one transfers the loot to the cars. We need four cars. One at the town line, for the lookout. One at the plant. Two along Raymond Avenue. Four cars, four walkie-talkies, a lot of guns, ten men.”
Edgars moved closer, and for a few seconds his bulky shoulder cast a black shadow on the screen. He moved back out of the way and stood gazing at the map. “Ten men,” he said. “I wouldn’t have believed it.”
“You, need three box men. Paulus is good at that, so you need two more. You seem to know the town, Edgars, so you ought to be the lookout.”
“You’re in, Parker?”
Parker looked at the map. “Not yet,” he said. “I want to see a getaway route that makes sense. I don’t like the idea of driving four cars out of town past that state police barracks at six o’clock payday morning.”
Wycza said, “I don’t like that state police barracks at all.”
Parker went on, “I want to see a hideout we can get to but the law can’t. I want to be sure there’s no other way to get information out of that town but what we’ve already covered, and I want to be sure there’s nobody else we have to worry about in that town but what we’ve already covered.”
“We can straighten those points out, Parker,” Edgars assured him.
“Then let’s do it.” Parker looked down at the slide projector. “What’s the rest of the slides in that box?”
“His trip to Ausable Chasm,” said Grofield.
“Shut up, Grofield.” Parker said it quietly, not bothering to look at him.
Edgars said, “Pictures of the banks, the plant gates, the police station and everything else.”
“They’ll come in handy some other time. What about getaway route? What about hideout? You got a map of the whole state there?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You’ve got to get one. You’re from out around there, aren’t you?”
“I was.” His voice was bitter.
The personal reasons again. Parker didn’t give a damn about. them. He said, “You get a state map, a couple of them. A roadmap and a topographical map. You look at them till you find a spot we can hole up. If we leave there at six, we’ve got maybe an hour before the alarm’s out. You find us a place fifty miles away or less, that we can get to without being noticed and without leaving tracks, and that the law wouldn’t come in after us.”
Edgars nodded. “All right, I’ll do it.”
Wycza said, “What about that goddam trooper barracks? Edgars, ain’t there any side road, dirt road, anything at all to take us aroundthat barracks?”
“Nothing,” Edgars told him.” Flat dead countryside, that’s all.”
Wycza got to his feet and stretched. His knuckles scraped against the ceiling. He said, “I just don’t like that barracks there, that’s all.”
“Neither do I,” Parker told him. “Edgars, switch off that projector, we don’t need that map right now. Paulus, give us some light.”
When they had light, Parker said, “I don’t like four cars going intotown past that state police barracks, and I don’t like them coming out again past the barracks.”
Grofield said, “What about holing up inside the town? The old double feint. I’ve seen you use that a dozen times, Parker.”
“It’s no good here,” Parker told him.
Edgars said, “What is it?”
“It works in some jobs, not this one. You do the job, then make like you’re going to run for it. You run maybe two blocks, and hole up. They throw out roadblocks all over the state and wait for you to show up. You don’t, so they figure you must of holed up in town. They take the roadblocks down and start looking for you in town, and that’s when you leave town.”
Edgars laughed. “You’re in when they’re looking for you out, and out when they’re looking for you in.”
“Right.”
Grofield said, “What’s wrong with doing it here?”
“Too small a town, number one. Only one road out, number two. They could put up one dinky roadblock and leave it there for thirty years, till we showed our faces.”
Grofield shrugged. “So we have to go past the troopers, that’s all.”
Paulus said, “Going in’s no problem. We can slip in over a couple days.”
“So half the townspeople can make you in the rogue’s gallery. No good, Paulus. We go in the night it happens and go back out the same night.”
“These are details we can work out,” Edgars told them.
“We work them out soon,” Parker said, “or there’s no job.”
Edgars said, “Tomorrow morning I’ll get the maps. We can meet back here again tomorrow night, Nine o’clock?”
Nine o’clock was all right with everybody. Edgars said, “This thing will work, I know it will. The town’s wide open for it, and you people have the knowledge to do it.”
“We’ll see,” Parker told him.
