Stubbs said, “Listen, what are you trying to pull?”
“Look,” Parker said. “Look at him, he wants to argue.”
Handy turned to Stubbs. “How's your kneecaps? In good shape?”
Stubbs caught the message. He got to his feet and shut up. They took him downstairs and back to the Ford. They drove over to 9 and headed south, Parker driving, with Stubbs beside him and Handy in the back seat.
On the way Parker asked, “How'd you get to me?”
“That letter you got,” Stubbs said. “I looked up that Lasker fella in Cincinnati, and he left a forwarding address. I went there and hung around till I saw you.”
“He left a forwarding address,” repeated Parker. He shook his head and kept driving. He didn't know if this was Handy's last job, but he knew it was Skimm's.
TWO
1
Parker left the car off Hudson Boulevard in Jersey City and walked two blocks to the office building. There were two elevators, but only one of them was working. An ancient angular Negro with a loose vacant smile operated it. Its metal sides were painted green, and there were grease smears on the doors.
Parker got out on the third floor and turned left. A sign on the fourth door down read: “Eastern Agency Confidential Investigations.” He pushed the door open and went into a small green reception room. On one wall was a certificate stating that James Lawson was a licensed private investigator.
A bleached blonde, looking secondhand, sat at the gray metal desk, talking on the phone. When Parker came in she said, “Hold on, Marge.” She pressed the telephone to her hard breast and looked at Parker.
“Doctor Hall to see Lawson,” Parker said.
“One moment, please.” She told Marge to hold on again, and got up and went to the door of the inner office. She had stripper's hips, big and thick and wrapped in a tight black skirt. She went through into the inner office, and in a minute she came back. “Go right on in, Doctor.”
“Thanks,” said Parker.
She went back to her desk and her phone call, and Parker went through to the inner office and closed the door.
James Lawson was small and balding. He looked like the kind of man who was worried about being out of condition, who kept promising himself he'd start going to a gym but never went. He looked across his wooden desk at Parker. “I don't think I know you.”
Lawson wasn't a man to trust with the new face. “Parker sent me. Him and Handy McKay.”
“So you can name-drop,” said Lawson. “Doctor-Hall, and Parker, and Handy McKay. Parker's dead.”
“No, he ain't. Him and Handy and Pete Skimm and me are working on a job. You want to call Skimm?”
Lawson shook his head. “I don't call anybody,” he said. “Where'd you get the Dr. Hall from?”
“Parker. He said I should call myself Doctor Hall, and then you'd know what was what.”
“How come he didn't come himself?”
“He can't show himself in the East. He ran into trouble with the Outfit.”
Lawson nodded. “I heard something about that, too. But I also heard he was dead.”
“He wasn't, the last time I talked to him.”
Lawson chewed on a knuckle. “You look okay,” he said, “and you sound okay. But I don't know you.”
“Do you think I'm law? If I was law, I wouldn't play games. I could take your license away without half trying. I wouldn't have to fool around with you.”
“Take my license away for what?”
“For the time you gave Parker the three Magnums and the Positive.”
Lawson started. “You know about that?”
“Parker told me. So let's quit fooling around.”
“Maybe I better call Skimm,” said Lawson. He was suddenly very nervous.
Parker gave him the number, and then sat down in the client's chair during the phone call. Skimm was home, and Parker had already told him the right answers. Lawson talked with him briefly, and then hung up.
“You ready to deal?”
“Sure.” Lawson grinned, his lips wet. “But I ought to know who I'm dealing with,” he said.
“Flynn. Joe Flynn.”
“I don't think I've heard of you.”
“I've always worked out around the Coast before this.”
“And where's this job? Here in Jersey?”
Parker shook his head. “Youngstown, Ohio,” he said. “You'll read about it in the papers.”
Lawson was a man you could trust, so long as you never told him anything.
Lawson opened a drawer and took out a pencil and notepad. “What do you need?”
“Three guns. Medium size—.32's or .38's.”
Lawson nodded. “I'll look around. Anything else?”
“Two trucks. Semis.”
“Tractor-trailers?” Lawson frowned, and tapped his pencil point against the notepad. “That's a tricky one. There isn't so much market in those big ones any more. That'll probably cost you.”
Parker shrugged. “If it costs too much, we'll steal our own.”
Lawson tapped the pencil faster against the notepad. “You've still got the registration to worry about. And the cover.”
“Don't need them,” Parker said. “Just the trucks.”
“Stripped?”
“It doesn't matter.”
“Oh. That isn't so tough, then. I know one already, if it isn't sold. Down in North Carolina. I'll check on it for you.” He wrote on the notepad again. “Anything else?”
“Some place to get some work done on one side of the trucks.”
“Engine or body?”
“Body.”
Lawson nodded. “I think I know the place for you. Anything else?”
