the tourists and natives hustling in the outside world while Claire’s arms reached up and folded around him.
He sat there in the living room and let his mind drift wherever it wanted to go until his watch read four o’clock. Then he got to his feet and went out to the kitchen and said, “Time to go.”
“Right,” said Webb. He was out of the hand being played, so he got to his feet, took his handful of bills from the table and lucked them away in a pocket, and yawned and stretched, his arms seeming grotesquely long for his stubby body when he spread them out.
The other three finished the hand, which Kengle won with jacks over threes.
Raking in the pot, Kengle grinned and said, “Looks like my luck’s changing. It’s about time.”
Stockton said, “Mine better change before tonight.”
“How’d you do?” Fusco asked Kengle.
“Made about eighteen.”
“I’m ahead three,” Webb said.
“I took a bath,” Stockton said, getting to his feet.
Fusco said, “Parker, I’ll be with you in a minute. I’ve got to say so long to Ellen.”
“Bring the costumes out with you.”
“Right.”
Stockton said, “Where’s the armament?”
“This way.”
Stockton and Kengle followed Parker down the hall to the kid’s bedroom. She was in bed now for her afternoon nap, all wrapped up in a filthy blanket she carried around with her all the time. Parker opened the closet door and handed out the cartons to the other two, who took them and tiptoed out of the room. Parker shut the door of the closet and followed them.
Fusco was still in the bedroom with Ellen. Kengle, his arms full of boxes claiming to contain road-racer sets, stood in the middle of the living-room and gestured toward the bedroom with his head, saying, “Marty getting a little off the ex-wife?”
“No,” Parker said. “He’s just being a good guest, thanking her for all the breakfasts.”
Kengle made a face and nodded. “That sounds like Marty,” he said. “You should of seen him in stir. Polite to the screws.”
Webb, his hand on the doorknob, said, “We’ll see you out there, Parker.” “Right.”
The three went out, Webb leading the way and the other two carrying the cartons. They were put in the back of the station wagon and a minute later the wagon pulled away.
Parker stood by the open door, waiting. It was three or four minutes before Fusco came out, holding the tunics up by their hangers, a worried expression on his face. “Boy, Parker,” he said. “She’s really nervous. I guess me taking a fall really shook her up.”
“She’ll survive,” Parker said. “You want to put those things in a bag or something. Somebody’ll see us going out with those things.”
“Nobody pays any attention in a neighborhood like this,” Fusco said. “Nobody’s looked at either of us any time we came in or out here.”
“That’s because they can figure us, even if they’re wrong. Ellen’s a divorcee, we’re men. But those are crazy gold pajama tops, and people’ll remember them. We don’t want the law around here tomorrow, asking Ellen where’d the guys go with the gold pajama tops.”
“And the gold. Okay, you’re right. Just a minute.”
Fusco got a brown paper bag from the kitchen, took the tunics off their hangers, rolled them one at a time and stuffed them into the bag. When he was done, he and Parker went out to the Pontiac. Parker’s suitcase and sweater and sport jacket were still on the back seat, and Fusco now added the bag of tunics to them. Parker got behind the wheel.
They drove east out of Monequois, past the air base, and left up Hiker Road. They went past the South Gate and continued on northward another four miles, until they came to a dirt road leading uphill away to the left. They took this and Parker shifted into low. The road climbed steeply, with sharp curves. Never anything more than a track beaten into and scraped out of the mountainside by a bulldozer, it had now been out of use for three years and showed it. Deep meandering grooves showed where the runoff from mountain rains was making paths for itself toward the valley. Here and there tree branches hung low, scraping the roof of the car, and in two spots thick fallen branches lay beside the road where Parker and Devers and Fusco had shoved them out of the way the first time they’d driven up here.
It was three miles, almost all uphill, all on minimal road, until at last they came to the burned-out lodge. It had been a large building, two storeys high, of stone and log, and it had been almost entirely gutted by fire. A garage behind it, originally large enough for a dozen cars, had been partially burned away, with now only one end of it still intact, enough for three cars. Another out-building, a large work-shed, hadn’t been touched at all.
Of the original building only the stone walls were left, extending from three to seven feet up at different spots around the perimeter. Inside these walls was a jumble of black lines, the charred remains of beams and walls, made anonymous and smooth by three summers and winters. Grass was growing here and there inside, little areas of green.
Half a dozen “No Trespassing” signs had been fixed to trees or the remaining stone walls, but there was no sign anyone had been around recently to see if the signs were being obeyed. The garage and work-shed were both stripped and bare, and it was obvious no one was in any hurry to rebuild Andrews’ Lodge. It looked, in fact, suspiciously like the result of somebody’s having burned his business down for the insurance, which doesn’t happen when the business is showing a steady profit. Andrews’ Lodge had probably been losing a lot of its business to Canadian hunting areas, which hadn’t been as extensively hunted, so that game was still plentiful.
