seen me around. Where the hell’s he gone?”
Automatically, Hanks answered, “Back by the phone booths.”
“Yeah, We figured he had somebody with him. Are there any more phone booths around here?”
“Listen,” said Hanks. Things were going too fast for him. He’d thought of walking off with seventy-five G’s lot of times, but he’d never had the guts to try it. He couldn’t get used to the idea that maybe somebody else didhave the guts. He was so shaken, he couldn’t get his mental balance back.
And Kobler wouldn’t give him the chance. “Phone booths, dammit!”
“Yeah, over there by the lockers. But”
“No time! I don’t want him to see you phoning nobody. Go over there to those other booths and call your boss and see didn’t the telegram get there yet. Tell him to send two or three boys out here. We don’t know who’s with LaRenne or how many, and I’m not sure I can handle it by myself. Get going!”
“But”
“I can’t lose LaRenne!” said Kobler, and hurried away.
Hanks didn’t know what to do. But LaRenne was acting funny, and the big guy had given him a reason for it, so he did what the big guy told him to do. He hurried across the echoing floor towards the other bank of phone booths on the far side of the terminal by the baggage lockers.
Kobler meanwhile went after LaRenne. He had disappeared into a double rank of phone booths. If you stood between the ranks, you couldn’t be seen from the terminal proper. There were three people besides LaRenne closeted in booths, all of them talking like mad and paying no attention to the outside world. Kobler took out the Blackhawk, held it by the barrel, and opened the door of LaRenne’s phone booth. He clipped LaRenne with the gun butt just as the operator finally made the connection with Argus Imports.
A tinny voice sounded, “Hello?”
Kobler put the phone back on its hook, and stripped off LaRenne’s coat. He stuffed coat and gun into the briefcase, closed it, and shut the phone-booth door. He walked over to the self-service baggage counter where the baggage from his flight was just coming in. He stood with his back to the terminal and when his bag was put on the counter, he picked it up and headed towards the exit to the parking lot. He was just going through the electric-eye doors when Hanks came running from the phone booths at the far end. He knew something was wrong, and it probably wasn’t wrong with LaRenne. But he was staring at the phone booths far ahead of him, so he didn’t see Kobler going out.
Kobler walked over to the parking lot where Parnell was sitting in a year-old Mercury station wagon with the engine idling. Kobler put the suitcase and briefcase in the back, got in front next to Parnell, and they drove back to Parnell’s furnished room, where they split the coat up the back and the take down the middle.
Parnell caught a plane later that evening for New Mexico to start work on his new racer.
6
THE NEXT DAY, and four hundred miles to the south
From the gas station, you could see the stands around the race track. Maury sat in the gas-station office, his feet up on the desk, and looked out the window past the pumps, and beyond the highway, to the stands which were topped by waving pennants. He sat there and waited for the phone not to ring. Every day during racing season, he spent his afternoons in the gas station, waiting for the phone not to ring, and most days it didn’t.
But, every once in a while, it would and Willy, who ran the station, would pick it up and then turn to Maury and say, “It’s for you.” And Maury would have to run to the track. Maury didn’t like to run, not to the track or anywhere. But God help him he should some day walkto the track and, as a result, get there too late to make the bet. On the days when the phone rang and Willy told him it was for him, Maury would jump up and run over to the phone, crying, “Open the safe! Open the safe! Don’t just stand there!” And he’d be panting already, even before making the run to the track, as he’d take the receiver, identify himself, and hear the voice at the other end say, “Three on Mister Whisker.”
“Three on Mister Whisker,” Maury would repeat. Then the party at the other end would cut him off. Maury would slam the receiver, turn to Willy, and shout, “Isn’t that damn safe open yet?”
Willy would ask, “How much Maury? Take it easy for Christ’s sake, Maury. How much?”
And Maury would say, “Three.”
Then Willy would hand him $3,000 in hundred-dollar bills, thirty hundred-dollar bills, and he would stuff them into his pockets and run for the track. It would seem like for ever getting through the gate, then he would be at the hundred-dollar WIN window, and he’d say, “Three thousand on Mister Whisker.”
The clerk at the hundred-dollar WIN window would smile and say, “Hello, Maury. Big play on that one, huh?” And he’d take Maury’s thirty hundred-dollar bills and give him thirty tickets on the nose of Mister Whisker.
Maury could then relax for a few minutes. He could go some place to watch the race, or just sit down and get
