There was one possibility, down to the right, closer to the fountain. Parker went that way, moving fast, keeping low, keeping to the edge of the path. Ahead of him was another outdoor water ride like the fake jungle over in Voodoo Island, this one a miniature mock-up of San Francisco Bay, dominated by a larger-than-scale Alcatraz Island. It was a gunboat ride, in which the customers during the summer could watch escaping prisoner dolls swimming to freedom, see smugglers, and be “almost” crushed by collapsing Golden Gate Bridge, all the while riding in flat-bottomed boats that looked like no gunboats ever seen anywhere in the world.
The ticket booth and entrance were on this side, with the bulk of the Alcatraz mock-up between Parker and the fountain. He went out onto the wooden dock area and saw the boats tied up in a small service area to his left. He went over and released one of the boats.
There were two streams meandering through Fun Island, both connected to the moat enclosing the park, one traveling through the back half of the park and the other through the front half. The water in this gunboat-ride area also flowed into Treasure Island, where it supported the pirate ship, into New York Island, where it became the Coney Island area’s Atlantic Ocean, and back the other way into Hawaii, where it served the submarine ride. Between these ride areas it was fairly narrow but not too winding, and where it crossed from one area into another, there was a wooden footbridge along the main radial path.
There was increasing commotion back at the wax museum now. It would take them a while to work their way through that building and convince themselves he was none of the figures in there, but then they’d check out the rest of the Alcatraz area, working close and complete, so by then he’d better be somewhere else.
There was a kind of picket fence arrangement across the stream where it came into the gunboat-ride area. Parker tried lifting this, but for some reason it was padlocked and he couldn’t get it up, so what he finally did was drag one of the boats up onto the wooden dock. It was heavy, too heavy to lift but not too heavy to pull. He dragged it around the picket fence and then shoved it into the water again on the other side, climbing in after it.
The stream was about two feet below the general level of the land, so that one would have to be pretty close to it to see the boat in it. Parker crouched on the floor in the front of the boat, keeping his head below ground-level, and pushed off.
He’d chosen the same direction as the slow natural movement of the stream, so that when the impetus of his first push was gone, the boat still kept moving very slowly along. The stream curved very gradually to the right, so he had to keep pushing away from the left bank, and slowly they left the gunboat ride behind and approached the curved wooden footbridge marking the border between Alcatraz and Hawaii. That was the path being watched by one of Lozini’s men. Once on the other side of it, he would be out of the territory where they expected to find him.
The boat was just sliding under the bridge when he heard people coming, hurrying up from the area of the fountain. The boat was completely under the bridge now, and Parker reached up to one of the support beams and held himself where he was. Until they’d gone by, he couldn’t move any farther.
But they didn’t go by. Footsteps thudded on the bridge, and stopped, and a voice said, “Right here. The bridge is raised up a little, you can see better.”
“Yeah, and he can see me better, too.”
“Don’t be stupid. Before he could get close enough to do you anything, you could see him. Look around. How could he get near you?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“You got a better gig than the guys in the wax museum. You want to switch with one of them?”
“Okay, I’m happy here.”
“Good boy. See you later.”
Footsteps went off the bridge. A receding voice said, “Remember. You see him, you fire once.”
A voice right overhead said, “Right.”
Parker listened. The guy was standing up there. He was moving back and forth a little, Parker could see him vaguely through the cracks between the boards. He heard him light a cigarette, using a lighter, heard the snap of the lighter shutting again.
He couldn’t move. If he let the boat drift out from under the bridge, toward the Hawaiian submarine ride, the guy on the bridge would have to see him. If he killed the guy on the bridge, other people would see that. There was nothing to do but wait.
It was about ten minutes. From time to time he heard orders shouted back and forth, far away, but nobody came close to the bridge. The guy up there, restless, kept walking back and forth and chain-smoking. He’d work on a cigarette for only a minute or two, then flip it into the water. Then right away Parker would hear the lighter grind again, and snap shut, and then more pacing, and then another long butt snapped into the water. All on the same side, the Alcatraz side, which was good. It wouldn’t be good to have him comparing the look of the stream on both sides of the bridge, because on the Alcatraz side most of the skim ice on the surface had been broken up by the passage of the boat, while on the Hawaii side the ice was still intact. A thoughtful man, looking at the stream on both sides, might figure it out that there had to be a boat underneath the bridge. But the guy up there” stayed mostly on the Alcatraz side. Besides, he acted more bored and sullen than thoughtful.
Parker was just beginning to wonder if maybe he shouldn’t take some action after all — it might be possible to float out on the Hawaii side and shoot the lookout down, with no one else knowing exactly where the shot came from — when he heard the grinding of a small gasoline engine. It was the cart Lozini was riding around in, and it came roaring up and clattered onto the bridge and stopped. Parker heard Lozini shout over the engine sound, “What the hell are you doing over here?”
“March told me to stay here on account of — “
“March told you! What the hell does March know? I don’t want that son of a bitch goin through behind you when you’re lookin the other way. Get back down by the fountain and keep your eyes open.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Lozini.”
“How do we know he didn’t get through down this side already?”
“I been watching both ways, Mr. Lozini. I swear he didn’t get through.”
Lozini’s answer was softer, and Parker couldn’t make out the words, but he was apparently mollified. Then the cart roared away again, headed toward the wax museum, and Parker heard footsteps go off the bridge toward the fountain.
He waited another couple of minutes, to be sure everybody was far enough away, and then pushed off again. The boat drifted out into the Hawaii section, and now the stream ran straight at first and then curved to the left, and came to the submarine ride.
This one was easier to get through, the boat gliding past the submarines to another of those picket fences. But this time the fence wasn’t locked, and when Parker pulled on the rope hanging beside it, the fence lifted out of the way and he floated on through and lowered the fence again behind him.
Now the stream was barely wider than the boat, but it was a short distance to the moat running along just inside the fence. Parker turned the boat to the right when he reached the moat, but there was no movement to the water here and he had to pull the boat along, crouching on the bottom and reaching out to the right-hand bank and hauling it through the water.
He moved slowly, but finally he got to the other stream, the one crossing the front half of the park, and turned into it. The movement of the water was against him now, so he had to pull harder, dragging the boat along, its momentum ending quickly after each heave.
He was now in Pleasure island, and the stream opened into a large concrete-sided pool. Heavy mesh screens guarded both ends of the pool, but they were raised now. In the summer the pool was full of porpoises, but now it was empty.