The Score: A Parker Novel by Richard Stark Page A

appearances. My nurse isn't in on it.”
    “That's all right.”
    They went out. When they were back in the car, Grofield started laughing again. “This office isn't bugged! Parker, if you had a sense of humor you'd bust a gut right now. This office isn't bugged! I wouldn't take a million dollars for that man.”
    Parker lit a cigarette and waited for Grofield to get over it.

2
    T welve men made the dining room uncomfortably full. Edgars had set up folding chairs for the extras and had distributed beer. Then he and Parker and Paulus had taken turns filling the new men in on the operation. Edgars had run his slides, showing them the map, and also the photos of Raymond Avenue and the banks and the two gates to the plant and the police station and everything else. The room had filled with smoke, even with both windows open.
    Handy McKay was the only one selected who hadn't chosen to come in at least to listen. The rest were all there. Wiss and Kerwin, the other two safe and vault experts, both small, narrow men with an intense and concentrated look. Wiss had brought, to work with him, a rangy fortyish man named Elkins, with whom Parker had worked in the past. Chambers was there, a big awkward-looking hillbilly with a brother in jail for statutory rape. And Pop Phillips, an old guy wholooked like Hollywood's idea of a night-watchman. And Littlefield, a stocky man in his fifties who looked as though he made his living selling gold-mine stock. And Salsa, in his late thirties, tall and slender, who looked like a gigolo and used to be one.
    When the talk and the slide show were finished, and when Edgars had distributed more beer, Paulus asked if there were any questions. Wiss said, “One. What's the split?”
    “Even,” Paulus told him. “Every man a twelfth.”
    “That's not the regular way.”
    Parker said, “This isn't the regular job. It's more men than usual, and more things to do.”
    Wiss shrugged. “It don't matter to me. What's a twelfth of two hundred fifty grand?”
    “That's minimum,” said Edgars, “just a minimum.”
    Paulus said, “A little over twenty thousand.”
    Wiss said, “Twenty thousand's all right.”
    Littlefield, looking like a man at a board meeting, said, “You got financing yet?”
    “Picked it up yesterday,” Grofield told him.
    “How much?”
    “Four G's.”
    “That's eight thousand off the top. You couldn't cut it any closer than that?”
    Parker said, “You heard the setup. You got any way to shave it?”
    Littlefield shook his head. “I guess not. But eight thousand's a big bite.”
    “Less than seven hundred a man,” Paulus told him.
    Elkins, the man Wiss had brought with him, said, “How long you figure to stay out at this mine?”
    Wycza laughed. “Till it cools,” he said.
    “Maybe three, four days,” Parker told him. “We can stash cars there ahead of time, make our split there.”
    Chambers, the hillbilly, stretched his long legs out and said, “What's the chance of aerial surveillance? What if the state boys throw helicopters out?”
    “Helicopters,” said Paulus.
    Edgars said, “There's sheds there, and trees back a ways from the ravine edge. We can all get under cover.”
    Chambers nodded and scratched his chin. “The truck, too?”
    “I'm pretty sure.”
    Chambers looked at him sideways. “Pretty sure? Pretty sure don't cut it.”
    “If we can't hide it up top,” Edgars told him, “we can always take it down into the ravine. There's an overhang on the south side, we can stick it in under there.”
    “Just don't like helicopters.”
    There was silence then. Parker looked around. Kerwin and Pop Phillips and Salsa hadn't asked anything, but all three of them looked as though they were thinking hard. Parker said, “Everybody in?”
    Pop Phillips shook his head. “I'm not quite sure, Parker,” he said. “It strikes me as being a pretty ostentatious sort of proposition.”
    Kerwin said, “How many safes?”
    Edgars answered him. “The two bank