The Rare Coin Score p-9

by Richard Stark

  The truck pulled away up the ramp and Parker said, “Back into the office.”

  The attendant started walking backwards, still with his arms at his sides and his eyes faced front.

  Parker said, “Unbrace, kid. Turn around and walk in there and sit down.”

  The attendant did what he was told, and Parker stood in front of his desk and said, “My friends and I are going to stay here a while. I’ll have an eye on you. If cops come around, nobody’s here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If cops come around and you spill, you’ll get the first bullet.”

  The attendant looked very earnest and very scared. “I won’t spill, sir,” he said.

  “You can spill,” Parker told him, “by looking scared.”

  “I am scared, sir.”

  Parker nodded. “That’s what you’re supposed to be,” he said. “But you’re not supposed to show it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If the cops figure out I’m here, you get the first bullet. Whether you let them know on purpose or not.”

  The attendant nodded. “Yes, sir. I understand, sir.”

  “Good.”

  Parker went back out of the office and shut the door. Through the glass he could see the attendant sitting there, practicing how not to look scared. He needed more practice.

  Ahead was the ramp. To the left was a wide fire door leading to concrete stairs. Parker went up these at a run, came cautiously through the door on the second floor, and saw French ahead of him, walking down the ramp. French didn’t have anything in his hands and wasn’t trying to get down to the first floor unseen.

  Parker called, “French!”

  French turned, halfway down the ramp, saw Parker, and spread his hands. “I’m clean,” he said.

  “Why?” Parker asked him. “Why not throw down on me?”

  French shook his head. “I can’t do it alone,” he said. “A quiet heist I could do, but this got noisy. You think on your feet, you’ll get out of this. Your fence is dead now, but I’ve got one. We can help each other.”

  Did it make sense? Or did French have something cute in mind? Parker said, “Why muscle in on somebody else’s proposition?”

  “I thought you were out. I thought Lebatard wouldn’t be able to get anybody but amateurs, and I figured I could take them. And I told you, I was into my stake. And I figured to take Lempke in with me. I figured he’d come, if the takeover was done anyway, then there’d be two of us to move the stuff.”

  Parker could see how it might have looked to French, but maybe what he was getting was only something in the vicinity of the truth. He said, “All right. You keep the kid cool downstairs, I’ll stay with the truck.”

  “The broad’s flaked out.”

  “All right. I’ll take care of it.”

  French said, “We scratch each other’s backs?”

  “Deal,” Parker said.

  Two

  CLAIRE WAS standing beside the truck, looking puzzled. When Parker came along she said, “I have to go home now.”

  “Snap out of it,” he said. “We don’t have any more time for that.”

  Calm and reasonable, she said, “We must never speak of that. Will you promise me?”

  “I promise,” he said. She was still crazy as a loon, but she was being quiet crazy so it was all right. “Sit down in the truck again,” he said.

  “But I have to go home,” she said.

  “They want to talk about it there,” he told her. “Better stay here.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Then I’ll stay for a while.”

  She climbed back into the cab and sat there, knees primly together, hands folded in her lap. She gazed out through the windshield.

  French had put the truck way in a corner of the third floor, out of sight from the top of the ramp. This floor was about half full of cars, all with the keys in them, and Parker went walking around looking for the best vehicle to switch to.

  He heard a siren and went to the front part of the building to look. The outer concrete wall was chest-high, and then was open to the air above that. Parker leaned out, looked over the edge, and saw a police car go screaming by, headed toward the hotel. He could hear other sirens now, too, in other parts of town.

  It was bad, it was very bad. They’d have the city sewed up in half an hour, and there was no place arranged inside the city to hole up. As to French, Parker thought he could trust him until they were clear, and then he’d have to be taken care of. If they got clear.

  He left the wall, walked around some more, and finally found a Volkswagen Microbus down on the second floor. He drove it upstairs, parked it next to the truck, and got out to find Claire collapsed over the truck’s steering wheel, crying quietly but desperately.

  She looked up when Parker opened the truck door. The madness was out of her eyes, and in its place was pain. She shook her head and whispered, “I didn’t know what it was.”

  “We’re in deep now,” Parker told her. ‘We’ve got trouble.”

  “It’s all because of me.”

  “No. French tried a takeover. It’s a tough thing to pull off, and he didn’t quite make it.”

  “But Billy’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s my fault.”

  He shrugged. “If you want it,” he said, “You want to go turn yourself in?”

  She shook her head. “No. I don’t want to go to jail.”

  He was relieved, but didn’t show it. If she’d said yes he would have had to kill her, here and now. It would have bothered him; but it would have been necessary, so he would have done it. He said, “You won’t be able to go home.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’ll identify Billy. Somebody has to know Billy was hanging around you, so the cops’ll get to you. Then somebody looks at you and says, ‘She’s the one was at the hotel’.”

  “Oh,” she said. “You mean, I can’t go back at all.”

  “That’s right,” he said, watching her.

  She thought about it, looking at the dashboard, and then looked back at Parker, saying, “Will you take me with you?”

