Comeback p-17 Page 9

  Oh, boy; talk about luck. The police car was even coming here. Bill moved as quickly and silently as he could across the roof, seeing the cop get out of his car over there by the pumps and then walk this way, toward the building.

  Standing at the front edge of the roof, just above the office door, Bill waved his arms over his head to attract the cop's attention. "Hey!" he called.

  The cop looked up.

  11

  The police were stretched thin, having so many places to search, so many routes to guard, so many barricades to man, so many possibilities to think about. That was why they were doing one-man patrols in what they considered the safest places, and how it was that Liss found a cop all alone in his patrol car, half asleep, parked next to a ramp for a narrow rusty iron bridge over old freight yards. There were a few bars and diners in this neighborhood, a few junkyards and machine shops and auto-repair places, but no homes, and no commercial places open at this hour. Liss circled around into the grassy steep slope above the freight yards, where an old chain-link fence was half broken-down, bent out of the way, rusted and useless. Along there, he found a two-foot length of the metal pipe that had originally been part of the frame of the fence, and held it close along his right leg as he came loping down the empty street toward the patrol car, clutching his upper right arm with his left hand as though he'd been wounded and yelling, "Help! Help!"

  The cop, startled out of a moony doze, saw this wounded man running forward, scrambled rapidly and awkwardly out to the pavement, and took the metal pipe directly across the face. He fell backward, half in and half against his car, dazed but trying to reach his holstered pistol, and Liss slammed the open door into him, pinning him there while he swung the pipe three more times at that head.

  When Liss pulled the door open, the cop slid to the ground. Liss quickly stripped the uniform off him, not wanting blood on it, and stuffed the body into the trunk, noting the shotguns on racks in there, the first-aid equipment, even a small red-handled ax. Couldn't be better.

  The uniform fit fairly well; good enough. Sitting behind the wheel, engine and heater on, uniform cap on his head, police radio giving him the ebb and flow of movement through the night, Liss waited. No rush any more.

  * * *

  He'd had to rush earlier, hurrying out of the old man's house across from the stadium when Brenda showed up in the station wagon. As they'd loaded the duffel bags over there, Liss had looked around frantically for a car to steal, but there wasn't time, and in any case, with so little traffic at this hour, how could he follow them in a car without being spotted?

  So he'd had to do it a different way. It was hard, there were times he thought he was going to fail, but he kept going. Out of necessity, he trailed them on foot.

  What made it a little easier, they were driving slowly, carefully, obeying the law, calling no attention to themselves, stopping at every stop sign, waiting at every traffic light. They parked at the curb for quite a while when the construction trailer blew up and the streets filled with fire trucks and police cars and ambulances and all the rest of it, and he could take a breather then, hidden beside an exterior staircase to an old tenement building.

  After that, when they moved he ran; when they stopped he walked. Sometimes their lights were just faint red dots far away, and once when they made a turn he thought he'd lost them completely. But he managed to keep up, and to see what their idea was at the gas station, and he admired the move. Indoors, safe, warm. They wouldn't leave till morning, and by then he'd be ready.

  In the meantime, he dozed in the warm comfort of the police car, the crackly snarl of the radio's infrequent reports keeping him from the mistake of a deeper sleep, and at first light he got out of the car, stretched, went down the slope to relieve himself, got back into the police car, and drove over to the gas station to get rid of Parker and Mackey and Brenda and get, at last, the goddam money.

  Would they be awake or asleep? It was still very early. They wouldn't expect trouble after so many peaceful hours hidden away. They didn't know anyone had any idea they were here. And what would they see when he first showed himself to them? A cop.

  He parked at the gas pumps, like a regular customer, and walked toward the station building, getting the cop's handgun out of its holster. Advertising posters and grease-pencil announcements obscured much of the office windows, but as he came nearer he saw there was somebody in there, seated at the desk. Parker? Staring at him?

  Did they still have the shotguns?

  Liss was deciding to shoot through the plate glass, get it over with, when movement suddenly made him look up. There was something on the roof! Nothing but a silhouette against the gray morning sky, looming over him, a black figure like something out of horror stories, waving its arms and yelling. Without any thought at all, in quick panic, Liss raised the pistol and squeezed off a wild shot.

  And then all hell broke loose.

  PART THREE

  1

  Parker looked past the notices taped to the gas station window and watched Liss come this way across the blacktop, that handgun sliding out of the holster. Parker's hands splayed on the metal tabletop in front of him, and he looked down, remembering the shotguns, seeing only the wrench they'd taken away from the kid. He reached for it, even though it was useless, even though he knew Liss was smart enough to shoot him through the window, not bother to come inside. Why should he?

  Parker picked up the wrench, and heard a shot. He stared out at Liss, almost a silhouette against the flat gray morning light out there, and the silhouette was arched backward, the arm with the pistol aimed upward. Liss had fired at what? Something on the roof?

  Parker heaved the wrench through the plate glass and launched himself out of the chair toward the open doorway to the service area. Would the racket wake Brenda? Would she know to get that station wagon moving?

