Comeback p-17

by Richard Stark

  "We don't care about that," Liss said. "We're long gone by then. One way or another."

  7

  It's getting too dark in here," Liss said.

  They'd all been silent for a long while, Quindero brooding, Liss and Parker both waiting. But it was true; darkness had spread in this east-facing room, faster than outside, where the shadow across the way had not yet quite reached the rim of the ravine. Clear sunshine tinged with red made a kind of fire along the rim, a line of concentrated brightness, with the sky beyond it a deep blue turning gray. Inside, they could still see one another, but no one would be able to read the newspaper. Thorsen's gun no longer gleamed on the floor. And Liss wasn't happy.

  Parker felt Liss's eyes on him, but didn't respond. He kept on watching the rim of the ravine out there. When the last of the sunshine left, there would be a sudden drop in reflected light into this room. Not a big change, not even very noticeable. But enough to make everything blur, everything out of focus, until their eyes could adjust. In that instant, Parker would go for Thorsen's gun.

  But Liss was unhappy. "Parker," he said, "I don't know about this."

  "What's the problem, George?"

  "Same as always. You."

  Parker kept watching the rim. The sun moved very slowly. "Nothing's changed," he said. "We're all still like we were."

  "I don't want you loose when it's dark in here," Liss said.

  "Midnight doesn't come for a while, George."

  "Even if I had a flashlight, I couldn't use it," Liss said. "Not with all those windows. There's always some nosy son of a bitch with time on his hands to call the cops."

  "We've been doing fine up till now, George." The light hung on the rim, golden red. The air was so clear you could see individual branches, fall shades of yellow and tan on the weeds and underbrush, turned Technicolor by the sun.

  Liss abruptly stood. "Ralph," he said, "put your foot on that gun."

  Parker didn't bother to watch Quindero obey. He also stood, watching Liss's hands, waiting for one of them to reach to a pocket or behind his back. "George," he said, "don't fuck things up."

  "There's a closet," Liss said. "Ralph and me, we looked the place over when we first got here. Downstairs, next story down, there's a closet with a door on it and a lock on the outside."

  "George, you don't want me to—"

  "It's that or I wound you," Liss said. The strain was coming back into his voice. "Maybe that'd be easier anyway. Don't have to gut-shoot you, I can take out both your knees, and Ralph can carry you when it's time to go."

  Quindero made a little startled sound, not quite a protest.

  Parker said, "Better have Ralph test that first. See how far he can carry me."

  Quindero stammered and said, "I don't— I don't think I could do that." He was a reedy weedy thing, a poor specimen.

  Liss had to know it, but he also had to protect himself. "Goddamit, Parker," he said. "I want you out of the way, locked up, where I don't have to worry about you all the time. Eleven-thirty, we'll let you out, we'll all get out of here. Meantime, Ralph and me, we'll go get a car."

  "George—"

  "We do it my way!"

  Parker was silent, thinking. A closet till eleven-thirty? Half an hour after Brenda and Mackey would drive by the motel, and they surely wouldn't wait. But could a closet hold him that long? Liss and Quindero had to go get a car. He said, "Make it eleven. It could take a while to get there."

  "Eleven," Liss agreed. "But I can't have you out here, Parker, you understand that. I'll have to shoot you, either to kill or wound. I can't have you around."

  "I'll wait, George," Parker said. "Where is this closet of yours?"

  "Downstairs. Next flight down. You lead the way."

  The light hung on the rim of the ravine. Parker shrugged and turned toward the stairs. Behind him, Liss said, "Ralph, bring along that fucking gun."

  8

  It was darker down here, with all these interior walls separating off bedrooms and bathrooms, but Liss and Quindero were behind him, keeping their distance, and there was no advantage to be made of the darkness. Parker went down the stairs, and at the bottom, from behind him, Liss said, "Around to the right," which was the hall through the middle of the building.

