Chapter 6

THE GREEN ROSE was oblong, and very dim. A trough high around the wall contained indirect lighting, alternate red and green lengths of fluorescent tubes. Some of the mechanical beer and whisky display ads on the bar back were lighted, and there was a light over the cash register, but the rest of the place was like a tomb.

Coming in the door, the dark mahogany bar was to the left, extending back to the wall projection for the rest rooms. Booths with dark red leather seats and black formica on the tables were on the right. Parker walked down the line between the bar and the booths to the back, where there was a bigger booth across from the rest rooms. They were there, all three of them.

Skimm and Alma sat facing the front of the bar, with Alma on the outside, so she'd been to the head already. They both had beer in front of them, a glass and a thin bottle and a glass and a thin bottle, and Alma's glass and bottle were almost empty. Handy McKay was sitting on the other side, half-turned, with his back against the wall.

He was long and thin and made of gristle, and his stiff dark hair was grey over the ears. He lipped his cigarettes so badly the brown tobacco showed through the paper for half an inch, and he used wooden matches, the little ones, not the big kitchen matches. Whenever he got cigarettes from a machine, he threw the pack of paper matches away. Between cigarettes, he poked at his teeth with the plain end of one of the wooden matches.

"Hello, Handy. Move your knee."

Handy turned his head slowly and raided an eyebrow at Skimm. Skimm grinned, though otherwise he was acting nervous. "That's Parker."

"Son of a bitch," said Handy thoughtfully. He moved his knee and watched Parker sit down. "Did a good job on you," he said.

"Yeah."

Alma said suddenly, "You were in the diner Saturday." Her voice was harsh, but low.

Parker looked at her. "That's right."

Skimm was very nervous. "Parker, this is Alma. Alma, Parker." He looked at them both as though he wanted to say, "Don't fight."

Alma turned to Skimm, "We need more beer. How come he was in the diner Saturday?"

"Looking it over," said Skimm. "Here comes the bartender now. He had to look the set-up over first, ain't that right, Parker?"

Parker nodded. Skimm ordered four more bottles of Bud and the bartender went away.

"It's a good set-up," Parker said.

"Like I told you," Skimm answered. He sounded relieved, but still nervous.

"You figure just the four of us, Parker?"

"It's a small pie, Handy," Parker replied.

"I want to talk about that," Alma said. She seemed ready for a fight about anything.

"Not here," Parker said.

There was a cigarette in the ashtray that had been lipped very badly. Handy picked it up and said, "I haven't seen you in a while, Parker."

"Few years," Parker answered.

"What do you hear from Stanton?"

"He went to jail a couple years ago. Out in Indiana."

Handy puffed thoughtfully on his cigarette, holding it from force of habit in his cupped fingers so the light wouldn't show. "How'd it happen?"

"They shot his gas tank as he pulled away from the bank. It didn't blow, but it drained out before he could make the switch. He tried walking to the other car, and they picked him up.

Three of them, Stanton and Beak Weiss and one other guy."

Handy shook his head. "Bad."

"It wouldn't of happened," Parker said quietly, "but their driver ditched while they were in the bank. A kid, new at the game." He glanced at Skimm, and back to Handy. "That held them up, having to start the car."

"You got to be careful who you work with," Handy said. He put his cigarette out, bending the lipped end on to the ember, making a small fizzing sound.

The bartender brought the new round and Skimm paid. He was more nervous than ever. They waited while he counted out change and added a bill. The bartender scooped it off the formica and went away, and Skimm said, bright and nervous, "This is a nice place, Parker. You picked a nice place." Beside him, Alma was glaring, still ready for the fight.

They sat there and drank the beer, and Parker and Handy talked about people they knew. Skimm sat stiff, elbows on the table, not quite bouncing up and down, with a nervous grin on his face. He wanted to talk with them, because he knew most of the same people, but he didn't want Alma to feel left out, so he didn't talk, just smiled and grinned and looked nervous.

