She shook her head. "The minute the police start leaning on people here," she said, "the truth will come out, and Jake will go back to jail, and the worst thing is, you know know that." that."

No, the fact was, Parker didn't care. Jake would find his own way out of the jam, or not. He said, "It's too late to stop it. It's going to happen, so you better tell Jake it's time to start practicing his poker face."

"I'll stop you," she said. She was wide-eyed, body clenched with determination.

He studied her. "How do you figure to do that?"

"I'll go to the police! I'll tell them everything, I'll tell them what you plan to do."

Parker shook his head. "I wouldn't have believed it," he said. "You're dumber than your brother."

She was offended, but also involved. "What do you mean?"

"There's one guy in this group," Parker told her, "that doesn't spend a lot of his time thinking things through. I could walk you down there to his room, knock on the door, have you tell him what you just told me, and he'd kill you right then. Wouldn't even think about it, just drop you."

She blinked, but remained defiant. "Well, I'm not telling him," she said, taking a step backward, away from him and toward her car. "I'm telling you, you're the one I know, and you're the only one I have to tell."

Parker said, "The reason it's better to tell me than this other guy is, I take a minute to think about it. I take a minute and I think, what what is she gonna tell the cops? Does she know when or where or how we're gonna do it? No. Does she know who we are when we're at home? No. The only thing she can do is blow the whistle on her brother, so instead of is she gonna tell the cops? Does she know when or where or how we're gonna do it? No. Does she know who we are when we're at home? No. The only thing she can do is blow the whistle on her brother, so instead of maybe maybe he's in trouble definitely he's in trouble, and you did it." he's in trouble definitely he's in trouble, and you did it."

He waited, watching her eyes, as she went from defiant to frightened to something like desperate. Then he said, "You want to talk to the cops, go ahead. Don't worry about us. I gotta pack now. Goodbye."

FOUR.

1.

Dalesia left the Trails End first, followed a few minutes later by McWhitney, and a few minutes after that by Parker, who drove out past the covered swimming pool just around the time Wendy Beckham sat down in the hospital room with her brother to try to figure out how to keep him out of trouble, now that Jake's bad companions had announced they were not going to cancel their robbery.

"I'm sorry I told you," Jake said. He was sulky, and getting bored in the hospital bed.

"Unless I can think of something to get you out of this," Wendy told him, "so am I."

And they sat together in grim silence. This was the first day Jake's leg was out of the sling and he could sit up normally, but he wasn't even allowed to enjoy that.

When Parker got to the old mill in West Ruudskill, Dalesia and McWhitney had already driven their cars across the old, littered concrete floor, lumpy and powdering beneath their tires as they circled around rusted pieces of machinery, rolls of wire, moldering stacks of cartons, until they'd reached as deep into the building as they could drive. From the broad open entrance at the other end of the place, long since stripped of its huge metal sliding doors, they were invisible back here.

Now they had nothing to do until Dalesia would drive off to meet Briggs at the motel at six. The inside of the old brick building was colder than the outside air, so they went out a squeaking side door to the remains of an old iron bench on a concrete platform over the stream. There they sat or paced, and saw that the white sky was not going to clear today. Heavy cloud cover or even rain could only be an advantage to them tonight.

Across the way they could occasionally, not often, hear a pa.s.sing vehicle approach and cross the bridge, but where they were, the bushes and trees screened them from the road, and they could neither see nor be seen.

This was a dead time, nothing to do. Even McWhitney didn't feel like talking, though at one point he did say, "What do we do if your friend Briggs doesn't show up?"

"We go home," Parker said.

McWhitney looked at him. He'd clearly been expecting some endors.e.m.e.nt of Briggs. Not getting it, he realized he hadn't needed it. So he nodded, and looked out at the quick stream, and said nothing else.

While they were out there, in the last of the day's thin warmth, one hundred sixty miles to the east, in Chelsea, just north of Boston, behind an eight-foot-tall chain-link fence, four armored cars were finishing their prep. The company was Harbor Coin Services, and the cars had all been bought used and were then refurbished. They were all the International Navistar Armored Truck model 4700, more or less the standard of the industry. They had been manufactured in America in the late eighties or early nineties and were as good as ever. The reinforced metal box that was their reason for being did not weaken or grow old. The parts that did, the engines and transmissions and brakes and the rest of it, could be repaired or rebuilt or replaced, but the metal box remained solid.

