Breakout
Authors: Richard Stark
PRAISE FOR
RICHARD STARK, DONALD WESTLAKE, AND
BREAKOUT
“Richard Stark (the name that Donald E. Westlake uses when he lets Parker off the leash) writes with ruthless efficiency.
His bad guys are polished pros who think hard, move fast, and turn on a dime in moments of crisis. And because talk doesn’t
come cheap, every bit of dialogue counts.”
—Marilyn Stasio,
New York Times Book Review
“The Parker volumes are lean, spare, tough-minded, and utterly convincing.… Parker hasn’t lost a step.”
—Lawrence Block,
Washington Post Book World
“Exhilarating… a great pleasure.… Packed so tightly with painstaking details… that it comes as a shock to realize the volume
isn’t bigger than it is.… Westlake is an artist of compression, with the ability to create a complex, frightening character
in very few words.”
—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)
“Westlake’s ability to construct an action story filled with unforeseen twists and quadruple-crosses is unparalleled.”
—
San Francisco Chronicle
“Whatever Stark writes, I read. He’s a stylist, a pro, and I thoroughly enjoy his attitude.”
—Elmore Leonard
“Elmore Leonard wouldn’t write what he does if Stark hadn’t been there before. And Quentin Tarantino wouldn’t write what he
does without Leonard.… Old master that he is, Stark does all of them one better.”
—
Los Angeles Times
“Fans will thank Stark/Westlake for assisting them in making it through another night of guaranteed spare, straight-ahead
action and dark humor.”
—
Library Journal
“Charming, efficient, and deadly serious, Parker never misses a beat—whether finishing off the hit man who pays him an unexpected
visit, or tracking down the unknown enemies who put out the contract on his life.”
—
New York Daily News
“A very readable effort from master craftsman Stark.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
The Hunter [Payback]
The Man with the Getaway Face
The Outfit
The Mourner
The Score
The Jugger
The Seventh
The Handle
The Damsel
The Rare Coin Score
The Green Eagle Score
The Dame
The Black Ice Score
The Sour Lemon Score
Deadly Edge
The Blackbird
Slayground
Lemons Never Lie
Plunder Squad
Butcher’s Moon
Comeback
Backflash
Flashfire
Firebreak
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2002 by Richard Stark
All rights reserved.
Mysterious Press books are published by Warner Books, Inc.
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
The Mysterious Press name and logo are registered trademarks of Warner Books, Inc.
First eBook Edition: September 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-56480-9
Contents
PRAISE FOR RICHARD STARK, DONALD WESTLAKE, AND BREAKOUT
1
W
hen the alarm went off, Parker and Armiston were far to the rear of the warehouse, Armiston with the clipboard, checking off
the boxes they’d want. The white cartons were stacked six feet high to make aisles that stretched to the unpainted concrete
block side walls of the building. A wider central aisle ran straight to the loading dock where they’d come in, dismantling
the alarms and raising the overhead door.
Then what was
this
alarm, five minutes after they’d broken in? “That idiot Bruhl,” Armiston said, throwing the clipboard away in exasperation.
“He went into the office.”
Parker was already loping toward the central aisle. Behind him, Armiston cried, “God
damn
it! Fingerprints!” and ran back to pick up the clipboard.
Parker turned into the main aisle, running, and saw far away the big door still open, the empty truck backed against it. George
Walheim, the lockman who’d got them in here, stood by the open doorway, making jerky movements, not quite running away.
These were all generic pharmaceuticals in here, and Armiston had the customer, at an airfield half an hour north. The plan
was, by tomorrow these medicines would be offshore, more valuable than in the States, and the four who’d done the job would
earn a nice percentage.
But that wasn’t going to happen. Bruhl, brought in by Armiston, was supposed to have gotten a fork-lift truck, so he could
run it down the main aisle to pick up the cartons Parker and Armiston had marked. Instead of which, he’d gone to see what
he could lift from the office. But Walheim hadn’t cleared the alarm system in the office.
As Parker ran down the long aisle, Armiston a dozen paces behind, Bruhl appeared, coming fast out of the first side aisle
down there. Walheim tried to clutch at him, but Bruhl hit him with a backhand that knocked the thinner man down.
Parker yelled, “Bruhl! Stop!” but Bruhl kept going. He jumped to the ground outside the loading dock, next to the truck, then
ran toward the front of it. He was going to take it, leave the rest of them here on foot.
There was no way to stop him, no way to get there in time. Walheim was still on hands and knees, looking for his glasses,
when the truck jolted away from the loading dock. Outside was the darkness of four A.M., spotted with thin lights high on
the corners of other buildings in this industrial park.
The truck, big rear doors flapping, heeled hard on the right turn at the end of the blacktop lot, Bruhl still accelerating.
