Max Allan Collins

Blood Money

This is for my parents,

Mr. and Mrs. Max A. Collins, Sr.,

whose investment in me makes this

the most expensive book they ever bought.

One

1

The two men with guns sat in the car and waited. The man on the rider’s side was young, about twenty-five, and apprehensive. The man behind the wheel was about fifty-five and his face was firmly set, as though he were very determined to do something. They were both wearing Hawaiian print sportshirts and solid color shorts. In the front seat between them was a large cardboard box full of old newspapers. Under the newspapers were the guns, two Smith and Wesson nine-millimeter automatics with silencers.

The young man was thin and had a pale complexion with some fading acne under his ears along his neck; his right arm, which was elbow bent out the window, was getting red from the sun. His dark eyes were set close together and gave him a look of naive sincerity; his eyebrows met over the bridge of his nose. His hair was brown, long but not over his ears. Beads of sweat ran down his forehead. He was slapping his left hand against his left knee in some nervous inner rhythm and didn’t realize it.

The older man was thin and had a dark complexion; his skin was lined and leathered from too much sun over too many years, and his lower cheeks and neck were pockmarked. He had been handsome once. He, too, had dark eyes sitting close to each other, giving him a naturally intense look. His hair was powder white, cropped short. Though the day was hot and humid, he was bone dry. He sat motionless, staring at the building across the street.

The young man said, “How you feeling, Dad?”

“I’m feeling fine,” the older man said. His voice was low. “I’m feeling fine. How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” the younger man said. “Fine.”

Their car, a dark blue Oldsmobile of recent vintage, was parked in the open cement area beside a Dairy Queen restaurant in Iowa City, Iowa. The car had Wisconsin license plates and air-conditioning, which the older man had rejected using while they waited, a wait that had been going on now for just over an hour. A few minutes ago they had eaten hamburgers and French fries and root beer. The food had not settled well in the young man’s stomach and the root beer had gone through him at once, first teasing, then torturing his bladder, but the young man felt he shouldn’t mention his condition to his father. The older man had eaten an extra hamburger and felt, as he’d said, fine.

It took several more minutes for the older man to notice his son’s discomfort. He was too busy concentrating on the antique shop across the road. The shop was a two-story white clapboard structure, resembling a house more than a business establishment, and in fact marked the point where the business district trailed off into residential, the downtown and University of Iowa campus being some four blocks of filling stations and junk-food restaurants away. Directly across from the Dairy Queen was a Shell station, and next to that was the antique shop; directly across from the antique shop was a grade school, an old empty brown-brick hulk, deserted for the summer, separated from the Dairy Queen by a graveled alley. And down the street were homes, modest, aging, but well kept up, strewn along this quiet street lined with lushly green shade trees. The older man nodded to himself; yes, this was a street you could retire on, like this man Planner had.

“Dad?”

“Hmmm?”

“How’s it going, Dad? How you feeling?”

“Fine,” he said, still not noticing how ill at ease his son was acting.

He continued to watch the antique shop, studying it. The lower level of the building was divided in half by a recessed door set between two window displays showing assorted junk on either side: old metal advertising signs (“Coca Cola,” “Chase and Sanborn,” “Call for Philip Morris!”) and china and kids’ metal toys and tea kettles and phonograph records and mason jars and crap, just plain crap, how anyone could pay money for crap like that the older man couldn’t fathom. The windows were many-paned, sectioned off with metal, like stained glass, and in the midst of each display hung a sign saying, “Antiques — Edwin Planner, proprietor.” With pleasure, the older man had been noting the lack of business the antique shop was doing; it had been two o’clock when they first arrived, and now, at three-fifteen, not a soul had gone in or out.

But if this man Planner felt badly about his nonexistent customer flow, he certainly didn’t show it. The older man had watched carefully as the shop’s proprietor peeked outside, glancing up at the hot sun in the cloudless sky and smiling. Planner was a lanky old guy, balding, wearing baggy pants and a red tee-shirt, puffing a cigar. Twice Planner had done this, and the third time he peeked out and smiled, the older man had smiled, too, and glanced at his son to share the good cheer, and then he noticed his son’s discomfort.

The boy’s legs were crossed tight, like a woman afraid someone was after her privates, and he was shaking his foot. His face was bloodless pale and he was gritting his teeth. The older man sighed.

“Go get me an ice cream cone,” the older man said.

His son said, “What?”

