The Rare Coin Score p-9

by Richard Stark

  “They might help,” Wemm said.

  Parker handed them over, Wemm skimmed through them briefly, and then shook his head. “Come along,” he said, and started away.

  The room they were in was large and open, with a cement floor. Pipes and hoses crisscrossed on the ceiling. Fluorescent lights made the place as bright as day. Over on the right, three late-model automobiles were masked and taped, waiting for the spray.

  Wemm led Parker to a small glass-windowed cubicle on the left. Inside were a cluttered desk and two chairs. Wemm motioned to Parker to take one chair, while he took the one at the desk. He spread the photographs out on the clutter atop the desk and bent the fluorescent desk lamp closer to them. After squinting at the pictures a minute, he said to Parker, “How’s this color reproduction? Any good?”

  “How do I know?”

  “You might look. Is this the same color as the real truck or isn’t it?”

  Parker leaned over and studied the nearest photo, then said, “I think it’s brighter. Not much.”

  Wemm nodded. “I thought so,” he said. “It’s what you might call institutional orange. All the same people that put that puke green in all the hallways, when it comes time to paint a truck, this is the color they use.”

  “You know the color, then.”

  “It ain’t gonna be easy to match.”

  “Why not? If you already know it—”

  “This is a private place. What we do is cars, private passenger cars.” He tapped one of the photos. “This isn’t what you could call a popular color for private passenger cars.”

  Parker sat back. “Can’t you do it?”

  “Sure I can do it.”

  “Then what’s all the talk?”

  Wemm spread his hands. “I want you to understand the problems we got to face here.”

  “Why?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why do I have to understand the problems you got to face here?”

  “Well—” Wemm blinked, and looked at the photos, and shook his head. “Be damned if I know,” he said. He gave Parker a small wondering smile. “Just shooting off my mouth, I guess.”

  Parker said, “When will it be done?”

  “You want to take it out tomorrow night, don’t you?”

  “If I can.”

  “You can.”

  “I’ll need it covered with a tarp or something.”

  Wemm nodded. “The body. That’s no problem. And over the name on the doors, we put a piece of cardboard with masking tape, put some other company name on it. You got any favorites?”

  “No.”

  “Then that’s it. I’ll need to keep the pictures.”

  “Naturally.” Parker got to his feet. “I’ll want it delivered.”

  “You talk to the boss about that,” Wemm said. “That, and money.”

  “All right.”

  Parker found the boss out by the overhead door. “I’ll want it delivered tomorrow night,” he said..

  “Delivered? What’s the matter with your chauffeur out there?”

  “She won’t be here.”

  “Delivered.” He took the cigar out of his mouth, shook his head. “That’s extra.”

  “Five,” Parker said.

  “I don’t know—”

  “Don’t push so hard,” Parker told him. “You’ll get another customer some day.”

  The round man shrugged with sudden irritation and said, “The hell with it. It’s all in the same price. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Good.” Parker handed over a hundred and fifty of Billy’s dollars, and the round man said, “You want a receipt?”

  “No,” Parker said.

  “Of course not,” said the round man. “That was a dumb question, you know that?”

  “Yes,” Parker said.

  He gave the round man the name of the motel in Towson, and then went out to the car. Claire had already moved over, and when Parker slid in she said, “How’d it go?”

  “Good. They’ll deliver it tomorrow night.”

  “You don’t want me to drive you down?”

  “You can go back now, everything’s set. And I’ll take longer in the truck than you in this.”

  She said, “You want me to go back now?”

  “Why not?”

  “Tonight, you mean?”

  He looked at her, and finally understood what she was driving at. His mood of exhilaration from this afternoon had worn off by now, he was back to concentrating on the job, but she had no way to know that.

  There were times when you had to push yourself a little to keep somebody else in the string content, and this was one of the times. In a way Lempke had been right, after all; Claire was valuable, if only to keep Billy in line.

