“Oh, well, I can do
“You can?”
She gestured to the notepad she kept mounted on the top of the dashboard. “Any car I’m following, or I’m interested in, every time, I write down their plate number.”
Parker looked at it. “And you can get the dealer from that?”
“Sure, Keenan and I always cultivated cash-only friendships at the DMV. Hold on.”
From her bulky purse she drew a slender black book, opened it, and dialed a number. “Hi. Is Matt Devereaux there? Thanks.”
She waited. Beside them, the last of the cars from the ferry were trickling by.
“Hello? Hey, Matt, it’s Sandra Loscalzo, how you doing? Well, I’ve got a cute one here, if you could help me. It’s a dealer’s plate, so I’m not talking about the car this time, I’m talking about the dealer. Sure.” She reeled off the number, then also gave him her cell number, and hung up.
“He’ll call back in five minutes,” she said, and put the Honda in gear. “We might as well start. Wherever the dealer is, he isn’t gonna be this far out on the Island.”
* * *
Matt did call her back in five minutes, while they were still in the cluster of traffic from that ferry, everybody westbound on Route 25. “Keenan. Hey, Matt. That’s terrific. Say again.”
She nudged Parker and pointed at the pad on the dashboard. He picked up the small magnetized pen she kept there, and she said, “DiRienzo Chevrolet, Long Island Avenue, Deer Park.” She spelled “DiRienzo,” then said, “Thanks, Matt. I’ll catch up with you later. Roy? I haven’t seen him for a while.” Breaking the connection, she said, “Well, that’s true. Deer Park’s just a little beyond Bay Shore. Any point going there now?”
“Every point,” Parker said, “but not yet. We’ll go to that neighborhood, find a diner, get something to eat, get in position before eight.”
“What if they don’t bring it back till tomorrow?”
“They don’t want it any more,” Parker said, “and their friend at the dealer’s gonna get nervous if it stays out overnight.”
Sandra frowned out at the slow-moving traffic all around them. They wouldn’t get clear of this herd from the ferry for another half hour or more, when they reached the beginning of the Expressway. “You’re a strange guy to partner with,” she said.
“So are you.”
“Do me a favor. Don’t kill anybody.”
“We’ll see,” he said.
13
Half a dozen car dealers were clustered along both sides of the wide road in this neighborhood, all of them proclaiming, either by banner or by neon sign, open til 9! All the dealerships were lit up like football stadiums, and in that glare the sheets of glass and chrome they featured all sparkled like treasure chests. This was the heart of car country, servicing the after-work automotive needs of the bedroom communities.
At seven thirty-five, when Sandra drove down the road to see DIRIENZO writ large in neon on their side, she said, “What do you want to do?”
“Pull in. We’ll look at cars.”
There were three separate areas for cars at the DiRienzo lot: new, used, and the customers’. Sandra followed the signs and put the Honda in with the customer cars, then said, “Now I’m shopping with you. I need this to come to an end.”
He shook his head and got out, and she followed suit, and immediately a short clean young fellow in suit and tie appeared, smiled a greeting, and said, “You folks looking for a family sedan?”
Sandra’s smile was sweeter than his. “We’re just looking around.”
“Go right ahead,” he said, with a sweeping arm gesture that offered them the whole place.
“Thank you.”
“I’m Tim, I work here.” He produced a business card, which he handed to Sandra, who took it. “Take your time. If I can help you with anything, I’m right here.”
“Thank you.”
They walked away from him, and Sandra said, “Do we want a new family sedan or a used family sedan?”
“We want to get over near the building. I need to see how they’re going to come in, what they’ll do.”
The building was broad, one tall story high, the front mostly wide expanses of plate glass, the rest a neutral gray concrete. A few of the most special cars were given their own spaces on the gleaming floor of the inside showroom, with desks and cubicles and closed-off offices behind. On the right side of the building, farther back than the plate glass, the gray concrete wall continued, with three large overhead doors spaced along the way, all of them at the moment shut.
Parker and Sandra saw that, then moved on past the front of the building, Parker saying, “They’ll bring it in there, by the doors. Their own car will be back with the customer parking. We’ll see what happens when they make the transfer.”
“We’ve got at least half an hour to wait,” she said. “What do we do in the meantime?”
“Look at cars.”
* * *
It was more like fifty minutes, and twice in that time they could see the fellow who’d first greeted them look over in their direction, frowning. But he never quite made the move to find out what they were up to.
Sandra said, “Is that it?”
It was. They were walking among the new cars, and the Suburban had to circle around that area to get to the side entrances. They angled to move toward where it would finish up, and as it drove by them Sandra said, “That’s weird.”
Parker had been looking the other way, not wanting the bulky guy from last night to see and recognize him, but now he turned back, watched the Suburban move slowly among the cars and customers, and said, “What’s weird?”
“Only the driver in front, three others in back. What would they do that for?”
Ahead, the Suburban made the turn to go around the corner of the building, putting itself into profile, and Parker could see the middle man of the three in back. “It’s Nelson,” he said.
“My God,” she said, staring, “it is! Did he go over to them?”
“No.”
“Well, why lug him around?”
The Suburban stopped in front of the middle overhead door as another suited salesman, a little older, smiling broadly and making gestures of greeting, came around toward it from the front entrance. The driver stepped out to the macadam. The three in the backseat stayed in the car.
“I’ll tell you why,” Parker said. “Oscar Sidd told them it was going to be two million dollars of poisoned money. They opened the boxes and they only found two hundred thousand. They think it’s the same money, and they want to know where the rest of it is.”
Sandra stared toward McWhitney. “He’s their prisoner in there.”
