Comeback

2

It began with a phone call. Parker didn't hear it ring, because he was out on the lake, in the row-boat, oars shipped, doing nothing, feeling the pulse of the water through the wood hull. Early May, this lake in northern New Jersey was still too cold to swim in, most of the vacation houses around its fringe still closed down, waiting for their owners to come back from the city when weather and water got a little warmer. Parker and Claire were among the few year-round residents, Claire establishing her presence in the community, Parker more aloof, being someone whose work let him stay at home for periods of time and then took him away sometimes. Claire was the one who made the home here, being Claire Willis because Parker had been Charles

Willis a long time ago, before they'd met. She liked the idea of reaching back into the world when they hadn't known one another, to make a link, throw a line back into the past.

Movement. He always reacted to movement, no matter how small, anywhere in his vision. This was three-quarters behind him, and when he turned his head it was Claire, at the dock, waving. The lawn stretched behind her up to the dark house. He lifted a hand, then rowed back, and as he stepped up onto the dock she said, "Man called. Pay phone. Says he'll call back in ten minutes." She looked at the slender watch on her slender wrist and corrected herself: "Six minutes."

"Did he give a name?"

"George Liss."

Parker frowned at that, and tied the boat to the stanchion, and they walked up to the house, she holding his wrist in her cool fingers. She said, "He seemed like he knew you."

"To a point," Parker said.

Parker and George Liss had never worked together, though they'd come close. Twice, they'd met on other guys' deals that hadn't panned out. He had no real opinion about George Liss, except he thought he probably wouldn't want to count on him if things turned sour.

The money situation at the moment was all right, but not perfect. There was cash here and there, stowed away. He could wait for something that smelled good. Even in a world of electronic cash transfers and credit cards and money floating in cyberspace, there were still heists out there, waiting to be collected.

When the phone rang the second time, Parker was in the enclosed porch that faced the lawn and the lake and the boathouse, standing there, looking out. The day was overcast, and looked colder than it was. He picked up the phone on the third ring and said, "George?"

"I've got something." The voice slurred a little, making a furry sound in the phone lines.

Parker waited. George Liss could have a lot of things, including a need to turn someone else over to the law to take his place.

Liss said, "It's a little different, but it's profitable."

They were all different, and they were all supposed to be profitable, or you wouldn't do it. Parker waited.

Liss said, "You still there?"

"Yes."

"We could get together someplace, talk it over."

"Maybe."

"You want to know who else is aboard." And again Liss waited for Parker to say something, but again Parker had nothing to say, so finally Liss said, "Ed Mackey."

That was different. Ed Mackey was somebody Parker did know and had worked with. Ed Mackey was solid. Parker said, "Who else?"

"It only takes three."

Even better. The fewer the people, the fewer the complications, and the more the profit. Parker said, "Where and when?"

They came together first in the parking lot of a lobster restaurant on Route 1 just south of Auburn, Maine, a place where a couple of rental cars from Boston's Logan Airport wouldn't look out of place. Parker left his Impala and crisscrossed through the parked cars to the Century Regal where Ed Mackey, blunt and taciturn, sat at the wheel with his girlfriend Brenda beside him and George Liss in the back seat. Parker joined Liss, a tall, narrow, black-haired man with a long chin, who nodded at him and smiled with the side of his mouth where the nerves and muscles still worked, and said, "Have a good flight?"

This wasn't a sensible question. Parker said, "Tell me about it."

"It's a stadium," Ed Mackey said, half-turning in the front seat, knees pointed at Brenda as he looked back at Parker. "Usual stadium security. Twenty thousand civilians inside."

Parker shook his head. "All you walk out with," he said, "is credit card receipts."

