Parker knew they both knew what he might try at that point; the lunge, the kick, get the guy down and use the feet on him, hoping to get at the key for the cuffs later. But Parker wouldn’t do it that way; there was too much chance the .38 could go off, and nobody could know for sure where the bullet would go.
Nothing to do but wait. Words of reassurance would not reassure, they’d merely make him more spooked than ever. Parker stood there, patient, and the guy slowly worked it through, and then he said, “Face to the wall. Put your forehead on the wall. Don’t move anything.” Absolutely a cop.
Again the cool gun barrel touched the back of his neck. The hand burrowed into his pocket like a small animal, and withdrew, and then the barrel also withdrew.
“All right.”
Parker turned around, and the guy had retreated to the middle of the living room. The keys to the Lexus were in his left hand, the .38 in his right. “Nowwe go,” he said. “I’ll open the front door and step to the side. You go out, I follow. You stay just ahead of me and we walk to your car.”
“A block and a half, in cuffs? What if somebody sees them?”
“Maybe I’m arresting you.”
“And what if the somebody’s a patrol car? This is a middle-class neighborhood, no crime but a lot of voters. This is where the cops like to patrol.”
The guy started to sneer, as though about to defend cops, but then must have realized how stupid that would be. Instead, he looked around, saw the shut closet door over near the front door, and went over to open it. He rummaged around and brought out a raincoat. “You’ll wear this,” he said. “Over your shoulders. Stand still.”
Parker stood still. The guy brought the raincoat to him, draped it on his shoulders, and stepped back to consider him. “Works fine,” he decided.
It probably did, though too short. “Okay,” Parker said. “Now what?”
“Now we walk,” the guy said, and opened the door.
The gray day was still gray, the neighborhood still mostly empty, people now off to their jobs or schools. Parker, with the guy to his left and one pace behind him, walked down the street, crossed to the other side after they’d passed where the pickup was parked over there, and stopped at the Lexus.
“Is it locked?”
“Of course.”
The guy unlocked it, and said, “Get in.”
“Two things,” Parker said. “Could you take this coat off me? Throw it in the back seat or on the ground or whatever you want. And just give me a hand on the elbow to help me in.”
“I’m your goddam nurse,” the guy said, and yanked the coat off him, and let it drop to the curb. “Get in the car, I’ll help if you need it.”
He needed it; balance was impossible, to shift from standing outside the car to sitting inside it. As he was about to topple, the guy grabbed his right elbow with his left hand, his right hand staying in his pocket with the .38. He pulled back, helped Parker get into position, seated there against his own arms pulled back behind him, and said, “Don’t move.” He reached across him to strap him in with the seat belt.
Parker said, “Safety first?”
“Mysafety first,” the guy said. Then he shut the door, and went around to get behind the wheel.
Parker said, “Where’s your truck?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I thought you wanted things from it.”
The guy started the engine. “Where to?” he said.
12
The question was gasoline. It had been a while since the Lexus had been refueled. Parker had planned to do that after he finished with Cathman and got his day’s sleep, and as he remembered, the last he’d looked at the gas gauge it had shown just under a quarter tank. It was hard to see that little arrow from this angle, in the passenger seat, and he didn’t want to be obvious about it.
He was trying now to go through the trips he’d taken with Mike Carlow, when they were looking for a place to stay, when they’d wound up at Tooler’s cottages. Different real estate agents had shown them different things, driven them on different back roads. It was important now to remember them right, which road led where.
He needed a destination that would fit in with the story he’d told, in case they were still together that long. But it would be best if he could arrange the route so they arrived at the right kind of gas station when the needle was looking low. A small station, isolated, not too many customers, one guy on duty, no mechanics. So remember those places, too, and the different roads, and the different places the real estate agents had shown them.
Tiredness kept trying to creep in on him, distract him, but the discomfort of having his arms pulled around behind him, and then the weight of his torso against his arms, kept him from getting groggy. He thought about undoing the cuffs now, but he was afraid the freedom would make him careless, permit him to move his arms a little to relieve the pressure, and alert the guy beside him. So he left the cuffs where they were.
At first it was all major highways, across the Hudson River out of Albany and then due east toward Massachusetts. This was called the Thruway Extension and at the state line it would met up with the Massachusetts Turnpike, one hundred fifty miles due east to Boston. A little before that, there was the north-south highway called the Taconic Parkway, the oldest major highway in the state, built in the twenties so the state government people in Albany would have easy access to New York City, one hundred fifty miles to the south and screw the rest of the state, which didn’t get a big road until the thruway came in, thirty years later.
The Taconic was the road Parker and the others had been using between the Tooler cottages and Albany, but not today. Some miles before that turnoff was State Route 9, also north-south. “We take that exit,” Parker said.
