The Outfit: A Parker Novel (Parker Novels) Read online

  “What? You got the wrong man, friend.”

  “You're Hanks, aren't you?”

  Hanks debated denying it. Was this guy law or what?

  Kobler hurried on. “Where's the others, god damn it? You want him to get away?”

  “What? Who?”

  “LaRenne! Didn't you people get the telegram?”

  “What telegram?”

  “Oh, for God's sake!” exclaimed Kobler. “LaRenne's figuring to walk off with the seventy-five G's. We just found out about it. I barely got on the same plane with him. He doesn't know me, see, he's never seen me around. Where the hell's he gone?”

  Automatically, Hanks answered, “Back by the phone booths.”

  “Yeah. We figured he had somebody with him. Are there any more phone booths around here?”

  “Listen,” said Hanks. Things were going too fast for him. He'd thought of walking off with seventy-five G's lots of times, but he'd never had the guts to try it. He couldn't get used to the idea that maybe somebody else did have the guts. He was so shaken, he couldn't get his mental balance back.

  And Kobler wouldn't give him the chance. “Phone booths, dammit!”

  “Yeah, over there by the lockers. But—”

  “No time! I don't want him to see you phoning nobody. Go over there to those other booths and call your boss and see didn't the telegram get there yet. Tell him to send two or three boys out here. We don't know who's with LaRenne or how many, and I'm not sure I can handle it by myself. Get going!”

  “But—”

  “I can't lose LaRenne!” said Kobler, and hurried away.

  Hanks didn't know what to do. But LaRenne was acting funny, and the big guy had given him a reason for it, so he did what the big guy told him to do. He hurried across the echoing floor toward the other bank of phone booths on the far side of the terminal by the baggage lockers.

  Kobler meanwhile went after LaRenne. He had disappeared into a double rank of phone booths. If you stood between the ranks, you couldn't be seen from the terminal proper. There were three people besides LaRenne closeted in booths, all of them talking like mad and paying no attention to the outside world. Kobler took out the Blackhawk, held it by the barrel and opened the door of LaRenne's phone booth. He clipped LaRenne with the gun butt just as the operator finally made the connection with Argus Imports.

  A tinny voice sounded. “Hello?”

  Kobler put the phone back on its hook, and stripped off LaRenne's coat. He stuffed coat and gun into the briefcase, closed it, and shut the phone-booth door. He walked over to the self-service baggage counter where the baggage from his flight was just coming in. He stood with his back to the terminal and when his bag was put on the counter, he picked it up and headed toward the exit to the parking lot. He was just going through the electric-eye doors when Hanks came running from the phone booths at the far end. He knew something was wrong, and it probably wasn't wrong with LaRenne. But he was staring at the phone booths far ahead of him, so he didn't see Kobler going out.

  Kobler walked over to the parking lot where Parnell was sitting in a year-old Mercury station wagon with the engine idling. Kobler put the suitcase and briefcase in the back, got in front next to Parnell, and they drove back to Parnell's furnished room, where they split the coat up the back and the take down the middle.

  Parnell caught a plane later that evening for New Mexico to start work on his new racer.

  6

  The next day, and four hundred miles to the south—

  From the gas station, you could see the stands around the race track. Maury sat in the gas-station office, his feet up on the desk, and looked out the window past the pumps, and beyond the highway, to the stands which were topped by waving pennants. He sat there and waited for the phone not to ring. Every day during racing season, he spent his afternoons in the gas station, waiting for the phone not to ring, and most days it didn't.

  But, every once in a while, it would and Willy, who ran the station, would pick it up and then turn to Maury and say, “It's for you.” And Maury would have to run to the track. Maury didn't like to run, not to the track or anywhere. But God help him he should some day walk to the track and, as a result, get there too late to make the bet. On the days when the phone rang and Willy told him it was for him, Maury would jump up and run over to the phone, crying, “Open the safe! Open the safe! Don't just stand there!” And he'd be panting already, even before making the run to the track, as he'd take the receiver, identify himself, and hear the voice at the other end say, “Three on Mister Whisker.”

  “Three on Mister Whisker,” Maury would repeat. Then the party at the other end would cut him off. Maury would slam the receiver, turn to Willy, and shout, “Isn't that damn safe open yet?”

  Willy would ask, “How much, Maury? Take it easy for Christ's sake, Maury. How much?”

  And Maury would say, “Three.”

  Then Willy would hand him $3,000 in hundred-dollar bills, thirty hundred-dollar bills, and he would stuff them into his pockets and run for the track. It would seem like forever getting through the gate, then he would be at the hundred-dollar WIN window, and he'd say, “Three thousand on Mister Whisker.”

  The clerk at the hundred-dollar WIN window would smile and say, “Hello, Maury. Big play on that one, huh?” And he'd take Maury's thirty hundred-dollar bills and give him thirty tickets on the nose of Mister Whisker.

