Comeback

by Richard Stark

  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 well 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.”

  “He’s going to come over to you,” Liss said. “He’s going to frisk you. Don’t turn around.”

  Parker shrugged, with hands wide. Faint movement behind him was reflected in the glass in front, not clear enough to be of any use. He said, “George, if you’re holding a gun, put it away. I don’t want to see it. We’ve got to get along if you’re ever gonna see your share of the money.”

  “Are you carrying?”

  “Yes.”

  “Here’s my problem,” Liss’s slurring voice said. “Maybe I need you to get to the money. But if you know where it is, or where it’s gonna be, why do you need me?”

  That was the question. Parker had to finesse it and make it believable, or Liss would kill him here and now and try to figure out some other way to get to the money. The truth was, Parker needed Liss because Liss had a gun on him. Parker needed Liss only so long as Liss had the option to kill him. Parker needed Liss until they were back on an even footing. Then Parker would kill him.

  Which was the thought he didn’t want Liss to develop. He said, “George, ever since you made that little mistake with the shotgun, we’ve both been looking over our shoulder. I need my concentration for other things, and so do you. We don’t have to kill each other, and we don’t have to lose out on the money. We team up again, we start new. Just until we get the money. Then you go your way and I go mine, and you know I won’t work with you again.”

  There was a long silence from behind him. Liss had to weigh it all, had to decide what was the likeliest thing to be the truth. But his judgment would be affected by th
e fact that he didn’t know how to find the money and Parker did. That was why, at last, the slurring whispery voice said, “I never heard you were a forgiving guy.”

  “I’m not forgiving you, George. I know what a piece of shit you are. But I worked with a lot of guys over the years that I didn’t want to see off the job. If I was only gonna work with gentlemen, I’d never work.”

  Liss laughed. “And isn’t that the truth,” he said. “All right, we’ll try it your way for a while. But my partner’s coming over there to take that gun off you. Or however many you have.”

  “Not needed, George.”

  “/need it, Parker,” Liss said, and for the first time the strain was in his voice. “The other thing I could do, you know,” the strained voice said, “I could gut-shoot you right now, and you’d still be able to lead me to the money later on but I wouldn’t have to worry about you in between.”

  “And if I went into shock?”

  “I’d chance it.”

  Liss might even do that, he was reckless enough. Parker didn’t like giving up the gun he’d taken from Thorsen, but it was a risk he was going to have to accept. He said, “One gun, George, on my left side, above the waist.”

  “My partner’s gonna pat you down.”

  Parker shrugged.

  Silence. Shuffling sounds. Panting in Parker’s ear, and a hand that snaked around his chest, feeling for the gun.

  Parker saw a scenario. He takes out this one with an elbow, spins around behind him, fires at the spot where Liss’s voice had been coming from.

  But Liss would know that scenario himself. By now, he would have moved to one of the two corners of the room back there. Parker would be firing at an empty doorway, and Liss would have an angle on him that the punk’s body wouldn’t shield.

  The hand found Thorsen’s gun, tugged it out. The panting breath receded. Hands patted his shins, his pockets, like being touched by a flock of passing bats. The hands missed anywhere he might have had a second gun, and then they left.

  Parker said, “George, when I turn around, I don’t want to see your gun.”

  A little pause. “Fine,” slurred the voice.

  Parker turned, and the Quindero kid was in the open doorway to the next room, his face full of exhausted panic, Thorsen’s gun dangling from his right hand, barrel pointed downward. In the left corner of the room, just by the head of that open staircase downward, Liss stood, watchful, waiting. His hands were empty.

  5

  One level down, there was more light because there was less plywood. This had originally been kitchen, dining room and maid’s quarters, with bedrooms below that, and the owner’s study at the bottom. With the conversion to the duplex, that fresh stairway had been cut in from the top floor to the maid’s quarters, which then became the second bedroom of the upper apartment. The dining room down here became the living room of the lower apartment, with access via the original stairs, which were blocked off from the tenants up above.

  The result was, this second level had been messed around with less. No new walls, no wholesale removal of windows. And, since below the top level access from without was very difficult on the ravine side, the windows down here had not been covered with plywood when the bank took over, and still showed the old view out over the ravine. From down here, in the original dining room, most of the development houses were invisible beyond the rim of the ravine, so you could look out and still see some of what had first attracted the site to the original owner and architect.

  Squatters had lived in here from time to time. They’d pulled up the plywood that had been laid over the bathroom drains, so now you could use the space where the toilet had been as a toilet; but it was better to slide the plywood back over the hole when not in use. Some wooden boxes and old futons had been dragged down here by the onetime squatters as furniture. Nobody wanted to go near the futons, but the boxes made good chairs when placed against the wall.

  Parker and Liss and the punk, Quindero, sat against three walls, Parker in the middle, facing the windows and the late afternoon view; sunlight on tumbled rocks and snarled woods, with the shadow of the building slowly creeping up the other side of the ravine. This place faced east, so the sunrise would look in on whoever was still here.