The empty truck was top-heavy, it wasn’t going to make it.
Walheim was on his feet, patting his glasses into place, when Parker ran by. “What do we—?” But Parker was gone, jumping off
the loading dock to run away leftward as behind him the truck crashed over onto its side and scraped along the pavement until
it ran into a utility pole, knocking it over. The few lights around here went dark.
There was nothing in this area but the industrial park, empty at night. No houses, no bars, no churches, no schools. There
were no pedestrians out here at four in the morning, no cars driving by.
Parker had run less than a block when he heard the sirens, far behind him but coming fast. There was nowhere to go to cover,
no point trying to break into another of these buildings. Fleets of trucks here and there stood in lines behind high fences.
Parker kept running. Armiston and Walheim were wherever they wanted to be, and Parker tried to keep the sound of sirens behind
him. But the sirens spread, left and right and then everywhere, slicing and dicing the night.
Parker ran down the middle of an empty street and ahead of him headlights came around a corner, a bright searchlight beam
fastened on him. He stopped. He put his hands on top of his head.
D
o you want to tell me about it?” the CID man offered.
“No,” Parker said.
The CID man nodded, looking at him. He was small but bulky, a middleweight, carrot-topped, said his name was Turley. Inspector
Turley. He had a dossier on the desk in front of him, Parker in the wooden chair opposite him, all of it watched by the two
uniforms in the corners of this plain functional government-issue office. Turley opened the dossier and glanced at it with
the air of a man who already knows what’s inside, the grim satisfaction of somebody whose negative prediction has come true.
“Ronald Kasper,” he said, and frowned at Parker. “That isn’t your name, is it?”
Parker watched him.
Turley looked down at the dossier again, rapped the middle knuckle of the middle finger of his right hand against the information
in there. “That’s the name on some fingerprints, belong to a fella escaped from a prison camp in California some years ago.
Killed a guard on the way out.” He raised an eyebrow at Parker. “You’ve got his fingerprints.”
“The system makes mistakes,” Parker said.
Turley’s grin turned down, not finding anything funny here. “So do individuals, my friend,” he said. Looking into his dossier
again, he said, “There is no Ronald Kasper, not before, not since. In the prison camp, out, left behind these prints, one
guard dead. Do you want to know
his
name?”
Parker shook his head. “Wouldn’t mean anything to me.”
“No, I suppose it wouldn’t. We have some other names for you.”
Parker waited. Turley raised an eyebrow at him, also waiting, but then saw that Parker had nothing to say and went back to
the dossier. “Let me know which of these names you’d rather be. Edward Johnson. Charles Willis. Edward Lynch. No? Nothing?
I have here a Parker, no first name. Still not?”
“Stick with Kasper,” Parker said.
“Because we’ve got that one tied to your fingers anyway,” Turley said, and leaned back. “We’ve got you all, you know. I imagine
you’ll be tried together.” Turley didn’t need his dossier now. “Armiston and Walheim are also in cells here,” he said. “You
probably won’t see them until trial, but they’re here. This is a big place.”
It was. It was called Stoneveldt Detention Center, and it was where everybody charged with a state felony in this state spent
their time before and during trial, unless they made bail, which Parker and Armiston and Walheim would not. No judge would
look at their three histories and expect them to come back for their bail money.
Like the industrial park where things had gone wrong last night, Stoneveldt was on the outskirts of the only large city in
this big empty midwestern state. Parker’s few looks out windows since being brought here last night had shown him nothing
out there but flat prairie, straight roads, a few more buildings of an industrial or governmental style, and a city rising
far to the east. If he were still here for the trial, it would be a forty-minute bus ride in to court every morning and back
out every night, looking at that prairie through iron mesh.
“Steven Bruhl,” Turley went on, following his own train of thought, “is a little different. A local boy, to begin with.”
Armiston had brought Bruhl in, needing somebody good with machinery like forklifts, not knowing he was an idiot. Well, they
all knew it now. And Turley had said they
three
were all here in Stoneveldt, so where did that put Bruhl? Dead? Hospital?
“If Bruhl lives,” Turley said, answering the question, “he’ll be tried later on, after you three. So, unlike you, he’ll already
know what the future’s gonna bring. And also unlike you, he won’t have a chance to flip. Nobody left to rat on.”
They sat there and watched that thought move around the room. The two uniforms shifted their feet, rubbed their backs against
the wall, and watched Parker without expectation; he would not make them earn their pay or prove their training.
“Now, you,” Turley said, “are in a better position. Out in front. You know game theory, Ronald?”
“Mr. Kasper,” Parker said.
Turley snorted. “What difference does it make? That isn’t your name anyway.”
“You’re right,” Parker said, and spread his hands: Call me whatever you want.