Backflash. Part 8

"No, a state car, with the state seal on the doors. Black, usually."

"Trooper in uniform?"

"Probably not," Cathman said. "He'd be a plain-clothesman from the security detail."

"Then that's the ID I want," Parker said. "Two of them."

"They'd be photo IDs."

"Then get me blanks. Get me something I can adapt."

Cathman picked up the wine gla.s.s, took a sip, brooded at Parker. He said, "When are you going to do it? The robbery."

"Pretty soon. So get me the IDs."

"No, I mean when."

"I know what you mean," Parker told him. Leaving his wine unfinished, he got to his feet and said, "I'll call you here, next Monday, in the evening, tell you where to bring them."

Cathman also stood. "Are you going to do it next week?"

Parker shrugged into the jacket, picked up the clipboard. "I'll call you Monday," he said, and left.

6.

"I bet that's her," Carlow said.

Parker looked, and it was. Among the people getting off the Chicago Trailways bus here at the Albany terminal, that was the remembered face and figure of Noelle Braselle. She looked to be about thirty, tall and slender and very together, but she also looked like a college girl, with her narrow-legged blue jeans and bulky orange sweater crossed by the straps of a dark blue backpack, and her straight brown hair pulled back from her oval face to a black barrette and a short ponytail. She saw Parker and Carlow across the street from the terminal and waved, and as the other disembarking pa.s.sengers crowded around the driver while he pulled their luggage out from the bus's lower storage area, she came across to them, smiling. Noelle traveled light. "Long time no see," she said to Parker.

"You haven't changed," he told her.

"I sure hope not," she said, and raised a curious eyebrow at Carlow.

Parker said, "Noelle, this is Mike Carlow. He's your driver."

"My driver?"

"We're taking different routes, on the night. Come on, I'll tell you about it."

They'd borrowed Wycza's big Lexus, for comfort, because it was almost an hour drive from here to Tooler's cottages, and it was parked now a block from the terminal. As they walked, Noelle said, "You still got that nice lady stashed?"

"Claire," Parker agreed. "Yeah, we're together."

"Good. Tommy and I split, you know."

"I heard."

"Funny," she said. "I used to think there wasn't anything would scare him, then all at once everything did, and goodbye, Harry. Is this it? Nicer than a bus."

"Very like a bus," Carlow told her.

Carlow drove, Noelle beside him, Parker in back. They had to cross the river on one of the big swooping bridges here, and then head south. Parker said, "You remember Lou Sternberg."

"From that painting disaster? Angry guy, overweight, drove the big truck."

"That's him. He's with us on this. And a guy I don't think you know, Dan Wycza."

She turned to grin at Parker in the back seat and say, "I hope this one comes out a little better."

"It will," he said.

Wycza, in shorts and sneakers, was doing push-ups on the weedy gra.s.s in the sun in front of the cottage. Noelle, seeing him as they drove in, laughed and said, "Is this supposed to be my birthday?"

"Dan Wycza," Parker told her, and Carlow said, "For the heavy lifting."

"I can see that," she said. "Is Lou Sternberg here?"

"Not yet. He's in Brooklyn, watching a guy for later."

Wycza got to his feet when he saw the car coming. He offered a small wave and went into the house, while Carlow parked the Lexus. They got out, Noelle carrying her backpack slung over one shoulder, and went into the house, where Wycza stood now in the living room, rubbing his head and neck with a tan towel.

Parker said, "Noelle Braselle, Dan Wycza."

"Hi," Wycza said, and Noelle frowned at him and said, "I know you. Don't I know you?"

Grinning, Wycza said, "I wish you did, honey."

"No, I've seen you somewhere," she said. The two wheelchairs were in this room, one still together, the other mostly apart; she hadn't remarked on them yet, but she did put her backpack on the complete one now as she continued to frown at Wycza, trying to place him.

"If I'd ever met you," Wycza promised her, "I'd remember. Trust me."

All at once her brow cleared: "You're a wrestler! That's where I saw you!"

Wycza gazed at her like he couldn't believe it. "You're a fan?"

"I went with a guy a few times," she said. "I kind of loved it."

Speaking confidentially, he said, "It's all fake, you know. I'm not really getting beat up by those clowns."

