Backflash p-18 Read online

  Cathman laughed, self-conscious. “Heavens, no. Not at all. That’s why I neededMr. Howell. Or you. Or whoever it might be.”

  “You just go around talking to people? In bars, and here and there?”

  “Certainly not,” Cathman said, and gave Parker a sudden keen look. He said, “Mr. Parker, I don’t know your world very well, or your

  business. But that doesn’t mean I’m a fool.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I am not going to talk to an undercover policeman, believe me.”

  “Maybe you are right now,” Parker told him.

  Cathman smirked, and shook his head. “I was sure of Mr. Howell,” he said, “and I’m sure of you. Mr. Parker, do you gamble?”

  “Not with people I don’t know.”

  Cathman made a sudden irritated hand-gesture, sweeping away a misunderstanding. “I don’t mean that,” he said. “I mean gambling, legal gambling. Lotteries, betting parlors. Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Foxwood.”

  Parker looked at him: “Foxwood?”

  Cathman’s hand-wave this time was airy, dismissive. “Over in Connecticut,” he said. “On the Indian reservation, so state laws don’t apply. The casino there makes millions.”

  Parker nodded. “So the Indians finally found a way to beat the white man.”

  “My question was, do you gamble?”

  “No.”

  “May I ask why not?”

  What did this have to do with anything? But Parker had learned, over the years, that when somebody wants to tell you his story, you have to let him tell it his own way. Try to push him along, speed it up, you’ll just confuse him and slow him down.

  So the question is, why not gamble? Parker’d never thought about it, he just knew it was pointless and uninteresting. He said, “Turn myself over to random events? Why? The point is to try to control events, and they’ll still get away from you anyway. Why make things worse? Jump out a window, see if a mattress truck goes by. Why? Only if the room’s on fire.”

  That was apparently the right answer. Cathman beamed like a man who’d won the turkey at the raffle. He said, “The reason you feel that way, Mr. Parker, if I may presume, and the reason Ifeel that way, is, we are not in despair. We are not bored and miserable with our own lives. We don’t pay twenty dollars every week for a cluster of numbers in the state lottery, in hopes we’re buying a new car, a new house, a new job, a new wife, better children and a firmer stomach. Gambling preys on misery, Mr. Parker, misery and discontent. Where the people are comfortable and confident, gambling does not flourish.”

  Parker was beginning to see that Cathman was not a man with a job, he was a man with a cause. So why did he need a Howell, or a Parker? He said, “Tell me where you’re going with this.”

  “Let me first tell you who I am,” Cathman said, and reached inside his topcoat. Parker tensed, looking at the Adam’s apple he’d hit, but what Cathman brought out was a small flat leather case. Opening it, he took out a business card and handed it over. Parker took it:

  HILLIARD CATHMAN

  Hilliard Cathman Associates

  14-162 State Plaza, Suite 1100 Albany, NY 12961

  Urban & Policy Planning

  Resource Apportionment Consultants

  518 828-3344 fax 518 828-3388

  “Since I retired from state government,” Cathman explained, “I’ve been able to use my contacts and expertise in a broader and more satisfying way. Not limited to New York State any more, nor to one administration.”

  Parker extended the card, but Cathman waved it away: “No, keep it. I want you to understand. I am knowledgeable, and I am reliable. In my area. As Mr. Howell was in his, and as he led me to believe you are in yours.”

  “I still don’t see where we’re gong,” Parker said.

  Cathman looked out at the river, apparently to gather his thoughts. The river was wide here, and moved briskly. It was a hundred miles from here to the harbor and the sea.

  Cathman said, “Gambling fever has struck the politicians, I’m afraid. They see it as a safe form of taxation, a way to collect money from the people without causing discontent or taxpayer revolt. The lottery does it, and OTB does it, and casino gambling can do it. Three resort areas in New York State have been designated by the state legislature for legalized gambling. This area is not one of them.”

  “Then they’re lucky,” Parker said.

