Ask the Parrot

“You’re right,” Parker told him. “You can always say no.”

“Good. We understand each other.” Lindahl nodded at the windshield. “Lights out there.”

They had met only the occasional other moving car, this time of night, but up the road ahead of them now were the unmistakable lights of another roadblock. Those roadblocks would be in position all night tonight, and maybe tomorrow night, too.

The law was looking for two men, possibly separate but possibly together, so any car out late at night with two men in it attracted their interest. Also, with so little traffic out here on the rural roads in the middle of the night, the guys on duty were getting bored. For the first time, Parker and Lindahl were asked to step out of the Ford while the troopers did a quick flashlight scan of the interior. They weren’t patted down, though, and once again Parker’s new license was accepted without question.

They were the only car at the roadblock, and when they left it, driving north into darkness, that cluster of lights in the rearview mirror was still the only illumination to be seen. Lindahl kept twisting around to look back at those lights, and it wasn’t until they disappeared that he spoke again. “I guess you have an idea of what to do. About the track, I mean.”

“Yes.”

“I think it must be different from mine.”

“Parts of it.”

“Which parts?”

“In the first place,” Parker said, “we don’t take those metal boxes with us. There’s no reason to lug all that weight around.”

“The money’s gotta be in something.”

“Is there a mall around where you are? Someplace open on Sunday?”

“About forty miles away,” Lindahl said, “over toward Albany.”

“Tomorrow,” Parker told him, “you drive over there. Get two duffel bags. You know what I mean, big canvas bags.”

“Like the army uses.”

“That’s right.”

Lindahl shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “You saw how much money was there.”

“All we want is the big bills,” Parker told him. “Nothing under a ten. And no change.”

“Oh.” Nodding slowly, Lindahl said, “I guess that makes sense.”

“And also get two pairs of plastic kitchen gloves.”

“For fingerprints; fine. Anything else?”

“No, that’s all we’ll need. And fill the gas tank, it’s getting low.”

“Sure.” Lindahl was quiet for a minute, but then he frowned and said, “Why do I have to do all this tomorrow? There’s closer places I can go to on Monday.”

“Because we’re taking the money tomorrow night,” Parker said.

3

No!” Lindahl was deeply shocked. “That’s no good! We won’t have any time at all to get away!”

“In the first place,” Parker said, “let’s get rid of that thirty-six-hour fantasy of yours. You can’t go on the run, because you can’t hide. Where do you figure to be, thirty-six hours later? Oregon? Where do you sleep? Do you go to a motel and pay with cash? A credit card places you, and the law by then is watching your accounts. So do you pay cash? The motel wants your license plate number. Oh, from New York State?”

“Jesus.”

“Anywhere you go in this country, everybody’s on the same computer. It doesn’t matter if you’re across the street or across the country, as soon as you make any move at all, they know where you are. You gonna try to leave the country? You got a passport?”

“No,” Lindahl said. He sounded subdued. “I’ve never traveled much.”

“Not a good time to start,” Parker told him. “You can’t run away, you don’t know those ropes. So instead of being the guy that did it and you’re thumbing your nose and they’ll never get you, you’re the guy that didn’t do it, and you’re staying right there where you always were, and sure, let them go ahead and search, and you were home in bed last night same as any other night, and you don’t spend any of that cash for a year. You want to pull the job and not do time for it? That’s how.”

“That’s all . . .” Lindahl shook his head, gestured vaguely in the air in front of himself, like someone trying to describe an elephant to a person who’d never seen one. “That’s different from what I had in mind. That isn’t the same thing.”

“You want two things,” Parker reminded him. “Or so you said. You want revenge. And you want the money.”

“Well,” Lindahl said, and now he seemed a little embarrassed, a little sheepish, “I kind of wanted them to know.”

“Because you were gonna disappear.”

“But you say I can’t do that.”