The Green Eagle Score (15 page)

”It’s here!” Devers shouted, and the other two came running.

They hadn’t worried about noise or light this trip; time was the important element now. With the Buick sitting with its high beams on in the middle of the gravel parking-lot behind the Monequois Professional Building the three of them had spread out like competitors in a scavenger hunt, first inside the building itself and then around the area in back.

And now it was Devers who’d found it, after fifteen minutes of searching, stuffed into a large metal garbage bin against the rear wall, with papers strewn over it to keep it from casual eyes.

Webb had been going through the pile of leaves at the far corner of the lot, Parker had been searching the hedge along the rear boundary line of the property. They both trotted over to find Devers grinning in the light from the Buick, an old canvas suitcase sitting on top of the now-closed garbage bin.

Webb said, “Is that it?”

“We’ll see,” Parker said. “Open it.”

“Right,” said Devers.

It wasn’t locked. Devers flipped open the two catches, raised the lid, and they were looking at a jumbled untidy mass of bills.

Parker said, “Good. Put it in the car, switch the lights off, come up to the office.” He turned to Webb. “Come on with me.”

”Right.”

The back door wouldn’t close properly since they’d gone through it the last time. Parker led the way into the building and up the stairs, Webb following him, saying as they started down the hall toward Godden’s office, “What do we want up here?”

“The body.”

“If he’s dead.”

“He’ll be dead,” Parker said.

They’d left the office as they’d found it, light on and door ajar, and when they went in now nothing had changed. Ralph was lying with his face turned so he was staring under the desk. Parker went on one knee beside him, closed his hand against Ralph’s throat.

Webb, leaning over the desk, said, “Alive or dead?”

Parker didn’t answer for a moment. His arm showed strain. Then he took his hand away and said, “Dead. We need something to roll him in, so we don’t trail blood.”

“Rug in the other office.”

“Good. Take his feet.”

They carried the body to the outer office, put it on the small rug in front of the receptionist’s desk. When they rolled the rug, Ralph’s feet protruded from the knees down.

Parker said, “We want the money cases, too.”

They went back to the inner office, got the two money cases, carried them out to the hall. Then Parker went back to the office to look things over. There were stains on the carpet behind the desk, but there was nothing to be done about that. No other signs out of the ordinary, and the stains could only be seen if you went around behind the desk. Parker switched off the light, went to the outer office, and he and Webb carried the body out to the hall. They shut the door so it locked, and Devers arrived saying, “What’s up?”

Webb told him, “We’re transporting a stiff.”

Parker said, “Can you carry those two cases? Don’t make a lot of marks on the walls.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Parker and Webb picked up the body again and carried it out to the car. Devers followed, carrying the cases one at a time, bringing one partway and going back for the other and carrying that farther and going back for the first and so on. Because Parker and Webb moved more slowly, Devers could keep up with them and even run ahead and open the tailgate of the Buick for them.

The back of the Buick was crowded with the suitcase, metal cases and body. Parker and the other two climbed in the front and Webb said, “Where now?”

“Godden’s house.”

The doctor was sitting on the floor where they’d left him, still tied and gagged. Webb went directly to the dresser when Parker turned on the light, picked up Godden’s keys, and went out to switch cars, putting Godden’s car in the drive and the Buick in the garage.

Parker sat on the bed. “Listen close,” he said. “Because of you, things got screwed up. We can’t use our hideout now, we’d never get out there any more, it’s almost light already. Three of my friends are dead, and two thirds of the money is gone. If I didn’t have any use for you I’d kill you now with a wire hanger. But I can use you, so you’ve got a shot at living. Cooperate and you’ll be all right. Screw up again and it’s all over.”

Godden nodded vigorously.

“All right.” Parker went over and removed the gag. “Don’t do a lot of talking,” he said. “Just answer the questions I ask you.”

Godden nodded again. “I will.” His voice sounded rusty, there were red marks on his cheeks where the gag had bit. The blood on his forehead had dried, so no more was seeping out.

Parker went back and sat on the edge of the bed again. He said, “How long is your wife out of town for?”