"Not this one," Liss said, and the left side of his face smiled more broadly. A sharpened spoon handle had laid open the right side, in a prison in Wyoming, eleven years ago. A plastic surgeon had made the scars disappear, but nothing could make that side of his face move again, ever. Around civilians, Liss usually tried to keep himself turned partially away, showing only the profile that worked, but among fellow mechanics he didn't worry about it. With the slight slurring that made his words always sound just a little odd, he said, "This one is all cash. Paid at the door."

"They call it love offerings," Mackey said, deadpan.

Parker tried to read Mackey's face. "Love offerings? What kind of stadium is this?"

Liss explained, "The stadium's the usual. The attraction's a guy named William Archibald. A TV preacher, you know those guys? Evangelists."

"I thought they were all in jail," Parker said.

'The woods are full of them," Liss said, and Mackey added, "Mostly the back woods."

Parker said, "He's preaching at this stadium, is that it?"

"To make a movie," Mackey said, "and show it on the TV later."

"The people walking in," Liss said, moving his hands around in the space between himself and Parker, "they put down a twenty-dollar love offering, every one of them. No exceptions. Twenty thousand people."

Brenda spoke for the first time: "Four hundred thousand dollars," she said in her husky voice, rolling her full lips around the words.

"Brenda does my math for me," Mackey said.

"Plus," Liss said, "they got these barrels up front by the stage, you get inspired along the way, you want to help the preacher spread the word on the TV, you can go up and toss whatever money you want in the barrel."

"On TV," Mackey said. "On the big screen up behind the preacher. I seen it work, Parker, it's like hypnotizing. These people love to see themselves on that big screen, walking right up there, tossing their cash in the old barrel. Then a month later, they're at home, TV on, there they are again. Live the moment twice. The day you gave the rent money to God."

"We figure," Liss said, "that doubles the take."

Brenda opened her mouth, but before she could say anything Mackey pointed at her and said, "Brenda. He can work it out."

Parker said, "There's going to be more than the usual security, if it's all cash."

"Archibald has his own people," Liss agreed.

"But we got a guy on the inside. That's what made it start to happen."

"Not one of us," Parker said.

"Not for a minute," Mackey said.

"He works for the preacher," Liss said. "And now he's mad at him."

"Greedy? Wants a bigger slice?"

"Just the reverse," Liss said, and half his face laughed. "Ol' Tom got religion."

'Just tell it to me," Parker said.

Mackey patted the top of the seatback, as though calming a horse. "It's a good story, Parker," he said. "Wait for it."

People had to tell their stories their own way, with all the pointless extras. "Go ahead," Parker said, and sat back to wait it out.

Liss said, "I had twenty-nine months' parole last time I got out. It was easier, just hang around and do it, then have a paper out on me the rest of my life. This guy Archibald, one of his scams is, his people volunteer to give this counseling to ex-cons. It's all crap and everybody knows it, it's just to find new suckers, and to get some kinda tax break."

"A cash business," Parker said. "He's doing okay with taxes anyway."

"Oh, you know he is. But William Archibald, he's one of those guys, the more you give him to drink, the thirstier he gets. So I drew this guy

Tom Carmody to be my counselor, once a week he'd come around the place I was living, and then when he'd fill out the sheet, that meant I didn't have to go in to the parole office. A good deal for everybody. And after the first few weeks, we pretty much come clean with each other, and after that we'd just watch basketball on the tube or something, or have a beer around the corner. I mean, he knew what I was and no problem, and I knew what scam he was on, so we just got on with life. Except sometimes he'd go on crusades, and—"

Parker said, "Crusades?"

"When Archibald takes his show on the road," Liss explained. "Rents a hall, a movie house, a stadium, someplace big, does his act three, four times, brings in a couple mil, takes it all home again. Tom was one of the staff guys he brought along on these things, so then I'd get some gung ho trainee from the office instead, and I'd have to be real serious and rehabilitated and grateful as hell to Jesus and all this shit, and then when Tom came back we'd laugh about it. Only, then, about the last six months—yeah, two years we're dealing bullshit and we both knew it, and then the last six months he began to change it all around. Not trying to reform me or nothing. It was Archibald he got agitated about."