"I know! That's what's so great about it! I look at you, and I see you could open those guys like pistachios, and you just goof around instead. Wait. Strongarm! You're Jack Strongarm."

"Miss Braselle," Wycza said, "you got a convert."

"Well, if that isn't something else," she said, and shook her head at Wycza, and grinned. "Nice to meet you."

"And you. Believe me."

She turned to Parker to say, "You were gonna show me what I'm doing. Or should I get rid of my pack first? Which room is mine? What's with the wheelchair?"

"You're gonna be in it," Parker told her.

"I am."

"Every night, starting tomorrow, after we get you the right clothes, Mike's gonna be in his chauffeur suit, pushing you in the wheelchair, and you're gonna be the brave but broken debutante. You'll be six hours on the ship, Albany to Albany. You'll gamble a little, you'll watch a little, you'll do little brave smiles here and there."

'Jesus, I despise myself," she said. 'What am I playing this poor little rich girl for?"

Parker slid open the box under the seat, with the white plastic bowl in it. "See this?"

"Oh," she said. "Don't tell me, let me guess."

"This is a wheelchair for people who don't get out of it for anything."

"I get the concept," she said.

"Security's tight on that ship," Parker told her. "When you board, they'll look in there."

"So what?"

"It won't be empty. You'll see to that."

She made a disgusted face and said, "Parker, what are you doing to me? That's going to be under me all night?"

"Six hours. It's airtight, no smell, nothing. But they'll look in it when you come aboard, and they may look in it when you go ash.o.r.e. And they may the next night, and they may the night after that."

She began to smile. "And one of these nights they won't," she said, "because they know what's in there."

"That's right."

"So that's how the guns get on."

"No," he said, "we're getting them on another way, that's what Lou's working on now. What you're doing is, you're taking the cash off."

She looked around, and pointed, and said, "That's what the other wheelchair's for."

Wycza said, "We're adapting it a little, the seat on that one's gonna be higher, so that night you hunker down some."

"I can do that," she said. She looked around at the three men and the two wheelchairs and the old-fashioned cottage and said, "A new experience. I never hatched money before."

7.

Parker rode the Spirit of the Hudson just once before the night. Since, when it all went down, he'd be in disguise, this time he went open, alone, in jacket and tie. He bought some chips, and he noticed that most of the other people buying chips were using hundred-dollar bills. That was a good sign.

Because this was a new operation, n.o.body knew yet what the take would be. The ship was medium to small, holding just over eight hundred paying pa.s.sengers, and if they on average dropped a hundred dollars apiece, including the twelve-dollar fare to come aboard, that would mean eighty thousand dollars in the money room by the end of the night. If the average loss was five hundred dollars, which some area newspapers had estimated, that would be four hundred thousand waiting for them. It was an acceptable range, and from what Parker was seeing, the result would most likely be toward the higher end.

It wasn't true that no credit cards at all were in use on the Spirit of the Hudson. Chips you could only buy with cash, but you could pay for your dinner or souvenirs with credit cards. The little bit of cash that came in from those sources didn't go to the casino money room, so Parker didn't think about it.

The casino ship took two runs a day, from noon till six P.M. and from eight P.M. till two in the morning. Every trip began and ended in Albany, with one midway stop at Poughkeepsie, where a few pa.s.sengers would board or depart and more supplies would be taken on. The money only left the ship, though, at Albany.

Parker chose a Friday night trip, the same as the night they'd be taking it down, to get a feel for the place. The ship was full, action in the casino was heavy, and the people having dinner in the gla.s.s-walled dining rooms to both sides of the casino as it sailed past the little river towns were dressed up and making an occasion of it. The sense was, and it was palpable through the ship, this was a fun way to spend money. Good.

From time to time, Parker saw Carlow and Noelle in the distance, but made sure to steer clear of them. Noelle, with a little pale makeup and dark gray filmy clothing that made her seem even more slender than she was, looked mostly like a vampire's victim. Car-low, pushing the wheelchair in his dark blue chauffeur's uniform and cap, leaning on the handles when it was at rest, looked wiry and tough, as though he were as much bodyguard as chauffeur.

