“Yes. I’m working on that problem, too. I told Meany we’d do the switch around one. You call Sandra.”
“Why do we want to bring her in?”
“Because Meany doesn’t know her. If they try something after all, she can be useful.”
“All right. I suppose it makes sense.”
“She can earn her half of Nick. She can come to Orient Point and take the same ferry as us and not know us.”
“I’ll see you in the morning,” McWhitney said, and hung up.
* * *
When he got to Colliver’s Pond, the body of water Claire’s house was on, he drove past her place and a further mile on around the lake to another seasonal house where he had a stash. More than half of the money in the duffel bag from upstate New York had been spent.
With a green Hefty bag on the seat beside him, he drove back to Claire’s house, and as he came down the driveway she stepped out the front door and signaled him not to put the car in the garage. He rolled his window down and she said, “I’ve been needing the car, I’ve got some shopping to do.”
“We won’t have this crap much longer,” he said, getting out of the Toyota.
“I know. Don’t worry about it.”
He carried the Hefty bag through the house into the garage, then didn’t feel like being indoors, so went out around the back to the water. There were two Adirondack chairs there, on the concrete jetty beside the boathouse. He sat there and looked out over the lake and didn’t see any other people. Three months ago this whole area had been alive with vacationers, but now only the few year-rounders were left, and they were all in their houses.
The strong breeze that ruffled the lake and blew past him had hints of frost in it. It was past five on an early November day, and the light was fading fast. Once these two problems were taken care of, the money and the new identification, it would be time for them to head somewhere south.
He didn’t hear the car coming back, but he heard the garage door lift open, and got up to go inside, help her unpack the groceries, and then go sit in the living room while she went to her office to listen to her messages. They’d eat out tonight; when she came back, they’d decide where.
But when she walked into the living room, there was a troubled look on her face. “One’s for you.”
It was McWhitney. “Evening, Mr. Willis. I hope I’m not interrupting anything. This is Nelson, the bartender from McW, and I’m sorry to have to tell you you left your briefcase here. Your friend Sid found it and turned it over to me. He doesn’t want a reward or anything, but he and a few of his pals are waiting around outside to be sure everything’s okay. I hope to hear from you soon. I hope there wasn’t anything valuable in there.”
5
Parker had had enough. But he knew this was exactly the kind of situation that makes an angry man impatient, an impatient man careless, and a careless man a convict. He was angry, but he would control it.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I got to ask you to drive me to the city.”
She gave him a curious look. “But that’s the place we went to, isn’t it? Where I met Sandra.”
“Right.”
“But that’s out on Long Island.”
“I’ll take a train.”
“You will not,” she said. “Come on, let’s go.”
“One minute,” he said, and went through to the pantry, where he took down from a shelf an unopened box of Bisquick. He turned it over and the bottom had been opened and reclosed. He popped it open and shook out, wrapped in a chamois, a Beretta Bobcat in the seven-shot .22, a twelve-ounce pocket automatic, which he put in his right pants pocket, then returned the chamois to the box and the box to the shelf.
Claire had her coat on, standing by the door between kitchen and garage. Parker chose a loose dark car coat with several roomy pockets, and transferred the Bobcat to one of them. “Ready.”
As they went out to the car, she said, “You can tell me what this is along the way.”
“I will.”
He waited till they were away from the house, then said, “This is about doing something with that money.”
“Overseas. You told me.”
“That’s right. On his own, Nels talked to a guy he knew that could maybe do that, but Nels didn’t know him as well as he thought.”
“Is this Sid?”
“You mean Nels’s message just now. The guy’s name is Oscar Sidd. I’ve never seen him, but he’s been described to me. It turned out, when Nels went up to New England to get the money, Oscar Sidd followed him.”
“To see if he could get it all for himself.”
“That’s right. Sandra saw what he was up to, and cut him out of the play.”
“But now he’s back,” Claire said.
“He has to know the money’s somewhere around Nels. So what Nels was saying is, Oscar Sidd’s outside the bar with some friends of his, or some muscle he bought. To keep things quiet, he’s waiting out there until the other customers leave. Then they’ll go in and ask Nels where the money is. They’ll have plenty of time to ask.”
Claire nodded, watching the road. Full night was here now, oncoming traffic dimming its lights. “When will the customers leave?”
“On a Monday night in November? No later than nine o’clock.”
She looked at the dashboard clock, “It’s five-thirty.”
“We’ll get there.”
“Not if you take a train.”
“Nels will hold them off for a while. It won’t be that sudden.”
“That’s why I’ll drive you there.”
“You don’t want to be at that bar, not tonight. Or anywhere near it. Let me off a block away.”
“Fine. I can do that.”
“And don’t wait for me, Nels and I were going to make the money transfer tomorrow anyway. So you just let me off and go back.”
“I might stay in the city. Have dinner and go to a late show.”
“Good idea.”
“And if anything comes up, call me on my cell.” She looked at him and away, “All right?”
“Sure,” he said.