“Go get me an ice cream cone.” The older man gave his son a dollar.

“Uh, how many dips?”

“Two.”

“Okay, Dad. Dad?”

“Hmm?”

“Uh, what flavor?”

“Doesn’t make a damn to me. Strawberry.”

“I think all they got’s chocolate and vanilla.”

“Vanilla.”

“Vanilla, okay.”

“And Walter?”

“Yes, Dad?”

“Go to the can, too, why don’t you, before you piss all over the front seat.”

Walter let loose a shaky grin, then saw his father wasn’t joking, and retracted it. He got out of the car and walked around to the back of the Dairy Queen building to the restrooms. The men’s was clean, very clean, as white and wholesome as ice cream itself. He felt guilty when in his extreme need and nervousness he overshot the stool and before he flushed it, he got down on the floor with toilet paper and wiped up his mess. After he was finished doing that, he felt silly, felt he was acting irrationally, and he put the seat down and sat and held his face in his hands. Shit, he thought, I got to get my head together. Christ, he thought, don’t let me make an asshole out of myself in front of him.

He went to the sink and washed his hands, then brought the cold water up and splashed it against his face. After the heat of the day, this cold water was heaven. He splashed more cold water on his face, more, more, and it felt good, then suddenly it didn’t feel good, it felt lousy, and he went to the stool and frantically slapped the lid up and emptied his stomach.

Back in the car, the older man was watching a young guy walk around from behind the two-story structure. Must be a rear entrance back there, he thought, and this must be that kid they told me about. Planner’s nephew. He watched the boy walk past the Shell station and head toward the Iowa City business district. The boy was short, maybe five-six or-seven, but he was strongly built, his arms muscular. His hair was curly brown and long, stopping just this side of an Afro, and the older man wondered if there was any chance in hell the boy was on his way downtown for a haircut. He was wearing worn, patched jeans and a white tee-shirt with some cartoonish thing on the front. About Walter’s age, the older man thought, maybe a little younger.

“Here’s your cone, Dad.”

The older man turned his head and nodded to his son and took the cone. Walter came around the front of the car and got in and sat, feeling queasy as he watched his father eat the ice cream. Walter said, “Did I see a kid come out of the shop?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t see anybody go in there.”

“It’s the guy’s nephew or something. He lives there.”

“Oh. You didn’t say anything about that.”

“I wasn’t sure whether the kid lived with him or not.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, I’m glad he’s left.”

“How come?”

“Don’t be stupid. It’ll be easier with just the one guy.”

“Oh. Yeah, of course.”

The ice cream tasted good. And he felt good, knowing the kid wouldn’t be in there. He had no compunction about what he was going to do, but killing or even hurting some kid Walter’s age was something he didn’t care to do. He’d gone into this knowing it would be like the old days. It had to be like the old days, like coming up in those years when brains weren’t enough, you had to have balls, and balls meant shooting who you had to when you had to and the hell with manners. He had to have the right frame of mind if he expected to deal with Nolan and come out on top. So sure, this was like the old days, this was a situation where if you had to be hard, you were hard. But these last ten, fifteen soft years made it hard to be hard; it was like sex, he could still get it up, if need be, but he wasn’t no tiger anymore.

He was glad the kid wouldn’t be around. Some old son of a bitch, what did that matter, but some damn kid? That was something else.

2

At two o’clock, just as the two men with guns were pulling into the Dairy Queen parking lot across the street, Planner was lighting a cigar and wondering when the phone call would come. The cigar was a Garcia y Vega, at least one box of which Planner kept under the counter always; he liked cigars, Garcia y Vegas especially, and if the occasional customers who walked into his antique shop were irritated by the smoke, well, fuck ’em. The phone call he was waiting for was from Nolan, a man who played a part in Planner’s other and primary occupation, which was planning jobs for professional thieves.

The antique shop, however, was more than just a front. Long before the thought of using an antique shop as a front had ever entered his mind, Planner had been a collector of antiques, though like many collectors he was a specialist and only one small branch of antiquing held a fascination for him.

Buttons.

Planner loved buttons.

Not buttons that hold your clothes together (though there were collectors of those around, too) but political buttons and advertising buttons and anything that pinned on, including sheriff’s and other cop badges, if they were old enough. The mainstay of his collection was the political buttons, the pride being his Lincoln tokens and the large picture buttons of Hoover. These were in a frame upstairs, while others of lesser value and importance, but gems nonetheless, graced a display case in the front of the store.

