Comeback (2 page)

"They call it love offerings," Mackey said, deadpan.

Parker tried to read Mackey's face. "Love offerings? What kind of stadium is this?"

Liss explained, "The stadium's the usual. The
attraction's
a guy named William Archibald. A TV preacher, you know those guys? Evangelists."

"I thought they were all in jail," Parker said.

'The woods are full of them," Liss said, and Mackey added, "Mostly the back woods."

Parker said, "He's preaching at this stadium, is that it?"

"To make a movie," Mackey said, "and show it on the TV later."

"The people walking in," Liss said, moving his hands around in the space between himself and Parker, "they put down a twenty-dollar love offering, every one of them. No exceptions. Twenty thousand people."

Brenda spoke for the first time: "Four hundred thousand dollars," she said in her husky voice, rolling her full lips around the words.

"Brenda does my math for me," Mackey said.

"Plus," Liss said, "they got these barrels up front by the stage, you get inspired along the way, you want to help the preacher spread the word on the TV, you can go up and toss whatever money you want in the barrel."

"On TV," Mackey said. "On the big screen up behind the preacher. I seen it work, Parker, it's like hypnotizing. These people
love
to see themselves on that big screen, walking right up there, tossing their cash in the old barrel. Then a month later, they're at home, TV on, there they are again. Live the moment twice. The day you gave the rent money to God."

"We figure," Liss said, "that doubles the take."

Brenda opened her mouth, but before she could say anything Mackey pointed at her and said, "Brenda. He can work it out."

Parker said, "There's going to be more than the usual security, if it's all cash."

"Archibald has his own people," Liss agreed.

"But we got a guy on the inside. That's what made it start to happen."

"Not one of us," Parker said.

"Not for a minute," Mackey said.

"He works for the preacher," Liss said. "And now he's mad at him."

"Greedy? Wants a bigger slice?"

"Just the reverse," Liss said, and half his face laughed. "Ol' Tom got religion."

'Just tell it to me," Parker said.

Mackey patted the top of the seatback, as though calming a horse. "It's a good story, Parker," he said. "Wait for it."

People had to tell their stories their own way, with all the pointless extras. "Go ahead," Parker said, and sat back to wait it out.

Liss said, "I had twenty-nine months' parole last time I got out. It was easier, just hang around and do it, then have a paper out on me the rest of my life. This guy Archibald, one of his scams is, his people volunteer to give this
counseling
to ex-cons. It's all crap and everybody knows it, it's just to find new suckers, and to get some kinda tax break."

"A cash business," Parker said. "He's doing okay with taxes anyway."

"Oh, you know he is. But William Archibald, he's one of those guys, the more you give him to drink, the thirstier he gets. So I drew this guy

Tom Carmody to be my counselor, once a week he'd come around the place I was living, and then when he'd fill out the sheet, that meant I didn't have to go in to the parole office. A good deal for everybody. And after the first few weeks, we pretty much come clean with each other, and after that we'd just watch basketball on the tube or something, or have a beer around the corner. I mean, he knew what I was and no problem, and I knew what scam
he
was on, so we just got on with life. Except sometimes he'd go on crusades, and—"

Parker said, "Crusades?"

"When Archibald takes his show on the road," Liss explained. "Rents a hall, a movie house, a stadium, someplace big, does his act three, four times, brings in a couple mil, takes it all home again. Tom was one of the staff guys he brought along on these things, so then I'd get some gung ho trainee from the office instead, and I'd have to be real serious and rehabilitated and grateful as hell to Jesus and all this shit, and then when Tom came back we'd laugh about it. Only, then, about the last six months—yeah, two years we're dealing bullshit and we both knew it, and then the last six months he began to change it all around. Not trying to reform
me
or nothing. It was Archibald he got agitated about."

Brenda spoke again, this time drily: "He noticed Mister Archibald was insincere."

"He got hung up on the money," Liss said. "How Archibald takes all the suckers for all this money, and it doesn't go anywhere good. I dunno, Parker, it wasn't the
scam
that got ol' Tom riled up, it still isn't. It's what happens with the money
after
Archibald trims the rubes. He'd talk about all the good that money could do, you know, feed the homeless and house the hungry and all this, and then he wanted to know was there any way I knew that he could
get
a bunch of that cash. Not for himself, you see, but to do good works with it."

