Comeback (20 page)

Parker moved slowly through the house, up through the levels, carrying the L bracket, his only weapon and tool. He searched the rooms as he went through, but they'd all been stripped, there was nothing left he could use.

And there was nobody here. The moonlight let him see his watch, and the time was nine-twenty. So Liss and Quindero must be out picking up a car. Parker needed them to come back soon, so he could finish this in time to meet Brenda and Mackey.

The dining room, where they'd waited out the afternoon, was very bright, being closer to the top of the ravine and with all those large windows facing right at the moon. Quindero had left his newspaper on the floor near the box where he'd been sitting, and the light was bright enough to read the headlines. If you held the paper close to a window and squinted, you could probably read everything in it, but there was nothing in there Parker needed to know.

He went on up to the top floor, and crossed to the spot in the rear corner where you could look out through the plywood sheathing at the road and the fence. The fence now gleamed silver, reflecting the moonlight, to make everything behind it a fuzzy blurry black.

Parker leaned against the wall and watched the road. He had come here to this house in the first place only because there were too many people in this town looking for him. He'd needed somewhere to lie low until it was time to go meet Brenda and Mackey, and this was the best place he knew. Finding Liss here had been an extra gift, a way to close the books on this job entirely, but if it wasn't going to work out it wasn't going to work out.

If Liss and Quindero didn't come back by ten, he'd have to leave, forget about them. Go meet with Brenda and Mackey, if they were there, and worry about dealing with Liss later.

Ten o'clock. Half an hour from now. Working the stiffness out of his shoulders and arms, Parker waited.

Nine-fifty. Light, moving through the woods.

Is he driving the car in here? Over
that
road?

But maybe it made sense. The road was almost nonexistent, but Liss might be more comfortable driving on it than having to walk back to the main road in total darkness. Particularly with Parker at his side.

Yes, here it came, very slowly. Some sort of four-door sedan. Liss drove with parking lights only, just enough amber illumination out front to give him a sense of where the road was. Now he swung the car to the left, just the other side of the fence, reversed, swung forward again, and backed up almost to the fence, facing out. Making it easier for himself for the return.

Liss hadn't removed the interior light. It flashed on as they got out of the car, and Parker saw that Liss had been driving and his new partner was still alive.

Parker moved into the shadows away from where they would enter the house. He could hear them talking as they neared it, and when they came through the break in the plywood he could make out the words. Liss was saying "—trust him. He doesn't trust me, and he's right, and I don't trust him, and I'm right. If he can take us down, he will. Ralph, you listening?"

"Yes." The voice was small, quavery, frightened, but determined.

"We gotta work together," Liss said, "or he'll kill us both. You hear what I'm saying?"

"Why don't we just leave him?" Quindero asked. "Just walk away now and take the car and get away from here and just
leave
him down there."

"I need the money," Liss said.
"We
need the money, Ralph, you and me. Your half is two hundred grand, just keep thinking about that. You need that money, if you're gonna get to Canada, start over."

So that's the fairy tale they're telling each other. Parker followed, well behind, as they went downstairs toward the dining room.

Liss said, "We gotta keep him with us, and we gotta keep him alive, until we see if he really

does know where the money is. Then we can deal with him. But before then, we gotta keep
him
from doing its. Jesus, it's bright in here."

They were in the dining room now, Parker on the stairs behind them.

Quindero said, "That's good, isn't it? If there's light, we can see him."

"Here's what we're going to do," Liss said. "I'll wait here. You go down and— Wait. Where's that gun of his?"

"Here."

"Give it to me," Liss said. "I don't want him taking it off you."

"You want me to go down there without a gun? Where are
you
going to be?"

"Up here."

"But—"

'Just listen," Liss said, and Parker sat down on the stairs to listen. Liss said, "You go down there and take that piece of wood out of the lock. Do it quiet if you can. Then get back into some dark corner somewhere that he's not gonna see you, and then shout to him to come out. Then
I'll
shout from up here, and I'll tell him to come up. Then he'll come up and you'll come up behind him."