  Maury could then relax for a few minutes. He could go some place to watch the race, or just sit down and get his breath back, until the particular race on which he bet was over. If Mister Whisker came in, he'd go back and collect on his thirty tickets. If Mister Whisker lost, he'd carry the thirty tickets back to the gas station, put them in an envelope, and mail them off to the commission house, so they'd know he actually had bet the three grand and not just pocketed it.

  He'd thought sometimes of not betting the money, of sticking it in his pocket and waiting for the horse to lose. He could scrounge up enough tickets that other people had thrown away to make up the amount he should have bet. But most losers got their revenge by ripping the tickets up first. Besides, what if the horse won? If the horse won, and Maury hadn't had the money on it, he wouldn't be able to go back to the gas station with the winnings. And if that happened, God help him. So he took his fifty a week for sitting in the gas station and hoping the phone wouldn't ring, and every once in a while he ran across the highway with his pockets full of thousands of dollars that he knew better than to try to keep.

  He'd gotten the job from his brother-in-law, his wife's brother, who was a big shot. Maury was a little shot and always would be. His brother-in-law had got him the job because otherwise Maury might not have been able to support his family, and, in that case, Maury's brother-in-law would have to. And the brother-in-law had made it clear this was one job, the one job in Maury's life, that Maury did not want to get himself fired from. “If you screw this up, Maury, there's nothing I can do for you. My sister will be a widow.”

  It was a hell of a responsibility, and it terrified Maury. That was why he spent every afternoon hoping the phone wouldn't ring.

  What Maury was, he was the lay-off man. The occasional phone order he got began a long, tortuous distance away from him. It could begin with your corner bookie. Normally, your corner bookie likes to cover all his bets himself, because then he can keep all the money bet on losers. But, every so often there's a run on a horse—there's so much money bet on a particular horse running with high odds that if that horse came in, it would cost your corner bookie his shirt to pay off. Your corner bookie is a gambler, but he isn't crazy. So he calls one of the big bookies, in New York or Chicago or Miami, and lays off part of the one bet on that horse. If the horse doesn't come in, he's lost the money he laid off to the big bookie. But if the horse does come in, he'll have the money to cover the winnings and he can pay off his betters.

  Just as the small-time bookie sometimes has to lay off an excess of bets on a horse, the big bookie sometimes has to do the
same thing. Mister Whisker, say, is running at 12 to 1, which means a $24 pay-off on every $2 bet. A number of corner bookies have been getting runs on Mister Whisker, and have laid off part of the money with a big bookie. Not only that, but a number of the big bookie's regular customers are also betting heavily on Mister Whisker. So the big bookie calls a commission house in St. Louis or Cincinnati or Chicago, and he, in turn, lays off some of his bets.

  After the commission house, there's no place left to lay off bets. Except at the race track itself. So the commission house, if necessary, does its laying-off right at the track. This system has a double advantage for the commission house. Not only does it cover the commission house bets, but a large win bet shortly before post time may also lower the odds at the track so that a horse which was paying 24 to 2 before the commission house placed its bet through a lay-off man at the track may actually end up paying only 10 to 2.

  But although the commission house gains an additional advantage from a lay-off bet at the track, it is faced with an additional physical problem in making the bet. The corner bookie can phone the big bookie. The big bookie can phone the commission house. But the commission house can't phone the race track.

  So the commission house does the next best thing. It hires a man to stand by near a telephone close to the race track every afternoon for the entire racing season. When the commission house wants to place a bet, it calls the man it has hired and tells him how much to bet on which horse. Then the lay-off man races over to the track and makes the bet personally.

  There's only one rub. In order for the man to be able to make large bets when required, he must have large amounts of money handy. In the safe in the gas-station office, for instance, there was always a fund of between $30,000 and $50,000. When the fund dropped below thirty, it was replenished by a courier from the commission house. If a lay-off bet turned out to be a winner, any money won that brought the fund over $50,000 was immediately returned to the commission house.

  That afternoon, when the phone rang at twenty minutes past two and Maury felt the panic wings flutter in his stomach, there was $42,000 in the safe.

  * * *

  Salsa had been sitting here in the car at the same spot every afternoon since he'd gotten Parker's goading letter, watching the gas station through his binoculars. He was beginning to lose patience. It was now Wednesday. He would wait it out till the end of the week. If there wasn't any action by then, he'd give it up.

  Salsa was a tall, smooth-muscled man of thirty-seven, an illegal immigrant, whose youth had been thrown away on a passionate concern for a brand of politics currently in strong disfavor in the United States. In his middle twenties, he had suddenly awakened to the Truth of Self-interest, which he now realized was a far more important and valid Truth than any Political Truth ever invented. He further realized this was the hidden Truth upon which most of the leaders he had blindly followed based their actions. They had claimed to be struggling selflessly for a better world and Salsa had been young enough to believe them and to try to help them actively. He had actually been struggling selflessly for a better world until he had realized that most of the men he'd been following were struggling mainly for a world which would be better for themselves. From then on, when faced by a man who claimed he was struggling for a better world, Salsa invariably thought, “Better for whom, Brother?”

