The Rare Coin Score p-9 Read online

  But he wasn’t about to explain himself to Lempke, so he just agreed with Lempke’s explanation and then they went on upstairs.

  They found Billy sitting at the kitchen table, looking sullen. Parker said, “Where is she?”

  “In there,” Billy said, pointing toward the front room. It was clear he’d tried again to establish his position with Claire, and had gotten the same inevitable putdown.

  Parker said, “I want your wagon for a day or two.”

  Billy shrugged. “I don’t care.”

  Parker turned away from him and went on into the living room, where Claire was sitting as self-absorbed as a cat, doing her nails again. Parker said, “We’ve got to take a trip for a day or two.”

  She looked up at him. “All of us?”

  “You and me. You’ll have to drive the wagon back.”

  Lempke had come in, and said, “You going to get the truck?”

  “Right.”

  “I’ll get in touch with those two boys.”

  Billy came to the doorway, looking pained. Eyes on Claire, he said, “You’re going together?”

  Claire gave him an ice-cold look, and said nothing.

  Billy started two or three different things to say, failed to say any of them, and abruptly turned around and hurried back to the kitchen.

  Parker said to Claire, “Don’t push him so hard he falls over.”

  “Him,” she said with contempt, and turned to put the top on the nail polish.

  “We need him,” Parker said. “Go out to the kitchen and pull the knife out of him.”

  “He’ll be all right.”

  “Do it anyway.”

  She turned around, seemed about to tell Parker to go to hell, thought about it, changed her mind, shrugged in sudden irritability, and went out to the kitchen.

  Parker said to Lempke, “Tell her I’m in the car.”

  “See you in a while.”

  Parker went out and sat behind the wheel. Five minutes later Claire came and slid into the seat beside him. “He’ll be good,” she said.

  Parker looked at her. “And you?”

  She sighed and nodded. “I’ll be good, too.” She handed him the car keys.

  Three

  THEY LEFT Indianapolis Friday morning, heading straight east. They made good time on the stretches of Interstate 70 that were done, bad time on Route 40, finished with a long run across the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and arrived in Baltimore at eight-thirty that night. Parker found a motel in Towson, they unpacked and showered and changed, and then they went downtown for dinner.

  Over coffee, Claire said, “I counted sentences.”

  He’d been thinking about the wall at Diablo Tours. He frowned at her, saying, “What’s that?”

  “I counted sentences,” she said. “How many things you said to me since we got into the car this morning. You know what the score is?”

  “What is this?” He was irritated at having his thoughts broken into by some sort of game.

  “Twelve,” she said. “Twelve times you’ve spoken to me. That works out to about one sentence every fifty minutes.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t follow you. What’s the problem?”

  “What did you bring me along for? You don’t talk to me, you don’t look at me, you don’t know I’m here.”

  “You drive the wagon back,” he said.

  “Why not take a plane here? Then you don’t need me at all.”

  He shook his head. “The first place we go may not have what I want. The second place is in Trenton. The third place is in Newark. There’s more risk than it’s worth to rent a car, or steal one, just to drive around the East Coast a day or two.”

  Bitterly, she said, “We’re back to me not mattering.”

  ml He put his hands on the table and studied her. “You want me to do a job,” he said. “Leave me alone so I can do it.”’

  “All you were doing today was driving.”

  “Do you know how we’re going to get into that bourse room?” he asked her. “Do you know how we’re going to take the goods out of there? Do you know how we’re going to transport the goods away? Do you know how and where we’re going to hole up afterwards? Do you know what we’re going to do before and during and after to see to it we don’t get picked up?”

  She seemed startled. “No,” she said. “Of course not. I thought you knew all that.”

  “Some of it,” he said. “Some of it I know because I sat down and thought about it. By next Saturday I’ll know the rest of it, because I’ll have done a lot more thinking about it.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “I was working today. When I’m not working, give me a call, we’ll sit around and talk to each other.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t think about it that way.”

