The Steel Hit p-2

by Richard Stark

  “It isn’t worth eight. It’ll never be worth eight.”

  “Now, buddy,” the florid man said, “you got a chip on your shoulder. Now, why don’t we just talk this over? Come on back to the office.”

  “Tell your boy to put a new battery in.”

  The florid man tried another smile. This one worked better. “Not a new battery, buddy, I wouldn’t try to snow you. But a better one than you got. Okay?”

  “Good.”

  “There you go. You see, we can get along.” He turned and shouted, “Hey, Willis! Never mind about that. Take that old battery out of there, and put that Delta in. You know the one.”

  “And leave the engine off,” added Parker.

  “Yeah, sure, buddy. Leave her off, Willis.”

  Willis gathered up his battery and jumper cables and went back through the side door into the garage again.

  Parker and the florid man went back to the office, and this time Parker sat down in the slat-bottomed wooden chair beside the desk. The florid man settled heavily into the swivel chair, making it squeal. “I can see you know about trucks, buddy.”

  “I thought you wouldn’t snow me,” Parker said.

  “Now, there’s that chip on your shoulder again.” He made a little tsk-tsk sound, and shook his head in a friendly sort of way. Then he pulled an order-blank pad and a pencil over. “Now, then. What else did you want?”

  “Lube. Oil change. New plugs. Check the points. New–-“

  “Points? Now, you keep adding something every single time.”

  “Are you writing all this down?”

  “I surely am.” The florid man wrote “points”, and asked, “What else?”

  “New radiator hoses. And the legal minimum of lights.”

  The florid man wrote, laboriously, chewing on his cigar. The cigar had gone out, but he kept chewing on it anyway. When he was done writing, he said, “Now, let’s see. Lube and oil change, I guess I can do that all right. And plugs, well, we can check ‘em out, clean ‘em up a little. But I don’t see any way we could give you new ones.”

  “New ones,” Parker said.

  “Now, buddy.” The florid man spread his arms. “I give a little, you give a little.”

  “Tell me about that Delta,” Parker said. “The one you’re giving me.”

  The florid man cocked his head and sucked on the cold cigar. Then he smiled again. “New plugs. I just might be able to do it.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Okay, now, let’s see what else we got. The points. Well, sure, that’s no problem. And those hoses.” He nodded slowly, the cigar moving around in his mouth. “I noticed them myself, but I don’t think I got hoses like that in stock. I tell you what I’ll do, though. I’ll have Willis tape them up solid with friction tape. What do you say? You won’t leak a drop.”

  “There’s an oil leak, too.”

  “Now, there you go adding things again.”

  “The breather’s gone.”

  “I know I don’t have that in stock.”

  “Cap it, then. I don’t want to keep throwing oil away.”

  “Cap it? I can cap it, right enough. It’s just I don’t have that in stock.” He looked down at the list again. “Now, this about the lights. There sure are a lot of lights on there now.”

  “Not enough. There have to be lights at all outer corners, top and bottom, front and back of the box.”

  “I’m not sure the wiring’s there any more.”

  “It won’t take much to wire. You don’t have to be neat about it.”

  “Well, I’ll see what I can do.” The florid man looked at the list, studying it. “I do believe I can take care of all this for you, and still only ask the original price of eight hundred.”

  “We’ll see what kind of a job you do.”

  “Don’t you worry, my friend,” the florid man said. “I’ll take care of you right. You just leave everything to me.”

  “One more thing.”

  The florid man look up, frowning.

  “I saw Alabama plates on her. Are they hot?”

  “Not where you’re going, way up in New Jersey.”

  “What about when I drive through North Carolina?”

  “I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll smear some mud on ‘em, so you can’t tell the difference.” He took the cigar out of his mouth at last. “You know, safe plates are expensive. I got some, safe as a mother’s arms, but I just wouldn’t let them get tossed in on this deal. Safe plates aren’t that easy to come by.”

  “All right. Smear mud on them.”

