Comeback p-17 Read online

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.

  9

  Thorsen's office was converted from a normal hotel room. The wall-to-wall carpet showed indentations where the bed's wheels had been and the feet of the other furniture, all of which had been taken out and replaced by two desks, four office chairs and a number of telephones. The connecting door to the next room was slightly ajar; Parker guessed that was where Thorsen slept.

  When he came in, Thorsen was at the desk nearer the window, just finishing a phone conversation. It didn't seem to be pleasing him. He said one or two brief things, and then he said, "Thanks," sounding sour, and hung up. "Sit down," he told Parker, gesturing toward the chair at the other desk. "Your guy Liss got away."

  "Uh huh," Parker said, and took the seat offered. Both desks were gray metal, basic models. The one he sat at had nothing on its surface, and probably nothing in its drawers.

  Thorsen said, "You don't sound surprised."

  "I'm not. How'd he do it? Is the other one still with him?"

  "Quindero? Oh, yes. Calavecci is not a happy man."

  "Quindero," Parker suggested, "thinks he must be a desperate criminal, with nothing to lose."

  "And he isn't," Thorsen said. "But by the time this is over, he probably will be. Or dead."

  "How did Liss get out?"

  "The hospital morgue is in the basement," Thorsen told him. 'There's a special back way in, unobtrusive, from a side street, with a ramp, for the hearses from the different morticians. They don't like dead bodies and hearses around the front, gives the wrong image, looks like failure."

  Parker said, "So the two of them went down there."

  "Where a body was being loaded. The hearse driver and a morgue attendant. I guess Liss didn't want to make too much noise, which was lucky for those two guys, because he just concussed them and tied them up. Then he and Quindero and the hearse—and the body, just to get even more people upset—went up the ramp and through a shit-poor roadblock there, and disappeared."

  "And now," Parker said, "Quindero has committed a felony."

  "He has, hasn't he? This mess is not getting neater," Thorsen said. "Did Archibald offer to pay you to find his cash?"

  "A thousand now, one percent later."

  "Did you take it?"

  "It was impolite not to," Parker said.

  "That's true. Excuse me," Thorsen said, and turned away to one of his phones. He pressed four numbers, so it was a call inside the hotel. "Okay," he said, and hung up.

  So it was going to be like that. Parker turned toward the slightly open connecting door, and in came four more of Thorsen's young troops, of the same standard issue: Dark suits, dark ties, dark shoes, white shirts, close-cropped hair, expressionless faces. They would do well at taking orders, and they would do well at giving orders, too. Parker smiled at them, then looked at Thorsen. "And I thought we were getting along pretty good," he said.

  "Now, whoever you are," Thorsen said, with no friendliness in it at all, "let's hear your real story."

  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.

  11

  Always take out the brains first. Then you can deal with the hands and feet.

  The four guys hadn't known it was going to play out like this. They'd thought their presence was supposed to keep trouble from happening. They were still working on their poses when Parker moved, so they were still reacting when Parker finished his first lunge, halfway across Thorsen's desk, Thorsen flying backward out of his chair, his face a red mess.

  The return swing with the metal drawer caught the nearest young lion on the side of the head, and sent him reeling into number two, while Parker ran forward, the drawer held out in front of him like a battering ram, and caught number three as he was trying to duck away. One bottom corner of the drawer sliced his cheek as the other corner gouged his shoulder, and the whole drawer, Parker's momentum behind it, drove him straight back into the wall. He hit hard, crunched between the wall and Parker's weight on the drawer, and he dropped straight down when Parker let go of the drawer. The drawer and the man were both still falling when Parker spun around and kicked number four twice, first in the balls and then in the forehead as, in agony, he bent quickly down.

  These four had trained in gyms, and knew a lot about self-defense. They actually didn't have guns, and they'd never thought they would need such help. But they'd never been crowded into a small room before, getting in each other's way, with somebody who was trying to kill them and who didn't do any of the moves they'd learned about in gym.

  Thorsen and numbers three and four were out of play. Number one, having been side-swiped with the drawer, was groggy but standing, and number two was moving in on Parker, hands splayed out, doing all the moves he'd learned.

