Parker said, “What does he give them? At this point, what’s he got to sell?”
“You listened to him,” Marcantoni said. “That means you got something to protect.”
Parker nodded. “He made the same point. But if I duck away from him, that’s even worse, because then I don’t know how much he’s got. The reason he braced me is because he’s already got his eye on us. That doesn’t change. But what does he know? He knows we’re long-termers and we’re together, and it isn’t natural for us to be together.”
“Damn it,” Williams said.
“So,” Parker said, “he asks me questions, and I give him nothing. He’ll keep watching us, try to see what we do, where we go, try to figure out what our idea is. While he’s doing that, he won’t talk to the guards because he doesn’t have anything to give them yet.”
Williams said, “You think there’s any chance he really does want to come along?”
“None,” Parker said.
“Jelinek doesn’t want life on the run,” Marcantoni said. “All he wants is to build up some merit badges, make his time on the inside easier.”
Parker said, “That’s right. He doesn’t want to be on the outside. He’s got everything he wants right in here.”
“Or the place he gets sent, after his trial,” Marcantoni said. “And he’s angling for that place to be a nice retirement village.”
“On our backs,” Williams said.
“You got it.”
Williams hefted the weight again, put it back. “But what we do now is nothing.”
Parker said, “And watch him watching us.”
“But the last thing I do before I leave this place,” Marcantoni said, “I put him down.”
14
When the loudspeaker said, “Kasper,” next morning, the fifteenth day here, it was too early for visitors. Parker and Williams exchanged a glance, and then Parker dropped down from his bunk and walked down to the end of the line of cages, where a second guard waited. “I’m Kasper,” Parker said.
No conversation. The first guard buzzed the gate open, and the second one led the way, down the clanging stairs, through the locked door into the corridor with the white line painted down the center of the floor, through the next locked door into the main building, and there the guard said, “Wait.”
Parker waited. The guard turned to his left, to that first door, the one nobody ever noticed, the one that was supposed to lead to a hall down past the library and the volunteer lawyer’s exit. The guard pressed a button on the wall, then spoke into a grid beside the door, and the door buzzed open. The guard gestured for Parker to go first.
This was the route. This was what he’d been wanting to see, and now that he was looking at it he realized he’d already seen it once before, from the other direction, when they’d first brought him in. At that time, he’d been concentrating too much on too many other things, hadn’t paid attention to the route coming into this place because he hadn’t expected he’d ever go out the same way.
But this was the way. The locked and guarded parking area was just outside this wall to the left, not only for the guards’ personal cars but also for delivering fresh fish. The hall was a little narrower than the other one, with no windows, nothing on the left but a yellow-painted concrete block wall, and the same wall on the right with a gray-blue metal door in it, down toward the far end. The volunteer lawyer’s door; had to be.
Parker was now completely alert, not to where he was going, but to where he was. This was the route he’d been trying to dope out, and now they were handing it to him, giving him a guided tour. He didn’t know yet why, but he would remember every bit of it.
At the far end was another barred door, which another guard buzzed them through once he’d eye-balled them, and past that door was a square foyer with a jumble of exits. The metal door to the left would lead out to the parking area. Beyond the barred door to the right stretched a normal office hallway. And straight ahead, the open doorway on the left showed the guards’ locker room while the shut gray metal door on the right was marked, in black block letters, CONFERENCE.
That last was the door Parker’s escorting guard knocked on. Another buzz sounded, and the guard pulled open the door with one hand while he gestured Parker inside with the other.
Inspector Turley. Same office, same man, a small bulky red-haired middleweight. He sat at the same desk and the same steno sat at the same small table in the corner.
Turley looked at Parker without expression. He said, “Come in, Kasper. Sit down.”
Parker entered, the guard following, shutting the door, leaning against it. Parker sat in the same chair as before. Turley looked at him, waiting, and then said, “You do remember me, don’t you?”
“Two weeks ago,” Parker said. “In here.”
“I told you your friend Armiston would talk if you didn’t,” Turley said. “Remember that?”
“Game theory,” Parker said.
Turley started to smile, proud of his student, then frowned instead, realizing the student wasn’t a student. He said, “Armiston’s coming around, I have to tell you that.”
Parker nodded.
“Nothing to say?”
“Not yet.”
“All right,” Turley said. “I’ll tell you what the situation is, so you don’t think I’m trying to play off one fella against another fella.” He cocked his head, bright-eyed. “All right?”
“Fine,” Parker said, because some sort of statement was required.
“So here’s the situation,” Turley said. “Armiston’s beginning to make noises like he’d maybe come around, but so far, it’s just negotiation, you know what I mean? Jerking off, in other words.”
Parker didn’t really care what Armiston did, because it wouldn’t affect what he himself was going to do. It would be better for Armiston, maybe, to make a deal with these people, tell them whatever he knew about the guys with the plane, the customer, and then the customer’s customer; though Parker doubted Armiston knew enough to be really useful.
Still, it seemed to him Armiston wasn’t the sort to plot out a break for himself, particularly from a place filled with loners like this one. He was more of a team player and a follower. Also, he was probably facing nothing more than the warehouse break-in; no California, no extradition, no murder one.
In fact, now that Turley had made him think about the situation, it made sense to Parker that Armiston had already made his deal, whatever it was going to be. He’d had two weeks for it, and nothing he did or said could make things worse for Parker, so why not?
Which meant this meeting was for a different reason. Turley had something else in mind. Parker sat there and waited for it.
Turley let him wait awhile, half-smiling, and then said, “No? Still don’t wanna get involved in game theory?”
“Not right now,” Parker said.
Turley sat back, toying with a pencil on his desk. “You’ve settled in pretty good here,” he said.
It’s coming now, Parker thought. He said, “You don’t settle in here. This is a bus depot.”
“Granted,” Turley said. “That’s perfectly true. In fact, most people in here never really make connections with one another at all.”
This is it, Parker thought. It’s Jelinek who’s started the negotiation, “beginning to make noises like he’d maybe come around,” as Turley had said of Armiston. It was Jelinek who’d passed on his observations to the authorities here, so naturally they were hoping to cut out the middleman, get the story without Jelinek’s help.
“But you,” Turley was going on, “you surprised me, Kasper.”