Comeback Page 7

  “Oh, but it does, Tom,” Archibald said, “and that’s where I’ve been remiss. Remiss, Tom. I’ve failed you, and I’ve failed the Crusade, and I’ve failed every good soul who has ever put his or her trust in me. Because all I’ve been saying is, ‘Give me money,’ and I have slighted, I have ignored, I have failed to make clear, what the money is for.”

  “It’s for you,” Tom said, feeling amazingly brave to confront the man like this, to throw the truth in his face for once, with no softening of the blow at all.

  “It’s for the Crusade,” Archibald corrected him, but gently, the milk of human kindness still sheening on his face. ‘The television costs us so much, Tom, but without the television how will we reach God’s creatures? And the counseling, the crusades in the field, all our efforts … Now, I know some of the good we do is strictly speaking not in His service, is more social work than religious work, but I believe God can and will forgive us for our lunch programs and our school crusades and—”

  “The money’s for youn Tom cried, feeling himself sink under Archibald’s platitudes, drown in his false pieties, lose his own hard certainties in the undifferentiated sludge of Archibald’s philosophy. “It’s all for you! The rest of it, it’s all just fake, it’s all just to cover for you, for you, for you!”

  Archibald sighed, more sinned against than sinning. He sat back in the small chair, gazing with sad forgiveness at Tom as he contemplated what had just been said, and finally he replied, “I had suspected that was what you believed of our mission, Tom. I’m glad you’ve unburdened yourself of it, brought it out in the open where we can look at it.”

  “It’s true, and you know it.”

  Another sigh. Archibald said, “And I suppose that’s why you helped those men.”

  A hard wall. There, right there, in the path of Tom’s life. A huge hard impenetrable wall, right there now. His throat pained him, his eyes pained him, with the emotional sense of his loss. He looked at the stolid Dwayne Thorsen, then back at Archibald. They were waiting for an answer. And he too was waiting to hear his answer. He and they all wanted to know: Would Tom lie? At this point in his life, at this nexus, at this nadir, would he lie? or would he tell the truth?

  “Yes,” Tom said.

  Archibald’s long sigh this time seemed more honest, more human, and even Dwayne shifted position slightly, though his face didn’t alter. Archibald, as though the question hardly mattered, said, “And do you know where they are now, Tom?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, Tom,” Archibald said. “Don’t disappoint me at this stage, Tom. You have started to open your heart, don’t close it again.”

  “I don’t know where they are,” Tom insisted. “And that’s the truth.”

  Archibald and Dwayne shared a glance. Tom knew they were trying to decide whether or not it was the truth, and he knew Archibald didn’t really and truly care whether Tom believed all that stuff about the money, all that face-saving garbage about lunch programs and counseling and of course his own work with former convicts. There’s a laugh; the work with former convicts. How do you like your social programs now, Reverend Archibald?

  Archibald turned his attention back to Tom. “I hope to do what I can to help you,” he said, “in your difficulties with the law. And I equally hope you will—”

  A knock at the door interrupted him. Archibald frowned at Dwayne, the unctuous mask slipping slightly, and Dwayne silently crossed to the door, opened it, spoke briefly in a low voice with someone outside, accepted a sheet of paper, and shut the door again.

  While Archibald and Tom watched, Dwayne came back to the bed, reading the sheet of paper, which was white but flimsy, curling at the edges. Archibald, tension at last apparent in his voice, said, “Dwayne? What is it? Do they have the rascals?”

  “No,” Dwayne said, and extended the sheet of paper for Archibald to take. The paper curled like parchment as it changed hands, so that for one instant there was something almost Biblical in the transaction.

  Archibald unrolled the paper, read it, and the blood drained from his face. That expression of shock wasn’t false. Tom stared at the soft clean hands holding the sheet of paper; he burned with both fear and curiosity, wondering if they would even tell him what the paper was all about. And then Archibald looked at him with something new and incomprehensible in his eyes. Sympathy? The genuine article?

