This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by Richard Stark
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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First eBook Edition: April 2008
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ISBN: 978-0-446-53622-6
Contents
By Richard Stark
Dedication
ONE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
TWO
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
THREE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Massachusetts
FOUR
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
By Richard Stark
The Hunter
The Man with the Getaway Face
The Outfit
The Mourner
The Score
The Jugger
The Seventh
The Handle
The Damsel
The Rare Coin Score
The Green Eagle Score
The Dame
The Black Ice Score
The Sour Lemon Score
Deadly Edge
The Blackbird
Slayground
Lemons Never Lie
Plunder Squad
Butcher’s Moon
Comeback
Backflash
Flashfire
Firebreak
Breakout
Nobody Runs Forever
Ask the Parrot
This is for Dr. Quirke, and his creator—two lovely gents
ONE
1
When the silver Toyota Avalon bumped down the dirt road out of the woods and across the railroad tracks, Parker put the Infiniti into low and stepped out onto the gravel. The Infiniti jerked forward toward the river as the Toyota slewed around behind it to a stop. Parker picked up the full duffel bag from where he’d tossed it on the ground, and behind him, the Infiniti rolled down the slope into the river, all its windows open; it slid into the gray dawn water like a bear into a trout stream.
Parker carried the duffel in his arms and Claire got out of the Toyota to open its rear door and say, “Do you want to drive?”
“No. I’ve been driving.” He heaved the duffel onto the backseat, then got around to take the passenger side in front.
Before getting behind the wheel, she stood looking toward the river, a tall slender ash-blonde in black slacks and a bulky dark red sweater against the October chill. “It’s gone,” she said.
“Good.”
She slid into the Toyota then and kissed him and held his face in her slim hands. “It’s been a while.”
“It didn’t come out the way it was supposed to.”
“But you got back,” she said, and steered the Toyota across the tracks and up the dirt road through scrub woods. “Was one of the men with you named Dalesia?”
“Nick. They nabbed him.”
“He escaped,” she said, paused at the blacktop state road and turned right, southward.
“Nick escaped?”
“I had the news on, driving up. It happened a couple of hours ago, in Boston. They were transferring him from the state police to the federal, going to take him somewhere south to question him. He killed a marshal, escaped with the gun.”
Parker looked at her profile. They were almost alone on the road, not yet seven AM, she driving fast. He said, “They grabbed him yesterday. They didn’t question him yet?”
“That’s what they said.” She shrugged, eyes on the road. “They didn’t say so, but it sounded to me like a turf war, the local police and the FBI. The FBI won, but then they lost him.”
Parker looked out at this hilly country road, heading south. Soon they’d be coming into New Jersey. “If nobody questioned Nick yet, then they don’t know where the money is.”
With a head gesture toward the duffel bag behind them, she said, “That isn’t it?”
“No, that’s something else.”
She laughed, mostly in surprise. “You don’t have that money, so you picked up some other money on the way back?”
“There was too much heat around the robbery,” he told her. “We could stash it, but we couldn’t carry it. We each took a little, and Nick tried to spend some of his, but they had the serial numbers.”
“Oh. That’s why they caught him. Do you have some?”
“Not any more.”
“Good.”
They rode in silence for a while, he stretching his legs, rolling his shoulders, a big ropy man who looked squeezed into the Toyota. He’d driven through the night, called Claire an hour ago from a diner to make the meet and get rid of the Infiniti, which was too hot and too speckled with fingerprints. Now they passed a slow-moving oil delivery truck and he said, “I need some sleep, but after that I’ll want you to drive me to Long Island. All my identification got wasted in the mess in Massachusetts. I’d better not drive until I get new papers.”
“You’re just going to talk to somebody?”
“That’s all.”
“Then I can drive you.”
“Good.”
She watched the road; no traffic now. She said, “This is still something about the robbery?”
“The third guy with us,” he said. “He’ll know what it means, too, that Nick’s on the loose.”
“That the police don’t know where the money is.”
“But Nick knows where we are, or could point in a direction. Are we all still partners?” He shook his head. “You kill a lawman,” he said, “you’re in another zone. McWhitney and I are gonna have to work this out.”
“But not on the phone.”
Parker yawned. “Nothing on the phone ever,” he said. “Except pizza.”
2
Once or twice, Claire had gotten too close to Parker’s other world, or that world had gotten too close to her, and she hadn’t liked it, so he did his best to keep her separate from that kind of thing. But this business was all right; everything had already happened, this was just a little tidying up.
