“I visit the lawyers across the same corridor,” Parker told him, “beyond that wall with the long table and the drinking fountain.”
“Right,” Mackey said. “And from what I understand, the library’s beyond that, the hallway you want beyond that.”
“Right.”
“Okay, tilt it all on its side,” Mackey told him, because they wouldn’t be able to write any of this down or make any drawings. “You know those metal change things the conductors carry on the front of their belt, where they can give you coins out of?”
“Right.”
“Okay. Then if this whole thing is on its side with that corridor out there on the bottom, then where we are is the row of half dollars, and the lawyers’ room next to it is the row of quarters, and the library is the row of dimes, and the hallway you want to know about is the row of nickels. Okay?”
“Right,” Parker said.
“Near the top of the dimes, the library,” Mackey said, “back where the law books are kept, there’s a side door to the hallway, the row of nickels.”
“That’s what I hoped.”
“It’s kept locked, and the lawyer doesn’t have the key. In fact, there is no key. When he wants out, he phones, and the guard at the far end of the hallway, top of the nickels, buzzes him out. Same going in, buzzes him in.”
“What’s beyond the guard at the far end of the hallway?”
“Above the nickels and the dimes is a couple offices and the guards’ locker room, where they change for work. And a side door to the guards’ separate parking lot.”
“Good. What else?”
“Above the lawyers, and you see the corner of this room where the door is that I come in, above all that is the hall down from the front entrance at the very top of the building. The rest up there is offices and johns.”
“So the best route out,” Parker said, “looks as though it’s into the library, into that side hallway, in the guards’ locker room, into the guards’ parking area. Is the parking area kept guarded and locked?”
“You know it is.”
“So I need,” Parker said, “people coming in while I’m coming out.”
“I can talk to Marcantoni’s pal,” Mackey said.
“And Williams’ sister, and her friend?”
“I don’t think I’ll mention many details to them,” Mackey said.
12
Walter Jelinek was a man, but he looked like a car, the kind of old junker car that had been in some bad accidents so that now the frame is bent, the wheels don’t line up any more, the whole vehicle sags to one side and pulls to that side, and the brakes are oatmeal. Half the original body is gone, the paint job is some amateur brushwork, and there’s duct tape over the tail-lights. That was Walter Jelinek, who Mackey had told Parker not to talk to, since he had a reputation for carrying tales to teacher, but now Jelinek on his own wanted to talk to Parker.
It was the fourteenth day, two weeks in this hard world, progress but slow, and Parker was on his way to join Marcantoni and Williams over by the weights in the exercise yard when all at once Jelinek was beside him, gimping along with him, trying to keep in step. His left shoulder was low, his left knee had a ding in it that made it click outward when he walked, and his jaw hadn’t been rewired very well, so that he always showed some spaces and some teeth. His hands were big but bunchy, and when he talked he sounded as though something was knotted too tight around his neck. He said, “Kasper, you and me, we never talk somehow.”
Parker stopped, to look at him. Guards always kept their eyes on Jelinek, because he was like a garden to them, something always ripening. Aware that guards now watched him talk to Jelinek, Parker said, “We never talk because we got nothing to say to one another.”
“Couple old lags like us?” Jelinek’s left eye closed when he tried for a smile. “Long-term guys, gonna be in a long time? Why, you and me, we could spend the first ten years just gettin caught up on the old days.”
“The past doesn’t interest me,” Parker said, and moved on.
Jelinek hopped along with him. “I bet the present interests you,” he said. “I bet the future’s what you talk about with Marcantoni and the schvug all the time.”
Parker stopped. He looked at Jelinek. “What do you think you know?”
“I think I know you stopped,” Jelinek told him. “That’s one thing I think I know.”
“Tell me another thing.”
“They want you in Cal,” Jelinek said. “Es-cap-ing. Killing a guard.” He grinned, and the eye shut. “They hate it when you kill a guard.”
“They don’t mind when we kill each other,” Parker told him.
“Oh, some of us, they do,” Jelinek said. He was pleased with himself. “Some of us,” he said, “they like to see alive, moving here and there.”
Parker said, “Is there a point to this?”
“You and those boys,” Jelinek said, “have travel plans.” He waited for Parker to comment, but Parker merely looked at him, giving him nothing, so Jelinek shrugged and said, “You got plans, and why not? All three of you are looking at heavy time. I don’t have to know what the plans are, I just have to know you got em.”
“Think what you want to think.”
“I do.” Jelinek looked around, then pretended he was being confidential. “Me, I wanna travel, too,” he said. “I been livin this life too long, I wanna settle down. You believe I got a daughter?”
“If you say so,” Parker said.
“Well, I do. She’s forty-one years of age, runs a nursing home in Montana. My own daughter. Would I be happy there?”
“Probably so,” Parker said.
“Need help getting there, that’s the thing,” Jelinek explained. “Hitch a ride on a bus with somebody.”
Parker waited. Jelinek squinted at him. “You boys got a bus,” he said. “I don’t have to know what it is, when it is, where it is, all I got to know is, you boys got a bus. And here’s what I think. When you fire up that bus, I’m on it. I’m riding along with you.”
Again, Jelinek waited, and again Parker simply stood and looked at him. Jelinek didn’t like the lack of feedback. “Not gonna argue with me?” he demanded. “Not gonna go all innocent, you don’t have any bus, you and them other two? Not gonna go all tough guy, warn me keep my mouth shut or you’re gonna do all kindsa shit, and how’d I like that?”
“You’ve heard all that before,” Parker said.
“Yes, I have,” Jelinek agreed. “There isn’t a goddam thing I haven’t heard before, Ronnie Kasper. When that bus of yours is ready to roll, be sure to give me the word, because some word is going somewhere. Either I’m on that bus, or that bus doesn’t roll.”
13
“We have to kill him,” Marcantoni said. He was lifting the hand weights again, but bunching his arms more, because he was mad.
“Not now,” Parker said. He stood by Williams’ head, where Williams lay on his back on the bench, lifting and lowering the weighted bar, resting it between times on the vertical metal posts.
“The longer he’s alive,” Marcantoni said, “the more sure it is he’ll rat us out.”
“He doesn’t know anything yet,” Parker said. “And the guards saw him talk to me today. If he dies now, it draws attention right at us.”
Williams rested the bar on the posts. “But Tom’s right,” he said. “He saw us together. That’s what he does, he prowls around like that, looks for something he can deal in. He might not wait until he’s got everything in a package.”