THERE WAS no way out.
Parker spent over an hour going slowly around the perimeter of Fun Island, and there was no usable exit anywhere except the main gate he’d come through on the way in. Where he’d been seen by the cops.
The park was a large square shape, completely enclosed by the eight-foot-high board fence that was painted gray on the outside but on the inside was an endless mural of ocean, with ships and birds and distant islands painted on it. The whole idea of the place was that it was an island, cut off from the cares of the ordinary civilized world, and in their own way the people who’d built the park had succeeded just fine. Inside the fence, all the way around, there was a stream or moat, about ten feet wide, now with a thin crust of ice on it, under which the water could be seen swirling along, black and cold. It was impossible to guess how deep it was, though probably not very. And it must be connected with a real stream some way, or it would have been turned off for the winter.
Apparently the people who ran this place were afraid then summertime customers might turn into wintertime vandals, because three secondary exits were boarded shut, there were marks to show where footbridges had been removed leading to these exits, and — most important — above the fence all the way around the park ran two thick strands of wire, bearing at intervals signs saying WARNING — HIGH VOLTAGE.
There was a waist-high chain-link fence just inside the moat all the way around, probably meant to keep children from falling into the water. Parker walked along next to that fence, ignoring the structures behind him, studying the high board fence beyond the moat, the boarded-up exits, the two strands of wire.
There was no way out.
At first as he’d moved along, toting the satchel, he’d had a great feeling of urgency, an itch at the back of his neck, a conviction that any minute this place would fill up with law. He’d been seen by those cops at the parking-lot entrance, there was no question of it. Maybe they hadn’t picked up anything about the armored-car job yet on their radio, but they would soon. They’d follow the sound of the siren, the different groups of cops would compare notes, and they’d barrel in here after him. He wanted to be out again before they came in, but there just wasn’t any way to do it.
There wasn’t any chase either. He kept moving, he kept listening behind him, and nobody was coming into the park. He could hear sirens and noise from the other side of the fence when he went past the place where the armored car had been hit, but that was the closest the sound ever got. He didn’t know what was taking them so long to get themselves coordinated, but he’d take the extra time, he wouldn’t complain. Every minute they gave him was another minute in which he might find a way out of here.
But he didn’t. He was a big man, big and blocky, wearing rubber-soled shoes, dark trousers and a heavy dark zipper jacket closed up to the throat. He had a gun in the jacket pocket and a satchel full of money and a busted plan. He walked along beside the moat, studying the fence, seeing no way out, and didn’t waste time worrying about what might have happened. He might have found a better driver than Laufman. Laufman might have kept his head. Those cops might have stopped somewhere other than that parking-lot entrance. But none of it had worked that way, so he shoved it all out of his mind and thought about the situation he had and not what he might have had if things had gone different.
The situation he had was bad. He was in a box, he knew that by the time he was halfway around the perimeter of the park, and after that he kept going only because he was thorough, always thorough. But he was in a box, and the law had seen him climb in, and sooner or later the law would come in after him.
It looked bad. He had Claire waiting for him at the house on the lake a couple of thousand miles from here, and it was looking now as though the next word she’d get of Parker would be in the newspapers.
He was coming near the gate again, and he moved more and more slowly, more and more cautiously. The satchel was heavy now, but he didn’t change hands, he kept it in his left hand. When you carry something heavy it affects your muscle control in that arm, it makes you less accurate. Parker was saving his right hand in case he had to use the gun.
The gate was up ahead, and still shut. Were they waiting for somebody to show up with keys? Were they massed outside there, and the only delay was that somebody in some office downtown had to get out here with the keys to unlock the gate?
That could be it. The local law would know, as he hadn’t, that this was a box with only one exit. They didn’t have to knock the gate down and rush in after him, they could take their time. They already had him in a prison.
Parker turned at last and looked inward, at Fun Island. It was all little buildings, scaled-down houses, with little trees and even a couple of low hills to match. It was crowded and compact, with blacktop paths everywhere.
He could hide in here. There were millions of crannies, the place was nothing but hidden corners. He could hide.
But not forever. They’d find him, sooner or later. They’d just fan out from the gate and run their drag slowly through the park and sooner or later they’d turn him up.
What were they up to now? Parker moved on, coming down the last side and back to the gate again. He left the satchel against the rear of one of the low buildings and crept along the edge of the moat until he came to the entrance again.
Nothing. Nobody.
That didn’t make any sense. Why weren’t they massed out there, why wasn’t that space of sidewalk and road out there crawling with law?
Parker moved farther out, where he could see more, and there on the other side of the road was the black Lincoln, in the same place as when he’d first seen it. The police car was gone now, and in its place was a pale green Dodge station wagon. Both cars were empty.
No police. Nobody in sight at all.
By pulling back and looking through the gates at an acute angle he could see the spot on the parking-lot fence where Laufman had rolled the Ford, and there was nothing there now but a great sagging indentation in the chain- link fence. The Ford was gone, the cops probably had Laufman and Grofield. And they had to know Parker had the money.
But where were they? None of this made any sense. Hadn’t they seen him?
They had. He was sure of it, the four of them just across the street, two cops and two men in overcoats, all four of them looking directly at him. They’d seen him, all right, they’d stared at him.
