Comeback (12 page)

A burglar alarm high on the front of the building began to scream, and Parker wriggled hurriedly backward, toward the office. If Liss came in here . . .

The doorway. He climbed it, trying to be invisible on both sides, and when he leaned leftward for a quick look out the office's smashed window he saw Liss running for the police car, the pistol waving in his hand.

Sure. Whether or not he knew Parker was still in here, and still alive, it was the money Liss wanted, the money he couldn't lose sight of.

Parker watched, because whichever way Liss went, that's where the money had gone. Liss jumped into the police car, kicked the engine on, spun the wheel, made a sharp U-turn around the pumps, and headed away to the left. Away from that interstate over there. Toward town.

Some ricocheted something had sliced Parker's left arm, not deep, but enough to sting. Rubbing it, he went out of the building through the opening where the garage door used to be, and above the insistent wail of the burglar alarm he heard a voice, some voice yelling. He looked around and saw nothing, but then remembered that Liss had fired upward, so he stepped farther from the building to look up, and the kid was up there, sitting on the roof. The kid they'd locked away in the storeroom was up on the roof, sitting there, both hands pressed to his left leg because that's where Liss had shot him.

He saw Parker down below, and yelled some more: "Help! Help!"

"Everybody needs help," Parker said, and turned away, and went loping toward town.

Parker walked two blocks. In the second, two police cars raced by him, shrieking, on their way to the burglar alarm at the gas station. At the far end of that block was a diner, just open for the morning's business. Parker went in there, where a dozen delivery men and salesmen yawned over coffee in their separate spaces. He found a stool at the counter with empty stools on both sides of it, ordered breakfast, and in the mirror on the back wall he watched the street behind him, where an ambulance screamed past, toward the gas station. The waitress brought his ham and eggs and toast and coffee and the ambulance screamed back the other way. Carrying the kid.

Parker ate, and looked at his own reflection in the mirror, and except for the stained cut on his left sleeve where he'd been nicked he looked all right. Like this is where he would eat breakfast.

Time to think. He knew the people. Did he know them well enough to find them?

Liss was the newcomer, but he was the easiest to peg. It was the dead side of his face that told the truth. A competitor, he'd never team up with anybody, not for long. If he had to go in with others to get what he wanted—like the money in those duffel bags—he'd take the absolute first chance that came along to get rid of his partners, and to get rid of them in a way that wouldn't leave anybody spreading complaints. Single-minded, he'd only look forward; never back. He wouldn't care if Parker was coming, because in his mind it would simply be somebody else trying for the same thing, the money. It wouldn't occur to him that for Parker that wasn't enough, that he wanted more than the money. That he needed Liss dead.

As for Mackey, he was a mechanic, like Parker. If Parker knew himself, he knew Mackey. He knew he wouldn't ever bother to cheat Mackey, because they were useful to each other and there'd always be enough for both of them. And he also knew he'd never go out of his way to give Mackey an assist, because Mackey was supposed to be a grown-up who could take care of himself. So that's the way Mackey would feel.

Which meant, at this point, Mackey would just keep moving, straight ahead. He wouldn't even consider the idea he could circle back and find Parker. Why should he? He couldn't even be sure Parker was still alive, back at the gas station. So Mackey would keep on, and Liss would keep on, right behind him, and if that's all there was to it, Parker would be the lame third, already out of sight and out of mind.

But that wasn't all. Brenda was also in the mix, and Brenda was the only one of them who thought about the future. She would want everything settled, now, today, before they all left this town. She would never want anything out of the past to come catch up with her, farther down the road. She was fast, and she was smart, and she was decisive—look how she tore that station wagon out of there—and Mackey deferred to her, because he'd learned long ago that when he followed Brenda's advice things worked out okay. So Brenda was the key.

Liss was following Mackey. Mackey would follow Brenda. Where would Brenda lead?

