Comeback

8

Zack was still driving. He steered them out of the stadium parking lot and down the empty street, as Ralph said. "All for nothing, the whole thing for nothing."

"We don't give up," Zack said. He'd grown less cocky, but more sullen and just as determined, since he'd lost the woman in the station wagon.

When she'd come out of the motel, moving with purposeful speed, all three of them in the car had perked up, even Woody, who'd been sulking about something for hours. And at first they'd liked it that she was pushing hard, driving a little too fast for the city streets. It meant action at last, something happening.

They'd heard on the car radio about the half-million-dollar robbery—a half a million dollars!—and they knew the robbers had gotten away with it clean and clear. They were still at large. And this woman in the station wagon would lead them right to it.

Except she didn't. "Shit," Zack said at one point, "she's onto us."

"Oh, goddamn it," Woody said. "I knew it'd be something." His brief return of high spirits was over, already.

Ralph was leaning forward again, forearms atop the front seat. "Maybe she isn't," he said. "What makes you think she is?"

"We went down this block before," Zack said, angry and disgusted, "and made that fucking turn!"

Half a block ahead, the woman took a right turn very hard and fast, the heavy body of the wagon sagging way leftward as she went around the corner and out of sight. Zack took the turn as fast as he could, not quite as quick as the woman, and when they came around— Goddamit, the station wagon's coming the other way!

How did she do that? A hard right, an impossibly tight U-turn to the left, and coming back the other way as Zack completed his own turn. All three of them gaped at her, and she pretended they weren't even there. A good-looking woman, dramatic in the rose-glow of her dashboard, jaw set, eyes facing front as she flashed on by.

Ralph twisted around to look out the back window, and saw her take a left so fast and so sharp she left rubber all over the street back there. Going back the way they'd come. And of course, by the time Zack got them turned around and back to the intersection she was long gone.

Still, he drove in her imagined wake for a while, as they argued about what it meant and what to do next. "It doesn't come out right," Woody kept saying. "Everything screws up, it just gets worse and worse, we should never of got into this, we're fuckups, that's all, we're just fuckups."

"Shut up." Zack's knuckles were white, he held so hard to the steering wheel. His teeth were clenched, the veins stood out on the side of his neck, he looked like he'd explode. But he never shouted. "Shut up shut up shut up." Low, quiet, but with such intensity that Woody withdrew down into a sullen lump in his corner of the front seat.

Ralph said, "Shit, Zack, we did lose her. I mean, we lost her."

"So we'll find her."

"How?"

"The stadium. That's where she was headed, before she saw us. So that's where we'll go."

And that's where they went, and got nothing for it. Nobody at the stadium, all locked up and dark. Parking lot empty except for some construction trailer way at the far end, padlocked and empty. Nobody and nothing. No trail of breadcrumbs. With no alternative, they drove away from the stadium at last, the car moving along in its own gray cloud of depression.

"What we did," Woody mumbled, feeling so sorry for himself he was almost in tears. "What we did, and for nothing."

"Shut up, Woody."

"What we did, what we did."

Ralph frowned at Woody's miserably unhappy profile. "What are you talking about?"

"He's talking about," Zack snarled, "what an asshole he is. It isn't over, all right? We aren't done, all right?"

Ralph said, "Zack, we don't know where they are. If the cops can't find them, how are we gonna find them?"

"Luggage," Zack said.

Woody was still deep in his own misery, but Ralph bit: "Luggage?"

"She didn't take any luggage when she left the motel," Zack said. "None of them did. Just those duffel bags, and that was for the job. Remember, the radio said. So they didn't take their luggage, so they're going back."

Ralph felt a sudden surge of hope, and even Woody looked up. Ralph said, 'To the motel!"

"They're going back," Zack said, absolutely sure of himself. "And so are we."

Same parking space. The nearby pizza place was closed, but they found another and settled down in their usual vantage point to eat and to wait. Across the way, the windows of rooms 16 and 17 were dark. No car parked in front. Not back yet.

After a while, Ralph said, "Maybe they're hiding the loot. Maybe they're doing that first, so it won't be on them if they get stopped."

"That's okay," Zack said.

"But maybe it won't be with them," Ralph said, because Zack didn't seem to be getting the point.

"That's all right," Zack said. "If it isn't with them, they'll tell us where it is. Okay?" Zack pulled that switchblade out of his pocket again, snapped it open, whapped it down onto the dashboard where he'd kept it before. "With that, okay? We'll ask with that, and they'll tell us."

