Wycza laughed. “Till it cools,” he said.
“Maybe three, four days,” Parker told him. “We can stash cars there ahead of time, make our split there.”
Chambers, the hillbilly, stretched his long legs out and said, “What’s the chance of aerial surveillance? What if the state boys throw helio-copters out?”
“Helicopters,” said Paulus.
Edgars said, “There’s sheds there, and trees back a ways from the ravine edge. We can all get under cover.”
Chambers nodded and scratched his chin. “The truck, too?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
Chambers looked at him sideways. “Pretty sure? Pretty sure don’t cut it.”
“If we can’t hide it up top,” Edgars told him, “we can always take it down into the ravine. There’s an overhang on the south side, we can stick it in under there.”
“Just don’t like helio-copters.”
There was silence then. Parker looked around. Kerwin and Pop Phillips and Salsa hadn’t asked anything, but all three of them looked as though they were thinking hard. Parker said “Everybody in?”
Pop Phillips shook his head. “I’m not quite sure, Parker,” he said. “It strikes me as being a pretty ostentatious sort of proposition.”
Kerwin said, “How many safes?”
Edgars answered him. “The two bank vaults, the loan company, the three jewelry stores, maybe ten or twelve other stores that’d be worth it.”
“How you want to do it, noisy or slow?”
Parker looked at Edgars. “Any people live along Raymond Avenue?”
“No, it’s all commercial. There’s no homes less than a block away.”
“So you want juice,” said Kerwin. “That’s a hell of a lot of juice to carry around.”
Paulus said, “Why not drill? Blow the vaults, but drill the others.”
Wiss, the other safe man, said, “Drilling’s just as loud, and slower.”
“You got a hell of a lot of safes there,” Kerwin said.
“But three men doing it,” Parker told him. “You hit the payroll, while Paulus and Wiss start on the banks. Then the three of you take the rest of the town.”
Kerwin nodded. “Maybe so. You got to blow the vaults, no choice there. But I don’t like blowing everything, that’s too much juice to carry around.”
Paulus said, “Drilling doesn’t take long. It might even be, a couple of those safes, all you’ll need is a sledge on the combination.”
Wiss said, “I don’t mind drilling. But you want speed on this job.”
Professionals bickering about their specialty; it was taking them away from where they ought to be. Parker said, “You three work it out later. Any way you want to do it is okay.”
Elkins, Wiss’s partner, said, “What about alarms?”
“What about them?” Edgars asked him. “We’ll have the police station sewed up.”
“I meant bells. You don’t want the main street sounding like New Year’s Eve.”
“Oh. There aren’t any bells.”
“None at all?”
“Every business along Raymond Avenue is hooked up to a burglar alarm system at police headquarters. Trip the alarm in one of the banks or a store, and a bell rings in the police station, and a light comes on to show the man on duty where the break is.”
Elkins nodded, and said, “That’s all right, then.”
Salsa spoke up for the first time. He had a trace of accent in his voice. “How soon do you plan to do this?”
“Couple of weeks,” Parker told him. “Depends how long it takes to get set.”
“What do we do in the meanwhile?”
“We’ll get to that. First, is everybody in? Anybody want to drop out? Phillips?”
Pop Phillips shook his head thoughtfully. “I don’t know,” he said. “This looks all right to the rest of you, eh? I can’t help but feel we’re biting off more than we can chew, but if you’re all convinced it’s feasible, then I imagine that’ll have to be good enough for me.”
“Only if you’re sure,” Parker told him.
“That’s just his way, Parker,” Wycza told him. Phillips had been suggested by Wycza. “If he says he’s in, he’s in. Right, Pop?”
“I rely on your judgment,” Phillips told him. He looked like a rummy night watchman, baggy pants and all, but sounded like a retired schoolteacher. He’d taken two falls in his lifetime and had done a lot of reading in prison.
