“All right, fine. I’ll come in and get it.”
Ormont nodded heavily. “Tomorrow afternoon. Two o’clock. I won’t be having office hours then, just ring the bell.”
“Will do.”
They all got to their feet. Ormont said, “Good to see you again, Parker. The face is a very good job.”
Parker nodded again. There wasn’t anything to say; he’d never been any good at small talk.
Ormont said, “Sorry to keep you waiting the way I did. But we’ve got to keep up appearances. My nurse isn’t in on it.”
“That’s all right.”
They went out. When they were back in the car, Grofield started laughing again. “This office isn’t bugged! Parker, if you had a sense of humor you’d bust a gut right now. This office isn’t bugged! I wouldn’t take a million dollars for that man.”
Parker lit a cigarette and waited for Grofield to get over it.
2
Twelve men made the dining-room uncomfortably full. Edgars had set up folding-chairs for the extras and had distributed beer. Then he and Parker and Paulus had taken turns filling the new men in on the operation. Edgars had run his slides, showing them the map, and also the photos of Raymond Avenue and the banks and the two gates to the plant and the police station and everything else. The room had filled with smoke, even with both windows open.
Handy McKay was the only one selected who hadn’t chosen to come in at least to listen. The rest were all there. Wiss and Kerwin, the other two safe and vault experts, both small, narrow men with an intense and concentrated look. Wiss had brought, to work with him, a rangy fortyish man named Elkins, with whom Parker had worked in the past. Chambers was there, a big awkward-looking hillbilly with a brother in jail for statutory rape. And Pop Phillips, an old guy who looked like Hollywood’s idea of a night watchman. And Littlefield, a stocky man in his fifties who looked as though he made his living selling gold-mine stock. And Salsa, in his late thirties, tall and slender, who looked like a gigolo and used to be one.
When the talk and the slide show was finished, and when Edgars had distributed more beer, Paulus asked if there were any questions. Wiss said, “One. What’s the split?”
“Even,” Paulus told him. “Every man a twelfth.”
“That’s not the regular way.”
Parker said, “This isn’t the regular job. It’s more men than usual, and more things to do.”
Wiss shrugged. “It don’t matter to me. What’s a twelfth of two hundred fifty grand?”
“That’s minimum,” said Edgars, “just a minimum.”
Paulus said, “A little over twenty thousand.”
Wiss said, “Twenty thousand’s all right.”
Littlefield, looking like a man at a board meeting, said, “You got financing yet?”
“Picked it up yesterday,” Grofield told him.
“How much?”
“Four G’s.”
“That’s eight thousand off the top. You couldn’t cut it any closer than that?”
Parker said, “You heard the setup. You got any way to shave it?”
Littlefield shook his head. “I guess not. But eight thousand’s a big bite.”
“Less than seven hundred a man,” Paulus told him.
Elkins, the man Wiss had brought with him, said, “How long you figure to stay out at this mine?”
Wycza laughed. “Till it cools,” he said.
“Maybe three, four days,” Parker told him. “We can stash cars there ahead of time, make our split there.”
Chambers, the hillbilly, stretched his long legs out and said, “What’s the chance of aerial surveillance? What if the state boys throw helio-copters out?”
“Helicopters,” said Paulus.
Edgars said, “There’s sheds there, and trees back a ways from the ravine edge. We can all get under cover.”
Chambers nodded and scratched his chin. “The truck, too?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
Chambers looked at him sideways. “Pretty sure? Pretty sure don’t cut it.”
“If we can’t hide it up top,” Edgars told him, “we can always take it down into the ravine. There’s an overhang on the south side, we can stick it in under there.”
“Just don’t like helio-copters.”
There was silence then. Parker looked around. Kerwin and Pop Phillips and Salsa hadn’t asked anything, but all three of them looked as though they were thinking hard. Parker said “Everybody in?”
Pop Phillips shook his head. “I’m not quite sure, Parker,” he said. “It strikes me as being a pretty ostentatious sort of proposition.”
Kerwin said, “How many safes?”
Edgars answered him. “The two bank vaults, the loan company, the three jewelry stores, maybe ten or twelve other stores that’d be worth it.”
“How you want to do it, noisy or slow?”
Parker looked at Edgars. “Any people live along Raymond Avenue?”
“No, it’s all commercial. There’s no homes less than a block away.”
“So you want juice,” said Kerwin. “That’s a hell of a lot of juice to carry around.”
Paulus said, “Why not drill? Blow the vaults, but drill the others.”
Wiss, the other safe man, said, “Drilling’s just as loud, and slower.”
“You got a hell of a lot of safes there,” Kerwin said.
“But three men doing it,” Parker told him. “You hit the payroll, while Paulus and Wiss start on the banks. Then the three of you take the rest of the town.”
Kerwin nodded. “Maybe so. You got to blow the vaults, no choice there. But I don’t like blowing everything, that’s too much juice to carry around.”
Paulus said, “Drilling doesn’t take long. It might even be, a couple of those safes, all you’ll need is a sledge on the combination.”
Wiss said, “I don’t mind drilling. But you want speed on this job.”
Professionals bickering about their specialty; it was taking them away from where they ought to be. Parker said, “You three work it out later. Any way you want to do it is okay.”
Elkins, Wiss’s partner, said, “What about alarms?”
“What about them?” Edgars asked him. “We’ll have the police station sewed up.”
“I meant bells. You don’t want the main street sounding like New Year’s Eve.”
“Oh. There aren’t any bells.”
“None at all?”
“Every business along Raymond Avenue is hooked up to a burglar alarm system at police headquarters. Trip the alarm in one of the banks or a store, and a bell rings in the police station, and a light comes on to show the man on duty where the break is.”
Elkins nodded, and said, “That’s all right, then.”
Salsa spoke up for the first time. He had a trace of accent in his voice. “How soon do you plan to do this?”
“Couple of weeks,” Parker told him. “Depends how long it takes to get set.”
“What do we do in the meanwhile?”
“We’ll get to that. First, is everybody in? Anybody want to drop out? Phillips?”
Pop Phillips shook his head thoughtfully. “I don’t know,” he said. “This looks all right to the rest of you, eh? I can’t help but feel we’re biting off more than we can chew, but if you’re all convinced it’s feasible, then I imagine that’ll have to be good enough for me.”
“Only if you’re sure,” Parker told him.
“That’s just his way, Parker,” Wycza told him. Phillips had been suggested by Wycza. “If he says he’s in, he’s in. Right, Pop?”
“I rely on your judgment,” Phillips told him. He looked like a rummy night watchman, baggy pants and all, but sounded like a retired schoolteacher. He’d taken two falls in his lifetime and had done a lot of reading in prison.
“I guess we’re all in,” said Paulus.
“All fools in a circle.”
“Shut up, Grofield.”
“You men give me confidence. This is going to be easier than I thought.”
“I only wish Ernie could be here to see this. He hateslittle towns.”
“It’ll be pleasant, I must admit, to be in uniform once again. I sometimes think I missed my calling.”