the wheel of the Taurus. Both cars stopped, and Angioni said, ‘You two ride with Ed, he knows where we’re going. See you there.’
Parker slid into the front passenger seat, Williams into the back. On the seat was a little bundle of clothing. As Mackey drove them forward, Williams slipped out of his shoes and the prison guard’s pants, and put on instead gray chinos and a green patterned shirt. In front, Parker made a similar changeover.
As they headed on down the dirt road, back the way they’d come in, the Honda following, Williams moved forward to put his forearms on the seatback behind the other two, and watch the road. No one said anything until after they’d reached the blacktop and turned right, and then Parker said, ‘Did Tom tell you about this new job?’
Mackey grinned. ‘My guess was,’ he said, ‘you weren’t gonna like it, not at first. You and Brenda and me, we want to be in some other part of the world.’
‘That’s what makes sense,’ Parker agreed.
Williams supposed that was what made sense for him, too, the way things were. He was a local boy, who had made a little too good. As soon as possible, he should ease out to some other part of the country. It’s a big country, and a black boy can make himself hard to see.
Mackey was saying, ‘It isn’t a bad job. We should be able to work it without problems, and at least we’ll get off this tabletop with a little cash profit.’
Williams said, ‘This is a cash job? It’s tough to find real cash, I mean, enough to make it worthwhile.’
‘No, it’s jewelry,’ Mackey told him. ‘But they’ve got a buyer, in New Orleans, he’ll drive up as soon as we do the job, we’ll have cash a day later.’
Parker said, ‘From a jewelry store?’
‘It’s not a jewelry store,’ Mackey said, ‘it’s a wholesaler. He’s the one sells to the jewelry stores, all around this flat part of the world here.’
They were coming into the city now, with more traffic, with stop signs and traffic lights. Parker said, ‘This is going to be right in the middle of town.’
‘You know it,’ Mackey said.
‘Will we go past it now?’
‘No, it’s more downtown. Where we’re headed now used to be a beer distributor. Just a few blocks up here.’
This neighborhood was old commercial, little office buildings and manufacturing places and delivery outfits, mostly brick, all seedy. Evening was coming on, traffic moderate, mostly small trucks and vans. The Honda kept a steady distance behind them.
After another block, Parker said, ‘The reason they put us in front, it’s in case we change our mind.’
Mackey laughed. ‘What would they do, do you think,’ he asked, ‘if I suddenly hit a turn, took off?’
‘We’re not going to,’ Parker said.
Mackey was making Williams nervous. People who didn’t take serious things seriously always made him nervous. Junkies were like that. Mackey wasn’t a junkie, but he had the style. Williams, forearms on the seatback, looked at Mackey in the interior mirror. ‘I don’t think this is the time to do jokes,’ he said.
Mackey grinned in the mirror. ‘You tell me when,’ he said.
2
Tom Marcantoni was pleased with the place Jack and Phil had found. In a low-rent neighborhood of factories and warehouses, no private homes, this two-story brick building was one huge open space inside, concrete-floored, big enough for three delivery trucks and who knew how many cases and barrels of beer. The company had been absorbed by a bigger distributor, making this building redundant, and no one had another use for it yet. Electric and water were still on, Jack and Phil had put cots in the offices upstairs, and so long as they were reasonably cautious they shouldn’t attract attention.
Phil steered the Honda into the building, behind the Taurus, and both cars stopped. Jack jumped out to close the big overhead door, all the others climbed out and stretched, and Marcantoni got out at a more leisurely pace, grinning.
He couldn’t help it. It was all back on track. To think, just a few days ago, he’d thought he was screwed forever, put away like a goldfish in a bowl.
From the minute he’d gone inside, he’d been hoping and looking and waiting for a way to break that bowl, but Parker had been right: You couldn’t do it alone. So now he had these new partners, solid guys he could count on, and he still had the old score, waiting for him, downtown.
It had taken a while to be sure Williams and Kasper or Parker now, or whoever he was would stand up. Williams had been easier for Angioni and Kolaski to check up on, being a local boy, and the word had come back that he was sound; for a nigger, very good. For anybody, in fact, very good; cool in the action and never too greedy.
As for Parker, it had been easier for Kolaski to get a handle on his pal, Ed Mackey. Mackey had a good reputation back east, a lot like Williams, but Parker was a more shadowy figure, showing up here and there, solid but dangerous. The word was, after a while, that you could count on him but you had to be wary of him, too. If he got the idea you planned to cross him, he didn’t take prisoners.
Well, that was all right. Marcantoni was also not too greedy, and smart enough not to make trouble inside his own crew. There was plenty in this job for everybody. He wouldn’t cross Parker, and Parker wouldn’t cross him, so neither of them had anything to worry about. And finally, the best recommendation for Parker was that Mackey would go out of his way for him, be the outside man when it came time to break out of Stoneveldt. Marcantoni would do that for Angioni and Kolaski, and they would for him they’d just done it so that was all the guarantee you needed.
There was still a little of the old furniture in the building, including a long table and some folding chairs next to one of the long brick walls. Apparently, this was where the drivers would fill out their forms, get their requisitions and their routes. Now, the six of them crossed to this table, Jack Angioni leading the way for the new guys and