It was that display case that let other dealers who came around know that despite the junk quality of most of the merchandise in the shop, Planner was a dealer who knew what he was doing, worthy of respect. It was with great pleasure that he would turn down offers from fat-cat dealers who would drool at the generous assortment of political buttons in the airtight case, the Willkies, the Wilsons, the Bryans. If he was feeling really generous, he might sell them one Nixon or a Kennedy or perhaps a Goldwater, but not often, as even recent buttons brought a pretty penny, since during the last three or four presidential campaigns a man had to contribute five or six bucks before the party would give him a picture button of the candidate. And who could guess what a McGovern/Eagleton would one day be worth?

If he was feeling particularly ornery, Planner would show dealers the Lincoln tokens and the Hoovers upstairs and would listen to their eager bids and pretend to consider and then calmly refuse. Even if a dealer got down on his knees (which had happened a couple times) Planner would shake his head solemnly no. Back downstairs, to rub salt in the wound, Planner would point out the barrel of buttons next to the front display case, a barrelful of zilch buttons Planner sold to the school kids for a quarter a throw.

Also, from dealers who came around and from stops he made to keep his “buying trips” looking honest, Planner had managed, over these past thirteen or fifteen years, to fill in the gaps of his own collection, picking up damn near every button he needed. But even before he got into the antique trade, Planner had had one of the best goddamn button collections in the U.S. of A. (if he did say so himself) and so, when he was picking out some way to semi-retire, the antique hustle had been a natural.

Sometimes, sitting behind the counter, smoking a Garcia y Vega, Planner would wonder if he could actually make a living selling antiques, you know, straight-out legitimate. Even though he purposely filled his shop with unspectacular horseshit, he did pretty good, better than he needed to with a situation that was basically a front. But the little old ladies in tennis shoes would ooh and ahh at the god-damnedest junk, and he would constantly (three or four times a year) have to spend a day going to flea markets and yard sales and load his station wagon with more bottles and jars and furniture and china and kettles and toys and crap and more crap. When he’d bought the place, it had been jampacked with junk, which he’d thought would last for years and years. Six months, it had been, and he was out scouting flea markets to replenish his supply. Occasionally he’d run onto an honest-to-God antique for next-to-nothing and these he would pack carefully away in one of his back rooms. One day he might sell them, but not now. Somehow it seemed crazy to sell an antique, a real one that is, since an antique’s value is its age, and tomorrow it’s going to be older and hence more valuable.

In that way, and many others, the antique shop was more than a simple front. In addition to feeding Planner’s button habit, and turning a nice dollar itself now and then, the antique shop was just the sort of nebulous one-man business operation that made it damn near impossible for the IRS to get to you. Just the same, Planner reported a healthy income and gave the feds their healthy share, faking his own bookkeeping, which required both math skill and imagination. It was a time-consuming task, doing the books and other records, but he would find ways to amuse himself, such as inventing wild merchandise when writing up fake sales slips, his favorite being “One Afghanistan banana stand, $361.” He had told that one to Nolan once, thinking he would laugh, but Nolan had said, “That’s a little silly, isn’t it? You’re getting senile.” Nolan implied that if Planner got too goddamn cute with his records, the IRS would smell something, should they go sniffing. Planner didn’t think so. Anyway, the tax boys, classically, didn’t care how you made your money, they just wanted their piece of your action.

Probably the best angle was that as an antique dealer, Planner could make frequent buying trips and on them gather the information that would enable him to put together “packages” for clients like Nolan. These trips aroused no suspicion whatsoever, neither locally nor wherever he chose to go.

On the trips he got his information by playing the role of a cantankerous but friendly old antique dealer, and while putting on the eccentric act had been a chore at first (fifteen, sixteen years ago when he got started) he found that now, at sixty-seven, the role was much easier to play convincingly. People weren’t surprised when an old guy like him would want to talk for a while, and he could always manipulate a stranger into a lengthy and rewarding conversation. The information was easy to get: he’d act paranoid and tell about his shop and how he was afraid of being robbed and ask about alarm systems and safes and such. He’d admire the layout of, say, a jewelry store and tell about how he was thinking of remodeling his place along similar lines and just how is everything put together here, exactly. He’d express dissatisfaction with his present payroll system for his staff of ten employees (all nonexistent, of course) and ask advice. And on and on. No trick to it.

