Comeback

by Richard Stark

  They’d brought six bags, but it only took five for all the money. “Give me the empty one,” Parker told the women as they loaded the last of the cash, and they did. While he moved the duffels two at a time out to the anteroom, Liss told the people, “You’ll stay in here a while. Ed’s gonna hang around outside the door, hoping to shoot somebody. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take Jack and me to get him to leave, so don’t be in any hurry to go anywhere.”

  Liss then joined Parker and the money in the anteroom, while Mackey raved at the people a while on his own. Looking down at Carmody, some dried blood on the side of the fellow’s head looking fake against the angel makeup, Liss said, “Is he gonna hold?”

  Parker had already put his shotgun in the empty duffel bag. Holding it open for Liss’s weapon, he said, “He’ll hold.”

  “I’m the one he could identify,” Liss said. He didn’t put the shotgun in the duffel. He said, “I’m the one exposed if he breaks.”

  “If you kill him,” Parker said, “they’ll know he was the inside man. They’ll look at who he knew, through that parole scam. They’ll get to you for sure.”

  Liss thought about that. Mackey came out, shutting the door, and looked at them. “Something?”

  “No,” Liss said, and put his shotgun in the bag.

  Mackey put his weapon with the others and said, “They’ll stay in there a while. They’ll stay in there until their pants dry.” Then they tossed their ski masks into the bag with the guns, and left, each carrying two bags, Mackey carrying the heavier one with the guns.

  Back where they’d come into the building, Parker cautiously opened the door and looked out. The parking lot was full of cars and empty of people. This was why they’d given up the idea of going for the money outside in the barrels. They would have had to wait until the crusade finished and everybody was out and moving. This way was cleaner and simpler.

  The three moved quickly across the asphalt lot through the cars. It was a bright sunny fall day, temperature in the fifties, air very crisp and clear. They seemed to shimmy and disappear as they moved through the varicolored parked cars.

  At the far end of the parking lot, five days ago, a construction company trailer had been set up here, wheeled in behind a semi cab, then chocked up and the perimeter beneath closed with concrete blocks. A sign on the side of the trailer read, in large blue letters on a white ground, MORAN CONSTRUCTION, site manager’s office.

  This was a legitimate trailer from a legitimate construction company, now bankrupt and shut down, but its assets not yet sold. The trailer had been stolen from the company’s yard, using a cab that also belonged to the company. Once it was in position here, Mackey had hooked up the electric lines to a nearby power pole, and then they’d just left the thing alone. Archibald’s crusade hadn’t even been in this state when they’d moved the trailer into position. Such trailers are so often to be found in distant corners of large public parking areas that nobody looks twice at them. This one had been left undisturbed for five days.

  Now, Parker did the combination on the padlock on the door and climbed up and in, followed by Liss and then by Mackey. They entered a cramped office, with desk and chair on one side and narrow hard sofa on the other, on and around which they dumped the duffel bags. To the right of the office was the john, complete with a very narrow shower—the trailer contained its own water supply and waste storage— and to the left was a compact living room, with built-in sofas, a bookcase full of magazines and paperbacks, and a small black-and-white television set. Beyond the living room was a galley-type kitchen; five days ago, they’d stocked that with beer and soda and canned food.

  There was a small sliding window in the entry door, covered on the inside by a stretched-tight translucent plastic curtain. Once they were inside, Parker removed that curtain, unlatched the window, slid the openable half out of the way, reached out, and reattached the padlock to the hasp on the door, locking them in. Then he slid the window shut, latched it, and put the curtain back in place.

  Mackey came in from the kitchen with three cans of beer. Distributing them, he said, “Parker, I like this. It’s very good. This is the most comfortable escape from a heist I ever made.”

  “Bad news to be running around out there now,” Parker said.

  “You know it.” Mackey popped open his beer. “To a life of ease,” he said.

  Liss knocked back about half his beer, but still looked troubled. “Now,” he said, “all Tom has to do is not make me sorry he’s still alive.”

  6

  It was a mess in the parking lot for a couple hours. Police cars and police lab vans blocked the aisles. An ambulance came and went, yowling, most likely dealing with Tom Carmody. Long tables were set up near the main arena entrance, where clerical cops processed the crusade’s attendees, taking their IDs and giving them a few quick questions each, as the former crusade audience stood in long nervous patient lines. More cops searched every car before permitting it to be driven away. Twenty thousand people; every one of them given personal attention. It took a while.

  Twice in the course of the afternoon, cops came over to the construction trailer to fiddle with the padlock and test the door to be sure it was locked and then knock on it, just in case. The second one did even more, walking all around the trailer to see if there was any other way in, then trying to look in through the three windows; the one in the door leading to the office, the large one in the living room through which Parker and Mackey and Liss occasionally watched the action outside, and the small high one in the john. But they were all covered by the translucent plastic curtains, so he gave up, and contented himself with copying down the Moran Construction Company phone number from the sign on the trailer’s side. He wouldn’t get much satisfaction if he actually dialed that number. Out of service, most likely.