"So he's in between us."

"That's right," Liss said.

Quindero said, "But if I don't have a gun? What good is it if—"

"Does
he
know that? What if he sees you, and instead of coming upstairs he makes a jump for you? If you've got a gun, you're not gonna use it. So you show him your hands, you tell him you don't have any weapons on you, they're all up with me. He knows he has to come up past me before he can get out. And I'll call to him, I'll say, 'Don't mess with my partner, I'm up here, come up.' And he'll come up."

Liss was explaining all this as though Quindero was a six-year-old, and he was probably right to play it that way. Another professional would already know most of what Liss was saying, but Ralph Quindero was not a professional.

And now Quindero said, "Okay, he comes up here. And then what?"

"I'll move ahead of him," Liss said. "I'll go up those stairs over there, ahead of him, and we'll tell him to follow, and you come along behind. And we'll go out to the car that way, me always in front of him, you always behind him, so he can never get the both of us."

"What if he jumps you?"

"I'll put one in his arm," Liss said. "It'll stop him, but it won't kill him, and it won't put him into shock. Maybe I ought to do that anyway."

Quindero said, "Don't," pleading.

Liss was amused. "What, you don't like loud noises? Or is it blood you're afraid of?"

"We don't have to shoot him," Quindero said. Now he sounded sullen.

Liss said, "Haven't you been listening? Of
course
we have to shoot him, sooner or later. We have to shoot him dead. When we get there, wherever the money's supposed to be, we're gonna shoot him then."

"Why? Why do we have to?"

"You want him behind you, the rest of your life?"

Quindero didn't say anything to that. They were shuffling around down there in the dining room, doing something Parker couldn't see, because he didn't want to descend the stairs far enough that he might be noticed, and then Liss said, "Okay, go on down and let him out."

Parker rose, silent, as he heard Quindero thump down the next flight of stairs. He eased downward, step by step, until he could see into the room, bluish gray in the moonlight, the boxes and trash throwing long black shadows across the gray floor. He looked left and right, and at first he didn't see Liss at all. Where was he?

Oh. Smart. Liss was seated on the floor directly under the windows, in the middle of that long wall. It was the one place in the room where he'd be hard to see, and he'd stay there until he was sure things were going right with Quindero.

But things wouldn't go right with Quindero. And where Liss had placed himself, Parker couldn't get at him. He'd never get across that large room without being seen, and shot.

"Hey! Mr. Parker! Come on out!"

Parker eased back up the stairs. He'd have to come at them in some other way.

It was too late now to get away from here. If he took the car, he wouldn't be able to drive it at better than a walking pace between here and the main road. Liss would have no trouble catching up. If he went on foot, Liss could get close enough to him with the car's headlights to bring him down.

He had to stay here, and finish it.

When the house had been divided into two, the main staircase had been segregated from the top floor area by a new wall, but when the failed attempt had been made to restore the place to its original condition that extra wall had been removed, which meant Parker could now come up to the top floor, go to his left, and in the far corner find the additional set of stairs that had been added to give access to what had originally been the maid's quarters.

As he moved, he could hear them shouting back and forth:

"He's not coming out! He isn't coming out!" "Ralph! Go over and open the door!" "I don't want to!"

"Shit. Parker! Ralph doesn't have the gun, I do! Come on out of there!"

Construction materials were still scattered around, particularly up here where the duplex had been made and then unmade. Parker had earlier noticed a few scraps of plywood and other junk along the partition where the second staircase had been cut in, and now, while Liss and Quindero went on shouting at one another, he felt around in that rubbish, and came up with a stub of two-by-four about two feet long. He hefted it, and it wasn't very heavy, but it was the best he could find.

Carrying the two-by-four in his right hand and the L bracket in his left, he went quietly down the new stairs into the maid's quarters, and from there into the original kitchen. He was now one room away from Liss, who was yelling, "Ralph! Dammit, open the door!"

