Comeback

'I figure the details have to come from you,' Thorsen told him.

Parker shook his head. 'It's your fairy tale,' he said, 'you'll have to fill it in yourself. George Liss takes one shot at the guy been chasing him eight months, and to you that means the guy s in on the heist.'

'That shot,' Thorsen said, 'made me start to think about something that had snagged me but I'd just let it go by. You know what that was?'

'You'll tell me,' Parker said.

'There's a lot of different words for the room that, when I was in the Marines, we called the head. There's the bathroom, the toilet, the lavatory, the washroom, the WC. The Irish call it the bog. I've been places they called it the cloakroom, don't ask me why. But one thing is constant and sure and solid and you could build your house on it: Nobody named John calls that room the john.'

Parker nodded. 'I think you're right about that.'

'So that isn't your name.'

'That's my joke,' Parker told him. 'My name is John Orr. Meaning, my name is John, or it isn't.'

'It isn't. You're one of the robbers. You and Liss had a falling-out.' Thorsen showed that thin smile again, thinner than ever. 'I think Liss makes a career out of having falling-outs with people. I think maybe he doesn't play well with others. What do you think?'

Parker said, 'Dwayne, I understand, the situation you're in, it can make you jumpy, paranoid. The story I told you is solid.'

'Then I'm gonna owe you an apology,' Thorsen said. 'But before I give you that apology, let's take a picture of you, and take your fingerprints, and ask the local law to check you out. And let's call your home office in— Where's Midwest Insurance located, by the way? I called our insurance guy in Memphis just now, and he never heard of it.'

'That's because he's in Memphis. He isn't in the midwest.'

Thorsen poised a hotel pen over a hotel notepad. 'Give me the phone number of your home office, and the name of your supervisor.' When Parker didn't say anything, he smiled again and said, 'And you might as well also give me the Reverend's thousand dollars, while you're at it.'

So this piece was played out. Parker glanced around at the four young guys standing there at parade rest, silent, watching, ready to do whatever they were told. He said, 'Are these guys armed?'

'You don't want to know,' Thorsen said.

'Oh, yes, I do. I've been without a gun for too long, I need one. I'm wondering, do I take that dinky thing of yours, or is one of these fellas better hipped?'

One of the youngsters spoke: 'We don't need to be armed,' he said, being tough.

Thorsen had put the pen down to stare at Parker. 'By God, you're sure of yourself,' he said.

'Why not,' Parker said, and rose from the desk. As he did so, he pulled the empty metal side drawer out of the desk and swung it around in a short quick arc into Thorsen's face.

11

Always take out the brains first. Then you can deal with the hands and feet.

The four guys hadn't known it was going to play out like this. They'd thought their presence was supposed to keep trouble from happening. They were still working on their poses when Parker moved, so they were still reacting when Parker finished his first lunge, halfway across Thorsen's desk, Thorsen flying backward out of his chair, his face a red mess.

The return swing with the metal drawer caught the nearest young lion on the side of the head, and sent him reeling into number two, while Parker ran forward, the drawer held out in front of him like a battering ram, and caught number three as he was trying to duck away. One bottom corner of the drawer sliced his cheek as the other corner gouged his shoulder, and the whole drawer, Parker's momentum behind it, drove him straight back into the wall. He hit hard, crunched between the wall and Parker's weight on the drawer, and he dropped straight down when Parker let go of the drawer. The drawer and the man were both still falling when Parker spun around and kicked number four twice, first in the balls and then in the forehead as, in agony, he bent quickly down.

These four had trained in gyms, and knew a lot about self-defense. They actually didn't have guns, and they'd never thought they would need such help. But they'd never been crowded into a small room before, getting in each other's way, with somebody who was trying to kill them and who didn't do any of the moves they'd learned about in gym.

Thorsen and numbers three and four were out of play. Number one, having been side-swiped with the drawer, was groggy but standing, and number two was moving in on Parker, hands splayed out, doing all the moves he'd learned.

Parker didn't have a lot of time. He didn't know how much noise he was making or who might be around to hear it. He didn't know when it would occur to one of these survivors to run the hell out of this room and go for help. He didn't know when it would be too late to get out of here, so he had to get out of here now, so he lunged in, ducked back, feinted for the balls, and sliced the edge of his left hand across number two's Adam's apple. Number two stopped, clutched his throat, made a strangled scream, and fell backward, trying desperately to breathe.

Number one, bleeding on the side of the head where the drawer had hit him, was getting less groggy by the second, but wasn't yet one hundred percent. He came in at Parker, arms in defensive position, looking to throw a punch, and Parker pointed at number two, on the floor, making terrible noises through his crushed throat: 'If I put you down, there won't be anybody around to get him breathing.'

Number one looked down and to his right, following the point of the finger and the sounds from his friend, and Parker stepped in fast to clip the side of that jaw with his right elbow.