face and pale eyes of a man who spends a lot of time outdoors. His nose was long and narrow, lips thin, Adam’s apple prominent. He got to 924 before Parker, and when Parker arrived he nodded and said, “Hello, Parker. A long time since Tyler.” That was the last place they’d worked together. They’d all done well in Tyler, better than twenty-five thousand dollars a man. The memory gleamed in Carlow’s pale eyes.
Parker unlocked them into the room. “There’s a bottle there, and the glasses, and here’s ice.”
Looking at the glasses, Carlow said, “Three of us.”
“Dan Wycza.”
“For the heavy lifting. Good.” Wycza had also been along in Tyler.
Carlow put an ice cube in a glass and poured enough bourbon to float it, then looked over at Parker, held up the bottle, and said, “You?”
“The same,” Parker said, and someone knocked with a double rap. “Make it two,” he said, and crossed to open the door.
Dan Wycza was a huge bald man with a handsome, playful face and heavy shoulders that he automatically shifted to an angle when he walked through doorways. He looked out at the world with amused mistrust, as though everybody he saw was an opponent in the wrestling ring who maybe couldn’t be counted on to stick to the script. There was a rumor he was dead for a while, but then he’d popped up again. He was also known to be a health nut, which wouldn’t keep him from accepting a glass of bourbon. He came in now, squared his shoulders, nodded a hello to Parker and said, “Mike. Long time.”
“Tyler,” Carlow said, and brought Parker and Wycza their drinks.
“I spent that money,” Wycza said. Before drinking, he looked at Parker: “We gonna get some more?”
“Maybe. Sit down, let me describe it.”
There were two chairs in the room. Parker sat on the windowsill and said, “It’s cash. It’s all in one place for several hours. I’ve got an inside man to give me the details. But there are maybe problems.”
Carlow said, “Is the inside man one of the problems?”
“Don’t know yet. Don’t have him figured out. My woman’s checking into him, his background, see what his story is.”
Wycza said, “What does he say his story is?”
“Retired from state government, New York. Consultant to governments. Gave me his card.”
Wycza smiled in disbelief. “He has a card?”
“He’s legit, his whole life long. Got a reputation you could hang your overcoat on.”
Carlow said, “So why’s he giving you this score?”
“That’s the question. But if it turns out he’s all right, there’s still problems, and the first one is, it’s a boat.”
Carlow said, “On the ocean?” The question he meant was: What do you want with a driver?
“On a river,” Parker told him. “A gambling casino boat, a trial period, no gambling on credit, all cash, they take the cash off every six hours.”
“Not easy to leave a boat,” Wycza suggested, “if all at once you want to.”
“That’s part of the problem.”
Carlow said, “How much cash?”
“The boat isn’t running yet,” Parker said. “So nobody knows what the take is. But a Friday night, five hours between ten P.M. and three A.M., it should be enough. I don’t think the money’s the problem, I think the boat’s the problem.”
Wycza said, “The boat isn’t on that river now?”
“It’s heading there. It used to be in Biloxi.”
Wycza grinned and said, “The Spirit of Biloxi?”
“It’s going to be the Spirit of the Hudsonnow. You know the boat?”
“You’re giving me a chance to get my money back,” Wycza said. “But, you know, they do heavy security on that boat. I did an automatic case when I was aboard, decided not to try it. They got rent-a-cops in brown everywhere you look. Cash goes straight down through a slot into some safe room down below. When you cash in your chips, they got a vacuum tube with little metal-like rockets in it, to send up just your money.”
Parker said, “How about security when you’re getting aboard?”
“Airport,” Wycza told him. “You go through a metal detector. No X-ray, but they eyeball bags.”
“So no way to bring weapons aboard,” Carlow said. “Unless
” He looked at Wycza. “Could you bring your own boat alongside?”
“Not without being seen. The dining rooms and other stuff is along the outside of the boat, gambling rooms inside. No windows when you gamble, windows all over the place when you eat a meal or have a drink or just sit around.”
“So that’s the second problem,” Parker said. “Guns. And the third problem is, getting the stuff off the boat.”
“And us,” Wycza said.
“That’s the fourth problem,” Parker said.
