Backflash p-18 Page 3

  Carlow said, “So why’s he giving you this score?”

  “That’s the question. But if it turns out he’s all right, there’s still problems, and the first one is, it’s a boat.”

  Carlow said, “On the ocean?” The question he meant was: What do you want with a driver?

  “On a river,” Parker told him. “A gambling casino boat, a trial period, no gambling on credit, all cash, they take the cash off every six hours.”

  “Not easy to leave a boat,” Wycza suggested, “if all at once you want to.”

  “That’s part of the problem.”

  Carlow said, “How much cash?”

  “The boat isn’t running yet,” Parker said. “So nobody knows what the take is. But a Friday night, five hours between ten P.M. and three A.M., it should be enough. I don’t think the money’s the problem, I think the boat’s the problem.”

  Wycza said, “The boat isn’t on that river now?”

  “It’s heading there. It used to be in Biloxi.”

  Wycza grinned and said, “The Spirit of Biloxi?”

  “It’s going to be the Spirit of the Hudsonnow. You know the boat?”

  “You’re giving me a chance to get my money back,” Wycza said. “But, you know, they do heavy security on that boat. I did an automatic case when I was aboard, decided not to try it. They got rent-a-cops in brown everywhere you look. Cash goes straight down through a slot into some safe room down below. When you cash in your chips, they got a vacuum tube with little metal-like rockets in it, to send up just your money.”

  Parker said, “How about security when you’re getting aboard?”

  “Airport,” Wycza told him. “You go through a metal detector. No X-ray, but they eyeball bags.”

  “So no way to bring weapons aboard,” Carlow said. “Unless

  ” He looked at Wycza. “Could you bring your own boat alongside?”

  “Not without being seen. The dining rooms and other stuff is along the outside of the boat, gambling rooms inside. No windows when you gamble, windows all over the place when you eat a meal or have a drink or just sit around.”

  “So that’s the second problem,” Parker said. “Guns. And the third problem is, getting the stuff off the boat.”

  “And us,” Wycza said.

  “That’s the fourth problem,” Parker said.

  Carlow said, “The money’s easy. Throw it overboard, in plastic. You got a boat trailing. That’s me. I do boats as good as I do cars.”

  Doubtful, Wycza said, “They light up that boat pretty good.”

  “A distraction at the front end,” Parker suggested. “Maybe a fire. Nobody likes fire on a boat.”

  Wycza said, “Idon’t like fire on a boat. And I also don’t jump in a river in the dark and wait for Mike to come by and pick me up. Nothing against you, Mike.”

  “I don’t want people,” Carlow told him. “Not with a boat. Plastic packages I can hook aboard and take off the other way.”

  “We don’t have this money yet,” Parker reminded him. “To get it, we need a way to get guns aboard. We need a way to get into the room where they keep the money.”

  Wycza said, “This source of yours. Can he give us blueprints?”

  “When I told him I’d think about it,” Parker said, “he gave me a whole package of stuff. Blueprints, schedules, staffing, I got it all.”

  Carlow said, “What does it say about guards? I’m wondering, are weguards, is that how we get the guns on board?”

  “You mean, hijack some guards,” Wycza said, “take their place. That’s possible, it’s been done sometimes.”

  “I don’t think so,” Parker said. “You’ve got two security teams. Those rent-a-cops you saw when you were on the boat, they’re hired by the private company owns the boat. They’re regulars, they know each other. Down in the money room, the guards and the money counters are hired by the state government, they’re a different bunch entirely. The way it’s gonna work, a state bus picks them up, on a regular route, takes them to the boat all in a bunch, takes them home again the same way. They bring food from home, they don’t get food on the boat. They’re locked in at the start of their tour, unlocked again at the end when the money on their shift comes off the boat, surrounded by the money room crew plus armored car company guards.”

  Carlow said, “Maybe it isn’t a boat job, maybe it’s an armored car job.”

  “My inside man can only help me with the boat,” Parker said. “In Albany, that’s where the money comes off, it’s like a three-block run from the dock to the bank, all city streets, heavily guarded.”

