Comeback

complained.

Bewildered, the kid stared at Mackey and said, 'No! What do we want with a—? What are you doing there!'

Mackey came around the desk toward the kid, spreading his empty hands, saying, 'That's a hell of a thing. What if we were robbers?'

It had crossed the kid's mind that that's just what they were. Blinking from Parker to Mackey, both of them now too close to him, he said, 'You're not?'

'Not at the moment,' Mackey said, and grinned.

Parker held out his hand. 'If you give me the wrench,' he said, 'the lady behind you won't have to crack your head open.'

Everything was happening too fast; the kid could never get set, never get a response ready before the encounter took another turn. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Brenda there behind him, holding up a shiny large socket wrench for him to see. She wasn't smiling. She looked businesslike. The kid said, 'You're with these guys?'

Mackey laughed. 'She's the boss!' he announced. 'That's Ma Barker!'

'The wrench,' Parker said.

The kid shrugged, and handed it over. 'If you're not gonna hold the place up,' he said, 'then I don't get it.'

'We're all going to stay here a while,' Parker told him. 'Where do you turn off the lights?'

This astonished the kid more than anything so far: 'You want to close,?'

'You're getting a vacation,' Mackey explained. 'An unexpected brief vacation.'

Parker tapped the kid's chest with the wrench, leaving a grease smear on the white coveralls. 'The lights.'

The kid blinked, then pointed at the circuit breaker box on the back wall behind the desk. 'We do it there,' he said. 'You can't turn them all off, though. There's some stuff we've got to leave on.'

'For now,' Parker said, 'just turn off the outside lights.'

Reluctant but obedient, the kid did as he was told, wide-eyed, as though it were some kind of sacrilege to close a 24-hour gas station.

Next, they had him lower the hydraulic lift, to bring the station wagon back down, and shut and lock the service area door, a double-width overhead garage door full of rectangular windows. Then they looked around at their new environment and found, at the right rear of the service area, a door to a storage room that was tucked in behind the office. Long and narrow, the storage room was full of fan belts and cans of oil and high wooden racks of tires. The door was open, but there was a padlock on the hasp on the outside.

Mackey said, ''Write down the combination, will you?'

'I'm not sure I know it,' the kid said, deciding to be crafty.

Mackey shrugged. 'That's up to you,' he said. 'We're gonna lock you in there now, so you won't be in our hair. I figured to let you out when we go, but you want to take your chances on somebody coming along, that's up to you.'

The kid remembered the combination then, and wrote it on a service order pad. He also asked if he could bring into the room with him the two magazines from the desk that he'd been reading, and they said okay. He went in without trouble, dragging along a wooden chair and carrying his magazines. He even grinned at them tentatively as they closed the door.

Fixing the padlock, Mackey said, 'Not a bad kid. A bright future, I think.'

'A smart kid,' Parker said. 'He knows he wants a future.'

They turned off the rest of the lights, shutting the station entirely. A little illumination seeped out from under the storage room door, where the kid was reading his magazines, but not enough to be seen out in the street.

Mackey and Brenda caught up on some of their missed sleep in the station wagon. Parker made himself as comfortable as he could on the vinyl stuffed chair in the office, feet up on the desk. He dozed off a few times, never for very long, and then one time he opened his eyes and it was daylight; six or six-thirty in the morning.

And what had awakened him was a city police car out there, just pulling to a stop, this side of the pumps. There was only one cop in it. He got out on this side, and turned his back to look out over the top of his car at the street, looking left and right. His uniform was the wrong size, legs too short, jacket too loose.

Parker put his feet on the floor and leaned forward. The cop turned and started toward the office, right hand unhooking the flap on his holster, closing around the service revolver in there. Under the police cap, it was George Liss.

PART TWO

1

Seven hours before some atheistic sons of bitches robbed the Reverend William Archibald of four hundred thousand dollars, he woke up alone in bed. 'Now where the hell is she?' he said.

Tina, having heard the familiar rich baritone voice, immediately popped out of the bathroom, saying, 'Here I am, Will.' Her heavy ash-blonde hair framed that willing face in a mad tangle, still mussed from sleep. She was