Devers was blank. “Back to Ellen’s place, where else?”
Parker said, “Some time tomorrow the law’s going to find those three bodies up by the lodge. Either tomorrow or the next day they’ll get a fingerprint report, and one of those bodies is going to belong to a guy named Martin Fusco. They’re going to look around, and they’re going to see an ex-wife of Martin Fusco’s living right here in town. Coincidence. They’ll go talk to the ex-wife, and they’ll find out she’s shacked up with a guy from the finance office out at the air base. Coincidence number two.”
Devers was pale. “Christ on a crutch. How do I get out of it? I just keep saying no. What can they do? I keep saying no, it’s a coincidence, what can they do about it?”
Webb, his mouth full of pound cake, said, “They’ll lean on you, buddy. They’ll lean hard.”
“I can hold out.”
Parker said, “Can Ellen? They’ll lean on her, too.”
“I’d say kill her,” Webb said thoughtfully, “but then they’d lean on you harder. And then if they get you they’ve got you on murder one.”
Devers was looking from one to the other. “What do I do?”
“You take your forty thousand,” Parker said, “and you go away.”
“But I’ve got to finish out my enlistment!”
Parker shook his head. “Not now. Between the woman and him upstairs, they’ve screwed you.”
“Only if they get Fusco’s body,” Devers said.
Webb said, “Forget it. You’re pretty safe to drive around in town, but you go out on the road now they’ll be all over you. You can’t even get to the lodge without going by the base.”
“So they stop me. I’m clean.”
“Finance office clerk. Driving around four o’clock in the morning. No destination.”
Parker added, “If they pick you up on the way back, you won’t be clean. Not with Fusco in the car.”
Devers was getting frantic. “God damn it, there’s got to be
“You’re going to find the registration to Godden’s car,” Parker told him. “In case you get stopped. Then you’re going to take his car and go over to the house and get Ellen and the kid. If she doesn’t want to come with you, you’ll kill her.”
“I can’t—”
“Then call us and tell us you can’t and give us a shot at making a run for it.”
Devers looked from Parker to Webb to Parker. “All right,” he said. “I get her. Then what?”
“You bring her here. If the law finds her, she’ll tell them about Godden, and we need Godden clean so we can hole up here. So she has to come here, too.”
“How long do we hole up here?”
“Two or three days. Till the first heat lets up.”
Devers made an angry bitter gesture. “Then what do I do?”
“Pick a new name for yourself, buddy,” Webb told him. “And keep your head down. And hope for the best.”
“You mean be on the run the rest of my life.”
Webb grinned, “Like in the movies? Sleeping in hay-lofts, riding in freight cars, that what you mean?” He shook his head. “I been wanted under my own name for fifteen years. Parker here, he’s wanted under more names than he can remember. We both been on the run, we’re always on the run. It’s a nice easy run if you know how to take it.”
“You were in Puerto Rico,” he said.
Webb spread his hands. “There, you see? On the run, at the Hilton hotel.”
7
When the two plainclothesmen left, Parker came out of the kitchen and made a show of putting his revolver away. “That was nice,” he said.
Godden was sweating, the adhesive bandage on his forehead making a dull tan patch against the gleaming pale skin. “I wouldn’t want to go through that twice,” he said. “Not for a million dollars.”
Webb and Devers came in from the other side. “You did it for a hundred G,” Webb said, “and you don’t even get that.”
Devers didn’t say anything. He was resigned now to the impossibility of his going back, but he hated Godden for having caused it. He stood there and glared at Godden, his fists clenched at his sides.
Godden nervously touched his bandage. Do you think they believed me about this?”
“They believed everything,” Parker told him. “You did good.”
The story Parker had given him to tell tied together neatly enough, being grounded sufficiently in truth. When the phone had rung at ten minutes to seven this morning it was Parker who’d answered it, saying he was Godden. It was a reporter on the line, representing one of the wire services and phoning from Syracuse. Parker, being
