Now she was overdoing it. “Just get moving,” he said.
“You’re hard to get along with, you know that?”
He didn’t say anything at all to that, so after a minute she went on into the other room. Parker found the kitchen, found a bottle of Philadelphia and a glass and a tray of ice cubes, and made himself a drink. He could hear the shower running.
She was available. Some other time, he’d probably do something about it, but not now. He ran to a pattern that way; right after a job he was raring, he couldn’t get enough. Then it would slacken off, gradually, over months, until he didn’t give a damn at all. When he was working, he was an ascetic, not out of choice but just because that’s the way he was built.
He stood in the kitchen doorway, looking at the messy living-room and pulling at his drink. He heard the shower stop, and then she called, “You get a drink?”
“Yes.”
“Make me one?”
He went back to the kitchen and made her one, just whiskey over ice in a glass. He carried the two glasses across the living-room and into a small airless bedroom with a closed Venetian blind over the one window. She was wearing a white terrycloth robe, and a suitcase was open on the double bed. Her hair was wet, plastered to her head, and her face was scrubbed clean of make-up. That way she looked younger and less hard. Without the shrill good looks that cosmetics gave her, she had a plain and somewhat thin face.
“Just put it on the dresser,” she said. “You want to dry my back?”
“You do it.” He turned away.
“Wait a second.”
“Why?”
She was studying him with confusion. “You a good friend of Edgars, or what?”
“What,” he said.
“You always in such a goddam hurry like this?”
“I am this time.”
“I try to be friendly, and you put me down. What’s the matter with you?”
They were going to be traveling halfway across the country together, and she could always louse up Edgars’s effectiveness in the operation some way if she wanted to, so he made the effort again and said, “Maybe it’ll be different afterwards.”
“Afterwards what? You mean after this big secret mission you and charming Billy got on?”
“That’s right.”
She shrugged. “Okay, I’ll dry my own back. It wouldn’t stay wet till then, anyway.”
Parker went back to the living-room, tipped a wicker chair forward to dump newspapers and magazines out of it onto the floor, and sat down. He looked at his watch; six minutes had gone by.
When she came out, dressed in black skirt and white blouse and tan summer coat, carrying a suitcase in each hand, he looked at his watch again. Exactly fifteen minutes. She said, “Well? Do I get the gold star?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure. Gold-star mother. I had a boy in the service, but he died. Here, you’re the gentleman, carry these things. I’ll be right back.” She put the suitcases down and went into the kitchen. She came back carrying the bottle.
5
“There’s the turnoff,” Edgars said. He pointed.
Parker turned the Mercury off the highway and onto the secondary road. The highway had been concrete, three lanes wide, straight as a bowling alley. The secondary road was blacktop, two lanes wide, and curved a lot. But the road-surface was good, they could still make good time.
In the trunk of the car, along with the three road-racer sets from Scofe, were three rifles and eight pistols from Amos Klee. The rifles were a Higgins Model 45, chambered for .30-30, a Ruger .44 carbine, and a Winchester Standard 70, chambered for .30-06. The pistols were mostly S&W, .32 or .38 revolvers. Two boxes on the floor behind the front seat contained ammunition.
Yesterday they’d left the blonde, Jean, in a motel outside Thief River Falls, Minnesota. The name of the city struck Edgars as funny, which is why they picked it. Edgars wrote down the motel phone number, so he could call her from time to time and let her know everything was all right.
One way or another, she’d apparently made up her mind about Parker the first night, back in Jersey City. On the trip out she kept to herself, saying little, sitting on the back seat with her feet on the ammunition boxes, working her way through bottle after bottle. Every time they stopped, Edgars had to go buy her another bottle. “Gold-star mother,” she said to Parker once, and started to cry. But she cried silently and didn’t bother him. She was only about thirty, so the gold-star mother stuff was crap. Probably meant a boy friend killed in the army. Every tramp has an excuse.
But yesterday they’d unloaded her at Thief River Falls. Edgars gave her a bottle and some money, and promised to call every other day. Then he and Parker drove the last stretch to North Dakota. At Madison they picked up the highway that connected with 22A, the road into Copper Canyon. Three miles this side of it they came to the secondary road that headed toward the abandoned strip mine.
Parker glanced at the speedometer. “You said six miles to the dirt road?”
“About that.”
They rode in silence, till Edgars said, “There it is.”
Parker looked again at the speedometer. Six point two. He nodded, and made the turn.
The dirt road was in worse condition than the blacktop road; it hadn’t been kept up since the mining company had moved on. Parker kept it at thirty, and the car jounced badly, but never badly enough to force him to slow down. He checked the rear-view mirror from time to time, but the land here was clay or something and there was practically no dust raised in their wake. That was good.
They ran through a small wood that was choked with underbrush and then they emerged suddenly on a brown flat plain. Just ahead were squat small buildings, some of corrugated metal, some of wood siding. There was a station wagon parked up close to one of the wooden buildings. As Parker drove the Mercury closer a man came into view, walking leisurely toward them. It was Littlefield.
Parker braked to a halt, and Littlefield came around to his side and said, “You made good time. How you like it here?”
“Where do I put the car?”
Littlefield pointed. “That one over there. We ripped some of the wall down on the other side, so we could get cars in.”
Parker nodded, and drove forward again. Seen up close, the buildings were just sheds, each with a single door and one or two windows in each wall. Parker made a circle past the shed Littlefield had pointed out, and swung around to face it. It was one of the corrugated ones, and a couple of pieces of the wall were lying on the ground to one side. Parker drove through the open space and stopped.
There was just a dirt floor inside, and darkness, and dry heat. Parker felt sweat breaking out on his face before he was out of the car. There was a Plymouth already in there; with Parker’s Mercury added the shed was full.
“Christ,” said Edgars. “Hot.”
They went back out to the sunlight and walked around the shed and over to Littlefield, who was standing next to the station wagon, watching them. Littlefield was wearing gray work pants and a flannel shirt and a cowboy hat. He didn’t look like a member of the board of directors any more; out here he looked like a hanging judge.
Littlefield said, “We set this one up for living quarters. You go on in, I’ll stay out here and watch for them.”
“Better get the wagon out of sight.”
“One car don’t make any difference.”
“Get it out of sight anyway.”
Littlefield pursed his lips and went away to get the car out of sight.
Parker and Edgars went into the wooden shed. Inside, it was one large room, and it seemed a little cooler than outside. Folded army cots were stacked in a corner near some cardboard cartons. A folding table and some folding chairs were set up in the middle of the room.
Five men were in the room. Kerwin and Wycza and Salsa and Pop Phillips were sitting around the table, playing poker. Paulus was in the corner, inventorying the contents of the cartons.