fifteen years, they owned homes in the same Chicago suburb, their families visited back and forth, and it was beginning to seem that in a few years Elkins’ daughter Pam and Wiss’ son Jason would be getting married. Both wives knew what Elkins and Wiss did for a living, but the children and the cousins and the nieces and all the rest were kept in the dark. “We do specialty promotions,” Frank Elkins would say, if asked, and Ralph Wiss would nod. Specialty promotions.
Wiss was a safe man, a jugger, a man whose specialty was opening safes by whatever means was most appropriate. He was comfortable with liquid nitro and with plastic explosive, he was expert at peeling, he could drill out a combination lock or cut a circular hole in the top of a solid steel safe. He had helped to tunnel into vaults, to by-pass time locks and to remove wall safes entirely, so they could be worked on at leisure somewhere else. A small narrow man with a concentrated look, Wiss was a skilled craftsman, as devoted to his work as any fine jeweler.
Elkins was a general purpose man, a utility infielder. He would hold the gun, or carry the duffel bag full of cash, or keep an eye out the front window. He was the eyes and the muscles, complementing Wiss’ brain. They knew one another completely by now, trusted one another, and worked together with no waste motion.
The last time these two had seen Parker was in Copper Canyon, the time the whole town had been cleaned out. Before that, they’d worked with him in St. Louis, hitting a syndicate operation, a place where the local bookies’ comeback money was collected. Normally, people like Wiss and Elkins left syndicate places alone, but at the time Parker had had some sort of feud on with a boss named Bronson, and since it was bound to be a safe and profitable score, Wiss and Elkins had been happy to work it with him.
They didn’t talk much on the drive, being too comfortable with one another to need to force conversation. They did both wonder aloud about the score they were coming down to, but they didn’t worry about it. Elkins said, “If it’s Parker, it’s all right.”
“He gets gaudy sometimes,” Wiss said. He was a man with no taste for melodrama at all. “But safe,” Elkins said.
Wiss shrugged. He was always guarded, always kept a little in reserve. “It’s worth the drive,” he said.
* * *
Philly Webb drove the Buick west from Baltimore. The new blue paint job sparkled at him from the hood, the new license plates were a complementary blue from Delaware, and the new identification in the glove compartment and his hip pocket said that the Buick was registered to one Justin Baxter of Wilmington and that he himself was the same Justin Baxter.
Webb was a driver, like Mike Carlow, but he never had anything to do with racing. Robbery was his only profession, partying and gambling was where the money went, and the Buick was his single hobby.
This was his fifth Buick. He bought one every few years, buying it new and legit, straight out of a dealer’s window. But within a week a new car in his possession had completely lost its original identity and would never find it again. He switched engines so as to switch motor numbers, he altered serial numbers, he changed the paint job, he bought false registration and fake license plates. And after he’d had the car for a few months he would do the same thing all over again, changing things around, re-establishing yet another new identity. By the time he’d owned a car for three years, it would probably have operated under ten or twelve registrations, colors, and sets of license plates.
In addition to the periodic face lifts done mainly for the hell of it, Webb also completely redid his current Buick immediately after working a score. The blue paint on this car was less than three weeks old, but the car would be some other color within twenty-four hours of his returning to Baltimore. He prided himself on having attained the absolutely untraceable car, but in truth most of the changes he put his cars through were unnecessary, done more as a hobby than for any real reason.
Short and chunky and olive-complexioned, Webb had the chest and arms of a weight lifter, giving him a vaguely apelike look. He fit behind the wheel of a car with the naturalness of a cabdriver, and always seemed a little awkward when forced to walk. He had last worked with Parker in the air-base robbery with Stan Devers in Upstate New York. He’d come away with forty-two thousand out of that, every dollar of it long since spent, and he was looking forward to working with Parker again.
Forty
A murmur of voices woke Faran. He was very uncomfortable and he had a lousy cottony headache, and at first he couldn’t remember where he was or what was going on. Then he tried to shift on the bed, and realized his wrists were tied behind him, and it all came back.
Parker. The son of a bitch had kidnapped him last night, just as he was closing the club. Standing there in the street, cool and calm and taking his time, he’d tied Faran’s wrists and put some sort of bag over his head and then walked him to a car and drove him here—wherever here was.
In an apartment building, he knew that much. They had driven for a while, not long enough to be out of the city, and just before the car stopped, it had dipped down some sort of short incline. An apartment building with a basement garage. And an elevator, in which they rode up together, his head still inside the bag, silent Parker’s hand on his elbow. Then along a corridor until Parker stopped him and withdrew his hand for a few seconds. The grate of a key in a lock. He was led into the apartment, the door was closed, and the bag was taken away.
The apartment was a surprise. He’d expected a grubby room somewhere, but it wasn’t like that at all. It was a pleasant middle-class apartment, sofa and chairs and TV and lamps and tables. Green drapes covering windows in the far wall. Carpeting, with a bit of dark-stained wood flooring showing around the edges of the room.
Near the entrance door was a dining area: an oval table and four chairs, tucked into the corner. Parker sat Faran down there, produced pen and paper, and started asking questions. At first Faran wouldn’t answer, and he expected to be threatened and maybe punched around, but Parker didn’t do anything like that at all. He just took a small white box out of his pocket and put it on the table where Faran could see the severed finger lying inside it. Then he asked the questions again, and after a short hesitation Faran started answering.
The questions went on till long after sunup, till Faran was so exhausted he could barely keep his head vertical and his eyes open. But Parker kept pushing, wanting to know more, demanding details, writing it all down on sheet after sheet of paper. Doing sketches and blueprints and insisting that Faran study them, tell him where the details were wrong. What kind of window is this? How many people work in that office? What time does this place open?
Till at last it was finished. Faran fell asleep at the table while Parker read through his notes once more, to be sure there wasn’t anything else he needed to know. Then Parker had to thump him and shout at him and yank him by the hair to wake him up enough so he could stand and be marched into a bedroom and locked away in a closet.
