Comeback

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

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?'