He puffed his cigar and grinned to himself. It was a damn good life. Much better than it had been for those years and years he’d spent actually working on jobs, the bank hits, the armored cars, the payroll robberies, all of it. When he was young, he’d found it stimulating, but before long (oh, even into his late twenties) his nerves had started to bother him. Planning ahead of time was one thing, but being on the job when the shit hit the proverbial fan and you got to improvise is another thing entirely. He worked things out so that at age fifty he could “sort of” retire, which he had, and a good thing too. He wouldn’t like to work in the field the way things were now. He wouldn’t enjoy working with the kind of people that were in the trade these days, if you could even call it a trade anymore.

Planner had been in the trade when it was a trade. He started young, young enough to have worked with Dillinger a few times. There wasn’t anybody around today, needless to say, who could compare to Dillinger, except for Nolan, who was almost an old-timer himself, and that guy Walker, and a few others, Busch, Peters, Beckey, not many. Every string you put together these days has got somebody you can’t be sure of, he thought, and one or maybe two somebodies you never heard of and got to trust what some other somebody told you about ’em. It was hard to find pros these days, people who really knew what they were doing.

Like Nolan and that bank job, a year ago November. Even with that team of amateurs, Planner thought, Nolan had managed to put together a professional score. Most people these days, when they hit a bank, clean out a teller cage or two or three (picking up mostly bait money, the marked bills every teller keeps on hand for just such occasions) and come off with a grand total of two, maybe three thousand. Shit, Planner thought, Nolan wouldn’t cross the street for three thousand. Because he knew what he was doing, Nolan had knocked that bank the hell over, he’d cleaned that bank’s vault out of every damn cent, choosing the day when the bank would be brimming with cash (the first Monday of the month) and got away with close to eight hundred thousand bucks.

Most of which, Planner thought, swallowing, is back there in that safe of mine. He felt suddenly uncomfortable. His cigar went out and he relit, using an old-fashioned kitchen match. He wished Nolan would call.

“Hey, unc, I’m talking to you. Snap out of it.”

“Huh?” Planner woke from his reverie and noticed his nephew Jon was standing across the counter from him, grinning. The boy had a mop of curly hair and was wearing a tee-shirt picturing a manlike pig (or pig-like man) in a superhero outfit, including cape, under the words “Wonder Warthog.” Planner grinned back at his crazy nephew and said, “What the hell, I didn’t even see you there, Jon. I’m getting old. You say something?”

“I just wanted to know if I got any mail.”

Planner nodded and reached under the counter, pulling out four wrapped packages and a long cardboard tube. Jon was always getting stuff in the mail; it was that damn fool comic book collecting of his, mostly.

Jon took the bundles in his arms and said, “Great!” His eyes were lit up like a four-year-old on his birthday. The boy nodded toward the long tube and said, “That’s my EC poster, I’ll bet. Made a good haul today.”

“Just take that nonsense away and don’t bother me.”

Jon laughed. “Yeah, I can see how busy you are, unc. Hey, has Nolan called yet?”

“No.”

“Be sure to say hello to him for me.”

“You know I will.”

“Thanks, unc.”

The boy disappeared into the back of the store, where his room was stuck way in the back. Planner was glad Jon was living here; he felt better having someone else around what with all the cash in the safe. After all, half of that eight hundred thousand dollars from Nolan’s bank job belonged to Jon. Yes, Planner thought, smiling, relighting his Garcia y Vega once again, remembering how he brought Nolan and Jon together, my nephew’s a very wealthy boy, thanks to his old uncle.

But Planner wouldn’t feel at ease, couldn’t feel at ease, until that money was out of his safe and in some bank where it belonged. There were reasons for keeping it here, sound ones, but he would be glad, glad — hell, overjoyed — when Nolan’s call came through saying special arrangements’ve been made and the money can be moved.

He was used to keeping money in the safe, and large amounts of it, too. Personally, he didn’t have much faith in banks, having seen too many of them fail in the Depression and having had a hand in the robbing of a goodly number as well. So he usually had twenty to fifty thousand dollars in that big old safe of his in his farthest-back back room, as well as smaller but still substantial amounts belonging to various clients like Nolan who liked to have little nest eggs stuck here and there for emergencies. But Nolan and Jon’s little nest egg — eight hundred thousand dollars — Christ! If there was such a thing as too much money, that was it; it hardly fit into the safe, all of it, between it and the other money in there, near a million all together crowded into that poor old safe, and had been for almost a year now.

