Comeback

5

During football games, this was the replay booth, where guys with video equipment could second-guess the referees. It wasn't an ideal command post for Dwayne, being so far from the center of activity, but its overview of the stadium couldn't be beat, and the communications between here and the rest of the complex were perfect. Dwayne, not a sitting-down type, paced back and forth behind the long plywood table containing all the electronic equipment, and looked out past it through the line of big windows at the crusade making its measured practiced way far below.

The main part of the crusade, exclusive of counseling and other activities scheduled for afterward, was planned to take just two and a half hours, and the second hour was not quite over when the phone call came. There were four telephones spaced along the plywood table, and the low-pitched ring was supplemented by a white light that blinked on the appropriate one. Dwayne picked it up, said, "Thorsen," and heard a frightened young male voice say a scrambled nervous sentence in which one word stood out.

"Robbed."

Dwayne made it to the money room before the police, but not by much. The normally locked door was propped open, and inside Tom Carmody lay unconscious on a sofa, his gray-white angel makeup blotched with dark dried blood. Dwayne looked at that unconscious discontented face and knew: "So this is what you did, you stupid fuck," he said, and turned as the first cops came in.

In every organization, there's the one guy who manages things. Not the boss but someone at the middle level, the equivalent of a master sergeant in the army. Dwayne was that one in William Archibald's Christian Crusade, and whenever he had to deal with another organization of whatever kind he always sought out his opposite number, and would settle for nothing less. This time, it was a fellow named Calavecci, a Detective Second Grade.

Tom Carmody had been ambulanced away still unconscious, the six people in the money room had been questioned and turned over to the medics for tranquilizing, and now the money room had filled up with technicians. Dwayne stood to one side, observing, waiting, and when he heard a voice say, "Who's in charge of security here?" he smiled and turned around, knowing the manager-type on the other side would be just as anxious to make contact with him.

"Me," he said, and felt an instant coolness toward the man filling the doorway. Large but not beefy, with an irritable yet patiently amused expression, he was the kind of guy, in the Marines, who liked war too much. Well, you worked with who you had. "Dwayne Thorsen," and he approached with hand stuck out.

The man considered him briefly, considered his hand, then took it. "Calavecci, Detective Second Grade. What happened here?"

'Three men with shotguns."

"Inside help?"

"Yes."

Calavecci looked surprised: "Usually we get denials," he said, "this early on."

"This isn't early," Dwayne said. "They're already gone with the money. I don't have time for denials."

"Good. Got a candidate for the inside guy?"

'Tom Carmody. The one went to the hospital with a concussion."

Calavecci considered that. "Trouble before?"

"He's been building," Dwayne said. "I had my eye on him. I expected something different, though."

Calavecci looked around the room. "They whomped him to give him cover," he said. "Whomped him pretty good, but that was it."

"That's right."

"Be nice," Calavecci said, "if he knows where they went, because we sure as hell don't."

Dwayne didn't like that. "You mean they're long gone?"

"I mean they're pros," Calavecci said. "Like you and me. So they're on the next page already. Maybe the loot's in the trunk of a car outside and they're back in here with the audience. Congregation? What do you call this crowd?"

"The crowd."

"Well, maybe they're with them. Or maybe they're burning rubber on the interstate, but if they are we've got them, and I assume they know that, so I assume they're not. So maybe they come to town last month and rented a little apartment two three blocks from here. We're checking that. We'll check everything. But it would be nice if your fella, whatsisname—"

'Tom Carmody."

"Be nice if he knew what was supposed to happen next," Calavecci concluded. "Take all the guesswork out of it, that's what /like."

Carmody was conscious when Dwayne and Calavecci got to the hospital, but the doctors wouldn't let him be questioned. "Bullshit," Calavecci said, which was the wrong thing to say to the doctors.

"Hold on," Dwayne said. "Let me try something."

"Try anything," Calavecci offered, "just so your friend can tell us where his friends got off to."

So, while Calavecci went to ask the Memphis police to question Mary Quindero, just in case Tom had told the woman anything useful, Dwayne called the hotel, and Archibald was there in the suite all right, raging in the background when Tina answered the phone in that breathless lisp that made Dwayne's skin crawl. Listen to the man back there, yelling his way around the hotel suite; how he hates to lose money. "Let me talk to Will," Dwayne said.

"Oh, Dwayne, he's so upset, I know he wants to talk to you."

He did. Dwayne stood there at the pay phone in the hospital corridor and listened to a certain amount of unnecessary oratory and then at last cut in with, "Will, you can help down here."

That caused a stumble in the oration. Archibald said, "Help? Down where?"

"I'm at the hospital with Tom Carmody. They won't let the law question him, so it's up to you and me. They can't very well keep the man's religious advisers away from him, so we do the questions."

"Questions? Tom?" Dwayne could almost hear the penny drop. "Dwayne! Do you really think that filthy little pervert— You think it's him?"

"He's part of it. Come on down, Will."

In a small bare conference room borrowed from the hospital administration, Dwayne gave Archibald a little orientation talk before they went in to see Tom: "Now, listen, Will. If we get mad, or we make him scared, we won't get a thing out of him."

"I'd like to get his liver and lights out of him, that wretched little ..." Archibald sputtered, at a loss for words he could permit himself to use.

"Will, that's the wrong attitude," Dwayne said patiently. "What we want is whatever information Tom Carmody has inside his head, and the only way we're gonna get it is if we go in there and preach sweet forgiveness."

"Sweet for—!" Archibald choked on the word, his beefy neck flushing all the way around his collar.

"Shit, Will, you play it to millions all the time. This once, play it to one. We want the money back, dammit."

"Yes, we do," Archibald agreed, and sat back, and nodded. "All right, let me just get myself settled."

"Sure."

Archibald sat there a minute longer, eyes half closed, and when he made a steeple of his hands Dwayne thought in astonishment that the man was going to pray, but he didn't. He took a deep breath instead, managed a smile, got to his feet, and said, "All right, Dwayne. Let us go pour oil on the little prick."