When they finished the beer, Parker said to Skimm, "You got a place in town?"

"In Irvington. It ain't far."

"We'll go there."

They went outside to the sidewalk and Parker said, "You got a car?"

Alma answered. "Over there, the green Dodge."

"I'll follow you." Parker turned to Handy. "You got a car?"

"No."

"Ride along with me."

They walked down the street. Parker's car was down at the end of the block, facing the wrong way. They got in, and he made a U-turn and waited till the green Dodge passed him. Alma was driving. They could see her mouth moving, angry talk, and Skimm looking worried. Parker pulled out behind the Dodge and followed it to Springfield Avenue and down Springfield towards Irvington.

When they'd ridden a few blocks, Handy said, "She's going to try a cross."…› "I know that."

Handy nodded. "I figured you did." He pulled a box of matches out of his pocket, took one of the matches, and poked at his teeth with it. He held the box in his other hand and shook it a little, to make the matches rattle inside. "So then what?"

"We split two ways," Parker said.

Handy grunted. "What about Skimm?"

"Either she's talked him over, or she figures to bump him."

"Why not do it without her?"

"She's the finger, she could finger us. Besides, we need her in the set-up. She blinds one side during the job."

Handy nodded, and kept poking at his teeth. "You got the cross figured?"

Parker nodded. "I'll take you over the route."

They rode a while longer, and Handy said, "You nervous, Parker?"

"There's too much to watch. I don't like this Alma thing. If it gets worse, I pull out."

"I'll go with you."

They followed the green Dodge when it turned off Springfield Avenue. They drove along secondary streets a while. Handy lit a new cigarette, using the match he'd been poking against his teeth. "I been meaning to ask you about something."

When he didn't go on. Parker said, "What?"

"I heard you was dead. I heard your wife done it. Then Skimm told me you done your wife in, and the syndicate was after you."

"Outfit," said Parker.

"What?"

"They call it the Outfit. I was in an operation that went sour. This guy Mal, you wouldn't know him, he put Lynn in a squeeze. Either she dropped me or he'd drop her. She did her best, and this guy Mal thought it was good enough. Then he went to New York and used my share to pay off an old debt to the Outfit. They took him on in some kind of job, and when I got on my feet I settled him and got my money back from the Outfit."

Handy grunted again. It was the way he laughed. "They didn't like it much, huh?"

"I had to louse up their business day a little bit."

"What about your wife? Lynn. I heard you settled with her, too."

Parker shook his head. "I wanted to, but I didn't. When she found she hadn't done me, she killed herself."

Handy grunted. "Saved you the trouble, huh?"

Parker shrugged. He'd wanted to kill her, to even things, but when he'd seen her he'd known he couldn't. She was the only one he'd ever met that he didn't feel simply about. With everybody else in the world, the situation was simple. They were in and he worked with them or they were out and he ignored them or they were trouble and he took care of them. But with Lynn he hadn't been able to work that way.

He'd felt for her what he'd never felt for anybody else or anything else, not even himself, not even money. She had tried her level best to kill him, and even that hadn't changed anything, the way he felt about her or his helplessness with her. He didn't want that to happen again, ever, to feel about anybody that way, to let his feelings get stronger than his judgment. Oddly enough, he missed her and wished she were still alive and still with him, even though he knew that sooner or later she would have found herself in the same kind of bind again and done the same thing.

Ahead of him, the green Dodge turned into a driveway next to a small faded clapboard house. This was an old section here; all the houses were small and faded – most of them with sagging porches.

There was no garage. The green Dodge turned into the back yard and stopped. Parker pulled up beside it, and he and Handy got out. Alma and Skimm were waiting for them, by the back door. There were three warped steps up, and a small back porch half the width of the house. The kitchen door had masking tape over a break in the window. Skimm lived in places where broken things were patched with masking tape.

They all went into the kitchen and Alma told Skimm to open up some beer…'

"Sure," said Skimm. He wasn't nervously happy any more, he was sullen now.

