the work. Then all three went back to the Dodge, Parker driving, the other two in the back seat with their change of clothing. Parker backed the Dodge out to the road, and he and Devers moved the two Plymouths into the side road, just deep enough to be invisible to anyone driving by. Devers was down to socks and T-shirt and uniform trousers by now, and kept up a muffled yelling of “Ouch, ouch, ouch” as he ran back along the stony dirt road with Parker to the Dodge. Parker got behind the wheel again, Devers slid once more into the back, and Parker drove north.
He caught up with the truck, doing about fifty, just before the town of Oconee, and stayed behind it the next few miles to the gas station south of Pana with the
False dawn was a blurred gray line far to the east, but the land was still dark. When Parker stopped the Dodge and switched off its headlights, and when at the side of the station Tommy did the same with the truck, the blackness in contrast was at first almost total. Parker opened the car door and the interior light went on, but it showed almost nothing away from the car. He stepped out onto the tarmac, aware of Mackey and Devers doing the same, both of them now in their regular clothing, and when the doors were slammed the night was complete again.
The bulk of the station itself was the only guide. Parker walked carefully around it, not wanting to trip over any unseen curbs, and came to the second bulk of the truck. He touched the metal side of the trailer, and he could amost feel the paintings inside it: canvas, wood, oils. Kirwan and the department store on Mother’s Day; Beaghler and the six statuettes from San Simeon; and the third try was beginning to work out.
But just beginning. There was still a lot to do.
Yellow lights came on—dim, but enough to see by. They were the parking lights of a dark green Reo truck cab with red lettering on the doors:
Lou Sternberg climbed carefully down from the driver’s seat of the Reo. He was still dressed too warmly for the weather, including the same billed cap as before, but now instead of the raincoat he was wearing a short brown leather jacket with a zip-up front. The jacket and cap, with green work pants and heavy shoes, converted him from a short stout accountant to a short stout truck driver. He came around to meet the others at the front of the Reo and said, by way of greeting, “Damp tonight. Hell on the sinuses.”
“Should remind you of home,” Tommy said.
Sternberg gave him a look of disapproval. “Have you ever been in London?” He was taking a pack of sugarless gum from his jacket pocket.
“Naw,” Tommy said. “Too damp for me.”
“Don’t talk about what you don’t know about.” Sternberg unwrapped one piece of the gum.
Parker said, “Let’s go.”
Sternberg nodded. “Right.” He put the gum in his mouth, stuck the wrapper in his jacket pocket, and led the way around to the back of the Reo cab. Parker followed him, while the other three went off to do other things. They’d rehearsed all this, but never with this little light.
At the rear of the cab, on the flat greasy surface where a trailer would be hitched, there were instead two ladders tied down with lengths of rope. Working silently, Parker and Sternberg untied them and tossed the ropes into the cab. Then they carried the ladders over to the stolen truck, one on each side.
The others had gotten the rest of the equipment from the trunk of the Dodge: spray cans of red enamel and large cardboard stencils, each sheet two feet by three and containing just one letter.
It was difficult working in the dark. Mackey and Devers on one side, Parker and Tommy on the other, they fixed the stencils high on the trailer sides with masking tape, while Lou Sternberg went about the process of unhitching the trailer from the Mack cab that had brought it here. He finished separating all hoses and wiring, and drove the Mack cab out of the way, just as the stencils were all put up; in the dim glow of the Reo’s parking lights, the cut-out letters could dimly be read: GREAT LAKES, stretching most of the length of each side of the trailer.
Tommy and Devers, being the lightest, stayed up on the ladders and did the spraying, while Parker and Mackey dragged each ladder backward across the tarmac. At the same time, Sternberg was putting the Reo cab in position, though he didn’t try to connect it to the trailer while the spraying was still going on. Instead, he climbed down from the cab with a Wisconsin license plate and a screwdriver, and switched the rear plate on the trailer.
The sky to the east was getting lighter. A car went by, southbound, without pausing, and a minute later a pickup truck went past heading north. The stencils were pulled down from the sides of the truck and packed away again with the empty spray cans in the trunk of the Dodge. Sternberg began attaching the Reo cab to the trailer while Mackey took a short crowbar and popped open the trailer’s rear doors.
Immediately a siren sounded, loud and abrasive, a one-tone buzzing too loud to shout over. But they’d expected that, been planning for it. While Parker and Mackey put the ladders in the truck, stuffing them in among the tied-down crates, Devers traced the siren to its source and cut the wires. The silence after the noise seemed a kind of sound of its own, swelling and falling.
Tommy had kept out one spray can of paint, and was now spraying the doors of the Mack cab, removing the company name. The red he was spraying on didn’t match the original red of the body exactly, but it didn’t matter; used trucks often enough have a former company name painted out in a sloppy way.
Sternberg finished hitching cab and trailer together as Parker and Mackey reclosed the trailer doors. They wouldn’t shut as neatly as before, but by slamming them they could be made to stick.
The Mack cab engine started with a roar, and then the headlights flashed on. Tommy backed it around in a tight U, and Parker studied the right side of the trailer as the headlights swept across it. There had been a very little running of paint, not much. Not enough to worry about. With a cab of a different make and a different color, with a different license plate on the back, and with a company name spread across both sides, it was no longer the same truck. Sternberg had registration papers for the cab that would hold up if necessary. There was no way to pass an inspection of the trailer except to avoid one, and the way to do that was to keep ahead of pursuit. Move fast, and keep moving.
All the lights of the truck switched on, and Sternberg climbed down from the cab to walk around and make a quick inspection. It would be stupid to get stopped for a missing light, and then be arrested for grand larceny.
The Mack cab had finished making its turn, and now bounced out from the gas station tarmac to the road, and headed north. It was about forty-five miles to Springfield. Tommy would leave the Mack cab there, near the railroad station, and then connect up with Noelle and the Volkswagen Microbus. The two of them would head straight west
