They both seemed serious, if happy. Nobody in the car was taking any mood changers. He said, ‘This is twelve million in jewelry?’
‘That’s the floor,’ Ross said. ‘That’s the appraisal. It’s a charity sale. If we let it alone, it’ll go higher, but what we’ll get is the floor.’
‘A charity sale. Where?’
‘Palm Beach,’ Ross said.
Parker shook his head. ‘Deal me out.’
Ross said, ‘You don’t want to listen to the job?’
‘I just heard the job,’ Parker told him. ‘Twelve million in jewelry all in one place draws a lot of attention. Cops, private cops, guards, sentries, probably dogs, definitely helicopters, metal-detecting machines, all of that. Then you put it in Palm Beach, which has more police per square inch than anywhere else on earth. They’re allrich in Palm Beach, and they all want to stay that way. And besides that, it’s an island, with three narrow bridges, they can seal that place like it’s shrink-wrap.’
‘All of this is true,’ Ross said. ‘But we got a way in, and we got a way at, and we got a way out.’
‘Then I still know the job,’ Parker told him, ‘and I still don’t want it.’
Melander said, ‘Just out of curiosity, why?’
‘Because to even think about doing your job,’ Parker told him, ‘and to do it in Palm Beach, there’s two things you got to have. One is the insider, who’s the amateur, who’s gonna bring you down. And the other is a boat, which is the only way off the island, and which is even worse than an island, because there’s no way off a boat.’
Ross said, ‘That’s yes and no. We got the insider, that’s true, but he’s beforethe job. He’s nowhere near Palm Beach on the day, and he’s not exactly an amateur.’
Melander said, ‘He’s one of our buyers, we worked with him before.’
‘What he is,’ Ross said, ‘he’s an art appraiser, estate appraiser, he tells you what the paintings are worth, what the rugs are worth, what the jewelry is worth, for the taxes and the heirs.’
Keeping his eyes on the road, Carlson said, ‘He has a little trouble with nose powder, so he needs extra money. But he doesn’t let it make him a problem, at least not for us.’
‘What his occupation is,’ Melander said, ‘he spends his life casing the joint.’
‘Then he tips off you guys,’ Parker said.
‘Right.’
‘And then you go in and take out the best stuff. And how long before somebody notices, when this guy does the appraisal, step two is a robbery?’
‘We don’t do it that way,’ Ross told him. ‘Our agreement is, we never touch a thing until at least two years after he’s been and gone. And this time, the Palm Beach, he wasn’t one of the appraisers.’
‘He gets access to the appraisals,’ Melander added, ‘like anybody else in the business.’
‘He’s done other stuff in Palm Beach,’ Ross said, ‘so he knows the place, he knows the routine, he knows everything about it, but he isn’t one of the people that looked at this particular bunch of jewels.’
Melander said, ‘He’s moved in that territory, but on different estates, different evaluations.’
‘If they’re looking for an insider,’ Ross said, ‘they won’t look at him, because he wasn’t inside.’
‘Possibly,’ Parker said. ‘What about the boat?’
‘No boat,’ Melander assured him. ‘I a hundred percent agree with you about boats.’
‘Then how do you get off the island?’
‘We don’t,’ Ross said.
‘You stay there? Where? You know, you rent a condominium, the cops are gonna look at recent rentals.’
‘Not a condominium,’ Ross said. ‘Then where?’
‘At my place,’ Melander said, and grinned like a bear.
Parker tried to see around corners, but couldn’t, not quite. ‘You’ve got a place there?’
‘It’s fifteen rooms,’ Melander told him, ‘on the beach. I think you’ll like it.’
‘You’ve got a fifteen-room mansion on the beach in Palm Beach,’ Parker said. ‘How does this happen?’
‘Well, I looked at it a few weeks ago,’ Melander said.
‘But he’s just buying it today,’ Ross said. ‘We got the down payment from that bank back there.’
4
The motel, and the car Parker would be using, was in Evansville. When they got there, while Melander and Ross counted the money on the bed, Carlson and Parker sat in the room’s two chairs, across the round table from one another, and Carlson told him more. ‘The mansion is cheap. I mean, for a mansion in Palm Beach.’
‘Why?’
‘It was sold maybe eight years ago to this movie star couple, you know, he’s a star and she’s a star, so when they make a picture, he gets twenty million, she gets ten million’
From the bed, Melander said, ‘Still not equal pay, you see that?’
