Comeback

8

It wasn't a manger. Carlton Tower, where William Archibald and his Christian Crusade were resting their heads while they saved local souls, was a many-tiered wedding cake, white and gleaming in the sun, with the flags of various Scottish clans dangling from horizontal poles stuck out from the facade just above the second level. (Most people had no idea what those colorful flags stood for, and the few who did know couldn't figure out what they stood for here.)

The lobby was broad and two stories high, with a figured carpet in which the dominant color was maroon. The bank of gold-doored elevators stood discreetly around a corner on the right. Thorsen led the way across from the revolving-doored entrance, through an atmosphere of hyper but hushed activity, and Parker looked at it all with approval. He liked this kind of place when he wasn't working. On the job, it was no good, of course, because the byword with a place like this was constant service of the guest, which meant constant observation of the guest. On the job, Parker preferred a place where, once you paid your money and they told you where the ice machine was, you were left alone.

Archibald and his people had taken all or most of the twelfth floor. Thorsen and Parker rode up in the elevator with blushing honey-mooners, who continued on to greater heights. When Thorsen and Parker stepped out of the elevator, they found a very neat and muscular young man in dark gray suit and dark blue tie seated on the nice wing chair against the opposite wall, reading what looked like a missal. He glanced up, saw Thorsen, and said, "Morning, sir."

"Morning. Archibald in?"

"I believe everybody's in, sir," the young man said, and gave Parker a flat look, merely recording him, to remember him. Parker already remembered the young man; he'd been one of the Crusade's guards in the money room at the stadium.

Thorsen led the way down the hall, saying, "We'll drop in, have a word with Archibald, then go on to my office. He's an interesting fella to meet."

"I suppose he must be," Parker said.

They went to the end of the white-and-gold corridor, where the suites were, and Thorsen knocked on the door that instead of a number had the word Macleod on it. After a minute, this door was opened by another muscular youngster in a suit, a clone of the one at the elevator, though Parker didn't think this one had been in the money room.

Thorsen stepped in, murmuring a word to this guy, and Parker followed. They went through a small mirrored vestibule with two doors that probably led to closets, and then entered a large six-sided room with big windows in two walls showing cityscape. Paintings hung on the rest of the walls, cream-and-green broadloom was underfoot, and the furniture was large and dark, mostly imitation antique, and placed in separate groupings, the largest cluster being the two sofas and two chairs with several tables and lamps positioned in front of the now-idle fireplace. That detail surprised Parker; he'd thought Archibald would want a fire. Maybe too distracted by the loss of his money.

The remembered plummy voice from the night of the robbery oiled the room, coming from the man himself, seated at a small desk in front of the view, talking on the telephone. He gestured at Thorsen that he wouldn't be long, and went on with his conversation. Parker listened, and Archibald seemed to be on the line with his head office back in Memphis, arranging alterations in the television schedule created by the disruption that had happened here.

"Better coffee in this place," Thorsen said, and went over to the bar—from the doorway, it was fireplace to the left, bar to the right, Archibald on the phone straight ahead—where he filled two hotel china mugs with coffee from a glass pot on a warmer there. Parker joined him, hiking one hip onto a stool in front of the bar while Thorsen stood behind it, leaning against the back counter. The coffee was in fact much better than the stuff at the hospital.

Parker looked around. "Nice duty," he said.

Thorsen offered a thin smile. "Depends what you like."

When Archibald got off the phone, everybody moved, Archibald rising and turning his smile toward the room as though it contained multitudes, Parker getting to his feet and standing there with the coffee mug in his left hand, Thorsen coming around the end of the bar to make the introductions. "Reverend William Archibald," he said, as the three moved toward one another, "may I present Mr. John Orr, an undercover insurance investigator from Midwest Insurance."

Archibald's handshake was firm but not aggressive. "Mr. Orr," he said, in greeting. "Here concerning our unfortunate loss?"

"Not exactly," Parker said.

Thorsen said, "Mr. Orr was on another case. He was already in pursuit of one of the fellas robbed us, for something else he did."

Archibald smiled, with ruefulness in it. "In that case, Mr. Orr," he said, "I can only regret that you didn't catch up with him last week."

"I feel the same way," Parker told him.

"But now you're here," Archibald said, "I presume you've taken our misfortune under your wing as well."

"That would be a different insurance company," Parker said.

Thorsen said, "Mr. Orr's got a full plate, Will. This fella he's after is a very bad man. Just caused a ruckus down at Memorial Hospital." His voice lowered, becoming as funereal as his boss, as he said, "I'm afraid Tom Carmody's dead."

That startled Archibald. "Why, that's terrible!" Looking at Parker, he said, "Tom was one of my failures, Mr. Orr. I'm not going to get over this."

"Uh huh," Parker said.

"But at least," Archibald said, brightening, "he expressed sorrow for his wayward ways. Toward the end, Dwayne, didn't he? You were there."

"He was sorry, all right," Thorsen said.

"We'll remember him in our prayers," Archibald decided.

A blonde woman came into the room, then, from somewhere deeper in the suite, and attracted everybody's attention; which is what she would do in any room she entered. Ripe to overflowing, she was almost a parody of the sexpot, but kept under strict control, her yellow hair in a tight bun, lush body completely covered in a sexless gray suit and high-necked white blouse, and dark horn-rim glasses worn to distract from the bee-stung mouth.