The station wagon was marked up now, it had to be. They couldn't keep it for long. Brenda would lose Liss, she was that good, but then she couldn't just drive around all day because very soon the cops would be on the lookout for the station wagon that had ripped through that garage door. And the kid would have already told them about the duffel bags in the station wagon, so the law would know it was the heisters from the stadium inside that car.

Brenda would lose Liss. They change cars, somewhere, somehow. Now there are three possibilities. They make a run for it, try to get out of town without being stopped by the law or Liss or anybody else. Or, the second choice, they hole up at the empty house where they'd all originally meant to wait out the police search. Or, third, they go back to the motel they'd been in before the heist.

If it was just Mackey, he'd choose to run. But Brenda's too smart and too careful. Does she go to the house? She knows Liss will be waiting for her someplace. And Liss will figure her to go to the house, right? Because that was the original plan for after the heist, and because, as far as Liss is concerned, the motel is used up. And Brenda will know that's what Liss is thinking.

What did Brenda say in the car, about the motel? "I'll be leaving a whole lot of cosmetics back in that room."

They'll have a different car. They already have a civilian cover in that motel. Brenda will believe that Liss will look for them in the house.

Parker paid for his breakfast, and left.

The Midway Motel occupied a wide shallow parcel of land on Western Avenue, across the street from the Seven Oaks Professional Building. The motel, red aluminum siding over concrete block, with metal room doors painted to look like wood, presented its long face to the street, with blacktop across the front for guests' cars to park, nose in. At seven-thirty that morning, cars and pickups stood in front of eleven of the twenty units, but not in front of either 16 or 17.

Parker walked down the other side of Western Avenue and climbed the concrete steps to the squat brick professional building. He stood in the little lobby, looking at the directory, aware of what was happening in the street. A few cars went by; nothing else.

"Can I help you?"

It was a caretaker, looking nosy. Parker said, "No."

"Well. . ." The guy was miffed. "I'll be over here," he said, and went away.

Parker stepped outside and paused, like anybody, to study the weather and the day. Going to be sunny, not hot. Nobody moving around the motel. No cars yet this morning in the Professional Building's parking lot, no cars with occupants inside stopped up or down the street.

Parker still had the key to room 17 in his pocket. When no traffic was in sight, he crossed the street, moving directly to 17, watching for movement from inside any of those windows along the front, and there was nothing. Now the key and its rectangular plastic tab were in his palm.

He went in fast, slapping the door shut behind him as he crouched down and ran across the room, looking left and right. Nothing, nobody. In the bathroom, dark. Nothing, nobody.

The drape was already closed across the front window beside the door. Parker switched on lights and looked around, and nobody had been in here since they'd left except the maid. They all traveled light, all except Brenda and her cosmetics, and their goods, Parker's and Liss's, were still here where they'd been left, nothing but some clothing and toothbrushes and other things that didn't matter, weren't traceable, could always be bought new.

The original plan, now nothing but a memory, was that they'd wait in the construction trailer until the excitement was over. Then, at six in the morning, Brenda would pick them up, and they'd drive the three miles to the empty house, in town but isolated, and stash the money there. Then they'd come back here and stay in the motel until it seemed safe to leave town, when they'd go by the house once more, pick up the money, and be off.

Now everything was random. Mackey and Brenda and the money were somewhere in this city. Liss was somewhere else, looking for them. And Parker was counting on Brenda, sooner or later, wanting to come here.

There was a connecting door to the room where Brenda and Mackey had stayed. They hadn't bothered to unlock it before but Parker did now, and this room was also empty. And in this bathroom were Brenda's famous cosmetics, spread over every surface.

Parker switched off the lights in Brenda and Mackey's room, went back to his own, and closed the connecting door almost completely, leaving just a crack to see and hear through. Then he went into the bathroom in here, stripped off his shirt, and washed out the angry red line along his upper left arm. He found one last fresh shirt, put it on, moved a chair over near the connecting door, switched off the lights in this room, and sat down in the dark to wait.

Click.

Parker sat up straighter, and a vertical line of gray light appeared in front of him, brightened, darkened, went out.