“Five more days. She’ll be back Monday afternoon. That is, the two of us are supposed to be back Monday afternoon.”

“You were leaving?”

“Friday. Friday afternoon.”

“Were you due in your office today?”

”You mean tomorrow? The day that’s starting?”

“It’s twenty after four in the morning. I mean today.”

“Yes, of course.”

“How many patients today?”

“Four. Well, three, not counting Ralph Hochberg.”

“Roger St Cloud?”

“Yes. Is he—?”

“That’s two,” Parker said. “What time’s the first session?”

“Ten o’clock. But that would have been Ralph. The next one would be at eleven.”

“In the morning,” Parker said, “call those two patients, tell them you won’t be in today.”

Godden nodded. “All right.”

“But wait till after the law talks to you.”

Godden looked surprised. “The law? You mean the police?”

“Your boy Roger barricaded himself in the house and shot it out with the cops.”

“My God!”

“They’ll be calling you. If you hear about it some other legitimate way first, you call them, offer full cooperation. Offer to talk to them, tell them anything they want to know. But you don’t want to go to them, you want them to come to you.”

“What if they insist?”

“You insist.”

“But, won’t they be suspicious?”

“No,” Parker said. “When they come here, give them the whole rundown on Roger, anything you want to say. But you keep cool about us.”

“You’ll be here? This is where you’re going to hide out?”

“If you tip about us,” Parker said, “the least you’ll get is your connection with the air base heist found out by the law. The worst you’ll get is a bullet in the head.”

“If I come out of this with my skin,” Godden said, “I’ll consider myself well ahead. Ellen Fusco told me about you, Parker, but I underestimated you, I didn’t really listen to what she was saying.” His face clouded. “I underestimated Roger, too.”

“Just keep remembering that,” Parker said. He got to his feet. “See you in the morning.”

“You’re going to leave me here like this?”

Parker went out, switching off the light.

There was a small light on in the kitchen now, enough to allow him to make his way around in the house. He went down to the kitchen and found Webb at the refrigerator. Webb looked around, a container of milk in one hand and a piece of pound cake in the other. “I was starved.”

“Where’s Devers?”

“Here,” Devers said, coming in grinning, lugging the suitcase. “I thought we could divvy up before I went back.”

Parker looked at him. “Back where?”

Devers was blank. “Back to Ellen’s place, where else?”

Parker said, “Some time tomorrow the law’s going to find those three bodies up by the lodge. Either tomorrow or the next day they’ll get a fingerprint report, and one of those bodies is going to belong to a guy named Martin Fusco. They’re going to look around, and they’re going to see an ex-wife of Martin Fusco’s living right here in town. Coincidence. They’ll go talk to the ex-wife, and they’ll find out she’s shacked up with a guy from the finance office out at the air base. Coincidence number two.”

Devers was pale. “Christ on a crutch. How do I get out of it? I just keep saying no. What can they do? I keep saying no, it’s a coincidence, what can they do about it?”

Webb, his mouth full of pound cake, said, “They’ll lean on you, buddy. They’ll lean hard.”

“I can hold out.”

Parker said, “Can Ellen? They’ll lean on her, too.”

“I’d say kill her,” Webb said thoughtfully, “but then they’d lean on you harder. And then if they get you they’ve got you on murder one.”

Devers was looking from one to the other. “What do I do?”

“You take your forty thousand,” Parker said, “and you go away.”

“But I’ve got to finish out my enlistment!”

Parker shook his head. “Not now. Between the woman and him upstairs, they’ve screwed you.”

“Only if they get Fusco’s body,” Devers said.

Webb said, “Forget it. You’re pretty safe to drive around in town, but you go out on the road now they’ll be all over you. You can’t even get to the lodge without going by the base.”

“So they stop me. I’m clean.”

“Finance office clerk. Driving around four o’clock in the morning. No destination.”

Parker added, “If they pick you up on the way back, you won’t be clean. Not with Fusco in the car.”

Devers was getting frantic. “God damn it, there’s got to be
some
way! What the hell am I going to do?”

