Comeback

4

Thorsen was still on the phone, saying, "Yeah," and, "I see," and, "How about that." He held a finger up toward Parker—one minute—and went on listening to the phone. Then he said, "Well, we'll come over and hang around until you're done," and hung up, and said, "I could grow to dislike that slime ball."

"The detective? Whatsisname?"

"Calavecci. He's waiting for the doctors to say he can go over and have a conversation with Carmody himself, probably by ten o'clock. When he's done, then we can go in."

The clock radio in the room read 9:23. "So we wait a while," Parker said.

"The thing is," Thorsen said, "what he's waiting to do. He wants to bring Quindero over there, let him and Carmody have a conversation."

"Quindero?" This was a new name to Parker.

"The brother," Thorsen explained. "This is just the sadistic son of a bitch wanting to turn the knife a little more. Let Quindero and Carmody reminisce together about good old Mary."

"A nice guy, your detective."

"Let's get out of here," Thorsen said, looking around, disgusted. "There's more, I'll tell you in the car."

"Fine."

Thorsen nodded at the connecting door. "Nothing in there?"

"Same as here. They didn't leave any address books."

'These are not people with address books," Thorsen said. "Come along— What do I call you? John, or Jack?"

'Jack."

"And I'm Dwayne."

"Fine."

They went out, switching off the lights, and Thorsen said, "I parked across the street."

In the Professional Building parking lot, which was now half full. Thorsen's car was a rental, a blue Chevy Celebrity. He unlocked them into it, and on the console between the front seats was a black scanner, which he immediately switched on, saying, "I've got this fixed to the local police band. I'm not official, so Calavecci won't tell me anything unless I ask, and then he has to play around a little."

Thorsen had the volume low, so that the police dispatcher's voice was a raspy buzz that wouldn't interfere with conversation. Parker said, "There's more?"

Thorsen started the car, and drove out of the parking lot, and as they headed across the city he told Parker about the mess at the gas station this morning, and the kid hospitalized with a bullet in his leg, and the description of the station wagon and the duffel bags and the two men and a woman.

"The thing is," he finished, "my security people in the money room where it happened, they say it was three men. The kid's sure it was two men and a woman. During the robbery, the hitters had ski masks on, so maybe one of them was a woman all along."

"Wouldn't be the first time," Parker said.

"Then the other thing," Thorsen said. "Nobody knows if it's connected or not, but the locals have lost a cop. And his car."

Knowing this was Liss's work, Parker said, "Lost a cop? How do you mean?"

"The guy was on duty at an on-ramp someplace, by himself. When the relief showed up at six this morning, he and the car were gone. He doesn't respond to radio calls—you'll hear them, from time to time, they're still trying to raise him—and they don't know what it means."

"If the heisters have a police car," Parker said, "they could probably just drive on out of town and nobody think twice."

'Then why are they still in that gas station an hour later, with a station wagon? That's why nobody knows if it's connected."

'They'll find him," Parker said. 'Their cop. Sooner or later. One way or another."

"What's driving them nuts is," Thorsen said, "if the hitters have that car, they've got the radio, just like this. They're listening to the pursuit."

"They're probably not enjoying it much," Parker said.

The hospital was well across town. Parker sat in the passenger seat as Thorsen drove from traffic light to traffic light, and the radio kept talking. From time to time, it called for an Officer Kendall, who never answered. Sometimes there was stuff about who would be on duty in and around the hospital, to guard Carmody. Then they found the station wagon.

Thorsen said, "What? Turn it up."

Parker turned it up, and they listened to the reports. A woman had reported her car stolen, a Toyota Tercel, from in front of her apartment building, discovering it when she went out to go to her morning class at the local college, and when the officers responded they found the battered station wagon in front of a fire hydrant directly across the street. So now the fugitives were presumed to be traveling in a dark green Toyota Tercel, license number S46 8TJ.

Except that Parker knew they weren't. He knew what Mackey would do now, because they'd both done it before, when they needed to buy time and they didn't dare travel in stolen wheels. Mackey and Brenda and the duffel bags, in the Toyota, would drive directly to a downtown parking garage, the kind where a machine gives you the ticket on the way in. There they'd park the Toyota, grab another car, wait in it twenty minutes or so, and pay on the way out with the ticket they'd got on the way in. This new car would take them to a motel, either the old one or more likely a new one. Once they had a room, Mackey would bring the new car back to where he'd got it, leave it there, and take a cab to the new hidey-hole.

Somewhere in this city. All Parker had to do was find them.

Up ahead, on the right, a patrolman strolled his beat, slow and relaxed, showing that not the entire local law was all caught up in the excitement. Parker saw him up ahead, from the back, saw how casual he was, then noticed how sloppy the uniform looked.

They drove by. Parker turned his head to look. It was Liss.