The Rare Coin Score p-9 Read online

  “I’d rather this whole thing was called off, I’d rather—”

  “Did you ever notice,” Parker said, lying down again, putting his hands behind his head, looking up at the ceiling, “that funny scar she’s got low on her stomach, a kind of crescent shape? How do you suppose she got that?”

  There was nothing Billy could say to that. He was just coming to that understanding, and to the knowledge that the only move left to him was to rush at Parker and start hitting him with his fists, when the door opened and Claire came in, saying, “Billy isn’t— Oh, here he is!”

  Parker said, “Go out and walk around the halls and come back in.”

  Billy said, “No! You ought to hear this, too. I want—”

  “That’s all,” Parker said. He got to his feet, saying, “It’s off. The two of you get out of here.”

  Claire said, “Billy, if you gum things up…”

  “All I wanted—”

  “Go home, Billy,” she said.

  A sulky sullen child, Billy wagged his head back and forth, saying, “He has no right—”

  ” For the last time, Billy.”

  Reluctant, pouting, Billy scuffed out of the room.

  Claire shut the door behind him and said to Parker, “It won’t happen again. I promise.”

  Parker was at the window. Far below was the street, this room being on the same side as the ballroom. He stood looking down, trying to balance the pros and cons, trying to decide whether it was worth it to hang on a little longer.

  She came over and stood just behind him. “I gave Lempke the message,” she said. “He’s on his way, with a Polaroid.”

  Parker kept looking out the window.

  Tentatively she touched his arm. “I promise,” she said.

  There was nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. He shook himself and turned around. “Let’s see the maps,” he said.

  PART TWO

  One

  WITH A camera slung around his neck, Lempke looked like a retired postal clerk, off on a world tour, who somewhere along the line has made a left turn when the rest of his charter group (“14 Days, 21 Countries!”) made a right. He stood in the middle of Parker’s hotel room, shoulders slumped as though the camera were dragging him down, seeming to be waiting for somebody to come along and find him. He said:

  “You don’t know what it’s like on the inside, Parker, you never been.”

  Parker had done a little time in a prison farm once, but he knew it wasn’t the same thing, so he let it ride, saying, “If you want clear of this, all you got to do is walk away.”

  Lempke’s tiny false teeth gnawed his lower lip. “I need the money,” he said. He looked at Claire, sitting over by the window and doing her nails. He shook his head, saying, “What I want is reassurance.”

  “About what?”

  Lempke frowned, having trouble getting it out, and finally said, all in a rush, “That you aren’t being influenced. This time.”

  Claire looked up from her nails, saying, “You mean me? I thought you knew Parker better than that.”

  “I don’t want to go back inside, is all.”

  Parker said, “Then walk away.”

  “I can’t.”

  Parker shook his head and walked around the room. “It’s a bad string,” he said. “One amateur, one scared old man.”

  “You never been in,” Lempke said defensively.

  “And I won’t be after this one, either.”

  Claire abruptly said to Lempke, “Don’t you have any grown children, anybody to take care of you?”

  Lempke looked at her blankly, and Parker said, “That isn’t how it works, Claire. Let it go.”

  She shrugged, and went back to her nails.

  Parker said to Lempke, “You know you got to make up your mind now. If you stay, we don’t talk about it any more.”

  Lempke moved his hands like a man feeling his way in the dark. “I’m troubled in my mind,” he said. “There’s so many problems.”

  “We’ll do the easy one next year,” Parker said.

  “I know, I know.” Lempke gnawed his lower lip some more, then abruptly made a violent shrugging motion that caused the camera to jump and bobble on his waist. “The hell,” he said angrily. “The hell with it. You take the chances or you get out.”

  “Which is it?”

  “In, in,” Lempke said, still angry. “What am I, dead and buried? I walk around like I’m constipated.” Then, to Claire, “Excuse the indelicacy.”

  She gestured with the nail-polish brush, accepting the apology and waving away all offense.