  “That’s just what I’ll do.” He tore the top sheet off the order-blank pad. “Now, when do you want to take her? Tomorrow morning?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Oh, you want a rush job.”

  “I want her tonight,” Parker said. “And don’t give me a lot of crap about that being extra.”

  “Why, I had no intention. I tell you what, friend, you come back here at midnight — that’s two hours from now or a little less — and she’ll be ready.”

  “That’s good,” Parker said.

  He left the office. A block away he found a hole-in-the-wall restaurant and spent some time over a cup of coffee. Then he walked around a while, looking at the town, glad he was going to be leaving it that night. At midnight he walked back to the Double Ace Garage.

  The truck was out on the side again, but in a different spot, closer to the floodlight. Parker went over and looked at it. There were new spark plugs, the joints had been lubed, the breather hole was capped, and lights had been haphazardly attached to the trailer. Friction tape had been wrapped tightly around the radiator hoses and mud had been smeared on the Alabama plates. And the stain on the ground under the cab came from cleaner oil.

  Parker swung up into the cab and turned the key in the ignition. She started sluggishly, but she started. The engine roared, and the cab trembled. There was either no muffler or it was riddled with holes.

  Parker saw the florid man coming towards him across the gravel. He had a new cigar now, lit. He stopped beside the cab and shouted up over the roar of the engine, “How do you like her?”

  “Get in,” Parker shouted back. “Let’s go around the block.”

  The florid man hesitated. “Hold on just a second.”

  He went back towards the office. When he came back, he had a jacket on, with a bulging right-hand pocket. He climbed into the cab, and Parker fought into second.

  The mirror on the left was cracked, and the mirror on the right was gone. Using just the one on the left, Parker backed till he was facing the driveway to the street, and then drove out. The trailer was long and high. Because it was empty, and because of the bad way it was attached to the cab, it tracked badly as Parker made the wide turn on to the street.

  The brakes were better than Parker had expected, though he had to pump them up a little each time. But the acceleration was lousy and the cab seemed ready to shake itself apart any second. They went around the block, having trouble on all the turns because of the way the trailer tracked, and when they got to the garage again Parker left the truck in the street. “All right,” he said. “Eight hundred.”

  “She’s old,” the florid man answered, petting the grimy dashboard, “but she’s rugged. She’ll get you there.”

  “Lawson’s already got his piece,” Parker said, “so you get seven-twenty.” He had it ready, in an envelope in his coat pocket.

  He handed it over, and the florid man counted the money, slowly, his lips moving as his blunt lingers shuffled the bills. There were six twenties, and these he held out over the dashboard where the light from the street light would hit them. “There’s been some trouble with twenties lately.”

  “I’m not in that business,” Parker said.

  “It always pays to be careful.” The florid man finished inspecting the bills. “That’s fine. Well, you’re all set now. You got yourself a good buy.”

  He opened the door and clambered down to the street
. He slammed the door and waved, and went on into the garage, stuffing the bills back into the envelope. Parker fought the gearshift into second again, and started off.

  He took 117 north out of Goldsboro and picked up 301 the other side of Fremont, then 301 north into Virginia. The friction tape on the hoses hadn’t been enough. The radiator itself leaked. Parker had to make his first stop at Richmond, after going one hundred and seventy miles. He had the radiator filled, and a can of sealant added. They checked the oil, and he needed a quart already.

  The other side of Richmond, he stayed on 301 to bypass Washington and Baltimore. He crossed Chesapeake Bay, kept on 301 across the state line into Delaware, and had to stop short of Wilmington because the radiator had run dry again. The truck also took another quart of oil.

  He’d now done three hundred and fifty-some miles, and it was ten o’clock in the morning. The steady hard jouncing in the cab and the number of hours he’d gone without sleep caught up with him, and he pulled into a motel south of Wilmington. He didn’t start again until eleven o’clock that night. It was better to drive at night anyway, less likelihood of being stopped by the law.

