Dirty Money

by Richard Stark

  Parker shrugged. “Well, that’s all right.”

  “You want coffee, by the way?”

  “No, Claire and I ate.”

  “Well, maybe the Nick thing is all right and maybe it isn’t.” McWhitney waggled his palm over the newspaper, to indicate the question.

  Parker said, “Why wouldn’t it be all right? We’re done up there.”

  “The hymnbooks,” McWhitney said. “I was gonna drop them off at a church around here. Just to get rid of them, but now I don’t know. Can they be traced back to the church up there? I don’t want anything anywhere around me that hooks to anything in Massachusetts.”

  “We’ll dump them somewhere else,” Parker said.

  McWhitney shook his head, “I never thought I’d sit around,” he said, “and try to figure out what to do to get rid of a load of hot hymnbooks.”

  “The money’s mostly what we have to deal with,” Parker said. “Make the load lighter. Hefty bags are good for that.”

  “Maybe three of them. It’s a lot of cash.”

  “Where’s the truck?”

  “In an open parking lot a couple blocks from here. I figured,” McWhitney said, “a piece of crap like that little truck, if we give it a lotta security, it’ll look like something might be inside there.”

  “Hymnbooks.”

  “Right.” McWhitney yawned and pushed the News away from himself, “I talked on the phone with Sandra this morning,” he said. “She checked the ferry on the Web. The one we want’s at one o’clock. Takes an hour and twenty minutes, we come back on the three.”

  “Fine,” Parker said. “But now I’m thinking about another complication from Nick.”

  McWhitney laughed. “That Nick,” he said. “He’s one complication after another, isn’t he? What now?”

  “The troopers that stopped by when we were unloading the boxes out of the church,” Parker said.

  “Sure. The woman went to that church when she was a little kid.”

  “And now they found Nick,” Parker said. “Do they start to wonder about that truck?”

  “Well, shit,” McWhitney said.

  “They didn’t write anything down,” Parker said. “They looked at your license but they didn’t do anything about it.”

  “No, that’s right.”

  “But they’re going to remember those words on the door. Holy Redeemer Choir.”

  “And they’ll look here, and they’ll look there, and they won’t find any Holy Redeemer Choir.”

  “At least, not the same one.”

  McWhitney looked bleak. “And we’re gonna take that same truck on a ferry to New England.”

  “That place where you had the name painted on,” Parker said, “is he around here?”

  “Yeah, walking distance. In fact, I walked it.”

  “Could he paint the name out again?”

  Getting up from the booth, McWhitney said, “Let me call him, I mean, why not?”

  “We should have just time before we have to go get the ferry. And if not, we’ll get the next ferry.”

  Walking around the end of the bar to the phone, McWhitney said, “When this is over, I’m gonna be nothing but a bartender for a long long time to come.”

  8

  On the phone the car painter told McWhitney he could do a quick spray job of the body color over the names on the doors in five minutes, so he and Parker walked to the parking lot where McWhitney had left the truck. Along the way, Parker said, “The only thing we’ve got to do today is the money switch, get that stuff out of our hands. The hymnbooks is something for later.”

  “I don’t like it,” McWhitney said, “but I know you’re right.”

  “Where’s your pickup?”

  “Behind my place. If there was room, I’d have put the truck back there, too, but it’s too tight.”

  “We’ll switch the boxes of books to the pickup,” Parker said, “then take care of the money.”

  “Okay, fine.”

  Along their walk they came to a deli, where Parker bought a box of ten large Hefty bags. Then they went on to reclaim the van and drive it the four blocks to the body shop and auto paint place, a sprawling low dark-brick building taking up most of this industrial block. The closed garage door in the middle of the otherwise blank wall had a big sign, red letters on white, honk, so McWhitney honked, and in a minute a smaller door that was part of the garage door opened and a guy in coveralls looked out.

  McWhitney called, “Tell George it’s Nelson,” and the guy nodded and went back inside, shutting the door.

  They waited another two or three minutes, and then the full garage door lifted and another guy in coveralls came out, this one also wearing a baseball cap, black-framed eyeglasses, and a thick black moustache. He came over to McWhitney at the wheel of the van, grinned at him, grinned at the name on the door, and said, “Well, it looks like you got religion and then you lost it again.”

  “That’s about it.”

  “It’s a quick job, but I need to do it inside, I need the compressor.”

  “Sure.”

  George leaned closer to McWhitney’s window, “The job may be quick,” he said, with a friendly smile, “but it isn’t cheap.”

  McWhitney slid a hundred-dollar bill from his shirt pocket, and extended it, palm down, toward George, saying, “A quick job like this, it doesn’t even have to show up in the cash register.”

  “That’s very true,” George said, and made the hundred disappear. “You can both stay in the car,” he said. “Follow me.” And he turned away, walking back into the building, McWhitney following.

