Comeback

3

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.

Thorsen said, "Midwest Insurance. Who's your client? The stadium?"

Parker put his wallet away. "Nobody," he said. "Not on this one."

Thorsen nodded, considering that. "What you mean is, you were already on their trail, for something else."

"One of them," Parker said. "A fellow named George Liss."

"That's a name I know," Thorsen agreed.

So Carmody had broken; not a surprise.

Thorsen went on, "Seems to be his real handle, Liss. What do you have on the others?"

"Nothing," Parker said. "They're not part of my job. Or they weren't. I guess they are now. Do you have names on them?"

"Not names I like," Thorsen said. 'Jack Grant.

Ed and Brenda Fawcett." He waggled a hand, to show doubt. "That's what they told Carmody, for what it's worth."

Parker decided an insurance investigator following George Liss would have some knowledge of Carmody. He said, "Carmody. He's something in Liss's parole, isn't he?"

"He's also the inside man on the robbery," Thorsen said.

"It looked like there had to be somebody inside," Parker agreed. "And they holed up in that trailer that blew apart, I suppose."

"From there," Thorsen said, "God knows where they went."

"Who's running the investigation?"

Thorsen shook his head. "I don't like him," he said, "and you won't either. Detective Second Grade Calavecci."

"Is that why you're looking around here yourself? He's incompetent?"

"No, he's good at the job," Thorsen said. "I think the whole department's good. He just enjoys himself a little too much."

"Maybe I'll stay out of his way," Parker said.

"That's what I'm doing," Thorsen said. "Came over here to see what's what, when I couldn't stand him any more."

"You knew about this place from Carmody?"

"And also from another bunch, trying to cut themselves a piece. Calavecci didn't want to come here, said they wouldn't be back, but you never know. Their stuff is here."

Parker said, "Another bunch?" That must be the trio in the car in the stadium parking lot. Who were those clowns? And where were they now? Parker said, "I don't know any other bunch."

"It's a sad story," Thorsen told him. "Carmody had a girlfriend. He told her what was going down here."

"Everybody talks to everybody," Parker said.

"They do," agreed Thorsen. "The girlfriend talked to her brother, who's an asshole. He talked to two other assholes he knew, and they decided to come hit the hitters."

"Did they," Parker said.

"Before they left," Thorsen went on, "the other two assholes went to see what else the sister might know, and killed her. Not meaning to, I guess."

Parker said, "The sister?"

"They didn't mention that part to the brother," Thorsen said. "They just all came here."

"To the motel, you mean. So they could follow the heisters."

"That's right."

"Liss told Carmody this was the motel, Carmody told the girlfriend, the girlfriend told the brother."

"As you say," Thorsen said, "everybody talks to everybody."

"The question is," Parker said, "who do I talk to?"

"The second bunch is in custody," Thorsen told him. "Calavecci was teasing the brother about the sister's death, not quite telling him, when I left."

"Uh huh."

"But I don't know that that bunch has much you want to know."

"They're nothing to me," Parker said. He was thinking, trying to find a way to turn this meeting into something useful. "I might want Carmody," he decided. "He could know associates of Liss, people Liss might go to if he has to go to ground."

"Calavecci and his people squeezed him pretty good, I think," Thorsen said.

"But they're thinking about the stadium, and the money. I'm thinking about Liss."

"That's true." Thorsen thought it over, and said, "I could phone, say we want to drop by—"

"You and the insurance man."

Thorsen grinned. "That's right. Just get an okay, a phone call from Calavecci to the hospital saying we're cleared to go in. That way, Calavecci won't have to come with us."

"He's a busy man anyway," Parker suggested.

Thorsen got to his feet. "I'll just make the call."

Also rising, Parker said, "Give me a minute in the john, and I'll be with you."

As Thorsen went over to the telephone on the bedside table, Parker went into the bathroom, shut the door, and looked through Brenda's cosmetics until he found a round black compact. He opened it, and the inside of the top was mirrored. With eyebrow pencil, he wrote on the mirror 11 PM. Then he closed the compact and put it down a different place from where he'd found it, then flushed the toilet before leaving the room.

The one place he was sure Brenda would look was in a mirror.