Comeback

6

It was unnatural to sit here like this. Parker needed Liss dead, and he knew Liss felt the same way about him, and they were both held back. Liss was held back because Parker was his only sure route to the duffel bags full of money, and Parker was held back because Liss had the gun.

After dark, Parker thought. A chance will come after dark.

The afternoon slowly descended outside, the sunny areas growing bright even as they narrowed, the shadows getting darker. The rock and the tangled underbrush out there would be full of creatures, wary, moving in sudden jumps, hidden away in the cat's cradle of vines and branches, living their lives with all senses alert. Darkness would be good for them, too.

Thorsen's gun was pale, standing out against the dark floor over next to the box where Quindero had been. Neither of them looked directly at it, but both knew it was there. Parker looked out the windows at the ravine and watched the light change. Liss didn't seem to look at anything.

Quindero was gone almost an hour, and when he came back he seemed more agitated than ever. He carried a brown paper shopping bag with handles, and when he came in he said, "My picture's in the paper."

They looked at him. Liss said, "Is it a good picture, Ralph? Is it one you like?"

Parker said, "Show me the paper." And held his hand out.

Quindero dithered, not sure what to do, looking first at Parker, then at Liss.

Liss did his half-grin. "You bought the paper, Ralph? Did you? For your scrapbook? Sure, go ahead, let Parker see it."

Quindero put the bag on the floor, rooted in it, came out with a newspaper, handed it to Parker. Then he carried the bag over to Liss, to divvy up the food.

It was this city's one newspaper, full-size, not tabloid. It was heavy on the ads, heavy on the wire service reports, with just barely enough local staff to cover robbery, murder, arson and escapes all happening at once. Under the main headline:

WITNESS MURDERED IN MEMORIAL HOSPITAL Police Guard Not Enough; Killer Escapes

was an excited story about the events in the hospital, plus a recap of the robbery at the stadium, plus a lot of self-confident official pronouncements.

Three photos of equal size and importance ran horizontally under the main headline and next to the subhead and story. From left to right, they were the local police commissioner, Tom Carmody and Ralph Quindero. The newspaper couldn't have done a better job of taking attention away from Ralph Quindero's features if they'd decided not to run the picture at all.

The photo they'd used of Quindero was a black-and-white blowup of something from the family's collection, and it showed him in sunshine, full face, smiling and squinting, two things he wasn't likely to do for a while. When Parker looked at this picture and its placement, and then looked at Ralph Quindero, it seemed to him Quindero could probably walk through the newspaper's editorial department without anybody recognizing him.

Over next to Liss, Quindero squatted down and ripped up the paper bag into large irregular pieces to use as plates. On one of these, he brought Parker two slices of pizza, plus a can of some local bottler's cola. A bottle would have been more useful, but it didn't matter.

It was getting darker in here, hard to read, but once everybody was settled, with Quindero once again seated against the right wall, mouth full of pizza, Parker held the newspaper angled to catch the light from the windows and out loud read, "Walter Malloy, the Quindero family attorney, issued a plea late this morning for fugitive Ralph Quindero to give himself up, saying, 'There are no substantive charges against Ralph. At this point, the police merely want to talk to him as a witness. The longer he stays in hiding, the more he risks facing some sort of charge down the line.' Police have announced a special telephone number for anyone with information on any aspect of the investigation." Parker looked over at Quindero: "You want the number?"

Quindero blinked a lot, staring back and forth between Parker and Liss. "What does that— What do they mean?"

Parker said, "Oley oley in free."

Liss laughed, and looked at Quindero, and told him, "It's a good thing we don't believe what we read in the newspapers, huh, Ralph?"

Quindero simply stared at him.

"Because, if you did believe that bullshit," Liss went on, "I'd have to kill you now. I can't have you go home and tell stories about me. But we don't believe it, so that's okay."

Quindero said, "We don't believe it?"

"Oh, come on, Ralph," Liss said. "That's the stuff they say every time. They'd say it to me if they could. Come on in, there's no problem, nobody's mad at you. Oh, okay, you say, I'm all right. And you go in, and the first thing, they slap the cuffs on you. You've had the cuffs on you, remember, Ralph?"

"I remember," Quindero said.

"And that was before all this other stuff. Everything's okay and you should come in now? When back before old Tom got his, and you and I headed out of there, way back then they had the cuffs on you?"

"That's right," Quindero said.

Liss looked at Parker, and shook his head. "Parker, why do you want to upset my partner here? That's not a good thing to do."

Parker looked at the top of the paper. "It says there's a chance of rain tomorrow."

"We don't care about that," Liss said. "We're long gone by then. One way or another."