“No.” Parker got to his feet. “That's all we need. You can leave messages with Skimm.”
Lawson ripped the top page from the notepad, stuffed it in his side pocket. “You ought to leave something with me. Sort of a drawing account.”
Parker took out his wallet, peeled off four fifties, and dropped them on Lawson's desk.
Lawson picked them up and grinned. “You want a receipt? You know, for tax purposes?”
“No,” Parker said. “Leave the word with Skimm.”
“Will do.”
Parker went back downstairs in the green elevator and walked back to the Ford. It had a parking ticket on it. He threw the ticket into the gutter and drove away, back to Hudson Boulevard and then to the Pulaski Skyway and down 9. Because of the trooper, and not wanting to be near the diner too soon before the job, he turned on 1 when it branched away to the right. At New Brunswick, he turned left on 18, then right at Old Bridge, heading down toward Spotswood. But before he got there he turned left up a winding dirt road.
The land here was red clay and white sand mixed together, with a fuzz of wild gray grass and here and there thick-trunked trees. The road seemed to end shortly but Parker went up an overgrown slope, and the dirt road angled sharply around a tree and then dropped away down the dip into a kind of cup.
Down in the indentation stood a gray farmhouse, nearly invisible on days the sun didn't shine. Someone had once tried to make the land grow something besides wild grasses and occasional trees. But the farmhouse was slowly rotting away now, becoming a part of the land. It couldn't be seen from any road, and most people in the area probably didn't even know it existed. The dirt road leading in was sometimes used as a lover's lane, but those people never even came in very far. They didn't care what was over the slope; they just wanted not to be seen from the road.
When Parker had first come, the road had been impassable. The turn around the tree at the top of the slope had been choked with underbrush and dead branches. They would not have cleared it until the day before the job, but now there was Stubbs, so Parker had hacked away at it with an ax and cleared enough room for the Ford to just get through. He made it now on the first try and came down the grassed-over double track on the other side.
He drove around to the back of the farmhouse, left the
Ford up close against the house—he would have liked to park it in the barn, but that had already fallen in—and went down the steps into the basement. The flooring upstairs was unsafe, so they used only the basement.
It didn't smell like a basement. The windows were all broken out, and sand had sifted in over the years. It smelled mummified. There were two cots set up along one wall, a card table and three folding chairs on the other side, and a camp stove by the ruins of the furnace so the smoke would go up the chimney.
Parker went over to the door to the fruit cellar and hit it with his fist. “You in there?”
Stubbs' voice came through the thick door faintly. “Go to hell.”
Parker took the bar down and went back to the card table, where the automatic lay next to the canned goods. He picked up the automatic and called, “Come on out.”
There was a pause, and the door pushed slightly open. Another pause, and the door jolted back and slammed against the wall and Stubbs came out with a gray chunk of two-by-four over his head.
Parker motioned with the automatic. He watched Stubbs decide whether or not to throw the two-by-four at him, but Stubbs decided against it. When he dropped it, Parker said, “Let's go out in the air.”
He would rather have just left Stubbs locked away in the fruit cellar for two weeks, but if he did Stubbs might get sick and die. He couldn't afford yet to have Stubbs die. He had to waste some time now getting Stubbs out in the sunlight.
They went outside and Parker sat down on the ground, his back against the wall of the farmhouse. “Go on, walk around a little,” he said.
Stubbs stood blinking in the light. There was no window in the fruit cellar, and he'd been in pitch-dark. He looked around, blinking in the light. “I got to go.”
“Over there.” Parker pointed with the automatic. “Away from the house, over by that tree there. And cover it up.”
Stubbs stood around, undecided. “I'm out of cigarettes.”
Parker tossed him his pack, and some matches. He had more in the glove compartment of the Ford. Stubbs picked them up from where they'd fallen at his feet, and slowly lit a cigarette. He stuffed the pack and the matches in his pants pocket and looked sullenly at Parker. “You can't kidnap me like this.”
Parker shrugged. It didn't need an answer.
Stubbs screwed his face up, the way he did when he was trying to think. He wanted to tell Parker this whole thing was impossible, you just don't lock a man away in a fruit cellar for two weeks with no electricity and no plumbing. But Parker was doing it, and that didn't leave Stubbs much to say. After a minute, he turned and trudged over toward the tree.
They stayed outside for half an hour, and then they went back into the basement and Parker let Stubbs make himself some beans and instant coffee at the camp stove. There was bread, too, but no butter, and a can of peaches for dessert. Stubbs thought about tossing a can of beans at Parker's head, but Parker told him to forget it, so Stubbs forgot about it.
After he'd cleaned up his dinner utensils, Parker let him go outside again for a while. Then he put him back in the fruit cellar, put the bar across the door. “I'll see you tomorrow,” he called through the door.
