“You’ll want a receipt,” she said.
“It’s the only way I get reimbursed,” he said. She stamped the bill paid, gave it to him, and scooped the bills off the desk. “Thank you for staying with us, sir. Do come again.”
Parker went back outside. It was a good day, sunny but with a bite in the air. He walked down the row to his unit and unlocked the door. The cleaning girl’s cart was two doors farther along. He went inside, left the door open, and packed his one suitcase, leaving out only a long-sleeve high-neck black pullover sweater, a dark gray sport jacket and a quiet blue-and-black tie. He put the tie in the side pocket of the sport jacket, set the closed suitcase on the floor and lay down on the bed with his eyes closed to wait.
He sensed when the light changed, meaning there was someone standing in the doorway. He opened his eyes and it was the cleaning girl. “I’ll be out of here by twelve-thirty,” he said, and she went away.
It was quarter past twelve when he heard the tires grate on gravel in front of his room. He sat up, saw the Pontiac coming to a stop out there, and got off the bed again.
It was Devers, on his lunch hour. He got out of the car as Parker stepped out into the sunlight, carrying his suitcase in his right hand, his sport jacket and sweater in his left.
Devers said, “You want to drive?”
“Why?”
Devers laughed and shook his head. “I’ll tell you the truth, it’s because I’m a nervous wreck. I’m really shaky today.”
Parker nodded. “I’ll drive,” he said. He put his gear in the back seat and got behind the wheel as Devers trotted around and came in on the passenger side.
Devers had left the engine running. Parker put it in reverse, backed it around in a tight half-circle, switched into drive and joined the thin stream of westbound traffic on the highway.
Devers said, “You get used to it after a while?”
“After a while,” Parker agreed. “Some guys always get flutters before. Some always get them after.”
“When do you get yours?”
“I don’t.”
He wasn’t boasting, it was the truth. The situation they were going into tonight would only make him colder and colder, harder and harder, surer and surer. He knew everything was organized, he knew the way it was supposed to come off, the step-by-step working out of the prepared script, and he was like a cold-blooded stage manager on opening night; no jitters, just a hard determination that everything would happen the way it was supposed to happen. He knew that the others, the actors, were all atremble, but that wasn’t for him. Stage managers don’t tremble.
Not even when something goes wrong. That was what he was there for tonight, just as much as his pre- planned actions. He was there also to be ready for the unexpected, to improvise if anything went wrong, to keep the production safe and moving no matter what. So he couldn’t get the flutters before or during, and it didn’t make any sense to get them after. So he just didn’t get the flutters.
Devers wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Boy, I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know how you go about getting used to something like this.”
“You keep doing it,” Parker told him.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Just this side of North Bangor there was a white clapboard house with a sign hanging from a tree out front reading: TOURISTS. Behind the house were half a dozen cabins, miniature versions of the house. A black Buick station wagon was parked next to one of the cabins. Devers gestured a thumb at it as they drove by, saying, “They haven’t left yet.”
“They’ll be along,” Parker said.
“They” were the other three men, Jake Kengle and Philly Webb and Bill Stockton, all of whom had come into town on Monday, had listened to the outline of the caper, and had elected to be dealt in. The station wagon was Webb’s, and the only constant about it was its brand; it never stopped being a Buick. But it hadn’t been black more than a week or two, and would be some color other than black by the end of this week. And the Maryland license plates it sported now were only one of the many sets it had known in the past and would know in the future. Webb prided himself out loud on having attained the untraceable car, but Parker thought it likelier that Webb just liked to have something to play with.
He took the right turn before Monequois that bypassed the town and went directly out to the air base. He stopped before the main gate and Devers said, “See you tonight.”
“Right.”
Devers climbed out and walked away toward the gate. Parker turned the car toward Monequois.
He reached the Fusco house at one o’clock, and put the car in place beside the house. The day was beginning to warm up a little, but it wouldn’t get much above seventy before starting back down again two or three hours from now.
Parker went into the house. Fusco was seated at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of cereal. He called, “I’m babysitting. Ellen’s off to see her shrink. Said she’ll be back a little after two.”
Parker didn’t care where she was or when she’d be back. He said, “Did you get the coats?”
“In the bedroom closet.”
“Good.”
Parker left the living-room and went down the short hall to the master bedroom. It was neat and plain and functional and impersonal, like the rest of the house. It was Ellen Fusco’s room, and either she or he had managed to create a room that gave no sign of occupancy at all. The dresser top was bare, there was no clothing on the chair beside the bed, the nightstands held neat metallic lamps and clean ashtrays, the bed was anonymously and