  After Wilmington, he crossed into Pennsylvania for a while, on 202, bypassing Philadelphia, then crossed into New Jersey at New Hope. He passed through Flemington at three in the morning, and just the other side of there the oil gauge told him he had trouble. He pushed fifteen miles to Somerville, but couldn’t find a gas station open, so he kept going, switching to 22, and picking up 18, to limp into New Brunswick.

  He found a good-sized garage open, but they had no mechanic on duty Sunday night. He’d come on at seven o’clock, so Parker left the truck there and went away to get something to eat. He was glad to be out of the cab for a while. It had bucked and tossed him for five hundred miles, and he was a little surprised it had made it this far.

  After eating, he went back and talked with the nightman at the garage. The pumps were all lit up out on the tarmac, but at five o’clock on a Monday morning there were no customers. After a while the nightman took a nap and Parker sat in the office, smoking and looking out at the truck. It was a bad truck, but it had done better than he’d expected. So maybe the job wouldn’t go completely sour after all, despite Alma and Stubbs and the bored state trooper.

  When the mechanic came in at seven o’clock he looked at the truck in disgust. He got interested, though, being a professional, and worked on it till nine-thirty. By then, the boss was in, and he charged Parker thirty-seven dollars.

  Parker asked for a receipt, and thanked the mechanic. The mechanic told him he had maybe five hundred miles left in the truck, and where he should drive was straight to a dealer for a trade-in, while it could still make it under its own power. “The way I got it fixed,” he said, “a dealer might think it was worth taking in and doing some work on.”

  Parker gave him five for himself and told him he’d probably be back with the truck some time. Then he left New Brunswick on route 1, took it north to where it met 9, and turned south.

  He got to the Shore Points Diner at ten after ten and pulled in to the side lot, just to the left of where the armoured car usually stopped. He climbed down from the the cab and went across the highway to the furniture store parking lot. Handy was there, in the Ford. Parker slipped in beside him. “That’s it. Over there. Cost me thirty-seven bucks in New Brunswick to keep it going.”

  “That’s a real nice scow,” Handy said.

  “Take it up to Newark and stash it on a side street tonight.”

  “Right.”

  Parker handed over the ignition key. “And take some paint and fix up the doors, will you? Put some kind of brand name on them.”

  “Will do.” Handy looked down to the right. “Here she comes.”

  They watched the red armoured car come down the highway, slow, and turn at the diner. It rolled up the blacktop to the gravel at the side and slid into its usual parking slot. Parker and Handy watched it disappear behind the truck, and Handy grinned. “Right out of sight.”

  Parker nodded. “The job’s going to work out.”

  Chapter 5

  THE MAN who had the guns was named Fox. Maurice Fox, it said on the window of the store, Plumbing Equipment. Inside, the store was long and narrow and dark. There were dusty toilets in one row, porcelain sinks in another row, and bins full of pipe joints and faucets along one wall.

  A short balding man in a rumpled grey suit and bent glasses came down the aisle between the rows of toilets and sinks. “Yes?”

  “I’m Flynn. You’ve got three pipes for me.”

  “Yes. I didn’t like holding them so long.” He blinked steadily behind the glasses, and his eyes looked watery. “All the way from Thursday, and now Tuesday already.”

  “I couldn’t take it before.”

  “It’s bad business.” He shook his head, eyes still blinking steadily. “Come along.”

  He turned and led the way down the aisle, Parker behind him. They went through a doorway to the back and down a flight of stairs with just steps and no risers to a plaster-walled basement. Fox clicked a light switch on a beam, and to the left a bare bulb came on.

  Fox led the way to a wooden partition with a heavy wooden door. He took a ring full of keys from his pocket, selected the one he wanted, and unlocked the door. They went inside, and Fox lit another bare bulb. He closed the door after Parker.

  The room was small and made smaller by the cases lining it on all four sides. The floor was wooden slats over concrete, except for one square in the middle, where there was no wood over the drain. Along the back wall the crates were on shelves, and Fox went over to them and reached into one of the crates and took out a Sauer 7-65-mm. automatic. He handed this to Parker, reached in again, and brought out a Police Positive .38 revolver. On the third dip, he came up with a short-barrelled Smith & Wesson .32 revolver.