Alma told the others to come on into the living-room. She'd argued most of her belligerence out on the drive. She was sure of herself now, and in charge.

They went through the dining-room, going around a scarred table. The house was one storey high, with a living-room and a dining-room and a kitchen and two bedrooms. One bedroom was off the dining-room and the other one was off the kitchen. The bathroom was off the kitchen on the other side, next to the steps to the basement.

Alma clicked a wall switch and a ceiling light went on, four forty-watt bulbs amid a cluster of stained glass. Alma led the way into the room. "Look at this lousy place. Just look at it."

It wasn't very good. The sofa was green mohair, worn smooth in some places and spiny in others. The two armchairs both rested the weight of their springs on the floor, and one of them had an old deep cigarette burn in one overstuffed arm. The rug was faded and worn, showing trails where people had done the most walking, to the front door and the dining-room archway. There was an old television set with an eleven-inch screen and a wooden cabinet with a folded matchbook under one leg.

Alma pulled the wrinkled shades down over the three living-room windows. "Sit down."

Parker and Handy took the armchairs. Skimm came in, carrying four cans of beer, and passed them around. Then he and Alma sat on the sofa.

Alma started. "Skimm tells me you don't like the plan."

"Did he tell you why?" Parker asked.

"I don't mean the tear gas," she said. "The rest of it."

"Which rest of it?" Parker asked.

"We need five men," she said. "We can't do it with less. For God's sake, it's an armoured car."

"You want to lay a siege and starve them out?" Parker asked.

"Don't be a wise guy."

Handy didn't have a cigarette going, he had a match poked into his mouth. He took it out and said, "Who's running this operation?"

Nobody answered him. Parker looked at Skimm, and Skimm looked at the floor. Alma looked at Handy.

Handy pointed the wet end of the match at Alma. "You're the finger." He pointed the match at Skimm. "You brung us in. You running it, Skimm?"

Skimm looked up, reluctantly. "I never worked an armoured car before."

"I ain't running it," said Handy. "I'm not the type. So that leaves Parker."

Parker said, "I don't like this situation. More and more, I don't like it. The finger sitting in, doing a lot of talking. I just don't like it."

"I've got a stake in this too, you know," Alma said. She was getting hot again, a slow flush creeping up her face.

"Skimm, who's running this operation? Parker asked.

Skimm was even more reluctant to answer this time. When he finally spoke, it was to Alma. "Parker knows this kind of job."

Alma said, "Let's hear what he has to say."

"It's simple. Three men. One in a uniform like the guards wear. We get the two trucks, and one car. One of the trucks we rig up so we can lock the guards in it, keep them cooled for a while. The driver and the guard from the back go in first. While they're in the diner, we get in position. When they come out, we grab them at the back of the armoured car, where the other guard in the cab can't see us. We wait till they open the back door. Then we grab them, and the one in the uniform takes the driver up to the cab. The guard inside opens the door when he recognizes the driver, and the other one – that's one of us – hangs back, so the guard'll just glimpse the uniform out of the corner of his eye. He opens up, and we've got him, too. We sap all three of them and lock them in the truck. Then we transfer the cash and take off in the car. We leave the trucks there because we don't need them any more."

"That's what I don't like," said Alma. "That's the part I don't like."

Parker drank some beer and looked at her.

"They're going to see your car," Alma said. "It's going to be at the back of the U, blocking vision, so they're going to see it. That's why I wanted the trucks to be in it, too. We'd have vehicles going off in all directions and they wouldn't know which way to look for us."

It didn't matter which way they went, or how many people saw them go. Parker knew that but he didn't say anything about it. This Alma was a busher, a new fish, she didn't know how this kind of operation was handled. Parker knew this, because it was his line of work, but he didn't say anything about it. All he said was, "Tractor-trailers don't outrun police cars. We leave them at the diner."

"I still want cars going off in different directions."

Parker nodded. He knew why she wanted it, but she didn't know he knew. He said, "So what's your idea?"

