“You and Claire are making a thing,” Lempke said. “That isn’t like you, on the job.”
Parker said, “Maybe it’s part of the job.”
“You mean, you hold Claire and she holds Billy.”
“Something like that,” Parker said. The truth was different, though, and more complicated. Usually, Parker had no interest in sex while he was working, saving it all for afterwards, but everything had been different this time. He’d gotten interested in Claire before doing any real thinking about the job, and had only started theorizing about the job as a tactic to get Claire. Then the job had turned out to be feasible after all, and Claire was all bound up in it, a part of it. Things would probably change as the night of the heist got closer, but so far his attention was divided in a way not usual with him.
But he wasn’t about to explain himself to Lempke, so he just agreed with Lempke’s explanation and then they went on upstairs.
They found Billy sitting at the kitchen table, looking sullen. Parker said, “Where is she?”
“In there,” Billy said, pointing toward the front room. It was clear he’d tried again to establish his position with Claire, and had gotten the same inevitable putdown.
Parker said, “I want your wagon for a day or two.”
Billy shrugged. “I don’t care.”
Parker turned away from him and went on into the living room, where Claire was sitting as self-absorbed as a cat, doing her nails again. Parker said, “We’ve got to take a trip for a day or two.”
She looked up at him. “All of us?”
“You and me. You’ll have to drive the wagon back.”
Lempke had come in, and said, “You going to get the truck?”
“Right.”
“I’ll get in touch with those two boys.”
Billy came to the doorway, looking pained. Eyes on Claire, he said, “You’re going together?”
Claire gave him an ice-cold look, and said nothing.
Billy started two or three different things to say, failed to say any of them, and abruptly turned around and hurried back to the kitchen.
Parker said to Claire, “Don’t push him so hard he falls over.”
“Him,” she said with contempt, and turned to put the top on the nail polish.
“We need him,” Parker said. “Go out to the kitchen and pull the knife out of him.”
“He’ll be all right.”
“Do it anyway.”
She turned around, seemed about to tell Parker to go to hell, thought about it, changed her mind, shrugged in sudden irritability, and went out to the kitchen.
Parker said to Lempke, “Tell her I’m in the car.”
“See you in a while.”
Parker went out and sat behind the wheel. Five minutes later Claire came and slid into the seat beside him. “He’ll be good,” she said.
Parker looked at her. “And you?”
She sighed and nodded. “I’ll be good, too.” She handed him the car keys.
Three
THEY LEFT Indianapolis Friday morning, heading straight east. They made good time on the stretches of Interstate 70 that were done, bad time on Route 40, finished with a long run across the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and arrived in Baltimore at eight-thirty that night. Parker found a motel in Towson, they unpacked and showered and changed, and then they went downtown for dinner.
Over coffee, Claire said, “I counted sentences.”
He’d been thinking about the wall at Diablo Tours. He frowned at her, saying, “What’s that?”
“I counted sentences,” she said. “How many things you said to me since we got into the car this morning. You know what the score is?”
“What is this?” He was irritated at having his thoughts broken into by some sort of game.
“Twelve,” she said. “Twelve times you’ve spoken to me. That works out to about one sentence every fifty minutes.”
He shook his head. “I don’t follow you. What’s the problem?”
“What did you bring me along for? You don’t talk to me, you don’t look at me, you don’t know I’m here.”
“You drive the wagon back,” he said.
“Why not take a plane here? Then you don’t need me at all.”
He shook his head. “The first place we go may not have what I want. The second place is in Trenton. The third place is in Newark. There’s more risk than it’s worth to rent a car, or steal one, just to drive around the East Coast a day or two.”
