He had studied the space and blueprints of the Spirit of the Hudson,and knew the ship well, at least in theory, but reality is never exactly the same as the space. He wandered the ship, getting to understand it in this new way, covering every part of it that was open to the passengers.
There were three public decks. The top one was an open promenade, a long oval around the bridge with a lot of deck chairs that probably got more action on the daytime run. The deck below that was wider, another promenade, this one glassed-in, because upstate New York doesn’t get that much good weather year-round. This public oval surrounded an interior space of offices, a gift shop, a massage room, a game room with pinball machines, and a tiny joke of a library. The lifeboats were suspended just outside and below this promenade, not to spoil the view; if anybody ever had to actually board those lifeboats, the glass panels in front of them could be slid out of the way.
The third deck down was the important one, the casino, taking up the entire interior of the ship, with no windows, and no doors that opened directly to the outside. It could be reached only through vestibules fore and aft. Everywhere on the ship you were always aware of the humming vibration of the engines and the thrust of them through the water, but in the casino you could very quickly forget that you were afloat.
Flanking the casino were two dining rooms, of different types. The one on the port side was more upscale, with cloth napkins and expensive entrees and an eight-page wine list, while the one to starboard was a sandwich joint. Both were long and narrow, their outer walls all glass. Both, Parker knew from the specs, were served by the same kitchen, directly below the casino, with escalators for the waiters to bring the platters up. And in the center of that kitchen was a round metal post, inside which were the pneumatic tubes that moved money; upward to the casino cashier, in the middle of the casino, in an elaborate cage, and downward to the money room.
There was one bit of public access below the casino; restrooms, fore and aft. Broad carpeted staircases led down from both vestibules outside the casino, to wide hushed low ceilinged areas that looked like hotel lobbies, scattered with low sofas and armchairs, with the men’s and women’s rooms off that.
In the aft lobby, near the stairs, an unmarked and locked door led to a simpler staircase that went down to the corridor that led to the money room. A guard would be on duty at all times, the other side of that door, to keep people from coming in. He wouldn’t worry, until too late, about keeping people from coming out.
The aft section also contained a small elevator from casino vestibule down to restroom lobby, for people who’d have trouble with the stairs. Once every evening, Noelle and Carlow would take that elevator down and, while Noelle waited outside, Car-low would take the bowl into the men’s room and tip the attendant there very well to clean it out.
In the course of the evening, Parker ate small meals in both restaurants, when he could get window tables. He also walked the glassed-in promenade, and the top deck open-air promenade, where he was completely alone. Although the ship produced a lot of light, with a creamy nimbus around it on the disturbed water, it was very hard to see in close at the side of the ship. From above, the view was outward, not down. If Hanzen came up from behind, and stayed close to the flank as he approached the open door, no one would see him.
When the ship docked at Albany at two in the morning, Parker was among the first off. He stepped back on the pier, out of the way of the others debarking, and watched that door open in the side of the hull. An armored car was already parked there, facing away from the ship, and once that doorway gaped black the armored car backed up to it until it was snug against the metal side of the ship.
Parker watched Noelle and Carlow go by, both looking solemn, as though what they’d just come out of was church. Neither looked in his direction, but Noelle waggled two fingers as they went by. She was having fun.
8
The man who had the guns was named Fox. Maurice Fox,it said on the window of the store, Plumbing Equipment,on a backwater side street in the former downtown of New Brunswick, New Jersey. This wasn’t the kind of business to move out to the mall with all his former neighbors, so here he stayed, now with a storefront revivalist church on one side and a candle-and-incense shop on the other.
Parker left the Subaru in the loading zone in front of the store and went from the sunny outside to the dim interior, where the store was long and narrow and dark. Dusty toilets were lined up in one row, porcelain sinks in another, and bins full of pipe joints and faucets lined one wall.
A short balding man in a rumpled gray suit and bent eyeglasses came down the aisle between the rows of toilets and sinks. “Yes? Oh, Mr. Flynn, I didn’t recognize you, it’s been a while.”
“I phoned you.”
“Yes, sure, of course. You don’t go through Mr. Lawson anymore.” James Lawson was a private detective in Jersey City who fronted for people like Fox, on the bend.
Parker said, “Why should I? We already know each other.”
With a sad smile, Fox said, “Cut out the middleman, that’s what everybody does. In my business, most of the time, I’mthe middleman, why should I love this philosophy? I think I got what you want, come look.”
There was a way to talk to this man on the telephone about plumbing equipment and wind up with guns, but when you have to be so careful about listening ears, sometimes it’s hard to get the exact details right. But, as Fox turned away to lead Parker deeper into the store, he said, “What I heard, you want two revolvers, concealment weapons such as plainclothes police might carry, and the shoulder holsters to go with them.”
“That’s right.”
At the back of the shop, Fox led them through a doorway, which he shut behind them, and down a flight of stairs with just steps and no risers to a plaster-walled basement. At the bottom, Fox clicked a light switch on a beam, and to the left a bare bulb came on.
Now he led the way across the concrete floor, mounds of supplies in the darkness around them, to a wooden partition with a heavy wooden door. He took a ring full of keys from his pocket, chose one, and unlocked the door. They went inside, and Fox hit another light switch that turned on another bare bulb dangling from the ceiling. He closed this door, too, when they were inside.
The room was small and made smaller by the cases lining it on all four sides. The floor was wooden slats over concrete, except for one two-foot square in the middle, where there was no wood over the drain. Along the back wall the crates were crowded together onto wooden shelves, and Fox went directly over to them and took out a white cardboard box. The label pasted on the end claimed, with an illustration, that the box contained a bathroom sink faucet set.
A square dark table, paint-stained, stood in one corner. Fox carried the cardboard box to it, opened it, and