Each car held a crew of three: a driver and a guard riding shotgun in the front compartment, and a guard with his own fold-down seat in the sealed-away rear compartment. A shatterproof gla.s.s panel between the two compartments could be slid open for communication, but otherwise the wall between front and rear sections was as thick and tough as the outer walls.

The four trucks, their bodies painted red and hoods black, went through the company car wash as the final step in their preparation for the night's work, and then lined up behind the chain-link fence, awaiting departure time. The twelve men of their crews had an early dinner, without beer or wine, and got to Harbor Coin Services at six-thirty, ready to roll.

At six-thirty, Dalesia got into his Audi and maneuvered it back out of the building, on his way to meet Briggs, who was supposed to arrive at the motel at seven. He would be taking over Dalesia's room, and then Dalesia would lead Briggs and his van back to the mill. An evening chill had settled in, so after Dalesia left, Parker and McWhitney moved back inside, sitting in the Dodge, Parker in front, McWhitney in back.

The four armored cars lumbered like costumed circus elephants out of the Harbor Coin secure area onto city streets until they reached the Northeast Expressway. They took that west, over the Mystic-Tobin bridge to Interstate 93, and then took 93 and 95 in the long loop south and west and north around Boston and up to Interstate 90, which would take them across the state. They couldn't make much time in this early part of the drive, because the Boston area roads were full, but once they got west of Newton, the traffic thinned out enough so they could get into a line in the right lane and do a steady sixty-five while all the traffic around them snapped by at eighty.

Dalesia came back at ten to seven, trailed by a dark green Ford Econoline van with Florida plates. Briggs, when he got out of the van, looked as fussy and dissatisfied as ever, but offered no complaints beyond saying, "Long drive." He was still neat, though, in white dress shirt open at the collar, a tan zippered cotton windbreaker hanging open, and dark gray work pants. He looked like an office-machine repairman.

Briggs and Dalesia and Parker had worked together some years before, in the failed job that had led Briggs to opt for retirement, but Briggs and McWhitney were now meeting for the first time. Dalesia made the introductions, and Briggs and McWhitney shook hands while eyeing each other with some skepticism. Both were generally dissatisfied people, in different ways, and couldn't be expected to take to each other right away.

While Briggs and McWhitney were sizing each other up, Wendy Beckham was leaving the hospital, fretful, no closer than before to figuring out how to save her brother from his own carelessness. And Elaine Langen was on her way from home down to the former bank headquarters in Deer Hill. Her husband had been there all day, working with Bart Hosfeld, the professional who'd been hired to be in charge of the move, but Elaine only had to be there for the part she dreaded most, which was the farewell dinner.

The Deer Hill branch would continue as a bank, a part of Rutherford Combined Savings, but it would now be a Rutherford bank branch in the old-fashioned marble s.p.a.ce of the bank building's main floor. The former Deer Hill Bank offices upstairs would be rented to other concerns, one of which would pay for the right to rename the building after itself.

For tonight, however, a different kind of transition would be taking place. For tonight only, the marble hall of the Deer Hill Bank, with its high ceiling and glittering chandeliers installed back in the twenties, was going to be a banquet hall.

Caterers were even now wheeling in round tables, chairs, tablecloths, place settings for eighty, and a wheeled rostrum for speeches, and the branch manager's office tonight would be the caterer's base of operations, with warming ovens and portable refrigerators and many trays lined with canapes.

At eight tonight, old-line bank employees and important local citizens would gather in this original branch of Deer Hill Bank to say farewell to that bank and to watch it be eaten in one giant gulp by Rutherford Combined. Speeches would be made, maudlin and tedious. Promises would be made, never to be kept. Memories would be stirred with many boring anecdotes of the old days of Deer Hill and the sweet little bank that kept the town going through thick and thin, mostly thin. Elaine's father, Harvey, would be remembered in ways that would make him unrecognizable.

