Parker 09 The Split by Richard Stark Read Free Book Online

western end of the stadium, the cinder path ended and Shelly crossed a narrow patch of grass to a lane of blue-gray stones that led around to a blacktop parking area behind the building. Shelly drove around there and parked against the rear wall.
    The parking lot was full of the cars of employees of the stadium and a few chartered buses from Plainfield. There was no one in sight; bus drivers and all, they were around on the other side of the building watching the game.
    Upstairs, Parker went over to the window and looked out and saw Shelly down there. He motioned to him and turned back to help with the finishing up. The employees had to be tied and gagged like the guards and dragged into the storeroom. When that was done, Parker took the rope he'd brought in with him, tied one end to the radiator, and attached the other end to the two suitcases. Feccio helped him lower the two suitcases down to Shelly, who took them off the rope and slowed them away in the back of the Renault inside the ambulance. They lowered the machine guns next, and finally they came down the rope themselves, one at a time. Parker and Clinger trawled into the back of the ambulance and squeezed into the Renault. Feccio, still in his guard uniform, sat up front with Shelly in the cab of the ambulance, while Negli found enough room between the back of the Renault and the rear doors of the ambulance to be more or less comfortable.
    It was now two twenty-five. Plainfield was on the Monequois eight-yard line, first and goal to go, three minutes and seventeen seconds left in the first half. Monequois was still leading ten to three. Plainfield had one chance to tie the score before the half. The seventy-four thousand fans present had never seen a more exciting ball game.
    So it was just an added fillip when the ambulance came tearing around from behind the stadium building, red lights flashing and siren screaming, racing across the cinder track from one end of the field to the other while the Plainfield quarterback threw an incompleted pass into the end zone and cheerleaders scattered in all directions. The ambulance roared out through the East Gate, turned right, and shrieked away toward the city.
    It went one block, and the siren stopped and the red lights clicked off.
    Another block and the ambulance pulled to the curb. Feccio jumped out, ran around back, opened the rear doors, and helped Negli position the boards for Parker to back the Renault out. They were on a side street with no traffic and no pedestrians, but they didn't care if they were seen or not. Neither of these vehicles mattered.
    Feccio and Negli got back into the rear of the ambulance, shutting the doors after them. Shelly kicked the ambulance into motion again, turned left at the next corner, left again at the next, and drove for five minutes at high speed, rapidly leaving the city behind. He stopped at a roadside ice-cream stand, closed for the season, behind which Feccio and Negli had stashed their car. They abandoned the ambulance there, and Feccio and Negli drove Shelly to his hideout and then went on to theirs.
    Behind them, Parker and Clinger had gone off in the opposite direction in the Renault. Clinger looked at his watch and said, 'Two-thirty on the button.'
    Parker said, 'Good.'
    He turned a corner, and three blocks ahead on the right was the truck. As he approached it, the Buick pulled out from behind it and stopped in the middle of the street. Kifka got out and ran around to the back of the van, where Rudd was already placing the boards.
    Parker angled the Renault in behind the Buick and stopped long enough for Kifka and Rudd to be sure the boards were positioned right, and then he drove the Renault up inside the truck.
    No one saw it happen. A factory, closed on Saturday, was on their right, and the high board fence of a junkyard was on the left.
    Parker and Clinger got out of the Renault while Kifka and Rudd were shoving the boards back up into the truck. The four of them all