  The cops were nowhere near finished when it started to get dark, so three floodlight trucks were brought in and parked strategically to drench the area in light. Even at the fringe of the action, where Parker and the other two waited, there was plenty of illumination. It spilled into the trailer, giving them all the light they needed, softening into a pale coral color as if filtered through the curtains.

  In that soft illumination, Parker and Mackey and Liss sat around the desk in the office and counted the money, which came to three hundred ninety-eight thousand, five hundred eighty dollars, all in fives and tens and twenties, and even some wrinkled singles. About as traceable as a drop of water.

  After that, they mostly watched television, with the sound very low. Which meant they mostly watched other angles of what was going on outside. The half-million-dollar robbery at the arena—whether the exaggeration was Archibald’s, the cops’, or the television people’s, was hard to guess—was the biggest event in this town since the last Rolling Stones farewell tour.

  Around nine o’clock, Mackey moved the curtain slightly at the corner of the living room window, looked out, and said, “Parker, they’re gonna still be here tomorrow morning.”

  The idea was, Brenda was expected at six in the morning. She’d drive by in a station wagon they’d promoted earlier, and if things seemed all right she’d come on into the parking area, they’d switch the goods, set the fuse on the bomb, and take off. (The only way to be sure they wouldn’t leave incriminating evidence in the trailer was to blow it up.) But now Mackey, shaking his head as he looked out the window, said, “When Brenda gets here, she’s gonna have to check in with the cops.”

  “They’ll be gone,” Parker said. “You’re just getting antsy.”

  “And that’s the truth,” Mackey agreed, moving away from the window, sitting down again. “I never lived inside a tin can before,” he explained. “Now I know how minestrone feels.”

  “How does Tom Carmody feel,” Liss said tensely, “that’s all I want to know.”

  Parker said, “He’s got a concussion. He’ll come out of it tomorrow groggy. They won’t lean on him very hard, not right away. By the time they’re really
looking him over, he won’t be nervous any more.”

  “Tom,” Liss said, “will always be nervous.”

  Parker shrugged. “So will you, I guess.”

  Mackey leaned back, fingers laced behind his head, aggressive grin on his face. “Snowbound with my pals,” he said. “Everybody getting along. No problems. From here on in, everything’s gravy.”

  7

  A flat metallic click woke Parker. He opened his eyes and in the darkness saw the dull glint of the shotgun barrels a foot from his face. Beyond them, Liss’s eyes stood out, the whites luminous, as though lit from within.

  Making a hoarse scared rale in his throat, Liss pulled the second trigger, and that click sounded again as Parker kicked him in the chest. Liss bounced backward into the wall, and Parker’s left hand went up and closed around the barrels, yanking the shotgun away. Grasping the barrels with both hands, he surged up from the sofa and lunged the shotgun forward, the butt smashing into Liss’s face.

  “Hey! What the hell?” Mackey came boiling up from the other sofa, getting in Parker’s way, the two of them stumbling around in the cramped space as Liss fell to the floor, then crawled quickly through the doorway into the other room.

  “It’s Liss,” Parker said, pushing Mackey away. “Wanting it all.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  Parker went to one knee, felt under the sofa cushion, came out with just one of the shells. Getting to his feet, he broke the shotgun as he went through the doorway. The exit door stood open. Thumbing in the shell, slapping the shotgun shut, Parker crossed to see Liss out there, hesitating over the three duffel bags.

  They’d each crammed their third of the take into one of the bags, and Liss had moved all three outside before turning to rid himself of his partners: one barrel into Parker, then quickly one into Mackey, all of them together in the narrow room. If Parker hadn’t quietly emptied the three shotguns earlier tonight, one time when he had gone to the john and the other two were watching television, he and Mackey would be dead.

  Liss had thought he might grab one or more of the bags anyway, on his way out, but when he saw Parker in the doorway he gave that up and just ran. Parker jumped down to the asphalt and watched Liss dash across the parking area, bent low and weaving as he went. Parker stood where he was, shotgun in both hands, not pointing anywhere in particular.

  Mackey leaped down beside him, empty hands closed into fists. “Shoot the cocksucker! What’s the matter with you?”

  “No need,” Parker said. “And a noise could draw a crowd.”

  Furious, Mackey said, “Don’t leave him alive, God damn it.” He acted as though he wanted to pull the shotgun out of Parker’s hands, and was restraining himself with difficulty.

  Liss was out of sight now. The police had finished clearing out of here a little after ten, and the three in the trailer had gone to sleep around midnight, three hours ago, Liss on the sofa in the office, with the money and the guns. He could have just taken the money and left, but he hadn’t wanted Parker and Mackey behind him the rest of his life.

  Apparently, Mackey returned the feeling. “Parker,” he said, “that was a mistake. We could have afforded a little noise, not to have him around any more.”

  Parker never saw any point in arguing over past events. He said, “Can you call Brenda?”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Mackey said. “We can’t stay here any more.” Peering away into the night where Liss had disappeared, he said, “He’ll need time to get guns and friends, but I’ll bet you, Parker, he still thinks this money is his.”

