People had to tell their stories their own way, with all the pointless extras. "Go ahead," Parker said, and sat back to wait it out.
Liss said, "I had twenty-nine months' parole last time I got out. It was easier, just hang around and do it, then have a paper out on me the rest of my life. This guy Archibald, one of his scams is, his people volunteer to give this counseling to ex-cons. It's all crap and everybody knows it, it's just to find new suckers, and to get some kinda tax break."
"A cash business," Parker said. "He's doing okay with taxes anyway."
"Oh, you know he is. But William Archibald, he's one of those guys, the more you give him to drink, the thirstier he gets. So I drew this guy
Tom Carmody to be my counselor, once a week he'd come around the place I was living, and then when he'd fill out the sheet, that meant I didn't have to go in to the parole office. A good deal for everybody. And after the first few weeks, we pretty much come clean with each other, and after that we'd just watch basketball on the tube or something, or have a beer around the corner. I mean, he knew what I was and no problem, and I knew what scam he was on, so we just got on with life. Except sometimes he'd go on crusades, and—"
Parker said, "Crusades?"
"When Archibald takes his show on the road," Liss explained. "Rents a hall, a movie house, a stadium, someplace big, does his act three, four times, brings in a couple mil, takes it all home again. Tom was one of the staff guys he brought along on these things, so then I'd get some gung ho trainee from the office instead, and I'd have to be real serious and rehabilitated and grateful as hell to Jesus and all this shit, and then when Tom came back we'd laugh about it. Only, then, about the last six months—yeah, two years we're dealing bullshit and we both knew it, and then the last six months he began to change it all around. Not trying to reform me or nothing. It was Archibald he got agitated about."
Brenda spoke again, this time drily: "He noticed Mister Archibald was insincere."
"He got hung up on the money," Liss said. "How Archibald takes all the suckers for all this money, and it doesn't go anywhere good. I dunno, Parker, it wasn't the scam that got ol' Tom riled up, it still isn't. It's what happens with the money after Archibald trims the rubes. He'd talk about all the good that money could do, you know, feed the homeless and house the hungry and all this, and then he wanted to know was there any way I knew that he could get a bunch of that cash. Not for himself, you see, but to do good works with it."
Parker said, "It was his idea?"
"Absolutely. The guy's a civilian, I only know him two years, and he's tied to the parole board. Am I gonna say, 'Hey, Tom, let's pull a number'? No way."
"But you went along."
Liss shook his head. "Not at first. One of the few big words I know is entrapment. So at first I'd just nod and say well, that's a real bitch, Tom, and all this. And when he finally came out with it—-'Hey, George, let's do it together, you with your expert background and me with my inside information'—I told him no, I told him I'm retired, it isn't I'm reformed I just don't want to go back inside. Which was almost the truth, by the way."
Parker nodded. For a lot of people, that was almost the truth almost all the time.
"Also," Liss said, "I told him I didn't much care where money went that didn't come to me, whether this money fed Archibald or fed some other people made no difference to me, and he said he understood. He understood for me it would be more of a business proposition. So he suggested we split fifty-fifty, and I'd put my share in my pocket and he'd give his to the poor."
"Us poor," Mackey said.
Parker knew what Mackey meant. Glancing at him, "If," he said.
"Naturally."
Liss went on, saying, "Finally I said I'd pass him on to somebody who was still active in the game, but he said no, he wouldn't trust anybody but me, so then I figured I could take the chance. If he was out to trap somebody for the law, he wouldn't care who he brought in, right? He'd let me pass him on to somebody else, work his number just as good. Since he didn't do that, then he probably wasn't pulling anything. So then we started to get kind of serious, talking it over, him giving me the details about the money, and I saw how maybe it could be done. And here we are."
Parker said, "And the theory is, the inside guy takes half, and we split the other half. However many of us it is doing the thing."
"That's the theory."
"Does he buy it?" Parker shook his head, rejecting his own question, rephrasing it: "What I mean, does he believe it?"
"That he'll get his half?" Liss did his lopsided smile. "That's the big question, isn't it? He's kind of hard to read since he changed, you know. Used to be, he was an easygoing guy, now he's all tensed up. Relaxed guys are harder to fool, but tensed-up guys are harder to read."
"Anyway, Parker," Mackey said, "what's he gonna do if he doesn't believe it? We're the takers, not him. Is he gonna take it from the takers? No way."
Parker ignored that. He said to Liss, "How many parole guys does this fella have beer with?"
Liss half-frowned; that face of his took some getting used to. He said, "You mean, he puts together a backup crew to take it away after we get it? But what's the point, Parker? If he's afraid we're gonna cut him out, what's he gonna do about the second crew? Come up with a third?"
"What I think it is," Mackey said, "I think the guy bought his own story. He's not buying from us, he's buying from himself."
Parker said to Mackey, "You meet this wonder?"
"Not yet."
"That can be arranged," Liss said. "Easiest thing there is. I'll call him tonight, say we're—"
"No," Parker said. "You say he goes out with this preacher on his crusades. When's the next one?"
"Couple weeks. I figured that's when we could pull it."
"No. Where they gonna be? The whole tour."
Liss's face went out of whack again. He said, "Beats me. I guess I could find out."
"Good," Parker said. "Then somewhere along the way, without any invitations or planning or setting things up, we're there, and we say hello. Mackey and me."
"And Brenda," Mackey said.
Parker looked at Brenda. "Naturally," he said.
3
In a not-very-good restaurant in St. Louis, with old bored waiters and old-fashioned dark red-and-brown decor, Parker and Mackey and Brenda ate dinner, taking their time over it. Liss had said he'd get the pigeon here between eight and ten, and it was already nine-thirty. "I gotta go to the john again," Brenda said, fooling with her coffee cup, "but I know, the minute I leave the table, they're gonna walk in."
"Then do it," Mackey told her. "I'd like to see something make them walk in."
"Only for you," she said, and left the table, and a minute later Liss walked in with a sandy-haired nervous-looking guy in his late twenties, wearing tan slacks and a plaid shirt.
"There, you see," Mackey said. "That's why I keep Brenda around. She's magic."
Parker said nothing. He already knew why Mackey kept Brenda around—she was his brains—and his interest was in the guy over there with Liss. And also with whoever might come into the restaurant next.
Which was nobody. If Carmody was being watched, it was a very long leash. Watchers couldn't have been planted in the place ahead of time, because Liss wouldn't have told Tom where they were going until they got here. "This looks like a good place, Tom. I'm ready for dinner, how about you?"
And why would a watcher wait outside, when the whole point of keeping an eye on your bait was to see who came around and what happened? So Tom was not under observation. Which didn't mean he wasn't a Judas goat, only that, if he was, they were letting him float on his own. Not important to them, in other words, or not yet. Not until he starts to come home with somebody.