'He doesn't want to play footsie any more.' Wiss seemed calm about it, driving them up route 87 toward Havre, but Parker had noted before that Wiss had taken a kind of mentor shine to Lloyd; maybe not a good thing.
Hunting season would start soon, and the road was dotted with SUVs full of guys wearing orange and red. Driving among them, looking like any other hunter, but not yet changed out of dark blue, Wiss said, 'He saw his chance, deal with the guy messed him up, then forget the past, come out here. He figured to use his share of this thing to set himself up as Mister New.'
'Not everybody can do that,' Parker said.
'Oh, I know.' Wiss grinned, driving around a little old lady doing her grocery shopping before hunting season started. 'I couldn't, for one. But I think Larry could. Except now we got this complication.'
Parker said, 'Your old partners.'
Wiss laughed, but shook his head. 'I know what you mean, I keep expecting them to show up, but they're not as fucked over as Larry. If they've got a shot at keeping the straight world, they'll take it. Not that they
Parker shrugged the ex-partners away, saying, 'What's the complication?'
'Yesterday,' Wiss told him, 'the lodge filled up with law. Federal first, ATF, then state, then county.'
'What the hell for?'
Wiss shook his head, but couldn't keep down a grin. He was like somebody who'd made a bad-news prediction, not wanting it to come true, and now it has, so he wins by being right but he loses by being in the middle of the bad news. He said, 'It's the firebreak thing again. Remember, when we first described this setup, we said it was a firebreak.'
'I remember.'
'We went in the first time,' Wiss explained again, 'but we didn't get what we went in for, so then they upgraded their security, made it tougher.'
'You said law.'
'That's the other part of the firebreak,' Wiss told him. 'The robbery attracted attention, it made somebody somewhere in law enforcement think there was something more in there than Paxton Marino was talking about. Let me tell you what happened.'
'Go ahead.'
'Those three paintings we recognized, when we went into the secret rooms,' Wiss said, 'they were a special order, we told you.'
'Yeah.'
'The customer was an art dealer down in Dallas named Horace Griffith,' Wiss said. 'We dealt with him before, he was always okay. This time it was to grab these three special pictures from this traveling museum show, a special order from a customer of his. He didn't say who
'Paxton Marino.'
'Sure. Yesterday, Griffith shows up at the lodge with a bunch of empty wooden crates, just the right size to carry paintings.'
'I get it,' Parker said. 'That's your firebreak again. Now they're gonna move the stuff.'
'But they don't get a chance,' Wiss told him. 'Right after Griffith gets there the place fills up with ATF, maybe thirty, forty of them, you'd think they're after terrorists.'
'But they're not.'
'When Larry told us, we said, what are they doing there, and he said, They're looking for our paintings.'' Wiss laughed. 'Is that a pisser? They're looking for
That didn't matter, not now. 'But there isn't a job any more,' Parker said, meaning, if the job did still exist, they'd have to think very hard, should Lloyd still exist.
'We don't know yet,' Wiss said. 'The general feeling is, let's stick around, see what happens next.'
'Until when?'
'Until the dust settles.' Wiss shrugged. 'Who knows, maybe they'll truck the pictures outa there, we can hijack them on the road, we're the only ones know what and where they are.'
'Possible,' Parker agreed.
'At this point,' Wiss said, 'everything's possible. Listen, I forgot to ask. Did you deal with that problem?'
'Yes,' Parker said.
2
'Happy hunting,' the clerk said, handing over the key, and Parker said, 'Thanks.'
As they walked down the cold space between the maroon doors of the units and the cars parked out front, Wiss said, 'She thinks we're hunters, getting ready for the season.'
'Well, we are,' Parker said, and stopped at his room, number eleven.
