How did they know, that’s what bothered him, how did these people always know he’d be open to their suggestions, weak enough to agree, to lend his respectable façade to their schemes. He’d studied his face in the bathroom mirror more than once, and as far as he could see he didn’t look shady. And he’d heard tape recordings of his voice; and he didn’t sound shady. So how did they know?
They knew, that’s all. As a doctor, he could get hold of drugs, especially the new chemicals, the psychedelics. As a doctor specializing in psychoanalysis, his cover was perfect for the people who needed someone to act as a source of supply and a base for distribution. And if one of the shuffling bearded oddballs who’d come to him for the yellow capsules hadn’t turned out to be a policeman, one of the New York City Police Department undercover narcotics men, he might still be there, in New York City, with the lucrative practice and the even more lucrative sideline, instead of here in this sinkhole.
He’d gotten out of it in New York, too, though he’d spent nine days in jail, in the Tombs, and had come out of it stripped of his credentials and legal permission to operate either as a doctor or an analyst. But how else could he made a living? That was why he’d moved up to this godforsaken area, where a man’s bona fides were unlikely to be very closely scrutinized, but where the number of patients — and their ability to pay — was depressingly low.
And then Nolan had showed up. One of the buyers back in New York, Nolan had known everything about Dr. Godden’s connection with the gang, and now here he was in Monequois, demanding money as the price of his silence. How Nolan had found him Dr. Godden didn’t know, any more than he had known at first where he could possibly find the money to pay him.
But hard on the heels of Nolan had come the sudden revelation from Ellen Fusco, and all at once it had seemed to Dr. Godden that there was a way out after all, that he could see daylight at the end of the tunnel.
What he would do after tonight he himself wasn’t entirely sure. Would he merely pay off Nolan and all his outstanding debts, then tuck the rest away for the next crisis? Or would he pack his bags and leave the whole mess, start again somewhere else under another name, leave wives and children and mistresses and blackmailer and all? If that was what he wanted, there’d be money enough. Ralph and Roger, not having been told the true scope of the affair, were content to be receiving ten thousand dollars each. That meant almost the whole thing for Dr. Godden, estimated by Ellen Fusco at four hundred thousand dollars.
Four hundred thousand dollars. To tackle people like Parker and Fusco and Devers and the others Ellen had told him about, to risk the precarious balance he now had, to take a chance on using these two poor incompetents, it was all worth it for four hundred thousand dollars.
He had thought about it often. He well knew the danger in seeking the Holy Grail, he’d seen it frequently enough in his patients. “If only X happens, everything will be all right.” The belief in the easy one-shot panacea more frequently led to disaster than salvation.
So he couldn’t allow himself to think of it in all-encompassing terms. Even with the four hundred thousand in his hands, he would still be Fred Godden, Dr. Fred Godden, with a shady past and a penny-ante practice, with a wife and an ex-wife and a mistress and a certain bleak awareness of his own tendency toward erratic behavior when it came to women, and with a history of bad errors of judgment leading him into trouble. Nothing would change after tonight except his financial status. He would be wealthy, but he would still be the same man.
Knowing that, being sure not to forget it, he had studied the proposition, the possibilities, the dangers, the rewards, and at last he had made up his mind. An opportunity like this wouldn’t be coming his way twice. He’d be a fool to let this one slip by.
Tonight.
Dr. Godden looked at Roger and Ralph. His mob. They would have to do.
He took a deep breath, “I taped Mrs Fusco’s session just now,” he said. “She’s given us their plans from beginning to end. We’ll listen to them first, and then go over our own plans once more.”
Ralph and Roger looked alert, Dr. Godden pressed the switch and the voice of Ellen Fusco, faintly metallic, began once more to drone.
Three
1
The Phone rang. Parker awoke at once, put the receiver to his ear, and the operator said, “Eleven o’clock, Mr Lynch.”
“Thank you.” It was Wednesday. The heist was tonight.
Parker got out of bed and padded nude to the bathroom. He showered and shaved, then dressed in black rubber-soled oxford shoes, black trousers, white shirt open at the collar. He left the room, locked it after him, and went across the highway to the diner where he’d had breakfast every day of his stay here. He knew now what was safe to order and what was not.
The waitress knew him, too. She came over smiling when he sat down, saying, “Good morning, Mr Lynch. Getting a late start this morning.”
“Leaving today,” he said. He would have preferred a waitress who minded her own business, but this was a cheery gregarious stocky woman and there was nothing to be done about it. Rather than have her remember him specifically as the customer who’d been surly to her, he’d maintained a small conversation with her every day, allowing himself to be just another salesman passing through, spending a couple of weeks at the motel across the way. He would be much less specific in her mind then, and if the law did come around in a day or two her description of him would be that much more vague.
Now, “Sorry to lose you,” she said. “What’ll it be this morning?”
He ordered scrambled eggs, bacon, orange juice, black coffee, then sat and looked out the window at the trucks going by on the highway. He ate his food when it came, left an ordinary tip, paid the cashier at the door, and walked back across the road to the motel.
He went into the motel office and the woman at the desk looked at him brightly. “Yes, sir?”
“I’m checking out.”
“Yes, sir. What room number, please?”
“Eleven.”
“Do you have your key?”
“I’ll leave it in the room. My luggage is still there.”
“Very good.”
She opened a file drawer and got out his bill. “Any charges this morning? Phone calls, anything like that?”
“No.”
“Very good.”
She slid the bill across the counter to him. One hundred forty dollars. He took out his wallet, began to slide some of Norman Berridge’s bills on to the desk.
“Cash?” she said in surprise.
This was a bad moment, and he knew it, but there was no way around it. To skip out on the bill would have the cops looking for him a day early. Have them looking for Devers’ Pontiac, which had been here often enough to be known in the last three weeks. But he couldn’t carry credit cards or a checkbook, at least not legitimately, and it was bad business to kite checks in the neighborhood of a score. Got the law on your trail too soon and too easy. So he was going to have to pay this motel bill, and the only way to do it was with cash.
He shrugged at the woman’s surprise, therefore, and said, “That’s what the company accountant says we have to do from now on. It’s something to do with taxes. I liked it better the old way. Hand over an American Express card and that’s it.”
“You’ll want a receipt,” she said.
“It’s the only way I get reimbursed,” he said.