  Parker saw that the closet Liss was talking about was the one that used to be the elevator shaft. The lock was a hasp, with a wooden dowel stuck in it. Liss, still keeping well back, said, "Take the dowel out. Hand it back to Ralph."

  Parker did that, and opened the door, and only a faint odor of dry wood came out. It was black inside there, impossible to see a thing.

  Liss, sounding more and more nervous, said, "What's the problem? Get in there."

  It wouldn't do to have Liss lose control; he was the one with the guns. Parker said, 'Take it easy, George. It's dark in here, I gotta feel my way."

  He took a step forward, reaching his arms out, and at first encountered nothing. The elevator, when it had been in place, had been deeper than wide, comfortable for two people, possible for three if they knew one another. Now that the space was a closet, the front half was empty, but when Parker stepped in deeper, his hands met the round horizontal wooden pole toward the back for hanging clothes on, and the wooden shelf above it. Both were empty, and so was the floor.

  The pole and shelf were at head height, but there was plenty of room in front of them. Parker turned around to look out at Liss and Quindero, in the hall with the staircase behind them. "All right, George," he said. "Go get your car."

  Liss said to Quindero, "Shut it. Put the dowel in. Make sure it's goddam tight."

  Quindero came forward. His eyes met Parker's just before he shut the door, and they were full of panic. But he'd go on obeying Liss, because there wasn't one solitary other thing he could think of to do.

  The door closed. In absolute darkness, he heard the dowel scrape into place. Then it sounded as though Quindero was pounding the dowel in tighter, probably with the butt of Thorsen's gun. Shoot his own elbow off, if he wasn't careful.

  Late for Ralph Quindero to be careful.

  Parker went down on the floor, pressing his cheek to the plywood floor and his head against the base of the door, his ear next to the space under the door. He heard Quindero back away, heard him say, "It's good and tight."

  "Good."

  "Do we go get the car now?"

  "No. When it's dark. Come on upstairs."

  The steps went away. Two pairs, receding down the hall, then mounting the stairs.

  Parker sat up, rested his back against the plywood wall, and crossed his forearms on his knees. His watch didn't glow in the dark, which was sometimes an advantage and sometimes not.

  It didn't matter. He was better in here for now, not making Liss antsy. There was plenty of time to come out.

  9

  It was probably time. Parker had listened now and then at that space at the bottom of the door, but heard nothing, so Liss and Quindero weren't bothering to check on him in here. He'd seen the faint gray line of light under the door shadow and blur, until at last it disappeared into the general black. He'd gone on waiting, and now it was probably time to get out of here.

  Did Liss understand what these closets were? Maybe not. They were afterthoughts, simple structures inserted to make use of the space. These closets were not structural, and therefore had none of the building's support beams going through their ceilings and floors. Simple stringers, two-by-six lengths of wood, had been toed into place to support plywood floors; that was it. And Ed Mackey had already showed them how to lift the floor in the bottom-level closet, to find the motor well for use as a hiding place for the duffel bags.

  Parker went down on all fours and started in a front corner, patting the floor, looking for a seam. He found it where he expected it to be, about a foot and a half back from the doorway opening, the same place it had been downstairs. When they'd added these closets, they'd laid one sheet of plywood from the rear of the space to near the front, to give themselves lee
way in fitting the piece in, and then they'd cut a second piece to fill the remaining space.

  Next, he stood and felt his way to the back of the closet, where he patted the underpart of the shelf until he came to one of the two L-shaped brackets that the shelf rested on. It would have been easier if the shelf had just been placed there, but they'd screwed it to the brackets, so he stood under the shelf, bent down, kept out of the way of the wooden clothes pole, and punched upward with the heels of both hands, flanking one of the brackets, until the shelf broke loose.

  When the shelf popped upward, with a quick ripping sound, one of the screws fell out and bounced on the floor. Parker paused, listening for a reaction. There'd been very little noise, but he couldn't be sure they hadn't heard it. If they were in the building.