  “Forget I said anything,” Carlow said. “Anybody else want another?”

  They did. Carlow distributed more ice and more bourbon, sat back down and said, “We can’t do a switch with the guards, the outer guards, the rent-a-cops. It wouldn’t help us. Anyway, the big thing is, how do we get into the money room.”

  “Parker’s fire,” Wycza said. “Set the fucking boat on fire, they’ll open that door in a hurry.”

  “I don’t want to be on a burning boat,” Parker said. “That wasn’t the idea, about the fire, I just meant something small, to keep everybody looking forward when we do something at the back.”

  “Three questions we got,” Carlow said. “How do we get on, with the guns? How do we get into the money room? How do we get off again?”

  Wycza said, “Who can carry a gun onto the boat? Legit, I mean. The guards. Anybody else?”

  “A cop,” Parker said. “An off-duty cop, he could be carrying, they’d probably leave him alone.”

  “Maybe,” Wycza said. “Or maybe they’d be very polite, thank you, sir, if you don’t mind, sir, we’ll just check this weapon for you until you leave the boat, sir. They’re not gonna let people carry guns unless there’s a reason.”

  “Bodyguards,” Carlow suggested, and turned to Wycza to say, “Does this boat have entertainment? Shows? Would celebrities come aboard?”

  “They got shows,” Wycza said, “but not what you’d call headliners. Not people you been reading about in the National Enquirer.”

  “Bodyguards,” Parker said. “There might be something there. Wait, let me think.” He turned his head to look out the window at tan Denver.

  Wycza said to Carlow, “You been racin much?”

  “I totaled a Lotus at a track in Tennessee,” Carlow told him. “Broke my goddam leg again, too. I need a stake to build a new car.”

  “I gotta quit wrestlin for a while,” Wycza said. “I get tired of bein beat up by blonds. In capes, a lot of them.”

  Parker turned back. “Either of you know a guy named Lou Sternberg?”

  Wycza frowned, then shook his head. Carlow said, “Maybe. One of us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lives some funny place.”

  “London.”

  “That’s it.”

  Wycza said, “An Englishman?”

  Parker told him, “American, but he lives over there. Only he never works there, he always comes to the States when he needs a bankroll.”

  “He was on a bank thing I drove,” Carlow said. “In Iowa. Jeez, seven, eight years ago. I came in late, the guy they had first got grabbed on a parole violation, so I didn’t get to know the rest of the string very much. Just the guy, Mackey, that brought me in.”

  “Ed Mackey,” Wycza said. “Him we all know. Him and Brenda.”

  Carlow said to Parker, “What about Sternberg?”

  “Remember what he looks like? How he talks?”

  “Sure. Heavyset, sour most of the time, talks like a professor.”

  “Can you see him,” Parker said, “as a state legislator? One of the anti-gambling crowd, coming for an inspection.”

  Wycza laughed. “And we’re his fucking bodyguards! ” he said.

  Carlow said. “An assemblyman, with bodyguards? Are you sure?”

  “He’s had death threats,” Wycza explained. “Cause he’s such an uncompromising guy. So he’s got us to guard him.”
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  “Armed to the teeth,” Parker said.

  7

  “Hello?”

  “I’m looking for Lou Sternberg.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, he’s gone out. May I tell him who rang?”

  “Ed Lynch.”

  “Does he know the subject, Mr. Lynch?”

  “Not yet, not until I tell him.”

  “Does he know you, Mr. Lynch?”

  “We were in the art business together one time. Buying and selling art.”

  “Oh, I believe he’s mentioned that. It wasn’t a very profitable business, was it, Mr. Lynch?”

  “No profit at all.”

  “And are you still in the art business, Mr. Lynch?”

  “No, I gave that up.”

  “Probably just as well. What business are you in now, Mr. Lynch?”

  “Politics

  Hello?”

  “You surprise me, Mr. Lynch.”

  “Things change.”

  “So I see. May I ask Forgive me, but I know Mr. Sternberg will ask me,so I should know the answers.”

