If Mackey was challenged, they’d quickly find Williams in back. They’d know they were looking for three men, so would they open the trunk right away? If they did, he’d do what he could. If they impounded the car before searching it, took it away to their pound, he’d try to find the best moment to get out of here.
The car stopped. Was Mackey paying the cashier now, or answering questions? The car started again. It jounced heavily down to street level, turned hard, drove straight, jolted to a stop. Red light. They were out of there.
It was a twenty-minute drive, with red lights and turnings. At the end, the Honda stopped, the door slammed, there was a pause, the door slammed, the Honda jerked forward again, and again it stopped. The door slammed, and then a second door slammed, and the trunk lid lifted. Parker saw Williams raising the lid, Mackey behind him closing the overhead door. They were back at the beer distributor’s.
Parker got out, stiff in a lot of his body, and put the Terrier away, as Mackey came back from the closed door, looking at his watch. ‘Still too early to call Brenda,’ he said, ‘with that block on her calls, so we can’t get out of here yet.’
‘We need sleep,’ Parker said. ‘We’ll stay here now, leave this afternoon.’
Mackey nodded. ‘That’s probably a good idea.’
Williams said, ‘I’m taking off. I’m too itchy, man, I wanna get out of here.’
Mackey said, ‘You got a place to go?’
‘Out of this state,’ Williams told him, ‘then south, then I don’t know.’
Parker said, ‘You don’t have the money you thought you’d have.’
‘I’ll promote some.’
Mackey said, ‘You want to take the Honda?’
Williams raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Yeah?’
‘If it belonged to anybody,’ Mackey said, ‘it belonged to those other guys. Brenda’s got wheels and Parker’s gonna ride with us.’
‘Then I’ll do it,’ Williams said. ‘Thanks.’
Mackey said, ‘You sure you don’t want to get some sleep first?’
‘The other side of the state line,’ Williams told him, ‘I’ll sleep like a baby.’
‘Then go for it,’ Mackey said.
Mackey opened the overhead door again, and Williams backed the Honda out into early dawn. He waved at them through the windshield, and Mackey slid the door shut.
Upstairs, in the former offices, is where they’d set up temporary housing for themselves, with cots, each of the six of them with his own room. Parker and Mackey went up there now, and Parker took off only his shoes before he lay down, Terrier under pillow, and went immediately to sleep. He woke reaching for the Terrier, but it was Mackey who’d come into the room, saying, ‘They arrested Brenda.’
FOUR
1
‘Give me a minute,’ Parker said.
The functioning men’s room was upstairs. Parker washed face and hands, then looked at his watch. Not quite nine-thirty; he’d been asleep less than three hours.
When he went downstairs, Williams was back, and so was the Honda. Williams and Mackey sat at the conference table with containers of coffee and a bag of doughnuts; Parker sat with them. ‘I thought you were gone,’ he said to Williams.
‘I thought so, too,’ Williams said.
‘He heard it on the radio,’ Mackey explained. ‘So he turned around and came back.’
Williams’ smile was weak. ‘I was almost to the state line,’ he said.
Parker looked at him. ‘Why didn’t you keep going?’
‘If it wasn’t for you people,’ Williams said, ‘I’d still be in Stoneveldt, and then someplace worse after that, the rest of my life. That’s one. You said, “Take the Honda, we don’t need it,” that’s two. You two make no difference between me and each other, that’s three.’
‘Three’s all we need,’ Mackey told him. ‘Tell Parker what you heard on the radio.’
‘I had it tuned in to a news station,’ Williams said, ‘to help me know what to watch for. They described everything in the Armory they had our route pretty good and they said they were pretty sure it was you and me, escaped from prison, that was part of the gang, because Tom Marcantoni was one of the guys they found dead.’
‘All three dead,’ Mackey said. ‘Like we thought.’
‘Then they came on,’ Williams said, ‘they said they had an arrest, I thought it was gonna be you two, but then they said it was a woman. Then I thought, it’s Maryenne, it’s my sister they’re after because I called her that one time, but it isn’t. They describe a white woman, and say the only name they have is an alias, Brenda Fawcett.’
