Comeback

CLICK

"I'm getting bored," Brenda said.

Ed kept on looking at the TV: CNN, multi-vehicle collision in fog on an interstate in California, blonde-haired woman solemn over her mike with ambulances in the background. He was waiting for the TV to tell him something new about events in this town right here, far from California and its fog. Outside this motel room, halfway around town from their first motel, the late afternoon sky was clear, visibility perfect. Inside, nobody on television, not local or network or cable, wanted to tell him what was happening here.

Brenda said, "Ed? When are we getting out of here?"

"Late tonight," Ed told her, pretending to be patient. "You know why. You saw the TV."

"California," she said, and gave the television set a look of scorn.

"Come on, Brenda. Before."

She knew, of course, he meant the business about Liss shooting up the local hospital, then taking off with some goon called Quindero that the cops wanted back unharmed for some reason. The law had been irritated already with just the robbery, but then you throw in Liss killing a guy the cops have under guard, right in front of them, and you could expect the locals were truly itching by now to get their hands on somebody. Anybody at all.

Which was the point Ed wanted to make. "They're all over this town like a bad smell," he said. "We did enough running around here today. When it turns dark, I get us a nice little car, not flashy, nothing you look at twice, and then we clear out of here."

They'd each been out of this room once since they'd checked in at this motel, Ed paying cash and using a driver's license for ID that had no history on it at all. First Ed had taken the most recent borrowed car back to the parking garage, to make their trail loop back on itself, and then he'd walked from there to a luggage store, where he'd bought three suitcases from a matched set and cabbed them back here, so they'd no longer be people with duffel bags. And then, a little after noon, Brenda had said, "The hell with it, I want my stuff," and over Ed's objections she'd cabbed back across town to their old motel.

She hadn't been completely careless, not at all. She'd left the cab two blocks from the motel, walked around the area, studied it, was very patient, and only when she was sure nobody had the place staked out did she go boldly back to their old room, where she packed up all her goods plus Ed's shaving kit and change of underwear. On her way out she noticed the woman in the office eyeballing her, so she went over there and checked out. "The people in the room next to you," the woman said, half-whispering, afraid the cockroaches might hear and pass it on, "they had something to do with that big robbery." v

Brenda widened her eyes. "They did?"

"Might have killed us all in our sleep," the woman said.

"That's not much of a recommendation for your motel," Brenda pointed out.

The woman lowered her eyebrows and hunched down over her counter. "You can't be too careful," she said.

"Words to live by," Brenda agreed, and took another cab back to the new motel, where Ed hadn't moved, and CNN was showing distant explosions on a green mountainside. "Piece of cake," she said.

Ed kept his eyes on the screen. "Everybody else," he said, "has a woman constantly nagging: 'Be careful, be careful.' I got a woman, I'm the one says be careful."

"I was careful," Brenda assured him. "I didn't want you to see me on that TV."

"Be nice to see something, though," Ed said.

They saw something, at six o'clock, on the local news. They saw ambulances and stretchers and hundreds of official people, all in front of some big hotel downtown, behind an excited reporter yelling into his microphone about how one of the stadium robbers had posed as an insurance investigator until Reverend William Archibald's head of security unmasked him, when the robber damaged a whole lot of people and escaped. "Huh," Ed said. "Parker's a woolly

"And all I did," Brenda reminded him, "was go back to the motel."

"Well, Parker's far from here by now, anyway," Ed suggested.

"And I wish I was," Brenda told him.

"Patience. Later. Patience."

* * *

The guy in the motel office had said there was a good Italian restaurant two blocks down to the left, so that's where they'd go, around eight o'clock, and pick up a car on the way back, and be on the road by ten. At quarter to eight, Brenda went into the bathroom to freshen up her makeup for the journey to the restaurant, and two minutes later she came out with a scrunched-up expression on her face and an open compact in her left palm. "Ed," she said. "Take a look at this."

He looked. "It's dirty," he said. "The mirror's all streaked."

"It's a message. Come here in the light."

So he went back into the bathroom with her, where the light was brighter, and she said, "Eleven p.m. See it?"

"Shit," Ed said.

"He wants us to pick him up."

Ed looked shifty. She could tell he didn't like this idea. "He doesn't say where."

"Come on, Ed. Back at the motel."

"Not a chance," Ed decided. "You ready? Let's go eat."

They fought about it through dinner, leaning toward one another over their plates, Brenda hissing while Ed muttered. The waiters thought it was a lovers' quarrel, and gave them space.

Ed had all the arguments, and all Brenda had was persistence. He said, "We don't know who wrote that, even. It could have been George, and we walk right back into shit."

"It's Parker, and you know it," Brenda said. "And he expects us."

"If it was the other way around, he wouldn't come back for me, you can bet on it. And I wouldn't expect it."

"It isn't the other way around," Brenda said. 'You aren't him, you're you, and he knows we'll come back for him."

"Then it's you he's counting on, not me."

Brenda shrugged. "Okay."

"Brenda, he's got the whole fucking state looking for him, they've probably even got him by now. And, if they pick him up anywhere near that motel, they'll figure he was making a meet with us, and they'll wait, and we'll drive right into it."

"He won't get caught," Brenda said. "He'll be there at eleven, and so will we."

"He can't be sure we even got the message," Ed insisted. "That's a pretty weird delivery system."