When Nolan was staying there, Planner hadn’t felt so nervous about the money. At first, when Jon brought Nolan in all shot up like that and that doctor trying to keep Nolan patched together, there had been too much excitement to be nervous. Then, when Nolan was healing up from the wounds, feeling pretty good and able to move around some, Planner felt fairly safe; even under the weather, Nolan was a good man to have around. And of course Jon had moved from his apartment into that room in back of the shop, and Jon was a strong, tough kid, don’t let his size fool you, who’d seen Nolan through a rough spot and proved to his uncle that he could handle himself.

But near a year Nolan had been gone and all that money had been sitting in that safe, brother. Nerve-racking.

Well, Planner thought, doesn’t do any good to sit and worry like some goddamn old maid. Nolan will call today and that money’ll be out of here by tomorrow night. Maybe sooner.

He let out a sigh and suddenly noticed how nice and cool it was in the shop. That old air-conditioner of his was really putting out. He’d had it a long time, but it was still working like a son of a bitch. Just because a thing is old, he thought, doesn’t mean it’s not worth a damn. He smiled at the thought.

He got out from behind the counter and poked his nose outside the front door. The day was hot, a real scorcher, but the sun was big and yellow in the sky, and the sky was blue without any clouds at all. It was a beautiful day.

Now call, Nolan, damn you.

3

The ax was embedded in the man’s head, the blood gushing down his forehead, yet somehow he was still standing, implanted there in the doorway, his eyes wide and dead but staring. The other man gasped in horror, the sweat streaming down his face, the guilt apparent in his terror-swollen eyes.

Jon grinned. He laughed out loud.

It was the most beautiful poster he’d ever seen in his life. He held it out in front of him, drinking it all in. He couldn’t believe how fantastic the artwork looked blown up to this huge size; the violent scene had originally appeared as a comic book cover back in the early fifties, and blown up to a 22” by 28” poster, and in full-blooded color yet, was some trip. Almost reluctantly he allowed the poster to roll itself back up, and he tossed it on his as yet unmade bed, to be put up on the wall later that day.

Of course it wouldn’t be easy finding a place to display that beautiful poster: the walls of the little room were full as it was. In its former life, the room had been one of Planner’s storerooms, and after Planner and Jon had cleared and cleaned it, what remained was a dreary cubicle with four unpainted gray-wooden walls and a cement floor.

Jon had met the challenge by papering the gray-wood walls with poster after poster after poster, and the cement floor was covered by shag throw rugs and Jon’s considerable collection of comic books. The comics were neatly boxed, three deep along each wall, with a filing cabinet in one corner that contained the more valuable comics. Planner had contributed a genuinely antique single bed with a carved walnut headboard, and a non-matching walnut four-drawer chest of drawers. The room was cluttered but orderly, though against one wall was a wooden drawing easel with an expensive-looking swivel chair such as an executive might have back of his desk, easel and chair surrounded by scattered paper and pencils.

Comic art was Jon’s life. It went far beyond a simple hobby, and Jon was fond of his uncle but thought Planner’s button-gathering was dumb, just not sensible at all. Those precious political buttons of Planner’s were artifacts of a boring and unpleasant reality, while comics were “immortal gateways to fantasy,” as Jon had said in an article he was working on for submission to a fanzine.

He supposed his love for comics had something to do with his fucked-up childhood. Jon was a bastard, he hoped in the literal sense alone, and his mother had liked to think of herself as a chanteuse. What that amounted to was she sang and played piano in bars, and not very well. Because his mother was on the road most of the time, Jon’s childhood had been spent here and there, with this relative and that one, Planner part of the time, and Jon hadn’t lived steady with his mother until those last few years when she was serving cocktails in bars instead of singing in them. She was dead now, hit by a car some three years ago, perhaps by choice. Jon hadn’t known her well enough to get properly upset, and he had occasional feelings of guilt for never having cried over her.

His childhood was a good example, Jon felt, of reality’s general lack of appeal. Either it was boring — like the half dozen or so faceless relatives he’d lived with, the score of schools he’d gone to, the hundreds of kids he’d failed to get to know — or it was so goddamn tragic it was a soap opera and impossible to take seriously.

So why not comic books?

