Would French clear out, or would he stay a few minutes in the tour office? It depended how rattled Lebatard had made him, and Parker didn’t want to take the chance. There was no safe way to go through the wall.
Which left the other route, through the hotel. They were alerted out there now anyway, because of Claire’s scream, so they’d have to be contended with no matter which way Parker went out, but it was still a bad alternative. Out, and down the stairs, and through the lobby, and onto the street.
Parker wasted no time thinking about it. He looked around, saw the situation, and moved. He grabbed Claire by the arm and said, “Come on. You brought me in, you can bring me out.”
She came along as docile as a zombie. After the one scream she’d gone silent, her face chalk-white, and Parker doubted there was any comprehension at all behind those eyes right now.
Not that he cared. To do her part she wouldn’t have to think.
There was already pounding at the double doors, and a voice calling. Parker dragged Claire along behind him into the security room, shut the intervening door, and went over to the hall door. “When I open this,” he said, “you walk out there. Move when I push, stop when I pull.”
She didn’t respond, but he thought she probably had the idea. He opened the door, stepped behind Claire, grabbed a handful of her sweater at the small of her back, and pushed slightly. She walked.
Two Pinkerton men were to the left, hammering on the ballroom doors. Another Pink was at the far end of the mezzanine, having come out of the display room down there to see what was going on.
Parker shouted, “Everybody keep cool!” He started backing away toward the stairs, keeping Claire in front of him. She moved with him, doll-like and obedient.
One of the Pinks at the door started a dive to the right, going for his holstered-gun at the same time. Parker fired, and he ended the dive in a heap and didn’t move. Claire froze for just a second at the sound of the shot, but when Parker tugged at her she began to move again.
The other two guards put their hands up over their heads and left them there. Their faces looked cold and white, and Parker could feel the heat of their frustration, but they both had sense enough not to make him kill them.
Parker reached the stairs, and backed down slowly until both guards were just barely still in sight. Then he grabbed Claire by the wrist and went down the rest of the way at a dead run, she teetering and flailing along behind him.
In the lobby there was no one but the night clerk, standing behind his desk with his hands high in the air. But now both guards were at the railing up above, and as Parker angled away from the stairs and headed toward the doors they both opened up. But Claire was too close to him, they were both firing out in front or over his head, trying to rattle him and make him break free of Claire so they could have a good shot at him. He kept her close in, moved fast, went through the doors, and hit the street. To his right Jack French was in the cab of the fake power-and-light company truck grinding the starter.
Parker kept running, straight at the truck. French was too hurried and too harried to see him until he was right there, at the cab. The engine was just kicking over when Parker yanked open the passenger door and shoved Claire ahead of him up into the seat.
French turned his head and went reaching inside his coat, but Parker showed him his own gun and said, “Later. Get us out of here.”
French put his hands back on wheel and stick shift, and the truck moved cumbersomely forward. French said, “Where?”
“Left at the corner.”
That was no direction at all, except away from downtown, but Parker needed a second or two to think, and French might as well keep them moving along in the meantime.
The trouble was they had nothing set up for a situation like this. They were supposed to have leisure to take the truck to Lebatard’s house, more leisure to unload it, more leisure to drive it away someplace else and abandon it and go back to Lebatard’s house to arrange the divvy.
This way they were in every kind of trouble. The cops would have been called already, would be getting to the hotel in two or three minutes. Somebody would have to have seen them taking off in this orange truck. They couldn’t make any time in it, they couldn’t stay on the street with it, they didn’t have any place to stash it.
French had made the left. Parker looked ahead, and down the empty bright avenue he saw a neon sign saying PARK. “Head for that,” he said. “The parking garage.”
“Billy went for his hardware,” French said, as though apologizing.
“I figured.”
“It was supposed to be quiet.”
“I know.”
French looked at him past Claire. “I didn’t know till today you were back in,” he said. “Then it was too late. I promised 1 ‘ I’d,Ť delivery on this stuff.”
French had to be really rattled to do so much talking. Parker said, “Later. When we’re clear.”
French nodded. “Right,” he said, and faced front again.
Claire was still being a zombie, sitting there between them, unblinking, gazing out the windshield.
The parking garage was three stories high. French drove the truck inside and stopped and Parker said, “I’ll cool the attendant. Put it out of sight upstairs, leave Claire in it, come down empty-handed.”
French said, “We can work something out.”
Parker got out of the cab and walked around the back of the truck. The attendant was coming out of his office, looking puzzled, and when he saw the gun in Parker’s hand he stopped where he was, snapped to attention like an Army private, looked straight ahead, and said, “Take it all. I only work here, I ain’t involved.” He was about twenty, thin and sandy-haired, with a huge Adam’s apple that kept bobbing as he stood there staring forward.
The truck pulled away up the ramp and Parker said, “Back into the office.”
The attendant started walking backwards, still with his arms at his sides and his eyes faced front.
Parker said, “Unbrace, kid. Turn around and walk in there and sit down.”
The attendant did what he was told, and Parker stood in front of his desk and said, “My friends and I are going to stay here a while. I’ll have an eye on you. If cops come around, nobody’s here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If cops come around and you spill, you’ll get the first bullet.”
The attendant looked very earnest and very scared. “I won’t spill, sir,” he said.
“You can spill,” Parker told him, “by looking scared.”
“I am scared, sir.”
Parker nodded. “That’s what you’re supposed to be,” he said. “But you’re not supposed to show it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If the cops figure out I’m here, you get the first bullet. Whether you let them know on purpose or not.”
The attendant nodded. “Yes, sir. I understand, sir.”
“Good.”
Parker went back out of the office and shut the door. Through the glass he could see the attendant sitting there, practicing how not to look scared. He needed more practice.
Ahead was the ramp. To the left was a wide fire door leading to concrete stairs. Parker went up these at a run, came cautiously through the door on the second floor, and saw French ahead of him, walking down the ramp. French didn’t have anything in his hands and wasn’t trying to get down to the first floor unseen.
Parker called, “French!”
French turned, halfway down the ramp, saw Parker, and spread his hands. “I’m clean,” he said.