  “Now you know,” he said, and waved to the waiter for the check.

  Back at the motel, he failed to see her look at him questioningly. The wall at Diablo Tours was bothering him. The other side was fine, doubly fine, with the fake French doors and the maroon drapes, but the Diablo Tours side was open and bare and trouble.

  There were twin beds. She took the spread off one of them, turned the covers down, fluffed the pillow. He stood near the door, where he’d stopped after coming into the room. His arms were at his sides, his head tilted forward, his eyes focused on the wooden-armed chair across the way and seeing that smooth cream wall of Diablo Tours. She looked at him, hesitated, and went on into the bathroom. When she came back out, wearing a pale blue nightgown, he was still in the same position.

  She said, “Aren’t you going to get undressed?”

  “I’m going to walk,” he said, and left the room.

  He didn’t really want to walk. All he wanted was to be in a place where he could think. He got into the back seat of the station wagon, rested his elbows on his knees, and thought.

  An hour later he went back into the room. The light was out and Claire seemed to be asleep. Parker didn’t switch on any lights. In darkness he found the other bed and got into it. After he was settled, Claire made a noise in her throat and rolled over, but that was all.

  Four

  INSIDE THE shack a white plastic portable radio was trying to play the big beat; it sounded like a grasshopper fight. Hubcaps were mounted all over the walls. On the desk were papers and wrenches. A thin layer of black automobile grease seemed to be smeared over everything, including the kid sitting at the teletype machine, reading the incoming dealer requests.

  The kid hadn’t looked around when Parker stepped in. Parker waited five seconds, then went over and switched off the radio. The kid snapped around, ready to fight the world, righteous and ugly. He was probably nineteen and a half. He shouted, over the silence, “Whatcha think you’re doin’?”

  “I want to see Buster.”

  “You leave that goddam radio alone,” the kid said. He got to his feet and came hustling over toward it.

  Parker said, “Don’t do it.”

  The kid couldn’t believe it. He filled out his black T-shirt just like the pictures in the muscle ads; nobody should kick sand in his face. But he was surprised enough to look at Parker before doing anything, and what he saw didn’t reassure him. Leaving the radio off, he said, “Buster ain’t here. He went surfin’.”

  “I called this morning, kid, he expects me. Go get him.”

  “You talked to Buster?”

  “Get him.”

  The kid looked at the radio, at Parker, out the doorway at the wagon sitting there in the sunlight. Claire was in there on the passenger side. She had the windows rolled up because of Buster’s Dobermans, even though Parker had told her they wouldn’t attack unless ordered. Both dogs were pacing back and forth around the wagon, heads down, nervous and waiting.

  The kid shrugged and said, “I can’t leave here. I got to watch things in here. Buster’ll be back in a little while.”

  “One,” Parker said. “Two.”

  The kid didn’t know what number was the
top. He went out the door before Parker could say three.

  Parker went over to the teletype and looked at what was coming in. A dealer in Virginia wanted a left front door for a ‘61 Pontiac Bonneville convertible. As Parker watched, he got one from Wilmington, Delaware.

  The door opened and Buster came in, grinning, saying, “Artie tells me you’re a redneck bastard.”

  “How are you, Buster?”

  “Just lovely. That your woman out there?”

  “Yes,” Parker said, because it was easiest to say that.

  “Good gash,” Buster said, and went over to the teletype for a quick look. He was a big man, with a weight-lifter’s body, all shoulder and chest, narrow in the waist. His trousers were stiff with grease, and the sport shirt he wore was no particular color. His hair was pale blond, crewcut, and beneath the grime on his face and arms could be seen a deep tan. He shook his head at the teletype and said, “Nobody wants Plymouth parts. I’m up to the ass in Plymouth parts.” Turning away, he said, “Used to be Ford, now it’s Plymouth. You wouldn’t be after Plymouth parts, would you?”