"My car," she said, "my car, that's the Dodge out there. It'll be parked behind the diner, like always. When you get the money out of the armoured car, you put it in my car. Then you take off on route 9, going south, and circle around back to Old Bridge. When I know the job's finished, I'll get in my car and take the back road. Then we meet at the farmhouse outside Old Bridge. That way, even if you get stopped they've got nothing on you because you aren't carrying the money."

Parker glanced at Skimm. He was studying the carpet, lines of worry creasing his forehead. Parker said to Alma, "I don't like it. That leaves you holding the cash, and the rest of us holding the bag. I know Skimm, and I trust him, and I know Handy, but I don't know you."

"So one of you rides with me," she said. "Skimm. He can ride with me. All right?"

It was bad. The whole idea was stupid. It was sloppy, it was bad business.

But Parker nodded. "That's all right. Just so one of us goes along with the money."

If he let her keep her original plan he could be sure of getting the money back. If he forced her to change by making the grab more sensible, then maybe he wouldn't be able to figure out her cross in time. He'd had to argue so she wouldn't get suspicious. The only one he had to worry about was Skimm. Skimm, if he was thinking sensibly, had to know the two-car scheme was nonsense. He would have to wonder why Parker was going along with it. If Alma had talked him into her plans, that would make him dangerous because he'd realize that Parker was on to the cross. But it made more sense that Alma was playing a lone game, that she was figuring to cross Skimm, too.

"What about bankrolling?" Handy asked.

"I got it," Parker said. "Three grand." He pulled a long white envelope from his jacket pocket. "I brought five C with me," he said, "in case there was any need for it."

Handy nodded. "You going to equip us?"

"Yes."

"Then I don't need any."

Alma was staring at the envelope. "Skimm could use some money," she said.

"This isn't for personal expenses. This is bankrolling. That means to buy what we need for the operation."

Skimm said, in a small voice, "I don't need any."

Parker put the envelope back in his pocket. Alma watched it disappear, a vertical anger line between her brows. Parker asked, "Is there anything else?"

Alma blinked, and said, "When do we do it? Next Monday?"

"Dry run next Monday. The week after that, maybe, if it looks right. Or the week after that. Whenever it looks right."

"I don't want too much delay," Alma said.

Parker got to his feet. "We do the job when we know it'll come off right. That's why we don't go to jail." He turned to Handy. "I'll give you a lift."

Handy stood up. "Fine."

Parker turned back to Skimm. "You got a phone?"

"Yeah. Clover 5-7598."

"I'll give you a call."

"All right." Skimm looked at Parker for just a second, and then his eyes slid away. He still looked worried.

Parker drained the beer can and tossed it into the chair he'd just left. "Nice to meet you, Alma."

She struggled, and said, "Nice to meet you, too."

Parker and Handy walked through the house to the kitchen and out the back door. They got into the Ford and drove out to the street, and Handy said, "I've got a room in Newark."

"Right," Parker said. He headed back towards Springfield Avenue.

Handy poked at his teeth with a match. After a while, he said, "That's garbage, that stuff."

"About the two cars?"

"Yeah."

"You know why I went along."

"You've got her figured."

Parker nodded. "I wonder where Skimm is."

"I've always trusted that little bastard," said Handy. "We worked together a couple times. Once in Florida, once in Oklahoma."

"I never work in Florida," said Parker. "I play there."

"You got a good system." He poked at his teeth some more. Then he said, "I'd like to know about Skimm, though."

"I don't think he's in it. She's got him tight, but not that tight. She figures to cross him too, and take the whole pie for herself."

"That poor bastard."

"You want to wise him?"

Handy considered, the match working in his mouth. "I don't know," he said. "He'll be in the car with her."

"He wouldn't believe you." Parker shrugged. "You fall in love with a woman, you've got a blind spot."

Handy glanced at him, and away. "I suppose." They rode a while longer and then he said, "You think she'll bump him?"

"Yeah."

