A noon plane on a summer Monday to a third-level city in the hinterlands; there weren’t many passengers. The tourists had done their traveling on the weekend, the businessmen had taken the earlier morning plane, and all that was left was oddities like Stan Devers. Checking in at the gate, he saw no more than a dozen other passengers in the plastic seats there, all gazing moodily out the big windows at the white plane waiting to take them aboard. Of course, it was still fifteen minutes before takeoff time, but he doubted the plane would be very full when it left.
He carried a black attache case and a black raincoat. Between them, they contained everything he needed to travel with. Getting his ticket back from the check-in clerk, he walked over to the side wall of the waiting area and sat in a chair that gave him equal views of the windows and the check-in desk. Five minutes later he saw a huge bald man arrive and hand over his ticket, and he grinned to himself. Now why would a man mountain like that be going to Tyler this fine morning, unless he was another member of Parker’s team?
* * *
Dan Wycza accepted his ticket back, muttered a thank you, and moved into the waiting area, looking around for a seat away from the other passengers. He saw a kid sort of grinning at him from over by the side wall, ignored him, and sat down in the front row, right near the plate-glass view of the airplane. Putting his old brown-leather bag on the floor at his feet, he took out the health magazine he’d been reading and went on with the article about the skin-drying effects and other disadvantages of sunlight.
Wycza hadn’t seen Parker in almost ten years, not since the time a bunch of them had knocked over a whole town together —banks and jewelry stores and everything. Copper Canyon, North Dakota. What a mess they’d made of that place, even more than they’d intended. Since then Wycza had done a number of jobs, none of them as big or as gaudy as that Copper Canyon business, but they’d kept him in wheat germ and yogurt. Whenever things had gotten slow he’d gone back to his other trade, wrestling, but given his choice, he preferred armed robbery. It was always better to be paid in thousands than in hundreds.
He felt eyes on him. He was sensitive to that kind of thing, being a big man and completely bald, sensitive to being stared at, and he didn’t like it. He glanced around, irritated, and it was the young guy over by the wall. Grinning at him, as though he knew something about something. And not shifting his eyes away when Wycza glowered at him. In the end, it was Wycza himself who looked away, facing front again and trying unsuccessfully to go on reading the article in the magazine.
That was the only thing wrong with this life, the fear of arrest. Could that possibly be a cop over there, could some old score have suddenly blown up, could he be on a wanted list without knowing it? This wouldn’t be the first time a guy squealed on everybody else he knew in order to keep from doing a little time himself, and an airport was a natural place to look for a wanted man.
Guardedly, Wycza looked around the waiting area, but he couldn’t see any more of them. Just the one grinning clown over by the wall, who was still looking at him.
Waiting for the boarding to start? Waiting to collar him when he started toward the plane?
Wycza found himself wishing he had a gun in his luggage, despite the danger of air marshal searches.
He had never taken a fall, had never spent even one night in jail, and he wanted it to stay that way. Because he knew what would happen to him in jail, he would die there. A year, two years at the most, and Dan Wycza would be dead.
There were things he needed in order to stay alive, things beyond the simple food and shelter and clothing the prison would supply. Exercise, for instance. He needed to be able to run, to run for miles and to do it every day. He needed to work out in gyms whenever he wanted. He had to keep using his body, or it would dry up and die, he knew that with utter certainty.
And women. He needed women almost as much as he needed exercise. And special foods: steak, and milk, and green vegetables, all properly cooked and not steam-tabled till all the nutrition was out of them. And food supplements, vitamin pills and mineral pills and protein pills.
Not in jail. In jail he wouldn’t be able to exercise, not properly. And there’d be no women, and none of the food or pills he needed. In jail he would shrivel up, his teeth would rot, his muscles would sag, his body would shrink in on itself and start even before he was dead to decay.
He wasn’t going to jail. If it came down to it, if it was down to it right here and now, he wasn’t going to jail. There are two ways to die, fast and slow, and he’d rather go out the fast way. He wouldn’t go to jail because in order to put him in jail they’d have to lay hands on him, and before they could lay hands on him they’d have to kill him.
Movement. Wycza lifted his head, and faintly reflected in the plate glass in front of him he could see the young guy coming this way. Wycza carefully folded his magazine and put it away in his jacket pocket. Every muscle in his big body was tensed.
The young guy passed between groupings of plastic seats and stopped in front of the glass, just to Wycza’s right, looking out at the plane. Wycza kept his head down, watching the guy from under his brows, and after a minute the guy turned and gave him a cheerful smile and said, “Hello, there.”
Wycza lifted his head. He felt dangerous, and he looked dangerous. He said, “Something?”
The young guy didn’t seem troubled. Still smiling, he said, “I wonder if you know a friend of mine in Tyler.”
What’s this? Wycza, frowning massively, said, “No. I don’t know anybody in Tyler.”
“This friend is named Parker,” the young guy said.
A cop. A definite cop. “Never heard of him,” Wycza said.
“He lives on Elm Way,” the young guy said.
“Don’t ring a bell,” Wycza said.
The young guy’s expression began to change; doubt was creeping in. “Are you sure? I could have sworn you were somebody on your way to see my friend.”
“Not me, friend,” Wycza said. “You got the wrong guy.”
The guy shook his head, obviously all at sea. “Well, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I troubled you.”
“Yeah, sure.”
