He sat up. Small and slender, with long wavy hair that made him look like Christ’s kid brother, Tommy Carpenter was twenty-four, looked sixteen, and felt eighty. “No rest, man,” he said. “I feel worse than I did before.”
“It’s no good when we’re moving, baby,” Noelle said. “I told you that before. The body just doesn’t rest when the car’s in motion.”
“Right, right.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “Find a phone, okay?”
“Sure.”
His shoes were somewhere in the scramble in the back of the bus. He found one with no trouble, but then had to root around through clothing and food and all sorts of crap before he came up with the other. Shod, he crawled to the front and clambered his way into the passenger seat.
They were traveling through the fringes of the city, residential sprawl all around them. Noelle said, “I think I got off the Interstate too soon.”
“Where the hell are we?”
“Pretty close. There’s something open.”
It was a bar. Noelle stopped and Tommy went inside. He had to ignore the hostile stares of the customers, but he was used to that; the straights never did seem to get used to the existence of freaks. He went into the phone booth, got the motel’s number from Information, dialed, and was put through to Ed Mackey’s room, where the phone was answered by a female voice. Tommy asked her, “Is Ed there?”
“Second.”
The next voice was Mackey’s: cheerful, tough, open. “Yeah?”
“This is Tommy.”
”Yeah. Where are you?”
“Somewhere in town.”
“Come on out. We’re gonna meet at nine.”
“Be right there,” Tommy said, and hung up, and went back out to the bus, where Noelle had opened a can of tunafish and put together a sandwich of white bread and American cheese. Taking them, he said, “You eat already?”
“Little while ago. We go straight on?”
“Yeah, they’re meeting at nine.”
Noelle kept driving while Tommy ate, and a few blocks later she found a small grocery store open and stopped to get a couple cold cans of Coke. Tommy washed down the tunafish and sandwich with Coke, and was finished eating by the time they got to the motel and drove in. Tommy said, “You remember his room number?”
“You said one thirty-seven.”
“Right.”
There was a car already in the slot in front of that unit. Tommy said, “I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
“There’s a parking lot around front, by the restaurant. I’ll wait there.”
“Fine.” He gave her a kiss and got out of the bus, and she drove it away. He paused to brush crumbs off himself and organize his clothes and general appearance a little bit—smoothing down his hair with his palms—and then went over and knocked on the door numbered 137.
Ed Mackey himself opened the door. “Hey, man,” he said, grinning. “Come on in.”
Tommy had worked with Ed twice before, but this was the first time Ed had been the one to bring him in on a job. It implied more trust, more liking, a whole different level in the interpersonal relationship. Tommy was very self-aware and self-conscious as he greeted Ed and walked into the room; he was interested in what this new kind of relationship was going to be.
The woman who had answered the phone wasn’t in the room, but three other men were, none of whom Tommy had ever met before. All three gave him neutral expressions, and he liked that; people on this side of the law seemed more prepared to accept differences between individuals.
Ed Mackey made the introductions; the new names were Parker and Stan Devers and Lou Sternberg. They all said hello back and forth and nodded, but nobody offered to shake hands.
Of the three, Devers was the closest to Tommy in age, probably only two or three years older. But his appearance was much straighter, more like the young guys in television commercials. Sternberg was short and fat and sour-looking, as though he had stomach trouble. Parker was big and lean and tough-looking, as though he were brooding about somebody he was mad at who wasn’t at the moment in this room. Parker reminded Tommy of somebody, but he couldn’t quite remember who it was.
After the introductions, Ed Mackey outlined the job. They were going to hijack a truckload of paintings. They already had a buyer, and the price had been fixed.
Stan Devers asked the first question: “We’re going to take them while they’re in transit. Where are they now? Here?”
“No,” Mackey said. “They were, and Parker and I looked them over while they were on display here. But they moved on to Indianapolis; that’s where they are now.”
Sternberg said, “You studied their method of shipment?”
“Between here and Indianapolis,” Mackey said. “We figure they’ll use the same system every time.”
Sternberg asked, “What was the system?”
