The Green Eagle Score Read Online Free PDF Page B

pointed at Ellen and said, “Stop right there. I want to know what’s stuck in your craw.”
    Ellen turned around, at the far end of the room, moved her chin in a contemptuous nod toward Fusco, and said, “Let him tell you.” But she didn’t leave the room.
    Parker looked at Fusco, who shrugged and said, “She’s just a little bugged, Parker, that’s all. It don’t mean a thing, it’s just the way she gets.”
    “About the job?”
    Fusco looked scared. “Parker, I swear to God she’s no problem. She always takes the dim view, that’s all it is.”
    “She was this way before?”
    “That’s why she left me,” Fusco said, “the time I took the fall. Because that time she was right.”
    Ellen’s lip curled, but she didn’t say anything.
    Devers had walked in from the kitchen, carrying a coffee cup in his hand. “And now she’s sore,” he said, “because this time her ex-husband’s got me involved in it. Gonna get me in trouble.” Standing there, he drank coffee, with Ellen glaring at him.
    Parker said, “What will she do about it?”
    Ellen answered him. “Nothing,” she said, biting the word off. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
    “That’s straight, Parker,” Fusco said.
    Parker looked at them, Fusco scared, Devers confident, Ellen angry. He considered, and finally shrugged, letting it go. For now he’d take their word for it, and just keep his eyes open. Over the years he’d come to accept the fact that the people involved in every heist were never as solid as you wanted them. They always had hang-ups one way or another, always had personal problems or quirks from their private lives that they couldn’t keep from intruding into the job they were supposed to be doing. The only way to handle it was to watch them, know what the problems were, be ready for them to start screwing up. If he sat around and waited for the perfect string, cold and solid and professional, he’d never get anything done.
    “All right,” he said. “She’s your woman.”
    Grinning, Devers said, “Which of us you talking to?”
    Shocked, Fusco said, “Stan!”
    Ellen said to Parker, “You finished with me now? Can I get back to what I was doing?”
    “I’m finished,” Parker told her. “Thanks.”
    She left the room, and Parker turned to Devers. “What about that checking account?”
    The way Devers was smiling, he’d thought of something. He said, “You know the song about the little tin box?”
    “No. What’s the idea?”
    “I didn’t want to put all my cash in the bank,” Devers said. “All I’d do was put in enough money to cover my checks and keep a small steady balance. But most of my money keep in in a box in the closet in the bedroom here.”
    Parker said, “Why?”
    Devers grinned and shrugged his shoulders, being boyish and innocent. “I don’t know, it’s just the way I’ve always done it. I guess I’m like King Midas or something. I like to have my money where I can look at it. You have to have a checking account these days, you can’t send bills through the mail and money orders are too much trouble, so what the heck I’ve got an account. But the money isn’t real to me if it’s in the bank. I like to be able to open my box and see the money there.”
    Fusco was frowning at Devers as though he couldn’t understand what the boy was up to, but Parker could see it. It was the kind of offbeat approach to money a kid might have. If Devers could pull it off.
    Parker said, “Let’s see this little tin box.”
    Devers held up a hand. “Give me time,” he said. “I’ll have it when it’s needed.”
    “You going to go buy a new box?”
    “Hell, no. I’m going to have the little old box I’ve carried with me ever since high school, the battered old box that went with me to Texas, to New Mexico, to the Aleutians, and now here. Don’t you worry, Mr Parker, that box is going to look right.”
    “Not overdone.”
    “You mean, decals from the different places?” Devers