  “For how long?”

  She managed a wan smile. “Until one of us gets bored, I suppose.”

  “Will you break down anymore, like you did tonight?”

  “No. That was just a surprise, that’s all. The same thing won’t surprise me twice.”

  “Maybe something else’ll surprise you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Parker looked at her, and he didn’t think so either. He wanted to believe her, because if he believed her he could take her along, but if he couldn’t trust her to stay reliable he’d have to shut her now, and he didn’t want to have to do that. He said, “All right. We travel together.”

  “There’s one thing,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “What I told you, about needing seventy thousand dollars. It was a lie.”

  Parker ‘said, “You mean, you didn’t need it for a debt?”

  “I didn’t need it at all. I didn’t need it.”

  “You wanted to build a stake.”

  “Yes.”

  Parker grinned. “You work hard,” he said.

  She smiled uncertainly. “It doesn’t change anything?”

  “Why should it? I wasn’t in this for you, I was in it for me.”

  “Of course.” She smiled more naturally, saying, “I guess I just felt I had to confess something to somebody.”

  “That’s a bad feeling. Don’t get it anymore.”

  “I won’t.”

  “All right,” he said. “French is going to be with us for a while. We can use him. Until he feels safe, we can trust him. But you’ve got to help me watch my back.”

  “I will.”

  “Good. Come on, let’s switch the goods.”

  Three

  HE HEARD sirens again, coming this way. “Keep working,” he told her, and went up front again to take a look
. They’d been at the job of transferring the cases about five minutes now, and were not quite half done.

  Parker looked over the edge. The street was filling up with cops, both in cars and on foot, for several blocks in both directions. Somebody must have seen the truck make a left into this street. Cops were checking alleys, side streets, driveways. As Parker watched, a police car turned slowly and nosed into this building, disappearing from his view.

  He trotted back to Claire and said, “Keep it quiet a minute. We’ve got company. Listen at the head of the ramp. If you hear them coming up, give me the high-sign.”

  “All right.”

  He went to the front and looked over the edge again, waiting for them to come back out. If they did come up here he’d have to run for it. Down the stairs if they drove up, or drive down if they came up on foot. There was a blue Porsche parked up there, he’d take that.

  If he was taking the car, he’d be able to bring Claire along, but if he had to clear out on foot she’d slow him too much. She’d have to be put out of the way. He didn’t think about that, didn’t want to think about it, but if the time came he’d do it.

  Cops were moving around down there like black models in an electric game. The temptation came to start plinking, to hit every moving shape, to make the street silent and empty again, but he knew the temptation for what it was, an emotional, irrational reaction to being in a tight spot. He kept watching It lasted nearly five minutes, and then the dark nose of the police car came turning out into sight again, moving slowly. Parker watched the dark bump of the flasher on the car roof, watched the car turn to the right and drive slowly away.

  He waited a minute more, but that was apparently the end of it. The main body of the search had moved farther down the street by now, and the last few cops going by on foot did nothing more than glance into the garage entrance on the way by.

  Parker went back over to Claire and said, “All right, it’s clear. Let’s finish up.”

  She was better now, almost all the way back to her usual self. She came along with him, and they hurried through the rest of the job of transferring the coin cases.

  After a minute, she said, “I had an idea, about French.”

  “Like what?”

  “We drive the truck down,” she said, “and we both get out of it and leave the motor running. We make it look as though we don’t realize it, but French can get to the truck. So he’ll jump into it and drive away, thinking he’s got all the loot. Then the police can chase him, and we can get away.”

  Parker grinned. “That’s cute,” he said. “But it’s no go.”

  “Why not?”

  “In the first place, French won’t drive the truck away. He’ll stick with us until we’re completely out of this town. In the second place, Billy’s dead now, so we—”

  “Please,” she said, and her face had gone chalky again. “Don’t say anything about any of that.”

  He shrugged. “The point is, we need a new fence, somebody to take this stuff off our hands. We could find one without French but it would take time, and we’re better off the sooner we get out from under.”

  “But isn’t that dangerous? To keep French around like that. What if he tries to double-cross us?”

  “He will. Don’t worry about it.”

  She shook her head. “Whatever you say,” she said, and went back to work.

  A minute later, as they were finishing up, she said, “I know what you were going to do.”

  He looked at her. “What do you mean?”

  “If the police came upstairs,” she said. “I know what you were going to do. But you wouldn’t have to. I’d never tell them anything.”

  He thought about it a few seconds, and then he nodded. “I’ll remember that,” he said.

  Four

  FRENCH WAS sitting in the office with the attendant. When Parker came in, French looked up and said, “He was very good.”

  “Fine. Put him out. Sit in for him while I bring it down.”

  French got to his feet. “Can we move now?”

  “We can’t wait anymore. It’s almost four o’clock. All the cops moved on anyway.”

  “Good.”

  Parker started out of the office, then looked back to say, “Don’t put him out permanently. Just for now.”

  “I know. Parker, I’m not a killer. Your boy Lebatard forced my hand back there.”

