Dirty Money

by Richard Stark

“Frank would like his car back,” the guy said, and grinned again, this grin a little less relaxed. “And the other, too, of course.”

  “It’s taken care of,” Parker said. “I gotta go. If they see me talking to you, they say, who’s that?”

  The guy’s grin this time was self-confident. “They don’t wanna know.”

  “Hold the thought,” Parker said, and went back inside.

  Now he saw the bulky guy from last night, on line at the refreshment stand. Parker skirted the line without being seen, went on down to the cars, found the Forester, and unlocked his way in. On the backseat were two liquor cartons. He didn’t bother to look in them.

  From here, the Chevy Suburban was almost parallel to him, two cars over, with Sandra’s Honda in front of it, and McWhitney in the van closer to the front of the ship. Parker put the key in the ignition, and waited.

  There was a glitch in unloading the ferry in New London. The first cars got off all right, including McWhitney in the van, but then Sandra couldn’t seem to start the Honda. She ground the starter, and people behind her began to honk and shout and get out of their vehicles. Other lines of cars moved, but that one was stuck. When Parker drove off, the bulky guy and one other from the Suburban were pushing the Honda.

  McWhitney had waited beside the road. He was laughing when Parker went by, and rolled in to follow him. They drove into town, found a supermarket, and Parker went to the rear of its parking lot. McWhitney stopped next to him, still laughing, and got out of the van to say, “She got them to help. You believe the balls on that woman?”

  “Let’s do this fast,” Parker said. “We’ve got half an hour before the ferry goes back.”

  As they started the transfer of the three Hefty bags and the two liquor cartons, McWhitney said, “I’ve been thinking about this. We’re still gonna have money in this van. Not the dirty two mil, the clean two hundred K.”

  “That’s right,” Parker said.

  “So they’ll still have something to go after,” McWhitney said. “So what I think, I don’t take the ferry back. You do and Sandra does, you give the beverage guy this Subaru and you travel with Sandra, come back together to my place.”

  “It’ll take you five hours to come around,” Parker said, “Almost all the way back to the city, and then out onto the Island.”

  “But they know this van,” McWhitney said, “And we rubbed their noses in it pretty good last night, so now they got an extra motivation. You know I’m not gonna skip out on you because I’m not gonna skip out on my bar. You’ll be there by five-thirty, I’ll be there by eight. And Sandra can keep in touch with me.”

  “All right,” Parker said. “I’ll see you there.”

  12

  It was a shorter wait this time for Parker to board the ferry, driving the Forester up the ramp, following the hand signals of the ferry crew, coming to a stop very near the front of the boat. The three large Hefty bags filled most of the space behind him, one on the rear seat and two squeezed into the cargo area.

  Once again he waited for the ferry to move away from the land and make its turn before he got out of the Forester, locked it, and headed for the stairs. He didn’t look for Sandra’s Honda yet, but would find it when he needed it.

  Frank Meany’s man was promenading on the same side deck as last time. He looked relaxed enough to retire. Seeing Parker, he smiled and said, “Everything all right, your end?”

  Handing him the car keys, Parker said, “About all you’re going to see in your rearview mirror is Hefty bags.”

  “Frank loves Hefty bags,” the guy said. “Nice to see you again.”

  Parker went back inside, and saw Sandra coming up the stairs. He went over to her and said, “I’m traveling with you.”

  “Not yet,” she said. “I’m here for the ladies’. I’ll be right back.”

  She went on to the restrooms, and Parker waited near a window in a spot where people coming up the stairs would face the other way. But none of the trio from the Suburban came up, and a few minutes later Sandra returned, waved to Parker, and the two of them went down the stairs to the cars, he saying, “Nelson didn’t like bringing the good money back on the boat with those other guys around, so he’s gonna drive.”

  “That’ll take him forever.”

  “He figures to get to his place by eight. We’ll wait for him there.”

  “Okay, good,” she said, and pointed. “I’m over this way.”

