“They’d be photo IDs.”
“Then get me blanks. Get me something I can adapt.”
Cathman picked up the wine glass, took a sip, brooded at Parker. He said, “When are you going to do it? The robbery.”
“Pretty soon. So get me the IDs.”
“No, I mean when.”
“I know what you mean,” Parker told him. Leaving his wine unfinished, he got to his feet and said, “I’ll call you here, next Monday, in the evening, tell you where to bring them.”
Cathman also stood. “Are you going to do it next week?”
Parker shrugged into the jacket, picked up the clipboard. “I’ll call you Monday,” he said, and left.
6
“I bet that’s her,” Carlow said.
Parker looked, and it was. Among the people getting off the Chicago Trailways bus here at the Albany terminal, that was the remembered face and figure of Noelle Braselle. She looked to be about thirty, tall and slender and very together, but she also looked like a college girl, with her narrow-legged blue jeans and bulky orange sweater crossed by the straps of a dark blue backpack, and her straight brown hair pulled back from her oval face to a black barrette and a short ponytail. She saw Parker and Carlow across the street from the terminal and waved, and as the other disembarking passengers crowded around the driver while he pulled their luggage out from the bus’s lower storage area, she came across to them, smiling. Noelle traveled light. “Long time no see,” she said to Parker.
“You haven’t changed,” he told her.
“I sure hope not,” she said, and raised a curious eyebrow at Carlow.
Parker said, “Noelle, this is Mike Carlow. He’s your driver.”
“Mydriver?”
“We’re taking different routes, on the night. Come on, I’ll tell you about it.”
They’d borrowed Wycza’s big Lexus, for comfort, because it was almost an hour drive from here to Tooler’s cottages, and it was parked now a block from the terminal. As they walked, Noelle said, “You still got that nice lady stashed?”
“Claire,” Parker agreed. “Yeah, we’re together.”
“Good. Tommy and I split, you know.”
“I heard.”
“Funny,” she said. “I used to think there wasn’t anything would scare him, then all at once everything did, and goodbye, Harry. Is this it? Nicer than a bus.”
“Very like a bus,” Carlow told her.
Carlow drove, Noelle beside him, Parker in back. They had to cross the river on one of the big swooping bridges here, and then head south. Parker said, “You remember Lou Sternberg.”
“From that painting disaster? Angry guy, overweight, drove the big truck.”
“That’s him. He’s with us on this. And a guy I don’t think you know, Dan Wycza.”
She turned to grin at Parker in the back seat and say, “I hope this one comes out a little better.”
“It will,” he said.
Wycza, in shorts and sneakers, was doing push-ups on the weedy grass in the sun in front of the cottage. Noelle, seeing him as they drove in, laughed and said, “Is this supposed to be my birthday?”
“Dan Wycza,” Parker told her, and Carlow said, “For the heavy lifting.”
“I can see that,” she said. “Is Lou Sternberg here?”
“Not yet. He’s in Brooklyn, watching a guy for later.”
Wycza got to his feet when he saw the car coming. He offered a small wave and went into the house, while Carlow parked the Lexus. They got out, Noelle carrying her backpack slung over one shoulder, and went into the house, where Wycza stood now in the living room, rubbing his head and neck with a tan towel.
Parker said, “Noelle Braselle, Dan Wycza.”
“Hi,” Wycza said, and Noelle frowned at him and said, “I know you. Don’t I know you?”
Grinning, Wycza said, “I wish you did, honey.”
“No, I’ve seen you somewhere,” she said. The two wheelchairs were in this room, one still together, the other mostly apart; she hadn’t remarked on them yet, but she did put her backpack on the complete one now as she continued to frown at Wycza, trying to place him.
“If I’d ever met you,” Wycza promised her, “I’d remember. Trust me.”
All at once her brow cleared: “You’re a wrestler! That’s where I saw you!”
Wycza gazed at her like he couldn’t believe it. “You’re a fan?”
“I went with a guy a few times,” she said. “I kind of loved it.”
Speaking confidentially, he said, “It’s all fake, you know. I’m not really getting beat up by those clowns.”
“I know! That’s what’s so great about it! I look at you, and I see you could open those guys like pistachios, and