Parker said, "It was his idea?"

"Absolutely. The guy's a civilian, I only know him two years, and he's tied to the parole board. Am I gonna say, 'Hey, Tom, let's pull a number'? No way."

"But you went along."

Liss shook his head. "Not at first. One of the few big words I know is
entrapment.
So at first I'd just nod and say well, that's a real bitch, Tom, and all this. And when he finally came out with it—-'Hey, George, let's do it together, you with your expert background and me with my inside information'—I told him no, I told him I'm retired, it isn't I'm reformed I just don't want to go back inside. Which was almost the truth, by the way."

Parker nodded. For a lot of people, that was almost the truth almost all the time.

"Also," Liss said, "I told him I didn't much care where money went that didn't come to me, whether this money fed Archibald or fed some other people made no difference to me, and he said he understood. He understood for me it would be more of a business proposition. So he suggested we split fifty-fifty, and I'd put my share in my pocket and he'd give his to the poor."

"Us poor," Mackey said.

Parker knew what Mackey meant. Glancing at him, "If," he said.

"Naturally."

Liss went on, saying, "Finally I said I'd pass him on to somebody who was still active in the game, but he said no, he wouldn't trust anybody but me, so then I figured I could take the chance. If he was out to trap somebody for the law, he wouldn't care who he brought in, right? He'd let me pass him on to somebody else, work his number just as good. Since he didn't do that, then he probably wasn't pulling anything. So then we started to get kind of serious, talking it over, him giving me the details about the money, and I saw how maybe it could be done. And here we are."

Parker said, "And the theory is, the inside guy takes half, and we split the other half. However many of us it is doing the thing."

"That's the theory."

"Does he buy it?" Parker shook his head, rejecting his own question, rephrasing it: "What I mean, does he believe it?"

"That he'll get his half?" Liss did his lopsided smile. "That's the big question, isn't it? He's kind of hard to read since he changed, you know. Used to be, he was an easygoing guy, now he's all tensed up. Relaxed guys are harder to fool, but tensed-up guys are harder to read."

"Anyway, Parker," Mackey said, "what's he gonna do if he
doesn't
believe it? We're the takers, not him. Is he gonna take it from the takers? No way."

Parker ignored that. He said to Liss, "How many parole guys does this fella have beer with?"

Liss half-frowned; that face of his took some getting used to. He said, "You mean, he puts together a backup crew to take it away after we get it? But what's the point, Parker? If he's afraid
we're
gonna cut him out, what's he gonna do about the second crew? Come up with a third?"

"What I think it is," Mackey said, "I think the guy bought his own story. He's not buying from us, he's buying from himself."

Parker said to Mackey, "You meet this wonder?"

"Not yet."

"That can be arranged," Liss said. "Easiest thing there is. I'll call him tonight, say we're—"

"No," Parker said. "You say he goes out with this preacher on his crusades. When's the next one?"

"Couple weeks. I figured that's when we could pull it."

"No. Where they gonna be? The whole tour."

Liss's face went out of whack again. He said, "Beats me. I guess I could find out."

"Good," Parker said. "Then somewhere along the way, without any invitations or planning or setting things up, we're there, and we say hello. Mackey and me."

"And Brenda," Mackey said.

Parker looked at Brenda. "Naturally," he said.

In a not-very-good restaurant in St. Louis, with old bored waiters and old-fashioned dark red-and-brown decor, Parker and Mackey and Brenda ate dinner, taking their time over it. Liss had said he'd get the pigeon here between eight and ten, and it was already nine-thirty. "I gotta go to the john again," Brenda said, fooling with her coffee cup, "but I know, the minute I leave the table, they're gonna walk in."

"Then do it," Mackey told her. "I'd like to see
something
make them walk in."

"Only for you," she said, and left the table, and a minute later Liss walked in with a sandy-haired nervous-looking guy in his late twenties, wearing tan slacks and a plaid shirt.

"There, you see," Mackey said. "That's why I keep Brenda around. She's magic."

Parker said nothing. He already knew why Mackey kept Brenda around—she was his brains—and his interest was in the guy over there with Liss. And also with whoever might come into the restaurant next.

