“I’ll see you when the job is done.”
“I’m not so sure. And just a minute, don’t leave yet. We’ve got more to talk about.”
He kept his hand on the doorknob. “Such as?”
“Such as those other two men. The one that looks like you, only more pleasant, and the funny fat one. You didn’t say anything to Daddy about working with anybody else.”
“How I work is my business. Don’t be here in the morning.”
She was going to say something else, but he didn’t give her a chance.”
The other two were already asleep when Parker got back to his room. Menlo was staying here tonight, sleeping on the floor, and the three of them would move to another location tomorrow. Parker stepped over Menlo, stripped, and got into bed. He fell asleep the way he always did, completely and immediately.
He was a light sleeper. Normal predictable sounds traffic outside a window, a radio playing that had been playing when he’d gone to sleep didn’t disturb him, but any unusual noise would have him completely awake at once. So when Menlo got up from the floor and crept cautiously towards the door, Parker came awake. He lay unmoving on the bed, watching Menlo through slitted eyes. Menlo took the time to pick up his suit coat and tie and shoes, but nothing else. He went out, the shoes in his hand, the coat and tie over his arm.
There was no point stopping him. Parker went back to sleep.
He awoke again when Menlo returned. The fat man was once again carrying shoes and coat and tie, but now he was carrying his shirt as well, and in the faint light from the window Parker could see that he was smiling to himself. So Bett had got what she’d come for after all. He wondered if Menlo had.
5
“Go,” said Handy. He thumbed the stop-watch; it read just about nine o’clock.
Parker edged the Pontiac away from the kerb in front of Kapor’s house. Moving with the traffic, they went straight over to Garfield to Massachusetts Avenue, and then turned right on Wisconsin. That took them through Georgetown and on north out of the city into Chevy Chase, and then Bethesda. It was a commercial road all the way, with more traffic than Parker liked on a getaway route, but it was the quickest, shortest way.
Menlo, sitting on the back seat like a renegade Buddha, watched with interest. At one point he said, “I still don’t see why this is necessary. Kapor will hardly be in a position to notify the authorities.”
Parker was busy driving, so Handy explained. “You say the Outfit’s given up on this job, and maybe they did and maybe they didn’t. You claim Spannick was the only one of your old crowd that knew what you were up to, and maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t. We’re going through the play the same night you planned, because it’s a good setup. Besides, now that Clara’s dead there’s nobody inside to let us know when the next good time is. But we’re running it an hour earlier than you figured just in case there is still somebody interested in you or Kapor’s hundred grand. And we’re working out the best route for the same reason.”
“Then why go only so far as the motel? Why not continue on our way as rapidly as possible? We might go to Baltimore, for instance, and come to rest there.”
Handy turned farther around in the seat, so he could talk full-face with Menlo. “Listen. If what we wanted was to get a confession out of Kapor, we’d let you handle it all the way. That’s what you’re a pro at; we’d follow anything you said. But what we’re doing is breaking into Kapor’s house and grabbing his goods, and that’s what we’repros at. So you just let us do it, OK.”
“My dear friend,” said Menlo, looking concerned, “please not to misjudge me. I mean no distrust of your abilities. You are most certainly professionals at your craft, and I appreciate this. It is in a spirit of curiosity only that I ask these questions. I would like to learn more.” This was all said too earnestly to be sarcasm; Menlo was perched forward on the seat, his hands pressed to his chest in a gesture of honesty.
Parker would have just told him to keep his mouth shut and watch and learn, but Handy didn’t mind talking. “All right,” he said, “I’ll explain it to you. There’s three ways to handle the getaway. You can do like you said, just take off and keep going, maybe a couple hundred miles. Or you can just go two blocks and hole up there till the heat’s off. Or you can go a few miles and hole up and wait four or five hours and thentake off and go your couple hundred miles. Now, if you do the first, take off and keep going, you’re on the road all the time you’re the most hot, and that’s the way to get yourself picked up fast. If you hole up real close and stay there a week or two, you’re right where the most cops are doing the most looking, and that’s the way to get picked up six or seven days after the job, when you go out for more groceries. But if you hole up nearby for a few hours, you throw everybody off stride. If the law is after you and they’ve thrown up roadblocks, they stay up for a few hours and then the cops figure you either got through quick or you’re holed up, and they take the roadblocks down. See what I mean? Right after the job is when they do their looking on the roads, and later on is when they do their looking in town. So right after the job is when we stay in town, and later on is when we’re on the roads. It’s a feint, like in basketball. You go,but you don’t go, and thenyou go.”
Menlo nodded happily. “Yes, I follow. I can see where that would be the method most difficult for the authorities to counteract. But in this case, we need have no fear of authorities. Kapor will feel his loss most deeply, of course, but he will not contact the police.”
“Not Kapor, no. But suppose some servant sees it first, that somebody’s broken in, and calls the cops before he tells his boss? So whether Kapor likes it or not, the law will be in on it. Or maybe the Outfit is still hot for that money, and they’ll show up at nine-thirty, the way you originally figured. They find out the swag is gone, the Outfit’s after us. Or maybe it’s your old group, friends of Spannick’s. We do it the safe way, the reliable way, and we never get jugged.”
Menlo smiled with a touch of sadness. “I must say you remove the romance most utterly from all this. I had been seeing myself in quite dramatic terms. The defecting policeman, meting out poetic justice to the embezzler by depriving him of his ill-gotten gains, then disappearing again, quite for ever, an enigma to all who seek to find him. But now I find I am merely a participant in a dreary and pedestrian series of quite normal activities opening doors, driving automobiles, sitting in motel rooms.” He shrugged and spread his hands.
Parker slowed the car. The motel was just ahead the Town Motel. They’d picked it because it was on the right side of the road, and because it was built in a U shape, on a slope down from the road, so that parked cars could not be seen from the street.
Parker made the turn, drove down into the court, and parked. Handy thumbed the watch and read it. “Just over eighteen minutes.”
“Not good,” Parker said.