  “Yes, they are, but they don’t know it. Foxwood in particular has driven them wild. It’s so close, and it’s so profitable. So a new bill has worked its way through the legislature, and will be signed before the end of the month, which adds a fourth gambling district in New York State.” He gestured outward: “The river.”

  “A casino boat?”

  “Yes. There are any number of them around America, and they tend to be migratory, as laws change, state by state. The boat which will be used on the Hudson, between Poughkeepsie and Albany, which is at this moment steaming up the Atlantic coast toward its new assignment, was until recently called the Spirit of Biloxi.But there are so many casinos in the Biloxi area now, the competition is so fierce, that the owners of the boat had no problem with the idea of changing its name to the Spirit of the Hudson.”

  “Loyalty,” suggested Parker.

  “They have nailed their colors to a weathervane,” Cathman agreed. “At this point,” he went on, “because there is a strong anti-gambling faction in the legislature or, that is, several anti-gambling factions, some religious, some practical, some spiteful approval has been given only for a four-month trial period. And, since they have learned from OTB and elsewhere that people will, if given the chance, spend far beyond their income when the gambling bug strikes, for this four-month trial period only, no credit will be allowed.”

  Parker frowned. “They can’t do it. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “Nevertheless, that is the compromise that has been struck. If the four-month trial is considered a success, and the boat continues to be the Spirit of the Hudson,then credit wagering will be permitted. But during the trial period, no. No credit cards, no checks, no letters of credit.”

  “Cash,” Parker said.

  Cathman nodded. “A boat swimming in cash,” he said. “Through my access to various government departments, I can obtain virtually any information you could possibly need. Blueprints of the boat, details of security, employee backgrounds, locations of safes, schedules, security arrangements at the two ports where the ship will touch land, being Albany and Poughkeepsie, the turnaround points. The details of any robbery that might take place on the boat, of course, are your concern.”

  “And what do you want for this?”

  Cathman shrugged inside his expensive topcoat. “I’m a little tired,” he said. “I would like to live in a state with less severe winters, pick and choose my clients with more freedom. If you proceed, and if you are successful, I would like ten percent.”

  “You’re gambling,” Parker told him.

  Cathman’s smile was wan. “I hope not,” he said. “If I am dealing with professionals, and I know myself to be professional in my own line of work, is that gambling? I don’t think so. You’ll have no reason to begrudge me my ten percent.”

  “You’re the inside man,” Parker pointed out. “The law will be looking for the inside man.”

  Now Cathman laughed outright. “Me? Mr. Parker, no one in New York State government would suspect me of so much as taking paper clips home from the office. My reputation is so clear, and for so long, that no one would think of me as the inside man for a second. And there would be dozens of others who might have been the ones who helped with inside information.”

  Parker nodded. He thought about it. On the river, a black barge full of scrap metal was pushed slowly upstream by a tug, the water foaming white across its blunt prow. Parker said, “When does this boat get here?”

  5

  Claire said, “What are you going to do?”

  “Find out some things,” Parker told her. “Talk t
o some people who might maybe like to come along. Take my time. It’s at least three weeks before the boat opens for business.”

  “There’s something you don’t like about it,” Claire said.

  Parker got to his feet and started to pace. They were on the screened porch on the lake side of the house, the chitter of a light spring rain filling the silences around their words. The lake surface was pebbled, with little irruptions where the breeze gusted. Usually the lake was quiet, glassy, reflecting the sky; now it was more like the river he’d been looking at yesterday.

  “I don’t like boats,” he said, pacing, looking out at the lake. “To begin with. I don’t like anything where there’s one entrance, one exit. I don’t like a cell. A boat on the water is a cell, you can’t just get up and go away.”

  “But the money,” she said.

  “Cash.” He nodded. “Cash is the hardest to find and the easiest to deal with. Anything else, you have to sell it, it’s two transactions, not one. So the idea of the cash is good. But it’s still cash on a boat. And besides that, there’s Cathman.”

  “What about him?”

