Whoever survives this night, Hanzen told himself, if anybody does, it won’t be me.
9
One-fifteen. It wasn’t necessary for Noelle to pitch her faint for another fifteen or twenty minutes, but she was ready to do it now. She really did feel queasy as hell, and it wasn’t because she was on a ship; the motion of the Spirit of the Hudsonas it coursed upstream was barely noticeable.
No, and it wasn’t the money under her that had her queasy, either. She understood about that, and agreed with the thinking behind it, and had no trouble with it. She’d been the girl distraction more than once in her life, either carrying the dangerous stuff herself or fronting for the one who did, though she’d never done it as an invalid before. But the idea here was a good one; she was an established presence on the ship. The robbers would have left through the door in the hull, and why wouldn’t they have taken the money with them?
Of course, the reason they hadn’t taken the money with them was because they would be half an hour or more in that small boat on the river before they reached the safety of the cabin. Nobody knew how soon the alarm would be raised, but when it was, there would be police boats out. They might be suspicious of four night fishermen, but on that boat they wouldn’t find any guns, any dress clothes, and most importantly, no money.
Would the police have any reason to think the money was still on the ship? None. Why would they believe that three men would go through such an elaborate con job and robbery and then not take the money with them?
So Noelle wasn’t worried about being caught sitting on several hundred thousand dollars. What had her shaky and nauseous was something much simpler; she was dehydrated. Having to sit for over six hours every night in this damn wheelchair or the other wheelchair, actually, up till tonight without any opportunity to leave it for any reason at all, meant she’d been avoiding liquids as much as possible the last eight days.
Six hours without a bathroom isn’t easy, if you stay with a normal intake of liquids, so Noelle had been cutting back, and finding it a little chancy anyway, and by tonight the drying-out had begun to affect her. She knew it already in the van driving up to Albany, but she didn’t dare do anything about it then, with the whole night in front of her, so she’d been hanging in there, feeling sicker and sicker, until by now what she was most afraid of was dry heaves; and dry they’d be.
Apart from the physical discomfort, though, she was having no trouble with this job. Since she and Tommy had split up, it had been harder to find strings to attach to, so money had often been a problem, which tonight should go a long way to solve.
And another good thing about this crowd was, none of them felt he had to hit on her. Parker had his woman Claire, and the other three all seemed to understand that she was simply another member of the crew, and it would screw things up entirely if they got out of line. Also, they probably knew she could be difficult if annoyed; they might even have heard about the guy she’d kneecapped in St. Louis.
It would probably be better all around if she found some other guy on the bend to hook up with, but she’d gotten along before Tommy and she’d get along now, and if another guy appeared, fine. It would certainly be easier, though, if Uncle Ray were still alive.
It was her father’s older brother, Ray Braselle, a heister from way back, who’d brought her into the game, over her pharmacist father’s objections. Ray Braselle had been around for so long that once, in describing the first bank job he was ever on, he’d said, “And I stood on the running board,” and then he’d had to explain what a running board was.
Uncle Ray was all right, though old as the goddam hills. But the people he ran with were more like Parker; tough, but not just smash-and-grab, always with a plan, a contingency, ways in and ways out. For guys like that, a good-looking girl could frequently be part of the plan, and if she was a pro herself, steady and reliable, not a hooker and not a junkie, who knew how to handle a gun, an alarm system or a cop, so much the better.
Uncle Ray liked to spend his free time living off away by himself, in a scrubby ranch he had in Wyoming, north of Cheyenne, up in the foothills before the high mountains toward Montana, and it was there that a horse rolled on him some kind of accident, no way to be sure exactly what happened and the body wasn’t found for six days. After that, Noelle still got the occasional call from guys she and Ray had worked with, and on one of those jobs she’d met Tommy Carpenter, and they’d lived together for a few years until all of a sudden it turned out Tommy was afraid of the law, so here she was on her own. And feeling mighty sick.
Should she ask Mike to get her a glass of water? No; the very idea made her feel even worse. What would happen if she tried to drink water and she threw it up, right here in this chair? Down to the nurse’s office, no way to avoid it; the change of clothing, the examination, the discovery of the money; ten to fifteen in a prison laundry.
Hang in there, she told herself, and to Mike she said, “Mike, could we stay in one place for a while? I feel like shit.”
“I thought you did,” he said. “Before you start feeling better, let’s go talk to the purser.”
“Good.”
They’d done this on two other nights, so the purser would be used to the idea. Half an hour or so before the ship would dock, they’d go to the purser and Mike would quietly explain that Jane Ann was feeling kind of bad, a little worse than usual, and would it be okay if they got off first, the instant the ship was made fast? Hey, no problem. No problem twice before this, and it should be no problem tonight.
Getting to the purser’s office meant another elevator ride; Noelle gulped a lot, and breathed through her mouth, and held tight to the wheelchair arms, and didn’t at all have to put on an act for the other people in the elevator.
The purser’s office was open on one side, to an interior lobby, with a chest-high counter. The purser himself was there, with two of his girl assistants, all three of them in the blue and gold uniforms. He wanted them to call him Jerry, and he gave them a big smile as they approached: “Hey, Mike. How you doin, Jane Ann? Enjoyin the ride?” Nobody ever asked anybody if they were winning or losing; that was considered bad taste.
“Not so much, Jerry,” Noelle told him, and swallowed hard.
Jerry looked stricken, as though he thought the ship was to blame, and Mike leaned close to him to say, “I hate to be a pest, Jerry, asking special favors all the time” as the phone on the desk behind the counter rang and one of the girls answered it.
“Hey, no problem, Mike,” Jerry said. “I can see Jane Ann’s ready to call it a day. You be down in that lounge again, you remember? and Excuse me.”
Because the girl who’d answered the phone wanted to say a quick word to Jerry, who tilted his head toward her while continuing to face Mike and Noelle.