  Parker squeezed her knee. “Not tonight,” he said. “Tomorrow morning’s soon enough, isn’t it?”

  The look she gave him was knowing. “Tomorrow morning’s fine,” she said, a touch of irony in her voice.

  Six

  THE TRUCK was delivered at one-thirty in the morning, driven by a skinny young kid in T-shirt and glasses. He was full of repressed excitement, a kid in the middle of a game of cops and robbers.

  What Parker could see of the paint job looked good, but he couldn’t see much. The entire body was covered with a dirty gray tarp, tied down along the sides. The pieces of cardboard on the doors said, in black letters on white, THE WEMM CORPORATION.

  Parker looked the truck over by the light from the motel sign, and told the kid, “It’s okay.”

  “Mister Reejus said you’d give me cabfare.”

  “He did, huh.” Parker gave the kid a five, and the kid took off at a half-trot, looking over his shoulder, on his way fast to tell somebody about his adventure. Parker just hoped he’d been brought in after the truck was already masked.

  His bag was packed, the room all paid for. He preferred to do as much of his driving as possible at night, since the plates on the truck were probably no good, and in any case he had no papers for it. They were D.C. plates; he could replace them with Indiana plates the day of the job.

  Parker took Interstate 83 up to Harrisburg, then headed west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The truck was a little better than he’d expected. Above fifty-five it had a bad front-end shimmy, but right on fifty-five it seemed ready to roll forever. He made good time, all things considered, and didn’t mind the cars that streamed by him on his left.

  It was just noon when he arrived in Indianapolis. Because it was Sunday, he got involved in church-leaving traffic, and it took him forty-five minutes to get across town and into Mars Hill. The station wagon was gone from Billy’s driveway, so Parker drove on in, turned around the back of the house, and left the truck in the backyard, near the barbecue.

  Billy came out the kitchen door as Parker came walking away from the truck, carrying his suitcase. Billy said, “That’s gonna leave marks in the lawn. Tire marks.”

  “You want to leave it out front? Raise questions?”

  Billy looked pained. He gazed at the new tire marks in the grass and shook his head. “If it has to be—”

  “It has to be,” Parker said, and went on by him and into the house.

  Billy followed him in, saying, “Lempke had to go away. To see somebody named Mainzer. He said he’d be back Tuesday. And we’re supposed to meet a man named Mike Carlow at the airport tomorrow afternoon at three-thirty.”

  “Where’s Claire?”

  Billy’s face clouded. “Home, I guess,” he said, suddenly sullen.

  “Call her. Tell her to come pick me up.”

  “She doesn’t like me to wake her.”

  “She won’t mind this time,” Parker said. He opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of beer. “Where’s the opener?”

  “On the wall there. See it?”

  Parker uncapped the beer and went on into the living room. He sat on a chair arm and watched nothing happening out on the street. From the kitchen he could hear Billy’s whining voice as he spoke
on the telephone.

  A few minutes later Billy came in and said, “She says she’ll be here in half an hour.”

  Parker nodded.

  Billy stood in the middle of the room, shifting his weight back and forth, fiddling with his fingers. Parker kept looking out of the window. A little girl in a pink dress went by on a red tricycle. A black Buick convertible, its radio playing rock and roll, cruised by with its top down. The two kids inside it wore their hair as long as Veronica Lake.

  Billy said, “About Claire.”

  Parker uptilted the beer bottle, swallowed, looked out at the street.

  Billy cleared his throat. He said, “You don’t want her. I mean, not really. Not to marry or anything like that.”

  Parker turned his head and looked at Billy and said, “You can’t let it alone, can you?”

  “You may not believe this,” Billy said earnestly, “but I love that girl. I really do. I’m in love with her.”

  Parker looked out the window again.

  “I mean,” Billy said, “when this is all over, you’ll just go away and leave her here. Right? It doesn’t mean anything to you, it’s just a girl for now, for a few days, while you’re here.”

