But he wasn’t about to explain himself to Lempke, so he just agreed with Lempke’s explanation and then they went on upstairs.
They found Billy sitting at the kitchen table, looking sullen. Parker said, “Where is she?”
“In there,” Billy said, pointing toward the front room. It was clear he’d tried again to establish his position with Claire, and had gotten the same inevitable putdown.
Parker said, “I want your wagon for a day or two.”
Billy shrugged. “I don’t care.”
Parker turned away from him and went on into the living room, where Claire was sitting as self-absorbed as a cat, doing her nails again. Parker said, “We’ve got to take a trip for a day or two.”
She looked up at him. “All of us?”
“You and me. You’ll have to drive the wagon back.”
Lempke had come in, and said, “You going to get the truck?”
“Right.”
“I’ll get in touch with those two boys.”
Billy came to the doorway, looking pained. Eyes on Claire, he said, “You’re going together?”
Claire gave him an ice-cold look, and said nothing.
Billy started two or three different things to say, failed to say any of them, and abruptly turned around and hurried back to the kitchen.
Parker said to Claire, “Don’t push him so hard he falls over.”
“Him,” she said with contempt, and turned to put the top on the nail polish.
“We need him,” Parker said. “Go out to the kitchen and pull the knife out of him.”
“He’ll be all right.”
“Do it anyway.”
She turned around, seemed about to tell Parker to go to hell, thought about it, changed her mind, shrugged in sudden irritability, and went out to the kitchen.
Parker said to Lempke, “Tell her I’m in the car.”
“See you in a while.”
Parker went out and sat behind the wheel. Five minutes later Claire came and slid into the seat beside him. “He’ll be good,” she said.
Parker looked at her. “And you?”
She sighed and nodded. “I’ll be good, too.” She handed him the car keys.
Three
THEY LEFT Indianapolis Friday morning, heading straight east. They made good time on the stretches of Interstate 70 that were done, bad time on Route 40, finished with a long run across the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and arrived in Baltimore at eight-thirty that night. Parker found a motel in Towson, they unpacked and showered and changed, and then they went downtown for dinner.
Over coffee, Claire said, “I counted sentences.”
He’d been thinking about the wall at Diablo Tours. He frowned at her, saying, “What’s that?”
“I counted sentences,” she said. “How many things you said to me since we got into the car this morning. You know what the score is?”
“What is this?” He was irritated at having his thoughts broken into by some sort of game.
“Twelve,” she said. “Twelve times you’ve spoken to me. That works out to about one sentence every fifty minutes.”
He shook his head. “I don’t follow you. What’s the problem?”
“What did you bring me along for? You don’t talk to me, you don’t look at me, you don’t know I’m here.”
“You drive the wagon back,” he said.
“Why not take a plane here? Then you don’t need me at all.”
He shook his head. “The first place we go may not have what I want. The second place is in Trenton. The third place is in Newark. There’s more risk than it’s worth to rent a car, or steal one, just to drive around the East Coast a day or two.”
Bitterly, she said, “We’re back to me not mattering.”
ml He put his hands on the table and studied her. “You want me to do a job,” he said. “Leave me alone so I can do it.”’
“All you were doing today was driving.”
“Do you know how we’re going to get into that bourse room?” he asked her. “Do you know how we’re going to take the goods out of there? Do you know how we’re going to transport the goods away? Do you know how and where we’re going to hole up afterwards? Do you know what we’re going to do before and during and after to see to it we don’t get picked up?”
She seemed startled. “No,” she said. “Of course not. I thought you knew all that.”
“Some of it,” he said. “Some of it I know because I sat down and thought about it. By next Saturday I’ll know the rest of it, because I’ll have done a lot more thinking about it.”
“Oh,” she said.
“I was working today. When I’m not working, give me a call, we’ll sit around and talk to each other.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think about it that way.”
“Now you know,” he said, and waved to the waiter for the check.
Back at the motel, he failed to see her look at him questioningly. The wall at Diablo Tours was bothering him. The other side was fine, doubly fine, with the fake French doors and the maroon drapes, but the Diablo Tours side was open and bare and trouble.
There were twin beds. She took the spread off one of them, turned the covers down, fluffed the pillow. He stood near the door, where he’d stopped after coming into the room. His arms were at his sides, his head tilted forward, his eyes focused on the wooden-armed chair across the way and seeing that smooth cream wall of Diablo Tours. She looked at him, hesitated, and went on into the bathroom. When she came back out, wearing a pale blue nightgown, he was still in the same position.
She said, “Aren’t you going to get undressed?”
“I’m going to walk,” he said, and left the room.
He didn’t really want to walk. All he wanted was to be in a place where he could think. He got into the back seat of the station wagon, rested his elbows on his knees, and thought.
An hour later he went back into the room. The light was out and Claire seemed to be asleep. Parker didn’t switch on any lights. In darkness he found the other bed and got into it. After he was settled, Claire made a noise in her throat and rolled over, but that was all.
Four
INSIDE THE shack a white plastic portable radio was trying to play the big beat; it sounded like a grasshopper fight. Hubcaps were mounted all over the walls. On the desk were papers and wrenches. A thin layer of black automobile grease seemed to be smeared over everything, including the kid sitting at the teletype machine, reading the incoming dealer requests.
The kid hadn’t looked around when Parker stepped in. Parker waited five seconds, then went over and switched off the radio. The kid snapped around, ready to fight the world, righteous and ugly. He was probably nineteen and a half. He shouted, over the silence, “Whatcha think you’re doin’?”
“I want to see Buster.”
“You leave that goddam radio alone,” the kid said. He got to his feet and came hustling over toward it.
Parker said, “Don’t do it.”
The kid couldn’t believe it. He filled out his black T-shirt just like the pictures in the muscle ads; nobody should kick sand in his face. But he was surprised enough to look at Parker before doing anything, and what he saw didn’t reassure him. Leaving the radio off, he said, “Buster ain’t here. He went surfin’.”
“I called this morning, kid, he expects me. Go get him.”
“You talked to Buster?”
“Get him.”
The kid looked at the radio, at Parker, out the doorway at the wagon sitting there in the sunlight. Claire was in there on the passenger side. She had the windows rolled up because of Buster’s Dobermans, even though Parker had told her they wouldn’t attack unless ordered. Both dogs were pacing back and forth around the wagon, heads down, nervous and waiting.
The kid shrugged and said, “I can’t leave here. I got to watch things in here. Buster’ll be back in a little while.”
“One,” Parker said. “Two.”
The kid didn’t know what number was the top. He went out the door before Parker could say three.