The Man with the Getaway Face: A Parker Novel (Parker Novels) Read online

  Parker stowed the three thousand in his suitcase, then carried the typewriter case down the row of doors to the motel office. This was a secondary route now that the Pennsylvania Turnpike was in existence, and the motel was seedy and run-down. The interior walls needed a new coat of paint, and half the neon sign out by the road wasn't working.

  The man who ran the hotel was short, fat and balding. His eyes shone behind glasses with plastic frames patched by friction tape. He sat at the counter in the motel office, dressed in a rumpled suit and a frayed white shirt and a wrinkled tie. He had sullen lines around his mouth, and he was surly whenever his customers spoke to him.

  He was alone at the desk when Parker came in, staring glumly across the counter through the plate-glass window at the road. A semi passed, headed east, and then the road was empty again.

  Parker put the typewriter case up on the counter and said, “Want to make half a G?”

  The owner looked at him. “Why don't you go to hell?”

  Parker lit a cigarette and dropped the match on the counter, still burning. The owner made a startled sound and reached out, slapping the match. Parker said, “One of these days, somebody's going to break your head.”

  “You get the hell out of here!” the owner said angrily. “Who do you think you are?”

  “Five hundred,” Parker said. “You could get the sign fixed.”

  The owner got off his stool, looking back at the phone on the wall. Then he looked at Parker again. “You mean it?”

  Parker waited, smoking.

  The owner considered, gnawing on the inside of his cheek. He stood next to his stool, one hand flat palm down on the counter. His fingernails were ragged and dirty. He thought about it, gnawing his cheek, and then he shook his head. “You're talking about something illegal,” he said. “I don't want no part of it.”

  Parker opened the typewriter case. “See? Five grand. And it isn't hot money. I want to stash it someplace where I know it's safe. If I ask you to hold it for me and you look in it and see the dough, you might be tempted. So I pay you five hundred. You've made a nice piece of change, and you don't get so tempted.”

  “Five thousand.” He said it with a kind of heavy contempt. “What would I do with five thousand? Where would I go? What would it get me? I'd need a lot more than that. I'm stuck in this rattrap for the rest of my life.”

  “You want the five hundred?”

  “If a state trooper comes in looking for that money, I'll hand it right over. I don't go to jail for no five hundred dollars. Or any five thousand, either.”

  “I told you, it isn't hot.”

  The owner looked at the money. “For how long?” he asked.

  Parker shrugged. “Maybe a week, maybe a year.”

  “What if it gets stolen off me?”

  Parker smiled thinly, and shook his head. “I wouldn't believe it,” he said.

  “I don't know.” The man looked at the money doubtfully. “Why don't you put it in a bank?”

  “I don't like banks.”

  The owner sighed and nodded. “All right,” he said. “I'll get the sign fixed.”

  Parker reached into the typewriter case and counted five hundred dollars onto the counter. Then he closed and locked the typewriter case and slid it across to the owner. “I'll stop back for it sometime,” he said.

  Then he went back to the room and picked up the suitcase. He stashed it in the Ford and left the motel, heading east.

  It was after midnight when he reached New Jersey. He stayed north of Philadelphia and crossed the Delaware River from Easton to Phillipsburg, still on 22. He stayed with 22 all the way to Newark. When he reached Newark, he drove around the sidestreets for a while, and made two stops.

  The first time, he took a screwdriver and removed the Jersey plates from a five-year-old Dodge. The second time, he took a razor blade from his shaving kit, and walked three blocks until he found an unlocked parked car. The street was deserted, so he slid behind the wheel and spent three minutes with the razor blade carefully removing the state inspection sticker from the windshield. It tore in a couple of places, but not badly. He went back to the Ford, found route 9, and drove south out of Newark.

  About twenty miles south, he passed the Shore Points Diner, all lit up, with three trucks and a station wagon parked at the sides. He continued south, nearly to Freehold, and when the highway narrowed to two lanes he pulled off onto the shoulder. He removed the Ohio plates and put the Jersey plates on and stowed the Ohio plates under the mat in the trunk. He smeared red Jersey mud on the bumpers and license plates, so the numbers could still be read but only with difficulty, and then turned around and drove north again, stopping at a motel in Linden. He borrowed some mucilage from the woman who ran the motel, attached the inspection sticker to the windshield of the Ford and went to bed.

  5

  Sitting at the counter over a cup of coffee, Parker tried to figure out which waitress was Alma. Since it was Saturday, just after noon, the place was nearly full, and the four waitresses were kept constantly on the move. Parker watched them, one at a time, trying to decide.

  One was soft-plump with frilly blonde hair and big blue eyes, the helpless magnolia-blossom type that works out best in the south and fails almost completely on the Jersey flats. Another was thin and stringy, with thin and stringy gray hair and a thin and stringy mouth; she surely had a school-age daughter or two at home, and her husband surely deserted her nine or ten years ago. The third was the German barmaid type, with sullen eyes and fat arms and a habit of throwing plates onto tables. The last was the horsy clumsy type, a young girl who couldn't stop thinking about sex; she got the orders wrong from all the male customers, and spent most of her nights knees-up on the back seats of Plymouths.

