“I didn’t keep it in the bank.”
“Where did you keep it?”
Devers was getting irritated despite himself, the smile was slipping slowly from his face. “What’s the point?” he said. “We’re talking about robbery, not embezzlement.”
“The law,” Parker told him. “They’ll check out everybody in your office. They’ll say, ‘There’s a kid with charge accounts in New York, expensive clothes, expensive car. How’d he do all that on Air Force pay?’ Then they look very closely at you, just to see what happens.”
Devers bit a knuckle, frowning, thinking. Finally he said, more as though it were a question than a statement, “I had my grandmother hold it?”
“Your grandmother? Why?”
“I always got along with her best,” Devers said. “My mother and father split up, I wouldn’t trust my mother with the prize from a Cracker Jack box. So I gave my money to my grandmother, and when I got back to the ZI she gave it back to me.”
Fusco said, “Back to the what?”
“The States,” Devers told him. “ZI. Zone of Interior.”
“Christ,” said Fusco.
Parker said, “Your grandmother’s going to cover for you?”
Devers grinned. “Guaranteed. She died in April.”
Parker said, “What if they check with your mother?”
“What my mother says is her business. She’d say something different from me just out of spite.”
“Would she?”
Devers hesitated. “Who am I talking to now? Parker or the law?”
“Does it matter?”
“No. No, you’re right. I’ve told you the straight story.”
Parker said, “You got a checking account?”
“Sure.”
“Let me see the checkbook.”
“Oh.” Devers nodded. “Yeah, I see what you mean.”
Fusco said, “What’s the problem?”
“My deposits,” Devers said. “Like, I put in a hundred thirty last week, so where did it come from?”
Parker said, “Where did it come from?”
“Give me a minute,” Devers said.
Parker waited, but when Devers kept on concentrating he said, “You’re a sitting duck, Devers. You aren’t covered at all. They could land on you any time.”
“They’ve never had any reason to look me over.”
Parker said, “What if somebody else in the office tries something, and he’s clumsy? So they find out there’s something wrong, they start looking around, and you stick out like the Empire State Building.”
“God damn it.” Devers gnawed his cheek. “There’s got to be some way to cover.”
“Not the old lucky at cards routine,” Parker told him. “That way, you’ve got to get half a dozen other people to say yeah, they played cards with you, they lost to you. That’s too many people.”
“I know. I wouldn’t try that one anyway. Let me think about it while I make some breakfast.”
Parker finished his coffee. “All right, we’ll be back at twelve.”
“Fine.”
Parker got to his feet, and Fusco bounced up after him. They went out to the sunlight and got into Devers’ Pontiac. Fusco said, “Which way?”
“Gas station. We want gas and a roadmap.”
“Right.”
As they drove, Fusco said, “You were right about him. I mean, hitting the company.”
“The question is,” said Parker, “can he work out a cover.”
“He’s a smart boy, Parker.”
“Maybe.”
They came to a gas station and Fusco pulled to a stop beside the pumps. While the attendant pumped gas, Fusco went into the office and got a map. He brought it out and handed it to Parker, already folded to the area around Monequois.
They were in an out-of-the-way northern corner of New York State, close to the Canadian border, about fifteen miles west of Malone, north of Route 11. The nearest city of any size was called Massena, farther west, large enough to have a commercial airport. The border was about twelve miles to the north. Dannemora, the New York