  Liss sat to Parker’s left, resting easy, legs out, back against the wall, hands in his lap with fingers curled upward. His eyes were hooded, and the active side of his face was almost as immobile as the frozen side. He was settled into a waiting mode, for as long as it took, patient, unmoving, a skill you learn on heists. Or in prison.

  Ralph Quindero jittered to Parker’s right. Nobody’d told him what to do with the little automatic, so it was on the floor between his feet, where his jittering made him bump into it with the sides of his shoes from time to time, each hit causing the automatic to scrape along the floor, each scrape sound making Quindero jump yet again. His hands twitched, moving from position to position, arms crossed, or hands resting on lap, or in pants pockets, or scratching his head and his arms and his knees. His eyes skittered back and forth, like a rodent, never looking at anything for long, bouncing every which way.

  The stairway from above was just to Parker’s left, a darker opening in this rear wall. The stairway down to the next level was along the right wall, between the windows and the jittering Quindero.

  Did Liss count on this “partner” of his? Did he think Ralph Quindero would be any damn use at all? If not, why keep him around?

  They didn’t have much to talk about, but after a while Liss roused himself and said, “One thing.”

  Parker looked at him.

  The good half of Liss’s face smiled a little. He turned his head enough to look at Parker, and said, “What the hell were you doing in that hospital? You weren’t after old Tom.”

  “No. Not the way you were. You saw the guy gave me a shove.”

  “Spoiled my aim.”

  “That’s him. He’s Archibald’s security man.”

  Quindero, with his nervous whiny voice, unexpectedly joined the conversation: “I remember him.”

  They both ignored the interruption. Interested in what Parker had said, Liss raised the one eyebrow: “Oh, yeah?”

  Pointing, Parker said, ‘That used to be his gun.”

  “He gave it to you?”

  “Not exactly. I went back to the motel, looking for Mackey—”

  ‘They won’t go back there,” Liss said, flat, with dismissive assurance.

  “But they did,” Parker told him. “Brenda and her cosmetics, remember?”

  Liss didn’t want to believe it. Gesturing at Quindero, he said, “With these wild cards in the deck? The motel was spoiled, we all knew that.”

  “Not later.” Parker shrugged. “They went back, that’s all, and checked out. That’s why I know where they’ll be at midnight. George, you can call the motel yourself. Jack Grant’s still registered, but the Fawcetts are gone.”

  Liss thought that over, and decided he could believe Parker this time. “Hell,” he said. “I could have had them. I’d never have thought it.”

  “While I was there,” Parker said, “after Mackey and Brenda left and we made our arrangements, this guy Thorsen showed up, the security man. I told him I was an insurance investigator.”

  Liss gave a little snort. “You? Don’t tell me he bought it.”

  “For awhile.”

  “So the security guy’s the one got you into the hospital. For the hell of it?”

  “I wanted to talk to Carmody,” Parker said, “only you got to him first.”

  “What the hell you want to talk to old Tom about?”

  “You.”

  “What about me?”

  “He was your parole guy. He might know people you knew, some way for me to track you down.”

  Liss looked confused and irritable. “Whadaya wanna track me down for? I didn’t have the damn money.”

  “I wanted to kill you,” Parker said.

  Quindero jumped at that, the automatic
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  scraping on the floor, but Liss laughed. Then he nodded a while, thinking that over, and when he looked again at Parker he said, “You still want to kill me.”

  “Not necessarily,” Parker told him. “Not if we all get our money. Your new partner here gets his out of yours, you know.”

  “Naturally,” Liss said.

  Liss and Parker looked at one another with faint smiles, both knowing how unlikely it was that anybody would share with anybody, and how impossible that Quindero would come out of this with anything at all. Anything at all.

  Liss thought some more, then said, “You got any money on you?”

  “A few bucks.”

  “There’s a deli about half a mile from here. We can send Ralph out for some more food. Another pizza. And sodas. Unless you want beer.”

  Parker shook his head. As Liss knew, you didn’t drink when you were working, and the both of them were working right now, very hard.

  “Soda, then,” Liss said. “You got a ten or a twenty?”

  “You’ve got money, George.”

  “I’ll pay my share,” Liss assured him. “And Ralph’s, too, the poor bastard doesn’t have a dime on him, the cops took it all. And his ID, and his shoelaces, and everything. Isn’t that right, Ralph?”

  “Uh huh,” Quindero said. He looked as though he suspected he was being made fun of, but knew better than to make an issue of it.

  Parker took a twenty out of his wallet, and extended it toward Ralph, saying, “You come over here to get it. Then you go over to George to get his. Leave that gun right where it is.”

  Liss laughed. “You gonna make a dash for it?”

  “No,” Parker said.

  Quindero looked at Liss, who told him, “Do it that way, Ralph, it’s fine.”