  8

  Parker sat on the weedy ground, the chain link fence against his back, the reloaded shotgun on his lap. Out ahead of him, in the darkness, beyond the narrow strip of scrubland, the empty asphalt parking area stretched across to the big round bulk of the arena. Off to the right, its metal side picking up the glints of distant streetlights, waited the construction trailer. The three sacks of money were back inside it, and the padlock was once more in place on the door.

  Parker had been seated here for twenty minutes, and so far nothing had happened. The only weapons they had were the shotguns, so Mackey had gone off unarmed to find a phone booth and call Brenda. She’d come to where he was, pick him up, and then drive on to the arena.

  This town wasn’t George Liss’s home base, so he shouldn’t immediately be able to lay his hands on guns and colleagues. There was time enough.

  The car that nosed into the parking area entrance, way over by the arena building, wasn’t a station wagon. It paused just inside the parking area, then switched off its headlights. In darkness, it drove slowly around on the asphalt, stopping two or three times, pausing, then driving on, moving in apparently random ways.

  Liss? With friends? Parker lay flat against the fence, shotgun tucked in against his side, and watched the car move around the parking area like a hunting dog that’s lost the scent.

  Eventually the people in the car saw the construction trailer and drove over to it, still with no lights. They stopped beside the trailer and two men got out, one from the front seat and one from the back. When they opened the two right-hand doors, the interior light went on, and Parker could see that neither of them was Liss. Nor was the third man, the driver. The strangers shut the car doors, killing the light, and went over to look at the trailer, poking at its padlock.

  Parker sat up, holding the shotgun in both hands. If they tried to break into the trailer he’d have to move against them. He had extra shells in his shirt pocket, but could only fire twice before having to reload. He should be closer, to put one charge into the two at the trailer door and the other into the driver. To give them something as a distraction while he reloaded.

  Slowly, silently, he got to his feet and moved to his right, to put the bulk of the trailer between himself and the three newcomers. But as he edged up closer they moved away from the trailer, losing interest in it. Parker hunkered down, and the two guys got back into their car. In the brief moment when the interior light was on, he could see they were arguing among themselves, all three. He could hear the driver grind gears, and the car jerked away.

  It made one more stop, over by the arena, and Parker saw the light come on briefly as the two guys got out again and went over to look at the accordion gates closed and locked over the broad arena entrance. They didn’t seem to have anything particular in mind. They were dogs who’d lost a scent.

  Finally they got back into their car, and this time it drove away entirely, out the exit from the parking area and out of sight. Two minutes later, another pair of headlights appeared way over there, and when Parker hunkered down next to the trailer to silhouette the car it was the station wagon.

  This vehicle switched down to parking lights as it turned this way, then came straight across the empty lot to the trailer and stopped. Brenda was driving, Mackey beside her.

  Mackey, more sensible than the strangers in the other car, had removed the bulb from the interior light, so nothing flashed when he climbed out and came across to Parker and said, “Did you make those guys?”

  “Don’t know them,” Parker told him. He still held the shotgun and kept glancing toward the parking area entrance.

  “Our delay is,” Mackey said, “they were watching the motel. They followed Brenda when she left to pick me up. She took some time and shook them before she got to me, and told me about it, and damn if they weren’t right ahead of us three blocks from here. We hung back and watched them come in and fuck around and then come back out. What did they do in here?”

  “Looked lost,” Parker said. Now he leaned the shotgun against the trailer and did the combination on the padlock as he said, “They know something, or they think something, but not enough. They came over here and sniffed around the trailer, but not as if they knew for sure this was it. It’s like they think we didn’t leave, but they don’t know what happened instead. They were trying to figure out how to get into the arena, like maybe we’re still in there.”

  “Friend
s of Liss?”

  “Or Carmody’s girl friend,” Parker suggested. He pulled open the trailer door. “Too many people hanging around.”

  “Time to go someplace else,” Mackey agreed. He opened the station wagon’s cargo door, and he and Parker carried the three duffel bags from the trailer to lay them side by side on the station wagon’s floor, like mail sacks. Then Parker put the shotgun in the office with the other two and plugged the bomb into the electric outlet beside the desk. He and Mackey got into the front seat with Brenda. They drove away from there, and three minutes later the trailer exploded itself into a million guitar picks.

  9

  Brenda drove, Mackey sat in the middle, and Parker was on the right. He bent his head sometimes to look at the outside mirror on his door, but nothing showed behind them. Four in the morning, this was a quiet town.

  Except, of course, when a construction trailer blows up with a force that rattles windows a block away. The trio in the car heard it go, and Brenda immediately pulled into the curb among a line of parked cars, cutting the lights and engine. They kept their heads down and waited, and a couple minutes later the parade of official vehicles started: fire engines, police cars, emergency service trucks, all thundering along at top speed, sirens wailing and red-and-white gumdrops and tootsie rolls flashing.

  The flow of excited public servants lasted five minutes or so, and finally ebbed with the appearance of a bright red fire chief’s station wagon, making a slower and more dignified approach to the scene.

  They let that last one go by, and then Brenda started up their own station wagon and took them farther away from the center of excitement. “Where next?” she said.

  Mackey said, “Well, we can’t go back to the motel, I know that much. Those extra guys, whoever they are, that’s where they’ll go, back where they were watching Brenda, stake it out, wait for us.”