  Parker didn't have a lot of time. He didn't know how much noise he was making or who might be around to hear it. He didn't know when it would occur to one of these survivors to run the hell out of this room and go for help. He didn't know when it would be too late to get out of here, so he had to get out of here now, so he lunged in, ducked back, feinted for the balls, and sliced the edge of his left hand across number two's Adam's apple. Number two stopped, clutched his throat, made a strangled scream, and fell backward, trying desperately to breathe.

  Number one, bleeding on the side of the head where the drawer had hit him, was getting less groggy by the second, but wasn't yet one hundred percent. He came in at Parker, arms in defensive position, looking to throw a punch, and Parker pointed at number two, on the floor, making terrible noises through his crushed throat: "If I put you down, there won't be anybody around to get him breathing."

  Number one looked down and to his right, following the point of the finger and the sounds from his friend, and Parker stepped in fast to clip the side of that jaw with his right elbow.

  Forty seconds since he'd first reached for the drawer. They were all down. They were all out and silent except the one trying to breathe. Parker crossed to Thorsen, stripped off the coat, stripped off the very nice holster that was engineered to fit against the side without a strap across the body, and put it on himself, under his jacket. It would need some adjustment later, but it would do for now.

  12

  The hall was empty. Parker pulled the door to 1237 hard shut, to lock it, and walked at a steady pace toward the turn to the elevators. Behind him, way back at or near Archibald's suite, a door opened and closed, but he didn't look back.

  The neat young guard was still in place on the wing chair facing the elevators. He nodded when Parker came around the corner, and put a finger in his missal to hold his place. Parker said, "How you doing?"

  "Fine, sir."

  Parker pushed the Down button and waited, but before it arrived someone else came walking around the corner. Christine Mackenzie. Dressed as before, but now with a simple gray hat and gray cloak as well, as though she were on her way to give alms to the poor. "Well, hello," she said, on seeing Parker, with a bigger smile than she'd permitted herself back in the suite. "Fancy meeting you here," as though she hadn't been watching Thorsen's office door, waiting for him to leave.

  "How you doing?" Parker said.

  "Well, I'm doing fine," she told him. "Since we have this unexpected stay here in this nice city, I believe I'm going to do some shopping."

  "Good idea."

  The elevator arrived. He gestured, and she boarded, and he boarded, and she pushed L. The young guard was back reading his missal again before the doors closed.

  They were alone in the elevator. "You should see the view on nine," she said, and pushed that button.

  Parker didn't have time for views, or anything else. A lot of people were goi
ng to be chasing after him in a few minutes. He said, "Why's that better than the view on twelve?"

  Here they were at nine already. "They have a conference room here," she said, holding the door open. "Huge windows, all around. Come on and see, it's fabulous."

  It was easier to go along. "Okay," he said, following her out of the elevator. "Show it to me."

  She giggled, a low contralto. "I will," she said.

  He never thought about sex when he was working, but he was always hungry for it afterward. What situation was this he was in now? The heist was done, and yet it wasn't done. The job was finished, but it was still going on, with complications and trailing smoke. Was he going to have sex with this woman now, or not? He looked at her body, imperfectly hidden in somebody else's clothing, and it looked very good, but his mind kept filling with Liss, with Brenda and Mackey, with the duffel bags full of money; and now with Thorsen and Archibald and Calavecci and Quindero and who knew how many more. But still, it was a good body, walking along beside him here.

  The conference room was at the opposite end on nine from Archibald's suite on twelve, so it was a view of a different quadrant of the city, but not that much different. Still, the room was large and airy and empty, with thick gray-green carpet and a large free-form conference table and some tan leatherette sofas along the inner wall.

  "Come look," she said, and when he went over to stand beside her she hooked her arm through his. "I love the way the sunlight bounces off that roof," she said, pointing with her free hand. "See it?"

  'Yes."

  She smiled at him, came close to laughing at him. "You don't care much for views, do you?"

  "Depends," he said, and bit that swollen lower lip.

  "Oo, careful," she said. "No marks."

  Beneath his hand, her breast was so firmly contained in place it might have been made of kapok. This wasn't going to work; she might as well be a sofa. "Not a good idea," he said, and backed away, disengaging her arm.