  “That’s okay. I thought he might like to run for state assemblyman.”

  “Mr. Sternberg?”

  “Yes.”

  “But Mr. Sternberg lives in London.”

  “That’s where I’m calling him.”

  “Wouldn’t he have to be resident in the United States?”

  “For a little while.”

  “Oh, I see. This wouldn’t be a full term, then. Completing someone else’s term, something like that.”

  “Something like that. My friends and me, we think Mr. Sternberg has the right look, he could inspire confidence in people.”

  “Probably so. Well, I have no idea if Mr. Sternberg would be interested. May I have him ring you when he gets in?”

  “When would that be?”

  “I expect him, oh, in ten minutes.”

  “I’m calling from the States.”

  “Yes, I assumed that.”

  “The number here’s two oh one five five five nine nine one three.”

  “And is that a business or residence?”

  “It’s a gas station.”

  “Ah. Petrol, we call it here. If Mr. Sternberg is interested, he’ll ring you within fifteen minutes. If he doesn’t ring back by then, you’ll know he isn’t interested.”

  “We say ‘call back’ here.”

  “Yes, I know. Goodbye, Mr. Lynch.”

  Parker sat in the car next to the phone booth and watched the customers pump their own gas, then pay the clerk in the bulletproof glass booth. Nine minutes later, the phone rang.

  8

  Claire made meals for herself when Parker was away, but when he was at home they always ate out. “You wouldn’t want what I eat when I’m here by myself,” she told him once. “No man would think it was dinner.” So they’d drive somewhere and eat.

  Tonight’s place was competent and efficient and, like a lot of country restaurants, too brightly lit. Claire waited until the waitress had brought their main courses, and then she talked about Cathman: “He’s a bureaucrat. He’s exactly what he says he is.”

  “Then he doesn’t make any sense,” Parker said, and carved at his steak.

  Claire took a small notebook from her bag and opened it on the table beside her plate. “He’s sixty-three,” she said. “He has an engineering degree from Syracuse University, and his entire adult life he’s worked for state government in New York. He was in some sort of statistical section for years, and then he moved on to fiscal planning. Two years ago, he retired, though he didn’t have to. I think what it is, he disagreed with state policy.”

  “About what?”

  “Gambling.”

  Parker nodded. “That’s where it is,” he said. “Whatever’s thrown him out of whack, the gambling thing is where it is.”

  “You mean that would make him change his spots.”

  “Change the whole coat.”

  Claire sipped at her wine, and said, “Maybe he needs money after all. A mid-level civil servant, retired early, maybe it’s rougher than he thought it would be.”

  “What about this consultant business?”

  Claire shook her head. She sliced duck breast, thinking about it, then said, “I don’t think it’s doing all that well. Mostly I think because he’s advising state governments against gambling and they’re all in favor of it.”

  “He told me about that,” Parker agreed. “The pols see it as painless taxes.”

  “People don’t want you to consult with them,” Claire said, “if you’re only going to advise them not to do what they’ve already decided they’re going to do. So what jobs he gets, mostly, have to do with fund allocation for mass transit and highways and airports. Here and there, he gets a job doing research for anti-gambling groups in state legislatures, but not that much.”

  The music in here was noodling jazz piano, low enough to talk over but loud enough for privacy. Still, when the waitress spent time clearing the main course dishes from the next table, Parker merely ate his steak and drank some of his wine. When she left, he said, “But he isn’t in it for the money, I don’t think. The thing with me, I mean.”

  Claire nodded, watching him.

  Parker thought back to his dealings with Cathman. “It doesn’t feellike it,” he said, “as though money’s the point. That’s part of what’s wrong with him. If it isn’t money he wants, what doeshe want?”

  “You could still walk away,” she said.

  “I might. Bad parts to it. Still, it’s cash, that means something.”

  “The boat isn’t even here yet,” she pointed out. “You still have plenty of time to be sure about him, learn more about him.”

  “You do that,” Parker told her. “His home life now. Wife, girlfriend, children, whatever he’s got. People bend each other; is anybody bending Cathman?”