  Parker looked them over. The Sauer still had its serial number, but it had been filed off the other two. He looked closer at the .32 and saw that acid had been used, after the filing.

  Fox rummaged in another crate, and came up with two small boxes marked “Nails”. One also had an X on it. “The one with the X is .32 calibre. The other one is .38.”

  “All right.”

  For the last time, Fox felt around in one of the crates, and this time he brought out two clips for the Sauer. “You’ll want to check them?”

  “Right.”

  Fox went to the middle of the room, got down on his knees, and lifted up the drain plate. Underneath was loose dirt. “In here,” he said, getting to his feet again. “Don’t worry about the sound. The boxes keep it all in. It will be very loud, because the room’s so small, but outside no one will hear a thing.”

  Parker put the two revolvers and the boxes of ammunition on top of a closed wooden crate, and slipped one of the clips into the Sauer. He stood wide-legged and aimed straight down into the drain. He switched the safety off, and fired. There was a tremendous noise, ricocheting off the walls and cases. Parker clicked the safety back on, removed the clip, and sighted through the barrel at the light bulb. The gun was in good condition.

  Fox put one bullet in the cylinder of the .32 and another in the cylinder of the .38, and Parker tried them both. When he had finished, his ears were ringing. The .32 was in somewhat ragged shape — he nicked concrete at the edge of the hole when he fired it — but usable, and the other two were fine. He nodded. “How much?”

  Fox pointed at the three guns lying on the crate. “Seventy-five and seventy-five and sixty. Two hundred and ten. And including the ammunition.”

  “The .32 isn’t very good. It isn’t worth sixty.”

  Fox shrugged. “Fifty, then. Two hundred even.”

  “All right.”

  Parker counted out the money, and Fox stowed it away in an old wallet. Then he carefully packed the three guns and the ammunition in a small wooden box with excelsior padding around them, and tacked the lid on tight. “You should clean them when you get home.” />
  “I will.”

  They went back upstairs, and Parker went out the front door and got into the Ford. He drove to Irvington and left the guns with Skimm to clean and hide. Then he went down to the farmhouse to walk Stubbs.

  Chapter 6

  THEY GOT the other truck that Thursday, from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Handy went for it, because that was the day Parker fixed up a licence for himself and a registration. It was a printer he went to, and once again the contact was through Lawson. It took three hours, and then Parker went to the body shop to wait for Handy and the truck.

  The body shop was in Dover, and the owner, a sullen man in an undershirt, had heard from Lawson that Parker would be coming. Parker introduced himself as Flynn, and then waited around for Handy.

  Handy got there at seven-thirty that evening. The truck was six years old. The cab was a wide International Harvester, painted green, and the trailer another Fruehauf. This one had cost more — fifteen hundred — and was a much better truck. It had been stripped of heater and mudguards and floor mats and all but the legal minimum of lights, but at least it was in sound running condition and the trailer was in good shape. The original plates had been Pennsylvania and as hot as it was possible to get, so Handy had had to pay a hundred extra for safe plates from Indiana.

  Parker studied the trailer, and it would work out fine. There were two rear doors plus one door on each side at the midpoint. The wooden inner shell was scuffed up but intact. Parker told the body shop owner what he wanted — the rear doors and the right side door sealed permanently, and a lock on the outside of the left side door which would be guaranteed to keep people in. He and Handy went off to a diner and had coffee and then to a movie.

  When they came back, just before midnight, the job was done. The owner wanted a hundred, but they gave him eighty. The bankroll was getting low, less than five hundred left.

  They drove to Newark, and Handy left the truck in a street already lined with trucks. Then he and Parker drove to where they’d parked the other truck yesterday, and Handy drove it eight blocks away and parked it again. It wasn’t good to leave a vehicle in one spot more than twenty-four hours. After they moved the second truck, they drove down to the Shore Points Diner.