Parker sensed, but didn’t turn his head to see, the driver grin. Still facing front, feeling the steel against his skull, he said, ‘Try not to jounce on the turn.’
The driver practiced his chuckle again, and slowed some more, flipping on his directional.
It was a dirt road, heading north over the scrub near the highway, then going on into the ripe green of the swamp shrubbery. Parker watched it coming and knew he couldn’t do the move, not now. He’d have to wait until they thought he wasn’t going to do anything. Eventually, they’d believe he’d given up the idea of doing anything, because eventually everybody gives up, and they’d know that. Eventually, he, too, might give up.
The driver made the turn, smooth and slow, but then they bumped a little when they crossed the wooden bridge over the nearby canal, and the rifle barrel jounced hard against his skull, but the gun didn’t go off. And a minute later, with the car up to a good speed again and the mangroves and palmettos getting closer, the rifle barrel went away.
Parker adjusted the air-conditioner vent so it wouldn’t blow directly on him. He looked at the driver, who concentrated now more completely on his driving on this imperfect road, then twisted around to look back at Herby, who was seated sideways in the left corner back there, so he could hold the rifle with its trigger handy to his right hand and its barrel aimed at the back of Parker’s seat. The aviator glasses reflected Parker, darkly. He faced front again.
Once in the swamp, the road veered left and right to keep on the dry ground. Water glinted among the trunks on both sides. The road was one lane wide, but here and there were wider spots where one car could pass another.
A straight stretch, and down at the end a sharp curve to the left. The driver accelerated, and Parker watched his foot on the pedal. At the end of this stretch, he’d have to brake.
There. The foot started to lift, and Parker moved everything at once. His left foot mashed down on the driver’s foot and the accelerator, jolting them forward, maybe spoiling Herby’s aim for just a second. His right hand shoved the door open against that acceleration as his left hand swung up backhanded to mash that toothpick into the driver’s mouth. And his right foot shoved down and leftward, propelling him backward out of the Land Cruiser, as the crack of the rifle shot banged around inside the car.
He landed hard on his back, the Land Cruiser spraying dirt back at him as the driver tried to brake, to steer, to keep the Land Cruiser from running off into the swamp. Herby was rolling out of the car on the other side, not waiting for it to stop, rolling with the rifle cupped against his chest under his crossed arms.
Parker rolled away from the road, hoping for water, but a low berm had been built along here to keep the swamp away from the road, and it stopped him. He had to rise, not wanting to, if he would get over the berm, and as he came up on his knees he heard the crack behind him, much smaller in the outer air, just a firecracker. Except that a punch in the back threw him forward across the top of the berm, and when he lifted himself, suddenly very heavy, there was blood spreading across the front of his shirt. The bullet had gone through him.
He shovedwith his arms, but they were heavy as trees and he only dropped forward, rolling onto his back. There was no sky, only the darkness of the leaves.
He felt their feet when they rolled him down into the water, but when he hit the water he wasn’t feeling anything anymore.
THREE
1
He wasn’t there. The house at Colliver Pond was empty, and that was bad news. Melander and Carlson and Ross wandered the empty rooms, looked out the windows at the frozen lake, and they were not happy.
Dissension had started among them not twenty minutes after they’d left Parker at the motel in Evansville, with a handful of earnest money instead of his share of the bank job. Carlson had started it; being the driver, he was the brooder, the one with extra thinking time on his hands. ‘I don’t like it,’ he’d said.
The other two had known immediately what he was talking about, and Melander had said, ‘Hal, we didn’t have a choice. We thought he’d come in. Tom Hurley would’ve come in.’
‘But Hurley left. And he sent us this guy Parker, and I can’t help thinking we made a mistake.’
‘No choice,’ Melander said again.
‘We had choices,’ Carlson told him, keeping his eye on the road, Interstate 64, headed east, going to switch to 75 southbound at Lexington, aimed for Palm Beach.
Ross, seated beside Carlson up front, with Melander in back, said, ‘What choices, Hal? The Clendon jewels is the only thing we got, and this is the only way to get it.’
‘If we were going to rob him’
‘Hey!’ Surprised, a little angry, Melander said, ‘Rob him! Who, Parker?’
‘Who else?’
‘We didn’t rob him, we borrowed the money, he’ll get the whole thing, we explained it to him.’
‘If you did it to me,’ Carlson said, ‘I’d say you robbed me.’
They all thought about that for a minute, trying to imagine the situation reversed, and then Ross shrugged and said, ‘Okay, he thinks we robbed him. So what?’
‘So maybe,’ Carlson said, ‘we shouldn’t have left him alive.’
Ross stared at him. ‘Meaning what?’
‘Come on, Jerry, you know what I’m saying. If we’re going to rob him, maybe we should go ahead and kill him.’
Melander, firm about it, said, ‘Hal, we don’t do that. We don’t kill the people we work with. How could we dothat?’
‘Then there he is,’ Carlson said, ‘behind us, thinking how we robbed him. He didn’t strike me as a let-it-ride kind of guy.’
They thought about that awhile, going over their brief knowledge of Parker, and then Melander said, ‘We can
