She was better now, almost all the way back to her usual self. She came along with him, and they hurried through the rest of the job of transferring the coin cases.
After a minute, she said, “I had an idea, about French.”
“Like what?”
“We drive the truck down,” she said, “and we both get out of it and leave the motor running. We make it look as though we don’t realize it, but French can get to the truck. So he’ll jump into it and drive away, thinking he’s got all the loot. Then the police can chase him, and we can get away.”
Parker grinned. “That’s cute,” he said. “But it’s no go.”
“Why not?”
“In the first place, French won’t drive the truck away. He’ll stick with us until we’re completely out of this town. In the second place, Billy’s dead now, so we—”
“Please,” she said, and her face had gone chalky again. “Don’t say anything about any of that.”
He shrugged. “The point is, we need a new fence, somebody to take this stuff off our hands. We could find one without French but it would take time, and we’re better off the sooner we get out from under.”
“But isn’t that dangerous? To keep French around like that. What if he tries to double-cross us?”
“He will. Don’t worry about it.”
She shook her head. “Whatever you say,” she said, and went back to work.
A minute later, as they were finishing up, she said, “I know what you were going to do.”
He looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“If the police came upstairs,” she said. “I know what you were going to do. But you wouldn’t have to. I’d never tell them anything.”
He thought about it a few seconds, and then he nodded. “I’ll remember that,” he said.
Four
FRENCH WAS sitting in the office with the attendant. When Parker came in, French looked up and said, “He was very good.”
“Fine. Put him out. Sit in for him while I bring it down.”
French got to his feet. “Can we move now?”
“We can’t wait anymore. It’s almost four o’clock. All the cops moved on anyway.”
“Good.”
Parker started out of the office, then looked back to say, “Don’t put him out permanently. Just for now.”
“I know. Parker, I’m not a killer. Your boy Lebatard forced my hand back there.”
“All right.”
Parker went back upstairs. The D.C. license plates that had originally been on the truck were now on the Microbus, with its own local plates stashed away inside. The D.C. plates had been brought along on the truck to be slipped back onto it when it was abandoned.
Claire was already in the passenger seat. Parker got behind the wheel and drove slowly down the ramp. The Microbus moved ponderously because of the weight in back, and Parker had to keep the brakes on hard to prevent it from shooting on down the curving ramp.
French came out of the office as they reached the bottom. He opened the door beside Claire, but Parker told him, “Get in back.”
“Right.” He shut the door again, opened the side door instead, and climbed in with all the coin cases. “Good idea to make the switch,” he said. “That truck was bad news.”
Parker drove on out to the street and turned left, back toward the hotel. He took a right turn before getting there, went around Monument Circle, took Indiana northwest, and after half a dozen blocks turned off onto a dark side street and parked at the curb.
French said, “What now?”
“We find a place to hole up.” Parker turned to Claire. “You’re local. Who do you know that we can move in on?”
Claire frowned. “You mean, somebody to trust? I wouldn’t know any—”
“Not to trust. Somebody who won’t be missed if they don’t show up anywhere for a couple days.”
“You don’t mean to kill,” she said, and a touch of panic showed again behind her eyes.
“No, I don’t mean to kill. Killing is something we do only if we don’t have any choice.”
From in back, French said to Claire, “It was Lebatard forced my play back at the hotel. I didn’t—”
“Don’t!” She clutched at Parker’s forearm, saying, “Parker, please, don’t let him talk about it.”
Parker said, “Shut up, French. Let her think.” To Claire he said, “It would be best if it was a neighborhood where we could park this bus at the curb without it looking out of place.”
She was obviously glad at the chance to think about something besides Billy. Nodding, she said, “Someone who won’t be missed. That would be someone who doesn’t work, who— I know! I know just the one.”
“Good. Let’s go there.”
“She’s a divorcee, she—”
“I don’t care what she is. Let’s get off the street.”
Five
THE DOOR was finally opened after Parker had been pounding on it for nearly five minutes. “Do you know what time it is?” the bleached blonde in the pink negligee started to say, and then she saw the gun in Parker’s hand and she tried, too late, to slam the door again.
Parker pushed in. French behind him. Parker said, “You only get one scream.”
She said, “You think I’m crazy?” Her eyes were frightened, her faint double chin was trembling, but she had control of herself.
French said, “It’s twenty-five minutes after four. Time for you to go back to bed.”
“I didn’t know rapists came in pairs,” she said.
“Wrong,” Parker told her. “We’re just going to stay here a while. You be good and we’ll be good.”
Bewilderment began to take the place of fear. She said, “What is this? What are you two?”
“Men in a hurry,” French said. “Turn around and walk back to your bedroom. Slowly.”
She said, “Is this somebody’s idea of a gag? Did Tommy send you birds around?”
Parker stepped over and took her by the arm, not gently. She had to get a touch of roughness to make her understand this was serious. Holding the arm tight, he pushed her around and shoved her down the hall, saying, “Don’t make it tougher on yourself.”
“My arm!” She held the arm with her other hand and looked back over her shoulder at him, and he could see by her eyes that she now understood this wasn’t anybody’s idea of a joke. She walked obediently forward, saying no more, and Parker and French followed her.
Claire had described the apartment layout to them. There were four rooms, all opening to the left off this long white narrow corridor. The living room was first, and then the kitchen, third the bath, and finally the bedroom. A light fixture with a frosted glass globe in the midpoint of the corridor was the only source of illumination at the moment, but when they entered the bedroom Parker felt along the wall beside the door, found a switch, and turned on the overhead light.
The blonde, whose name according to Claire was Mavis Gross, wore a chin patch when in bed; it was lying discarded now on the pillow, where she’d tossed it when she’d gotten up to answer the door. She headed straight for it, tucking it out of sight under the pillow with a quick movement of her hands, and then turned and said, “All right, what now?”
“You lie down. On your face.”
“Listen,” she said. “You two aren’t sadists or anything, are you? I mean, you’re not going to cut me up or anything.”
“You won’t get hurt,” Parker told her. “The law’s on our tail, we’ve got to lie low for a while. You do like you’re told, everything will be okay.” He didn’t like taking the time to make this kind of long-winded explanation, but he knew it was better in the long run. She’d be more docile, less trouble, less likely to get panicky, and that meant they could get done with her sooner.
The explanation helped right away. She lay down on the bed, face down as she’d been ordered, and waited while French went through the bureau drawers for something to tie and gag her with. He finally used stockings to tie her wrists and ankles, and went to the bathroom for adhesive tape to close her mouth.