“You’re going to find the registration to Godden’s car,” Parker told him. “In case you get stopped. Then you’re going to take his car and go over to the house and get Ellen and the kid. If she doesn’t want to come with you, you’ll kill her.”

“I can’t—”

“Then call us and tell us you can’t and give us a shot at making a run for it.”

Devers looked from Parker to Webb to Parker. “All right,” he said. “I get her. Then what?”

“You bring her here. If the law finds her, she’ll tell them about Godden, and we need Godden clean so we can hole up here. So she has to come here, too.”

“How long do we hole up here?”

“Two or three days. Till the first heat lets up.”

Devers made an angry bitter gesture. “Then what do I do?”

“Pick a new name for yourself, buddy,” Webb told him. “And keep your head down. And hope for the best.”

“You mean be on the run the rest of my life.”

Webb grinned, “Like in the movies? Sleeping in hay-lofts, riding in freight cars, that what you mean?” He shook his head. “I been wanted under my own name for fifteen years. Parker here, he’s wanted under more names than he can remember. We both been on the run, we’re always on the run. It’s a nice easy run if you know how to take it.”

“You were in Puerto Rico,” he said.

Webb spread his hands. “There, you see? On the run, at the Hilton hotel.”

When the two plainclothesmen left, Parker came out of the kitchen and made a show of putting his revolver away. “That was nice,” he said.

Godden was sweating, the adhesive bandage on his forehead making a dull tan patch against the gleaming pale skin. “I wouldn’t want to go through that twice,” he said. “Not for a million dollars.”

Webb and Devers came in from the other side. “You did it for a hundred G,” Webb said, “and you don’t even get that.”

Devers didn’t say anything. He was resigned now to the impossibility of his going back, but he hated Godden for having caused it. He stood there and glared at Godden, his fists clenched at his sides.

Godden nervously touched his bandage. Do you think they believed me about this?”

“They believed everything,” Parker told him. “You did good.”

The story Parker had given him to tell tied together neatly enough, being grounded sufficiently in truth. When the phone had rung at ten minutes to seven this morning it was Parker who’d answered it, saying he was Godden. It was a reporter on the line, representing one of the wire services and phoning from Syracuse. Parker, being Godden, told him the news about the Roger St Cloud affair was a complete surprise to him, and of course he wouldn’t be able to make a statement until he’d talked to the police.

Then Parker had roused Godden and had him phone the police and say he’d just been called by a reporter saying Roger St Cloud had run amok. When the man at the other end substantiated the story, Godden volunteered to tell what he could about St Cloud’s motives and state of mind, explaining he’d prefer the police to come to him because he’d fallen in getting out of bed to answer the reporter’s call, he’d cut his head, and he didn’t yet know how serious it was. Also, this news about a patient of his had shaken him badly.

The cop was sympathetic, and said a couple of men would be around sometime in the morning. They’d arrived at ten-fifteen, two plainclothesmen who already knew about the head injury, who were polite and deferential, and who obviously didn’t suspect Dr Fred Godden of anything. But why should they?

Now it was quarter to eleven, and in the half-hour they’d been here the two cops had shown nothing but interest in Godden’s monologue on Roger St Cloud. Godden had been nervous at first, but the police would have other explanations for that, and when he’d warmed into his description of Roger the nervousness vanished. He was, after all, engaging in shoptalk.

The plainclothesmen hadn’t said anything about Roger being involved in last night’s robbery at the air base, but the two events had been linked in the radio news since the nine o’clock broadcast. Nor had the radio said anything about the bodies up at the lodge yet, but the nine-thirty news had reported the finding of the bus. “Some of the bandits may have crossed the border into Canada under cover of darkness.”

They should be safe now, at least for a while. Godden had already called those of his patients he was to have seen that day and the next, telling them that under the circumstances naturally he wouldn’t be in the office till next week. After a few more reporters had called—the criminal’s analyst having replaced the criminal’s clergyman as a source of sidelight stories—there was nothing unusual in Godden leaving his phone off the hook.