  “I’m not seeing the Suburban,” he said.

  “What?” She looked around. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. They’ve gotta be here.”

  “You go that way, I’ll go this way, but I don’t think so.”

  They moved among the cars and met at the Honda. Looking across it at him, she said, “What are we gonna do?”

  “First we get in the car.”

  She unlocked them in, and when both doors were shut he said, “Call Nelson.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “With the steel hull on this thing, I get no reception.”

  “Go out on a deck.”

  “It’s still no good.”

  Parker looked at her. “You can’t call Nels till we get to Long Island?”

  “I hate it as bad as you do,” she said.

  He shook his head. “Over an hour before we can call him.”

  “He’ll be all right,” she said. “He’s a big boy.”

  “Yeah, he is,” Parker said. “And they’re three big boys.”

  At Orient Point, once they were off the ferry, Sandra pulled onto the verge of the road, out of the flow of debarking cars, and called McWhitney. Parker watched her face, and saw that McWhitney wasn’t picking up.

  Then she said, “I’m getting his voice mail. What the fuck, I might as well leave a message. Nelson, call me.” She broke the connection and said, “Shit. I needed that money.”

  “They’re still out there,” Parker said. “They haven’t gone to ground anywhere, not yet. They’ve got to come back to the Island. If nothing else, they’ve got to give the car back.” Looking out the windshield, he said, “If we knew what the dealer was, we could be waiting for them.”

  “Oh, well, I can do that part,” she said.

  “You can?”

  She gestured to the notepad she kept mounted on the top of the dashboard. “Any car I’m following, or I’m interested in, every time, I write down their plate number.”

  Parker looked at it. “And you can get the dealer from that?”

  “Sure, Keenan and I always cultivated cash-only friendships at the DMV. Hold on.”

  From her bulky purse she drew a slender black book, opened it, and dialed a number. “Hi. Is Matt Devereaux there? Thanks.”

  She waited. Beside them, the last of the cars from the ferry were trickling by.

  “Hello? Hey, Matt, it’s Sandra Loscalzo, how you doing? Well, I’ve got a cute one here, if you could help me. It’s a dealer’s plate, so I’m not talking about the car this time, I’m talking about the dealer. Sure.” She reeled off the number, then also gave him her cell number, and hung up.

  “He’ll call back in five minutes,” she said, and put the Honda in gear. “We might as well start. Wherever the dealer is, he isn’t gonna be this far out on the Island.”

  Matt did call her back in five minutes, while they were still in the cluster of traffic from that ferry, everybody westbound on Route 25. “Keenan. Hey, Matt. That’s terrific. Say again.”

  She nudged Parker and pointed at the pad on the dashboard. He picked up the small magnetized pen she kept there, and she said, “DiRienzo Chevrolet, Long Island Avenue, Deer Park.” She spelled “DiRienzo,” then said, “Thanks, Matt. I’ll catch up with you later. Roy? I haven’t seen him for a while.” Breaking the connection, she said, “Well, that’s true. Deer Park’s just a little beyond Bay Shore. Any point going there now?”

  “Every point,” Parker said, “but not yet. We’ll go to that neighborhood, find a diner, get something to eat, get in position before eight.”

&
nbsp; “What if they don’t bring it back till tomorrow?”

  “They don’t want it any more,” Parker said, “and their friend at the dealer’s gonna get nervous if it stays out overnight.”

  Sandra frowned out at the slow-moving traffic all around them. They wouldn’t get clear of this herd from the ferry for another half hour or more, when they reached the beginning of the Expressway. “You’re a strange guy to partner with,” she said.

  “So are you.”

  “Do me a favor. Don’t kill anybody.”

  “We’ll see,” he said.

  13

  Half a dozen car dealers were clustered along both sides of the wide road in this neighborhood, all of them proclaiming, either by banner or by neon sign, open til 9! All the dealerships were lit up like football stadiums, and in that glare the sheets of glass and chrome they featured all sparkled like treasure chests. This was the heart of car country, servicing the after-work automotive needs of the bedroom communities.

