The Man With the Getaway Face by Richard Stark

then another light, which turned red when they were about fifty yards away.
    "This one's going to be a bitch," Handy said.
    "I'll be going through the other one faster," Parker said. "I'll hit it little heavier coming around the circle. Thirty instead of twenty-five."
    "It'll be daytime. There'll be traffic."
    "It's a bitch doing it this way," Parker said.
    Ordinarily, they would have made this dry run on a Monday morning at eleven o'clock, but either Alma or Skimm would have seen them at it and wondered what they were doing.
    When the light changed, Parker drove on down to the bridge but didn't bother to go across. There were no more lights from here to the turn-off. He circled around and went by the first light. When it changed to green, he pulled away back to the diner, once again making sure he was stopped and was making fifty by the time they passed the diner.
    "Seventeen seconds," Handy said.
    "All right."
    They went around again, waited for the light to turn red before coming back down. Parker tore into the gravel parking lot, squealing the brakes at the last second, and swung around in the position they'd be in during the job.
    "Thirteen," Handy said. "Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen."
    Parker made the trip again, out of the diner, south to the U-turn, then north. They went through the first light and Handy looked back at it, counting. It changed ten seconds after they went by. They went through the middle of the second light, made the turn to 440, and Handy counted to ten again, because the timing was different now. They went through the first light just after it went green, and the second one just before it went red.
    "That's all right, now," Parker said.
    "If the lights work the same in the daytime."
    "They might change them at rush hour. Not at eleven in the morning."
    "Still--"
    "I'll try it once more tomorrow morning, just to be sure."
    Parker drove Handy back to his place in Newark, then turned around and went back to his motel. He wrote a note asking to be called at ten o'clock, and dropped it through the mail slot in the office door. It seemed as if he was barely asleep when the woman who ran the motel was knocking at the door.
    He got up and showered and ate breakfast and drove to the diner. Skimm was stationed in the furniture store parking lot and he went over and talked to him for a few minutes, leaving the Ford parked beside the diner. Then he went back over to the Ford, backing out of the parking space so he was in the position he'd be in during the job.
    He paused to light a cigarette, watching the road. Traffic went by, headed south, and as the leader went by, Parker pulled out of the lot and fell in behind him. He went over the course again, and the lights worked the same in the daytime.
    Satisfied, he went to the farmhouse and let Stubbs out in the air for two hours. Stubbs was surly and nervous. He'd refused to talk for the last two days, and he still refused to talk. The tic in his left cheek that had started yesterday was worse.

Chapter 7
    SATURDAY, Handy went shopping around in different stores and pieced together a dark blue guard's uniform. That afternoon, to keep Skimm and Alma happy, they all got together and made a timed dry run of the getaway.
    Alma and Skimm jumped into the Dodge and went bumping off into the scrub back of the diner, and Parker and Handy pushed the Ford south on 9. They were to go south on 9, turn right on 516 to 18 and then left on Main Street and on to the farmhouse. Alma and Skimm were coming around the back way, down the Amboy Turnpike. That's the way it was being done today, with everybody playing games and being serious about it, and Skimm the only one who thought it was for real.
    When Parker and Handy got to the dirt road turn-off to the farmhouse, the green Dodge was already there, parked on the shoulder of the road; Parker stopped behind it and kept his motor running. He didn't like the two cars together like this, so close to the time of the job.
    Skimm