Comeback by Richard Stark

was three white males in a car with Tennessee plates, where you people are from, and it's parked for
    hours in a professional building parking lot, where the building's closed for the night."
    "Three's the right number," Dwayne agreed.
    "But the wrong guys." Calavecci grinned and shrugged. "But interesting nonetheless. Your boy Tom Carmody—"
    "The inside man."
    "The clown," Calavecci agreed. "His girlfriend Mary Quindero turns up drowned in a closet. Not a usual way to go."
    Dwayne, trying to be patient, said, "That's right."
    "One of the three guys in the Tennessee car is her brother Ralph."
    "Ah," Dwayne said, getting it. "Tom to George Liss to a couple of his pals, so that's our doers. Then Tom to Mary Quindero to her brother Ralph to his pals, they decide to do the doers."
    "The sheer quantity of assholes in this world," Calavecci said, "never ceases to amaze me. You want some know-nothing clown come in, louse things up? No problem."
    "But the sister's dead," Dwayne said. "How does that come into it?"
    "The other two," Calavecci said, "Isaac Flynn and Robert Kellman—"
    "Isaac Flynn?"
    Calavecci shrugged. "That's what it says on his driver's license. Twenty, twenty-five years ago,
    people named their kids all kinds of stuff, like they were brands of cereal. Anyway, these two, Flynn and Kellman, they leaned on the sister because she clammed up when she realized what her brother had in mind. Of course, these are not guys who get the details right."
    Dwayne shook his head, having trouble here. "They killed his sister, and the brother kept on with them?"
    "He didn't know. He still doesn't know." Calavecci smiled like a wolf. "I thought you'd like to be here when we tell him, see what falls out of the tree."
    He's tougher than I am, Dwayne told himself, a thought that didn't come to him often and which left him slightly uneasy. But if this was a test, he'd have no trouble passing: "Should be interesting," he said.
    Ralph Quindero was about what Dwayne had expected: Beede Bailey without the comedy, a sad sack who would always be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just smart enough to get into trouble.
    What do you do with such people? Dwayne had dealt with a number of them in his Marine years, and they were a real problem. They weren't mean or vicious, they were just inevitable losers who screwed themselves up and made trouble for everybody near them along the way.
    Your only hope was a war; you'd put them on patrol till they didn't come back.
    It was too late for a war to help Ralph Quindero, who came shuffling into the interrogation room with his guard and, at Calavecci's direction, sat in I he chair Dwayne had vacated, Dwayne now being in the corner on the stenographer's chair, to observe. Quindero gave him one curious look on his way in, but Calavecci was clearly the authority figure here, and Quindero was doing what his brand of clown always did; once it's too late, be polite and cooperative with everybody. Ingratiating.
    With Calavecci and Quindero seated facing one another, Dwayne in the corner, and the uniformed guard leaning against the door, Calavecci said, "Well, Ralph, you're a lucky man."
    Quindero looked confused, as well he might: "I am?"
    "Oh, absolutely," Calavecci said. "After all, what've we got on you? Eating a pizza in a parking lot. No crime there."
    Quindero's slumped spine was beginning to straighten, hope was lifting him up. "That's right," he said, his voice tinged with awe.
    "Of course," Calavecci went on, "there's the issue of those handguns in the trunk, but they weren't yours, right?"
    "No, sir. They're not mine."
    "And the car isn't yours. The car's Zack's, so the guns are his problem."
    "Yes, sir!"
    "Of course," Calavecci said, "if we wanted to get really technical..." He waited, and grinned at Quindero, a sly and nasty little grin.
    Hope stumbled. Quindero began to fidget in the chair. "Sir? Technical?"
    "Well," Calavecci said, "there's the matter of the robbery out at the