Dirty Money

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McWhitney said, “I could take Sandra’s car, follow down this road. Or she could, while we move the boxes.”

“Waste of time,” Parker said. “You can’t find a man on foot with a car. We just get the cash, and clear out of here.”

As they walked back toward the church McWhitney, sounding irritated but resigned, said. “Alibi. Parker, I’m gonna have to call in every marker I got out. And just hope it turns out enough people owe me something.”

2

Sandra had everything ready. The van, its rear doors open, was backed against the concrete landing and steps that led to the side door McWhitney had kicked in more than a week ago. She’d moved her Honda farther forward along that side wall of the church, facing out, tucked in close enough to the church to block from the road much of the view of what would be going on between doorway and van.

McWhitney approved: “Good work.”

“You boys do the heavy lifting,” she said. “I’ll sit in my car and watch. If I see something I don’t like, I’ll honk twice. And then probably drive like hell.”

Parker said, “If they’re that close, you shouldn’t run away. You should draw on us and make a citizen’s arrest.”

“That’s right, Sandra,” McWhitney said. “You’re the upright citizen. You’ve got licenses and everything.”

“Just what I always wanted,” she said. “Caught in the cross fire. Start: let’s get out of here.”

They started. They had a lot of weight to carry, boxes of money and boxes of hymnals, out of the choir loft, down the stairs and into the van. To their right, Sandra sat in her Honda with the engine on, the radio playing soft rock as she read a Forbes magazine.

The money boxes and hymnal boxes were different brands of the same kind of mover’s carton, white, rectangular, with deep-sided lids fitting over them, like the boxes seen carrying evidence into federal courtrooms. Since the hymnals had been on top upstairs, for camouflage, most of them had to be moved first and set aside so the money boxes could be loaded into the van. They developed a two-man bucket brigade system, so they wouldn’t get in each other’s way on the stairs, and within half an hour the van was two-thirds full, with more money boxes still upstairs.

“We’ll have to leave those,” Parker said. “We need space for the other boxes in front and on top, to show at the roadblocks.”

“I hate to leave any of it,” McWhitney said, “but you’re right.”

There were four money boxes still upstairs. They restacked hymnal boxes on top of them, then went down to finish loading the van and, as they did, Parker saw a streak of mud on the floor that hadn’t been there before. It was near the closed door to the basement, a place they’d holed up in after the robbery, a one-time community room from which all the appliances had been removed.

They each carried a carton of hymnals out to the van and Parker said, “You keep working, I got something to do.”

McWhitney was curious, but kept working, as Parker moved forward to Sandra in the Honda and said, “I need a flashlight.”

“Sure,” she said, and took one from a small metal box of supplies she kept bolted to the floor in front of the seat, to the right of the accelerator. “What for?”

“Tell you when I get back.”

The basement, as he remembered it, would be pitch-black, because it had plywood panels that slid across in front of the windows, for when they used to show movies down there. That meant he wouldn’t be able to open the door at the head of those stairs without Nick, down below, knowing he was coming down.

Why would Nick come back here, of all the places in the world? Maybe he still thought there was some chance he could find an edge for himself. Or maybe he just didn’t have any place else to go any more. Maybe his life was a maze, and this was the far end of it, and he didn’t have any other choices.

Parker opened the door, slid through, shut the door behind himself. As dark as he remembered. He silently went down two steps, then sat on that step and waited. Nick wouldn’t have another gun, but he might have something.

No light down there, no sound. Parker waited, then abruptly there was a sound, and an instant later light; gray daylight. Nick was sliding back one of the plywood panels, baring a window. Maybe he thought that would level the playing field somehow.

Parker put the unnecessary flashlight on the step behind him, stood, and took the marshal’s automatic from his pocket.

Nick said, “Hold it, Parker. You want to see this. Take a look out there. I mean it, take a look.”

“At what?”

Nick backed away from the window, gesturing for Parker to help himself. “Do yourself a favor,” he said.

Parker went down the rest of the stairs, crossed to the head-high window, and looked out at a state police patrol car, stopped in front of Sandra’s Honda, just blocking it. Two uniforms were getting out of the patrol car, shrugging their gunbelts at their waists as they moved toward Sandra, one of them a man, the other a woman, both white.

Looking at the automatic in Parker’s hand, Nick said, “You don’t want to make any loud noises. Not now.”

3

Had Sandra honked twice, when she saw the patrol car, as she’d said she would? If so, Parker hadn’t heard it down here. Concrete-block walls, room mostly underground, plywood over the windows. But a shot would be something else. Cops would hear a gunshot.

“We don’t want them looking in that window,” he said, and slid the plywood closed with his right hand as his left hand reached for Nick.

“Hey!”

Nick had backpedaled, but his shout told Parker which way he was moving. And then his ragged breath gave him the spot, and then Parker had his hands on him.

This had to be fast, and then he had to find that window and slide the plywood open just far enough so he could find his way back to the stairs and collect the flashlight. Bring it back, shut out the daylight again, switch on the flash, shine it quickly around.

There. Across the rear end of the room had been a kitchen. The appliances were long removed, making broad blank insets in the Formica counter that ran all across the back, but the sink was still there, set into the counter, with closed cabinet doors beneath. They opened outward to the left and right, with no vertical post between them.

Parker opened the cabinet doors and saw that the pipes for the sink were under there, but nothing else. Plenty of room.

He dragged Nick across the linoleum floor, bent him into the space under the sink, and shut the doors. Then he went back upstairs and outside, where the male cop was giving McWhitney back his license and registration and the