Andrews said, “Turn it down a little, George.”
“Sure.” Uhl turned it down, but then the announcer came on, gave the name of the record that had just played and then said, “This just in. The Laurel Avenue branch of the Merchants and Farmers Trust was robbed this morning of nearly thirty-three thousand dollars. In a daring daylight holdup, four men— “
“Thirty-three thousand?” Weiss looked tragic.
“Hush,” Uhl said, and turned the radio up again.
The announcer had more to say, mostly in a daring-daylight holdup vein, all the journalistic cliches pouring out, even finishing with the authorities confident of early arrests.
“They’d better arrest each other,” Uhl said, grinning, and as another record started he turned the radio down again.
Weiss was gazing at the strongbox as though it had betrayed him. “Thirty-three thousand,” he said. “A crummy eight grand each.”
“We knew it could be low,” Andrews said. “We knew it could be in the forty-thousand-dollar range.”
“Range? You call that a range? It could’ve been in the sixty-thousand-dollar range, too! Fifteen thousand a man!”
“Eight thousand isn’t bad,” Andrews said. “Not for one morning’s work.”
This time Weiss wasn’t going to let him forget the time spent in preparation. “What one morning’s work? Three week’s work, dammit, and a huge risk, a goddam huge risk, and for what? Eight thousand stinking dollars.”
“I’ll take your share, you don’t want it,” Uhl said.
“You shut up, George,” Weiss said.
Andrews said, “Let’s open it up. Who knows, maybe they counted wrong.”
“They didn’t count wrong,” Weiss said, “and you know it. But go ahead, open it up. We might as well look at the damn stuff.”
Parker opened the box with a hammer and screwdriver, and it took a while. In the meantime Uhl got cans of beer out of their portable refrigerator and opened them for everybody. Then they all sat around in the chairs and watched Parker pound the locks.
When at last the box was opened it was only half full, lined with neatly wrapped stacks of bills. Parker stuck a hand in among them, messing up the stacks and said, “The singles and fives are all new. We’ll have to leave them.”
Weiss said, “You got more good news? It wouldn’t be Confederate money, would it?”
“It won’t add up to much,” Parker told him.
“You know what kind of day this is?” Weiss said. “I’ll tell you what kind of day this is. The kind of day this is, we’ll come down off this hill a couple days from now, the government will have devalued the dollar. How much is singles and fives?”
“Maybe a thousand,” Parker said.
“Another two hundred fifty dollars bye-bye,” Weiss said, and Uhl shot him in the head.
Four
Parker dove through the window elbows first, the rotted wood and shards of glass spraying out in front of him. He ducked his head, landed hard on his right shoulder, rolled over twice, and was running before he was well on his feet. He heard shots behind him but didn’t know if they were coming at him or not. He ran for the corner of the barn, and as he went around it a bullet chunked into the wood beside his head, spitting splinters at his cheek.
He hit the dirt, rolled some more, and wound up against the side of the barn and out of sight of the house. He reached inside his coat, and his hand closed on an empty holster.
Where was it? There were no more shots from the house. Parker stood there a few seconds more, his hand still touching the empty holster, and then he moved up to the edge of the barn and cautiously looked around.
A bullet whistling by made him duck back again, but not before he saw his revolver lying in plain view in the dirt outside the window. It had come out when he’d landed.
Uhl hadn’t seen it yet — he’d had too much else to think about so far — but he would. And when he did he’d come out of that house and hunt Parker down.
Andrews must be dead. And Weiss was definitely dead.
Parker moved away from the corner of the barn. If he could get inside this structure, get into one of the cars, be ready to run Uhl down with it when Uhl came in, there’d be a chance. But the only window on his side was high up in the wall, too high to reach. The only ground-floor openings into the barn were on the two sides Uhl could see from the house.
It was no good. He couldn’t fight Uhl. With all this open ground around the barn and house he couldn’t sneak up on Uhl.
The only thing left to do was get away from here.
On this side of the house the land fell away again into woods. There was maybe forty yards of open ground, and then the trees. Heavy woods covered the entire valley on this side.
“Parker! You left your gun behind!”
Parker moved away from the barn. He began to run down the hill.
“Parker! Come back for your gun!”
Parker bent low, and just before he reached the trees shooting started behind him. He heard the bullets