  Parker took out an envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it over. Inside were the color Polaroid shots Lempke had taken of the electric company work truck.

  Buster looked at the photos and began to smile. “You’re up to something,” he said. He grinned at Parker. “Who you got driving?”

  “Maybe Mike Carlow.”

  “He’s okay,” Buster said grudgingly. “Not as good as I was.” When Parker didn’t say anything to that, Buster said, “Am I right, or am I right?”

  Buster had bought this yard out of proceeds from half a dozen jobs he’d driven for. He’d been a conscientious driver, imaginative, unshakable in the clutch, but maybe a little too cowboy sometimes. Parker said, “You want to drive for us?”

  “Little Bus ” He laughed and shook his head. “I’m where I like to be, pal.”

  “What can you do me on the truck?”

  “International Harvester. Cab’s no problem. Have to dummy up something in back. When do you need it?”

  “Now.”

  Buster grinned. “It’s always now.” He sat down at the desk, studied the photos some more. “Phone company,” he said. “Any gas and electric company. Some television repair guys. Maybe— Hold on a second.”

  Parker waited while Buster made two phone calls. After the second, Buster said, “Screwed-up fender. Let’s see what we can do.” He went over to the teletype.

  When Buster was done typing, Parker said, “You can do it?”

  “Sure. Perfect match.”

  “Paint job?”

  Buster shook his head. “That’s not me. You get that done someplace else.”

  “Where?”

  “You don’t know anybody around here?”

  “This is your town, not mine.”

  Buster scratched his nose. “I don’t like to be connected,” he said. “You know how it is.”

  “I can’t hit somebody cold. I need you to clear me.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Buster lit a cigarette, made a face like it tasted bad, and said, “Okay. I’ll call the guy. But you make delivery.”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re going to have no papers on this beast,” Buster said. “She’s a scrapped truck, she don’t exist anymore.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Okay. You want anything special under the hood?”

  “No.”

  “The one I got, we’ll have to put a new engine in anyway. A different engine, I mean. It can be whatever you want.”

  “I don’t figure to race any cops out of town.”

  “Whatever you say,” Buster pulled a memo pad close. “About money,” he said.

  “Do it in round numbers.”

  “The roundest,” Buster said. “One G.”

  “Delivery when?”

  “Tonight. Two o’clock. It’ll be outside the gate, across the road there, by them trees. Key under the seat.”

  “Good.” Parker took out another envelope, peeled ten hundreds of Billy’s money off the stack, dropped it on the desk. He said, “Where’s the painter?”

  “Lemme check with him first.”

  Parker waited through another phone call, and then Buster said, “Okay, it’s fine. You bring it straight there. He’ll want a C and a half.”

  “That’s a hell of a lot for a paint job.”

  Buster shrugged. “You know how it is,” he said. “It’s the lettering on the doors. And the risk. And the silence. You want to argue with him, fine by me.”

  “He’s pushing the price a little.”

  “You’re probably right. But he’s the only guy I know that I’d trust.”

  “Then it’s good. Where do I find him?”

  “He’s out by the airport. Take the Harbor Tunnel. You know Baltimore?”

  “Not that good.”

  Buster opened a desk drawer, took out a greasy city map, opened it onto his desk, and showed Parker how to get from there to the paint shop. As he was finishing up, the kid came in, carrying a rusty bumper guard. Pointedly ignoring Parker, he said to Buster, “This is the best I could find.”

  “You can throw that in the bay,” Buster told him. “I told you clean.”

  “This is the best I could find.”

  Buster shrugged. Then, grinning, he said, “How come I come in here and the radio’s off? Don’t you like that music no more?”

  Parker didn’t like pointless needling. While the kid was trying to find an answer, Parker went over and turned the radio on. Buster looked at him in amused surprise, and the kid just looked baffled.

  Outside, the Dobermans watched Parker get into the car, waiting for somebody to tell them to stop him.