  At seven thirty-five, when Sandra drove down the road to see DIRIENZO writ large in neon on their side, she said, “What do you want to do?”

  “Pull in. We’ll look at cars.”

  There were three separate areas for cars at the DiRienzo lot: new, used, and the customers’. Sandra followed the signs and put the Honda in with the customer cars, then said, “Now I’m shopping with you. I need this to come to an end.”

  He shook his head and got out, and she followed suit, and immediately a short clean young fellow in suit and tie appeared, smiled a greeting, and said, “You folks looking for a family sedan?”

  Sandra’s smile was sweeter than his. “We’re just looking around.”

  “Go right ahead,” he said, with a sweeping arm gesture that offered them the whole place.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m Tim, I work here.” He produced a business card, which he handed to Sandra, who took it. “Take your time. If I can help you with anything, I’m right here.”

  “Thank you.”

  They walked away from him, and Sandra said, “Do we want a new family sedan or a used family sedan?”

  “We want to get over near the building. I need to see how they’re going to come in, what they’ll do.”

  The building was broad, one tall story high, the front mostly wide expanses of plate glass, the rest a neutral gray concrete. A few of the most special cars were given their own spaces on the gleaming floor of the inside showroom, with desks and cubicles and closed-off offices behind. On the right side of the building, farther back than the plate glass, the gray concrete wall continued, with three large overhead doors spaced along the way, all of them at the moment shut.

  Parker and Sandra saw that, then moved on past the front of the building, Parker saying, “They’ll bring it in there, by the doors. Their own car will be back with the customer parking. We’ll see what happens when they make the transfer.”

  “We’ve got at least half an hour to wait,” she said. “What do we do in the meantime?”

  “Look at cars.”

  It was more like fifty minutes, and twice in that time they could see the fellow who’d first greeted them look over in their direction, frowning. But he never quite made the move to find out what they were up to.

  Sandra said, “Is that it?”

  It was. They were walking among the new cars, and the Suburban had to circle around that area to get to the side entrances. They angled to move toward where it would finish up, and as it drove by them Sandra said, “That’s weird.”

  Parker had been looking the other way, not wanting the bulky guy from last night to see and recognize him, but now he turned back, watched the Suburban move slowly among the cars and customers, and said, “What’s weird?”

  “Only the driver in front, three others in back. What would they do that for?”

  Ahead, the Suburban made the turn to go around the corner of the building, putting itself into profile, and Parker could see the middle man of the three in back. “It’s Nelson,” he said.

  “My God,” she said, staring, “it is! Did he go over to them?”

  “No.”

  “Well, why lug him around?”

  The Suburban stopped in front of the middle overhead door as another suited salesman, a little older, smiling broadly and making gestures of greeting, came around toward it from the front entrance. The driver stepped out to the macadam. The three in the backseat stayed in the car.

  “I’ll tell you why,” Parker said. “Oscar Sidd told them it was going to be two million dollars of poisoned money. They opened the boxes and they only found two hundred thousand. They think it’s the same money, and they want to know where the rest of it is.”

  Sandra stared toward McWhitney. “He’s their prisoner in there.”

  “And that’s why he’s alive.”

  Across the way, the driver and the salesman had shaken hands, and now the driver was explaining something. The salesman looked toward the Suburban’s backseat, then bowed his head and seriously listened. The driver, finished, patted his arm and walked away toward the customer parking area. The salesman stood waiting, hands clasped in front of himself, like an usher at a wedding.

  Parker, watching the Suburban, said, “Go get your car, bring it here.”

  “I’m better as a spectator,” she said, “than a participant.”

  “Not this time. Do it.”

  She went away and the salesman conferred with a guy in work clothes, who’d come out a side door and who now bent down to start removing the front license plate.