She drove them eastward across New Jersey late that afternoon, and he told her the situation: “There was a meeting that didn’t pan out. A guy there named Harbin was a problem a lot of different ways. He was wearing a wire—”
“A police wire?”
“Which got him killed. Then
it turned out there was federal reward money out on him, and it attracted a bounty hunter named Keenan.”
She said, “This didn’t have anything to do with you in Massachusetts.”
“Nothing. This was just an annoyance, Keenan trying to find everybody at the meeting, so somebody could lead him to Harbin, which nobody was going to do. He got hold of some phone records, Nick Dalesia made two calls to our place here, that brought him around.”
She glanced at him, then looked out at Interstate 80, pretty heavy traffic in both directions, a lot of big trucks, the kind of traffic where you didn’t change lanes a lot. “You mean,” she said, “the law might come around now, using those same records.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Keenan was looking for connections. The law’s looking for Nick, and they’ll know he’s too smart to go hole up with somebody he knows. They won’t be spending time looking at phone bills.”
“Well, where are we going now?”
Parker was rested, most of the day asleep, but this car still felt too small. Maybe it was because he wasn’t at the wheel. He stretched in place and said, “Keenan’s partner, a woman named Sandra Loscalzo, caught up with us in Massachusetts just before the job. McWhitney convinced her to go away, and when he got back to Long Island he’d lead her to Harbin.”
“Who’s already dead.”
“Yes.”
“And McWhitney lives on Long Island?”
“He’s got a bar there, and lives behind it.”
“And that’s where we’re going.”
“And when we get there, the next part is up to you.”
She frowned out at the traffic and the eastern sky darkening ahead of them. “Is this something I won’t like?”
“I don’t think so. When we get there, I can go in and talk to McWhitney and you can wait in the car, or you come in, we have a drink, it’s a social occasion.”
“There isn’t going to be any trouble.”
“None. We’ve got to decide what to do about Loscalzo, and we’ve got to decide what to do about the money. There’s too much heat up in that area right now—”
“Because of what you people did.”
“They’re looking close at strangers,” Parker said, and shrugged. “So we’ll have to leave the cash where it is for a while, but if we leave it too long either they find Nick again and he trades the money for a better sentence, or he gets to it himself and cleans it out because he’s desperate. Being on the run the way he is uses up a lot of cash.”
“You said they have the serial numbers,” she said, “so he can’t use it, can he?”
“He’ll leave a wide backtrail, but he won’t care.”
“But you won’t be able to use it.”
“Offshore,” he said. “We can sell it for a percentage to people who’ll take it to Africa or Asia, it’ll never get into the banking system again.”
“There are so many ways to do things,” she said.
“There have to be.”
She said, “Before, you said you have to decide what to do about what’s-her-name? The bounty hunter’s partner.”
“Sandra Loscalzo.”
“Why don’t you have to decide what to do about the man? Keenan.”
“He’s dead, too.”
“Oh.”
He looked out at the traffic, which was thickening as they got closer to the city. They were both silent a while, and then he was surprised when she said, “I’ll come in with you.”
3
We can’t go there yet, you know,” McWhitney said, by way of greeting.
Standing at the bar, Parker said, “Nelson McWhitney, this is my friend Claire.”
“Hello, friend,” McWhitney said, and dealt two coasters onto the bar, saying, “Grab a stool. What can the house buy you?”
“I would take a scotch and soda,” Claire said, as she and Parker took the two nearest stools.
“A ladies’ drink,” McWhitney commented. “Good. Parker?”
“Beer.”
McWhitney’s bar, in Bay Shore on Long Island’s south shore, was deep and narrow, its dark wood walls and floors illuminated mostly by beer-sign neon. At eight-thirty on a Monday night in October it was nearly empty, two solitary men finishing whiskey along the bar and a yellow-haired woman hunched inside a black coat at the last dark table along the other side.
McWhitney himself didn’t look much livelier, maybe because he too had had a rough weekend. Red-bearded and red-faced, he was a hard bulky man with a soft middle, a defensive lineman gone out of shape. He made their drinks, brought them over, and leaned close to say, “Those two will be outa here in a couple minutes, and then I’ll close up.”
Parker said, “What do you hear from Sandra?”
Raising an eyebrow toward Claire, McWhitney said, “Your friend’s up to speed on you and me?”
“Always.”
“That’s nice.” Nodding his head toward the rear of the bar, McWhitney said, “Sandra’s not quite that good a friend, but there she is, back there, waiting on a phone call.” He raised his voice: “Sandra! Look who dropped by.”