  Inside, the building was mostly one broad open space, concrete-floored, full of racket. Auto-body parts were being pounded or painted, other parts were being moved on metal-wheeled dollies over the concrete floor, and at least two portable radios were playing different ideas about music. A couple of dozen men were working in here, all of them in coveralls, most of them either shouting or singing.

  There was no way to have a conversation in here, not once you got half a dozen feet in from the door. George directed them with hand gestures. While the first guy shut the door behind them, George guided them on a path through automobiles, automobile parts, and machinery to a large oblong cleared area with a big rectangular metal grid suspended above it. From the grid, large shiny metal ductwork extended up to the ceiling.

  George had McWhitney park directly beneath the grid, then went away and the loud whine of an air compressor joined the mix of noise. George came up the left side of the van from behind, carrying a spray gun attached to a black rubber hose, and hunkered down beside McWhitney’s door. The whining went to a higher pitch, then lower again, and George walked his spray gun and hose back down the left side and up the right side to do the same to the other door. He stepped back, looked at his work, nodded to himself, and carried the spray gun away again.

  When he next came into view, he motioned to them to follow him, and McWhitney steered the van along more lanes through the work to a different garage door that opened onto the side street. They drove out and stopped on the sidewalk, so both Parker and McWhitney could get out and look at the doors.

  The words were gone, without a trace. The fresh paint was darker and shinier than the rest, but nevertheless the same color.

  George, standing beside McWhitney to look at his work, said, “It’ll dry pretty fast, and then it’ll be the same color as the body.”

  “Good.”

  “Being out here and not in the shop, it’ll get some dust and dirt on it, so it won’t be as perfect as it might be. You’ll get some little roughness.”

  “George,” McWhitney said, “that really doesn’t matter. This is fine.”

  “I thought so,” George said. He was still happy. “Any time we can be of service,” he said, “just give us a call.”

  9

  The alley beside McW led to a small bare area behind the building, paved long ago with irregular slabs of slate. The area was confined by the rear of
McWhitney’s building, the flank of the building next door across the alley, and by two eight-foot-high brick walls on the other two sides. The local building code required two exits from any commercial establishment, and in McW’s case the second exit was through the door that led to this area from the bedroom of McWhitney’s apartment behind the bar. The space was large enough for McWhitney to park his pickup back there and K-turn himself out again, but not much more.

  Now McWhitney backed the van down the narrow alley until he was past his building, with the pickup in the clear area to the left. He and Parker got out of the van, McWhitney backed the pickup closer to the van’s rear doors, and they started emptying the van.

  The first boxes out were filled with hymnals, heavy but not awkward to move. Then there were the money boxes.

  The money inside the boxes was all banded into stacks of fifty bills, always of the same denomination. The bands, two-inch-wide strips of pale yellow paper, were marked deer hill bank, deer hill, ma. The stacks made a tight fit inside the boxes.

  It turned out to be easiest to dump a box over, empty the money onto the floor of the van, and then stuff it all into the Hefty bags. The emptied box, with its cover restored, would be stacked with the others in the bed of the pickup.

  As they worked, McWhitney said, “It’s a pity about this stuff. Look how beautiful it is.”

  “It’ll tempt you,” Parker said. “But it’s got a disease.”

  “Oh, I know.”

  When they were finished, the pickup, sagging a bit, was crammed with boxes, empty and full, and three roundly stuffed Hefty bags squatted in the back of the van. McWhitney looked at his watch. “My barman’ll be here in fifteen minutes,” he said, “and then we can take off. Come on inside.”

  To obey the fire code, the door at the back of his building had to be openable from inside at all times during business hours, but from outside it took a key to get in. McWhitney unlocked the door and they went through his small but neat living quarters to the bar, where McWhitney said, “You want a beer for the road?”

  “Later.”

  “I don’t trust later, I’ll take mine now. You want to call Sandra?”

  “Sure. Give me the phone.”

  McWhitney slid the phone across the bar to Parker, drew himself a draft, and watched the conversation.

  “Keenan.”

  “Hello, Sandra.”

  “I’m on my way,” she said. “I think I should be there ahead of everybody so I can see if anybody has extra company.”

  “Good idea. We’ll be in the same van, but it doesn’t have any words on it any more.”

  “Oh, you got the news. If that cop didn’t have her girlish memories of that church, she wouldn’t have any reason to remember us or the van.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter any more. See you later.”

  Parker hung up, and McWhitney said, “What doesn’t matter any more?”

  “The cops at the church.”

  “I don’t intend to drive through their territory for quite a while,” McWhitney said, and opened the drawer in the backbar beneath the cash register. “This piece we took from the fella last night,” he said. “I don’t feel like I want it in my joint any more, and on the other hand, where we’re going, what we’re doing, it might not be a bad idea to bring along an extra gun.”

  “Sure. Bring it.”

  McWhitney tried to stuff it into the inside pocket of his jacket, but it was too large and too heavy. “I’ll carry it in the glove compartment,” he decided. “Then drop it off the ferry. If things are going well.”