  Just as, earlier, he had practiced what his leaders had preached, Salsa now began to emulate what they had practiced. But he was still too young, a little too brash and incautious in his methods, and it wasn't long before he had to flee. Several countries were unconscious hosts for him as he wandered about trying to find a place for himself in a suddenly topsy-turvy world. His youth and physical strength had helped and his good looks had helped even more. A number of women had taught him their native languages. He still spoke English with a slight British accent.

  Eventually, Salsa discovered the gigolo's paradise, a luxury trans-Atlantic steamer. Staying aboard and not debarking at either end, he hid from authority when the ship was in port with the assistance of one or another of the shipping company's female employees. He spent three relaxed years on the same ship. There was good food; there were interesting companions. Clothing and pocket money could always be stolen, and there was inevitably a woman looking for a roommate, so he did not have to sleep on deck. But there was no permanence in that life, and no chance to accumulate the large sums which would enable him to retire to a life of ease. So, one day, he jumped ship in New York.

  The United States was the obvious country for him—he'd been everywhere else in the world where Caucasians predominate, except Australia—but, because of the political foolishness of his youth and the undoubted moral turpitude of his present life, he didn't even bother applying for permission to enter the States. He already knew the answer. So he simply jumped ship, and waited to see what the New World had to offer.

  It offered very little beyond dishwashing jobs and suspicious policemen until the day he ran into a fellow named Rico who was a professional thief. When Rico found out how much Salsa knew about guns, a part of his youthful political training, Salsa's new career was born. In the eight years since then, he had worked fourteen jobs, eight with Rico, two with Parker. The $17,000 that was his share of the first job he had been on bought him papers proving he was an American citizen, born in Baltimore, a veteran of the Korean War. He had a high school diploma, a driver's license, a Social Security card, an Army discharge form—everything he needed.

  The money from the next two jobs went into setting up his new home on the north shore of Long Island. Salsa had purchased a large house, half-a-century old, on five-and-a-half acres with frontage on Long Island Sound. He owned a Ford Thunderbird and a Cadillac—he was a proud, chauvinistic citizen who wouldn't buy foreign cars or anything else made outside the good old U.S.A.—and a Chriscraft. His friends were mostly in television and advertising, and, among them, it was rumored that he had inherited wealth. He took a job whenever the larder was low, and the rest of the time was the proverbial playboy, the one the gentlemen's magazines describe so aptly.

  It was a lucky accident that he found out about Maury and the money in the gas-station safe. He was aware of the lay-off system and how it worked, and knew that commission houses had men stationed around every major race track throughout the season. It just happened that he had stopped at that gas station—to feed the Thunderbird—one afternoon when a phone call had come for Maury.

  Salsa had been driving south, in response to a party invitation which had been tendered him two days before by longdistance. While the attendant was pumping gas into the car, he went into the station office to buy cigarettes. There was a stocky, indolent man sitting at the desk, his feet up on the top. He was smoking a cigar. Salsa, discovering he didn't have any change, produced a dollar bill and asked the stocky man to change it. The stocky man said, “Jeez, Mac, I only got about eight cents change on me.” He patted his pockets.

  Salsa, confused, motioned at the cash register. “But surely—”

  “I don't work here, Mac.” Willy disliked and distrusted Maury, so he wouldn't let him open the cash register. “Willy! Hey! Guy here wants change.”

  Willy had come in from the work area and given him change. Salsa had gotten cigarettes from the machine and gone back to the car, wondering what the story was. A lazy man, feet up on the desk, but he didn't work there. Then Salsa looked up and noticed the stands further down on the other side of the highway. He asked the attendant at the gas pump, “What's that?”

  “Race track.”

  And then Salsa had understood. He hadn't needed the rest of it. Just as he was pulling away, he saw Willy answer the phone in the office, then give the phone to the other man. He saw Willy crouch down near the safe, and nodded to himself. A lay-off man—with the capital in the gas-station safe. He filed the information away in the back of his mind for a very rainy day and drove on southward.

  It would be an easy job to knock over, he thought, one
man could do it alone. But Salsa had always worked on lays that somebody else had set up and planned, and he really didn't see himself as the kind of guy who could run a job from beginning to end. Besides, it was kind of an unwritten rule to leave syndicate operations alone. If he was ever really strapped for cash, he'd break that rule now that he knew about this setup, but until then he would forget it.

  Salsa had forgotten till the letter came from Parker. Then he remembered, and smiled in anticipation. It would be a pleasure to knock that place over! His first solo job ought to be something easy, anyway.

  He had driven down the same day and scouted the territory. There was an additional piece of luck he hadn't counted on, which came in handy. Next door to the gas station was a roadhouse which had burned down. The insides were gutted but the outer walls still stood. A lot of cheapskates who didn't want to pay at the race track parking lot left their cars in the parking lot beside the roadhouse, so Salsa simply parked his car among them. He could look straight across at the gas-station office and through the plate glass to the desk where the stocky man sat every afternoon. Salsa had the Thunderbird, decked out in false plates, and he'd worked out his getaway route. All he needed was for the stocky man to get a phone call.