  Parker studied them one by one, trying to decide. He crossed off the horsy nymphomaniac right away; when the armored car guards came in here for coffee and danish, that one would spend too much time thinking about their sex organs to wonder about the money they were guarding. The magnolia blossom might yearn for the goodies that money could bring, but if she were Alma she wouldn't offer Skimm any complicated plans for hitting the armored car—that type let the man do the thinking. The thin and stringy one had more than likely been married to a drifter who looked like Skimm, and she wouldn't trust him anyway since he was a man. And that left the German barmaid.

  So that was Alma. She passed him, white waitress skirt rustling and nylons scraping together at the thighs, and went on down behind the counter to draw three cups of coffee. He watched her, frowning, not liking what he saw.

  She was in her mid-thirties, and her waitress-short hair, a mousy brown in color, was crimped all around in a frizzy permanent. Her eyes were sullen and angry, glaring out at a world that had never given her her due. She was heavily built, with broad hips and full bosom and thick legs, all of it solid and hard. She had a double chin and a pulpy nose and a surprisingly good mouth, but the mouth was obscured by the hardness of the rest of her.

  He looked at her, and he didn't like what he saw. There is no honor among thieves, perhaps, but there has to be trust among thieves when they're working together or they'll be too busy watching each other to watch what they're doing. And Parker didn't trust this Alma at all.

  He watched her a while, seeing nothing to modify his opinion, then paid for his coffee and went out to the Ford. There was a Chevy wagon parked in the spot where the armored car always stopped. Parker looked up and down the highway, wandered once around the parking lot, then climbed into the Ford and backed it out of its slot. He turned the wheel and drove around behind the diner, and saw the double dirt track angle off away from the parking lot through stubby undergrowth and occasional trees. He turned the Ford that way and followed the tracks up a gentle slope and down the other side. The road was in better condition than he'd expected. A car could make time on that road, and this would be important.

  It was less than a mile north to the cross road, extravagantly called the Amboy Turnpike. P
arker turned left and traveled a little more than five miles to Old Bridge. He didn't know where the deserted farmhouse was supposed to be, so he turned around and drove back north on the Amboy Turnpike again. This time he bypassed the road from the diner and kept on northward. Another mile brought him back to route 9, about half a mile north of the diner.

  Less than five miles later, he left 9 on a long loop up to 440. Eastward on 440, it was three miles to Staten Island, via the Outerbridge Crossing. Parker stopped shy of the bridge, and pulled over against the curb. He smoked a Lucky as he watched the cars pass him and belt across the bridge. On the other side there was a toll booth construction across the road, built in California Mission style. Fourteen miles from there was the Staten Island Ferry, either to Manhattan or Brooklyn.

  After a while he finished the cigarette, threw it out the window and turned the car around. He went back to 9, back to the Amboy Turnpike, back to Old Bridge. He parked outside a bar and pulled the New Jersey roadmap out of the glove compartment.

  He studied it for a while, but there was no faster way to do it. In any kind of smash and grab, the object is to cross a state line as quickly as possible. The state where the crime took place is alerted first, with state police crawling over all the roads; it usually takes a while to get a neighboring state on its toes. If the states get along as badly as New Jersey and New York, it takes even longer.

  He folded the map again, stowed it back in the glove compartment, and locked up the car. He went into the bar, drank draft beer for two hours and then looked up at the revolving Budweiser clock. “For God's sake,” he said, “I've got to get to Brooklyn. What's the quickest way from here?”

  “For Brooklyn?” The bartender thought it over. “You go out of here and take this street here straight out, to the left. That'll take you to route 9, and you take a left there till you see the sign for Outerbridge Crossing. That'll take you to Staten Island, and then you cross the Island and take the ferry.”

  “What if I take the Holland tunnel?”

  “That's the long way around for Brooklyn, Mister. That'll lead you into Manhattan.”

  “Then that's the fastest way, huh? Go by Staten Island?”

  “If you're going to Brooklyn.”

  “Thanks,” said Parker. He left the bar and drove back to Newark.

  6

  Across the road from the diner there was a discount store in a concrete block building. At quarter after ten on Monday morning, Parker drove the Ford into the furniture store parking lot. There was cyclone fencing all around the black-top parking lot, and Parker stopped the Ford with its nose to the fencing, facing the road. He could look straight out through the windshield at the diner across the way. He checked his watch, saw it wasn't twenty after ten yet, and lit a cigarette.

  The armored car was red, and so short it looked stubby. It jounced into the diner lot at seventeen minutes to eleven, and stopped where Skimm had said it would. A Pontiac convertible was already there, in the spot between the armored car and the road.

  Parker lit a fresh cigarette and watched. The driver got out, on the near side, and carefully closed the door behind him. He walked back the length of the truck and unlocked the rear door. The guard climbed out and waited while the driver locked the rear door again. Then the two of them walked into the diner.