  10

  From where they were in Bay Shore on the south shore of Long Island, it was about seventy miles to the Orient Point ferry farther east and up on the north shore. Half of that trip was on highway, starting with the Sagtikos Parkway north, and then the Long Island Expressway east, but at Riverhead the Expressway, which had been getting thinner and thinner of traffic, ran out and from there they were on smaller roads on this less populated end of the island, with the ferry terminal still thirty-five miles ahead.

  They’d been driving beyond the Expressway for about five minutes, first on Edwards Avenue north almost to Long Island Sound, and then east on Sound Avenue, when McWhitney, looking alert, said, “Yeah?” He cocked his head, listening, and Parker knew Sandra was calling him on his hands-free phone. Around them now was mostly sand and scruffy wasteland, with a mix of small homes and businesses, some of them already shut for the season.

  “Sure,” McWhitney told the space in front of him, and took his foot off the accelerator. The van dropped about ten miles an hour in speed, and then he tapped the accelerator again, maintaining that new speed, for two or three minutes.

  Parker watched and waited, not wanting to interrupt if Sandra had anything else to say, and then McWhitney said, “Okay, got it. Let me know if they do anything else.”

  Parker said, “Somebody following us?”

  “A black Chevy Suburban with dealer plates,” McWhitney said. “Whatever speed I like, he likes.” Gradually he was accelerating back up to his previous speed.

  “The car Sidd and the others had last night,” Parker said, “was also a Chevy with dealer plates. This is Sidd’s pals.”

  McWhitney grinned. “They got a friend in the car business.”

  “They came along after us,” Parker said, “because they wanted to know where we were going.”

  “Then they’ve pretty well got it figured out by now,” McWhitney said. “Once you get out here past Riverhead, there’s only three things you can do. Take the ferry, swim, or turn around.”

  “The question is,” Parker said, “do we take them out, or do we ignore them?”

  “It’s a public highway in the middle of the day,” McWhitney said. “Not a lot of traffic, but there’s some. It just makes more trouble to try to deal with them. And they’re not gonna want to try to mess with us either, not while we’re moving out here in the daylight.”

  “What about on the ferry?”

  “No privacy.” McWhitney shrugged, “I’ll stay with the van. There’s other people gonna stay in their cars, not go upstairs. They read their paper, do some work, I won’t be alone. You go find the blazer and get his keys.”

  “A time is gonna come,” Parker said, “when we’ll have to deal with those people.”

  “That’s the time,” McWhitney said, “they’ll be delivered into our hands. What?”

  That last wasn’t directed to Parker, but to the voice in his ear, because after listening McWhitney laughed and said, “That’s very nice. You just make it up as you go along.”

  Parker said, “She’s gonna move on them?” He didn’t like that idea. It would be better if they didn’t know about Sandra until and unless she was really needed.

  But McWhitney said, “No. She wanted me to slow down again because she’s gonna accelerate out ahead of them to be in front when they board.”

  Parker nodded. “That’s good.”

  “Then,” McWhitney said, “we’ll see what trouble she can make.” Again he laughed. “I bet she can make a little,” he said.

  11

  At the ferry terminal, a large flat open space at the end of the North Fork of Long Island, facing south though the ferry would travel north, the drivers first paid their fares, and then the cars were lined up in rows on a large parking area with lanes painted on it. There they would wait for the southbound ferry to come in and unload its group of cars and foot passengers, before they’d be boarded in the order in which they’d arrived.

  The van’s position was halfway down the third occupied lane. That lane filled up pretty fast, and then more cars came down on the right beside them, filling in the next lane. Out in the water, the large white-and-blue ferry could be seen slowly maneuvering itself toward the dock.

  Into a silence, in the van, McWhitney suddenly said, “What?” Then, to Parker, he said, “She says to look over our shoulder.”

  Parker tried to look back through the van’s rear w
indow, but there was nothing to see except the front of the car tucked in close behind them. So he bent to the side until he could look in his outside mirror, and there, two cars behind them, was Sandra’s black Honda with its whip antennas. Behind it he could just see a black Chevy Suburban.

  “She’s back there and so are they,” he said.

  “I hate to be followed,” McWhitney said. “It makes me antsy.”

  “We’ll tell them,” Parker said.

  It was about fifteen minutes more before the ferry was loaded for the trip to Connecticut. Once everybody was aboard and the ferry was moving out of its slip into Gardiner’s Bay, Parker said, “I’ll find the guy now.”

  “I’m keeping the doors locked,” McWhitney said. “No point being too carefree.”

  Parker got out of the van and McWhitney clicked the door locked behind him. He made his way up the metal stairs to the upper deck, where there were lines at the refreshment stand. Big windows looked out onto the view of sea and sky, and there was bench seating both inside and out.

  Parker didn’t see the bulky guy from last night, and he didn’t see Sandra, but looking through a side window he saw a maroon blazer out there, the guy strolling along the rail. When he stepped out, it was the same guy who’d led him back to Meany’s office at Cosmopolitan Beverages last week.

  Parker said, “So here we are.”

  “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.”