  “What does he want? Why is he doing this? There’s something off-key there.”

  “Male menopause.”

  Parker did his barking laugh. “He isn’t chasing a fifteen-year-old girl,” he said, “he’s chasing a boat full of money. And he wants ten percent. Ten percent.”

  “It’s a finder’s fee. You’ll bedoing all the work.”

  “Why isn’t he greedier? Why doesn’t he want more? Why isn’t he afraid we’ll stiff him? Why does he have to tell me his thoughts about politics and gambling?”

  “He’s new to this,” she suggested. “He’s nervous, so he keeps talking.”

  “Well, that’s another thing that’s wrong. He says he’s got a perfect rep, nobody would think twice he could be linked up to something like this. So why is he? Why is he taking thirty years of straight arrow and tossing it in the wastebasket for ten percent of something that might not happen? If he never thought this way before, how can he think this way now? What’s different in him?”

  “Maybe he lied to you,” she said. “Maybe he’s not as clean as he says.”

  “Then the cops will be on him the day after we pull the job, and what he has on me is a name and a phone number.” He stopped his pacing to look around the porch, and then at Claire. “You want to move from here?”

  “I like this house.”

  He paced again, looking at nothing. “I was thinking, when I was there, yesterday. There was an access road there, went down to the water, right next to the station, with a ramp at the bottom where you could launch a boat. I was thinking, there’s nobody around, nobody even looking at the river, it’s too early in the season. This guy knows two things about me, I could launch him right now, and come home, and forget it. All done.”

  She winced a little at the idea, but said, “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because he makes no sense,” he told her. He paced the porch as though he were in the cell he’d said he didn’t like. “I want to figure him out. I want to know what’s behind him, what he’s doing, I want to know who he is, what he is, why he moves the way he does. Then I’ll decide what to do about him.” He stopped in front of her, frowning down at her, thinking. “You want to help?”

  She blinked, and looked tense. “You know,” she said, “I don’t like … there’s things I don’t like.”

  “Nothing with trouble,” he promised. “I’ve got the guy’s calling card. You just spend some time in the library, spend some time on the phone. He’ll have a paper trail. Get me a biography.”

  “I could do that,” she agreed. “And what will you be doing?”

  “I’ll go talk to a few guys,” Parker said.

  6

  “Edward Lynch,” Parker said, and extended a credit card with that name on it.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Lynch,” the desk clerk said. She had a neat egg-shaped head with straight brown hair down both sides of it, like curtains at a window, and nothing much in the window. “Pleasant trip?”

  “Yes,” he said, and turned away from her canned chatter to look at the big echoing interior of the Brown Palace, Denver’s finest, built around a great square atrium and furnished to let you know that you were in the western United States but that good taste prevailed. On the upper floors, all the rooms were on the far side of the halls, with a low wall on this side, overlooking the lobby. Here and there in the big space, groups of people sat in the low armchairs and sofas, leaning toward one another to talk things over, their words disappearing in the air. But a shotgun mike in any of the upper halls could pick up every conversation in the room.

  “Here you are, Mr. Lynch.”

  Parker signed the credit card slip and took the plastic key. “I think I have messages.”

  She turned, as neatly articulated as a Barbie, and said, “Yes, here we are. Two messages.” She slid the envelopes across the desk toward him. “Will you want assistance with your luggage?”

  “No, I’m okay.”

  His luggage was one small brown canvas bag; he’d be here only one night. Picking the bag up, stuffing the message envelopes into his jacket pocket, he crossed to the elevators, not bothering to look out over the groups in the lobby. Mike and Dan wouldn’t be there, they’d be waiting for his call, in their rooms.