  The answer was yes, but she was even faster than Parker hoped. As he dove through the doorway, meaning to roll, to come up beside the wagon and yank open its rear door, the engine was already kicking over. Before he was on his feet, it was moving, and he came up to see the garage door splinter as the station wagon roared through it. Brenda hunched and grim over the wheel, Mackey just opening his eyes, his mouth a big astonished O, the car screamed through the wreckage it made of the door, spinning and sliding rightward over smashed plywood, bent metal, crushed glass.

  Parker dropped to the concrete floor as the station wagon's rear wheels rifled broken pieces back into the garage, peppering the walls and tools with chunks of wood, metal and glass. He lay there, listening, hands and feet poised under him, trying to figure what was the best route now. What's the way out of this now?

  A burglar alarm high on the front of the building began to scream, and Parker wriggled hurriedly backward, toward the office. If Liss came in here . . .

  The doorway. He climbed it, trying to be invisible on both sides, and when he leaned leftward for a quick look out the office's smashed window he saw Liss running for the police car, the pistol waving in his hand.

  Sure. Whether or not he knew Parker was still in here, and still alive, it was the money Liss wanted, the money he couldn't lose sight of.

  Parker watched, because whichever way Liss went, that's where the money had gone. Liss jumped into the police car, kicked the engine on, spun the wheel, made a sharp U-turn around the pumps, and headed away to the left. Away from that interstate over there. Toward town.

  Some ricocheted something had sliced Parker's left arm, not deep, but enough to sting. Rubbing it, he went out of the building through the opening where the garage door used to be, and above the insistent wail of the burglar alarm he heard a voice, some voice yelling. He looked around and saw nothing, but then remembered that Liss had fired upward, so he stepped farther from the building to look up, and the kid was up there, sitting on the roof. The kid they'd locked away in the storeroom was up on the roof, sitting there, both hands pressed to his left leg because that's where Liss had shot him.

>   He saw Parker down below, and yelled some more: "Help! Help!"

  "Everybody needs help," Parker said, and turned away, and went loping toward town.

  2

  Parker walked two blocks. In the second, two police cars raced by him, shrieking, on their way to the burglar alarm at the gas station. At the far end of that block was a diner, just open for the morning's business. Parker went in there, where a dozen delivery men and salesmen yawned over coffee in their separate spaces. He found a stool at the counter with empty stools on both sides of it, ordered breakfast, and in the mirror on the back wall he watched the street behind him, where an ambulance screamed past, toward the gas station. The waitress brought his ham and eggs and toast and coffee and the ambulance screamed back the other way. Carrying the kid.

  Parker ate, and looked at his own reflection in the mirror, and except for the stained cut on his left sleeve where he'd been nicked he looked all right. Like this is where he would eat breakfast.

  Time to think. He knew the people. Did he know them well enough to find them?

  Liss was the newcomer, but he was the easiest to peg. It was the dead side of his face that told the truth. A competitor, he'd never team up with anybody, not for long. If he had to go in with others to get what he wanted—like the money in those duffel bags—he'd take the absolute first chance that came along to get rid of his partners, and to get rid of them in a way that wouldn't leave anybody spreading complaints. Single-minded, he'd only look forward; never back. He wouldn't care if Parker was coming, because in his mind it would simply be somebody else trying for the same thing, the money. It wouldn't occur to him that for Parker that wasn't enough, that he wanted more than the money. That he needed Liss dead.

  As for Mackey, he was a mechanic, like Parker. If Parker knew himself, he knew Mackey. He knew he wouldn't ever bother to cheat Mackey, because they were useful to each other and there'd always be enough for both of them. And he also knew he'd never go out of his way to give Mackey an assist, because Mackey was supposed to be a grown-up who could take care of himself. So that's the way Mackey would feel.

  Which meant, at this point, Mackey would just keep moving, straight ahead. He wouldn't even consider the idea he could circle back and find Parker. Why should he? He couldn't even be sure Parker was still alive, back at the gas station. So Mackey would keep on, and Liss would keep on, right behind him, and if that's all there was to it, Parker would be the lame third, already out of sight and out of mind.

  But that wasn't all. Brenda was also in the mix, and Brenda was the only one of them who thought about the future. She would want everything settled, now, today, before they all left this town. She would never want anything out of the past to come catch up with her, farther down the road. She was fast, and she was smart, and she was decisive—look how she tore that station wagon out of there—and Mackey deferred to her, because he'd learned long ago that when he followed Brenda's advice things worked out okay. So Brenda was the key.

  Liss was following Mackey. Mackey would follow Brenda. Where would Brenda lead?

  The station wagon was marked up now, it had to be. They couldn't keep it for long. Brenda would lose Liss, she was that good, but then she couldn't just drive around all day because very soon the cops would be on the lookout for the station wagon that had ripped through that garage door. And the kid would have already told them about the duffel bags in the station wagon, so the law would know it was the heisters from the stadium inside that car.

  Brenda would lose Liss. They change cars, somewhere, somehow. Now there are three possibilities. They make a run for it, try to get out of town without being stopped by the law or Liss or anybody else. Or, the second choice, they hole up at the empty house where they'd all originally meant to wait out the police search. Or, third, they go back to the motel they'd been in before the heist.