  After three or four minutes, when he still heard nothing, he went back to work, holding the shelf up out of the way with one hand while twisting the bracket back and forth with the other, until the screws holding it to the wall came loose. This part he managed to do with almost no noise at all.

  Now he had the bracket for a tool. It was three inches along one side and four inches along the other, thin but strong metal. He put this to work on the floor, gouging along the seam line until he'd torn a slit wide enough to squeeze the bracket into. Kneeling on the larger section of floor, bearing down on the bracket, he pried the smaller section up one fraction at a time. Four screws had been drilled down into the corners of this piece, plus one each at front and back into the central stringer. It was the rear screw in the stringer that Parker pried out first, then the left corner, then the right. Then he could peel this piece up and back toward the door, until the other three screws gave way.

  Now he had a space a foot and a half by five feet, with a two-by-six stringer across the middle and Sheetrock underneath. Using the bracket, Parker sliced through the Sheetrock a piece at a time, breaking the pieces off to bring them up into the closet and lay on the floor here, not wanting pieces of ceiling to fall and make a racket.

  When he made the first hole in the Sheetrock, he saw gray light again, very dim, defining the jagged hole. There was no door on the ground floor closet, and whatever light was coming in the study windows reached back to here.

  Parker removed chunks of ceiling, clearing the space, then slid down through the opening feet first. He had to wriggle his torso through the narrow opening, had to hold his arms over his head and at last just permit himself to drop.

  He landed with knees bent, and let himself fall forward, hands hitting the floor, elbows flexing, allowing his body to drop to the left, until his shoulder hit the side wall of the closet. He stayed in that position, awkward, crouched on hands and knees, bent body leaning leftward, shoulder against wall, back to the open doorway. He listened, and waited, and heard nothing.

  In silence, he shifted away from the wall. He put his left hand on the wall, and straightened. On his feet, he turned to look out across the stripped study at the angled row of windows, and they were bathed in blue-gray light. He moved toward them. There was stiffness to be worked out of his system, so as he crossed the study he moved his arms and shoulders, limbering up, feeling the sore points.

  A half moon had risen above the ravine, and now looked down toward this side of the house. The newspaper had said it might rain by tomorrow, and there was just a hint of haze over the moon, but for right now it gave plenty of light. Maybe too much. Later it would climb above the house and give almost no light to the interior. And if the clouds came in, there'd be nothing but darkness inside here.

  Parker moved slowly through the house, up through the levels, carrying the L bracket, his only weapon and tool. He searched the rooms as he went through, but they'd all been stripped, there was nothing left he could use.

  And there was nobody here. The moonlight let him see his watch, and the time was nine-twenty. So Liss and Quindero must be out picking up a car. Parker needed them to come back soon, so he could finish this in time to meet Brenda and Mackey.

  The dining room, where they'd waited out the afternoon, was very bright, being closer to the top of the ravine and with all those large windows facing right at the moon. Quindero had left his newspaper on the floor near the box where he'd been sitting, and the light was bright enough to read the headlines. If you held the paper close to a window and squinted, you could probably read everything in it, but there was nothing in there Parker needed to know.

  He went on up to the top floor, and crossed to the spot in the rear corner where you could look out through the plywood sheathing at the road and the fence. The fence now gleamed silver, reflecting the moonlight, to make everything behind it a fuzzy blurry black.

  Parker leaned against the wall and watched the road. He had come here to this house in the first place only because there were too many people in this town looking for him. He'd needed somewhere to lie low until it was time to go meet Brenda and Mackey, and this was the best place he knew. Finding Liss here had been an extra gift, a way to close the books on this job entirely, but if it wasn't going to work out it wasn't going to work out.

  If Liss and Quindero didn't come back by ten, he'd have to leave, forget about them. Go meet with Brenda and Mackey, if they were there, and worry about dealing with Liss later.

  Ten o'clock. Half an hour from now. Working the stiffness out of his shoulders and arms, Parker waited.

  10

  Nine-fifty. Light, moving through the woods.

