Comeback p-17

by Richard Stark

  "You don't think so?" She stood by the window, facing him, letting the full light from outside make her argument.

  Three floors up, they'd surely be making phone calls by now, and not all of them for a doctor. Parker said, "Sometimes the time isn't the right time."

  "All times are the right time," she corrected him, and slowly smiled. "As the Bible says, Hope deferred maketh the heart sick."

  "That's the Bible?"

  "I always do what the Bible tells me," she said, and stretched, and smiled again. "Come, let us take our fill of love, until the morning. It says that, too."

  She was a true pistol. He said, "What about Archibald?"

  She laughed at the idea that he cared about

  Archibald. "Stolen waters are sweet," she quoted, "and bread eaten in secret is pleasant."

  "I'm sure it is," Parker told her. "And it'll be even better later. I'll take a rain check."

  The smile disappeared. The body snapped to attention. Behind the horn-rim glasses, the blue eyes flashed at him. "Rain check? I'm not a game."

  That wasn't from the Bible.

  Part FOUR

  1

  It was called Sherenden, and it was a house from the twenties, modern architecture of the time, designed by someone famous in his day and built at the edge of a ravine in what had then been the outskirts of town. On two steep acres of brush-covered rocky hill, at the end of a narrow winding road from the nearest city avenue, the house had been constructed of fieldstone and native woods and stainless steel, fitted into the broken shape of the landscape, with a large airy living room at the top, four windowed walls around a central black-stone fireplace. The rest of the house spread away beneath, for a total of four stories with an interior elevator, its shaft blasted into the rock.

  The original owner was a lawyer, also famous in his day, and the bottom level of the house, enclosed by two jutting rock ledges of ravine, had been his study, with accompanying bath and small kitchen. From his desk in there he could look out through plate glass at the wildness of his ravine as though suspended from a balloon, and not see the slightest corner of the rest of the house.

  When it was built, the place was considered daring and original and one of the templates that would describe the future. It was written up approvingly in newspapers and magazines of its day, and was still mentioned, with small black-and-white photos, in books on modern architecture.

  Time had not been kind to the house. First there had been the divorce, as acrimonious as any divorce in the history of law, which had seen Sherenden fought over but unlived in for more than ten years. The winner, the ex-wife, had had no real use for the house but had wanted it out of spite, and had thereafter ignored it almost completely. Her heirs sold it as soon as they could.

  Then there was the city, which had grown in ways and directions not expected by the town planners. This rocky area just within the city limits, full of inaccessible ravines, had seemed the least likely direction for the city to grow. But then, after World War Two, the interstate highway system was born, and an on-ramp was placed just outside the city line in this direction, and it suddenly made sense to knock down hills and fill ravines and put in working-class housing developments; a thousand homes from the same blueprint, girdling the two acres that contained Sherenden.

  In the early sixties, one of the subsequent owners turned Sherenden into two apartments, by means of a lot of plywood and the removal of about half the original windows. (The elevator had ceased to function years before, and now became an additional closet on each level.) In the late seventies, another owner decided to restore the place to its former glory, despite the fact that the views from the living room were now of many small Monopoly-board houses stretching away toward infinity and the view from the bottom floor study was of the dump that had been made at the base of the ravine. However, he went bankrupt while the work was still under way, and so the plywood went back up, even more than before, sealing the house away.

  The bank that took over at that point enclosed Sherenden with a tall wire fence, and waited. They were always on the verge of selling the two acres—nobody at the bank ever thought about the house itself, except as a problem—to someone who would demolish the "existing structure" and level the land and put in eight houses, but the deals always fell through.

  Kids and vagrants and drunks had made a sieve of the fence and a sty of the house. In the last decade, homeowners in Golden Heights and Oak Valley Ridge Estates, the neighboring development communities, had put forth a number of petitions against this eyesore in their midst, but the bank wouldn't tear the place down without a purchaser, and so the stalemate continued.

  2

  Parker took a cab to a shopping center, out away from the middle of town. He had lunch in a bar there—despite its fake Tiffany lamps, it was a bar—and watched the television up on its high shelf, full of excited local bulletins, one after another. A whole lot of stuff happening around here these days. The bartender thought it was probably the work of a private army, stocking up money and supplies for the revolution, and Parker said he thought the guy was right. The bartender had known after one look that Parker was a kindred spirit.

  From the phone booth in the back of the bar, Parker called the Midway Motel and asked for Mr. or Mrs. Fawcett, and was told they'd checked out. No, the woman on the phone didn't know when they'd left, they were just gone. He asked to be connected to Mr. Grant's room, and let the phone ring in the black emptiness there for a good long time. The woman who'd switched him over never did come back to tell him his party wasn't answering and might be out and did he want to leave a message, so eventually he hung up.

  Brenda had her compact, anyway. And Liss was probably not at the motel. Was he at the house, he and Quindero?

  A city bus line ran past this shopping center and on out to the developments by the interstate. Parker took it, at two-thirty that afternoon, a time when the passengers were a few schoolkids getting home early, some maids and cleaning women done with their day's work, and shoppers sitting slumped in the middle of their mounds of parcels.

