place, just so it pays the taxes and the insurance and the maintenance. Hunting season, especially deer season, they’ll be rented out full, but the rest of the year they’re mostly empty.”
There was nothing to choose between them; they were identical. Inside, there was a small living room with a fireplace and pine paneling and just enough furniture to get by, a very small kitchen with twenty-year-old appliances in it, a closet of a bathroom with appliances even older, and three small but neat bedrooms, each with a double bed, a dresser, an armoire, one bedside table, one bedside lamp, one ceiling light and no closet.
There were a number of such places up and down the river, left over from a time when upstate New York was a part of New York City’s vacation land, before the jumbo jets opened the world. Most tourist accommodations around here had been torn down by now, replaced by housing or farming or light industry, but along the poorest parts of the river there had never been an economic reason to change, since nobody was going to come here anymore anyway.
This spot, Tooler’s cottages, was the best location Parker and Mike Carlow had seen in the last three days of being two New Yorkers, working men, looking for a cheap place along the river for fishing weekends for themselves and their friends for the next month or so. No other houses were visible from here, and the cottages would be hard to notice from the river.
Coming out, they’d asked their usual question. Would the owner mind if other people were invited along sometimes? Not a bit. “Long as you don’t burn the place down,” the real estate agent told them, “the Tooler sisters don’t care what you do.”
He’d said, during their first conversation back in his little cluttered office with the Iroquois Indian memorabilia all over the place, that he had three houses he thought would suit them, but that the Tooler cottages were probably the best, so why didn’t they take a look at them first? Fine. Now the question was, would there be any point looking at his other two possibles.
Parker and Carlow had seen almost two dozen rentals the last three days, and there’d been something wrong with every one of them. There were neighbors too close, or the access to the river wasn’t simple enough, or the owner would be too inquisitive, or it was right next to a county road. This one had privacy, accessibility from both land and water, and absentee owners.
Parker met up with the other two in the living room, where Carlow was still talking fish. Maybe, when he wasn’t driving cars, Carlow was a fisherman; he’d never said, and Parker had never asked.
Now, Carlow said, “What do you think, Ed? Looks good to me.”
“Fine,” Parker said. He was being Edward Lynch again.
“And the price is right,” the real estate agent assured them, grinning at them both, happy to have some profit out of his morning’s work.
Carlow said, “And there’s room, some of the other guys want to come up sometime, room for them, too.”
The real estate agent said, “Just don’t use more than one cottage, okay? The Toolers got a maid comes in once a week, cleans up, makes sure everything’s okay. If she tells the Toolers there’s two cottages been used, but I only show rent for one, there’ll be hell to pay.”
“Then we’ll only use the one,” Carlow promised.
Parker said, “What day does she come?”
“Monday. People usually leave after a weekend, so Marie comes in on Mondays.”
Not a problem, then; they planned to do their thing on a Friday. Parker said, “Anybody else come here?”
Carlow explained, “Ed wants to know do we have to lock up,” which wasn’t true, but a good thing to say.
The real estate agent grinned and shook his head. “I don’t think you couldlock up,” he said, “unless you brought your own, and your own hasps. I know there’s fewer keys than doors, and there’s at least two of these back doors, old wood, shrunk down, you can push ‘em open when they’re locked.”
Parker said, “So nobody else comes around.”
“The propane gas man makes deliveries. If you boys take the place, I’ll call him and tell him, and he’ll come by with two fresh bottles. Otherwise, nobody else comes out.” Grinning again, he said, “You won’t get mail here.”
“Good,” Parker said, and Carlow said, “That’s what we want, get away from it all.”
“I knew this was the right place for you fellas,” the real estate agent said.
Parker said, “I’ll pay you the rent and deposit with a money order, if that’s okay. Neither of us wants his wife to see this place in the checking account.”
The real estate agent laughed hugely. “You boys got it all worked out,” he said.
“We hope so,” Carlow said.
3
“I’d vote for him,” Wycza said.
He and Parker stood in the international arrivals building of American Airlines at JFK, where the passengers from the London flight were just now coming through the wide doorway from Customs and Immigration. Waiting for them out here were some relatives, a lot of chauffeurs holding up signs with names written on them, and Parker and Wycza. Parker had just pointed out the guy they were waiting for, Lou Sternberg, the American heister who lived in London and who was going to be their state assemblyman.
Short and stout, with thick black hair and a round face wearing a habitual expression of grievance, Lou Sternberg was in a rumpled brown suit and open Burberry raincoat, and he walked with slow difficulty, twisted to one side to balance the heavy black garment bag that weighed down his right shoulder. A smaller brown leather bag dangled from his left hand. He looked like a businessman escaping a war zone, and pissed off about it.
“Travels light,” Wycza commented.
“He likes to be comfortable,” Parker said.
“Yeah? He don’t look comfortable to me.”
