“So they stop me. I’m clean.”
“Finance office clerk. Driving around four o’clock in the morning. No destination.”
Parker added, “If they pick you up on the way back, you won’t be clean. Not with Fusco in the car.”
Devers was getting frantic. “God damn it, there’s got to be some way! What the hell am I going to do?”
“You’re going to find the registration to Godden’s car,” Parker told him. “In case you get stopped. Then you’re going to take his car and go over to the house and get Ellen and the kid. If she doesn’t want to come with you, you’ll kill her.”
“I can’t—”
“Then call us and tell us you can’t and give us a shot at making a run for it.”
Devers looked from Parker to Webb to Parker. “All right,” he said. “I get her. Then what?”
“You bring her here. If the law finds her, she’ll tell them about Godden, and we need Godden clean so we can hole up here. So she has to come here, too.”
“How long do we hole up here?”
“Two or three days. Till the first heat lets up.”
Devers made an angry bitter gesture. “Then what do I do?”
“Pick a new name for yourself, buddy,” Webb told him. “And keep your head down. And hope for the best.”
“You mean be on the run the rest of my life.”
Webb grinned, “Like in the movies? Sleeping in hay-lofts, riding in freight cars, that what you mean?” He shook his head. “I been wanted under my own name for fifteen years. Parker here, he’s wanted under more names than he can remember. We both been on the run, we’re always on the run. It’s a nice easy run if you know how to take it.”
Devers looked at Parker. He was seeing things a new way. “You were in Puerto Rico,” he said.
Webb spread his hands. “There, you see? On the run, at the Hilton hotel.”
7
When the two plainclothesmen left, Parker came out of the kitchen and made a show of putting his revolver away. “That was nice,” he said.
Godden was sweating, the adhesive bandage on his forehead making a dull tan patch against the gleaming pale skin. “I wouldn’t want to go through that twice,” he said. “Not for a million dollars.”
Webb and Devers came in from the other side. “You did it for a hundred G,” Webb said, “and you don’t even get that.”
Devers didn’t say anything. He was resigned now to the impossibility of his going back, but he hated Godden for having caused it. He stood there and glared at Godden, his fists clenched at his sides.
Godden nervously touched his bandage. “Do you think they believed me about this?”
“They believed everything,” Parker told him. “You did good.”
The story Parker had given him to tell tied together neatly enough, being grounded sufficiently in truth. When the phone had rung at ten minutes to seven this morning it was Parker who’d answered it, saying he was Godden. It was a reporter on the line, representing one of the wire services and phoning from Syracuse. Parker, being Godden, told him the news about the Roger St. Cloud affair was a complete surprise to him, and of course he wouldn’t be able to make a statement until he’d talked to the police.
Then Parker had roused Godden and had him phone the police and say he’d just been called by a reporter saying Roger St. Cloud had run amok. When the man at the other end substantiated the story, Godden volunteered to tell what he could about St. Cloud’s motives and state of mind, explaining he’d prefer the police to come to him because he’d fallen in getting out of bed to answer the reporter’s call, he’d cut his head, and he didn’t yet know how serious it was. Also, this news about a patient of his had shaken him badly.
The cop was sympathetic, and said a couple of men would be around sometime in the morning. They’d arrived at ten-fifteen, two plainclothesmen who already knew about the head injury, who were polite and deferential, and who obviously didn’t suspect Dr. Fred Godden of anything. But why should they?
Now it was quarter to eleven, and in the half-hour they’d been here the two cops had shown nothing but interest in Godden’s monologue on Roger St. Cloud. Godden had been nervous at first, but the police would have other explanations for that, and when he’d warmed into his description of Roger the nervousness vanished. He was, after all, engaging in shoptalk.
The plainclothesmen hadn’t said anything about Roger being involved in last night’s robbery at the air base, but the two events had been linked in the radio news since the nine o’clock broadcast. Nor had the radio said anything about the bodies up at the lodge yet, but the nine-thirty news had reported the finding of the bus. “Some of the bandits may have crossed the border into Canada under cover of darkness.”
They should be safe now, at least for a while. Godden had already called those of his patients he was to have seen that day and the next, telling them that under the circumstances naturally he wouldn’t be in the office till next week. After a few more reporters had called — the criminal’s analyst having replaced the criminal’s clergyman as a source of sidelight stories — there was nothing unusual in Godden leaving his phone off the hook.
The last item was Godden’s wife. Parker said, “Call your wife now. She’ll want to come back here, but tell her no. Tell her you’ll be coming along Friday as planned, unless the police want to talk to you again, and if they do you’ll be there Saturday. Tell her not to try calling you back because reporters have been bothering you and you aren’t answering the phone.”
“All right,” Godden said. He made the call, did more listening than talking, and finally got across all of the message that Parker wanted. When he hung up he looked uncertainly at Parker and said, “There’s another call I should make.”
“Who?”
“There’s a young lady. I would have seen her tonight.”
“Here?”
“No, her place.”
“Call her. Devers, get on the kitchen extension. If the woman doesn’t sound right, let me know.”
“Right.” Devers went out to the kitchen on the double, and it was clear he hoped Godden was trying something cute.
But Godden wasn’t. He called his young lady, explained that the Roger St. Cloud business had loused everything up, and promised to see her next week, Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest.
When he was done with that call, and Devers had come back into the living room to give a disgusted shake of the head, Parker said, “All right. Back to your room.”
Godden got to his feet, trying a smile. “You don’t have to tie me up again, you know,” he said. “You can trust me. I want to get clear of this mess just as much as you do.”
“You bastard,” Devers said.
Godden turned to him, spreading his hands. “I’m sorry for what’s happened to you, believe me I am. I didn’t want any of this. I didn’t want anybody dead, anybody ruined. The worst I wanted was to take your money away.”
“You rotten bastard,” Devers said.
Parker said, “That’s all. Godden, go upstairs. Webb, take him. Devers, take a look at your woman.”
Devers grimaced. “My woman,” he said in disgust, and turned away, and walked out of the room.
Ellen and her baby were being kept in the room once occupied by Godden’s children. According to Devers, she hadn’t wanted to come with him at first when he’d gone for her last night, she’d been sure she could bluff it out with the police. But when he’d assured her it was all up for them all, that being the ex-wife of one of the heistmen and at the same time shacked up with a finance office clerk from the air base left her in no position to try a bluff with the law, and that her choice was between coming with him or being silenced for ever as dangerous to the ones who were left, she’d reluctantly seen the light. Then she’d wanted to do a lot of packing, but Devers had cut that short, and she’d arrived with her daughter and one hastily stuffed overnight case.