‘Then you’re no good to me,’ Parker said, and brought the Sentinel up to his face again.
‘I’ll try!’
He could walk, with a limp. He kept looking at his red hand, in disbelief. ‘This is crazy,’ he said. ‘You don’t just shoot people.’
‘Yes, I do,’ Parker said. ‘What’s your name?’
The driver blinked at him, bewildered again. ‘What?’
‘Your name.’
‘Bancroft. Why, what’s’
‘Your first name.’
‘Jack. John Jack, people call me Jack.’
‘Okay, Jack. What’s your partner’s name?’
‘First?’
‘First.’
‘Oliver.’
‘Ollie?’
‘No, he’s no Ollie, he’s Oliver.’
They were approaching the shopfront. Parker said, ‘Tell him, “I’m shot, this man helped.” Nothing else. Show him your hand.’
Jack nodded. He was panting pretty badly, limping more. His face was still ashen.
As they reached the shopfront, Parker put the Sentinel away and took out the Colt. Jack knocked on the glass in the door, and it was opened partway by Oliver, who stopped abruptly with the door less than a foot open when he saw Parker. He said, ‘Jack?’
Jack held up his red hand. ‘I was shot, Oliver, this man helped.’ He gestured at his leg.
‘What?’ Oliver looked at Jack’s trouser leg, now wet with blood. ‘Jesus Christ!’
Oliver backed away, and Jack limped in, Parker following, shutting the door behind himself, pushing Jack to one side, showing Oliver the Colt. ‘Oliver, don’t move,’ he said.
Oliver looked tough and angry, but he hadn’t been shot. ‘You son of a bitch, you’
He was starting to make a move when Jack called, ‘He knows about the vests!’
Oliver stopped, frowning at his partner.
‘That’s right,’ Parker said. ‘Your chest is safe from me. Oliver, help Jack to lie on the floor, facedown. Oliver hesitated. Jack said, ‘Oliver, I’m hurting. Get this over with, let the cops have it.’
Oliver nodded. He told Parker, ‘They’ll get you, you know.’
‘Jack already told me. Move, Oliver.’
Oliver helped Jack to lie facedown on the linoleum floor in front of the counter. The counter was stained wood panel, chest-high, with bulletproof Lucite above and small openings where checks and cash could be passed through. A windowless gray metal door was at one end of the counter, to give access to the rear.
When both men were facedown on the floor, arms behind them, Parker put the Colt away and took from his back pocket a small roll of duct tape. He taped their wrists and ankles, Oliver first, then got Jack’s keys from his pocket. He made sure he had the right key to get back into the shop, and left to walk up the block toward the Taurus.
There was still almost no morning traffic around here. Parker drove the Taurus down to AAAAcme, went back inside, and found Oliver and Jack where he’d left them. Jack was breathing like a whale. When he heard Parker move around, he said, ‘Willya call 911, for chrissake?’
‘Somebody will,’ Parker told him, and went through the metal door to the rear part of the shop, where the two metal cases stood unopened on the floor. He lifted their lids and found the stacks of bills he’d expected.
Looking around, he saw an open safe, which Oliver must have just unlocked for the start of the day. Inside were more stacks of bills, and on top of the safe was a lockable gray canvas money sack. Parker put the bills from the safe in the sack, then opened the cash drawers under this side of the counter, and found more bills. There was change, too, which he left.
The two boxes and the sack were now full. Parker carried everything through to the front door. Oliver kept twisting around to glare at him, but Jack merely lay there, eyes closed, cheek on the floor, mouth open, wheezing.
It took two trips to get everything from the store to the Taurus. Parker propped the store door slightly open, so the first customer would be able to get inside and find Oliver and Jack and make that 911 call, and then, at seven minutes to nine, he drove away, looking for the signs to Interstate 65.
7
In this part of Memphis, integration was complete. There were as many white junkies in this neighborhood as there were black. A number of old-fashioned drunks wandered around here, too, and that’s what Parker was passing himself off as.
For nine days, while getting to know this territory, he’d been living in a small bare room in a motheaten residence hotel, blending in with the misfits and losers, paying cash, one day at a time. The Taurus, with most of AAAAcme’s thirty-seven thousand dollars in the door panels, was stashed in the long-term-parking lot out at
