"Westlake, Donald E as Stark, Richard - Parker 14 - Slayground 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Westlake Donald E)

"You and Handy sure pulled a lot of jobs together," Dent said, and grinned out the windshield and shook his head.

"Yeah, I guess we did," Parker said.

"He's got a diner now someplace in Maine, don't he?"

"Presque Isle."

"Maybe I'll get up there next summer, drop in. Think he'd like that?"

"Sure," Parker said.

"It's a pity about Joe Sheer," Dent said next, talking about somebody else who'd retired and was now dead.

"Yeah, it is," Parker said. Dent didn't know the half of it. Sheer had been the only man who could connect Parker with the name he was using in those days for his legal front, and the manner of Sheer's death, five years ago, had made it impossible for Parker to use that name any more or collect any of the money he had stashed here and there under that name in resort hotel safes. This was Parker's eighth job in the five years since that had happened, which was more often than he liked to work, but he was still trying to catch up with himself, still trying to rebuild his reserve funds.

Dent was still talking, still going on with his own thoughts. "It's a pity about a lot of people," he was saying, and his grin turned sour as he glanced at Parker. "Be a pity about me pretty soon."

"Why? You feel sick?"

"No, I feel okay. But I got me a haircut at the barber shop last week, and I looked in the mirror, and I saw the back of my head in the other mirror behind me, and the elevens are up. You know what that means, Parker."

"It means you're thin," Parker said.

"It means you're finished," Dent said. He sounded grim, but not as though he was complaining.

Parker said nothing, but glanced at the back of Dent's neck, and the two tendons were standing out there, just as Dent had said. The elevens are up. When the number eleven shows in the tendons on the back of a man's neck, he's finished, everybody knew that. Parker didn't waste time trying to lie to the old man.

Dent got quiet after that, and didn't have anything else to say until they turned down the road that ran between the ball park and the amusement park, and then he said, "How do you like this for isolated, Parker? Broad daylight, and nobody here."

"What's this road used for?"

"In the summertime -- I've been here in the summertime, and in the summertime you can't move on this road. Not with the ball park, not with Fun Island. But why come out here in the winter? No reason. Except at rush hour. Four o'clock till maybe six, it's a steady stream of them headin the same way we are now. In the morning comin the other way, naturally. But all day long, nothin at all. No reason for it."

"Here comes something," Parker said.

"It's what I wanted you to see," Dent said, and grinned at him.

It came closer, black-looking against the piles of snow mounded on both sides of the road, and Parker saw it was an armored car. It went by, and Parker twisted around in the seat to look out the back window and watch it drive on. He said, still looking back, "Where's it going?"

"Back to the main branch of the bank," Dent said. "It goes out to the suburbs, all the different little branches, and picks up money at every branch. And the last one is out this way, so it finishes by comin down this road."

"That's the job?"

"You'll never find a better."

"Show me some more," Parker said. So Dent drove Parker around town, and they talked over different escape routes, and different ways to open the armored car, not because Parker felt he needed any help but because this was the way Dent helped himself stay alive, by keeping an interest in things. Then they had lunch together in a place downtown, and Parker said, "You still be around here in a couple weeks?"

"Oh, about a month, I figure. We usually get where it's warm, this time of year, but this year we don't either of us feel like doin all that drivin. About a month, though."