offense, but to rise above it.
Assuming a bored air, the deskman said, “You can bring back my magazine while I’m calling.”
“Sure.”
The deskman turned away to his phone console and made a low-voiced call, while Parker watched him. When he hung up, he was sullen, because now he knew Parker was somewhere above him in importance. “You were gonna get my magazine,” he said.
“I forgot.”
Sorely tried, the deskman got to his feet to retrieve the magazine himself, as a silver door at the far right end of the silver wall opened and another guy in a company blazer came out. This one was older and heavier, with a little more business veneer on him. Holding the doorknob, he said, “Mr. Parker?”
“Right.”
Parker followed him through the silver door into another world. Beyond the reception area, the building was strictly a warehouse, long and broad, concrete-floored, with pallets of liquor cartons stacked almost all the way up to the glaring fluorescents just under the ten-foot ceiling. There was so much clatter of machinery, forklifts, cranes, that normal conversation would have been impossible.
Parker followed his guide through this to Meany’s office, off to the right, a roomy space but not showy. The guide held the door for Parker, then closed it after him, as Meany got up from his desk and said, “I didn’t know you were coming. Sit down over there.”
It was a black leather armchair to the right of the desk. Parker went to it and Meany sat again in his own desk chair. Neither offered to shake hands.
Meany said, “What can I do you for today?”
“You liked the sample.”
“It’s very nice money,” Meany said, “Too bad it’s radioactive.”
“Do you still want to buy the rest of it?”
“If we can work out delivery,” Meany said. “I got no more reason to trust you than you got to trust me.”
“You could give us reason to trust each other,” Parker said.
Meany gave him a sharp look. “Is this something new?”
“Yes. How that money came to me, things went wrong.”
Meany’s smile was thin, but honestly amused. “I got that idea,” he said.
“At the end of it,” Parker told him, “my ID was just as radioactive as that money.”
“That’s too bad,” Meany said, not sounding sympathetic. “So you’re a guy now can’t face a routine traffic stop, is that it?”
“I can’t do anything,” Parker told him. “I’ve got to build a whole new deck.”
“I don’t get why you’re telling me all this.”
“For years now,” Parker told him, “I’ve been working for your office in Canada.”
Meany sat back, ready to enjoy the show. “Oh, yeah? That was you?”
“A guy named Robbins is gonna call you, ask for some employment records. I know you do this kind of thing, you’ve got zips, you’ve got different kinds of people your payroll office doesn’t know a thing about.”
“People come into the country, people go back out of the country,” Meany said, and shrugged. “It’s a service we perform. They gotta have a good-looking story.”
“So do I.”
Meany shook his head. “Parker,” he said, “why in hell would I do
“Ten dollars for one.”
Meany looked offended. “That’s a deal we got.”
“And this is the finder’s fee,” Parker said, “for bringing you the deal.”
Sitting back in his chair, Meany laced his fingers over his chest. “And if I tell you to go fuck yourself?”
“Tell me,” Parker said, “you think there’s anybody else in this neighborhood does export?”
“You’d walk away from the deal, in other words.”
“There’s no such thing as a deal,” Parker told him. “There never was, anywhere. A deal is what people say is gonna happen. It isn’t always what happens.”
“You mean we didn’t shake hands on it. We didn’t do a paper on it.”
“No, I mean, so far it didn’t happen. If it happens, fine. If it doesn’t, I’ll make a deal with somebody else, and it’ll be the same story. It happens, or it doesn’t happen.”
“Jesus, Parker,” Meany said, shaking his head. “I never thought I’d say this, but you’re easier to put up with when you have a gun in your hand.”
“A gun is just something that helps make things happen.”
“What I don’t get,” Meany said, “is how this finder’s fee that you call it is gonna give us reason to trust each other. That’s what you said, right?”
“You’re gonna know my new straight name,” Parker pointed out. “And how I got it. So then we’ve both been useful to each other, so we have a little more trust for each other. And I know, if sometime you decide you don’t like me, you could wreck me.”
“I
“We’ll try to live with that,” Parker said.
Meany gave an angry shake of the head, then reached for notepad and pen. “The guy that’s gonna call me, he’s named Robbins?”
“Kazimierz Robbins.”
Meany looked at the notepad and pen. “Robbins will do,” he decided.
As Meany wrote, Parker said, “The other thing is the money switch.”
Meany put down the pen. “You wouldn’t just like to drop it off here.”
“No. Tomorrow, at one p.m., one of your guys in the maroon coats drives onto the ferry at Orient Point out on Long Island that goes over the Sound to New London in Connecticut. He’s got our money in boxes or bags or whatever you want. On the ferry, he gets out of the car and one of us gets into it. If that doesn’t happen, he drives off, turns around, takes the next ferry back. At some point, we’ll take the car. He stays on the ferry while it goes back and forth, and after a while the car comes back with the money for you in it, and he takes it and goes.”
Meany said, “And what if the car doesn’t come back? You’ve got our money, but we don’t have yours.”
“Then how do you help me get my new ID? See?” Parker spread his hands. “It’s how we build trust,” he said.
4
On the way back to Claire’s place, Parker stopped at the usual gas station, phoned McWhitney’s bar, and when the man came on said, “I’m in a phone booth.” When McWhitney called back five minutes later Parker said, “It’s worked out with Meany.”
“The ferry switch? No snags?”
“Nothing to talk about. I’ll have Claire drive me to the city tomorrow morning, and then I’ll take the train out to your place.”
“Doesn’t that get old?”
