The Steel Hit by Donald E. Westlake

Author:Donald E. Westlake [Westlake, Donald E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780340150252
Publisher: Coronet
Published: 1971-10-01T22:00:00+00:00

P04 The Steel Hit

Chapter 6

THEY GOT the other truck that Thursday, from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Handy went for it, because that was the day Parker fixed up a licence for himself and a registration. It was a printer he went to, and once again the contact was through Lawson. It took three hours, and then Parker went to the body shop to wait for Handy and the truck.

The body shop was in Dover, and the owner, a sullen man in an undershirt, had heard from Lawson that Parker would be coming. Parker introduced himself as Flynn, and then waited around for Handy.

Handy got there at seven-thirty that evening. The truck was six years old. The cab was a wide International Harvester, painted green, and the trailer another Fruehauf. This one had cost more — fifteen hundred — and was a much better truck. It had been stripped of heater and mudguards and floor mats and all but the legal minimum of lights, but at least it was in sound running condition and the trailer was in good shape. The original plates had been Pennsylvania and as hot as it was possible to get, so Handy had had to pay a hundred extra for safe plates from Indiana.

Parker studied the trailer, and it would work out fine. There were two rear doors plus one door on each side at the midpoint. The wooden inner shell was scuffed up but intact. Parker told the body shop owner what he wanted — the rear doors and the right side door sealed permanently, and a lock on the outside of the left side door which would be guaranteed to keep people in. He and Handy went off to a diner and had coffee and then to a movie.

When they came back, just before midnight, the job was done. The owner wanted a hundred, but they gave him eighty. The bankroll was getting low, less than five hundred left.

They drove to Newark, and Handy left the truck in a street already lined with trucks. Then he and Parker drove to where they’d parked the other truck yesterday, and Handy drove it eight blocks away and parked it again. It wasn’t good to leave a vehicle in one spot more than twenty-four hours. After they moved the second truck, they drove down to the Shore Points Diner.

It was now nearly four o’clock, Friday morning. The diner was closed and there was practically no traffic on route 9. Handy kept the watch in his hand, looking at it by the dash light, and Parker gunned out of the lot. He had to go south first, make a U-turn, and then north again. There were only two traffic lights along that stretch of 9, and they slowed when they reached the first one, to be sure they caught it red.

When it changed, Parker jumped to fifty and they flew past the second one. He had to slow to make the turn to 440, where there was a looping circle that went away to the right after 9 passed under 440.

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