State penitentiary, was about forty miles to the east.
Fusco paid for the gas while Parker looked at the map. They drove out of the station and Parker said, “Let’s go north, toward the border.”
Fusco looked at him in surprise. “We won’t want to go crossing any borders, Parker.”
“I know that. But they’ll figure us to try, so let’s see what the road looks like.”
Fusco shrugged and went back to driving.
Monequois was a small town, overbalanced by the Air Force base just outside the town limits. There were more people on the base than in the town, so the influence showed up everywhere, in the names of bars and diners and motels, in the heavy preponderance of blue uniforms on the downtown streets, in the number of bars and movie houses. If the majority of people at the base had been permanent rather than transient, the effect on the town would have been even greater, but as it was the place was unmistakably a camp town.
They had to go through town and out past the air base to Route 95. It was scrub country out here, hilly but not mountainous, heavily forested. Very little of the base could be seen from the road, only a few drab slant-roofed buildings glimpsed through the trees and then the sudden complex busy structure of the main gate, like a stage set in the sunlight, with a dark blue billboard on one side giving, in gold letters, the names of the military organizations here, all done in incomprehensible abbreviations.
Fusco turned north on 95, went up to Bombay and took the unnumbered road up to Fort Covington. This was a smaller and less traveled road than to continue on to Massena or to take the bridge across the St Lawrence from Rooseveltown to Cornwall on the Canadian side.
They went through Fort Covington, but stopped on the other side before reaching the border. Parker said, “All right, let’s go back.”
It didn’t look good. No place had shown itself readily as a hideout. The forest was thick between the little towns, but it wasn’t empty. Most of the woods were posted against hunters, and the rest would be full of them. It didn’t look likely for them to come up here after the job and cool out somewhere short of the border.
Of course, he couldn’t be sure yet, and anyway this was doing it backwards. If Devers couldn’t cover his embezzlements there wouldn’t be a job anyway. And even if he could, there was still the base to be looked at. The whole thing might be impossible because of some element long before the getaway or hideout.
On the way back, Fusco said, “What if he can’t do it?”
“Like you said before,” Parker told him. “If Devers isn’t solid, the job’s off.”
Fusco frowned. Parker could feel him pushing for Devers to come up with something.
6
Ellen opened the door again, gave them a sour look. “You two.” She stepped out of the way.
Parker and Fusco went inside. As Ellen was shutting the door, Parker said to her, “What’s the problem?”
Not looking at him, turning away, being busy about something else, she said, “Problem? No problem at all.” She walked away across the living room.
Devers, sitting at the kitchen table with the remains of a pancake breakfast in front of him, waved his fork and called, “Be right with you.”
Parker ignored him, saying after Ellen, “Is it just Devers? What’s on your mind?”
She kept moving away, and Fusco, in the manner of somebody embarrassed and trying to avoid a scene, said quickly, “Parker, let it go.”
“No.” Parker pointed at Ellen and said, “Stop right there. I want to know what’s stuck in your craw.”
Ellen turned around, at the far end of the room, moved her chin in a contemptuous nod toward Fusco, and said, “Let him tell you.” But she didn’t leave the room.
Parker looked at Fusco, who shrugged and said, “She’s just a little bugged, Parker, that’s all. It don’t mean a thing, it’s just the way she gets.”
“About the job?”
Fusco looked scared. “Parker, I swear to God she’s no problem. She always takes the dim view, that’s all it is.”
“She was this way before?”
“That’s why she left me,” Fusco said, “the time I took the fall. Because that time she was right.”
Ellen’s lip curled, but she didn’t say anything.
Devers had walked in from the kitchen, carrying a coffee cup in his hand. “And now she’s sore,” he said, “because this time her ex-husband’s got me involved in it. Gonna get me in trouble.” Standing there, he drank coffee, with Ellen glaring at him.
Parker said, “What will she do about it?”
Ellen answered him. “Nothing,” she said, biting the word off. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“That’s straight, Parker,” Fusco said.
Parker looked at them, Fusco scared, Devers confident, Ellen angry. He considered, and finally shrugged, letting it go. For now he’d take their word for it, and just keep his eyes open. Over the years he’d come to accept the fact that the people involved in every heist were never as solid as you wanted them. They always had hang-ups one way or another, always had personal problems or quirks from their private lives that they couldn’t keep from intruding into the job they were supposed to be doing. The only way to handle it was to watch them, know what the problems were, be ready for them to start screwing up. If he sat around and waited for the perfect string, cold and solid and professional, he’d never get anything done.