  “All right.”

  Parker went back upstairs. The D.C. license plates that had originally been on the truck were now on the Microbus, with its own local plates stashed away inside. The D.C. plates had been brought along on the truck to be slipped back onto it when it was abandoned.

  Claire was already in the passenger seat. Parker got behind the wheel and drove slowly down the ramp. The Microbus moved ponderously because of the weight in back, and Parker had to keep the brakes on hard to prevent it from shooting on down the curving ramp.

  French came out of the office as they reached the bottom. He opened the door beside Claire, but Parker told him, “Get in back.”

  “Right.” He shut the door again, opened the side door instead, and climbed in with all the coin cases. “Good idea to make the switch,” he said. “That truck was bad news.”

  Parker drove on out to the street and turned left, back toward the hotel. He took a right turn before getting there, went around Monument Circle, took Indiana northwest, and after half a dozen blocks turned off onto a dark side street and parked at the curb.

  French said, “What now?”

  “We find a place to hole up.” Parker turned to Claire. “You’re local. Who do you know that we can move in on?”

  Claire frowned. “You mean, somebody to trust? I wouldn’t know any—”

  “Not to trust. Somebody who won’t be missed if they don’t show up anywhere for a couple days.”

  “You don’t mean to kill,” she said, and a touch of panic showed again behind her eyes.

  “No, I don’t mean to kill. Killing is something we do only if we don’t have any choice.”

  From in back, French said to Claire, “It was Lebatard forced my play back at the hotel. I didn’t—”

  “Don’t!” She clutched at Parker’s forearm, saying, “Parker, please, don’t let him talk about it.”

  Parker said, “Shut up, French. Let her think.” To Claire he said, “It would be best if it was a neighborhood where we could park this bus at the curb without it looking out of place.”

  She was obviously glad at the chance to think about something besides Billy. Nodding, she said, “Someone who won’t be missed. That would be someone who doesn’t work, who— I know! I know just the one.”

  “Good. Let’s go there.”

  “She’s a divorcee, she—”

  “I don’t care what she is. Let’s get off the street.”

  Five

  THE DOOR was finally opened after Parker had been pounding on it for nearly five minutes. “Do you know what time it is?” the bleached blonde in the pink negligee started to say, and then she saw the gun in Parker’s hand and she tried, too late, to slam the door again.

  Parker pushed in. French behind him. Parker said, “You only get one scream.”

  She said, “You think I’m crazy?” Her eyes were frightened, her faint double chin was trembling, but she had control of herself.

  French said, “It’s twenty-five minutes after four. Time for you to go back to bed.”

  “I didn’t know rapists came in pairs,” she said.

  “Wrong,” Parker told her. “We’re just going to stay here a while. You be good and we’ll be good.”

  Bewilderment began to take the place of fear. She said, “What is this? What are you two?”

  “Men in a hurry,” French said. “Turn around and walk back to your bedroom. Slowly.”

  She said, “Is this somebody’s idea of a gag? Did Tommy send you birds around?”

  Parker stepped over and took her by the arm, not gently. She had to get a touch of roughness t
o make her understand this was serious. Holding the arm tight, he pushed her around and shoved her down the hall, saying, “Don’t make it tougher on yourself.”

  “My arm!” She held the arm with her other hand and looked back over her shoulder at him, and he could see by her eyes that she now understood this wasn’t anybody’s idea of a joke. She walked obediently forward, saying no more, and Parker and French followed her.

  Claire had described the apartment layout to them. There were four rooms, all opening to the left off this long white narrow corridor. The living room was first, and then the kitchen, third the bath, and finally the bedroom. A light fixture with a frosted glass globe in the midpoint of the corridor was the only source of illumination at the moment, but when they entered the bedroom Parker felt along the wall beside the door, found a switch, and turned on the overhead light.

  The blonde, whose name according to Claire was Mavis Gross, wore a chin patch when in bed; it was lying discarded now on the pillow, where she’d tossed it when she’d gotten up to answer the door. She headed straight for it, tucking it out of sight under the pillow with a quick movement of her hands, and then turned and said, “All right, what now?”

  “You lie down. On your face.”

  “Listen,” she said. “You two aren’t sadists or anything, are you? I mean, you’re not going to cut me up or anything.”

  “You won’t get hurt,” Parker told her. “The law’s on our tail, we’ve got to lie low for a while. You do like you’re told, everything will be okay.” He didn’t like taking the time to make this kind of long-winded explanation, but he knew it was better in the long run. She’d be more docile, less trouble, less likely to get panicky, and that meant they could get done with her sooner.

  The explanation helped right away. She lay down on the bed, face down as she’d been ordered, and waited while French went through the bureau drawers for something to tie and gag her with. He finally used stockings to tie her wrists and ankles, and went to the bathroom for adhesive tape to close her mouth.

  When they were done, they switched off the bedroom light again and went out of the room, shutting the door behind them. French went on into the kitchen and Parker went down the hall to the door and out into the stairwell, where he called down, “Okay.”