Wycza said, “All right, that’s even better.”
“It would work,” said Edgars. “It would sure work all right.”
Parker stood looking at the two maps and thinking it over. Twelve men. In at midnight, out by six in the morning. Everything covered, if they’d thought of everything, and if Edgars had his facts straight.
It was a job. It would work. The thing looked like idiocy at first, but it would work.
He nodded. “All right,” he said. “Who’s financing?”
Edgars looked blank. “Financing?”
“This is going to cost,” Parker told him. “Walkie-talkies, the truck, the cars. Transportation out there. Food and water stashed at the hideout ahead of time. Guns. It’ll cost dough to get this thing set up.”
Edgars still looked blank, and now a little worried besides. Paulus explained it to him. “Every job has to be financed,” he said. “Whoever puts up the dough gets it back doubled if the job works out.”
“You mean, one of us?”
Parker shook his head. “No. It’s better to get your financing done by somebody outside the operation. Otherwise the man who put the money in tries to run things.”
“This is all new to me,” Edgars told them.
“I’ll go over to New York tomorrow,” Grofield said. “I’ve got a couple contacts over there. How much you figure?”
Parker frowned, thinking it out. “Four thousand,” he said.
Edgars said, “Four thousand! “
“I told you, it’s going to cost. The truck, the cars, the”
“Why not just steal the truck?”
“You want to leave Copper Canyon in a hot truck on every state trooper’s list for a thousand miles around?”
“You mean, you just go to a used-truck dealer and buy a truck?”
“No, not that either. Then you got problems with registration. There’s outlets where you can pick up a mace pretty cheap.”
Edgars couldn’t seem to get the bewildered look off his face. “A mace? What’s a mace?”
“A car with papers that look good and license plates that look good.”
“But they aren’t really?”
“They aren’t really.”
Edgars sat down, shook his head, and drank some beer. “I didn’t know there was this much to it,” he said. “How many people have to know about this deal?”
“Just the ones in on it. Twelve men.”
“But Grofield’s going to go talk to somebody about financing, and you’re going to buy a stolen truck
.”
“The man that finances doesn’t know what the job is. Just that there’s a job, and it needs so much to get set up, and it should be done by such and such a date.”
“How you going to get a man to put money into a deal without knowing what it is?”
“He relies on the men in the deal. If he knows them, knows they do good work, he takes a chance on them.”
“What about where you buy the truck? You don’t tell him anything either?”
“Why should we?”
Edgars shrugged and spread his hands. “All right,” he said. “You people know what you’re doing.”
“We rather hope so,” said Grofield. He turned to Parker. “Come along with me tomorrow, okay? I know one guy in particular, he knows you. If he sees you’re in he’ll cover us with no trouble.”
“All right.”
“Now,” said Paulus. “About personnel.”
They all sat down at the table again, and Edgars cleared away the maps. Parker said, “We need three jug men. You’re one, Paulus. You work one side of Raymond Avenue, and Wycza can carry for you. Grofield, you’d be a good man for the phone company, keep the ladies from getting too scared.”
Grofield smiled thinly. “You know my boyish charm,” he said. “I’ll be happy to keep the ladies company.”
“Edgars, you ought to be lookout at the town line. You know the town, know the circumstances there. You can figure anything that moves quicker than anybody else.”
Edgars said, “I thought I’d be better off taking care of the police station. I know a little something about police procedure there, I could probably fake it better than anybody else if a phone call came in or anything like that.”
Parker shrugged. “Wherever you think you’d do the most good.”
“Police station.”
“All right.” Parker turned to Paulus. “You got a list of the jobs? Wait a minute, the other two juggers first. I’ll see if I can get Handy McKay. He could get in at the payroll as fast as anybody I know.” He looked around the table. “We need another jugger. A vault man. Any ideas?”
Paulus said, “What about Rohatch? He’s a geech, but he’s good at vaults.”
Grofield shook his head and said, “I heard he died. The liver got him.”
Wycza said, “I worked once or twice with a fella named Kemp. Any of you know him?”
“He’s unreliable,” said Paulus primly. “He’s on the needle. He may even be in jail by now for all I know.”
Wycza said, “All right, forget him. How about Wiss? Little guy, but fast.”
“I’ve worked with him,” said Parker. “While I was having that trouble with the Outfit. He’s a good man.”
“I’ll see can I get in touch with him,” said Wycza.
Edgars said, “What about you, Parker? What’s your job going to be?”
It was Wycza who answered. “He ought to be the loose one, the trouble shooter.”
Edgars nodded. “Fine by me.”
“I’m writing all this down,” said Paulus.
Parker said to him, “What other jobs?”
“You want Wiss to work the other side of Raymond Avenue, right? So you need someone to work with him, like Wycza’s working with me.”
“We’ll let him pick his own sideman. Lookout’s next. We want somebody fast, and cool.”
“Salsa,” said Grofield. “That bastard could hunker down in Times Square and disappear. You’d never see him, and he wouldn’t move for a hundred years if he had to. But when it was time to move, zoom.”
“I know Salsa,” said Parker. “He’s a good man.”
“I’ll get word to him.”
Parker turned to Paulus. “What’s left?”
“Just three. Fire department, gate guard, and plant office. Three men in place.”
“I know the guy for the gate guard,” said Wycza. “Pop Phillips. He wears some kind of uniform just about every job he takes.”
“Good old Phillips,” said Grofield. “Pop Phillips, the sweet old rummy.”
“He don’t drink when he’s on a job,” Wycza told him.
“You’re right, he doesn’t. But he’s got bad breath.”
Parker said, “Shut up, Grofield. Okay, Wycza, get Phillips. Now we need two more.”
“The Chambers brothers,” said Paulus.
Grofield shook his head. “Ernie’s in jail.”
“What the hell for?”
“Statutory. You know how those hillbillies like young meat.”
“What about his brother?”
Grofield shrugged. “He’s as good as the next man.”
“I’ll get in touch with him,” said Paulus, and wrote it down.
Parker said, “If Littlefield’s still working, he’d be a good man for the plant office.”
“I worked with him last year,” said Wycza. “He was still going strong then.”
“Get in touch with him, will you?”
“Right.”
Paulus looked up from his notes. “That’s all,” he said. “Except Wiss’s sideman. He can get him himself.”
“Day after tomorrow,” said Parker. “Here again. Nine o’clock.”
Edgars got to his feet and rubbed his hands together.
“This is going to work out,” he said. “It’s going to work out.”
They left the apartment one at a time. This time Parker waited, to be the last out. When he was alone with Edgars he said, “Something I wanted to ask you.”
“What?”
“What about Owen?”
“Owen? What about him?”
“He’s dead.”
“I know that.” Edgars was frowning at him, but then his face lit up with understanding. “Oh. You mean, what’s my attitude?”