"Maybe she'll flub it. Then Skimm's got the boodle."

"He'll split." Parker shrugged. "Skimm's getting old. Old and worried. I don't think she'll flub it."

"That poor bastard."

"He'll be better off," Parker said. "Hooked the way he is."

"I suppose so."

They rode a while longer, and then Handy said, "I wish it was simple, Parker. I wish to Christ it was simple. Can you remember the last time a job was simple?"

"A long time ago."

"It sounds like a good set-up." Handy reached for his cigarettes. "The way you talked about it, it sounds fine. But there's this Alma." He lit the new cigarette, lipping it. "There's always an Alma. Every damn time. Why can't we put together a job without an Alma in it?"

"I don't know," Parked said. He was thinking of a guy named Mal, the reason he'd had to change his face.

Handy sat for a while, thinking. "This is the last one for me."

"Uh huh," said Parker. There was an Alma in every job, an Alma or a Mal or whatever the name was. And there was a Handy in every job, too. There was always one that was ready to quit; this was the last job and he was going to buy a chicken farm or something and settle down. There was a Handy in every job, and he always showed up for a job again a year or two later.

Thinking about it, it surprised him that there were always the same people in every job. There was always one that had to be watched, like Alma. There was always one who was quitting after this grab, and this time it was Handy. And there was always one who had probably a hundred thousand dollars to his name, buried in fields and forests here and there across the country in tin cans and metal boxes, and this one was probably Skimm. Skimm always looked and acted like a bum, so he was probably the kind that buried it, buried it all.

Parker had known others like that, there was one in almost every operation. They took their share and peeled off of it two or three thousand, just enough to carry them for a while, and then they went off by themselves somewhere and buried the rest of it. They figured to dig it up again some day, but they never did. The day never got rainy enough and that was why bulldozer operators working on new housing developments every once in a while turned up a metal box with thirty or forty thousand dollars in it.

After a while, Handy said, "You turn right the next corner."

They turned right, and the car behind them turned right, too.

Parker watched it in the rear-view mirror and said, "Son of a bitch."

It didn't make any sense, and that bothered him.

The next street was one way the wrong way, but the one after that Parker made a left. So did the car behind him. He went two blocks and made a right and then another right and then a left. The car stayed with him. He drove along until he saw a "Dead End Street" sign and turned into it. He slowed down to almost a crawl, going around the corner, and stayed slow like that, so the car behind him came around the corner and was all of a sudden a lot closer.

It was a short street, with a railroad embankment crossing it at the end. The street was a kind of valley, with the houses on high land on either side, stone or concrete steps leading up from the sidewalk to the house level.

Parker turned into a driveway on the right, going very slowly, the Ford straining against going up the steep slope of the driveway so slowly. The other car went on by, down towards the embankment. Parker pushed the clutch in suddenly, and the car rolled back down the embankment and out across the street. It was a narrow street; with the parked cars, the Ford blocked it completely.

"Back me," Parker said.

He left the motor running, and pulled the emergency brake on. Then he got out of the Ford and walked down to the end of the street, where the other car was stopped facing the embankment. It was a black Lincoln. Looking through the rear window as he walked forward, Parker could see the driver alone in the car. He came around the left-hand side, and opened the door.

Stubbs was wearing his chauffeur's costume, complete with hat, and he was holding a -45. He pointed it at Parker, and said, "Hold it right there!"

Parker stood where he was, with his hand still on the door handle.

Stubbs said, "I got to know where you was Saturday."

Parker kept looking at Stubbs, not to the right where Handy was crawling along the pavement, coming up alongside the car, keeping low out of Stubbs's range of vision.

"What for?" Parker asked.

"The Doc was killed Saturday," Stubbs said. "One of you bastards did it."

"I was here in Jersey," said Parker, as Handy reached up and plucked the automatic out of Stubbs's hand. Parker leaned in and clipped him on the side of the neck. While Stubbs was getting over that, Handy got to his feet pointing the automatic. "Get out of the car."