There wasn't any answer, so Parker shrugged and walked away. It was just about sundown, darker in the cup around the farmhouse than up along the ridge. Parker got into the Ford, started the engine, and drove carefully through the dusk back to the road. He turned right and drove back toward the motel where he was staying, stopping off at a diner for a chicken dinner.
Handy showed up a little after ten in Alma's green Dodge. Alma didn't like him using it, but he needed it for the stakeout and after a while she'd given in. He'd spent the day and part of the evening at various spots on route 9 working out the state trooper beats. They talked it over for a while, and then Parker said, “Let Skimm take over Thursday. I want to show you the doublecross.”
Handy nodded. “I've been thinking about that.”
Then they went out to a nearby bar and drank some beer. After a while they split, and Parker went back to the motel. He was in bed by one o'clock.
2
Parker slowed as he neared the toll booths, and fumbled in his pocket for change. The toll booth structure was pale stucco with a green California Mission roof. It should have been on a road in Italy or Spain, rather than at the eastern end of the bride from Perth Amboy to Staten Island.
The fare was fifty cents. Parker handed over two quarters, and went three-quarters of the way around the circle, then straight for about a hundred yards on cracked concrete, and took a right turn. This was 440, headed toward St. George, where the ferries docked.
The road was four lanes wide, made of concrete, with a center mall. But it looked abandoned. Old breaks had been lumpily covered with blacktop, and the more recent breaks had been ignored. Bushes and weeds grew wild on the mall, and the land to either side of the road was scrub.
“This is the way she'll come,” he said to Handy. “After the job, she'll take the dirt road back of the diner, just the way she says. But she'll turn right instead of left, and come up just the way we did, up 9 and over 440 to the Outerbridge Crossing. She can take it easy along here, she's out of New Jersey.”
Handy twisted around in the seat and looked behind them. “We're the only ones on the road.”
“This route doesn't get much play. On a Monday, around noon, we'll have it all to ourselves.”
“You're sure this is the way she'll come?”
“She's got to. It's the most direct way.”
“What about those other two roads? Back there by the bridge, at the circle?”
Parker shrugged. “They don't go anywhere. This is the way to the ferry. There's what I want, up there.”
He hit the brake, and the Ford slowed. At an angle off to the right was a cross street, or the beginning of a cross street. When this road was built, the curbs were put down with provisions for cross streets in the future, when Staten Island would be as big as Brooklyn.
The curb curved back on either side, and concrete started off to the right, going into the scrub about ten feet and stopping. Beyond was a gravel road for about a hundred feet, and beyond that a dirt road that curved back toward the main road but didn't come all the way. From 440, though, all you could see was the concrete starting out and then the gravel going off into the bushes.
Parker slowed the car, turned the wheel a little, and stopped just at the edge of the gravel. “Right here,” he said. “The way I told you. We cut her off into this thing, take the dough, and go on to the ferry. Monday, around noon, we'll have ten or fifteen minutes before another car shows up. Besides, we're already in New York State.”
They got out of the car. Handy tramped back and forth on the concrete, looking the situation over. He peered down at the gravel part, and stood there a minute, poking at his teeth with a wooden match. Then he shook his head and turned back.
“You know what bothers me?”
“What?”
“Skimm.” Handy left the match in his mouth while he dug out a cigarette, talking around the match. “If he's on the outside and she figures to cross him, too, okay, then it'll work out like you say. But if she's sweet-talked him over, I don't like it. Skimm's no dummy. He'll try to think the way we think, and he'll come up with the idea they should stay away from Staten Island.”
“Do you think he's in?”
Handy took time to light the cigarette and throw the match away. “I don't know. I've known Skimm twelve years. I've worked with him four, five times. I always figured Skimm was a little guy who didn't have much brains but you could trust him, you know what I mean?”
Parker nodded. “You think Alma wants him? After the job, I mean?”
“It doesn't figure.”
“All she wants,” said Parker, “is the money. Not half of it, all of it. She won't even try to sweet-talk Skimm.”
“That's the way it plays,” Handy answered. He looked around, at the empty road, and the gravel road that went nowher
e. “We're taking a big chance on how it plays.”
“She takes it out of Jersey for us, then we take it away from her. If the law stops her, that's one thing. If it doesn't, she'll come this way.”
“It does figure,” said Handy. His cigarette was all wet, where he'd lipped it. He stuck it back in his mouth. “All right, this is the way we do it.”
“Right.”
A pale blue Ford went by, headed toward the bridge to New Jersey. It was the first moving car they'd seen on Staten Island. They watched it go by, and then Parker said, “I got to get back. I got to walk Stubbs.”
The Man with the Getaway Face: A Parker Novel (Parker Novels) Page 6
