“So everything’s going your way,” Parker agreed. “So all you have to be is calm, am I right?”
Turley nodded, thinking about that. He’d come down from his rage as quickly as he’d gone up. “You’re right,” he said. “So why don’t you just hand me the weapon and let’s let these people go back to work.”
“We’re getting in your car,” Parker told him. “You’re driving. If you don’t like that idea, I’ll give you some murder one and do my own driving.”
“You would, too,” Turley said. “You proved that with Jelinek.”
Parker waited for Turley to get used to the idea. Turley thought for a second, glancing toward the useless workmen, and then shrugged. “You’re the escape artist. I’ll enjoy watching you at work.”
“That’s the way,” Parker said. Backing away from Turley, he said, “We open our doors at the same time. We get in at the same time.”
Turley nodded, and stood with his left hand on top of the car while Parker moved around it to the passenger side and said, “Now.”
They opened both doors, slid in, and Parker said, “Don’t drive backwards. You can get around the Saab.”
Turley put the Plymouth in gear and drove them out of there, through the tight fit between the Saab and a couple of the electric carts, out to the business side of the airport, while behind them the workmen clustered into groups to try to decide what they’d just been witnesses to.
Now they were among the taxiways, with planes landing and taking off some distance away. Clear routes were marked in white paint on the gray concrete, and various vehicles traveled around back here, all staying within the lines.
Turley said, “Do you have some sort of plan in mind?” As though the idea were ridiculous.
To the left were the main terminal buildings. To the right the buildings grew fewer, and some chain-link fence could be seen. Whatever was happening with Mackey and Brenda, there was no point in Parker trying to link up with them again. “To the right,” he said.
Turley nodded, and they drove along the rear of the cargo buildings, hundreds of workmen moving around, dozens of vehicles of all kinds, nobody paying them any attention in their unmarked car.
Parker said, “Call in.”
Turley seemed surprised. “What do I say, I’m bringing you in?”
“You followed me into that cargo building, I abandoned the red car. You’ve got the car, but you don’t have me. You figure I’m hiding in that building somewhere.”
“And I’m standing by?”
“That’s right,” Parker said. “Waiting for backup.”
Turley snorted. “That’ll buy you maybe thirty seconds,” he said.
“Just do it.”
Turley did it, saying it the way Parker had told him to, adding nothing, the dispatcher brisk, in a hurry. Putting the microphone back on its hook, Turley said, “I’ll look like a real idiot, once I finally do bring you in.”
Parker said, “I didn’t take your gun.”
Turley looked at him sideways, looked at the road ahead. “Meaning what?”
“I’m not out to make you feel bad about yourself,” Parker told him. “It’s just that it’s time for me to get to some other part of the world.”
“And you figure,” Turley said, “if I’m your chauffeur, but you don’t disarm me, I didn’t lose my weapon to you, that way I’ve still got my dignity.”
“Up to you,” Parker said.
“And I’ll be easier to control,” Turley said, “if I’ve still got my dignity.”
“Up to you.”
Turley laughed, not as though he meant it, and said, “Here I was telling you all about game theory. We could have had some nice discussions, back in Stoneveldt.”
“I don’t think so,” Parker said.
“I knew you had something in mind, back there,” Turley told him. “I had my eye on you, just not enough.”
“I felt the eye,” Parker assured him.
“I hope so,” Turley said. “There’s a gate up there.”
Ahead, there was an open guarded gate where the delivery trucks drove in. Four rent-a-cops were on duty there. “Flash the badge,” Parker said.
“Naturally.”
A gasoline truck was just pulling out when they arrived. Turley lowered his window, dangled the leather folder that held his badge, and Parker put his other arm over the Terrier in his lap as the rent-a-cop leaned down to say, “Help you guys?” He was in his fifties, surely a retired cop himself.
“Undercover work,” Turley told him. “Baggage thefts.”
The rent-a-cop gave an angry laugh. “We can slow em down,” he said, “but nothing will ever stop em.” He stepped back and waved them through.
A two-lane road ran along the chain-link fence outside the airport property. Closing his window, Turley said, “Which way?”
“Left.” Which would be away from the main bulk of the airport.
This was the flattest part of this flat state, where they’d chosen to put the airport. Miles away to the right, as they rode along beside the fence, Parker could see Stoneveldt looming. So could Turley. He said, “Want me to drop you off there?”
“I don’t think so.”
The radio squawked. Turley looked at it, looked at Parker. “They’re calling me,” he said.
“Don’t answer.”
“I don’t have anything cute to say, throw them off the scent?”
“There’s nothing cute,” Parker told him. “There’s just me, going away from here.”
The radio squawked again, and Parker said, “Shut it off. There’s nothing we need to hear.”
Turley switched the radio off, stopping the voice in midsquawk. They drove a minute in silence, and then Turley said, “I’m state, as I guess you know, but this is a local car we’re in.”
“Working together to get the bad guys,” Parker suggested.
“That’s right,” Turley said. He seemed serious about it. He said, “A couple years ago, the city police union put a proposal on the table, to city government, install locators in all the cars. You know, bounce off the satellite, tells you exactly where you are, also tells the dispatchers at headquarters exactly where you are.”
Parker said, “The politicians didn’t want to spend the money.”
“You know that’s true,” Turley said. “They said, you boys are local law enforcement, you know exactly where you are.”
“If they’d spent the money,” Parker said, “I’d have to do something else now.”
“If they’d spent the money,” Turley corrected him, “and if I told you about it.”
“You’d tell me,” Parker said. “You don’t want me surprised.”
“Well, you’re right about that, too,” Turley agreed. “We’re coming to an intersection up here, which way you want to go?”
Stoneveldt was to the right. “Left,” Parker said.
14
It was almost three o’clock. He was out of that city at last, away from the airport and the gathering cops, but he wasn’t finished. He couldn’t stay in this car much longer, because they’d be putting planes up soon, to look for him. There were two hours of daylight left, far too much, and they were running southwestward away from the city over this tabletop.
Parker said, “What’s out in front of us?”
“Corn,” Turley said, but then corrected himself. “Not this time of year. Farms, a few little towns, railroad towns.”
Railroad towns sounded good. Wouldn’t the rails run east-west? “Take your next left,” Parker said, which would send them more southerly, to cross a railroad line eventually. Sooner, rather than later.
An intersection grew ahead of them, a gas station and convenience store on one corner, farm equipment dealer diagonally across, nothing on the other two corners but breezy fields with billboards. The intersection was marked by a yellow blinker; Turley waited for a pickup to go by, then turned left. There was little traffic out here.