  “All right,” Parker said. “We want pictures.”

  “I’m your man.” Lempke was standing straighter, looking determined, meeting Parker’s eye; kidding himself.

  Parker didn’t push. He said, “The ballroom, all angles. Mezzanine, all angles. Lobby, both exits and stairs and elevators. Street, this sidewalk and the street itself, the front of the hotel with the ballroom windows, the building next door. And inside, next door, there’s an outfit called Diablo Tours. We want the inner office, rear wall and window. You got color in that camera?”

  “Sure. Nothing but the best.”

  “Good. I want pictures of an electric company repair truck, all angles. At work, if you can find one.”

  Lempke cocked his head to one side. “You already got it worked out?”

  “Just a general idea. Better get started.”

  “Right!” Lempke went into a flurry of activity, moving his hands and feet and head, demonstrating enthusiasm and capability, then all at once stopped everything and looked at Parker with gray eyes and said heavily, “Don’t worry, I’ll be all right.”

  “Good.”

  “Lempke’s still down inside here,” he said, patting his chest. “He’ll come out when we need him.”

  “I know that,” Parker lied.

  “See you at Billy’s tonight.”

  “Nine o’clock.”

  Lempke left, and Claire got to her feet, holding her hands out with fingers spread. “He shouldn’t be like that, should he?” she said.

  “No.”

  “Will he really be all right?”

  “Probably not.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Parker shrugged. “Give him a chance to find out for himself.”

  “What if he doesn’t?”

  “He’s right about one thing,” Parker said. “He’s still a pro down inside. If he should get out, sooner or later he’ll know it, and he’ll get out.”

  “But what if he doesn’t?” she insisted.

  “I said he will.”

  She looked at his face, and didn’t ask again.

  Two

  BILLY’S BASEMENT looked like an antique store in a blackout. The ceiling was low, made of hole-pocked white squares of soundproofing, with two fluorescent light fixtures with frosted glass. The floor was concrete, painted gray too long ago. The walls were lined with shelves, cabinets, drawers, narrow display cases, stacks. A large wooden table in the middle of the room contained a postage scale, stacks of manila envelopes, flat pieces of cardboard, a broad roll of brown wrapping paper, a sponge and a glass bowl, trays of stamps. A rolltop desk, shut and locked, was at the end near the stairs. Through a doorway at the other end could be seen the furnace.

  When the four of them came downstairs, Lempke immediately went to the wooden chair by the mailing table and sat in it like a man waiting for death. In the fluorescent light his face had no color, except for faint grayness around the mouth and under the eyes. When he’d come back from taking his pictures, all the false strength had been gone. He’d said almost nothing since then.

  Claire stayed in the shadow by the foot of the stairs, arms folded, as Parker followed Billy over to one of the display cases along the right-hand wall. Billy said, “This is how it’ll be, all the coins out like this.”

  Parker looked in the display case and saw coins laid out in rows, each on a small square of orange paper.
On each piece of paper, above and below the coin, was writing in pen: a price, and abbreviations.

  Billy said, “I have some local customers, that’s why I have these out like this. But most of my business is mail order.”

  Parker said, “Show me how this stuff is transported.”

  “That’s over here.”

  Billy moved fussily away. Since the scene in the hotel room this afternoon, a change had come over him. He was all efficiency now, helpful and businesslike. He’d obviously decided his only course was to hold himself in until after the robbery, in hopes that Parker would then simply go away again and leave him with a clear path to Claire. How much of this he’d figured out for himself, and how much Claire had put into his head, Parker neither knew nor cared. Just so Billy stopped being a problem, that was all that mattered.

  “Some people,” Billy was saying, picking up a black suitcase and opening it on the glass top of one of the display cases, “carry their things this way. I do, too, when I’m going to have a lot. One of the bigger conventions.”

  The interior of the suitcase was all many-layered compartments. Billy demonstrated how coins were nested in these compartments, all of which were lined with felt. Parker, watching, saw it would be a long job for anyone not used to it, though Billy’s hands moved with practiced speed, filling each compartment.