"I checked out of the room," Brenda reminded him. "He can find that out, and then he'll know I got my stuff."

"We're not copping his goddam money,

Brenda," Ed told her. "We'll call him in a week or two, make a meet, give him his half."

"He wants to meet tonight," Brenda said. "So we'll be there."

"Why, dammit? Why do a risk when we don't have to do a risk?"

"Because," Brenda said, "you'll meet him again. You'll work with him again. And he'll look at you, and what will he say? That's the stand-up guy came back for me? Or does he say, That's a guy I don't trust so much any more? What do you want him to say, Ed, next time you see each other?"

Ed leaned back, muttering to himself. After a minute, he shrugged, shook his head, and waved for the check.

The staff didn't think there was much hope for the relationship.

"I'll drive around the block twice," Ed told her, as they neared the neighborhood, "and if he doesn't show up, that's it."

"He doesn't know the car, Ed."

This was true. The car they had now was a black Honda from a side street near the restaurant where they'd had dinner. But Ed wasn't going to stop, and no argument. "I'm not gonna be a sitting duck," he said.

'There's a church, the next block, behind the motel," Brenda told him. "Drop me there, drive somewhere else, come back in five minutes."

Ed clearly didn't like it, but Brenda wasn't going to change her mind, so he said, "All right, five minutes. But if he isn't there, we go. We don't wait."

"Naturally," Brenda said. "He put down eleven o'clock. He isn't there at eleven o'clock, we did our part, we go away."

"Sense at last," Ed said, and stopped in front of the church.

The quick way to the main road and the motel was through the small graveyard beside the church. Brenda went the long way around the block, and slowed as she approached the long brick motel building, with half a dozen cars parked at intervals in front of it. Traffic moved on the avenue, but she was the only pedestrian, and there were no cars parked along the curb. Come on, Parker, she thought, don't make me a dunce. I go back to Ed without you, he'll crow all the way to Baltimore.

She went past the motel office, walking slowly, just walking her dog, but without the dog, on this main traffic road where nobody walked. The office door opened and closed behind her, and she thought, hell. Dammit, goddamit, Ed, will you drive by now, please?

The voice behind her was smooth and non-threatening: "Miss? Just a second. Miss?"

She turned, and the guy facing her was in plainclothes, but he was a cop, all right. Big and burly, with an open raincoat and that arrogant smile. She said, "Yes?"

"Detective Lew Calavecci," the burly man said, and flashed a badge from a leather folder. "City police."

Be polite, be a civilian, be not afraid. "Yes?"

"Could I see some ID, Miss?"

Be a civilian, know your rights. Polite but firm, she said, "Why?"

He grinned, suddenly changing, as though he'd just remembered a dirty joke. "Come on now," he said. "I showed you mine, you show me yours."

"Of course I could," she said, wondering if a civilian would get indignant now, or scared, or what, "but I don't see—"

"Yeah, you're it," Detective Lew Calavecci said, and grinned all over his face.

Ed, where are you? Drive by, Ed. She said, "It? What do you mean, it?"

"Three men and a woman," Calavecci said. "When we finally listened to those other clowns. And the woman came back here and checked out. Nobody expected that. You play a tough game."

Indignant: "I don't know what you—"

Calavecci brought handcuffs out of his raincoat pocket. "Let's just see your wrists," he said.

"But— I don't—"

"You could turn and run," Calavecci told her, "and I'd wing you. I'd like that, relieve my feelings a little. Because I'm alone here, nobody could say it was excess force."

"Detective, please, I don't—"

"I need you," he said, with sudden passion. "They relieved me, sent me home, but I can still make it all right. I've had a tough day, I lost some . . . But this makes up for it, I was right, I knew they'd come back. You'd come back. Put out your goddam wrists."

"Lew!"

They both turned, and somebody was getting out of one of the cars parked nose-in along the front of the motel. "Lew, let me talk to you," he said, and straightened, and strode this way, and it was Parker.

Calavecci saw him, and his jaw dropped. "You! By God, you're a dead man!"

Calavecci dropped the handcuffs to the ground in his hurry to get at the gun in his shoulder holster. Parker was still too far away, but coming fast. Brenda lifted a leg, pulled off her shoe, and did a roundhouse right with it, the heel digging into the side of Calavecci's neck, missing the main veins but almost giving him a tracheotomy.

Calavecci yelled, slapping her away, yanking the shoe out of his neck. He threw the bloody shoe at her, gasping loudly, blood pumping over his collar, and he reached for his gun again as Parker got to him and put him down with two quick movements.

Brenda hopped around on one leg, getting the shoe back on, while Parker went to one knee and took Calavecci's wallet, badge and gun. Straightening, he said, "Where's Ed?"

Two cars had stopped out at the curb, wondering what was going on with the guy on the ground. Brenda said, "The church—"

Parker took her arm and hurried her away, back past the office, where the woman stood staring out, afraid to move. They went through the cemetery, dark and uneven but with just enough illumination from streetlights on both sides. Parker said, "Church. He's praying?"

"Probably," Brenda said.

As they came out to the next street, the Honda was just rolling down past the church. Brenda waved, and the Honda stopped, and they piled in, Brenda in front, Parker in back with the suitcases.

They drove down the street, and at the corner Ed turned right, away from the main road.

"We'll circle around," he said. "Then get out of here." He glanced in the mirror at Parker in the back seat. "You seen George?"

"Yes," Parker said.