  Parker left the bus at the first corner in Oak Valley Ridge Estates and walked back down Oak Valley Ridge Avenue the way he'd come. In just over a hundred yards he got to the road leading in to the right. A pair of crumbling stone pillars, once graceful but now anemic, with bad rusted gouges at the top where the light fixtures had long ago been stolen, flanked a blacktop road that immediately curved down and away to the right, disappearing into a tangle of shrubs and trees. Wild rose vines knitted the underbrush together, interweaving their tough thorny stalks with the tamer junipers and maples, making it impossible for a human being to travel anywhere in there except on the road.

  The road itself was receding back to nature. Frosts and rain had crumbled the blacktop, and weeds had grown through. Branches encroached from both sides, and closed completely over the top. Nothing here invited the passerby, and in fact the passerby was told to go away, private property no entry said the black letters on the yellow metal sign hung from the thick chain arced between the pillars, no trespassing said the black letters on the yellow plastic sign stapled to the pillar on the left, and danger keep out said the red and black letters on the white plastic sign stapled to the pillar on the right.

  Parker slowed as he neared this welcome, waiting for two cars to finish going by. They did, and he stepped over the chain and walked briskly down the first curving slope.

  He was now on the bank's two acres, an irregularly shaped parcel lying like a throw rug atop a lumpily unmade bed. The blacktop, almost disappearing in places, curved and climbed and dipped, covering nearly a quarter of a mile in what would have been much less distance in a straight flat line from entrance to house. Along the way, he saw nothing but shrubs and trees and vines, and at one point the faded blue trunk of a car that someone had years ago driven or pushed off the road into a deeper spot. The undergrowth grew up through the car, as though it weren't there.

  In the old days, the first v
iew of the house must have been something. You climbed a steep slope, came around a corner, and there in front of you was a wall of glass. Inside were the lights, and the graceful lines of the furniture, and the glow of the fireplace, and the confident movements of people. And beyond all that, seen through the house, was the view, already visible from here, of wild nature, tumbled scenery, and open sky.

  Today there was the fence; that was the first thing. Eight feet high, chain link, it had one of its vertical metal support bars sunk into the middle of the road itself, to declare this no longer a road. Beyond the fence was the wall of plywood, darkened and discolored by time. It didn't look like a house any more. It didn't look like anything.

  The fence had been snipped at the right edge of the roadway, as though for a prisoner-of-war escape, just enough to make it possible to push the flap of fence back out of the way and ease slowly through without ripping your clothes; though sometimes, to judge by the frayed threads on some of the sliced-off edges, clothes did get caught here.

  Parker eased his way through, and moved to the right, over weedy ground that had once been lawn and had not yet been completely reclaimed by woods.

  He'd been here before, with Mackey and Liss, when they'd been making ready for the job. It was Mackey who'd found the place, and researched it in architecture books in the library, and was as proud of it as if he'd designed it himself. "Parker, it's a beauty. Nobody knows it's there, you got a million hiding places inside it, and it's right next to the entrance to the interstate!"

  At first, Parker wasn't so sure. He had never liked places with only one entrance and exit. Given the situation with this house, once you were in it, the only way out was back that same road. On both sides of the house were woods that would eat you alive, and behind it was the ravine, too deep to get into and too steep to get out of, being very slowly filled as a town dump.

  But Mackey was right about one thing: the house did have more than its share of hiding places for a few duffel bags. And they didn't intend to stay there at all, just drop the loot and go back to the motel. The idea was, if it so happened that any of them was made, or questioned, or shaken down by the cops, the swag would be nowhere near them.

  So they'd gone through the house, Mackey leading the way, and it was Mackey who'd pointed out that there used to be an elevator in here where these closets were, and that its motor had been at the bottom of the shaft. The floors in all the closets that had been installed after the elevator car itself was removed and sold were plywood, and would pry up very easily. Mackey showed them how easy it would be to pry up the floor in the bottom-level closet, which revealed the old black motor, furred with dust on grease, leaving plenty of room for the duffel bags. It did mean lugging the bags down three flights of stairs and later back up again, but they would certainly be safe down in there for a few days.

  If things had gone right.

  Now Parker needed a place to lie low until tonight, when he could steal a car from the nearby development and go see if Brenda had caught up on her reading. At the moment, there were too many people looking for him, people who knew his face if nothing else about him. He had to give up the idea of settling with Liss until this whole operation was finished; unless Liss had also decided to hole up at the house.

  Of course, the house still had its same disadvantage: one way in, one way out. But that could be an advantage, too. From inside the house, Parker could watch the road. If he saw anybody coming in, he might not be able to leave, but at least he'd know about them before they knew about him.

  The loosened plywood, the new entry, was at the left corner of the house, near where the original front door had been. Parker looked over his shoulder, saw nothing, and eased inside.

