“All right,” he said. “She’s your woman.”
Grinning, Devers said, “Which of us you talking to?”
Shocked, Fusco said, “Stan!”
Ellen said to Parker, “You finished with me now? Can I get back to what I was doing?”
“I’m finished,” Parker told her. “Thanks.”
She left the room, and Parker turned to Devers. “What about that checking account?”
The way Devers was smiling, he’d thought of something. He said, “You know the song about the little tin box?”
“No. What’s the idea?”
“I didn’t want to put all my cash in the bank,” Devers said. “All I’d do was put in enough money to cover my checks and keep a small steady balance. But most of my money keep in in a box in the closet in the bedroom here.”
Parker said, “Why?”
Devers grinned and shrugged his shoulders, being boyish and innocent. “I don’t know, it’s just the way I’ve always done it. I guess I’m like King Midas or something. I like to have my money where I can look at it. You have to have a checking account these days, you can’t send bills through the mail and money orders are too much trouble, so what the heck I’ve got an account. But the money isn’t real to me if it’s in the bank. I like to be able to open my box and see the money there.”
Fusco was frowning at Devers as though he couldn’t understand what the boy was up to, but Parker could see it. It was the kind of offbeat approach to money a kid might have. If Devers could pull it off.
Parker said, “Let’s see this little tin box.”
Devers held up a hand. “Give me time,” he said. “I’ll have it when it’s needed.”
“You going to go buy a new box?”
“Hell, no. I’m going to have the little old box I’ve carried with me ever since high school, the battered old box that went with me to Texas, to New Mexico, to the Aleutians, and now here. Don’t you worry, Mr Parker, that box is going to look
“Not overdone.”
“You mean, decals from the different places?” Devers laughed. “I can be subtle, Mr Parker,” he said.
Parker said, “How much you got left in this little box?”
Devers frowned. “I’m not sure. Not much, after all the stuff I bought. It depends when we do it. If it’s the next Payroll, that’s next Tuesday—”
“Too soon.”
“Fine. Then I’ll have maybe six, seven hundred.”
You’ve got the math worked out? So they can add up your income and your outgo and it’ll work?”
Oh, sure. I could go up to twelve hundred and still be within the possible.” Devers grinned and said, “But I like to leave a little slack, it adds that touch of credibility.”
“Give me a list of people at these different places,” Parker said, “that saw the box.”
Devers looked startled, but recovered quickly, saying “Nobody. I didn’t let anybody know I had it.”
“Why not?”
“Here and there in the Air Force, Mr Parker, you run into a thief.”
Parker considered, and then nodded. “All right,” he said. “It should cover. If you can run it right.”
“I can run it,” Devers said.
“With a cop leaning on you?”
“Cops have leaned on me before,” Devers said.
“For something this big?”
“No. But I can do it.”
The worst thing about the boy was his confidence. He was smart, he was fast, he was capable, but he knew he was all those things and that could hurt. But he’d been running his dodge at the finance office almost a year without being caught out, so maybe his confidence wouldn’t be a liability. Parker was now willing to take a chance.
He said, “Answer me one question. Straight.”
Devers spread his hands. “If I can.”
“You’ve got a nice thing going at this finance office. It seems safe and sure and profitable. This knockover’s got to be risky. Why not stick with what you’ve got?”
“First,” Devers said, “I’ve only got seven more months of this gravy train. If I re-enlist I’m bound to get transferred out pretty soon, probably overseas again. Besides, I’m not all that happy with Air Force life. So when I get out, where am I? I’ve got a car, some clothes, a few hundred in cash, and a nice way to cut the pot in an Air Force finance office. Big deal. I go to work someplace else, maybe in a bank or something, and it takes me a while to figure an angle. Maybe they’re tougher than the Air Force, in fact they probably are, so maybe I don’t figure an angle at all. The point is, what I’ve got is fine for right now, but what about the future?”