Silence. Parker edged around the doorway between kitchen and dining room, and Liss hadn't moved, except to go up on one knee. But he was still in the same place, against the windows, unreachable.

"He isn't here! Jesus, I almost fell! There's a
hole
in the floor!"

"Parker!" Liss shouted, looking from doorway to doorway. "Parker, dammit!"

"He's gone!"

"Ralph! Come up out of there!"

But still Liss wouldn't move away from that safe position against the outer wall. Parker could see his head framed against the window, now that he was up on one knee. He was turning left and right, watching everything. He was going to be hard to get at.

Watching him, Parker considered. What if he were to come out now, show himself to Liss, go back to the idea that they were all traveling together?

No. Not any more. Liss was too spooked by now. He
would
put a bullet into Parker, just to slow him down.

Quindero came clattering up the stairs. When he appeared, Liss at last got to his feet, still wary. Quindero hurried across to him, crying, "He got away! He's gone!"

Quietly, Liss said, "He's here."

Quindero, bewildered, looked around at the moonlit room. "What? But he escaped."

"He's in the house," Liss said, "waiting his shot at us."

"What are we going to do?"

"Pull those rags and shit into the middle of the room," Liss told him. "What we need is more light."

"You mean a fire?"

"Then we go upstairs and wait. When he gets hot enough, he'll come up and visit."

Parker watched them shift the trash to a low mound in the middle of the room. Liss used Quindero's newspaper to start the fire, then stood over it until a few rags and some scraps of wood also caught. Then, looking around, he called, "Parker! Whatever you got in mind, it isn't gonna work. Come on out."

Voice hushed, Quindero said, "He must have heard us before, what we were talking. What we were gonna do."

"Shut up, Ralph," Liss said, almost absent-mindedly. "We didn't say anything he didn't already know." He now had his own pistol in his right hand, Thorsen's automatic in his left. "Okay, it's burning," he said. 'Time to go upstairs. You watch for him, in case he comes up over there. Let me get about halfway, and then follow me."

"All right."

Parker waited in the kitchen doorway, as Liss started up the stairs to the top floor, going almost immediately out of sight. Quindero stood staring at the stairs from below until Liss called down to him, "Come on, Ralph."

"I don't see him," Quindero said.

"You will," Liss said. "Come on up."

The instant Quindero turned toward the upper staircase, Parker came out from the kitchen. Moving fast, two-by-four cocked over his shoulder, he crossed the dining room, firelight throwing his shadows around the walls, and reached the staircase when Quindero was only up to the third step.

Liss yelled, "Ralph! Down!"

But Quindero was too slow. He didn't drop, the way Liss wanted, but spun around, open-mouthed, so the two-by-four, instead of hitting him in the back of the head, smacked into his left ear and cheek.

Liss fired anyway, and the slug punched into Quindero's right shoulder blade, spinning him farther around. Dazed, stunned, Quindero would have fallen, but Parker grabbed him with his left arm and held him as a shield, the way Liss had done in the hospital. The difference was, Liss didn't care about shields. He fired three more times, trying to hit Parker around Quindero or through him, he didn't care which.

Parker felt the impacts in Quindero's body, felt him go limp. His hand that held the L bracket pressed Quindero tight to him, and he backed hurriedly away from the stairs, dragging the body. In the middle of the room, he tossed Quindero across the small fire, hoping to smother it, or at least cut down on all that light.

Liss would come down, so Parker had to go up. Below here, there was only the one staircase, and he'd be trapped. On the top floor, where the glass was covered by plywood all around, there was almost no light. A two-by-four and an L bracket and darkness, that was what he had. Liss had two guns.

Parker eased off the stairs into the darkness of the top floor. He stopped, and listened, and heard nothing. Liss must be doing the same thing. But where? Had he gone down where the light is, to be safe? Or was he still up here?

He waited, hand against the partition wall, trying to see shapes in the dark. Ahead of him, where the main stairs would be, there was no light at all, but faint gray lines of light were visible at the periphery, where sheets of plywood didn't quite meet.