into Missouri, crossing the Mississippi at Hannibal, and then turning north into Iowa. They planned to spend tomorrow night in Davenport, and then take Interstate 80 east the next day. They had friends in Cleveland, and would get there sometime Thursday night. Mackey would phone them there before Sunday.
Sternberg finished walking around the truck and climbed back up into the cab. He started the engine and made a sweeping turn to take him out onto the highway just a minute behind Tommy, though he wouldn’t be able to travel as fast. He too went north, but it would only be for a few miles; at Pana he’d turn east on State Highway 16, take that over to Interstate 57, and head straight north to Chicago. He’d put the truck in a safe place there and wait for Mackey to call him with the arrangements for turning everything over to Griffith.
Parker and Mackey and Devers stood and watched the truck move away. After it left, there was still enough light to see by, with the eastern horizon graying almost to blue.
Mackey nodded in satisfaction. “We did it,” he said.
Parker said nothing. He turned away and walked over to the Dodge, and a second later the other two followed him.
Two
Mackey came in with a newspaper. “It says here they’ve got us,” he said.
Parker was lying on top of the made bed, dressed except for shirt and shoes. He sat up and said, “Let’s see that.”
“I don’t feel like I’m got,” Mackey said, grinning, and handed over the newspaper. “I’m going to go wake up Stan.”
Parker nodded, and looked at the paper as Mackey went out again. The robbery was the number two story on the front page, top left, with something at the UN on the right and a shipping strike in the middle. The headline was, MILLION DOLLAR ART TREASURES HIJACKED, which was already inaccurate. The story was a breathless and slightly garbled account of the robbery, padded with descriptions of some of the stolen paintings. The main story was continued on an inner page, but at the bottom of the front-page column was a separate box with its own headline: THIEVES CAPTURED. “Illinois State Police,” the item read, “announced this afternoon the capture of a part of the gang of art thieves near Galesburg. Also found was one of the vehicles used to transport the stolen paintings. Police anticipate a speedy round-up of the rest of the gang.”
Parker looked at his watch: five to six. He got off the bed and went over to switch on the television set, and stood there waiting for the six o’clock news to come on.
When Parker and Mackey and Devers had driven away from the gas station early this morning, they’d headed due south, winding up here in Nashville around noon. They’d taken three rooms at this motel and settled in to catch up a little on their sleep. Six hours wasn’t enough, but it would have to do. They’d left the Dodge back in Illinois, and the car they were driving now was clean, but it was still better to keep moving, get where they were going, finish the job as soon as possible.
If things weren’t already loused up.
A war movie was coming to an end on television; the bomber crippled, everybody wounded, all sagging across the French sky toward the Channel, with inter-cut shots of the nurse and the old man staring upward.
Mackey came back in, with Devers trailing after him, yawning and stretching and rubbing his eyes. Grinning, Mackey said, “What do you think of that paper? Show it to Stan.”
“I don’t like it,” Parker said, and told Devers, “It’s on the bed.”
Mackey’s grin turned puzzled. “What’s the matter? They grabbed the wrong people, that’s all. There’s none of us going to Galesburg.”
Parker said. “Galesburg is about twenty-five miles from Davenport. I figure they got Tommy and the girl.”
Devers, standing over by the bed with the paper in his hand, said, “I think you’re right. And the vehicle they got was the Volkswagen.”
Mackey said, “Then why do they say Galesburg? Tommy was getting out of Illinois, going up on the Iowa side.”
Devers said, “We pulled the job in Illinois. It’s the Illinois State Police making the announcement.” He patted the paper “They got a lot of things almost right here, so maybe they got the town almost right, too. Galesburg could be where the announcement came from.”
“We’ll see what the news says,” Parker said. On the set, the bomber had landed and the commercials were on.
Devers came over, carrying the newspaper, and all three stood there watching the set. It was a long three minutes of commercials and station identification before the news came on, and then the first two items were international and the next one a local thing concerning Nashville. But the fourth was the robbery and the capture. “The two suspects,” the announcer said, “in last night’s daring art robbery in downstate Illinois, captured early this afternoon in Davenport, Iowa—”
“Damn,” Devers said.
“—have been transferred to the Illinois state capital at Springfield.”
Film showed of the Volkswagen Microbus, with troopers and men in civilian clothes all over it. The announcer’s voice said, “The suspect’s vehicle, believed to have been used in removing at least some of the twenty-one paintings valued at nearly three quarters of a million dollars, is being gone over carefully for evidence which could lead to the capture of the rest of the gang and recovery of the stolen artworks. Police say the suspects, twenty- four-year-old Thomas Clark Carpenter and twenty-one-year-old Noelle Kay Brassell, deny any connection with the robbery, but that a positive identification has been made by Illinois State Troopers Robert Jarvis and Floyd MacAndrews, who were briefly held prisoner by the gang in the course of last night’s robbery.”
Mackey said, “I bet Tommy’s regretting that boot in the ass about now.”
The announcer was finished with the robbery news. As he went on to something else, Devers said to Mackey, “How much can we count on them?”