It was going to be absolute h.e.l.l, but longer. Elaine took a Valium with scotch and drove south, telling herself that at least the ending ending of tonight's activities would be a surprise for those pompous b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. of tonight's activities would be a surprise for those pompous b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

When Briggs opened the side door of his van, they looked in at five long, lumpy rolls of thin army blankets, tied in two places each with clothesline. In addition to those, looking like too-small body bags, there were three liquor cartons in there that had been opened and reclosed.

"Let me show you these things," Briggs said, considering which one he wanted to bring out first, actually squeezing one to feel what was inside. Making his choice, he pulled it closer and started to untie the lengths of clothesline. McWhitney, sounding suspicious, said, "These things aren't new?"

"Oh, no," Briggs said. "You'll never get a new one, they're much too controlled for that. They have to get out into the world, where they can be stolen and sold and lost and borrowed and mixed up in the paperwork." Now unrolling the blanket, he said, "These have all been reconditioned. I don't know if any of them has ever been fired, except maybe in practice. Mostly, you know, particularly when they're owned by governments, these items are mostly for show."

The last of the blanket was rolled back, and there was the 84mm Carl-Gustaf. Fifty-one inches long, grayish-tan metal, it was blunt and unlovely, a thick length of plain pipe that flared out like a megaphone at the b.u.t.t. There were two pieces of wood attached, one under the trigger guard and the other screwed to a metal strap near the front.

"You load it here," Briggs said, and snapped open the cone at the rear, which was hinged to the left. "It's all normal," he told them, and shut the weapon again. "There are three sights, open here, telescopic here, which I don't think you're going to need, and infrared here."

"That we'll use," McWhitney said. "Let me heft the thing."

"Of course."

Briggs handed the weapon to McWhitney, who hefted it and said, "Heavy."

"Thirty-six pounds," Briggs told him. "Six pounds more with the rocket in it."

McWhitney shook his head. "I don't want to have to fire this thing more than once."

Dalesia, grinning, said, "It's all in the aim, Nels."

McWhitney opened the b.u.t.t again, raised the weapon to his face, and sniffed. Briggs said, "It won't smell."

"Oil," McWhitney said.

"They're reconditioned," Briggs told him. "As I said."

Parker said, "What else have you got in there? The rockets are in those boxes?"

"Yes, but let me show you the rifle I got."

Parker said, "You said Valmets."

"Yes, but I got something else," Briggs said, feeling through the rolled blankets, making another choice. As he untied the clothesline, he said, "The problem with the Valmet, I could only get the M-sixty, not the M-sixty-two, and you don't want that."

McWhitney said, "Why not?"

"The Finnish army, it's cold up there," Briggs told him, "they use thick gloves, so the M-sixty doesn't have a trigger guard. You don't want that."

Parker said, "So what are we getting instead?"

"The Colt Commando."

Dalesia said, "An American gun?"

"That's right, developed for Vietnam. It's a short version of the M-16, and it's light, and you won't be worrying about long-range accuracy anyway, so it's fine for you."

Dalesia said, "I've seen these before."

"Sure you have." Opening the blanket, Briggs said, "The middle section is the same as the M-16, but the barrel's only ten inches instead of twenty, and the b.u.t.t's only four inches long. There's an extender in the b.u.t.t you can pull out to make it seven inches long if you're going to do shoulder-firing, which I don't think you are."

McWhitney said, "The front of the barrel is threaded. What's that for?"

"There's a lot of muzzle flash," Briggs told him, "because of the short barrel, so you can attach a four-inch-long flash hider on the front. You don't care about that, that's just for somebody who wants to keep his location hidden at night. This way, it's the shortest it gets."

"I think we need to practice with these things," Dalesia said. "Not shooting them, handling them."

As they unwrapped the rest of the weapons, some miles away Elaine Langen arrived at her party and was met by her husband's undisguised jubilation. "It's a wonderful night, Elaine," he said, standing there in a tux, which really did look very good on him. "It's so much better to close this chapter with a grand party, don't you think, than some cold banker's farewell."

"Oh, I think it'll be a cold bankers' party," she said, and went off to find the bar.