Parker shook his head. ‘What are they doing with Brenda? She was asleep in her hotel with a do not disturb.’
‘That’s the bitch of it,’ Mackey said. ‘She wasn’t. She pulled that trick again, that thing she does, where she hangs around near me in case I need help.’
Parker said, ‘She was outthere?’
‘Most of the night,’ Mackey said. ‘Maybe a block away. If we could have reached her, she could have come right over in a minute.’
‘You told her,’ Parker said, ‘she was gonna make trouble for herself doing that one of these days.’
‘And when she went back to the hotel,’ Mackey said, ‘after we busted out and set off that siren, somebody saw her go in. But that isn’t what did it.’
Williams said, ‘Somebody else turned her in. The woman that runs the dance studio.’
‘I’m sorry now,’ Mackey said, ‘we didn’t bust her goddam mirror.’
Parker said, ‘The woman in the dance studio? What’s shegot to do with anything? And what’ve they got on Brenda that they’re gonna pull her in?’
Williams said, ‘What they said on the radio, Brenda went to this dance studio a few times, took lessons, paid cash, gave a phony name, used phony ID.’
‘Now they’re saying,’ Mackey said, ‘she was casing the joint. For us.’
Williams said, ‘So this woman runs the dance studio, Darlene Something, one of those two-name things, she followedBrenda one time, see where she really lives, so when the cops call her this morning, tell her the dance studio’s all messed up, or where we come through, she says, “It’s Brenda Fawcett, she’s part of it.” And they go pick her up.’
‘And find,’ Mackey said, ‘a lot of fake ID I gave her a while back, just like to goof with.’
‘So now she’s the brains of the gang,’ Williams said, ‘and they want her to tell them where the rest of us are.’
‘Parker,’ Mackey said, ‘I gotta get her out of there.’
‘I know that,’ Parker said.
‘The radio says,’ Williams told them, ‘they’re holding her at the Fifth Street station, until they find out who she really is and what she knows about the rest of us.’
Mackey asked him, ‘Do you know this Fifth Street station?’
Williams grinned. ‘I put up there a couple times,’ he said. ‘It isn’t the city jail, it’s more of a holding tank kind of place. Connected to a precinct. You’re there, and then they move you on to some place real, once they decide where you should go.’
Mackey said, ‘Any place else would be tougher.’
‘Fifth Street isn’t easy,’Williams assured him.
‘But you know the place,’ Mackey said. ‘You can give us the layout.’ Turning to Parker, he said, ‘We gotta get her out of there today.She isn’t gonna like that place.’
Parker didn’t say anything. Mackey was about to turn back to Williams, but then he frowned at Parker. ‘Are you saying you aren’t in this?’
Parker didn’t want to be in it, he wanted to get away from this place, get back east, spend some time with Claire, decide what to do next. He’d been nailed to the floor here too long. He didn’t have that feeling of obligation that had sent Mackey to give him a hand when he needed to get out of Stoneveldt, or that had made Williams turn around at the state line and come back into the pit he’d spent all this time crawling out of.
&n
bsp; Parker didn’t live by debts accumulated and paid off; but there were times when you had to do things you didn’t want, be places you didn’t want. He could stand up now and walk out of here and head east, and there’d be no problem, not now. Neither of these people would shoot him in the back as he got to the door. But somewhere down the line, Mackey would think about him again, and he’d have a different kind of IOU in his mind. Parker didn’t collect the IOUs, neither the good ones nor the bad ones, but he knew he had to live among people with those tote boards in their minds.
‘I didn’t say anything at all yet,’ he answered Mackey. ‘I was thinking, we got to get hold of that lawyer Claire found me.’
Mackey beamed. ‘You’re right! Jonathan Li. He’s the guy.’
‘I’ve still got his card, up with my stuff,’ Parker said, and got to his feet. ‘But we need to get us inside there, too. I don’t know how yet.’