Archibald's smile when he turned to greet her contained the avarice of ownership; not much question who this woman was. "Ah, Tina," the Reverend said. "Come meet Mr. Orr. He leads a very exciting life."

When she came forward, Parker could see her rein herself in, deliberately hold herself within tight bounds. Her smile was small, almost prissy, and she didn't quite meet his eye as she murmured, "Does he? How nice."

"Mr. John Orr," Archibald said, presenting his proudest possession, "Ms. Christine Mackenzie, conductor of our Angel Choir."

"How do you do?"

Her hand was soft, with toughness within. Holding Parker's a second too long, she said, "What about your life makes it so exciting, Mr. Orr?"

"Not much," Parker told her.

Archibald said, "Mr. Orr's an undercover detective, working for an insurance company."

"Are you?" The smile opened a bit more, showed a gleam of teeth. "You must have some stories to tell."

"Mostly, I keep them to myself," Parker said.

He'd been aware of the transformation of Thorsen since Christine Mackenzie had come into the room. The man reacted with barely concealed rage and revulsion, covering panic; the sexuality of this woman was clearly far more than Thorsen could take. He wanted out of here, and now, gruffly, without looking at the woman, he said, "Will, Mr. Orr and I are going to my office, call Broad Street, find out if there's any developments."

"Broad Street." Archibald frowned slightly. "That's what they call their police headquarters here?"

"They better not ever move it," Christine Mackenzie said, and giggled, and showed Parker her tongue.

Thorsen turned away, his hands clenched into fists. "Come on, Jack," he said.

"Nice to meet you," Parker told Archibald, and nodded to Mackenzie. "Both of you."

But Archibald said, "Dwayne, you go ahead. Let me have a little word with Mr. Orr, if I might. I'll send him right along."

"Fine," Thorsen said. To Parker he said, "I'm down on the right, 1237."

"Got it."

Thorsen left, and Archibald said, "More coffee, Mr. Orr?"

"No, I'm fine."

Archibald turned to Mackenzie, saying, "Tina, go in the other room, please, and phone the concierge, and ask for somebody to come up and lay a fire, would you do that, please?"

She would rather stay, but that wasn't being given as a choice. "All right," she said, with a shrug that made her breasts call attention to themselves, even within all that nunnery. Approaching Parker, "Glad to meet you," she said, with another smile, and offered her hand once more. "I hope we meet again."

"That'd be nice," Parker assured her.

Archibald was impatient for her to leave, and was making it increasingly obvious. Now, he said, "I'll be along after a while, Tina."

Which meant don't come back, a message Tina understood. She rolled her eyes discreetly at Parker, and went away, and twitched just a little as she left.

Archibald said, "Mr. Orr, sit down a minute, won't you?"

They sat on sofas at right angles to one another near the fireplace, toward which Archibald sent a fretful look, saying, "I meant to call someone, have them lay a fire in there, but I just haven't had a minute to myself." Smiling at Parker in amused self-pity, he said, "I do think a fire cheers up a room, at any season. Don't you?"

"Sure."

"What I wanted to talk about," Archibald said, hunched forward slightly, becoming more confidential, "is your job. You're a sort of undercover policeman, aren't you? But with the insurance company, not the regular police."

"Something like that."

"You have . . . contacts within the underworld, different from what the police might have."

"I'm supposed to, anyway," Parker said.

"People like you," Archibald said, "people in your position, they do moonlight, I believe, from time to time. Isn't that what it's called? To moonlight?"

'You mean collect from two bosses for the same work."

"Well, slightly different work," Archibald corrected him. "Similar work. For instance, you're

looking for this one man anyway, but my understanding is, there were at least three involved in the robbery at the stadium, and probably a fourth man to drive them away. When you catch the man you're looking for, and I have no doubt that you're very able at your job, that you will run this fellow to earth, but when you do, it's extremely unlikely he'll have all the money from that robbery on his person."

"Very unlikely," Parker agreed.

"If you could make it a part of your business," Archibald said, looking Parker forthrightly in the eye, "to retrieve the money stolen from me, whether it's in the possession of the man you're hunting or not, I'd be very appreciative."

'Would you," Parker said.

"I'd pay in cash, of course."

"Uh huh."

"And you ought to have— What do they call it in your business? A retainer?"

"That's one word," Parker agreed.

"Let's say a thousand." Getting to his feet, not waiting for an answer, Archibald turned toward, the desk where he'd been on the phone before. Crossing to it, he said over his shoulder, "Against, let us say, five percent of whatever you reclaim. That's a maximum of twenty-five thousand dollars, Mr. Orr, or just a little less."

Parker got to his feet and watched. Archibald opened a drawer in the desk, took out a thick envelope that seemed to be full of cash, thumbed some bills out, and put the still-full envelope back in the drawer. Then he took up the bills he'd selected, slipped them into a hotel envelope, and came smiling back, envelope held out. "An extra little blessing on your job," he said. "Shall we call it that?"

This was the first time Parker had ever been offered a bribe to help find the money he'd stolen. "Let's call it that," he said, and took the envelope and put it in his pocket.