Grofield was coming over with the two rifles, wrinkling his nose. “I counted two-and-seventy stenches, all well defined, and several stinks.”
Parker shrugged. He wasn’t talking; when he opened his mouth he smelled the stink more.
The rear of the wagon was still full of revolvers. Parker picked up four of them by the trigger guards and carried them over to the stream and threw them in. Nobody’d stumble over them here, not too readily.
The guns could have been kept, but it would have been a false economy, and maybe dangerous. Until the next job, none of them would be needing a gun, and certainly not a rifle or chopper. In the meantime, they were difficult to transport, difficult to hide, and a cheap little rap if the law happened to stumble across them. So guns were just part of the overhead, bought before each job and gotten rid of afterward. Sometimes, if the job was done somewhere close to someone like Scofe, the blind man, or Amos Klee, the guns were sold back again at half-price, but only if that was the easiest way to get rid of them.
After they’d all been dumped into the sulphurous stream, Parker and Grofield drove the station wagon over to the truck. Wycza and Salsa and Elkins were there, dragging the bags and trays of the score down to the end of the truck by the open doors. Parker swung the wagon around and backed it up to the rear of the truck, and then he and Grofield got out and started transferring the stuff from truck to wagon. There was another car there, too; when they finished filling the wagon they loaded the rest into the trunk of the other car.
This was the third day. Tonight, if everything was clear, they’d leave this place. The sky was overcast and heavy, had been all day, building up from a lighter cloudiness yesterday. It hadn’t rained yet; with luck, it wouldn’t for a day or two.
Parker and Grofield and Wycza rode up in the station wagon, and the other two in the car. When they passed the mound of dirt covering Paulus’s wreck, Grofield said, “If it rains, the dirt’ll get washed away.”
“You got any ideas?”
“No. I was just saying.”
Parker grunted. What was the sense of talking about a problem if you didn’t have a way to solve it?
They drove up to the top and unloaded the two cars, carrying everything into the shed. Phillips and Littlefield and Wiss and Kerwin came out to help, making it like a bucket brigade, passing the sacks and bags and trays from hand to hand, piling it all up in a corner of the shed. Grofield’s girl sat on an army cot and watched it mount up. In the last few days, sleeping in Grofield’s car, with no fresh clothes to change to, she’d gotten a little bedraggled-looking, but it didn’t really hurt her appearance. She’d gotten, if anything, sexier-looking now. Parker had seen Salsa and a couple of the others looking at her. If they couldn’t all leave here tonight, there might be trouble yet.
When the cars were unloaded, Parker and Wycza put them back in their sheds and put the sides up, then went back to the living shed, where the others had started the count.
They’d taken nothing but money. They’d left the jewelry store stock alone because the only way to make a profit on jewelry was to sell it back to the insurance company covering the store’s loss, and in an operation like this, with so much other stuff taken, it would be too risky to try to get in touch with the insurance companies. As for the money, they’d taken only bills, leaving all sacks of change. Change was too heavy to carry, too bulky for the value, and too awkward to spend.
It took a long time to make the count; and outside, evening became night. The black curtains were put up in front of the windows and the electric lanterns were lit, and they went on counting. Their final total was $294,660.
Next, Grofield made his accounting of the $4,000 front money. He had a list of who had gotten how much and for what, and he had $730 left. He added $7,270 to it from the score to make the $8,000 that was to be paid to the doctor in New York. The $8,000 was put in an unmarked canvas sack and given to Grofield to deliver.
That left $287,390. Phillips got out pencil and paper and did the long division, and it came out $31,932.22. “Plus a fraction,” Phillips told them. “Two two two, it keeps going on.
They worked it out. If each man took $31,900 there’d be $290 left over. Salsa said, “Give it to Grofield for a wedding present.” He bowed and smiled at Grofield’s girl.
That was the way they did it. Salsa presented the girl with the $290, making a little ceremony out of it. Parker watched Grofield watching Salsa, but Salsa didn’t push it, and the tense minute passed.
When the split was finished, Phillips got ready to leave. His cut was still sitting on the card table, not yet claimed. He put on an old black-and-red check hunting jacket and a gray cap, and then he looked exactly like a dairy farmer getting ready to go out and milk the cows. He stuck a pipe in his mouth to complete the picture and went out to get the station wagon, which was dirty enough by now to add to the general picture. He drove off in the wagon, and the rest settled down to wait. Phillips was the best man to try this because he looked the least like a desperado. He was to drive around the general area but not too close to Copper Canyon and see if things had quieted down yet or not. When he came back, he’d tell them if it was safe to leave here. If he didn’t come back, that would be an answer, too.
While he was gone, Parker and Wycza took shovels over to one of the sheds with a dirt floor and dug a deep hole and buried the money sacks and trays in it. The others were gathering up the gear in the living shed, getting ready to move it out if Phillips said everything was okay.
He was gone three hours. It was a little after eleven when he came back, his headlights gleaming ahead of him. He left the wagon in front, came into the shed, and said, “As clear as water. No roadblocks or anything. I heard on the radio where they think we escaped into Canada already.”
“That’s the one direction none of us goes,” said Parker. “They’ll still be watching the border.”
Phillips got his little cardboard suitcase and shoveled his share of the score into it. They all had suitcases or bags of one kind or another for their part of the loot.
They all worked together, moving all the equipment out of the shed and loading it into the station wagon. Army cots, the card table and folding chairs, cartons of rubbish, unused food, everything went into the station wagon, filling it from front to back with just enough room for Phillips to get behind the wheel. He drove it down to put it with the truck, and Wycza took his own car and followed, to drive Phillips back up.
They got their cars out of the sheds and, using as little light as possible, arranged the sheds to look the same as when they’d come here. Sooner or later the truck and station wagon would be found, but they were at the bottom where, because of the fumes, people were less likely to go. Hunters or kids or whatnot might come around these sheds up at the top any time. It might be months before the truck and wagon were found, and even then there was nothing in either to connect them directly with the score. Unless the law had one or the other identified, maybe when they’d driven out.
They left at fifteen-minute intervals, Wycza and Phillips first. Kerwin and Grofield and Grofield’s girl left in the second car, and Wiss and Elkin in the third, and Salsa and Littlefield in the fourth.
Parker was last. He took one more look around, then loaded his luggage into the trunk of the Mercury. It was one o’clock Monday morning. Parker drove out to the highway and turned east.
5
The blonde looked past him and said, “Where’s Edgars?”
“He isn’t coming.” Parker pushed on by her and dropped his suitcase on the floor. The room was stuffy, smelling of woman and alcohol. The windows were closed, the Venetian blinds shut, the drapes pulled. The sun was shining outside, but she had the lights on in here.