The last item was Godden’s wife. Parker said, “Call your wife now. She’ll want to come back here, but tell her no. Tell her you’ll be coming along Friday as planned, unless the police want to talk to you again, and if they do you’ll be there Saturday. Tell her not to try calling you back because reporters have been bothering you and you aren’t answering the phone.”

“All right,” Godden said. He made the call, did more listening than talking, and finally got across all of the message that Parker wanted. When he hung up he looked uncertainly at Parker and said, “There’s another call I should make.”

“Who?”

“There’s a young lady. I would have seen her tonight.”

“Here?”

“No, her place.”

“Call her. Devers, get on the kitchen extension. If the woman doesn’t sound right, let me know.”

“Right.” Devers went out to the kitchen on the double, and it was clear he hoped Godden was trying something cute.

But Godden wasn’t. He called his young lady, explained that the Roger St Cloud business had loused everything up, and promised to see her next week, Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest.

When he was done with that call, and Devers had come back into the living-room to give a disgusted shake of the head, Parker said, “All right. Back to your room.”

Godden got to his feet, trying a smile. “You don’t have to tie me up again, you know,” he said. “You can trust me. I want to get clear of this mess just as much as you do.”

“You bastard,” Devers said.

Godden turned to him, spreading his hands. “I’m sorry for what’s happened to you, believe me I am. I didn’t want any of this. I didn’t want anybody dead, anybody ruined. The worst I wanted was to take your money away.”

“You rotten bastard,” Devers said.

Parker said, “That’s all. Godden, go upstairs. Webb, take him. Devers, take a look at your woman.”

Devers grimaced. “My woman,” he said in disgust, and turned away, and walked out of the room.

Ellen and her baby were being kept in the room once occupied by Godden’s children. According to Devers, she hadn’t wanted to come with him at first when he’d gone for her last night, she’d been sure she could bluff it out with the police. But when he’d assured her it was all up for them all that being the ex-wife of one of the heistmen and at the same time shacked up with a finance office clerk from the air base left her in no position to try a bluff with the law, and that her choice was between coming with him or being silenced for ever as dangerous to the ones who were left, she’d reluctantly seen the light. Then she’d wanted to do a lot of packing, but Devers had cut that short, and she’d arrived with her daughter and one hastily stuffed overnight case.

When Devers had brought her in she was being so erratic, fluctuating so badly among panic and guilt and despair and indignation, that Parker decided she was untrustworthy, and she’d been kept under lock and key ever since. Parker had guaranteed her silence during the plainclothesmen’s visit just now by letting her know her daughter would pay as much as she would for any trouble she caused. Any more trouble.

Now Parker went out to the kitchen and turned on the radio to hear the eleven o’clock news. They had a breathing spell now, shaky and complicated but with a chance of working out. Ralph Hochberg’s body was with the two money cases under a tarp in the basement. The money was still in the suitcase over by the refrigerator. Godden was a prisoner in one room, Ellen and her kid were prisoners in another, and no one else was left for the law to talk to and learn anything troublesome. They were covered against visitors and callers on the telephone. With luck, they’d be able to stay here another two days, until Saturday. With luck, another two days was all they’d need.

When Webb and Devers came into the kitchen, both to say their charges were under control, Parker said, “Let’s have that suitcase. Time to see how much we’ve got left.”

They sat around the kitchen table with the suitcase open in front of them and started counting. When they were done it came to a total of one hundred twenty-six thousand, five hundred eighty-three dollars. Parker did some figuring with pencil and paper and said, “That’s forty-two thousand, one hundred ninety-four for each of us, with a dollar left over.”

Webb rooted through the pile of money on the table found a single, crumpled it and threw it on the floor. “Now it’s even,” he said.

Devers began to laugh. When it seemed as though the laughter was getting hysterical Parker said, “Stop it.” Devers stopped, looked at Parker, and got up from the table and went into the living-room.

Webb said, “What about him?”

“We’ll wait and see.”