Stubbs got out, holding his neck. "You better not kill me," he said. "If May don't hear from me, she sends letters about your new face."

It irritated Parker, another useless complication. He slid in behind the wheel of the Lincoln and parked it in an open slot by the embankment. Then he came back and said to Handy, "Your place?"

"It's the closest."

They put Stubbs in the front seat of the Ford, next to Parker, who was driving. Handy sat in the back seat, watching Stubbs, the automatic in his lap. He gave Parker directions the rest of the way to his place.

Handy had a room in a building that had started out as a private home and then become a boarding house and now was just a place with furnished rooms. But the furniture was clean, and not quite as ugly as at Skimm's place.

The phone was out in the hall. They stood there, Handy holding the automatic in Stubbs's back, while Parker dialled Skimm's place. The ring came in his ear three times, and then Skimm answered, sounding sleepy. Parker told him who it was. "Alma there?"

Skimm hesitated. "Yes. She was just leaving."

"Sure. I got somebody here I want her to talk to. He'll ask her when she saw me in the diner. It's okay for her to tell him."

"What's going on, Parker?"

"I'll tell you sometime. Put Alma on."

"Okay, wait a second." There was mumbling, away from the phone, and then Alma came on the line. She sounded snappish.

"Hold on," said Parker. "Tell this guy when I was in the diner." He handed the phone to Stubbs.

Stubbs took the phone, frowning in concentration. It was getting too complicated for his battered brain. He said. "Hello? What time Saturday? Where is this diner?"

After that he frowned some more, staring heavily at the phone box on the wall, until he said, in answer to something from Alma, "I'm thinking," and hung up.

"You happy?" Parker asked.

Stubbs turned around, looking like somebody trying to answer a tough question. "She says you was in there around noon."

"That's right."

"The Doc was killed maybe four o'clock in the afternoon, while I was washing the cars."

Parker shook his head, disgusted. "You know how far Nebraska is from here?"

Stubbs chewed on that for a while and then said, "Okay, it wasn't you." That settled, he turned to Handy. "Gimme the gun back, will ya?"

Handy looked at Parker, wondering if this clown was kidding. "Just wait a minute, Stubbs. I think we've got to talk."

"Sure," said Handy. He held on to the automatic.

"There's nothing to talk about. You didn't do it."

"This way," said Handy. He motioned with the automatic.

Stubbs wanted to argue some more, but Parker hit him openhanded on the ear, where a punchy could feel it. Stubbs screwed his face up and hunched his shoulder and cupped his hand over his ear, and then he went where Handy told him.

They walked into the apartment, and Parker told Stubbs to sit down on the leather chair. Handy sat over to the side, in the maroon overstuffed chair, and Parker stood in the middle of the brown rug. He looked at Stubbs for a while, and then he made a disgusted sound. "All right. Now what?"

"I don't know what you mean," Stubbs said. His face was still screwed up, and his hand was still up protecting his ear. "I'm willing to go."

"That's it," Parker said. "Go where?"

"I got two more suspects."

Parker nodded. "That's what I thought." He went over to the sofa and sat down and lit a cigarette. "All right, tell me 'about it."

"The Doc only did three jobs in the last year," Stubbs said. "We figured it has to be one of them three, or the guy wouldn't have waited so long, If was a guy from two years ago, see, and he was going to go for the Doc, he'd of done it already."

"You and May," said Parker. "You worked that out?"

"May, mostly," Stubbs answered. "I figured, I got to get the guy. There's nobody else to do it, because the Doc was a Red."

Parker glanced at Handy, and shook his head. Handy shrugged. From listening, he was beginning to understand.

"And if May doesn't hear from you, she blows the whistle, is that it?"

"Yeah."

"On who?"

"The last three. She wouldn't be able to know which one it was, which one got me. So she'd blow the whistle on the last three."

"Including me," said Parker.

"But you didn't do it," said Stubbs, frowning. He'd missed something somewhere. "You're out of it, you didn't do it."