  The car was full of smoke. Parker rolled a window down and started the engine and drove out of the yard.

  Claire said, “Any luck?”

  Parker looked at her. “You want to know, or you making small talk?”

  “I’m in this, too,” she said. “You don’t have to push me out all the time.”

  “We’ve got a truck,” he said. “We come back tonight and take it to where they paint it.”

  “How are you going to take it back to Indianapolis? Won’t it look funny, an Indianapolis Power and Light Company truck on the Pennsylvania Turnpike?”

  “We dummy it up with a tarp,” he said, and all at once he saw how to do the Diablo Tours wall.

  She looked at him and said, “What’s the matter?”

  “Matter? Why?”

  “You’re smiling,” she said.

  He put his hand on her knee. “Because things are good,” he said.

  He drove one-handed a while, his other hand still resting on her knee.

  Claire said, “Where are we going now?”

  “Back to the room.”

  Five

  AT NIGHT the yard was floodlit, looking like some metallic moonscape where nothing had ever lived. The truck was in total darkness under the trees on the other side of the road.

  When Parker stopped the wagon, lights off, near the truck, the two Dobermans came loping out of the yard wreckage to the fence. They did no barking, made no sound at all, but just kept moving restlessly back and forth the other side of the fence, trying to find a way through.

  “Those dogs,” Claire said, shivering.

  Parker touched her shoulder. “They’re all right. They mind their business, we mind ours.”

  “All right.” She smiled nervously and squeezed his hand. “Let’s hurry out of here.”

  “Right.”

  Parker got out of the car and walked over to the truck. When he opened the door no interior light went on. He fumbled around on the dash, found the light switch, pulled it halfway on, and used the dashlight to help him look for the key. Once he got it, he slid behind the wheel and started the engine. The clutch seemed loose to him, and he was already anticipating bad brakes, but it didn’t matter. The truck had to be a prop for a while, and then it had to carry
the goods away, that’s all anybody expected from it. That, and to get back to Indianapolis in the first place.

  Claire had already made her U-turn, her headlights flashing over the restless pacing dogs behind the fence, so Parker shifted into first and started along the dirt road, the truck taking the bumps much harder than the wagon had. In the mirror mounted outside the door Parker could see the wagon’s lights jouncing along in his wake.

  They went out to Philadelphia Road and headed south. Twenty-five minutes later, Parker took the Airport exit from the Baltimore-Washington Expressway, turned off onto Fort Meade Road, and then went on more slowly, having trouble seeing street signs in the dark. Claire did better than Parker had expected, staying a good distance back, making them less of a caravan.

  It was quarter to three when he finally stopped the truck in front of a squat white concrete block building bearing the many-colored sign PALETTE AUTO PAINTING. An overhead garage door in the building front immediately opened, and a short round man in a black suit came out, cigar in the middle of his face, waving his arms frantically for Parker to drive on inside. Parker did, and the round man slid the door down again and came trotting over to say, “They’s a station wagon out there.”

  “It’s with me,” Parker said. He shut off the engine and climbed out of the cab.

  “Well, they ought to turn off their lights,” the round man said.

  “Go tell her yourself.” Parker took out the envelope of pictures, saying, “This is what I want it to look like.”

  “Not me,” said the round man, waving his hands back and forth. “Not me, I’m not the man for that.” Raising his voice, he shouted past Parker, “Hey, Wemm!”

  Parker turned and saw coming toward him a Negro in green coveralls. He had the self-contained movements of a man about to be asked to show how good he is, a man who knows he’s more than good enough. His hair was gray, but he had the face of a young man.

  “Show your stuff to Wemm,” the round man said. “He’s the one knows all about this.”

  “What do you do?” Parker asked.

  “I’m the boss,” the round man said. “Is she gonna leave those lights on out there?”

  “I don’t know.” Parker turned his back on the round man and said to Wemm, “You want to see these pictures?”