Ask the Parrot p-23

by Richard Stark

  “All we want is the big bills,” Parker told him. “Nothing under a ten. And no change.”

  “Oh.” Nodding slowly, Lindahl said, “I guess that makes sense.”

  “And also get two pairs of plastic kitchen gloves.”

  “For fingerprints; fine. Anything else?”

  “No, that’s all we’ll need. And fill the gas tank, it’s getting low.”

  “Sure.” Lindahl was quiet for a minute, but then he frowned and said, “Why do I have to do all this tomorrow? There’s closer places I can go to on Monday.”

  “Because we’re taking the money tomorrow night,” Parker said.

  3

  No!” Lindahl was deeply shocked. “That’s no good! We won’t have any time at all to get away!”

  “In the first place,” Parker said, “let’s get rid of that thirty-six-hour fantasy of yours. You can’t go on the run, because you can’t hide. Where do you figure to be, thirty-six hours later? Oregon? Where do you sleep? Do you go to a motel and pay with cash? A credit card places you, and the law by then is watching your accounts. So do you pay cash? The motel wants your license plate number. Oh, from New York State?”

  “Jesus.”

  “Anywhere you go in this country, everybody’s on the same computer. It doesn’t matter if you’re across the street or across the country, as soon as you make any move at all, they know where you are. You gonna try to leave the country? You got a passport?”

  “No,” Lindahl said. He sounded subdued. “I’ve never traveled much.”

  “Not a good time to start,” Parker told him. “You can’t run away, you don’t know those ropes. So instead of being the guy that did it and you’re thumbing your nose and they’ll never get you, you’re the guy that didn’t do it, and you’re staying right there where you always were, and sure, let them go ahead and search, and you were home in bed last night same as any other night, and you don’t spend any of that cash for a year. You want to pull the job and not do time for it? That’s how.”

  “That’s all . . .” Lindahl shook his head, gestured vaguely in the air in front of himself, like someone trying to describe an elephant to a person who’d never seen one. “That’s different from what I had in mind. That isn’t the same thing.”

  “You want two things,” Parker reminded him. “Or so you said. You want revenge. And you want the money.”

  “Well,” Lindahl said, and now he seemed a little embarrassed, a little sheepish, “I kind of wanted them to know.”

  “Because you were gonna disappear.”

  “But you say I can’t do that.”

  Parker said, “You aren’t used to the life on the other side of the law. There’s too many things you don’t know, too many mistakes you can make. You can have your money, and you can have your revenge, and maybe even a couple of your old bosses think you maybe did it, but they can’t prove it, and you and your parrot just go on living the way you did before.”

  “That’s not what I had in mind,” Lindahl said again. “What I had in mind was, I don’t live like this any more. I don’t shoot rabbits for my dinner. I don’t curl up in that crappy little house and never see anybody and everybody knows I’m that crazy hermit and nobody gives a shit about me.”

  “You did it for four years,” Parker reminded him. “You can do it one year more. A little less. Next July, you tell a few people you’re going on vacation, you’re driving somewhere. Then you take the money and you go wherever you want to go—”

  “Someplace warm.”

  “That’s up to you. When you get there, you start a checking account, you put a couple grand of your cash in it every few weeks, you rent a place to live, you drive back up here, pack your stuff, tell whoever you’re paying your rent to that you decided to retire someplace warm, and there you are.”

  Lindahl was quiet for a long while as Parker drove, the headlights pushing that fan of pale white out ahead of them, moving through hilly countryside, sleeping towns, here and there a night-light but mostly as dark as when the continent was empty.

  Finally, with a long sigh, Lindahl said, “I think I could do that.”

  “I think so, too.”

  “It’s like hunting, I see that. In some ways, it’s like hunting. The main thing you have to be is patient. If you’re patient, you’ll get what you want.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’d have to— If that’s what we do, I’d have to hide the money. I mean, really well, where they wouldn’t find it. Where nobody would find it.”

  “I’ll show you where,” Parker said.

  Surprised, Lindahl said, “You already know a place?”

  “But the other thing you’ve got to do,” Parker told him, “is get rid of those metal bank boxes. You don’t need them, and you don’t want any lawman to come across them, because you don’t have any answers to those questions.”

  “You’re right,” Lindahl said. “I didn’t think about them. They’re just in the furnace room, stacked in the corner.”

  “Wipe your fingerprints off.”

  “They’re still in the black plastic bags, from when they were thrown away in the Dumpster. I just left them that way.”

  “That’s good. Take them with you tomorrow, find another Dumpster, maybe at this mall you’re going to, get rid of them in a way that they won’t come back.”

  “All right, I can do that.” Curious, half turning in his seat, Lindahl said, “You really know where to hide the money?”

  “In the boarded-up house in front of you.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Lindahl said. “I don’t think it’d be easy to get in there. Not without making a mess.”

  “I’ve already been inside,” Parker told him. “It’s all set up. I’ll show you tomorrow.”

  “You’ve been in there? My God.”

  “In case it would turn out to be a bad idea to be in your house,” Parker said.

  “I’ll have to see this.”