Somebody'd come into Brenda and Mackey's room; that was daylight when the door had opened. It was no more than two hours, Parker thought, that he'd been waiting in here.

The lights didn't go on, in the next room. Parker leaned close to the door and heard very small movements.

Brenda and Mackey would switch the light on, right away. Was this Liss? Parker listened.

Now the lights did come on. And the sounds of movement stopped. Then there was brisk walking, past this door and beyond, and Parker heard the bathroom light click on. He eased the door open a bit more, but his angle of view was toward the front of the room. He could see most of the bed, on the opposite wall, and the bedside table, and the round table and two chairs and swag lamp in front of the window, and part of the window with its drape pulled across. He couldn't see the door.

More footsteps. The closet door was slid open. Ruffling sounds as somebody went through whatever clothes were in there. Then a drawer was opened, and shut.

Somebody searching. Somebody neat searching; he shuts the drawer. Knowing this wasn't Brenda, coming to believe it wasn't Liss, wondering if it was one of the three guys from that car that had nosed around the stadium parking lot, Parker waited, and then a guy he'd never seen in his life before came around the end of the bed and crossed over to look in the drawer of the bedside table.

Parker looked at this guy, trying to fit him in. A friend of Liss's? Was Liss waiting at the empty house, and he sent this other guy just in case the money showed up at the motel?

No. Liss wouldn't trust anybody else that far, and nobody else would trust him that far. Also, this guy didn't look the type. He was a very trim fifty, with short-cropped gray hair, wire frame eyeglasses, and a look of competence and self-assurance. He was dressed in a neat gray suit that made him look more like a cop than a banker, but this wasn't a cop.

Something like a cop? Somebody who doesn't mind breaking and entering, and who feels there might be something here he's looking for. Somebody who's dealt himself in.

Parker's eyes were now once again used to the light. As the guy turned away from the empty drawer in the bedside table, Parker stood, pushed open the door, and stepped into the room.

The guy saw him. His eyes focused, his body became still, and his right hand snaked inside his suit jacket, coming out with a small flat automatic. "Stop right there."

Not law, but close to law. "Don't be stupid," Parker told him, and spread his own empty hands. "Put that thing away, or I'll take it off you."

The guy ignored that. He waggled the gun toward the table and two chairs by the front door. "Sit down over there," he said.

"So you are stupid," Parker said, and walked toward him.

"Hey! Hey!" the guy said, startled, and backed up two steps to the wall. Then, before Parker could reach him, he holstered the automatic, just as rapidly as he'd taken it out. Showing his palms, he said, "All right."

Parker backed away, and now he was the one who pointed at the table and chairs, saying, "Why don't we both sit down?"

The guy frowned at him. 'Jesus Christ," he said thoughtfully. "What if I was the excitable type?"

"I'd calm you down," Parker told him. He went over and sat in the chair that didn't have its back to the door. Watching the guy, still standing there, indecisive, he said, 'You're looking for the money."

The guy nodded, still frowning; not so much in agreement that he was looking for the money but accepting the force of the statement. "I know who I am," he said. "Who the hell are you?"

'John Orr," Parker told him. "Midwest Insurance."

"You're an
insurance man?"

"Investigator."

"You got ID?"

"Never," Parker said. "Not on the job. How about you?"

Now at last the guy came over and sat in the other chair. He put one forearm on the table and said, "Dwayne Thorsen. Head of Security for the Christian Crusade."

"Archibald's guy."

"He's who I work for," Thorsen said. "You've got no ID on you at all?"

Parker pulled his wallet out of his hip pocket and dropped it on the table. "I've got papers on three different names in there," he said. "None of them true. It makes you feel better, look em over."

Thorsen looked at the beat-up wallet, then at Parker, and laughed. "You'll tell me when you're telling the truth," he said, "and you'll tell me when you're lying, and I can believe you or I can go fuck myself."

This was true, and there was no need for Parker to confirm it. There was a persona he wanted Thorsen to believe, and the more that persona was Thorsen's own invention, instead of a razzle-dazzle fed him by Parker, the better.