  If it was just Mackey, he'd choose to run. But Brenda's too smart and too careful. Does she go to the house? She knows Liss will be waiting for her someplace. And Liss will figure her to go to the house, right? Because that was the original plan for after the heist, and because, as far as Liss is concerned, the motel is used up. And Brenda will know that's what Liss is thinking.

  What did Brenda say in the car, about the motel? "I'll be leaving a whole lot of cosmetics back in that room."

  They'll have a different car. They already have a civilian cover in that motel. Brenda will believe that Liss will look for them in the house.

  Parker paid for his breakfast, and left.

  3

  The Midway Motel occupied a wide shallow parcel of land on Western Avenue, across the street from the Seven Oaks Professional Building. The motel, red aluminum siding over concrete block, with metal room doors painted to look like wood, presented its long face to the street, with blacktop across the front for guests' cars to park, nose in. At seven-thirty that morning, cars and pickups stood in front of eleven of the twenty units, but not in front of either 16 or 17.

  Parker walked down the other side of Western Avenue and climbed the concrete steps to the squat brick professional building. He stood in the little lobby, looking at the directory, aware of what was happening in the street. A few cars went by; nothing else.

  "Can I help you?"

  It was a caretaker, looking nosy. Parker said, "No."

  "Well. . ." The guy was miffed. "I'll be over here," he said, and went away.

  Parker stepped outside and paused, like anybody, to study the weather and the day. Going to be sunny, not hot. Nobody moving around the motel. No cars yet this morning in the Professional Building's parking lot, no cars with occupants inside stopped up or down the street.

  Parker still had the key to room 17 in his pocket. When no traffic was in sight, he crossed the street, moving directly to 17, watching for movement from inside any of those windows along the front, and there was nothing. Now the key and its rectangular plastic tab were in his palm.

  He went in fast, slapping the door shut behind him as he crouched down and ran across the room, looking left and right. Nothing, nobody. In the bathroom, dark. Nothing, nobody.

  The drape was already closed across the front window beside the door. Parker switched on lights and looked around, and nobody had been in here since they'd left except the maid. They all traveled light, all except Brenda and her cosmetics, and their goods, Parker's and Liss's, were still here where they'd been left, nothing but some clothing and toothbrushes and other things that didn't matter, weren't traceable, could always be bought new.

  The original plan, now nothing but a memory, was that they'd wait in the construction trailer until the excitement was over. Then, at six in the morning, Brenda would pick them up, and they'd drive the three miles to the empty house, in town but isolated, and stash the money there. Then they'd come back here and stay in the motel until it seemed safe to leave town, when they'd go by the house once more, pick up the money, and be off.

  Now everything was random. Mackey and Brenda and the money were somewhere in this city. Liss was somewhere else, looking for them. And Parker was counting on Brenda, sooner or later, wanting to come here.

  There was a connecting door to the room where Brenda and Mackey had stayed. They hadn't bothered to unlock it before but Parker did now, and this room was also empty. And in this bathroom were Brenda's famous cosmetics, spread over every surface.

  Parker switched off the lights in Brenda and Mackey's room, went back to his own, and closed the connecting door almost completely, leaving just a crack to see and hear through. Then he went into the bathroom in here, stripped off his shirt, and washed out the angry red line along his upper left arm. He found one last fresh shirt, put it on, moved a chair over near the connecting door, switched off the lights in this room, and sat down in the dark to wait.

  Click.

  Parker sat up straighter, and a vertical line of gray light appeared in front of him, brightened, darkened, went out.

  Somebody'd come into Brenda and Mackey's room; that was da
ylight when the door had opened. It was no more than two hours, Parker thought, that he'd been waiting in here.

  The lights didn't go on, in the next room. Parker leaned close to the door and heard very small movements.

  Brenda and Mackey would switch the light on, right away. Was this Liss? Parker listened.

  Now the lights did come on. And the sounds of movement stopped. Then there was brisk walking, past this door and beyond, and Parker heard the bathroom light click on. He eased the door open a bit more, but his angle of view was toward the front of the room. He could see most of the bed, on the opposite wall, and the bedside table, and the round table and two chairs and swag lamp in front of the window, and part of the window with its drape pulled across. He couldn't see the door.

  More footsteps. The closet door was slid open. Ruffling sounds as somebody went through whatever clothes were in there. Then a drawer was opened, and shut.

  Somebody searching. Somebody neat searching; he shuts the drawer. Knowing this wasn't Brenda, coming to believe it wasn't Liss, wondering if it was one of the three guys from that car that had nosed around the stadium parking lot, Parker waited, and then a guy he'd never seen in his life before came around the end of the bed and crossed over to look in the drawer of the bedside table.

  Parker looked at this guy, trying to fit him in. A friend of Liss's? Was Liss waiting at the empty house, and he sent this other guy just in case the money showed up at the motel?

  No. Liss wouldn't trust anybody else that far, and nobody else would trust him that far. Also, this guy didn't look the type. He was a very trim fifty, with short-cropped gray hair, wire frame eyeglasses, and a look of competence and self-assurance. He was dressed in a neat gray suit that made him look more like a cop than a banker, but this wasn't a cop.