  Parker said nothing to that, and they drove in silence another while. It was well after four in the morning by now, and it would be after five before they got where they were going. And then Lindahl had a lot to do tomorrow.

  “You know,” Lindahl said about fifteen minutes later, “now it is real. When I first went back to the track, and looked at it, and realized I was still goddam mad about what happened and still wanted to get back at them, I thought then it was finally real, but it wasn’t. It was still my fantasy, riding off into the west like somebody in the movies. Like Fred Thiemann saying we were a posse, only without the horses. That was his fantasy, and it sure bit him on the ass, didn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Parker said.

  “And my fantasy would have done the same thing. So now, for the first time, it really is real.”

  Lindahl looked out at the darkness and smiled. Parker didn’t tell him anything.

  4

  When they drove past the boarded-up house, coming into Pooley at last, Lindahl frowned at it and said, “You really got in there.”

  “We’ll look at it tomorrow,” Parker said. “We both need sleep.”

  It was nearly five-thirty in the morning, false dawn smudging the sky up to their right, suggesting the silhouettes of hills. The only lights showing in the town were down at the intersection, the streetlight and blinker signal and night-lights of the gas station.

  Lindahl parked in his usual place and got out of the car, yawning. Parker, getting out on the other side, paused to listen. Not a sound anywhere. He followed Lindahl inside, where at first the television set was the only light source, but then Lindahl switched on a floor lamp beside the sofa, switched off the television, and said, “That sofa isn’t bad. I’ll get you a pillowcase and a blanket.”

  “You got an alarm clock?”

  “Sure. What time should I set it?”

  “Ten.”

  Surprised, Lindahl said, “That doesn’t give us much sleep.”

  “You’ll sleep when we’re finished,” Parker promised him.r />
  5

  Lindahl kept yawning as they walked over to the boarded-up house. It was ten-thirty in the morning, and they’d been up half an hour, finishing a silent breakfast before coming out here to cold damp air, the sky a grayish white as though starting to mildew. Parker led the way to the rear door of the house, where he reached up to the top of the plywood and pulled it back.

  “Uh!” Lindahl broke off in midyawn, staring in astonishment. “Was that always like that?”

  “I fixed it yesterday.”

  Lindahl came closer to study the plywood, touching a finger to the stubby end of a sawed-off screw. “You cut them back.”

  “Right.”

  “And what’s that one in the middle for?”

  “To pull it closed when you’re inside. Come on.”

  Parker pushed open the door and motioned for Lindahl to precede him. As he then stepped in and maneuvered the plywood back into place, Lindahl said, “Is that my flashlight?”

  “Yes. We’ll need it. In fact, turn it on now.”

  Lindahl did, and Parker closed them in, then said, “Give me the light, I’ve been through here before.”

  “Fine.”

  They went up through the black house to the attic, and Lindahl went over to look out the unblocked window. “This is where you were when I got back last night,” he said. “In case I brought the police or something.”

  “That’s right.” Parker pointed the flashlight to the area behind the stairwell, where the roof angled down closest to the floor, leaving only a three-foot height of wall. Discarded there were a bent old cardboard suitcase and some rolls of curtains and curtain rods. “You put your duffel bag in with that stuff, and you leave it there until you go to your someplace warm. And once it’s there, you put a couple full-length screws in the plywood, just in case anybody ever comes around to be sure everything’s sealed solid.”

  “And I’ll rub a little dirt on them.”

  “Good.”

  They went back downstairs and out, and while Parker put the plywood in place, he said, “I’ll come along with you to this mall, see if there’s anything I need. Let’s go put those money boxes into your van.”

  “All right.”

  Parker put the pistol in his jacket pocket before they left. He had to drive again, because Lindahl was feeling the effects of four hours’ sleep. The seven metal boxes in their sheathe of black plastic filled the rear seat so high Parker could only use the outside mirrors.

  The first police blockade they came to was manned by the same sour older trooper as yesterday. “I saw you two before,” he said as Parker handed over his new license.

  “Untrained men with guns,” Parker reminded him. “Hickory Rod and Gun. No guns today, though.”

  “At least nobody got killed yesterday,” the trooper said, giving him back the license.

  “Any more word on those two guys?”

  “Not a peep.” His total disaffection dragged the trooper’s face down like a double dose of gravity. “You ask me,” he said, “those two are on the beach in Florida this very minute. But nobody asked me.”

  “See if your boss will send you down there to look for them,” Parker suggested.

  “You can move along now,” the trooper said.

  They drove on, and Lindahl said, “You don’t get nervous, do you?”

  “Nothing to get nervous about. Keep an eye out for someplace to get rid of these boxes.”

  That was twenty miles farther on, a demolition site where an old bowling alley was being torn down, the two Dumpsters already half full of a great miscellany of stuff, the site empty and unguarded on a Sunday morning. They transferred the seven money boxes, dividing them into both Dumpsters to make them a little less of a presence, then drove on to the mall, a smaller older place with only one of its two anchor stores still up and running. The shops down the line between the living major retailer and the dead one made an anthology of national brand names. The parking area was a quarter full, so they could leave the car very close to the entrance, just beyond the empty handicapped spaces.

