“In fact,” he said, “you shouldn’t run away from their meetings. You should be present as much as they permit. You should listen to everything they say, you should know just as much of their plans as they do.” He paused, and said, “Do you know why?”
“To help me understand why I’m afraid?”
“That too, of course. But even more than that, you should know precisely what they plan to do, because if the plan is a good one you’ll be spared a great deal of unnecessary worry. Who knows, if you listened to what they have in mind you might find out it’s really a very good and safe plan, and then you’d have one less problem to worry about. Wouldn’t you?”
She smiled at the carpet. “I guess I would.”
“You can talk their plans over with me,” he told her. “Together we’ll try and decide if they can get away with what they intend to do.”
“What if we don’t think they can?” she asked.
“Then we’ll decide why,” he said. “We’ll discuss their ideas, and if we see things that look like flaws you can show them to Stan, either so they’ll make their plan better or so he’ll decide not to go ahead with it.”
“I don’t dare tell Stan,” she said, “that I’ve been talking about all this with you.”
“That’s understandable.”
“He wouldn’t believe I’m perfectly safe telling you anything,” she said. She looked at him, actually held his eyes this time. “Anything at all,” she said.
His smile was gentle, sympathetic. “I’m pleased you have confidence in me,” he said.
4
Fusco pulled the Pontiac into the cinder driveway beside the house. There was no garage, only the driveway, ending at a metal fence. The fence completely enclosed the back yard, which was perfect for Pam. The kid was out there every warm and rainless day, with the whole yard to roam in. A hell of a lot more than the chunk of Canarsie pavement Fusco had had when he was a kid.
Fusco shut the Pontiac door and walked over to the fence. There was Pam, all the way at the other end of the yard, squatting the way little kids do, digging in the dirt back there with a tablespoon Ellen had given her.
Ellen was a good mother, there was no denying it. Yeah, and she’d been a good wife, too. It was him that was off. As a husband he’d been punk, and as a father he was the kind of guy who could show up once a year with a balloon and a box of Cracker Jack and other than that have no idea what the hell he was supposed to do. It was a good thing Pam had a mother like Ellen.
The one thing Fusco couldn’t work out entirely was his feeling about Stan. It seemed to him he ought to be bugged by it one way or another. Stan shacked up with Ellen, but when he thought about it he didn’t feel bugged at all. What the hell, they weren’t married any more. And after three years in the pen, completely separated from her, he had practically no emotional involvement left for Ellen at all any more. Oh, a little, but he thought that was mostly because of the kid, because she was the one in charge of bringing up his daughter.
He liked to look at Pam. He liked to know she was there. But he shouldn’t hang around out here too long now. Without having called to the child or in any way attracted her attention, Fusco moved away from the fence, walked around the Pontiac, and went into the house by the front door.
It was a little after six, and Ellen was in the kitchen making dinner. Parker was sitting on the sofa, looking at Stan’s pictures spread out on the coffee table. Stan wasn’t around.
Parker looked up. “It work out?”
“Beautiful,” Fusco told him. “I sat at a table right next to a window, I could see everything happened at the gate. I had a book open in front of me, my notebook open, it looked like I was copying down stuff I was reading. Nobody paid me any attention at all.”
Stan came in from the bedroom then, saying, “Marty, tomorrow I get my car back. I hate that stinking bus.”
“I was going to be there longer than you,” Fusco reminded him.
“I know, I know.” Stan looked at Parker. “You want to go over his stuff now, or after dinner?”
“Whenever Fusco’s ready,” Parker said.
“Couple minutes,” Fusco said. He dropped his notebook on an end table and went into the bathroom to wash up for dinner. He didn’t know why, but sitting in that library all day had made him stiff; his back creaked when he bent over the sink to wash his face.
When he came out, Parker and Stan had moved to the kitchen table and Ellen was dishing up supper. Parker and Fusco both were taking most of their meals here, but were sleeping elsewhere, Fusco at the residence hotel over Checkers’ Bar & Grill down on Front Street, Parker at the motel in Malone, fifteen miles away. Parker had the Pontiac every night, but always brought it back in the morning in time for Stan to take it to the base. Unless, like this morning, either Parker or Fusco had a use for the car.
Fusco sat down at the table and Ellen put a plate in front of him without a word, meatloaf, green beans, boiled potato. Starving, Fusco dug right in.
When Ellen sat down she said to Fusco, “How was your day?”
“Good,” he told her. “No trouble at all.”
“That’s good,” she said. In the last couple of days she’d gotten a lot better, a lot easier to get along with. She’d been all up in the air about this caper for a long time, but now all that seemed changed. Maybe she’d grown resigned to it, or maybe she’d just gotten interested in how the score was shaping up. Ever since Monday she’d been fine, listening to them talking things over, not bitching about anything. Stan had been understandably more relaxed himself as a result.
Fusco liked it when people were relaxed. He hated trouble in the air, interpersonal hang-ups. It was much better now, the four of them sitting around the kitchen table together, Stan telling funny stories about some kid second lieutenant in his office. Fusco had two helpings of everything.
Afterwards, back in the living room, Fusco reported on his day, giving the names and times of all the commercial vehicles in and out of the South Gate, the quantity of passenger cars at different times of day, what Air Force vehicles used that gate in and out. At the end he said, “There were two trucks went out that gate but didn’t come in, at least not while I was there. One was a garbage truck, green, said S & L Sanitation Service on the side, went through at three-twenty. The other was a Pepsi-Cola truck, went through at four thirty-five. I figure they both must of come in the main gate, went through some kind of set route, and then they go out this way.”
Parker said, “What kind of check do the commercial trucks get?”
“They must have some kind of pass,” Fusco told him. “Every one of them stopped, the driver held something out for the kid on the gate to look at, and then the kid waved him through.”
“In and out both?”
“Right.”
“Nobody got waved through? Not even people going to be the same every day? The gate guards have to know some of those drivers.”
Fusco shook his head. “Everybody stopped. No exceptions.”
Stan told Parker, “There’s some chicken outfit goes around trying to crack security on Air Force bases. They hit here three or four months ago, and the story went all over the base. One of their men came in in a Coke company truck, put a red brick with ‘bomb’ stenciled on it in white in every Coke machine on the base. Then called up the Provost Marshal and told him the whole base had just blown up.”
Parker shook his head. “That’s beautiful. So now they’re bright and alert. Just to make things tougher.”
Fusco said. “We wouldn’t count on them being slack anyway. It doesn’t change anything.” He still had a small fear that Parker would suddenly decide the job was no good after all, and up and walk out. Parker was capable of something like that, if he didn’t like the set-up.