“Parker, I don’t want you to lay a hand on her.”
“That’s not my job. That’s your job. I want to talk to her.”
Grofield shuffled his feet, and the silence lengthened between them until he finally said, “You going to tell her about her uncle?”
“Maybe.”
“Then tell her about Edgars.”
“Go get her, Grofield.”
“Don’t try to pushher away, Parker.”
“I won’t. Go get her.”
“All right.”
Grofield took a few steps away, and then Parker called his name and said, “I want to see her alone first.”
“I know. I figured that out already.”
Parker looked up at the sky. Four-thirty in the morning, it was still fully night, but the stars seemed to be getting a bit fainter, the sky a bit less totally black. Except for the stars, there was no light anywhere; black cloth covered the windows of the shed they were living in.
There was a crunching sound from the left, opposite the shed. Parker listened to it, frowning, and then realized who it was. “Wycza,” he said.
Wycza loomed up out of the darkness. “That’s a long walk,” he said.
“What do you think about Grofield’s girl?”
“I think he’s stupid.”
“That’s him. What about her?”
“I dunno. She doesn’t yack a lot. He didn’t have to twist her arm to bring her. I dunno about her.”
“This could have been a sweet job.”
“Tell me about that Edgars sometime.”
“I wish I knew myself.”
The girl was suddenly there, saying softly, “You wanted to talk to me?”
Parker turned and said, “Yeah. Wait there a second.” He turned back to Wycza. “What happens if it rains out here?”
“You mean with the sheds?”
“Yeah.”
“I guess they leak. But I don’t think it rains here this time of year.”
“Is that right?” Parker turned to the girl. “Does it rain here this time of year?”
“Not very often.” Her voice was very low and soft, but not shy in particular, just self-contained. The frightenedness that had been in her face before was completely missing from her voice.
Parker didn’t give a damn about rain or leaking sheds; he wanted to rattle her by talking at her instead of to her for a while, to see how she’d react. He said to Wycza, “What’ll we do if it does rain? You got any ideas?”
“Not me.”
He turned to the girl. “What about you? You got any ideas?”
“You robbed the banks, didn’t you?”
He was alert now. “That’s right,” he said, and waited.
But what she said was, “They keep their money in those canvas sacks, don’t they? You could cut them open and spread the sacks out on the roof on the parts where it leaks.”
Wycza laughed, and said, “I’ll be seeing you, Parker.” He trudged away toward the shed.
Parker said, “They’ll have helicopters out. We can’t have banks sacks on the roof.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t think of that.”
“Did you ever hear of a guy named Edgars?”
“The man who used to be police chief?”
“That’s the one.”
“He was with you tonight, wasn’t he?”
“What did he have against your town?”
“There was a big scandal. A grand jury asked him questions and tried to get evidence against him about something; I don’t know exactly what. I don’t think they ever tried him for anything, but he was dismissed anyway.”
“That figures. He tried to blow up your whole damn city tonight.”
