The Man With the Getaway Face Read Online Free PDF Page A

driver shut and locked the door again. Then he went to the cab. The other guard opened the door for him from the inside, stepped down to the gravel, and the driver climbed up behind the wheel. The guard pushed the door closed and went into the diner.
    He didn't take so long, probably because he didn't have anybody to talk to. At eight minutes after eleven, he came back out and went around to the far side of the armoured car. The driver reached over and opened the door for him. He climbed in and the driver backed out of the space and bumped across the gravel to the concrete and headed south again on 9.
    Parker got rolling right after him, coming out of the furniture store lot and heading north a quarter mile to the next place where he could make a U-turn. He hit sixty-five for a couple of minutes, coming back southward, and when he saw the red of the armoured car far ahead of him he slowed down to fifty, matching the armoured car's speed.
    The road was four lanes wide for a while, and then it narrowed down to two. There was very little traffic, only one Chevvy station wagon between Parker and the armoured car. The wagon turned off on 520, and Parker hung back farther. He was watching the sides of the road and the road itself, but he didn't see anything that looked good. No blind turns, no hills, no valleys. The road was flat and straight, the curves wide and looping.
    Parker quit before they reached Freehold, and turned the Ford around. He drove north a couple of miles and pulled on to the shoulder of the road. He shut the engine and got out of the car and opened the hood. Then he went back and sat behind the wheel again and lit a cigarette. He made himself comfortable in the seat and watched the rear-view mirror.
    A little after noon, a state patrol car pulled on to the shoulder just ahead of him, and a trooper got out looking like a modernized cowboy, only better fed. Parker rolled the window down and the trooper looked at him through his sunglasses and said, "Any trouble here?"
    "She heated up," Parker answered. "My brother took a walk up to the Esso station for some water."
    The trooper nodded. "That's all right, then."
    "Thanks for stopping," Parker said.
    The trooper hesitated, and then took one glove off. "May I see your licence and registration, please?"
    "I don't drive," Parker told him. "My brother drives. I'm just sitting over here till he comes back."
    This was beginning to irritate him, but he didn't show it. The hood being up was supposed to answer all the questions, was supposed to keep cops from stopping to ask what he was parked on the shoulder for. But it was a dull day and a quiet road and not much traffic, so they'd stopped anyway – for the hell of it, to break the monotony.
    "What about the registration?" the trooper asked.
    "He's got that, too," Parker answered. "He keeps them both in his wallet."
    "It's supposed to be in the car." The trooper wasn't suspicious or angry, just breaking the monotony. "He should have left it with you."
    "I guess he didn't think," Parker said. He hoped the armoured car wouldn't go by now, while he was bottled up with this idiot cop. "He was sore about the heating up and everything."
    The trooper hesitated again, glancing through his sunglasses at the back seat. "How come he went for the water, instead of you? Seeing you don't drive."
    Parker said, "I've got a game leg. That's why I can't get a driver's licence."
    The trooper was suddenly embarrassed. He pulled his glove back on and said, "You tell your brother about the registration."
    "I will," Parker promised.
    The trooper walked back to his own car, still looking like an overfed cowboy. He even had a rolling, slightly bow-legged walk. His black boots glistened in the sun. He got into the car and after a minute it pulled away and dwindled out of sight on the concrete road.
    Parker watched it till it disappeared, and then lit a new cigarette and frowned at the rear-view mirror.
    That shouldn't have happened. To have a cop