“How long?” Billy moved away from the smoke, waving the spatula in front of his face to clear the air. “I can do mine,” he said, “I can do mine in, oh, three minutes.”
“About thirty dealers. An hour and a half. Figure two hours, to be on the safe side.”
“That’s too much time,” said Lempke. “In and out, that’s the only way, Parker, you know that yourself. You hang around, hang around, you’re asking for the collar.”
Parker didn’t bother answering him this time. He prowled around the yard, thinking it out, trying to see if there was a way to do it. More to himself than the others, he said, “Have to work a switch on the Pinkertons. One for one, one for one. Too many men.”
Lempke said, “Parker, it isn’t in the hand. You were right last night, you knew what you were talking about.” He threw his empty beer can away across the lawn, and Billy looked pained.
“Maybe. Maybe.” Parker wasn’t as set on this job as Lempke and the others thought; it was still merely just a way to occupy his mind for a while, an exercise, a playing around with professional theory.
Claire said to Lempke, “There’s a way. And he’ll find it.”
Lempke looked from Parker to Claire and back again, then shrugged elaborately and got to his feet and went into the house for more beer.
Parker went over to Billy and said, “That means you’re in it all the way, you know. Not just the fence, but inside. There for the heist. We need you to point out which ones we take.”
Billy was plainly feeling both excitement and terror, trying unsuccessfully to hide both. “I’m willing,” he said. “It’s worth a lot to me, too, after all.” He cast a quick glance toward Claire, then tried to look as though he hadn’t.
“Two things,” Parker told him. “One, you do what you’re told. Two, you leave your bazooka home.”
“But won’t I—”
“No, you won’t. Leave it home.”
“If you say so,” Billy said, looking troubled.
Lempke came back out onto the stoop, carrying a fresh can of beer, and called across the lawn, “Parker, how you going to do this thing?”
“I don’t know yet,” Parker said, and started toward the driveway, saying, “Claire, come on.”
In surprise, Billy said, “Where are you going?”
“Find a way to make it happen,” Parker said.
“Now? But what about the hamburgers?”
Parker didn’t bother to answer him, but Claire said, as they walked around the corner of the house, “Eat them yourself.”
Eight
“I MUST BE a masochist,” Claire said. She was sitting up in bed, knees up, arms wrapped around her legs.
Parker, lying beside her, said, “I hadn’t noticed.”
She gave him a quick smile, then looked away again saying, “I’m always attracted to men who are about to get killed.”
“Not always,” said Parker. “Light me a cigarette.”
“What, not you? You’re the worst of them all.” She took the cigarettes and matches from the night table, lit two cigarettes and gave him one. “The first boy I ever—ever went around with, drove in stock car races every weekend. His left leg was all scars from an accident.”
Parker said, “Ashtray.”
She put it on the sheet between them. “But all the others just tempted fate,” she said. “You tempt fate and fight society at the same time.”
“Wrong. I don’t tempt anybody. I don’t fight anybody. I walk where it looks safe. If it doesn’t look safe, I don’t walk.”
“This time?”
He reached a hand up and stroked the long line of her back. “I haven’t made up my mind yet.”
“You’ll do it,” she said. “I know your type. You talk safety, but when you smell the right kind of danger you’re off like a bloodhound.”
She was describing a tendency in him that he’d been fighting all his life, and that he thought of as being under control. Also, it irritated him to be read that easily. With an abrupt movement, he got up from the bed, saying, “I’ve still got to look around, while it’s light.”
“Don’t get mad at me,” she said. “You were this way long before I came along.”
Parker looked at her and said, “You talk yourself out of a lot of things, don’t you?”
For just a second she looked stricken, but immediately got control again. “All right,” she said, and shrugged. “We’ll go look around.”
They dressed and went down to the mezzanine for another look at the ballroom. Workmen in white overalls were in here now, standing on tall spindly ladders, putting up pink and white bunting across the ceiling.
Parker nodded at the wall opposite, the one covered in maroon plush. “What’s on the other side of that?”
“I don’t know. A wall.”