He had built his collection up carefully over the years, at first just hoarding the books he bought off the stands, then gradually, as he got into his teens, he began working on the older titles, seeking out other collectors and swapping, sending increasingly large amounts of hard-earned money through the mail for rare old issues, even trekking to New York each summer these past four years for the big comics convention. Jon read and reread the books, savoring the stories, studying the artwork. When he finished rereading one of the yellowing classics, he’d seal it back in its airtight plastic bag and carefully return it to its appropriate stack in its appropriate box.

Though he was as yet unpublished, Jon considered himself already to be a full-fledged artist in the field of the graphic story (as comics were called in the more pretentious moments of fans like himself) and he felt this way primarily because he was too old now to say, “I want to draw comics when I grow up.” He was grown up, as much as he was going to anyway, and at twenty-one years of age, Jon was more than just serious about his artwork and comic-collecting; it was his lifestyle.

The posters on his walls reflected this. More than half of them were recreations of classic comic book and strip heroes, drawn with black marker pen and water-colored, Dick Tracy, Batman, Flash Gordon, Tarzan, Captain Marvel, Buck Rogers. The latest poster was a finely detailed face of an old witch, a withered old crone with a mostly toothless grin and a single bloodshot, popping eye, and was an indication that Jon’s taste in comic art was undergoing a transition. Once the ax poster was put up, and one of the superheroes taken down, the shift from heroes to horror would become even more apparent.

He sat on the bed and began eagerly opening his other packages. One of them was from California and was filled with underground comics. Jon smiled as he examined the cover of R. Crumb’s latest grossly funny masterwork; one of the nonoriginal posters on the wall was Crumb’s popular “Keep On Truckin’ ” poster, with a row of tiny-headed, huge-footed absurd men dancing in a line against a field of orange. One of the undergrounds had some Gilbert Shelton as well; Jon especially liked Shelton, whose “Wonder Wart Hog” was pictured on Jon’s tee shirt, though his “Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers” strip was more famous. Not much else of the underground art was up to their standard, in this batch of books anyway. Maybe the undergrounds were where he could make his first splash, he thought, leafing through several books full of artwork he considered beneath contempt.

Two of the other packages turned out to be rejections. Jon was very disappointed. It wasn’t so much that he’d expected to sell these “graphic stories,” but that he hadn’t realized that this was what the packages contained. He was disappointed that their contents hadn’t been more old comics or fanzines, dozens of which he’d paid for by mail order and should be showing up any day now. Both of the rejected stories were horror tales, and he was told, in a polite note from one editor, that he drew well but his style was too derivative of “Ghastly” Graham Ingels, and if he could just develop a more original style, they would be interested in seeing more. The other publisher included no note, but Jon was not surprised the story was coming back, because he’d heard through the fan grapevine that this company had gone out of business.

The other package perked him up considerably. It was chock-full of EC’s, and he’d half expected the ad he had responded to was a hoax, since these EC’s had been incredibly low in price, costing only five to six dollars a piece. There were four “Vault of Horror,” two “Tales from the Crypt” and one “Crime SuspenStories.” He flopped down on the bed and one by one opened each plastic bag and eased out the comic inside. He didn’t read the stories, he just thumbed through the magazines, window-shopping.

He had just got into the EC horror comics in the last six months or so. He’d heard of them, of course, but had never delved into the “Vault of Horror” because the prices were stiff for books printed as recently as the early fifties. And Jon’s primary interests had been the superheroes of the Golden Age of Comics, which ran roughly from 1937 to 1947, and issues reprinting newspaper strips like Dick Tracy and Buck Rogers.

But lately he’d gone sour on superheroes. They didn’t seem relevant to his life anymore. He guessed it had something to do with knowing Nolan, meeting him, working with him.

He smiled, remembering the first time he and Nolan had met. He glanced at the posters over his bed, which were the only noncomic art posters in the room: photos of Leonard Nimoy as Spock, Buster Crabbe in his serial days, and Lee Van Cleef decked out in his “man in black” gun-fighter apparel. Nolan had looked over Jon’s series of posters and had noticed especially the one of Lee Van Cleef, studying the black-dressed Western figure with the high cheekbones and narrow eyes and mustache, and Jon had told him who Van Cleef was, adding, “Looks something like you, don’t you think?” Nolan had shaken his head no, smiled crookedly and pointed a finger at Buster Crabbe, saying “Flash Gordon’s more my style.”

