Parker considered. He couldn’t expect Marcantoni to describe the job to him, inside here, but it wasn’t good to make a jump into the unknown. Still, he needed Marcantoni. So he’d go along with it, and if it looked bad, he could make adjustments.
Marcantoni said, ‘I’m trusting you in here. I’m asking you to trust me out there.’
Parker, nodded. ‘I’m in,’ he said.
‘Me, too,’ Williams said. ‘Why not?’
Marcantoni said, ‘Good. You’re gonna like it.’ He grinned at Williams. ‘You’re okay for a Baptist,’ he said.
11
Ed Mackey said, ‘Marcantoni’s friend was in on the armored car with him. Every day Marcantoni keeps his mouth shut, his friend owes him his life.’
Parker said, ‘Does that make him grateful, or scared?’
‘Grateful,’ Mackey said. ‘They did some things together, like you and me, they trust each other, he’d like his pal outside, be a help here and there.’
‘Sometimes,’ Parker said, ‘a guy wants to help somebody get to the outside, it turns out, he just wanted a clear shot on him.’
‘Not Marcantoni.’
‘Meaning what about Williams?’
Mackey shrugged and shook his head. ‘There it’s family,’ he said. ‘So that’s a little different, harder to read. Who I’m talking to is a neighbor of Williams’ sister, a guy in a different line of business entirely.’
‘What line of business?’
‘Import-export,’ Mackey said, and touched the tip of his nose. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘Mostly import?’
‘I’d say so, yeah.’
‘Trade?’
‘No, he sells to the trade.’ Mackey grinned. ‘You seen those signs on the stores. “To the trade only.” Wholesalers. He’s like that.’
‘But Williams isn’t part of it.’
‘No, Williams is strictly a heavy, like you or me. He doesn’t deal in anything and he doesn’t taste anything.’
‘And his sister?’
‘A simple girl, I think an innocent. Loves her brother.’
‘I hate not being able to see these people,’ Parker said. ‘Is there any way she can shop me and not shop her brother?’
‘Not that I can see,’ Mackey said, and offered a slow smile. ‘And at this point,’ he said, ‘she and the neighbor are a little afraid of me.’
Parker looked at him. ‘Just a little?’
‘So far,’ Mackey said.
That was the twelfth day. The thirteenth, Mackey gave him a verbal map. ‘From what I hear,’ he said, ‘that doorway you use, when you come in here, that’s a corridor straight down from the cells, mess hall on the right, the other side of that wall there with the kids’ pictures of trees and airplanes and shit.’
‘I visit the lawyers across the same corridor,’ Parker told him, ‘beyond that wall with the long table and the drinking fountain.’
‘Right,’ Mackey said. ‘And from what I understand, the library’s beyond that, the hallway you want beyond that.’
‘Right.’
‘Okay, tilt it all on its side,’ Mackey told him, because they wouldn’t be able to write any of this down or make any drawings. ‘You know those metal change things the conductors carry on the front of their belt, where they can give you coins out of?’
‘Right.’
‘Okay. Then if this whole thing is on its side with that corridor out there on the bottom, then where we are is the row of half dollars, and the lawyers’ room next to it is the row of quarters, and the library is the row of dimes, and the hallway you want to know about is the row of nickels. Okay?’
‘Right,’ Parker said.
‘Near the top of the dimes, the library,’ Mackey said, ‘back where the law books are kept, there’s a side door to the hallway, the row of nickels.’
‘That’s what I hoped.’
‘It’s kept locked, and the lawyer doesn’t have the key. In fact, there is no key. When he wants out, he phones, and the guard at the far end of the hallway, top of the nickels, buzzes him out. Same going in, buzzes him in.’
‘What’s beyond the guard at the far end of the hallway?’
‘Above the nickels and the dimes is a couple offices and the guards’ locker room, where they change for work. And a side door to the guards’ separate parking lot.’