  Is he driving the car in here? Over that road?

  But maybe it made sense. The road was almost nonexistent, but Liss might be more comfortable driving on it than having to walk back to the main road in total darkness. Particularly with Parker at his side.

  Yes, here it came, very slowly. Some sort of four-door sedan. Liss drove with parking lights only, just enough amber illumination out front to give him a sense of where the road was. Now he swung the car to the left, just the other side of the fence, reversed, swung forward again, and backed up almost to the fence, facing out. Making it easier for himself for the return.

  Liss hadn't removed the interior light. It flashed on as they got out of the car, and Parker saw that Liss had been driving and his new partner was still alive.

  Parker moved into the shadows away from where they would enter the house. He could hear them talking as they neared it, and when they came through the break in the plywood he could make out the words. Liss was saying "—trust him. He doesn't trust me, and he's right, and I don't trust him, and I'm right. If he can take us down, he will. Ralph, you listening?"

  "Yes." The voice was small, quavery, frightened, but determined.

  "We gotta work together," Liss said, "or he'll kill us both. You hear what I'm saying?"

  "Why don't we just leave him?" Quindero asked. "Just walk away now and take the car and get away from here and just leave him down there."

  "I need the money," Liss said. "We need the money, Ralph, you and me. Your half is two hundred grand, just keep thinking about that. You need that money, if you're gonna get to Canada, start over."

  So that's the fairy tale they're telling each other. Parker followed, well behind, as they went downstairs toward the dining room.

  Liss said, "We gotta keep him with us, and we gotta keep him alive, until we see if he really

  does know where the money is. Then we can deal with him. But before then, we gotta keep him from doing its. Jesus, it's bright in here."

  They were in the dining room now, Parker on the stairs behind them.

  Quindero said, "That's good, isn't it? If there's light, we can see him."

  "Here's what we're going to do," Liss said. "I'll wait here. You go down and— Wait. Where's that gun of his?"

  "Here."

  "Give it to me," Liss said. "I don't want him taking it off you."

  "You want me to go down there without a gun? Where are you going to be?"

  "Up here."

  "But—"

  'Just listen," Liss said, and Parker sat down on t
he stairs to listen. Liss said, "You go down there and take that piece of wood out of the lock. Do it quiet if you can. Then get back into some dark corner somewhere that he's not gonna see you, and then shout to him to come out. Then I'll shout from up here, and I'll tell him to come up. Then he'll come up and you'll come up behind him."

  "So he's in between us."

  "That's right," Liss said.

  Quindero said, "But if I don't have a gun? What good is it if—"

  "Does he know that? What if he sees you, and instead of coming upstairs he makes a jump for you? If you've got a gun, you're not gonna use it. So you show him your hands, you tell him you don't have any weapons on you, they're all up with me. He knows he has to come up past me before he can get out. And I'll call to him, I'll say, 'Don't mess with my partner, I'm up here, come up.' And he'll come up."

  Liss was explaining all this as though Quindero was a six-year-old, and he was probably right to play it that way. Another professional would already know most of what Liss was saying, but Ralph Quindero was not a professional.

  And now Quindero said, "Okay, he comes up here. And then what?"

  "I'll move ahead of him," Liss said. "I'll go up those stairs over there, ahead of him, and we'll tell him to follow, and you come along behind. And we'll go out to the car that way, me always in front of him, you always behind him, so he can never get the both of us."

  "What if he jumps you?"

  "I'll put one in his arm," Liss said. "It'll stop him, but it won't kill him, and it won't put him into shock. Maybe I ought to do that anyway."

  Quindero said, "Don't," pleading.

  Liss was amused. "What, you don't like loud noises? Or is it blood you're afraid of?"

  "We don't have to shoot him," Quindero said. Now he sounded sullen.

  Liss said, "Haven't you been listening? Of course we have to shoot him, sooner or later. We have to shoot him dead. When we get there, wherever the money's supposed to be, we're gonna shoot him then."