"What if number two did it?" Parker asked. "And instead of you getting him, he gets you. Then May blows the whistle on me. Right?"

Stubbs hadn't thought of that. He frowned heavily, scrubbing his hand over his face. Then he brightened a little. "Don't you worry. He won't get me. I'll get him."

Handy laughed. He tossed Stubbs's gun in the air and caught it. "The way you got Parker?"

Stubbs looked at him, not understanding, and Parker explained. "He knew me by the name of Anson," he said to Handy.

"Oh."

Parker said, "Listen, Stubbs. What if you phone May and tell her I'm in the clear?"

Stubbs shook his head. "We talked about that. How it could be faked, maybe. She's got to see me in person."

"God damn it," Parker said, "I don't have time for this crap."

Handy shrugged. "You'll have to go back to Nebraska with him."

"I don't have time," said Parker angrily. "The job's set up for two weeks from now. We've got to set up the cars, the routes, we've got to chart the state troopers, we've got to buy guns--" He mashed his cigarette out and got to his feet.

"There's too much to do. Stubbs, when's the deadline?"

Stubbs blinked at him. "What?"

"The deadline, the deadline. When does May blow the whistle if she doesn't hear from you?"

"Oh. A month from now. From yesterday. Four weeks from yesterday."

Parker paced back and forth, looking down at the carpet. "Two days," he said. "Even if we fly out. One day out and one day back. Two days for Alma to fast-talk Skimm, two days with nothing getting done."

"We could hold the job off for a week."

Parker shook his head. "It's sour enough already. I want to get it over with. Another week for Alma to think up some more cute ideas? Another week for that damn cop to see me driving by?"

"What cop?"

Parker shrugged. He didn't feel like talking about it. "A cop paid attention to me on route 9."

"Near the diner?"

"South of it." He turned and studied Stubbs. "The easiest thing," he said, "would be to bump you and drop you in a pool by one of the refineries. Then two weeks from now I go cut May."

Stubbs doggedly shook his head. "She's got her common-law husband with her," he said. "And his brother. They figure something might happen like that."

"What if you just let him go?"

"Look at him," Parker said. "He's punchy. He goes up against the guy who killed that doctor, he's dead. Then I'm dead."

"I can take care of myself," Stubbs said.

'Sure," Parker answered.

'So what do you want to do?" Handy asked.

'There's too much to watch. I'm ready to pull out of this damn thing, there's too much to watch."

"I could use the cash," Handy said. "This is my last job, you know."

"Yeah. That's the thing. I need it too." Parker looked at Stubbs and shook his head. "I've got to hold on to this beetle for two weeks. I've got to put him on ice."

Handy considered that. "What about the farm?"

"What farm?"

"Outside Old Bridge. Where we're supposed to meet after the job. You been out there yet?"

"Not yet."

"We could stash him there, maybe."

Parker thought about it. So many things to watch. The job, Alma, the state trooper, and now Stubbs. But he didn't have anything else on the fire. "That's a bad way to work it. To hang around the hideout before the job."

"Do you figure we're going there after it?"

"That's right. I forgot about Alma." Parker shrugged. "All right. We'll put him on ice out there."

Handy stood up, and waved the automatic at Stubbs. "Come along."

Stubbs said, "Listen, what are you trying to pull?"

"Look," Parker said. "Look at him, he wants to argue."

Handy turned to Stubbs. "How's your kneecaps? In good shape?" Stubbs caught the message. He got to his feet and shut up. They took him downstairs and back to the Ford. They drove over to 9 and headed south, Parker driving, with Stubbs beside him and Handy in the back seat.

On the way Parker asked, "How'd you get me?"

"That letter you got," Stubbs said. "I looked up that Lasker fella in Cincinnati, and he left a forwarding address. I went there and hung around till I saw you."

"He left a forwarding address," repeated Parker. He shook his head and kept driving. He didn't know if this was Handy's last job, but he knew it was Skimm's.