A more subdued party, if perhaps more honestly joyful, was taking place three miles north of the former Deer Hill Bank, in a room at the Green Man Motel, where Dr. Myron Madchen had brought his special friend Isabelle Moran and a bottle of champagne with which to toast the beginning of their new lives together, lives that were being fashioned for them this very night. Isabelle had brought the gla.s.ses, the Brie, and the crackers, which she opened while the doctor opened the champagne, very carefully, as he always did.

A little later, he opened Isabelle's clothing just as carefully, because she was still swathed in white bandage around her torso below the b.r.e.a.s.t.s, to give support to a two-week-old broken rib caused by the violent husband. The last broken rib he would ever inflict on Isabelle; they drank to that, too.

And then they made love, very carefully, the doctor choosing the positions with great delicacy so as not to interfere with the healing of her rib. He was considerate, and he was knowledgeable, and she was grateful, which she demonstrated in a number of ways.

Once the armaments had been unloaded from Briggs's van, Dalesia drew him a map to show the route back to Trails End Motor Inne, and Briggs shook hands all around.

"I'll be in touch," Parker said.

"Good hunting," Briggs told them all, then got into his van, backed away to where he could turn around, and drove out of there.

Everything was now on the concrete factory floor: the guns lying atop their blankets, the rockets and the Commando ammunition still in their liquor boxes. McWhitney stooped to pick up one of the Commandos and sight along it, aiming at the driver's door on his pickup. "It would be nice," he said, cheek against the metal of the gun, "if they'd see these things and just fold the hand. Give it up. Open the doors, get out of the way."

Dalesia said, "Never happen. Everybody's gotta be a hero for just one second. Then they fold like a beach chair, but first they gotta make you go that one step too far. That way, they can think back on it without being embarra.s.sed about themselves."

"The only thing they can do that's really stupid," Parker said, "is try to shoot at us."

"Shoot at us, us, you mean," McWhitney said. "You're gonna be in the police car." you mean," McWhitney said. "You're gonna be in the police car."

"It's still stupid," Parker said.

In another room in the Green Man Motel, down the hall from Dr. Madchen and his love, Sandra Loscalzo came in from her early solitary dinner and immediately switched on her scanners. She would now pick up any police radio transmission anywhere within twelve miles of here.

Those guys had wanted two days to finish whatever it was they were doing. She was interested in that. Without endangering herself, there might be a way to include herself into whatever was about to go down.

Sandra had once heard a definition of a lawyer that she liked a lot. It said: "A lawyer is somebody who finds out where money is going to change hands, and goes there." It was a description with speed and solidity and movement, and Sandra identified with it. She wasn't a lawyer, but she didn't see why she couldn't make the concept work for her.

In her room at the Green Man, among her scanners, the night blossomed with police calls. Prowlers, domestic disputes, drunken drivers, heart attacks, rowdy teenagers in parks and playgrounds, fights in bars. None of them were her three guys. Not yet.

The sequence at the Deer Hill Bank party was first c.o.c.ktails and shmoozing until eight, then dinner, then the speeches. Elaine Langen got just drunk enough in the initial phase of the evening to have no appet.i.te for the second, so she ate practically nothing of dinner. However, with the prospect of the speeches still out in front of her, she did keep on drinking.

Wendy couldn't be physically present in the hospital after visiting hours, but she could phone Jake and did, after tidying the mobile home and eating her frugal dinner. "Jake," she started, "I've been thinking."

"Don't," Jake said. He'd been thinking, too, and every thought he had led directly to a dead end. A solid wall. A black hole.

"No, listen, Jake," she said. "You and me, we've had our differences over the years, but we're still brother and sister, we can still take care of each other."

"Oh, yeah, I'm fine."

"The first thing you don't want to do," she told him, "is that. No giving up."

He made a face at the blank television screen. Maybe there was something he could watch there after all. "Yeah?"

"What you want to do tomorrow," she advised him, "when they come around, you just deny everything."

"That's what I figured to do. If they come around."

"They will, Jake. And when they do, no matter what they say, no matter what anybody at the motel says, you just deny it all."

"There's only two people at the motel," he said, "you know, that could be, whatever, and I trust those people."

"You're a trusting man, Jake," she said. "That's a good quality in you, but sometimes it can get you in trouble. You know what I mean."

"Let me go on trusting them, all right? As long as I can, let me go on trusting somebody."