Brenda spoke again, this time drily: "He noticed Mister Archibald was insincere."

"He got hung up on the money," Liss said. "How Archibald takes all the suckers for all this money, and it doesn't go anywhere good. I dunno, Parker, it wasn't the scam that got ol' Tom riled up, it still isn't. It's what happens with the money after Archibald trims the rubes. He'd talk about all the good that money could do, you know, feed the homeless and house the hungry and all this, and then he wanted to know was there any way I knew that he could get a bunch of that cash. Not for himself, you see, but to do good works with it."

Parker said, "It was his idea?"

"Absolutely. The guy's a civilian, I only know him two years, and he's tied to the parole board. Am I gonna say, 'Hey, Tom, let's pull a number'? No way."

"But you went along."

Liss shook his head. "Not at first. One of the few big words I know is entrapment. So at first I'd just nod and say well, that's a real bitch, Tom, and all this. And when he finally came out with it—-'Hey, George, let's do it together, you with your expert background and me with my inside information'—I told him no, I told him I'm retired, it isn't I'm reformed I just don't want to go back inside. Which was almost the truth, by the way."

Parker nodded. For a lot of people, that was almost the truth almost all the time.

"Also," Liss said, "I told him I didn't much care where money went that didn't come to me, whether this money fed Archibald or fed some other people made no difference to me, and he said he understood. He understood for me it would be more of a business proposition. So he suggested we split fifty-fifty, and I'd put my share in my pocket and he'd give his to the poor."

"Us poor," Mackey said.

Parker knew what Mackey meant. Glancing at him, "If," he said.

"Naturally."

Liss went on, saying, "Finally I said I'd pass him on to somebody who was still active in the game, but he said no, he wouldn't trust anybody but me, so then I figured I could take the chance. If he was out to trap somebody for the law, he wouldn't care who he brought in, right? He'd let me pass him on to somebody else, work his number just as good. Since he didn't do that, then he probably wasn't pulling anything. So then we started to get kind of serious, talking it over, him giving me the details about the money, and I saw how maybe it could be done. And here we are."

Parker said, "And the theory is, the inside guy takes half, and we split the other half. However many of us it is doing the thing."

"That's the theory."

"Does he buy it?" Parker shook his head, rejecting his own question, rephrasing it: "What I mean, does he believe it?"

"That he'll get his half?" Liss did his lopsided smile. "That's the big question, isn't it? He's kind of hard to read since he changed, you know. Used to be, he was an easygoing guy, now he's all tensed up. Relaxed guys are harder to fool, but tensed-up guys are harder to read."

"Anyway, Parker," Mackey said, "what's he gonna do if he doesn't believe it? We're the takers, not him. Is he gonna take it from the takers? No way."

Parker ignored that. He said to Liss, "How many parole guys does this fella have beer with?"

Liss half-frowned; that face of his took some getting used to. He said, "You mean, he puts together a backup crew to take it away after we get it? But what's the point, Parker? If he's afraid we're gonna cut him out, what's he gonna do about the second crew? Come up with a third?"

"What I think it is," Mackey said, "I think the guy bought his own story. He's not buying from us, he's buying from himself."

Parker said to Mackey, "You meet this wonder?"

"Not yet."

"That can be arranged," Liss said. "Easiest thing there is. I'll call him tonight, say we're—"

"No," Parker said. "You say he goes out with this preacher on his crusades. When's the next one?"

"Couple weeks. I figured that's when we could pull it."

"No. Where they gonna be? The whole tour."

Liss's face went out of whack again. He said, "Beats me. I guess I could find out."

"Good," Parker said. "Then somewhere along the way, without any invitations or planning or setting things up, we're there, and we say hello. Mackey and me."

"And Brenda," Mackey said.

Parker looked at Brenda. "Naturally," he said.