  “You want me to do that?”

  “Yes.”

  Claire nodded. “All right,” she said, and ate a bit, and then said, “What will you be doing?”

  “The river,” Parker said.

  9

  It was called the Lido, but it shouldn’t have been. It was an old bar, a gray wood cube cut deep into the ground floor of a narrow nineteenth-century brick house, and at two on a sunny afternoon in April it was dark and dry, smelling of old whiskey and dead wood. The shirtsleeved bald bartender was tall and fat, looking like a retired cop who’d gone to seed the day his papers had come through. At the bar, muttering together about sports and politics other people’s victories and defeats were nine or ten shabbily dressed guys who were older than their teeth.

  Not looking at any of them, Parker went to the corner of the long bar nearest the door, sat on the stool there, and when the barman plodded down to him like the old bull he was, he ordered beer. The muttering farther along the bar faltered for a minute, while they all tried to work out what this new person meant, but Parker did nothing of interest, so they went back to their conversations.

  Parker paid for his beer, drank it, and left, and outside the sunlight seemed a hundred percent brighter. Squinting, he walked down the half block to the Subaru he was still driving no reason not to, and he’d dump it after the job, if the job happened and leaned against its trunk in the sunlight.

  He was in Hudson today, a town along the river of the same name, another twenty miles north and upstream from Rhinecliff, where he’d met Cathman at the railroad station. The town stretched up a long gradual slope from the river, with long parallel streets lined like stripes up the hill. At the bottom was a slum where there used to be a port, back in the nineteenth century, when the whalers came this far up the Hudson with their catch to the plants beside the river where the whale oil and blubber and other sellable materials were carved and boiled and beaten out of the cadavers, to be shipped to the rest of America along the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes and the midwest rivers.

  The whalers and the whale industry and the commercial uses of the waterways were
long gone, but the town was still here. It had become poor, and still was. At one point, early in the twentieth century, it was for a while the whorehouse capital of the northeast, and less poor, until a killjoy state government stepped in to make it virtuous and poor again. Now it was a drug distribution hub, out of New York City via road or railroad, and for the legitimate world it was an antiques center.

  The Lido was just about as far from the water as it could get and still be on one of the streets that came up from the river. Where Parker waited in the sunlight he couldn’t see the river at all, just the old low buildings in two rows stretched away along the upper flat and then downslope. Being poor for so long, Hudson hadn’t seen much modernization, and so, without trying, had become quaint.

  About two minutes later, one of the shabby guys came out of the Lido, looked around, saw Parker, and walked toward him. He looked to be about fifty, but grizzled and gray beyond his years, as though at one time he’d gone through that whale factory and all the meat and juice had been pressed out of him. His thin hair was brown and dry, his squinting eyes a pale blue, his cheeks stubble-grown. He was in nondescript gray-and-black workclothes, and walked with the economical shuffle Parker recognized; this fellow, probably more than once in his life, had been on the yard.

  Which made sense. To find this guy, Parker had made more phone calls, saying he wanted somebody who knew the river and could keep his mouth shut. Most of the people he’d called were ex-cons, and most of the people they knew were ex-cons, so why wouldn’t this guy be?

  He stopped in front of Parker, reserved, watchful, waiting it out. He said, “Lynch?”

  “Hanzen?”

  “That’s me,” Hanzen agreed. “I take it you know a friend of mine.”

  “Pete Rudd.”

  “Pete it is,” Hanzen said. “What do you hear from Pete?”

  “He’s out.”

  Hanzen grinned, showing very white teeth. “We’re all out,” he said. “This your car?”

  “Come on along.”

  They got into the Subaru, Parker pulled away from the curb, and Hanzen said, “Take the right.”

  “We’re not going to the river?”

  “Not in town, there’s nothing down there but jigs. Little ways north.”

  They drove for twenty minutes, Hanzen giving the route, getting them out of town onto a main road north, then left onto a county road. Other than Hanzen’s brief directions, there was silence in the car. They didn’t know one another, and in any case, neither of them was much for small talk.