Breakout (23 page)

Three blocks later, that turned out to have been a good idea, because four police cars, two of them from Rosetown and two
from the city, went tearing by, toward Darlene’s house, Tootsie Roll lights flashing on their roofs. As he watched them recede
in the rearview mirror, Mackey said, “They’re not using their sirens.”

Parker sat up and looked out the back window. “Sneaking up on us,” he said.

T
he only sensible way to drive from the Park Regal, the hotel Brenda was checking out of, to the airport was to cut across
downtown to a highway called the Harrick Freeway. It was more complicated to get to the Harrick from Rosetown, but Parker,
in the backseat, gave directions from Darlene’s map, and a little after two Mackey took an on-ramp and joined the traffic
headed west. Twenty minutes later they saw the exit sign for McCaughey International and took it, Mackey saying, “What we
need now is a place we can wait.”

That turned out not to be a problem. The four blocks of city street between the freeway and the airport entrance were lined
with motels. Mackey pulled in at one in the second block, where the parking area for the attached restaurant was in front,
just off the street. Parked to face the traffic, he said, “Now we wait.”

“I should do the driving, this part,” Parker told him. “’When we get there, you follow Brenda in, I stay with the car. The
cops here would make me right away.”

“Fine,” Mackey said. “Circle the airport and come back for me. Either I’ll shake her loose, or I’ll see what plane she takes.”

They switched places, Parker at the wheel and Mackey beside him, and watched the traffic, which seemed to be about half cabs.
They waited a quarter of an hour, and then Mackey said, “There she is,” and they watched Brenda go by in the backseat of a
taxi, sitting forward, looking in a hurry to be somewhere else.

“There’s her tail,” Parker said.

“And there’s her other one. They put two on her.”

The unmarked police car is unmarked, but it’s still a police car, still with police equipment, built to government specifications.
They’re always large American sedans, heavy, four-door, in the lower price range, Ply-mouths or Chevrolets. They’re usually
painted some drab color that civilians would never choose but that’s supposed to make them less noticeable, and they have
the same tires municipalities buy for all their official vehicles, making them the only apparently civilian cars on the road
without a white stripe on the tires.

Now, when Parker pulled out from the motel parking lot to follow the followers, both cars were Ply-mouths, one a dull green,
the other a dull tan. Two bulky men rode in the front seat of each. He couldn’t see Brenda’s cab, but that was all right;
the cops could.

They all drove to the airport entrance and in, taking the loop past the terminal buildings. Ahead, first one unmarked car
and then the other flashed right-turn signals, so Brenda was going to the terminal for Great Lakes Air, a regional carrier.
Parker also pulled over, behind everybody else, stopping just long enough for Mackey to hop out, then angling back into the
traffic. One cop was getting out of each car to follow Brenda, the other staying at the wheel. Mackey trailed them all.

This road would eventually circle back to the entrance, where he could swing back to go past Great Lakes Air again. If Mackey
was there, he’d stop.

He was taking the left ramp that would lead him around and into the airport again when he glanced in the mirror and saw the
green Plymouth behind him. The cop had been hiding in the traffic, but no one else was taking the turn to go back into the
airport, so there he was. He’d made a very quick and sure ID as Parker had driven by him. Parker couldn’t see him well enough,
inside the car back there, but he knew the guy would be on his radio.

This little red car was too identifiable. He couldn’t stay in it, but how could he get clear of it without the cop being all
over him?

He completed the left-turn U, and this time he noticed the additional lanes that went off to the right, before the terminals,
with a big sign above: cargo.

Those lanes were empty. Parker accelerated into them, widening the distance from the pursuer, the Saab giving him just that
much more juice than the Plymouth could deliver. But he wouldn’t have the advantage for long.

This road curved rightward away from the passenger terminals and soon had large storage buildings on its left side, each with
an airline name prominent on it. On the right were a high chain-link fence and scrubby fields. A few trucks moved along this
road, and Parker snaked through them, looking for an out.

There. On the left, a building with a large open hangar-type entrance on the front. Parker hit the brakes, spun the wheel,
hit the accelerator, and roared into the building.