When Sandra Loscalzo rose to come join them, she was tall and slender, in heels and jeans and the black coat over a dark blue sweater. She walked in a purposeful way, taking charge of her territory. She wasn’t carrying a glass. At the bar, she said to Parker, “The last time I saw you, you were driving a phony police car.”
Parker said, “The police car was real. I was the phony. You were there?”
“Fifty-yard line.” She sounded admiring, but also amused. “You boys are cute, in a destructive kind of way.” Looking at Claire, she said, “Is he destructive at home?”
“Of course not,” Claire said, and smiled. “I’m Claire. You’re Sandra?”
“G’night, Nels,” called one of the customers, rising from his seat, waving a hand over his shoulder as he left.
“See you, Norm.”
Parker said to Sandra, “You’re waiting for a phone call.”
Sandra made a disgusted headshake and gestured at McWhitney. “This fellow and Harbin,” she said. “Where’s he stash him? In Ohio. I’m not going to Ohio, eyeball the fellow, that means, what I’ve got to do, I call my guy in DC, I pass along my tip, and I’m not even sure Nelson here isn’t pulling my chain. What if Harbin isn’t there? I don’t keep a reputation with dud tips.”
McWhitney said, “I don’t give you dud tips. What’s in it for me? He’s right exactly where I told you.”
“Have a good one, Nels.”
“You too, Jack.” McWhitney waved, then said to Parker, “About halfway between Cincinnati and Dayton, Interstate 75, they’re putting in a new restaurant, rest area. There’s a spot they’re gonna blacktop for the parking lot very soon now but not yet, not till the structure’s a little further along. A month ago, it was just messed-up fill in there, bulldozed a little, a lot of wide tire tracks. A few more weeks, they gotta lay that blacktop before winter freezes the ground, but not yet.”
“I hate it when somebody’s plausible,” Sandra said. “Everything fits together like Legos. Life doesn’t do that.”
“Every once in a while,” McWhitney told her, “the plausible guy has the goods.”
Parker said, “So McWhitney gave you the tip, and you gave it to somebody you know in DC—”
“In the US marshals’ office.”
“And they’re sending somebody to check it out. If the body’s there, you get your reward money. They’re calling you here?”
“Not on the bar’s phone,” she said. “On my cell.”
“All right.”
“Pretty soon, they’ll call,” Sandra said. She did all her talking with her right hand in her coat pocket. “If they say Harbin’s there, fine. If they say Mr. Harbin’s still among the missing, I’m gonna feel very embarrassed.”
“He’s there,” McWhitney said.
“But I’ll get over my embarrassment,” she told them, “because I’ll still have a little something to g
ive them, make up for the inconvenience. Originally, I just had Nelson here.” She smiled around at them all. “But now,” she said, “I got a twofer.”
4
McWhitney said, “I’d better lock up.”
He had to walk down to the end of the bar and open the flap there to come out, then walk back past the others on this side. Sandra stepped back against the line of booths so he wouldn’t pass behind her, then said to Parker, “Funny you should happen by.”
“Is it?”
“You find yourself in the neighborhood, just the same day Dalesia slips his bonds.”
Returning to the others, staying now on this side of the bar, McWhitney said, “Sandra, don’t excite yourself. We aren’t helping Nick. He isn’t gonna let us know where he is.”
Skeptical, Sandra said, “Why? Because you’d turn him in?”
“That’s the last thing we’d do,” McWhitney said, “and he knows it. Unless it was turn him in like you’re turning in Harbin.”
She shook her head. “You were a team.”
“Not any more.”
Parker said, “If they take him again, all he has for bargaining chips is the money and us.”
“Well, it’s me more than you,” McWhitney said. “He knows this place here.”
“I think,” Claire said carefully, “he knows our phone number.”
Sandra looked at her with a little smile. “You mean, he knows your phone number. He’s used your phone number. Roy Keenan and me, we looked at that number. Nick Dalesia never did have a wide range of telephone pals. Ms. Willis stood out.”
Claire shrugged. “I never actually met the man,” she said. “I have no real link with him at all. I was looking for somebody to blacktop my driveway. I forget who said they’d have Mr. Dalesia call me. I talked to him twice, but I thought he sounded unreliable.”
“That’s nice,” Sandra said. “As long as Nick isn’t there to say it didn’t happen that way.”
“That’s what we’re saying,” McWhitney told her. He had taken the stool next to Parker, with Claire beyond, the three facing Sandra with her right hand in her pocket and her back braced against the booth’s tall coatrack.
“All right,” Sandra said. “But while we’re waiting here, it might be we could do some other business together. I mean, if this Harbin thing turns out to be on the up-and-up.”
Dirty Money Page 1