In a way, both Van Cleef and Flash Gordon were Nolan’s style. Nolan was the sort of man Jon had always hoped to meet but never thought he really would. The sort of man Jon had admired in fantasy. Nolan was Flash Gordon, and Bogart and Superman, too. Nolan was Dick Tracy and Clint Eastwood and Captain America. Oh, he wasn’t as pretty as any of the fantasy heroes. His face was lean, hard, cruel, and his body was so scarred from bullet wounds he looked as if he’d been used for a year as some medical student’s cadaver. And Nolan could be a bastard at times, could be a real bastard, really an altogether unpleasant person to be around.

Which was maybe why those fantasy guys didn’t satisfy Jon anymore. Nolan was everything they were and more: he was real, both perfect and imperfect, everything. A superhero couldn’t come up to Nolan’s standards.

Did it matter that Nolan was a thief? Not really, Jon thought, his opinion shaded by the fact that he, too, was a thief of major proportions, since that bank job a year and a half ago. It wasn’t what the heroes stood for, it was the way they stood for it that mattered. Jon remembered seeing the film White Heat, where the so-called good guy Edmund O’Brien double-crossed Jimmy Cagney. Cagney was a psychopathic murderer, but he had style. When they showed White Heat at the U of I student union last month, every-body in the house had booed that son of a bitch Edmund O’Brien.

He was picking out one of the “Vault of Horror” issues to read when he heard the phone ringing out in the store. He had the urge to jump off the bed and run out there and see if it was Nolan calling, but he repressed the urge. He’d made up his mind that he was not going to jump up and down like a spastic puppy for the chance to talk to Nolan. Besides, Jon had nothing to say, really, and Nolan just about never had anything to say.

No. This was business between Nolan and Planner (even though Jon was up to his ass involved in that business) and Jon would stay cool, the way Nolan would expect him to.

“Hey, Jon boy!”

The sound of Planner’s rough voice made Jon’s heart leap. Nolan had asked to talk to him! Imagine that.

Jon joined Planner out in the store and Planner said, “It’s for you... it’s that woman.”

Jon didn’t let the disappointment show in his voice. “Karen,” he said, “Good morning, honey.”

“Morning my ass, Johnny. It’s two-thirty. Did you just wake up?”

“Yeah, ’bout half an hour ago.”

“Me, too. I’m hung over as hell.”

“Me, too. Did we have a good time last night, Kare? I can’t remember it too clear.”

“We had a couple good times. You had breakfast?”

“I slept through it, just like you did.”

“We missed lunch, too, you know. Come on over to the apartment and I’ll fix you some eggs.”

“And sausage?”

“You drive a hard bargain. And sausage.”

“That sounds good.”

“Then maybe a little later I can refresh your memory about last night.”

“That sounds better.”

“Get your cute little ass over here, Johnny.”

“Will do.”

Jon hung up and noticed Planner’s reproving gaze. Jon grinned and said, “I know, I know, she’s too old for me.”

“She’s old enough to be your mother.”

“Oh, bull. You’re old enough to be my grandmother. And I don’t hold it against you, do I?”

“No, but I’ll bet you hold it against her,” and now Planner, too, was grinning.

“What would you do in my place?”

“The same damn thing, nephew. The same damn thing.”

“Thought so. All this time you’ve just been jealous.”

“Sure, kid. That broad’s just about the right age for me.”

Jon walked over to the row of penny candy Planner kept along the counter for the school kids from across the street. He took a piece of bubble gum from one of the glass bowls and unwrapped the gum and tossed the pink square into his mouth. He chewed it up good and walked back to Planner and blew a healthy bubble and popped it at his uncle.

“Smartass kid,” Planner said, trying not to smile.

“See you later, unc,” Jon said, and went out the back way.

4

The older man took his time eating the ice cream cone. It irritated Walter that his father could be so calm, just sitting there eating that goddamn ice cream as if they were at the beach or something. He was irritated enough to speak, and in a tone more harsh than he generally dared use when he spoke to his father. He said, “How can you just sit there and eat that goddamn stuff?”

The older man said, “What?”

“I said... nothing. Nothing, Dad.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“Now what did I tell you? I told you don’t be nervous. We’re going in and do it and we’ll be out and done in nothing flat. So don’t be nervous, understand?”

“I’m not nervous.”

The older man studied his son’s face carefully. The boy was naturally pale, but he seemed to be even whiter than usual. But aside from shaking his foot on the leg crossed over one knee, the boy was showing no overt signs of tension.

