Richard Stark wrote Parker heist novels (perhaps better
described as Parker-gets-back-his-share-of-the-
heist) from 1960 to 1974.
The heists were varied nicely: armored cars, islands used as casinos, whole mountain towns with cash payrolls. The first four novels have one overarching storyline of Parker sweating and wrecking the outfit until it cries uncle.
Stark brought Parker back in 1997 with Comeback. Quite a comeback it is.
* * *
Where do you find a mountain of cash in the age of internet banking?
....Parker and George Liss had never worked together, though they'd come close. Twice, they'd met on other guys' deals that hadn't panned out. He had no real opinion about George Liss, except he thought he probably wouldn't want to count on him if things turned sour.
The money situation at the moment was all right, but not perfect. There was cash here and there, stowed away. He could wait for something that smelled good. Even in a world of electronic cash transfers and credit cards and money floating in cyberspace, there were still heists out there, waiting to be collected.
When the phone rang the second time, Parker was in the enclosed porch that faced the lawn and the lake and the boathouse, standing there, looking out. The day was overcast, and looked colder than it was. He picked up the phone on the third ring and said, "George?"
"I've got something." The voice slurred a little, making a furry sound in the phone lines.
Parker waited. George Liss could have a lot of things, including a need to turn someone else over to the law to take his place.
Liss said, "It's a little different, but it's profitable."
They were all different, and they were all supposed to be profitable, or you wouldn't do it. Parker waited.
Liss said, "You still there?"
"Yes."
"We could get together someplace, talk it over."
"Maybe."
"You want to know who else is aboard." And again Liss waited for Parker to say something, but again Parker had nothing to say, so finally Liss said, "Ed Mackey."
That was different. Ed Mackey was somebody Parker did know and had worked with. Ed Mackey was solid. Parker said, "Who else?"
"It only takes three."
Even better. The fewer the people, the fewer the complications, and the more the profit. Parker said, "Where and when?"
They came together first in the parking lot of a lobster restaurant on Route 1 just south of Auburn, Maine, a place where a couple of rental cars from Boston's Logan Airport wouldn't look out of place. Parker left his Impala and crisscrossed through the parked cars to the Century Regal where Ed Mackey, blunt and taciturn, sat at the wheel with his girlfriend Brenda beside him and George Liss in the back seat. Parker joined Liss, a tall, narrow, black-haired man with a long chin, who nodded at him and smiled with the side of his mouth where the nerves and muscles still worked, and said, "Have a good flight?"
This wasn't a sensible question. Parker said, "Tell me about it."
"It's a stadium," Ed Mackey said, half-turning in the front seat, knees pointed at Brenda as he looked back at Parker. "Usual stadium security. Twenty thousand civilians inside."
Parker shook his head. "All you walk out with," he said, "is credit card receipts."
"Not this one," Liss said, and the left side of his face smiled more broadly. A sharpened spoon handle had laid open the right side, in a prison in Wyoming, eleven years ago. A plastic surgeon had made the scars disappear, but nothing could make that side of his face move again, ever. Around civilians, Liss usually tried to keep himself turned partially away, showing only the profile that worked, but among fellow mechanics he didn't worry about it. With the slight slurring that made his words always sound just a little odd, he said, "This one is all cash. Paid at the door."
"They call it love offerings," Mackey said, deadpan.
Parker tried to read Mackey's face. "Love offerings? What kind of stadium is this?"
Liss explained, "The stadium's the usual. The attraction's a guy named William Archibald. A TV preacher, you know those guys? Evangelists."
"I thought they were all in jail," Parker said.
'The woods are full of them," Liss said, and Mackey added, "Mostly the back woods."
Parker said, "He's preaching at this stadium, is that it?"
"To make a movie," Mackey said, "and show it on the TV later."
"The people walking in," Liss said, moving his hands around in the space between himself and Parker, "they put down a twenty-dollar love offering, every one of them. No exceptions. Twenty thousand people."
Brenda spoke for the first time: "Four hundred thousand dollars," she said in her husky voice, rolling her full lips around the words.
"Brenda does my math for me," Mackey said.
"Plus," Liss said, "they got these barrels up front by the stage, you get inspired along the way, you want to help the preacher spread the word on the TV, you can go up and toss whatever money you want in the barrel."
"On TV," Mackey said. "On the big screen up behind the preacher. I seen it work, Parker, it's like hypnotizing. These people love to see themselves on that big screen, walking right up there, tossing their cash in the old barrel. Then a month later, they're at home, TV on, there they are again. Live the moment twice. The day you gave the rent money to God."
"We figure," Liss said, "that doubles the take."
Brenda opened her mouth, but before she could say anything Mackey pointed at her and said, "Brenda. He can work it out."
Parker said, "There's going to be more than the usual security, if it's all cash."
"Archibald has his own people," Liss agreed.
"But we got a guy on the inside. That's what made it start to happen."
"Not one of us," Parker said.
"Not for a minute," Mackey said.
"He works for the preacher," Liss said. "And now he's mad at him."
"Greedy? Wants a bigger slice?"
"Just the reverse," Liss said, and half his face laughed. "Ol' Tom got religion."
'Just tell it to me," Parker said.
Mackey patted the top of the seatback, as though calming a horse. "It's a good story, Parker," he said. "Wait for it."
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."
Jay
26 October 2020
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