  Extending the rolled-up sheet of paper, Archibald said, “You should see this, Tom. And I am truly sorry.”

  What in God’s name could it be? Fear clenched Tom’s chest as he took the paper and fumblingly unrolled it. A fax, on the letterhead of the Memphis police. It was addressed to Detective Second Grade Lewis Calavecci, and the body of the message read:

  “Mary Quindero discovered dead in her apartment. Preliminary medical exam suggests death by drowning. Body found in a closet. Under the circumstances, we’d appreciate more particulars regarding your interest in this person. Please forward your response to—”

  “NO!”

  “I’m sorry,” Archibald said, and this time he sounded as though he really meant it. “Do you have any idea why they would do such a thing?”

  “No.” Tom gestured vaguely with both hands, too distracted to think. “No! They didn’t have to— They didn’t even know about her until… I didn’t think they knew about… There’s no reason.”

  Softly, almost whispered, Archibald said, “Who are they, Tom?”

  Tom let the paper go, and it curled into a tube on the blanket covering his legs. “The first one,” he said, in a dead dulled voice, “is called George Liss. I met him in the parole program …”

  Around midnight, one of the night nurses foiled Tom’s suicide attempt. He’d been trying to slit his wrists with the IV needle torn from his forearm. The tool was inefficient, making a number of shallow gashes, painful and disfiguring but not in any way fatal.

  A doctor from emergency was called, who oversaw the cleaning and bandaging of the wounds. Tom spent the rest of the night strapped into the bed, horribly awake, thinking unwillingly about Mary and the people who had killed her. Why? Why?

  George Liss. Let them find him, please, God. Let them find George Liss.

  7

  When George Liss ran across the dark parking lot away from the construction trailer, he expected a bullet in his back at any second. He had no idea what had gone wrong, why Parker and Mackey weren’t dead right now and he on his way with the four hundred thousand, but Liss was not a man to gnaw at the past. All he would do now was run, as fast as he could, bent low to make a smaller target but nevertheless expecting that bullet every step.

  Which didn’t come. He hadn’t run directly toward the lights flanking the entrance, not wanting to silhouette himself, but had angled off toward the darkness along the perimeter fence, and when he reached that fence with neither a bullet in his body nor even the sound of shots having been fired behind him, he began to believe he might be still alive. And with work to do.

  Hunched over, Liss trotted along the straight chain-link fence, and slowed when he got near the brighter illumination around the entrance. Looking all around as he moved, he decided there was no one there, no one watching, nothing to worry about, at least not in this particular spot at this particular moment, so he sprinted on through and out to the public road.

  And now what? He still wanted the money, that was the whole purpose, but Parker and Mackey were alerted now, would be harder to deal with. And right this minute, this town was a dangerous place to be wandering around in, alone and unarmed and with no good explanation for his presence. There were going to be cops all over the neighborhood tonight. Somehow he had to go to ground, get out of sight.

  What were the choices? He couldn’t get to the motel and Brenda and the station wagon before Mackey called to warn her what had happened. And if he went to the empty house where they’d planned to stash the goods once they’d left the construction trailer, Parker and Mackey were sure to show up eventually, cautious and armed.
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  But if he just hid out in some alley or parked car for the night, Parker and Mackey could clear out entirely, find some other place to wait for the heat to grow less intense, and Liss would never get his hands on that money. There had to be a way to stay out of sight, and yet keep an eye on those golden duffel bags.

  Across the road from the stadium parking lot was a row of old three-story houses, with small shops downstairs and apartments above. Shoe repair, deli, dry cleaners, all shut down solid for the night, with heavy gates closed over their windows and doors. The apartment windows were all dark, too. Was there something useful there?

  A nearly full trash barrel stood by the curb. Out of it Liss plucked a newspaper. Folded in quarters, he put it under his left arm, and now he was a nightworker on the way home.