He went upstairs to his room. In the few days they’d been out, they’d accumulated a small amount of possessions; some clothing, toilet articles. Parker’s things were in the drawers of an abandoned wooden desk. He found the card and looked at it again, the many partner names in fine blue letters against ivory, the name Jonathan Li in gold at the bottom right. He carried the card downstairs, put it on the table, and said, ‘The problem is, none of us can go to him.’
‘I can phone him,’ Mackey said. ‘I’m not an escaped felon, where he might have to tell the law about me, I’m just somebody the cops want to talk to about people who areescaped felons.’
‘There’s a payphone’ Williams started to say.
‘No, I don’t need that,’ Mackey told him. ‘Tom had a cellphone, it should be upstairs with his stuff. I’ll be right back.’
He left, and Williams looked at Parker, considering him. ‘You don’t like this,’ he said.
‘None of us likes it.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ Williams nodded. ‘But Mackey feels like he owes Brenda, and I feel like I owe you and Mackey, but you don’t feel like you owe anybody anything. Tell you the truth, I wish I could be like that.’
‘If you were like that,’ Parker told him, ‘you wouldn’t have phoned your sister.’
‘Meaning,’ Williams said, ‘one of these days I’m gonna do something like that, because I feel like I owe somebody something, and I’m gonna put my head right in the noose.’
‘Maybe not,’ Parker said, and Mackey came back downstairs with the cellphone.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, hefting the phone. ‘Is he in the office yet? I can’t leave a callback number.’
‘Try,’ Williams said.
So Mackey sat at the table and punched out the number, then listened, the cellphone a small black beetle against the side of his blunt head.
‘Jonathan Li, please. Would you tell him it’s a guy, he’s so happy about how Mr Li dealt with the Ronald Kasper problem, now he wants to hire Mr Li on the Brenda Fawcett problem. Sure.’
Mackey put his other hand over the mouthpiece and said, ‘He isn’t in the office, but they can patch in to him. In his car, I guess, or wherever.’
Then he bent to the phone again. ‘Mr Li? Yes, this is Ed, you remember me.’ Shrugging, he said to the others in the room, ‘He’s laughing.’ Then, into the phone: ‘Yeah, you’re probably right. Yeah, that’s what they said on the radio, Fifth Street station.’
Raising his eyebrows at Parker, he said into the phone, ‘Sure, I think you can get a retainer from Claire again, same as last time. Probably easiest.’
Parker nodded. Mackey said into the phone, ‘She wired it to your account last time, didn’t she? So she’ll do it again. You just tell me how much. Fine, tell me then. That’s terrific. Nice to do business with you again, Mr Li.’
Mackey broke the connection, put the phone on the table, and said, ‘After he laughed, he told me he wasn’t surprised there’d be a link between a friend of Ronald Kasper and a friend of Brenda Fawcett. He says he knows it’s urgent, he’ll go over to the Fifth Street station right now, let Brenda know he’s her legal, he understands I’m probably somewhere he can’t phone me so I should phone him in three hours. By then he’ll know the situation, he’ll tell us how much is the retainer.’
‘In three hours,’ Williams said. ‘Good.’
Parker said, ‘We still have to get usinto this Fifth Street station.’ Standing, he said, ‘I’m gonna spend the three hours asleep.’
2
‘He wants to meet,’ Mackey said. He held the phone to his chest while he talked to Parker. The three of them were again at the downstairs conference table.
Parker said, ‘You’re the one he wants to meet.’
Mackey shook his head. ‘You should be along. We need to know the situation, what we should do.’
‘He doesn’t want meanywhere,’ Williams said. ‘I’ll wait here. You leave the phone with me.’
Into the phone, Mackey said, ‘Two of us, but we gotta be careful. You don’t want us in your office.’ He listened, then grinned at Parker: ‘He likes to laugh, this lawyer.’ Into the phone again, he said, ‘Good, that sounds good. Wait, give me the names.’
There were a notepad and pen on the table, left over from some scheming by Angioni and Kolaski. Williams slid them over and looked alert, and Mackey said, ‘Fred Burroughs and Martin Hutchinson. Four o’clock. We’ll be there.’ Hanging up, he said, ‘It’s his club, downtown. He wants us to meet at the handball courts. He says it’s loud there, lots of echoes.’
