Comeback

10

"What was it you didn't like about my story so far?"

"Everything," Thorsen said. "But to tell you the truth, and it's humiliating to say this, simple fuck that I am, I bought it for a while. Jack Orr, daredevil insurance spy." He shook his head, discouraged with himself.

"Go on buying it," Parker suggested. "It's nice, and it's true, and it's the only story I've got."

"We'll change your mind on that pretty quick," Thorsen said.

The four young guys all shifted position and moved their shoulders around, like a herd that had just caught a whiff of something on the breeze. Parker looked at them, and then back at Thorsen, who said, "Let me tell you when I finally got to singing in time with the chorus. It was when your friend Liss took a shot at you."

"He knows who I am," Parker pointed out. "He knows I'm after him."

"Everybody in that hall was after him," Thorsen said. "He didn't need to bust his own concentration to even some old scores. You said it yourself: He came there because Tom Carmody and the other robbers were the only people who could place him absolutely at the robbery, and he doesn't want anybody around who can do that. So he killed Tom, and the only other person he tried to kill was you."

Parker grinned, as though Thorsen must either be kidding or crazy. "Making me one of the heisters?"

"Heisters," Thorsen echoed. "That's a crook's word for it. We say robbers, or hitters."

"Crooks are who I hang out with."

"I'll tell you what happened," Thorsen said, ignoring that. "After the robbery, you all got split up somehow. One bunch spent the night in that gas station. Liss stole that police car and probably killed the poor cop. And you waited at the motel, until I showed up."

"Wait a second," Parker said. "Am I a heister, am I a robber, or am I a guy waiting at the motel?"

"I figure the details have to come from you," Thorsen told him.

Parker shook his head. "It's your fairy tale," he said, "you'll have to fill it in yourself. George Liss takes one shot at the guy been chasing him eight months, and to you that means the guy s in on the heist."

"That shot," Thorsen said, "made me start to think about something that had snagged me but I'd just let it go by. You know what that was?"

"You'll tell me," Parker said.

"There's a lot of different words for the room that, when I was in the Marines, we called the head. There's the bathroom, the toilet, the lavatory, the washroom, the WC. The Irish call it the bog. I've been places they called it the cloakroom, don't ask me why. But one thing is constant and sure and solid and you could build your house on it: Nobody named John calls that room the john."

Parker nodded. "I think you're right about that."

"So that isn't your name."

"That's my joke," Parker told him. "My name is John Orr. Meaning, my name is John, or it isn't."

"It isn't. You're one of the robbers. You and Liss had a falling-out." Thorsen showed that thin smile again, thinner than ever. "I think Liss makes a career out of having falling-outs with people. I think maybe he doesn't play well with others. What do you think?"

Parker said, "Dwayne, I understand, the situation you're in, it can make you jumpy, paranoid. The story I told you is solid."

"Then I'm gonna owe you an apology," Thorsen said. "But before I give you that apology, let's take a picture of you, and take your fingerprints, and ask the local law to check you out. And let's call your home office in— Where's Midwest Insurance located, by the way? I called our insurance guy in Memphis just now, and he never heard of it."

"That's because he's in Memphis. He isn't in the midwest."

Thorsen poised a hotel pen over a hotel notepad. "Give me the phone number of your home office, and the name of your supervisor." When Parker didn't say anything, he smiled again and said, "And you might as well also give me the Reverend's thousand dollars, while you're at it."

So this piece was played out. Parker glanced around at the four young guys standing there at parade rest, silent, watching, ready to do whatever they were told. He said, "Are these guys armed?"

"You don't want to know," Thorsen said.

"Oh, yes, I do. I've been without a gun for too long, I need one. I'm wondering, do I take that dinky thing of yours, or is one of these fellas better hipped?"

One of the youngsters spoke: "We don't need to be armed," he said, being tough.

Thorsen had put the pen down to stare at Parker. "By God, you're sure of yourself," he said.

"Why not," Parker said, and rose from the desk. As he did so, he pulled the empty metal side drawer out of the desk and swung it around in a short quick arc into Thorsen's face.