People smiled at Noelle, who smiled wanly back. People touched her for luck, or asked her to blow on their dice, and whenever she played a little blackjack or shot c.r.a.ps for a while she was surrounded by people cheering her on.

Noelle and Carlow had been at this game for four nights now, and the security people still looked in the bowl every night coming aboard, not going ash.o.r.e but Noelle was making sure they had a good variety to look at and they were beginning to get embarra.s.sed, and also to recognize her, and to ease up. Parker figured by the middle of next week they'd just be waving her aboard.

He had studied the s.p.a.ce and blueprints of the Spirit of the Hudson, and knew the ship well, at least in theory, but reality is never exactly the same as the s.p.a.ce. He wandered the ship, getting to understand it in this new way, covering every part of it that was open to the pa.s.sengers.

There were three public decks. The top one was an open promenade, a long oval around the bridge with a lot of deck chairs that probably got more action on the daytime run. The deck below that was wider, another promenade, this one gla.s.sed-in, because upstate New York doesn't get that much good weather year-round. This public oval surrounded an interior s.p.a.ce of offices, a gift shop, a ma.s.sage room, a game room with pinball machines, and a tiny joke of a library. The lifeboats were suspended just outside and below this promenade, not to spoil the view; if anybody ever had to actually board those lifeboats, the gla.s.s panels in front of them could be slid out of the way.

The third deck down was the important one, the casino, taking up the entire interior of the ship, with no windows, and no doors that opened directly to the outside. It could be reached only through vestibules fore and aft. Everywhere on the ship you were always aware of the humming vibration of the engines and the thrust of them through the water, but in the casino you could very quickly forget that you were afloat.

Flanking the casino were two dining rooms, of different types. The one on the port side was more upscale, with cloth napkins and expensive entrees and an eight-page wine list, while the one to starboard was a sandwich joint. Both were long and narrow, their outer walls all gla.s.s. Both, Parker knew from the specs, were served by the same kitchen, directly below the casino, with escalators for the waiters to bring the platters up. And in the center of that kitchen was a round metal post, inside which were the pneumatic tubes that moved money; upward to the casino cashier, in the middle of the casino, in an elaborate cage, and downward to the money room.

There was one bit of public access below the casino; restrooms, fore and aft. Broad carpeted staircases led down from both vestibules outside the casino, to wide hushed low ceilinged areas that looked like hotel lobbies, scattered with low sofas and armchairs, with the men's and women's rooms off that.

In the aft lobby, near the stairs, an unmarked and locked door led to a simpler staircase that went down to the corridor that led to the money room. A guard would be on duty at all times, the other side of that door, to keep people from coming in. He wouldn't worry, until too late, about keeping people from coming out.

The aft section also contained a small elevator from casino vestibule down to restroom lobby, for people who'd have trouble with the stairs. Once every evening, Noelle and Carlow would take that elevator down and, while Noelle waited outside, Car-low would take the bowl into the men's room and tip the attendant there very well to clean it out.

In the course of the evening, Parker ate small meals in both restaurants, when he could get window tables. He also walked the gla.s.sed-in promenade, and the top deck open-air promenade, where he was completely alone. Although the ship produced a lot of light, with a creamy nimbus around it on the disturbed water, it was very hard to see in close at the side of the ship. From above, the view was outward, not down. If Hanzen came up from behind, and stayed close to the flank as he approached the open door, no one would see him.

When the ship docked at Albany at two in the morning, Parker was among the first off. He stepped back on the pier, out of the way of the others debarking, and watched that door open in the side of the hull. An armored car was already parked there, facing away from the ship, and once that doorway gaped black the armored car backed up to it until it was snug against the metal side of the ship.

Parker watched Noelle and Carlow go by, both looking solemn, as though what they'd just come out of was church. Neither looked in his direction, but Noelle waggled two fingers as they went by. She was having fun.

8.

The man who had the guns was named Fox. Maurice Fox, it said on the window of the store, Plumbing Equipment, on a backwater side street in the former downtown of New Brunswick, New Jersey. This wasn't the kind of business to move out to the mall with all his former neighbors, so here he stayed, now with a storefront revivalist church on one side and a candle-and-incense shop on the other.