  Now a white Buick Terrazza came out of customer parking and angled over to stop beside the Suburban. Parker moved in closer as the two in back, one of them the bulky guy from last night, hustled McWhitney out of the backseat of the Suburban, wanting to move him quickly and smoothly across to the backseat of the Terrazza.

  It didn’t happen. Because there were so many other people around, and so much bright light was shining down, they couldn’t grasp him as they might have liked. In that instant when all three men were between cars, the two on the outside crowding McWhitney but not quite touching him, he suddenly swept his bent left arm up and back, the elbow smashing into the cheek of the guy on that side, who staggered back into the side of the Suburban and slid sideways to the ground, unmoving.

  While the bulky guy on the right was still figuring out a reaction, McWhitney used the same cocked left arm to drive a straight hook into his face, while his right hand lunged inside the guy’s jacket.

  Parker trotted forward, the Bobcat in his hand inside his pocket. The driver, with his Terrazza between him and the action, drew a pistol and yelled at McWhitney, “Hold it! Hold it!” He fired the pistol, not to hit anybody but to attract attention, which he did, from everywhere on the lot.

  “Not the model!” yelled the salesman. “Not the model!” Behind him the workman stood, bewildered, the front license plate and a screwdriver in his hands. People everywhere on the lot were craning their necks, trying to see what was going on.

  McWhitney was having trouble with the bulky guy. The two of them were struggling over the gun, still half in the guy’s jacket pocket.

  Parker knew he was too far away with this little gun, but he aimed and fired the Bobcat, then hurried forward again. He almost missed completely, but he saw it sting the bulky guy’s left ear, making him first lose his concentration on McWhitney and then lose the gun.

  It was the same one Parker had taken from him last night, which McWhitney had put in the glove compartment of the van. Now McWhitney clubbed the guy with it and, as he fell, stooped and fired one shot through both backseat windows of the Terrazza and into the driver, who dropped backward, his own gun skittering away.

  “NOT THE MODEL!”

  McWhitney shoved the salesman back into the workman, and both fell down, as he jumped behind the wheel of the Suburban. He had to back around the Terrazza to get away from the building, as Sandra in the Honda stopped beside Parker, who slid aboard. The two
men McWhitney had clubbed were both moving; the one he’d shot was not.

  With people all around yelling and waving their arms and jumping out of the way, McWhitney slashed through the lot and bumped out to the roadway, forcing a place for himself in among the traffic already there. Demurely, Sandra and the Honda trailed after.

  14

  Traffic on this commercial road, headed straight south across the Island, was fairly heavy, which meant no one could get much of an edge. Parker could see the black Suburban most of a long block ahead of them, seven or eight cars between, with no way to close the gap. Then the Suburban went through a yellow light, the traffic behind it stopped, and Parker watched the Suburban roll on out of sight.

  Was there any pursuit? He twisted around to look out the Honda’s rear window just in time to see the Terrazza make the left at the intersection behind them, the lack of glass in its back side window obvious even at this distance. “They’re up,” he said.

  Sandra looked in her mirror, but too late. “Who’s up?”

  “Somebody in the Buick. One or both of those guys are still in play.”

  “But they turned off?”

  “They know this part of the Island, and they know where McWhitney’s headed. They’ll get there first.”

  “And we’re too far back to let him know.”

  “We’ll just go to his place and see what happens,”

  McW and its entire block were dark, though there were lights on in some of the apartments above the stores. There was no traffic and no pedestrians in this part of Bay Shore at nine o’clock on a Tuesday night. But a black Suburban with a missing front license plate was parked in front of the bar. The white Buick Terrazza was nowhere in sight, but if they’d gotten here before McWhitney they would have tucked it away somewhere.

  Parker and Sandra left the Honda and went over to McW. The green shade was pulled down over the glass of the entrance door and the CLOSED sign was in place. Deeper in the bar, the faint nightlights were lit, but that was all.

  Parker listened at the door, but heard nothing. They had to be inside there, but somewhere toward the back.