  “All right,” Parker said. “I got the idea. What’s the other way?”

  Billy immediately moved away from the suitcase, saying, “Some people, if they don’t have too much, they might carry things this way.” He took a small wooden cabinet down from a shelf, carried it over to the mailing table, put it down there. From the way he carried it, it was heavy. About sixteen inches high, six inches wide, a foot deep, it was all narrow drawers, with tiny round drawerpulls down the front, making it look like the control panel in a Victorian elevator.

  “The advantage of this,” Billy said, taking a drawer out and setting it down on the table, “is you don’t really have to unpack. You just spread the drawers out on your table.”

  The drawers were lined with felt and full of coins. Parker said, “How careful do you have to be, carrying this kind of thing?”

  “Well, you can’t drop it, of course, but the felt does hold the coins pretty well. I can drive over a bumpy road with this in the back of the wagon and not have to worry.”

  “All right. Anything else?”

  “Looseleaf fillers.” Billy went over to a shelf and took down a black filler, saying, “Some people keep practically all their stock in books like this. I just do for some high-turnover items, the kind of thing twenty different people might look at before somebody buys.”

  Parker took the filler and leafed through it. The interior was double-thickness pages of clear plastic, with coins inside against a white paper backing. “These’ll be easiest,” Parker said.

  “Oh, sure. We just pick them up and carry them out. But not many people have these.”

  “What do most have?”

  “The large cases,” Billy said promptly. “They’ll be partly unpacked into the display cases on all the tables.”

  “Some of the stuff will still be packed?”

  “Oh, sure. Up to, I don’t know, maybe a quarter of the coins there. A lot of dealers bring more coins than they can display all at once in the space they’re given.”

  “Good. Anything else?”

  Billy looked around, squinting under the fluorescent light. “I guess not. I can’t think of anything.”

  “All right,” Parker said. “I have something. Money.”

  “Money?”

  “You’re financing this thing,” Parker reminded him.

  “I’m going to need two grand.”

  “Two thous— What for?”

  “Supplies,” Parker said.

  “But— Two thousand dollars!”

  Claire said quietly, “Don’t be stupid, Billy.”

  Billy flushed, his forehead gleaming pink under the light. Not looking at Claire, he said stiffly, “When do yon want it?”

  “Now.”

  “The bank’s closed by now.”

  Claire said warningly, “Billy.”

  Billy licked his lips, frowned, moved his hands vaguely back and forth. “I’ll have to— You’ll have to look the other way.”

  Parker shrugged. “Which way’s the other way?”

  “That way,” he said, pointing shakily toward Claire.

  Parker and Lempke faced Claire, and listened to Billy getting at a safe at the other end of the room. Claire, leaning against the wall, arms folded, smiled faintly and sardonically at Parker the whole time.

  Finally Billy said, “It’s okay now.”

  They turned around and Billy was standing there, embarrassed, holding a white envelope in his hand. Extending it to Parker, he said, “I’m sorry about that. But you can—you can understand how it is.”

  “Sure.” Parker put the envelope in his pocket. “You two go on upstairs,” he said. “Lempke and I want to talk.”

  Lempke raised his head slightly at the sound of his name, then let it sag again. Billy gave him a troubled glance, then smiled nervously and said, “Okay. You want anything to drink?”

  “No.”

  “Or coffee, something like that.”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Well—” Billy looked this way and that, returning more and more to his old style. The one thing he couldn’t do was make a quick exit.

  Claire solved the problem for him this time, saying, “Come along, Billy,” and starting up the stairs. Billy gratefully trotted after her, not looking back.

  Parker went over and sat on a corner of the mailing table, looking down at Lempke, who was still slumped in his chair, dispiritedly gazing down at the hands curled in his lap. Lempke’s hair was thinning; through it his scalp looked gray. His shoulders were as bowed as a coat hanger. Parker said, “All you have to say is, I want out.”