  3

  The plywood sheathing made the interior dark, but cracks and spaces here and there provided some dim uneven light, in which Parker could see the truncated living room. A wall had been run across from front to back just beyond the fireplace, dividing the space in two, with the larger half out here. Later, the fireplace had been dismantled and covered over, leaving only a conical half dunce cap jutting for no apparent reason out of this new wall at chest height. The doors that had once been installed in the new wall were long gone. There was no furniture left in here, but rags and cans and bottles littered the floor.

  The structure was still solid, having been built for a longer life than it was getting. When Parker crossed the living room, the floor neither squeaked nor sagged. He moved silently, a shadow in the shadows, to the nearer door in the new wall, which led to the kitchen that had been installed when this place became a duplex.

  The kitchen equipment was now gone, leaving only holes in wall and floor with stubs of pipe where the plumbing had been. The elevator, on this level, had become a pantry, which now gaped open, doorless and empty. Near it was a spot where the outer sheathing of plywood didn't quite meet the original stainless steel corner post, leaving about an inch of unimpeded glass from top to bottom. Rain-streaked on the outside, the glass was still clear enough to see through, with the chain-link fence a silver grid in the afternoon sunlight out front, defining the location of the road.

  Parker went over to that corner to lean close and look through, and saw nothing but the crowding woods and empty road. Then he stepped back, to study the glass itself, which was dusty and streaked all along here, its dirtiness hard to see because the plywood outside was flush against it. But the narrow band not covered by plywood was easier to look at, and just at eye level it had been roughly cleaned. The side of a hand, or maybe one of the rags from the floor here, had swept across the glass at just the right height for somebody to look out.

  When was that done? Weeks ago, when Mackey first came to the place, before he brought Parker and Liss out? Earlier, or later, by somebody else completely, some vagrant or drunk just passing through? Or very recently?

  Parker stood absolutely still for a long time, listening, alert, waiting. Facing the road as he was, he stood at the rear left side of the house, with the large living room making a C-shape to his right, around a central core. At his back was a wall separating this space from an interior coat-room and wet bar, its doorless doorway directly behind him. At the right end of that wall was the staircase, open to the living room up here, that went downward, flanked by interior walls, into the rear of the dining room one level below. To his left was the remnant of wall and the second smaller staircase that had been put in when the house was divided into two.

  Not a sound in the house, nothing to be heard, not anywhere. Would he be able to hear people on the lower levels? Would they have heard him? The house was solid, even if very open, with these stairwells and open-plan rooms. What could be heard in here?

  Very slowly his concentration shifted. There was still nothing to be heard, but he'd become aware of something else. Something very faintly in the air, something he could smell. Just a hint on the air, but it had to be very recent. A homely smell, almost a joke, but a warning. Pizza.

  4

  They're in here, Parker thought. Liss and Quindero. They would have seen me coming. Standing here, watching, eating the pizza they'd brought in. And now they're waiting. Liss didn't shoot, as I came in the door.

  What are they waiting for? To see if Mackey is with me? No. To lead them to the money.

  Parker stayed motionless. He seemed to be looking out at the fence and the road, but his attention was inward and behind him, and he was thinking. Liss had tried to kill him at the hospital, but was waiting now. Why? Because, at the hospital, for all Liss knew Parker had already been caught, and could be expected to trade Liss for lighter treatment for himself. But here and now, with Parker not in the hands of the law, and with the money not in Liss's hands, Liss wouldn't want to kill him. Not yet. Not until he had the duffel bags.

  Where is he? Where's his new ball boy, the punk Quindero? Either he's hoping to stay out of sight and wait for me to leave, and then follow me to the money, meaning he's down a couple of flights right now, staying wel
l out of the way, or he's close, in the room behind this one, wanting to make a move, waiting only to be sure I'm alone.

  That was the way to play it. Liss hovering, just out of sight, the way he did last night. Softly, not turning around, speaking in a conversational way as though the discussion had been going on for some time, Parker said, "Well, George, here we are."

  Nothing. No response. Parker focused on the outside world, where nothing had changed. In the same easy tone, he said, "Everybody makes mistakes. But then we move on."

  Still nothing. Maybe he really was alone in here, but he didn't believe it. "George," he said, "we can go on making trouble for each other, but that way we both lose, and Ed Mackey takes home the whole jackpot. Or we can go back to the original idea, three guys, three splits."

  "What do I need you for?"

  The voice was very faint, with that slur in it caused by the dead half of Liss's face. It came from well back, probably the doorway to the interior room. Parker didn't smile, but he relaxed, because he knew now everything would be all right. He'd kill Liss when the time came, and Brenda and Mackey would be waiting for him at eleven o'clock and all would be well. Still not turning, he said, "George, you know what you need me for. Without me, you'll never see the money."

  "You know where it is?"

  "Not now. I know where it's going to be."

  "When?"

  "Twelve tonight."

  "Where?"

  Parker shook his head, and smiled at the narrow view between the plywood and the stainless steel. "George," he said, "why do you want me to lie to you?"

  "We'll all go there together, is that the idea? At twelve?"

  "All?"

  "I've got a new partner."

  So Quindero was with him back there. Liss wouldn't call him a partner out of his hearing. Parker said, "The kid from the hospital."