  Two minutes gone; fifteen minutes to eleven exactly.

  They came back out at three minutes to eleven, and they both went to the rear of the truck. The driver unlocked the door, the guard climbed back in, the driver shut and locked the door again. Then he went back to the cab. The other guard opened the door for him from the inside, stepped down to the gravel, and the driver climbed up behind the wheel. The guard pushed the door closed and went into the diner.

  He didn't take so long, probably because he didn't have anybody to talk to. At eight minutes after eleven, he came back out and went around to the far side of the armored car. The driver reached over and opened the door for him. He climbed in and the driver backed out of the space and bumped across the gravel to the concrete and headed south again on 9.

  Parker got rolling right after him, coming out of the furniture store lot and heading north a quarter mile to the next place where he could make a U-turn. He hit sixty-five for a couple of minutes, coming back southward, and when he saw the red of the armored car far ahead of him he slowed down to fifty, matching the armored car's speed.

  The road was four lanes wide for a while, and then it narrowed down to two. There was very little traffic, only one Chevy station wagon between Parker and the armored car. The wagon turned off on 520, and Parker hung back farther. He was watching the sides of the road and the road itself, but he didn't see anything that looked good. No blind turns, no hills, no valleys. The road was flat and straight, the curves wide and looping.

  Parker quit before they reached Freehold, and turned the Ford around. He drove north a couple of miles and pulled onto the shoulder of the road. He shut the engine and got out of the car and opened the hood. Then he went back and sat behind the wheel again and lit a cigarette. He made himself comfortable in the seat and watched the rearview mirror.

  A little after noon, a state patrol car pulled onto the shoulder just ahead of him, and a trooper got out looking like a modernized cowboy, only better fed. Parker rolled the window down and the trooper looked at him through his sunglasses and said, “Any trouble here?”

  “She heated up,” Parker answered. “My brother took a walk up to the Esso station for some water.”

  The trooper nodded. “That's all right, then.”

  “Thanks for stopping,” Parker said.

  The trooper hesitated, and then took one glove off. “May I see your license and registration, please?”

  “I don't drive,” Parker told him. “My brother drives. I'm just sitting here till he comes back.”

  This was beginning to irritate him, but he didn't show it. The hood being up was supposed to answer all the questions, was supposed to keep cops from stopping to ask what he was parked on the shoulder for. But it was a dull day and a quiet road and not much traffic, so they'd stopped anyway—for the hell of it, to break the monotony.

  “What about the registration?” the trooper asked.

  “He's got that, too,” Parker answered. “He keeps them both in his wallet.”

  “It's supposed to be in the car.” The trooper wasn't suspicious or angry, just breaking the monotony. “He should have left it with you.”

  “I guess he didn't think,” Parker said. He hoped the armored car wouldn't go by now, while he was bottled up with this idiot cop. “He was sore about the heating up and everything.”

  The trooper hesitated again, glancing through his sunglasses at the back seat. “How come he went for the water, instead of you? Seeing you don't drive.”

  Parker said, “I've got a game leg. That's why I can't get a driver's license.”

  The trooper was suddenly embarrassed. He pulled his glove back on and said, “You tell your brother about the registration.”

  “I will,” Parker promised.

  The trooper walked back to his own car, still looking like an overfed cowboy. He even had a rolling, slightly bow-legged walk. His black boots glistened in the sun. He got into the car and after a minute it pulled away and dwindled out of sight on the concrete road.

  Parker watched it till it disappeared, and then lit a new cigarette and frowned at the rearview mirror.

  That shouldn't have happened. To have a cop working the area of a job notice you, that was bad. The hood being up should have taken care of things; if the damn cop hadn't been bored, it would have. From now on, he'd have to watch two things at once, the job and that state trooper car. It wouldn't do for that trooper to see him driving.

  He touched his fingers to his face, over his upper lip. His beard had been coming in spotty since the plastic surgery—the doctor had said that would straighten out after a while—but the hair on the upper lip grew the same as always. It might not be a bad id
ea to grow a moustache. If the same cop stopped him again, he could be his own brother. Amazing family resemblance. Parker grinned sourly at the thought, still watching the rearview mirror.

  He saw the red in the mirror at twenty after one, coming like a bat out of hell. He got out of the Ford and closed the hood and was getting back behind the wheel when the armored car went by. He started the engine and took off after it. The armored car was staying between fifty-five and sixty now; these guys were probably quitting work as soon as they reported in. Watching for the trooper's car, Parker stayed with the red tin box, without getting too close.

  They went by the Shore Points Diner and over the Raritan River and straight on up 9—four lanes all the way now—to Elizabeth. When the armored car turned off, in town, Parker kept going straight, on up to Newark. He'd seen all he wanted to see. The diner was where it would have to be done. There wasn't any place at all along the road where they could flag if for the toby, so that meant they'd have to use Alma.