Comeback

'We'll buy you a suitcase of the stuff,' Mackey promised her, 'out of Liss's share.'

'Good.'

'But the other problem is,' Mackey went on, 'we can't go to that empty house where we were gonna stash the goods, because naturally Liss knows about that place, and he just might show up there.'

'Well, we can't drive around all night,' Brenda said, taking a random right turn. 'Some cop'11 stop us just on general principles, and then he'll want to look at our laundry back there.'

Mackey said, 'The same thing would happen if we try to drive out of town. This is a very tense location right now. And if we go check into some other hotel somewhere at this hour in the night, we're still drawing too much of the wrong kind of attention.'

'What we want now,' Parker said, 'is an all-night gas station.'

Mackey frowned, leaning against Brenda to look at the gas gauge on the dashboard. 'Why?'

Brenda, quicker than that, said, 'I saw one out by the interstate.'

Looking past Mackey's confused frown at Brenda, Parker said, 'We'll get out a block before you reach the place. You go on in, you tell the guy you just got off the interstate because there's something knocking under the hood and you don't know what it is.'

'The dumb broad in the car,' Brenda said.

'That's right.'

Mackey's frown turned to a smile. 'He puts it on the rack,' he said. 'Inside.'

Brenda said, 'So I better tell him it's something with the brakes. Otherwise, we'll just stay outside by the pumps and he'll look under the hood.'

Mackey beamed at Brenda's profile. 'You see, Parker?' he said. 'You see what I mean?'

'Yes,' Parker said, and bent his head to look in the outside mirror once more. Something? He squinted at the distorting mirror—objects in mirror are closer than they appear was etched into the glass—but there was nothing back there but parked cars, dark houses, streetlights, traffic lights playing solitaire. Had there been something? Hard to tell. Nothing now. Maybe it had been a car crossing an intersection back there.

It was another ten minute drive to the gas station, during which one police patrol car passed, going the other way. It slowed as they came together, the two cops giving the people in the station wagon a very long stare, but Brenda smiled and waved at them, and they nodded with dignity and drove on.

'One thing I don't want to have to do,' Brenda said, sounding a little nervous as she watched the police car recede in her mirror, 'is outrun a lot of cops in their town.'

'At that point,' Parker told her, 'we give the whole thing up. Lose the car and the goods, and go to ground.'

'Don't even think it,' Mackey said.

They saw no more traffic, and then there was the gas station with all its gleaming lights, out ahead of them, an oasis of glitter in the surrounding dark. Beyond the station's lights, occasional smaller lights could be seen going by, fifteen or twenty feet up in the air; the big trucks on the interstate overpass.

'We'll get out here,' Parker said to Brenda, 'and we'll give you five minutes.'

'Fine.'

Brenda pulled the station wagon to the curb, and the men got out. Looking back the way they'd come, Parker frowned. Had something moved back there? As Brenda drove away, Parker stepped into the street, peering down the long empty stretch of it. No movement. Just the darkness.

'What is it?'

'Nothing,' Parker said.

The gas station was on this side, a block and a half away. They crossed the street and walked down the opposite sidewalk. Facing the gas station was a closed tire store, with sale signs in the windows. They paused there to look across the way, through the large open doorway into the service area. Over there, Brenda was just backing the station wagon into the service area, on the side with the lift, being directed by a skinny kid in white company coveralls and his own baseball cap. He seemed to be the only one on duty tonight.

'We have time,' Parker said. 'I want a look at the ramp.'

They walked on another long block to the two on-ramps for the interstate, and saw a state highway patrol car parked on each one, tucked up partway along the ramp, so you'd already have made the turn before you saw it. 'Just like we thought,' Mackey said.

'Just like we knew,' Parker said.

The one advantage was, where the highway patrolmen were, they wouldn't be aware of anything going on at the gas station. Leaving them there, keeping to the shadows, Parker and Mackey walked back and went beyond the gas station again before crossing to its side of the street and making their approach.

The kid had the station wagon up on the lift now and was checking the brake fluid, which should have kept him occupied, except that there was a bell over the office door that sounded when Parker entered, Mackey coming in behind him. Parker went to the doorway connecting the office with the service area, while Mackey went straight to the messy metal desk and riffled through the drawers, shoving credit card slips and other junk out of the way.

The kid came in fast, polite and ready to serve, but holding the wrench he'd used to open the brake drum cap. 'Sorry, gentlemen, I didn't hear your car come—' He took in the absence of a car out by the pumps at the same time he saw Mackey at the desk. 'Hey!'

Mackey straightened, shaking his head at the kid, disappointed in him. 'You don't have a gun in here,' he