  Parker nodded. “That’s what you want to hear,” he said. “That the competition’s going away.”

  “Well. This sort of thing happens to you all the time, doesn’t it? I mean, you meet a girl, it’s just for a little while, then you move on, you go someplace else, it’s all over.”

  Parker watched the street. What Billy had just said was right, had become increasingly right in the last few years. As women had become less individually important to him, a faceless quantity of them had become much more important. As though he were in some strange way really monogamous, true to a faceless nameless personality-less body, so that he never involved himself with anyone else, only her, time after time after time.

  He had been married once, but she was dead now. She’d gotten into a bind, where she’d had the choice of risking her own life or betraying Parker, and she’d chosen betrayal. When Parker had come looking for her afterwards, unsure in his own mind what he meant to do about it, she’d killed herself. Out of panic, probably, rather than remorse. But since her, since Lynn, there had been no woman, not for long. Never long enough for him and the woman to become individuals to one another.

  Looking at it now, he could see where it had served as an answer to the problem of Lynn’s betrayal, but it was the kind of answer which—like drugs—required larger and larger application, led eventually to sloppiness and excess, became eventually as bad a problem as the one it was supposed to be solving.

  Because Claire had come into his life in an odd way, entering in conjunction with a job, almost becoming part of the work at hand, she’d managed somehow to break through that pattern he’d developed. He found himself wanting to please her, willing to go out of his way for her sake, and though he’d been giving himself practical reasons to explain it—she could handle Billy, and so on—the truth was he acted that way because he wanted to.

  What about when it was over, when the job was done? For the first time in several years, he didn’t know what would happen then. He might flee from Claire as he had fled from all the others. Or he might want her to stay with him for a while; a year, a month. Or he might want her to stay with him permanently. Right now he had no way to tell which it was going to be.

  But he knew which one Billy wanted to hear, and the easiest way to keep Billy happy was to tell him what he wanted to hear. Still looking out at the street, Parker said, “When the caper’s over, I leave. By myself.”

  “That’s what I figured,” Billy said, and Parker could hear the happy smile in his voice. Then Billy started walking around in the living room, behind Parker, and after a minute he said, “You know, Claire and me, we don’t—”

  “Don’t start,” Parker said. He turned around and looked at Billy. “I don’t want your reminiscences.”

  “Oh,” Billy said, and suddenly looked frightened, as though it had just occurred to him that it was possible for him to make some wrong move, say some wrong word, and Parker would change his mind and stay. He looked around the room, licked his lips, made vague arm movements, and at last said, “Well, I guess I better—” And hurried away to the kitchen.

  Parker shook his head. He continued to drink his beer and look out the window, thinking about nothing at all, until the station wagon pulled into the driveway. Then he got his suitcase and went outside.

  Claire had moved over, but Parker opened the passenger door and said, “You drive.”

  “Okay,” she said, and slid back. When Parker was in and the door shut, she said, “Back to the hotel?”

  “No. I checked out of there. We shouldn’t be seen around there anymore, none of us.”

  “Where, then? Some other hotel?”

  “Not good.”

  She looked at him. “My place?”

  “Your place,” he said.

  Seven

  THE MEETING was in Claire’s apartment, ten o’clock Tuesday evening. Claire and Parker were already there, and Billy arrived early, at nine-forty-five. Lempke and Mike Carlow showed up at ten on the dot, and Otto Mainzer came along five minutes later.

  The apartment was on the third floor of a new building, all glass and chrome outside, all plasterboard and corner-cutting inside. There was a long living room with windows at one end overlooking an interior court, a small square bedroom with a narrow window overlooking an airshaft, and a midget kitchen and bathroom, windowless, sharing an air duct.

