“Here we are,” the guy agreed. Out here, he was smiling, relaxed. “I want to thank you,” he said. “You got me a day off and a nice jaunt on the ocean.”
“That’s fine,” Parker said, and looked around. He still didn’t see anybody else he knew.
The guy picked up on his tension. “Everything okay? Is it all right to give you the keys?”
“Yeah. Do it now.”
The guy pulled keys from his pocket and handed them to Parker, saying, “About the middle, on the left. It’s a Subaru Forester, green. Anything I should know about?”
“No. A couple of people are trying to deal themselves in. We’ll take care of it.”
“Frank would like his car back,” the guy said, and grinned again, this grin a little less relaxed. “And the other, too, of course.”
“It’s taken care of,” Parker said. “I gotta go. If they see me talking to you, they say, who’s that?”
The guy’s grin this time was self-confident. “They don’t wanna know.”
“Hold the thought,” Parker said, and went back inside.
Now he saw the bulky guy from last night, on line at the refreshment stand. Parker skirted the line without being seen, went on down to the cars, found the Forester, and unlocked his way in. On the backseat were two liquor cartons. He didn’t bother to look in them.
From here, the Chevy Suburban was almost parallel to him, two cars over, with Sandra’s Honda in front of it, and McWhitney in the van closer to the front of the ship. Parker put the key in the ignition, and waited.
* * *
There was a glitch in unloading the ferry in New London. The first cars got off all right, including McWhitney in the van, but then Sandra couldn’t seem to start the Honda. She ground the starter, and people behind her began to honk and shout and get out of their vehicles. Other lines of cars moved, but that one was stuck. When Parker drove off, the bulky guy and one other from the Suburban were pushing the Honda.
McWhitney had waited beside the road. He was laughing when Parker went by, and rolled in to follow him. They drove into town, found a supermarket, and Parker went to the rear of its parking lot. McWhitney stopped next to him, still laughing, and got out of the van to say, “She got them to help. You believe the balls on that woman?”
“Let’s do this fast,” Parker said. “We’ve got half an hour before the ferry goes back.”
As they started the transfer of the three Hefty bags and the two liquor cartons, McWhitney said, “I’ve been thinking about this. We’re still gonna have money in this van. Not the dirty two mil, the clean two hundred K.”
“That’s right,” Parker said.
“So they’ll still have something to go after,” McWhitney said. “So what I think, I don’t take the ferry back. You do and Sandra does, you give the beverage guy this Subaru and you travel with Sandra, come back together to my place.”
“It’ll take you five hours to come around,” Parker said, “Almost all the way back to the city, and then out onto the Island.”
“But they know this van,” McWhitney said, “And we rubbed their noses in it pretty good last night, so now they got an extra motivation. You know I’m not gonna skip out on you because I’m not gonna skip out on my bar. You’ll be there by five-thirty, I’ll be there by eight. And Sandra can keep in touch with me.”
“All right,” Parker said. “I’ll see you there.”
12
It was a shorter wait this time for Parker to board the ferry, driving the Forester up the ramp, following the hand signals of the ferry crew, coming to a stop very near the front of the boat. The three large Hefty bags filled most of the space behind him, one on the rear seat and two squeezed into the cargo area.
Once again he waited for the ferry to move away from the land and make its turn before he got out of the Forester, locked it, and headed for the stairs. He didn’t look for Sandra’s Honda yet, but would find it when he needed it.
Frank Meany’s man was promenading on the same side deck as last time. He looked relaxed enough to retire. Seeing Parker, he smiled and said, “Everything all right, your end?”
Handing him the car keys, Parker said, “About all you’re going to see in your rearview mirror is Hefty bags.”
“Frank loves Hefty bags,” the guy said. “Nice to see you again.”
Parker went back inside, and saw Sandra coming up the stairs. He went over to her and said, “I’m traveling with you.”
“Not yet,” she said. “I’m here for the ladies’. I’ll be right back.”
She went on to the restrooms, and Parker waited near a window in a spot where people coming up the stairs would face the other way. But none of the trio from the Suburban came up, and a few minutes later Sandra returned, waved to Parker, and the two of them went down the stairs to the cars, he saying, “Nelson didn’t like bringing the good money back on the boat with those other guys around, so he’s gonna drive.”
“That’ll take him forever.”
“He figures to get to his place by eight. We’ll wait for him there.”
“Okay, good,” she said, and pointed. “I’m over this way.”
“I’m not seeing the Suburban,” he said.
“What?” She looked around. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. They’ve gotta be here.”
“You go that way, I’ll go this way, but I don’t think so.”
They moved among the cars and met at the Honda. Looking across it at him, she said, “What are we gonna do?”
“First we get in the car.”
She unlocked them in, and when both doors were shut he said, “Call Nelson.”
“I can’t,” she said. “With the steel hull on this thing, I get no reception.”
“Go out on a deck.”
“It’s still no good.”
Parker looked at her. “You can’t call Nels till we get to Long Island?”
“I hate it as bad as you do,” she said.
He shook his head. “Over an hour before we can call him.”
“He’ll be all right,” she said. “He’s a big boy.”
“Yeah, he is,” Parker said. “And they’re three big boys.”
* * *
At Orient Point, once they were off the ferry, Sandra pulled onto the verge of the road, out of the flow of debarking cars, and called McWhitney. Parker watched her face, and saw that McWhitney wasn’t picking up.
Then she said, “I’m getting his voice mail. What the fuck, I might as well leave a message. Nelson, call me.” She broke the connection and said, “Shit. I needed that money.”
“They’re still out there,” Parker said. “They haven’t gone to ground anywhere, not yet. They’ve got to come back to the Island. If nothing else, they’ve got to give the car back.” Looking out the windshield, he said, “If we knew what the dealer was, we could be waiting for them.”