  Lempke shook his head back and forth, slowly. “I got no place else to go, Parker,” he said.

  “That’s not the question.”

  Lempke raised his head at last, blinked up at Parker. He looked blind. He said, “What’s it gonna need from me?”

  “On the caper or before?”

  “On. There’s nothing before, I know that, nothing I have to sweat about.”

  “You pack coins,” Parker told him.

  Lempke rubbed the back of one hand across his mouth. “That’s all? No muscle?”

  “You’re not the man for muscle.”

  Lempke managed something that looked like a smile. “Don’t I know it? I think I could do that.”

  “So could others,” Parker told him. “Guy named Littlefield, maybe you know him.”

  “For God’s sake, Parker,” Lempke said, as though he might cry. “I’m the one brought you in on this.”

  Parker shrugged. He got out his cigarettes, offered one to Lempke. Lempke shook his head. Parker lit a cigarette of his own, tossing the match on the floor. “Sometimes it’s tough to know when you should retire,” he said. “Some people stick around too long.”

  “I know when,” Lempke said. “After this one, believe me. I got no stake now, it all went to lawyers when I took my fall.”

  “We could maybe work out a finder’s fee. Three per cent, something like that. If the others said okay.”

  “Finder’s fee?” Lempke had the ashen look of a man insulted in a way he can’t fathom. “I need to be in this,” he said. i Parker got up from the table and walked over to one of the display cases and looked inside. The first coin he saw was priced at three hundred fifty dollars. It was just a coin, metal, a little worn.

  Lempke said, “From now till it’s over, I don’t say a word. I don’t get cold feet. I don’t get in your way.”

  Looking in at the coins, Parker said, “This train don’t carry passengers.”

  “I’ll pull my weight. Whatever happens, I’ll pull my weight, I swear it. I never let anybody down my whole life long.”


  Parker nodded and turned around. “All right,” he said. “Let’s talk about our string. We’ll need two men.”

  “You’ve got it doped?”

  “Some of it.” Parker went back over to the table and sat on its edge again. “We need one with muscle,” he said, “to tote things. And one to front the power-company truck.”

  Lempke frowned, wanting to be helpful. “How about Dan Wycza?” he said. “For the muscle.”

  “He’s dead. What do you hear from Hack Brown?”

  “I met him inside. I think he’s still there. He killed a woman for some damn reason.”

  Parker shrugged. Muscle had a habit of being emotional trouble; all right when working, but jumpy as a high-school girl between times.

  Lempke said, “I tell you who’d be good. Otto Mainzer.”

  “Mainzer? Do I know him?”

  “He’s some sort of crazy Nazi, but he’s okay on the job.”

  “You know how to get in touch with him?”

  “In Denver, I think, I’ll ask around. What about Jack French, do we bring him back in?”

  “He wouldn’t come,” Parker said.

  “Carlow,” Lempke said. “Mike Carlow, he’d be perfect.”

  “I remember Mike,” Parker said. “Give him a call.” He got to his feet, dropped his cigarette on the cement floor, heeled it out. “I’ll be off for a day or two,” he said. “Getting the truck.” Lempke said, “What about Billy? He going to be okay?”

  “We need him,” Parker said.

  “I know, but how is he?”

  “Claire can keep him on his feet.”

  “You and Claire are making a thing,” Lempke said. “That isn’t like you, on the job.”

  Parker said, “Maybe it’s part of the job.”

  “You mean, you hold Claire and she holds Billy.”

  “Something like that,” Parker said. The truth was different, though, and more complicated. Usually, Parker had no interest in sex while he was working, saving it all for afterwards, but everything had been different this time. He’d gotten interested in Claire before doing any real thinking about the job, and had only started theorizing about the job as a tactic to get Claire. Then the job had turned out to be feasible after all, and Claire was all bound up in it, a part of it. Things would probably change as the night of the heist got closer, but so far his attention was divided in a way not usual with him.