  You don’t meet where you’re going to pull the job, nowhere near it. And you don’t meet anywhere that you’ve got a base or a drop or a contact or a home. Three days ago, just after his conversation with Claire, Parker had started making phone calls, and when he made contact with the two guys he wanted he did a minimum of small talk and then said the same thing both times: “I ran into Edward Lynch the other day. Remember him?” Both guys said yeah, they remembered Edward Lynch, what’s he doing these days? “Salesman, travels all over the country. Said he was going to Denver, meet Bill Brown there on Thursday, then on and on, travel every which way. I’d hate that life.” Both guys agreed that Edward Lynch sure had it tough these days, and they did a little more nonsense talk, and hung up, and now it was Thursday and Parker was here as Edward Lynch, and he had the two messages in his pocket.

  The room was a room, with a view of Denver, a city that’s flat and broad. From a high floor like this, it looks tan, unmoving, a desert where people once used to live.

  After Parker threw cold water on his face and unpacked his bag, he spread the two messages on the table beside the phone. Both gave him numbers here in the hotel. One was from Jack Strongarm and the other from Chuck Michaels. Jack Strongarm would be Dan Wycza, a big burly guy who was known to work as a professional wrestler when times were tough; the Strongarm moniker was what he used in the ring. Chuck Michaels would be Mike Carlow, a driver who was also a race-driver on the professional circuit; a madman on the track, but otherwise solid and reliable and sure.

  Parker had no idea yet if this boat thing could be made to work, but if there was anything in it he’d need good pros to help put it together. He’d worked with both Wycza and Carlow more than once, and the best thing was, the last two times out with each of them everybody’d made a profit. So Wycza and Car-low would have good memories of Parker and reason to want to work with him again.

  He called both message numbers, and both were answered by wary voices. “Is this four twenty-nine?” he asked each time, since his room was 924, and both said no. He apologized twice, hung up, carried the bucket away to get ice, and when he was headed back he saw Mike Carlow coming the other way. A narrow rawboned guy in his forties, Carlow was a little shorter than medium height; good for fitting into those race cars. He had the leathery face and pale eyes of a man who spends a lot of time outdoors. His nose was long and narrow, lips thin, Adam’s apple prominent. He got to 924 before Parker, and when Parker arrived he nodded and said, “Hello, Parker. A long time since Tyler.” That was the last place they’d worked together. They’d all done well in Tyler, better than twenty-five thousand dollars a man. The mem
ory gleamed in Carlow’s pale eyes.

  Parker unlocked them into the room. “There’s a bottle there, and the glasses, and here’s ice.”

  Looking at the glasses, Carlow said, “Three of us.”

  “Dan Wycza.”

  “For the heavy lifting. Good.” Wycza had also been along in Tyler.

  Carlow put an ice cube in a glass and poured enough bourbon to float it, then looked over at Parker, held up the bottle, and said, “You?”

  “The same,” Parker said, and someone knocked with a double rap. “Make it two,” he said, and crossed to open the door.

  Dan Wycza was a huge bald man with a handsome, playful face and heavy shoulders that he automatically shifted to an angle when he walked through doorways. He looked out at the world with amused mistrust, as though everybody he saw was an opponent in the wrestling ring who maybe couldn’t be counted on to stick to the script. There was a rumor he was dead for a while, but then he’d popped up again. He was also known to be a health nut, which wouldn’t keep him from accepting a glass of bourbon. He came in now, squared his shoulders, nodded a hello to Parker and said, “Mike. Long time.”

  “Tyler,” Carlow said, and brought Parker and Wycza their drinks.

  “I spent that money,” Wycza said. Before drinking, he looked at Parker: “We gonna get some more?”

  “Maybe. Sit down, let me describe it.”

  There were two chairs in the room. Parker sat on the windowsill and said, “It’s cash. It’s all in one place for several hours. I’ve got an inside man to give me the details. But there are maybe problems.”

  Carlow said, “Is the inside man one of the problems?”

  “Don’t know yet. Don’t have him figured out. My woman’s checking into him, his background, see what his story is.”

  Wycza said, “What does he say his story is?”

  “Retired from state government, New York. Consultant to governments. Gave me his card.”

  Wycza smiled in disbelief. “He has a card?”

  “He’s legit, his whole life long. Got a reputation you could hang your overcoat on.”