  Headlights coming. Liss turned and strode purposefully the other way, not too fast, not trying to conceal himself. Two cars went by, civilians, and then one in the other direction. At the corner, Liss crossed the street away from the stadium, and when he walked past the side of the final row house he saw that it had a back yard, all those houses had back yards, separated here from the sidewalk by an eight-foot-high wooden fence, vertical boards tapering to points at the top.

  With a door? Yes; a simple narrow door of the same vertical boards, probably nailed to horizontal support pieces on the inside, and with a little round metal Yale-type lock inset in the wood. No knob.

  Liss looked left and right, and saw no one. Dropping the newspaper onto the sidewalk, he lifted his right knee high, and slammed his heel flat against that lock. The door popped open with one loud crack. Liss stepped through, pushed the door closed again behind himself, leaned against it, and looked around at where he was. Illumination from the streetlight on the corner showed him a messy untended yard, scattered with junk. A shorter wooden fence of the same style but only about five feet high defined the other border. An exterior flight of metal stairs against the rear of the building led up to a second-story door. The back door of the ground-floor shop was under the stairs.

  Liss made his way through the junk across the yard to the other fence, and looked down the row of yards. Some were neater than this, some as messy. A few had been turned into cared-for gardens and some had outdoor furniture in little conversational groups. Almost all the yards were defined or separated by some kind of fence. Every house had the exterior metal staircase giving access to the second floor. Every window down the entire block was dark, and the outside darkness was deeper the farther you went toward the middle of the block.

  Liss went over four fences, looking for the yard with the least sign of activity; neither a garden nor an accumulation of junk. He wanted a yard that suggested either a vacant apartment or a stay-at-home tenant, and when he found the right one he went silently up the stairs to that second-floor door, and just as silently through the door with a credit card.

  He was in a kitchen, small and old-fashioned, not remodeled for maybe thirty years. There was very little light, just enough to suggest the place was neat, cared for. He opened the small old refrigerator with its rounded corners and found it contained small amounts of just a few things; milk, orange juice, a few eggs, some tiny leftovers in plastic. A solitary; good.

  The refrigerator’s interior light, in the few seconds he’d had the door open, had spoiled his night vision. He stood patiently in the middle of the room, one hand touching the refrigerator door, until shapes took form in his sight again, and then he moved forward, through the deeper darkness of the doorway on the other side of the room.

  Night vision no longer helped. Shuffling forward very slowly, as silent as possible, both hands moving to the sides and out ahead, Liss made his way down a short black hall with a pair of closed doors facing one another partway along. A little farther, his groping right foot touched the saddle of a doorway. He stopped. He felt the wood of the frame, then the closed door itself, and then the old faceted glass knob. He turned the knob as slowly and gently as though it were a safe in the back of a store still open for business, and when it gave a tiny chick sound he eased the door open, out away from himself.

  Light, thin diffuse gray light defining the rectangles of two windows. This was the small living room, facing the street. Liss came on through, still holding the doorknob turned, and reached his other hand around to grasp the knob on the other side. He held that one in the same position as he eased the door shut again, then turned to look the place over.

  A living room, underfurnished. Two sagging armchairs, one near each window. A small TV, on a low wooden crate. A couple of end tables and lamps. One side wall was absolutely empty; that’s where the sofa would have been.

  Liss crossed the room and looked out a front window, just in time to see a car turning in at the parking lot entrance across the way. Brenda? No, it wasn’t the station wagon. Liss sat on the arm of the chair behind him, and watched through narrowed eyes. Who was in that car? What did they want?

  The car made its hesitant moves around the

  parking lot, and Liss tensed up when it stopped over by the construction trailer. People out of the car, fucking around over there at the trailer. He didn’t like that, he didn’t want anybody else around his money. That’s my money, he thought. Keep away.

  “Who’s there?”

  Liss automatically rose to his feet, while his mind registered that voice. Old, male, querulous. Liss moved catlike away from the windows.