‘Nobody can tape,’ Parker said.
Mackey nodded. ‘That’s the idea.’
It wasn’t easy for Parker and Mackey to turn themselves into people who might be accepted as a member’s guests in a club downtown that featured handball courts, not after the twenty-four hours they’d just lived through, but they managed. Washed and shaved, in the clothes they’d planned to wear when they’d quit this town after the job, casual but neat, they left the beer distributor’s at three-thirty and walked half a dozen blocks before they saw a cruising cab and hailed it. It felt strange to Parker to walk along the street in a town where every cop had just last week memorized his face, but the afternoon was November dark and Parker let Mackey walk on the curbside. They saw no law at all, and then they were in the cab.
The Patroon Club had a doorman, under a canvas marquee mounted from building to curb. He held open the cab door while Mackey paid the fare, then called them sirand walked with them under the marquee to the double entrance doors, where he grasped a long brass handle, pulled the door open, bowed with just his head, and said, ‘Welcome to the Patroon.’
‘Thanks,’ Mackey said.
Inside was a dark wood vestibule, coat closet with attendant on the left, low broad dark gleaming desk straight ahead, behind which sat an elderly black man in green and white livery. He looked alert, inquisitive, ready to serve: ‘Help you, gentlemen?’
‘We’re here to meet Jonathan Li,’ Mackey told him. ‘Fred Burroughs. And this is Martin Hutchinson.’
‘Oh, yes, Mr Li left your names.’ Opening a folder on his desk, he said, ‘If you could just sign the register.’
The register was a sheet of paper with columns to be filled in: name, date, time, company, member to be visited. They both wrote things, and the man behind the desk gestured at the inner door behind himself, saying, ‘Mr Li said you’ll find him by the handball courts. That would be straight through, down the stairs, and second on your right.’
Mackey thanked him again, and he and Parker went through the door into a plush dark interior, just slightly seedy. Downstairs, they found three handball courts in a row like three stage sets, side walls not meeting the ceiling, windowed at the interior end to face bleachers where spectators could sit. Only the nearest court was in use, two players in their forties, both of them very fast and very good. They made noise, but not too much.
Li sat on the third row of bleachers, watching the game, then nodded when he saw Mackey and Parker come in. He patted the cushioned bench beside him, an
d they came over, Parker to take a seat at Li’s right, Mackey choosing a place on the second row, just to their left, where he could sit sideways and look up at them both.
Li nodded to Parker and said, ‘Before we begin, just let me make the situation clear. I assume you did not come here trailing police’
‘No,’ Parker said.
‘No, of course not. But to consider the possibility, however remote, if in fact we areinterrupted by an official presence, I will explain that we were meeting to work on the details of your turning yourself in, and youwill say the same.’
‘Naturally,’ Parker said.
‘Good.’ Li turned to Mackey. ‘Now, to yourfriend. The police seem unable to learn her true identity.’
‘They never will,’ Mackey said.
‘I begin to believe you’re right. She was paying for her hotel room with a credit card under the Brenda Fawcett name. They have now learned from the credit card company that the bills are sent to an accountant in Long Island, who pays with money taken from the account of a client of theirs named Robert Morrison. They have not physically seen Morrison in some years, but send him statements to a maildrop in New York City. They manage a few money market accounts for Morrison, and he occasionally sends them more money How, if I may ask? The police don’t know, or at least didn’t tell me.’
‘Money orders,’ Mackey said. ‘Every once in a while, top up the tanks with some money orders.’
‘So Ms. Fawcett is not their customer, nor can they directly reach Morrison, who pays her bills.’
Mackey said, ‘Does she give them a story?’
‘The police here?’ Li smiled, almost in a proprietary way, as though it were a story he’d made up himself. ‘She says,’ he told them, ‘she is fleeing an abusive husband. Court orders didn’t help, police protection didn’t help a little dig there, of which they are not unaware she is in fear of her life, she will never give anybody at all her correct name for fear this man will find her.’ Li shrugged. ‘The police don’t exactly believe her,’ he said, ‘but it isn’t a story they can do anything about.’
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