There were trucks in here, too, being loaded or unloaded, with one narrow lane among them and stacks of goods piled high on
both sides. Too many workmen moved among the trucks; Parker held down the horn, accelerated, saw the broad open door at the
far end, cluttered with electric carts for carrying cargo out to the planes, and braced his forearms on the steering wheel
as he slammed down onto the brake, then pushed open his door and slid out of the Saab as it continued to travel at ten miles
an hour, straight toward that far opening.

Parker hit the floor rolling, under a truck and out the other side, coming to his feet with the Terrier in his hand. He ran
to the front of the truck, saw that the Saab had stopped when it ran into the carts just outside the building, and the Plymouth
was just braking to a stop behind it. He ran toward the Plymouth, and its door opened, and the cop got out, and was Turley.

The CID man from Stoneveldt, student of game theory. Of course the law would have him part of this detail, since he knew Parker,
had sat across a desk from him twice, told him nobody had ever escaped from Stoneveldt. A small bulky red-haired middleweight,
now reaching inside his windbreaker as he slammed the Plymouth’s door and took a step toward the Saab.

“Turley!” Parker yelled.

Turley spun around, astonished, and Parker took a flat stance, the Terrier held out in front of himself with both hands. “Hands
where I can see them!”

Turley stared all around, not sure what to do. His hand was still inside the windbreaker, but he had to know what would happen
if it came out full. Half a dozen workmen, wide-eyed, backed away.

Parker yelled, “I’m a police officer! This man is under arrest!”

“For Christ’s sake!” Turley yelled. Now his hand did come out from inside his windbreaker, empty, so he could wave his arms
in outrage, “Tm the cop!” he yelled. “This man’s an escaped—”

Parker had reached him now. “Stop yelling,” he said.

Turley blinked at him, trying to catch up.

Parker shook his head. “Game theory,” he said. “Chapter two.”

“You’ll never get out of the airport,” Turley told him. “Do you want to add murder one?”

“So everything’s going your way,” Parker agreed. “So all you have to be is calm, am I right?”

Turley nodded, thinking about that. He’d come down from his rage as quickly as he’d gone up. “You’re right,” he said. “So
why don’t you just hand me the weapon and let’s let these people go back to work.”

“We’re getting in your car,” Parker told him. “You’re driving. If you don’t like that idea, I’ll give you some murder one
and do my own driving.”

“You would, too,” Turley said. “You proved that with Jelinek.”

Parker waited for Turley to get used to the idea. Turley thought for a second, glancing toward the useless workmen, and then
shrugged. "You’re the escape artist. I’ll enjoy watching you at work."

"That’s the way," Parker said. Backing away from Turley, he said, "We open our doors at the same time. We get in at the same
time."

Turley nodded, and stood with his left hand on top of the car while Parker moved around it to the passenger side and said,
“Now.”

They opened both doors, slid in, and Parker said, “Don’t drive backwards. You can get around the Saab.”

Turley put the Plymouth in gear and drove them out of there, through the tight fit between the Saab and a couple of the electric
carts, out to the business side of the airport, while behind them the workmen clustered into groups to try to decide what
they’d just been witnesses to.

Now they were among the taxiways, with planes landing and taking off some distance away. Clear routes were marked in white
paint on the gray concrete, and various vehicles traveled around back here, all staying within the lines.

Turley said, “Do you have some sort of plan in mind?” As though the idea were ridiculous.

To the left were the main terminal buildings. To the right the buildings grew fewer, and some chain-link fence could be seen.
Whatever was happening with Mackey and Brenda, there was no point in Parker trying to link up with them again. “To the right,”
he said.

Turley nodded, and they drove along the rear of the cargo buildings, hundreds of workmen moving around, dozens of vehicles
of all kinds, nobody paying them any attention in their unmarked car.

Parker said, “Call in.”

Turley seemed surprised. “What do I say, I’m bringing you in?”

“You followed me into that cargo building, I abandoned the red car. You’ve got the car, but you don’t have me. You figure
I’m hiding in that building somewhere.”

“And I’m standing by?”

“That’s right,” Parker said. “Waiting for backup.”

