Comeback

'Could I see some ID, Miss?'

Be a civilian, know your rights. Polite but firm, she said, 'Why?'

He grinned, suddenly changing, as though he'd just remembered a dirty joke. 'Come on now,' he said. 'I showed you mine, you show me yours.'

'Of course I could,' she said, wondering if a civilian would get indignant now, or scared, or what, 'but I don't see—'

'Yeah, you're it,' Detective Lew Calavecci said, and grinned all over his face.

Ed, where are you? Drive by, Ed. She said, 'It? What do you mean, it?'

'Three men and a woman,' Calavecci said. 'When we finally listened to those other clowns. And the woman came back here and checked out. Nobody expected that. You play a tough game.'

Indignant: 'I don't know what you—'

Calavecci brought handcuffs out of his raincoat pocket. 'Let's just see your wrists,' he said.

'But— I don't—'

'You could turn and run,' Calavecci told her, 'and I'd wing you. I'd like that, relieve my feelings a little. Because I'm alone here, nobody could say it was excess force.'

'Detective, please, I don't—'

'I need you,' he said, with sudden passion. 'They relieved me, sent me home, but I can still make it all right. I've had a tough day, I lost some . . . But this makes up for it, I was right, I knew they'd come back. You'd come back. Put out your goddam wrists.'

'Lew!'

They both turned, and somebody was getting out of one of the cars parked nose-in along the front of the motel. 'Lew, let me talk to you,' he said, and straightened, and strode this way, and it was Parker.

Calavecci saw him, and his jaw dropped. 'You! By God, you're a dead man!'

Calavecci dropped the handcuffs to the ground in his hurry to get at the gun in his shoulder holster. Parker was still too far away, but coming fast. Brenda lifted a leg, pulled off her shoe, and did a roundhouse right with it, the heel digging into the side of Calavecci's neck, missing the main veins but almost giving him a tracheotomy.

Calavecci yelled, slapping her away, yanking the shoe out of his neck. He threw the bloody shoe at her, gasping loudly, blood pumping over his collar, and he reached for his gun again as Parker got to him and put him down with two quick movements.

Brenda hopped around on one leg, getting the shoe back on, while Parker went to one knee and took Calavecci's wallet, badge and gun. Straightening, he said, 'Where's Ed?'

Two cars had stopped out at the curb, wondering what was going on with the guy on the ground. Brenda said, 'The church—'

Parker took her arm and hurried her away, back past the office, where the woman stood staring out, afraid to move. They went through the cemetery, dark and uneven but with just enough illumination from streetlights on both sides. Parker said, 'Church. He's praying?'

'Probably,' Brenda said.

As they came out to the next street, the Honda was just rolling down past the church. Brenda waved, and the Honda stopped, and they piled in, Brenda in front, Parker in back with the suitcases.

They drove down the street, and at the corner Ed turned right, away from the main road.

'We'll circle around,' he said. 'Then get out of here.' He glanced in the mirror at Parker in the back seat. 'You seen George?'

'Yes,' Parker said.