They kept the radio on. The one o’clock news led off with the discovery of the bodies at the lodge, though with no identification of any of them, and followed with an
authorities-are-looking-for
on Devers and Ellen Fusco. No accusations, no statement that either of them was believed to be part of the mob. Just that they were being sought for questioning. The descriptions the newscaster gave fit Devers and Ellen, but they also fit a million or so other people in the world.

Webb said, “They must of found the lodge this morning. They were keeping it quiet until they were sure Devers wasn’t coming home.”

After a while Devers came in from the living-room. He’d found Godden’s liquor cabinet, and had a glass of warm Scotch in his hand. “You ought to come in and watch television,” he said. “They got my picture on television.”

Webb looked up at him. “Is that right? You’re a celebrity.”

“I’m a celebrity.” Devers was a little drunk already, just enough to dull all his responses.

Webb said, “A celebrity oughta have ice. Lemme bring you in some ice.”

Devers stood in the middle of the kitchen floor while Webb found an ice bucket and emptied two trays of cubes into it. Devers had the frown of the morose drunk on his face, the look of a man who suspects someone is pulling a huge complicated unfathomable practical joke on him.

Webb grabbed up the ice bucket and said, “Come on, Stan, I’ll drink you under the table.” He led Devers back to the living-room.

Later on Parker let Ellen out to make dinner. She too was dulled in her reactions now, docile but sullen. Pam, her little girl, knowing something was wrong, stuck close to her mother’s knee all the time, looking round-eyed out at the world.

They all had dinner together, with the exception of Godden, who afterwards got a tray in his room. Parker felt there were too many people at the table who hated Godden, there was no point looking for trouble.

Devers wasn’t sobered much by dinner. Afterwards, while Ellen went back to her room and Parker went into the living-room to watch television, Devers and Webb took over the kitchen. Devers told sex stories, Webb told crime stories. They both laughed a lot. Parker stayed sober, watched television, watched on the eleven o’clock news films of the lodge and of the ambulance bringing the bodies down the dirt road. Ellen Fusco’s mother appeared on the screen, asking her daughter to come back, to at least let Pamela come to live with her grandma. There were photos of Devers and Ellen.

Devers passed out around two in the morning, and Webb went to Parker, weaving a little, and said, “He’ll be all right. He’ll be okay, Parker. He’s just got to get used to it.”

“I thought he’d work out,” Parker said.

Friday was slow and dull. People came to the door a few times, but always gave up after a while. Devers had a hangover and spent most of the day in the kitchen trying different cures. Webb found a deck of cards and played game after game of solitaire. Ellen was calmer now, and more sensible, and realized she had no place else to go, so she and her daughter had the run of the house. Godden was still being tied up and kept in his room. Parker prowled around watching and waiting.

Friday night, Devers and Webb got drunk again, played gin rummy, told the same stories they’d told the night before. Ellen put her daughter to bed and came to Parker and said, “Stan isn’t going to want me to go with him now. I don’t blame him. But I don’t have any money, any place to go.”

Parker looked at her. “What do you want?”

“A little money. Not a lot.”

“Maybe Devers will give you a piece of his cut. Ask him.”

“I don’t have any place to go,” she said, and panic began to play again behind her eyes.

Parker didn’t want her going back to being frantic and erratic. To keep her calm, he said, “I’ll talk it over with Webb. We’ll work something out for you by tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” she said tonelessly, and walked away.

Devers passed out about one o’clock that night, and Webb came into the living-room to finish his drinking with Parker. “Great kid,” he said. “He’ll stay in this line, won’t he?”

“Probably,” Parker said.

Webb finished his drink, put the glass on the floor beside his chair. “When do you figure we can get out of here?”

“Maybe tomorrow night. They’re not really looking around here any more.”

“They figure we’re in Alaska by now.”

Parker didn’t say anything, and when he looked over toward Webb a minute later he was asleep.

The only light in the house now came from the television set. Parker sat in front of it, looking at it, not really paying attention to it, and when the sermon ended and the national anthem ended and the screen went to snow he didn’t bother turning it off. A while later, still facing the empty screen he went to sleep.