Which was nobody. If Carmody was being watched, it was a very long leash. Watchers couldn't have been planted in the place ahead of time, because Liss wouldn't have told Tom where they were going until they got here. "This looks like a good place, Tom. I'm ready for dinner, how about you?"

And why would a watcher wait outside, when the whole point of keeping an eye on your bait was to see who came around and what happened? So Tom was not under observation. Which didn't mean he wasn't a Judas goat, only that, if he was, they were letting him float on his own. Not important to them, in other words, or not yet. Not until he starts to come home with somebody.

Liss had seated himself at the table in a chair where he could give the doddering waiter his good side, about which the waiter cared nothing. Tom Carmody, across from Liss, was quiet, low-key, ordering as though he didn't care if he ate or not, then sitting there in a funk. Liss gave him a minute or two of cheery conversation and then ate rolls instead.

Brenda came back to the table and Mackey said, "Your magic worked."

"So I see."

While Mackey signaled to the waiter for the check, Brenda studied the guy sitting over there with Liss. Mackey repeated his hand gesture at the waiter—signing his name in the air—then turned back to Brenda to say, "What do you think?"

"He's too gloomy."

"I don't want you to date him, honey."

"I don't want you to date him, either," she said. "That's what I mean, he's too gloomy."

Parker listened, while across the way Liss and Carmody got their salads. Liss tucked in, while Carmody pushed the lettuce and tomato slice around in the shallow bowl.

Meantime, Mackey said, "Explain yourself," and Brenda said, "He already gave up. Look at him, Ed. He doesn't care if anything good happens or not. You know what a guy like that does when there's trouble? He lies down."

"Good," Mackey said. "He'll give us traction."

The waiter brought the check then, and stood around as Mackey brought out his wallet and, despite the hand signal, paid in cash. While he did that, Brenda said to Parker, "How's Claire?"

Unlike Mackey, Parker didn't bring his woman to work. "She's fine," he said.

"Will I be seeing her?"

"I don't think so."

Mackey left a little tip, and said, "Let's go look at our boy up close."

Parker let Mackey and Brenda go first; they were better at the social niceties, like pretending to be happily surprised at the sight of Liss sitting there: "George! How you doing, old son?"

"Hello, Ed! How are you? And Brenda!" Liss rose, shaking Mackey's hand, kissing Brenda's cheek, giving Parker a bright-eyed look of non-recognition.

Mackey said, "George Liss, here's a pal of ours, Jack Grant."

"How you doing, Jack?" Liss said, grinning, extending his hand.

"Fine," Parker said, shaking the hand briefly. Play-acting wasn't what he did best.

On the other hand, Liss was having a good time. "And this is a pal of
mine
," he announced, with a big wave at the pigeon. "Tom Carmody. Tom, this is Ed and Brenda Fawcett, and a pal of theirs."

Tom Carmody had been raised as a mannerly boy; he got to his feet and managed a smile at Brenda, with his how-do-you-dos. Mackey squeezed Carmody's hand, grinning hard at him, saying, "I'm a salesman, Tom, but I guess you can see that. Most people pipe me right away. You I don't get, though. You teach?"

"Not exactly." Carmody was clearly uncomfortable at having to explain himself. "I'm in rehabilitation," he said.

Mackey did a good job of misunderstanding. Looking concerned, he said, "Hey, I'm sorry. Whatcha rehabilitating from?"

"No, I'm—I—" Carmody's confusion made him blush. He finally managed to get it out: "I work for a preacher. We do rehabilitation work for, uh, people."

"Well, that's fine," Mackey told him. "There's a lotta people
need
that stuff." With a big jokey grin he said, "What about old George here? You gonna rehabilitate him?"

Carmody began to stumble and stutter all over himself again, but this time Liss came to his rescue, saying, "Not me. I'm a hopeless case."

"Us honest citizens shouldn't be seen with the likes of you," Mackey said, and whacked Liss playfully on the arm. "See you around, George."

Everybody said good-bye, Carmody sat down with obvious relief, and Parker and Mackey and Brenda went out to the parking lot, where Mackey had a laughing fit, leaning over the hood of their car. When he got himself under control he said, "That was touching, Parker. Do you know that? He didn't wanna blow the gaff on George being on parole. I call that touching."