saw headlights coming, he stepped off the road into the trees until the vehicle went past.
There was much less security at the Highway Department garage; just a bolted chain to keep closed the two sides of the chain-link gate. First putting on the surgical gloves, Parker climbed over the gate and found his way in the darkness to a yellow Caterpillar backhoe with a four-foot-wide bucket. Briefly using his pencil flash, he found the number painted on the side of the cab, then went over to the garage. The side door had a simple lock and no alarm system; he went through it, and used the pencil flash to find the locked plywood cabinet on the wall where the keys were kept. A nearby shovel made a good lever; he popped the cabinet door open and found the backhoe key. He also picked up a yellow hard hat to wear, to look legitimate, then went back outside.
The backhoe was loud but powerful. He had to back it out of its parking space, and it went ping ping pinguntil he shifted into Drive. Then he swung it around, extended the bucket, rotated it so the open part was facing rearward, and drove it through the locked gate.
The machine’s top speed was around twenty miles an hour, and it didn’t like to do that much on curves. It took eleven minutes to drive back north to A-Betta-Deala. In that time, one pickup passed, headed south, loud country music trailing from its open windows.
There were no headlights visible up or down the road when Parker reached the gun shop. Without pausing, he angled the bucket with the maw forward and down, then drove directly into the window displaying the handguns. He rotated the bucket, scooping up the window and everything in it, then backed away from the building while the backhoe pinged some more. Clear of the building, which was now screaming a high-pitched alarm wail, he rotated the bucket to spill everything onto the blacktop parking lot, then shut off the backhoe’s motor, took off the hard hat, climbed down from the cab, and picked through the rubble, shining the pencil flash. He chose four pistols, went away to the Taurus, put the handguns under a motel blanket on the back seat, stripped off the gloves, and drove north, away from the gun shop, the Highway Department garage, and the state police.
6
Six days later, in Nashville, at eight-thirty in the morning, Parker sat in the Taurus on Orange Street, across the way and up the block from AAAAcme Check Cashing. The place wasn’t open yet, so all that showed on the ground floor of the narrow three-story building, one of a row of similar structures along here, was the gray metal of the articulated grille that was drawn down over the facade at night. Once that was raised, the storefront was merely a small-windowed metal door in the middle of a brick wall, with a small wide window high on each side, both windows containing red neon signs that said ‘Checks Cashed.’
This was Parker’s fourth morning here, and he now was sure of AAAAcme’s opening routine. The business hours of the place were nine A.M. to six P.M., Monday through Saturday. At about eight forty-five every morning, a red Jeep Cherokee would pull up to the store with two men in the front seat. The driver, a bulky guy in a windbreaker no matter how warm the weather, suggesting a bulletproof vest underneath, would get out of the Cherokee, look carefully around, and cross to unlock and lift the metal grille. Then he’d unlock and open the front door, and stand holding it open, looking up and down the street. The other man, also bulky and in a windbreaker, would get out of the Jeep, open its rear door, take out two heavy metal boxes with metal handles on the tops, and trudge them across the sidewalk and into the store. The first man would let the door close, then go back to the Jeep, shut the rear door his partner had left open, and drive half a block to a private parking lot reserved for the bailsmen, pawnshop owners, used musical instrument dealers, liquor store owners, dentists, and passport photographers who ran businesses in the neighborhood. After parking the Jeep in its labeled spot, he’d walk back to the store, knock, and be let in. Fifteen minutes later they’d open for business.
This was more of a late-night than an early-morning neighborhood. There was almost no traffic at this time of day, rarely a pedestrian until mid-morning. The three days Parker’d watched, AAAAcme hadn’t had a customer before nine-thirty, so their opening time must be merely a long-standing habit.
This morning, the routine was the same as ever. Seeing the Cherokee approach in his rearview mirror, Parker got out of the Taurus, made a show of locking it, and walked down the street toward AAAAcme. The Cherokee passed him and stopped at the curb, and he walked by between Cherokee and storefront. He continued to walk, pacing himself to the normal speed of their movements behind him, and the Cherokee passed him again just before he got to the entrance of the parking lot.
Today he was dressed in a gray sweatshirt over black chinos. The Sentinel was in the right pants pocket, and a Colt.45 from Kentucky was tucked into the front of the chinos under the sweatshirt. Turning in at the entrance to the parking lot, he put his hand in his right pocket.
The driver was getting out of the Cherokee. He gave Parker an incurious look, turned to lock the Cherokee, and Parker stepped rapidly toward him, taking the Sentinel out of his pocket, holding it straight-armed in front of himself, aiming as he moved. He fired once, and the .22 cartridge punched through the meat of the driver’s left leg, halfway between knee and hip, then went on to crack into the door panel of the Cherokee, leaving a starred black dent.
The driver sagged, astonished, falling against the Cherokee, staring over his shoulder at Parker: ‘What? What?’
Parker stepped very close, showing him the Sentinel.
‘I shot you,’ he said. ‘The vest doesn’t cover the leg. It doesn’t cover the eye, either. You want one in the eye?’
‘Who the fuck are you?’ The driver was in shock, the blood drained from his face. He pawed at his left leg.
Parker held the Sentinel close to his face. ‘Answer me.’
‘What’d I do to you? I don’t even know you!’
‘I’m robbing you,’ Parker told him.
‘Jesus! You want my oh, my God!’ he cried, staring at his bloodred hand. ‘For a fucking wallet?’
‘The store,’ Parker said. ‘We’ll go there, and we’ll go in together.’
‘My partner’
‘Will do what you tell him. You do right, in a few minutes you’re on your way to the hospital. You do wrong, in a few minutes you’re on your way to the morgue.’
The driver panted, trying to catch up, get his wits about him. ‘They’ll get you, you know,’ he said.
‘So don’t sweat it,’ Parker told him. ‘It’s only money, you’re insured, and they’ll get me. Let’s go.’
‘I can’t walk.’