  The furnishings showed a combination of taste and haste, the creation of a woman who wants good surroundings but doesn’t intend to stay in this particular location very long. Sofa, lamps, tables, drapes, all had discreet elegance and were quietly but obviously expensive, but there were gaps, empty spaces, almost as though someone had come through and removed every fourth item from the room. There were no paintings on the walls, for instance, and no lamp handy to the armchair near the window, and no table on the right side of the sofa.

  Before the meeting, Claire had said to Parker, “This may sound silly, but should there be any refreshments or anything? I mean, should I get some beer or anything like that?”

  “Be a good idea to have some stuff on hand,” Parker said. “But don’t do any bridge club number, bringing in the little sandwiches on the tray.”

  “I know better than that,” she said.

  When Billy arrived, Claire was still getting dressed. Parker opened the door and Billy came in saying, “I guess I’m early.”

  “Go sit down,” Parker told him, and shut the door.

  Billy was at his most nervous, looking around like a possum coming out of a hole. He settled in a chair at the far end of the living room, and sat there fidgeting.

  Parker couldn’t stand to be around such restlessness, so he went into the bedroom and sprawled on the bed there and watched Claire dress.

  She was a good woman, good to look at and good to be with. Sensible and independent. Not full of foolishness.

  Looking at her now, as she moved around the room in bra and panties, he felt no immediate desire for her, but that was because he was thinking mostly about the work, the meeting, the personalities. Still, there was a background aura of remembered pleasure, and the good feeling of watching a body he had known. There would be time to bring the memories up to date, afterward.

  By the time the bell rang she was ready, wearing pale green stretch pants and a green and pink and white blouse. “I’ll get it this time,” she said, and they went out of the bedroom together.

  The look Billy gave them was full of pain, seeing them emerging together from the bedroom, but they both ignored him. Parker went to the kitchen and opened himself a beer, and when he came back to the living room Lempke was there with Mike Carlow.

  Carlow was a narrow rawboned guy, a little shorter than medium height. He was about forty, with the leathery face and washed-out eyes of a man who spends mos
t of his time outdoors. His nose was long and narrow, lips thin, Adam’s apple prominent. He said, “Hello, Parker. Long time no see.”

  “There’s beer,” Parker told him.

  “Good. Want one, Lempke?”

  “Not for me, thanks,” said Lempke. He smiled apologetically and patted his stomach. “Belly’s acting up,” he said.

  Carlow went on into the kitchen, and Parker said to Lempke, “How much does he know?”

  “Most of it. That he’s supposed to drive, that it’s a break-in with armed guards, that it’s valuable coins and we’ve got a dealer to fence. And that there’s five of us in it, with shares to be worked out.”

  “All right. You introduce him to Billy.”

  “Sure.”

  Lempke went away, and Claire came over to say, “Should I leave when the meeting starts?”

  “No. You’re in it.”

  She looked surprised. “I am?”

  “It’s your caper, remember? You started it going.”

  “So I’m going to be a part of it.”

  “That’s right.”

  She shrugged. “If you don’t mind amateurs,” she said.

  “You’ll do your part all right.”

  “Thank you.” The bell sounded, and she said, “I’ll get it.”

  Lempke and Carlow and Billy were all standing at the far end of the room now, talking together. Billy was looking eager, Lempke sick, Carlow indrawn and waiting. Parker waited by the kitchen door, watching Claire in the short hall, opening the front door.

  It was Otto Mainzer, a burly tall man dressed in black. His hair was so pale blond, and cut so short, that in most lights he looked bald. His face was dominated by a large hook nose with flaring nostrils. Eyes and mouth were both thin, flat, pale. The expression he seemed habitually to be trying for was arrogance, but instead he looked merely irritated. When he saw Claire a surprised smile creased his face, looking strange there, as though it had been delivered to the wrong address. He said something to Claire, Parker didn’t hear what, but he saw her stiffen. Her reply was short and curt, and Mainzer’s smile turned cynical. “Sure thing,” he said, and came on into the apartment.

  Parker went over to him and shook his hand, saying, “Good to see you.”