Ralph looked at the knife, the blade glinting sharp, reflecting a nearby streetlight. Troubled by a sudden thought, he licked his lips and said, "Zack? That isn't how you asked Mary, is it?"

Woody made a small sound deep in his throat.

Loud, covering Woody, Zack said, "Of course not! Jesus, Ralph, we didn't cut her, all right? I never even showed her the knife. Jesus Christ."

"Okay," Ralph said. "Okay."

Zack gave Woody a disgusted warning look, then reached out to switch on the radio. "Let's hear something cheerful for once," he said.

They listened to Top 40s, interspersed with news reports. They kept hearing about the three robbers and the half million dollars and how the three robbers were still on the loose, and it never occurred to them. They sat there in the parking lot, visible to the street, three guys in a car with out-of-state plates, listening to the news reports about how every cop within five hundred miles was looking for the three robbers, and it never occurred to them for a second, not until about twelve million watts' worth of searchlights and floodlights were suddenly beamed at them from every direction in the universe, including a helicopter up above.

'Jesus!" Zack cried, blinded by all the light, and would have made the fatal mistake of switching on the car engine if Ralph hadn't been just smart enough to yell, "No!" and grab his elbow.

They sat in the car in the empty parking lot, impaled by all that light, specimen bugs on a display board, and shadows moved out there. Cops, armed to the teeth, easing through the light as through heavy fog, moving cautiously in this direction.

"You in the car!"A hugely amplified voice, coming from everywhere. "Don't move! Make no movements!"

Woody started to cry. "I don't fucking believe this," Zack said, but it wasn't clear whether it was the cops' sudden presence or Woody crying that he didn't believe.

Ralph, amazed at his own capacity for quick thinking, leaned another inch forward over the seat back and said, "We didn't break any laws. We're driving to the coast, we stopped here for a pizza and rest a while."

"Right right right," Zack said. He was blinking like mad, his fingers twitching on the steering wheel.

One cop, braver than the others, approached Zack's door, opened it, and stepped back. He was carrying a shotgun—a freaking shotgun, for Christ's sake!—at port arms, and what he said was ridiculous: "Sir, would you step out of the car, please?" Sir!

"Officer," Zack said, his voice sounding much younger and more vulnerable than usual, "officer, uh, something wrong, officer?"

'Just step out of the car, please, sir."

So Zack, fumbling a bit in nervousness, stepped out of the car, and the cop asked to see

ID, continuing with the horrible grotesque parody of politeness. In the car, Woody hunched down in his corner of the front seat, moaning, while Ralph kept unwillingly looking at that switchblade knife on the dashboard, as big as a bayonet in all that light.

Zack's driver's license was handed on back to some other cop, and then more cops approached the car, also loaded down with weapons, and called on Ralph and Woody to get out, which they did. Woody, no longer crying, just stood there and trembled, like a horse on the way to the dogfood factory, while Ralph looked all around, trying to see, interested despite himself in what was happening.

More sirs, more requests for ID, more licenses passed back into the darkness behind all that light. Then the frisk. Sir, would you face the car? Sir, would you place your hands on the car roof? Sir, would you move your feet back? Farther apart, sir. Thank you very much, sir.

Pat pat pat; nothing. They were permitted to stand normally again, feeling a little better. Damn good thing the two pistols were stashed with their bags in the trunk.

"Sir, would you mind opening the trunk?"

They stared at one another, stuck, screwed, completely fucked over, and another cop came out of the darkness into the light to say, "Which one is Quindero?"

A distraction from the question of the trunk. But was this a good thing, or a bad thing? "Me," Ralph said, raising his hand like a kid in school. "Ralph Quindero."

The cop was a little older than the other cops, and not in uniform, and with no guns in his hands. It was hard to see people's faces in all this light, expressions and features got washed out to nothing, but still Ralph had the feeling there wasn't much he'd like in that face. The plainclothes cop, no inflection in his voice, said, "You're from Memphis?"

"Yes, sir."

"You know a Mary Quindero?"

Woody made the weirdest sound Ralph had ever heard, like a screen door being crushed or something. Ralph looked at him, just as Woody dropped to his knees, arms hanging at his sides. What the hell?

"Sir? You know a Mary Quindero?"

"She's my sister," Ralph said. "What's going on?"

The plainclothes cop turned away to the other cops. "Bring them in," he said, and walked away into the darkness, and Woody began to keen, like a dog when somebody's died.