  They went inside, and Parker said, “You go ahead. You want two duffel bags and two pairs of plastic gloves. I’m gonna look around, and I’ll meet you on the way out.”

  “Okay.”

  Lindahl took a shopping cart and pushed it away into the sparsely populated store. Parker watched him go, then turned and walked back outside and headed down the row of secondary shops. On the way in, he’d picked the one he thought he probably wanted, a youth clothing store featuring baggy jeans and baseball caps and sweatshirts with penitentiary names on them.

  Yes. Reaching that store, looking in the plate-glass window past the display of elaborate sneakers designed like space stations, he saw no customers, only the clerk, a skinny high school kid wearing the store’s product as he moved slowly around, halfheartedly neatening the stock.

  Parker went into the store, and the kid looked up, first hopeful and then blank when he realized this was unlikely to be a customer. “Yes, sir? What can I do for you?”

  “Well,” Parker said, and showed him the pistol, “you can open that cash register over there and then you can lie facedown on the floor behind the counter.”

  The kid gaped at the pistol and then at Parker, as though he’d lost the ability to understand English. Parker lifted the gun so it pointed at the kid’s nose from a foot away. “Or,” he said, “I can shoot you in the face and open the cash register myself.”

  “No, I’ll do it!”

  The kid abruptly moved, all jangly limbs, bumping into things as he hurried around the end of the counter and opened the cash register. He stepped back from it and stared at Parker. “You won’t shoot me?”

  “Not if you’re facedown on the floor.”

  The kid dropped as though in fact he had been shot, and when he was on the floor, he put his hands over the back of his head, trembling fingers entwined.

  Parker reached over the counter into the cash register drawer and removed the twenties and tens, touching only the money. Then he looked down at the kid and said, “Look at your watch.”

  The enlaced hands sprang apart, and the kid arched his back to look at the large round watch on his left wrist.

  “I’ll be outside for five minutes. If I look through the window and see you up, I’ll shoot. Five minutes. Got that?”

  “Yes, sir.” The kid kept staring at the watch, body arched.

  Parker turned away, left the shop, and walked back to the large store, where he went inside and found Lindahl on line at a checkout counter, only one other shopper in front of him. In his shopping cart were two dark brown duffel bags folded into clear plastic bags and two pairs of yellow kitchen gloves mounted on cardboard in shrink-wrap. He nodded to Parker: “Found it. You get anything?”

  “No, I just looked around.”

  Lindahl’s turn came, and he paid and got his purchases in a large plastic bag with the store’s name over a smiley face. They walked out of the store, Lindahl carrying the bag and saying, “Should I drive back?”

  “Sure.”

  Parker gave him the keys. In the car, they started out to the road, but then had to wait while a police car rushed by, lights flashing and siren ablare. Lindahl watched them go by, startled. “What do you think that is?”

  “Nothing to do with us,” Parker said.

  6

  They stopped at a run-down traditional diner for lunch on the way back. They chose a table beside the large window with its view out to very little Sunday traffic on this secondary road, and after they’d given the waitress their orders, Parker said, “Tell me about the Dennisons.”

  “The who? Oh, Cory and Cal? What do you want to know about them for?”

  “They came to see me last night. Right after you left.”

  “They came— They were at my place?”

  “They think I might be one of the missing robbers.”

  “Jesus!” Lindahl looked as though he just might jump straight up and out of t
he diner and run a hundred miles down the road. “What are they gonna do?”

  “If I am one of the robbers,” Parker said, “they think I must have a bunch of money on me.”

  “But you don’t.”

  “But if I was and I did, I could give Cal money to get plastic surgery and an artificial eye.”

  “Oh, for—” No longer in a panic, Lindahl now looked as though he’d never heard anything so dumb. “They said that to you? You’re the robber, and give us some of the money?”

  “The robber part wasn’t said.”

  “But that’s what it was all about. And if you give them the money, they won’t report you? Is that the idea?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “That’s a Cal idea, all right,” Lindahl said. “He’s jumped off barn roofs since he was a little kid.”

  “Cory’s the smart one,” Parker agreed, “but he follows the other one’s lead. They say they’re gonna come back today and talk to you.”

  Lindahl was astonished all over again. “Talk to me? About what?”

  “Am I really your old friend Ed Smith.”

  Lindahl leaned back in the booth and spread his hands. “Well, you really are my old friend Ed Smith. I oughta know who you are.”

  “That’s right,” Parker said. As the waitress brought their plates, he said, “Over lunch, we’ll work out the details of that. In case somebody talks to you and then talks to me.”

  “Good. We’ll do that.”

  “We’ve only got to worry about today,” Parker said, “and then we’re done with it.”

  With a surprised laugh, Lindahl said, “That’s right! Just today and tonight. The whole thing, it’s almost over.”

  7

  They got back to Lindahl’s house a little before two. The vehicle parked in front of it was not the Dennisons’ Dodge Ram, but a black Taurus that Parker recognized as Fred Thiemann’s. Then its driver’s door opened, and a woman in her fifties climbed out, dressed in jeans and a windbreaker. She must have been waiting for them to get back.