Comeback

do that I'm here in this place?

Zack started the Honda engine, and they followed the station wagon, keeping well back, and it did what they'd expected it to do, it went straight to the stadium. There, the wagon stopped, and the three men got out. They collected their duffel bags and strode away across the full parking lot, and the station wagon moved on, and Zack followed.

Back to the motel. The woman went indoors, and Zack found their old parking spot beside the Seven Oaks Professional Building still waiting for them. 'This is nice,' he said, as he pulled to a stop in the same old space. 'They pull the job, and if it works out she goes and picks them up, and gets them out safe, away from the law. And then we go in and take it away.'

Nobody said anything. Zack gave Woody a hard smile. 'Pretty good, huh, Woody?'

I don't want to be here, Woody thought. I don't want to know these people any more, or be in this place, or anything. I don't even want that pizza, it feels like shit in my stomach, I don't know if I'm gonna throw up or cry.

He didn't do either. Zack reached out with his middle finger and tapped the bloodstain on Woody's thigh and repeated his question: 'Pretty good, huh?'

'Yes,' Woody said.

5

During football games, this was the replay booth, where guys with video equipment could second-guess the referees. It wasn't an ideal command post for Dwayne, being so far from the center of activity, but its overview of the stadium couldn't be beat, and the communications between here and the rest of the complex were perfect. Dwayne, not a sitting-down type, paced back and forth behind the long plywood table containing all the electronic equipment, and looked out past it through the line of big windows at the crusade making its measured practiced way far below.

The main part of the crusade, exclusive of counseling and other activities scheduled for afterward, was planned to take just two and a half hours, and the second hour was not quite over when the phone call came. There were four telephones spaced along the plywood table, and the low-pitched ring was supplemented by a white light that blinked on the appropriate one. Dwayne picked it up, said, 'Thorsen,' and heard a frightened young male voice say a scrambled nervous sentence in which one word stood out.

'Robbed.'

Dwayne made it to the money room before the police, but not by much. The normally locked door was propped open, and inside Tom Carmody lay unconscious on a sofa, his gray-white angel makeup blotched with dark dried blood. Dwayne looked at that unconscious discontented face and knew: 'So this is what you did, you stupid fuck,' he said, and turned as the first cops came in.

In every organization, there's the one guy who manages things. Not the boss but someone at the middle level, the equivalent of a master sergeant in the army. Dwayne was that one in William Archibald's Christian Crusade, and whenever he had to deal with another organization of whatever kind he always sought out his opposite number, and would settle for nothing less. This time, it was a fellow named Calavecci, a Detective Second Grade.

Tom Carmody had been ambulanced away still unconscious, the six people in the money room had been questioned and turned over to the medics for tranquilizing, and now the money room had filled up with technicians. Dwayne stood to one side, observing, waiting, and when he heard a voice say, 'Who's in charge of security here?' he smiled and turned around, knowing the manager-type on the other side would be just as anxious to make contact with him.

'Me,' he said, and felt an instant coolness toward the man filling the doorway. Large but not beefy, with an irritable yet patiently amused expression, he was the kind of guy, in the Marines, who liked war too much. Well, you worked with who you had. 'Dwayne Thorsen,' and he approached with hand stuck out.

The man considered him briefly, considered his hand, then took it. 'Calavecci, Detective Second Grade. What happened here?'

'Three men with shotguns.'

'Inside help?'

'Yes.'

Calavecci looked surprised: 'Usually we get denials,' he said, 'this early on.'

'This isn't early,' Dwayne said. 'They're already gone with the money. I don't have time for denials.'

'Good. Got a candidate for the inside guy?'

'Tom Carmody. The one went to the hospital with a concussion.'

Calavecci considered that. 'Trouble before?'

'He's been building,' Dwayne said. 'I had my eye on him. I expected something different, though.'

Calavecci looked around the room. 'They whomped him to give him cover,' he said. 'Whomped him pretty good, but that was it.'

'That's right.'

'Be nice,' Calavecci said, 'if he knows where they went, because we sure as hell don't.'

Dwayne didn't like that. 'You mean they're long gone?'

'I mean they're pros,' Calavecci said. 'Like you and me. So they're on the next page already. Maybe the loot's in the trunk of a car outside and they're back in here with the audience. Congregation? What do you call this crowd?'