Turley snorted. “That’ll buy you maybe thirty seconds,” he said.

“Just do it.”

Turley did it, saying it the way Parker had told him to, adding nothing, the dispatcher brisk, in a hurry. Putting the microphone
back on its hook, Turley said, “I’ll look like a real idiot, once I finally do bring you in.”

Parker said, “I didn’t take your gun.”

Turley looked at him sideways, looked at the road ahead. “Meaning what?”

“I’m not out to make you feel bad about yourself,” Parker told him. “It’s just that it’s time for me to get to some other
part of the world.”

“And you figure,” Turley said, “if I’m your chauffeur, but you don’t disarm me, I didn’t lose my weapon to you, that way I’ve
still got my dignity.”

“Up to you,” Parker said.

“And I’ll be easier to control,” Turley said, “if I’ve still got my dignity.”

“Up to you.”

Turley laughed, not as though he meant it, and said, “Here I was telling you all about game theory. We could have had some
nice discussions, back in Stoneveldt.”

“I don’t think so,” Parker said.

“I knew you had something in mind, back there,” Turley told him. “I had my eye on you, just not enough.”

“I felt the eye,” Parker assured him.

“I hope so,” Turley said. “There’s a gate up there.”

Ahead, there was an open guarded gate where the delivery trucks drove in. Four rent-a-cops were on duty there. “Flash the
badge,” Parker said.

“Naturally.”

A gasoline truck was just pulling out when they arrived. Turley lowered his window, dangled the leather folder that held his
badge, and Parker put his other arm over the Terrier in his lap as the rent-a-cop leaned down to say, “Help you guys?” He
was in his fifties, surely a retired cop himself.

“Undercover work”, Turley told him. “Baggage thefts.”

The rent-a-cop gave an angry laugh. “We can slow em down, ” he said, “but nothing will ever stop em.” He stepped back and
waved them through.

A two-lane road ran along the chain-link fence outside the airport property. Closing his window, Turley said, “Which way?”

“Left.” Which would be away from the main bulk of the airport.

This was the flattest part of this flat state, where they’d chosen to put the airport. Miles away to the right, as they rode
along beside the fence, Parker could see Stoneveldt looming. So could Turley. He said, “Want me to drop you off there?”

“I don’t think so.”

The radio squawked. Turley looked at it, looked at Parker. “They’re calling me,” he said.

“Don’t answer.”

“I don’t have anything cute to say, throw them off the scent?”

“There’s nothing cute,” Parker told him. “There’s just me, going away from here.”

The radio squawked again, and Parker said, “Shut it off. There’s nothing we need to hear.”

Turley switched the radio off, stopping the voice in midsquawk. They drove a minute in silence, and then Turley said, “I’m
state, as I guess you know, but this is a local car we’re in.”

“Working together to get the bad guys,” Parker suggested.

“That’s right,” Turley said. He seemed serious about it. He said, “A couple years ago, the city police union put a proposal
on the table, to city government, install locators in all the cars. You know, bounce off the satellite, tells you exactly
where you are, also tells the dispatchers at headquarters exactly where you are.”

Parker said, “The politicians didn’t want to spend the money.”

“You know
that’s
true,” Turley said. “They said, you boys are local law enforcement, you know exactly where you are.”

“If they’d spent the money,” Parker said, “I’d have to do something else now.”

“If they’d spent the money,” Turley corrected him, “
and
if I told you about it.”

“You’d tell me,” Parker said. “You don’t want me surprised.”

“Well, you’re right about that, too,” Turley agreed. “We’re coming to an intersection up here, which way you want to go?”

Stoneveldt was to the right. “Left,” Parker said.

I
t was almost three o’clock. He was out of that city at last, away from the airport and the gathering cops, but he wasn’t finished.
He couldn’t stay in this car much longer, because they’d be putting planes up soon, to look for him. There were two hours
of daylight left, far too much, and they were running southwestward away from the city over this tabletop.

Parker said, “What’s out in front of us?”

“Corn,” Turley said, but then corrected himself. “Not this time of year. Farms, a few little towns, railroad towns.”