  “Who’s there? /hear you!”

  Liss slid along the empty wall, coming the long way around to the door, so he’d wind up behind it when it opened.

  “You better speak up! I’ve got a gun!”

  Oh, have you, Liss thought. Good; I need a gun.

  The doorknob rattled. “I’m warning you! I’m coming in!”

  Do it and get it over with, Liss thought.

  The door opened. Liss leaned close to it, eyes fixed on the gray rectangle of window past the dark vertical line of the edge of the door. A figure moved into that space, and Liss clubbed down with his forearm, hitting the top of a shoulder, the side of a neck. The old voice cried out, and Liss swung around the door, punching hard into the indistinct figure, connecting three times before it could fall.

  Light switch. Should be beside the doorway, same side as the knob. Yes; Liss flipped it, and a ceiling light came on, the bulb discreetly behind a round pink glass saucer.

  The unmoving old man on the floor bled slightly from nose and mouth. He wore gray pajamas and a thick wool maroon robe and dark blue slippers. Liss rolled him over, frisked him, searched the floor all around him, and there was no gun. The old son of a bitch lied.

  Liss switched off the light, hurried back to the window, and was just in time to see that unwelcome car come across the parking lot, moving as slowly and hesitantly as ever, and jounce out the exit onto the street. It drove away, out of sight.

  Good, Liss thought. I don’t know who you people are, but stay out of the way.

  8

  Zack was still driving. He steered them out of the stadium parking lot and down the empty street, as Ralph said. “All for nothing, the whole thing for nothing.”

  “We don’t give up,” Zack said. He’d grown less cocky, but more sullen and just as determined, since he’d lost the woman in the station wagon.

  When she’d come out of the motel, moving with purposeful speed, all three of them in the car had perked up, even Woody, who’d been sulking about something for hours. And at first they’d liked it that she was pushing hard, driving a little too fast for the city streets. It meant action at last, something happening.

  They’d heard on the car radio about the half-million-dollar robbery—a half a million dollars!—and they knew the robbers had gotten away with it clean and clear. They were still at large. And this woman in the station wagon would lead them right to it.

  Except she didn’t. “Shit,” Zack said at one point, “she’s onto us.”

  “Oh, goddamn it,” Woody said. “I knew it’d be something.” H
is brief return of high spirits was over, already.

  Ralph was leaning forward again, forearms atop the front seat. “Maybe she isn’t,” he said. “What makes you think she is?”

  “We went down this block before,” Zack said, angry and disgusted, “and made that fucking turn!”

  Half a block ahead, the woman took a right turn very hard and fast, the heavy body of the wagon sagging way leftward as she went around the corner and out of sight. Zack took the turn as fast as he could, not quite as quick as the woman, and when they came around— Goddamit, the station wagon’s coming the other way!

  How did she do that? A hard right, an impossibly tight U-turn to the left, and coming back the other way as Zack completed his own turn. All three of them gaped at her, and she pretended they weren’t even there. A good-looking woman, dramatic in the rose-glow of her dashboard, jaw set, eyes facing front as she flashed on by.

  Ralph twisted around to look out the back window, and saw her take a left so fast and so sharp she left rubber all over the street back there. Going back the way they’d come. And of course, by the time Zack got them turned around and back to the intersection she was long gone.

  Still, he drove in her imagined wake for a while, as they argued about what it meant and what to do next. “It doesn’t come out right,” Woody kept saying. “Everything screws up, it just gets worse and worse, we should never of got into this, we’re fuckups, that’s all, we’re just fuckups.”

  “Shut up.” Zack’s knuckles were white, he held so hard to the steering wheel. His teeth were clenched, the veins stood out on the side of his neck, he looked like he’d explode. But he never shouted. “Shut up shut up shut up.” Low, quiet, but with such intensity that Woody withdrew down into a sullen lump in his corner of the front seat.