Williams laughed. ‘So he thinks I’m stupid, and I think he’s stupid.’
‘No,’ Parker said. ‘He thinks you’re stupid, but you think he’s greedy. If he thinks there’s money in it from you, in cash, he’ll take you where you want to go first, and then call the law.’
Mackey said, ‘So we go down to that door, and what? Soon as he shows up, we run out there?’
‘No,’ Parker said. To Williams he said, ‘You tell him, you’re hiding in the back of the store. When he gets there, he should come over and knock on the door.’ To Mackey, Parker said, ‘That way, he’s out of the car before we move. And we get to see if it’s Goody or somebody else that shows up.’
6
When Williams hung up, his grin was both nervous and confident. ‘He’ll do it,’ he said.
From just listening to this side of the conversation, Parker believed Williams was right. Williams had been hushed and urgent throughout the brief call. ‘I’ll tell you in the car,man!’ he’d exclaim, every time Goody started asking questions. ‘If you don’t get here, I just gotta go, I don’t know where, I just gotta get outa here!’ And at last, ‘Good man, Goody, Maryenne says I could count on you, see you, my man.’ And he hung up and gave them his grin.
Mackey said, ‘I know it’s more comfortable in this place, but I wanna be down by that door.’
They all did. They left the rental office, strode to the far other end of the hall, past the sleeping residents of the Armory Apartments, and trotted down the service stairs to the door with the alarmed bar. Williams leaned against the window frame, looking out that deep narrow space at the camera store across the street, and Parker and Mackey sat on the stairs to wait.
The feeling at the bottom of this stairwell was like being in the base of a mineshaft. Even though they were at street level, the sidewalk just the other side of that door in front of them, it felt in here as though they were buried much deeper in the earth than when they’d been in the tunnel. The feeling reminded Parker of his more than two weeks in Stoneveldt. He wanted out of here.
It was three minutes to four when Williams suddenly straightened, looking out the window. Reading his body language, Parker and Mackey both got to their feet, watching Williams as he leaned closer to the window.
‘It’s him,’ Williams said. His voice was hushed, as though he was afraid the man out there could hear him. Then he shook his head. ‘Get out the car,Goody!’
Parker and Mackey moved in close to look out past Williams’ shoulders. A black Mercury, several years old, was stopped now across the street, in front of the camera store. Gray exhaust sputtered from the tailpipe. The driver was indistinct, but clearly alone in the car.
Mackey said, ‘What’s he waiting for?’
‘He’s got to get out of the car,’ Parker said.
And then he did. The driver’s door opened, the interior light switched on, and Parker could see a skinny black man, any age from twenty to forty, jiggling in nervous fidgety motions inside there. He pushed his door open, hesitated, looked around, then abruptly jumped out of the car. Exhaust still puffed from the tailpipe. The driver closed the door, but then leaned his chest against the side of the car and stared off at something to his right, down the street.
Mackey said, ‘What’s he looking at?’
Parker took his S&W Terrier .32 from its holster in the middle of his back. ‘We’ll be finding out,’ he said.
The other two both brought out their pistols, as Goody finally moved across the street. Jerking like a marionette, he hurried around the front of the Mercury and ran to the inset doorway of the camera store. As he knocked on the glass over there, Parker rammed his body into the barred door. It popped open, outward to the street. A great metal screamrose up, and Parker and Mackey and Williams ran out to the street.
Parker was already looking to his right as he came out past the door, and what was parked down there, a dozen car lengths behind the Mercury, wasn’t the law. It was a dark green Land Rover, with three burly black men boiling out of three of its doors. They were all shouting, but nobody could hear anything with the scream of that siren laid over them all.
Already there were lights coming on in windows up above, and the three men from the Land Rover waved guns as they ran forward. The two from the front seat would be muscle, the one from the backseat brain. All three started to fire their guns as they ran, which meant the bullets went anywhere.
Parker stopped in the street, one step beyond the curb, aimed down his right arm, dropped the brain. Mackey and Williams were also firing. Parker looked toward the Mercury, and Goody was running for it, across the sidewalk from the camera store, reaching for the passenger door. Two-handed stance, Williams shot him through both closed windows, and Goody bounced off the car, sprawled on his back on the sidewalk, shards of window glass glittering around him.
The three from the Land Rover were all down. That was the better car. Parker ran for it, knowing Mackey and Williams had to see him, because he couldn’t shout to them under the siren. Windows were opening upstairs, people staring down at the street, where three men were fallen in twisted positions, one lay spread-eagled on his back on the sidewalk next to a black Mercury, and three men with guns in their hands raced for a hulking dark Land Rover.
Still running, Parker half-turned, pointed to Williams running behind him, pointed to the driver’s seat of the Land Rover; Williams knew this town. The three piled in, Mackey following Parker through the same door to the back seat, and Williams tore them away from there.
As soon as the siren was behind them, Parker said, ‘Go to ground. Don’t drive a lot.’
‘Where we put the cars,’ Williams told him. ‘It’s just down here.’
Parker looked back. No law yet. They’d been out of the building less than a minute.
Williams drove without lights, nothing else moving on the street, and when he got to the parking garage he stopped to get the ticket that opened the barrier, then circled upward three stories before he finally found a space to park. Cutting the engine, he turned to the two in back and said, ‘I think the big guy was the one Goody worked for.’
