Parker - 21 - Breakout by Richard Stark

Author:Richard Stark
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780892967797
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Published: 2002-11-20T03:50:13+00:00

THREE

1

Parker, disgusted, removed his belt so he could let the full plastic bags fall to the brick floor of the useless tunnel. Mackey watched him, frowning, then said, ’You’re leaving the swag?”

Sliding the belt back through the loops, Parker said, “What do we do with it? The people who knew who to call in New Orleans are down in there, under the dirt.”

“God damn it,” Williams said, “we don’t have the customer.”

“We don’t have anything,” Parker told him.

He hadn’t liked this thing from the beginning. Mostly, it had been the simple matter that he hadn’t wanted to stay in this part of the world after getting out of their prison, but he also didn’t like to be pressured into doing something he felt wrong about.

And it had felt wrong to him, all the way. He hadn’t known why, or what to look out for, but from the minute Marcantoni introduced the idea, back in Stoneveldt, when it was clear to Parker that he had to agree to be part of this thing or lose Marcantoni—and he’d needed Marcantoni even more then than he needed him now—Parker believed it was all going to turn sour, one way or another, before he could get clear of this place. He’d never thought Marcantoni or the others would try to keep it all for themselves, when the time came to split up the proceeds; they were more professional—and sensible—than that. But he could feel it, out there, hovering. Something.

And here it was. A building that was famous for having only one way out, and now they had to find another way.

Williams was looking up at that long ragged split in the ceiling. “The street’s up there,” he said. “Suppose we could get up and out that way?”

Mackey said, “Dig a hole upwards, over my head? Into a street full of traffic? I’ll stand over here and watch.”

Parker said to Williams, “That doesn’t work. Even if it doesn’t cave in, and it probably wouldn’t, you’ve got a hundred fifty years of paving up there, layer over layer of blacktop.”

Mackey said, “That’s why, when they want to get through it, they use a jackhammer.”

Williams stopped looking up. With a shrug, he said, “That’s the only idea I had.”

Parker said, “We’ll go back the way we came, see what we find.”

The other two got rid of their plastic bags of jewelry and they left the tunnel, went back through the mostly abandoned storage room, and into the green-tinged parking area, where Mackey said, “Maybe it would be easier to get out down here. There’s more garage space past this, for people who live in this place.”

They walked over to the exit, which was covered by a heavy metal mesh gate that lowered from a drum overhead. Through the mesh, they could see the ramp extend upward toward the street, and a bit of the dark night up there.

But there was no way through or under or around the mesh. The barrier was seriously alarmed, firmly seated into deep metal tracks on both sides, and flanked by concrete block walls two layers thick.

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