Carlow said, “There was a girl with Tommy Carpenter like that. You know Tommy?”
“We worked on something together with Lou Sternberg once,” Parker said. “What was her name? Noelle.”
“Noelle Braselle,” Carlow said, and smiled. “I always thought that was a nifty name.”
Parker said, “But she comes with Tommy, doesn’t she? That’s two more slices, not one.”
Shaking his head, Carlow said, “Tommy got arrested or something. Well, they both did.”
“That’s the job,” Parker said. “The same job, with Lou. Some paintings we took. Those two got grabbed, but then they got let go, they had a good lawyer.”
“Well, it scared Tommy,” Carlow said. “You wouldn’t think he’d be a guy to spook, but he did. He quit, right then and there.”
Wycza said, “Do I know these people?”
“I don’t think so,” Parker said.
“You’d remember Noelle,” Carlow told him.
Parker said to Carlow, “Where’s Tommy?”
“Out of the country. Went to the Caribbean somewhere, doing something else. Nothing bent, he doesn’t want the arm on him ever again. Left Noelle without a partner, but the last I heard, she’s still around.”
Parker said, “Can you find her? I’d have gone through Tommy’s contact, but that can’t be any good now.”
“I’ll ask,” Carlow said.
Wycza said, “I smell my money.”
They looked at him, and he was gazing out the window, and when they turned that way the ship was just sliding into view from the left. On the gleaming blue-gray water, among the few sailboats, against the dark gray drapery of the Palisades, it looked like any small cruise ship, white and sparkly, a big oval wedding cake, except in the wrong setting. It should be in the Caribbean, with Tommy Carpenter, not steaming up the Hudson River beside gray stone cliffs, north out of New York City.
“I can’t read the name,” Carlow said. “You suppose they changed it already? Spirit of the Hudson?”
“They changed that name,” Wycza assured him, “half an hour out of Biloxi.”
Parker looked at the ship, out in the center channel. A big shiny white empty box, going upriver to be filled with money. For the first time, he was absolutely sure they were going to do it. Seeing it out there, big and slow and unaware, he knew it belonged to him. He could almost walk over to it, on the water.
TWO
1
The same bums were in the Lido. Parker stood at the street end of the bar to have his beer, then went out to the gray day no sunlight this time to lean against the Subaru for two minutes until Hanzen came shuffling out of the bar and headed this way along the sidewalk. Then Parker wordlessly got behind the wheel, and Hanzen slid into the passenger seat beside him, and Parker drove on down Warren Street toward the invisible river.
Hanzen said, “Where we going today?”
“Drive around and talk.”
“Take it out of town, then,” Hanzen advised. “Do your left on Third Street.”
There were lights at every intersection, not staggered. When he could, Parker turned left on Third Street, and within a couple of blocks they were away from houses and traffic lights, with scrubby woodland on both sides of the road.
Hanzen, sounding amused, said, “I guess you want me to go first.”
“If you got something to say,” Parker said.
“I talked to Pete Rudd about you.”
“I know you did.”
“And I know you know. Pete told me what you do, and I could trust you as long as you could trust me.”
“I don’t trust your biker friends,” Parker said.
Hanzen snorted. “I don’t come attached to any bikers,” he said. “I do business with those boys, that’s all, and Iwouldn’t trust them around the corner.”
Parker said nothing to that. An intersection was coming up, with signs for a bridge across the river, and Hanzen said, “Bear to the left, we’ll stay on this side and go south along the river.”
Parker did so, and after a minute Hanzen said, “I get the feeling you want meto tell youwhat your story is.”
“If you want.”
They were on a two-lane concrete road. There was woodsy hillslope up to their left, and the same down to their right, with the slate-gray river every once in a while visible down there. Nodding at the river, Hanzen said, “There’s only one change I know of lately, out there.”
“Uh huh.”
“It’s got a boat full of money.”
“Uh huh.”
“And here you are.”
