The Man With the Getaway Face by Richard Stark Read Free Book Online

believe you." Parker shrugged. "You fall in love with a woman, you've got a blind spot."
    Handy glanced at him, and away. "I suppose." They rode a while longer and then he said, "You think she'll bump him?"
    "Yeah."
    "Maybe she'll flub it. Then Skimm's got the boodle."
    "He'll split." Parker shrugged. "Skimm's getting old. Old and worried. I don't think she'll flub it."
    "That poor bastard."
    "He'll be better off," Parker said. "Hooked the way he is."
    "I suppose so."
    They rode a while longer, and then Handy said, "I wish it was simple, Parker. I wish to Christ it was simple. Can you remember the last time a job was simple?"
    "A long time ago."
    "It sounds like a good set-up." Handy reached for his cigarettes. "The way you talked about it, it sounds fine. But there's this Alma." He lit the new cigarette, lipping it. "There's always an Alma. Every damn time. Why can't we put together a job without an Alma in it?"
    "I don't know," Parked said. He was thinking of a guy named Mal, the reason he'd had to change his face.
    Handy sat for a while, thinking. "This is the last one for me."
    "Uh huh," said Parker. There was an Alma in every job, an Alma or a Mal or whatever the name was. And there was a Handy in every job, too. There was always one that was ready to quit; this was the last job and he was going to buy a chicken farm or something and settle down. There was a Handy in every job, and he always showed up for a job again a year or two later.
    Thinking about it, it surprised him that there were always the same people in every job. There was always one that had to be watched, like Alma. There was always one who was quitting after this grab, and this time it was Handy. And there was always one who had probably a hundred thousand dollars to his name, buried in fields and forests here and there across the country in tin cans and metal boxes, and this one was probably Skimm. Skimm always looked and acted like a bum, so he was probably the kind that buried it, buried it all.
    Parker had known others like that, there was one in almost every operation. They took their share and peeled off of it two or three thousand, just enough to carry them for a while, and then they went off by themselves somewhere and buried the rest of it. They figured to dig it up again some day, but they never did. The day never got rainy enough and that was why bulldozer operators working on new housing developments every once in a while turned up a metal box with thirty or forty thousand dollars in it.
    After a while, Handy said, "You turn right the next corner."
    They turned right, and the car behind them turned right, too.
    Parker watched it in the rear-view mirror and said, "Son of a bitch."
    It didn't make any sense, and that bothered him.
    The next street was one way the wrong way, but the one after that Parker made a left. So did the car behind him. He went two blocks and made a right and then another right and then a left. The car stayed with him. He drove along until he saw a "Dead End Street" sign and turned into it. He slowed down to almost a crawl, going around the corner, and stayed slow like that, so the car behind him came around the corner and was all of a sudden a lot closer.
    It was a short street, with a railroad embankment crossing it at the end. The street was a kind of valley, with the houses on high land on either side, stone or concrete steps leading up from the sidewalk to the house level.
    Parker turned into a driveway on the right, going very slowly, the Ford straining against going up the steep slope of the driveway so slowly. The other car went on by, down towards the embankment. Parker pushed the clutch in suddenly, and the car rolled back down the embankment and out across the street. It was a narrow street; with the parked cars, the Ford blocked it completely.
    "Back me," Parker said.
    He left the motor running, and pulled the emergency brake on. Then he got out of the Ford and walked down to the end of the street, where the