“It’s not going to be hard,” the older man said. “I’ll handle all the hard stuff. All you have to do is back me up and keep your damn wits about you.”

“I know, Dad.”

“But I won’t lie to you. It won’t be pleasant in there.”

“You told me.”

“It won’t be pleasant in there because that’s the way it has to be.”

“You told me a hundred times, Dad.”

“Don’t smart-mouth me.”

“I’m not.”

“Don’t. And I’m just telling you this because I look at you right now and you know what I see? I see a kid, I see a goddamn college kid who’s liable to go in there and crap his pants, and I can’t afford that, understand, and you can’t afford it either.”

“Dad...”

“You didn’t have to be part of this. I didn’t want you to be part of this, remember. But you wanted to help. You begged me to help. Fine, that’s fine talk, but this is now, this is right now and we’re about to go across that street and do the kind of thing they don’t teach you in school, understand, so if you want out now, say so, for Christ’s sake.”

“Dad...”

“I’ll drive you back to the lodge. Right now. I’ll drive you back to the goddamn lodge and come back down here tomorrow and do it alone.”

“Dad, you couldn’t do it alone...”

“I could. It wouldn’t be no goddamn picnic, but I could.”

“I’m not nervous, Dad.”

He looked at his son and saw resolve in the young face. He smiled briefly and squeezed his son’s arm, reaching over the box with the newspapers and guns in it to do so.

He felt better now, now that he could have confidence in his son again. But that ice cream, which had gone down so smooth, so easy, so cool and refreshing, the damn stuff was churning in his stomach, making him feel queasy. All of a sudden he was nervous, and it almost made him laugh. Worrying about his son being nervous had got him that way.

Funny, Walter thought, where the hell did that outburst come from? His father had been sitting there for an hour, looking so calm it was unnatural, as though he were on pot or something. And then out of nowhere the old man had let go with this practically hysterical lecture. Walter was stunned; he never would have suspected that his father’s placid surface was hiding such turbulent undercurrents.

Not that he hadn’t had the notion that something was (how should he put it?) wrong with his father. Right now he was wishing he could summon courage to look at his father, to study him, observe his behavior. (Walter was a business major, but he’d taken several psychology courses as electives.) He wondered now, as he’d wondered more than once in the past few weeks, if his father was, well, sane.

Up until this uncharacteristic outburst of a moment ago, the old man seemed normal enough to Walter: quiet, self-sufficient, a hard but not unaffectionate man. But Walter knew these were superficial judgments, biased judgments from a child who desperately wanted to love and respect a father. He had never known his father all that well, really. Dad had been gone so much of the time, the business had been so demanding. Walter had felt much closer to his mother, and if she were still alive today, the situation would most certainly be different, to say the least.

The distance between Walter and his father had been shortened only these past months, these last several weeks especially. The old guy was no longer the aloof, godlike, benevolent family dictator, but a human being, a man willing to meet his son as an equal... or at least as a peer.

Walter liked that. It was a new experience and he liked it, even now, even sitting in this car waiting to... to do what they were going to.

This last week, at the lodge at Eagle’s Roost, had been wonderful and terrible. The memories the place aroused were double-edged, pleasant this moment and painful the next. Like a fire, nice to look at until you got too close. He at times felt he and his father were ghosts haunting the empty old lodge, perhaps in search of other ghosts who could share remembrances of other, better times. He could hear the voices, his mother, his sister, his father, too, and once he heard himself, a high-pitched voice, pre-puberty, and he laughed; he heard all these voices, especially late at night and early in the morning, he really heard them, but then of course he was trying to hear them. He sat in the main room downstairs, that huge open-beamed, high-ceilinged room, dark wooded, dominated by the black brick fireplace and the elk head above it. There were three brown leather sofas arranged in a block C that opened onto the fireplace, forming a room within the room, an area before the hearth where throw rugs and pillows were scattered for lounging. But the pillows and throw rugs were gone now, and when he and his father arrived, the sofas, like all the other furniture, were covered with sheets. Walter had uncovered the center sofa, where he sat and stared at the fireplace, as though it were warm and roaring rather than cold and barren. They uncovered the long table in the dining area to the left of the sofas, and he and his father sat alone together at the table, eating TV dinners and canned food and other survival rations that didn’t jibe with the memories of sumptuous feasts at this same table. On the other side of the room, where Mother’s sewing table still stood, covered of course, and faded areas on the wood floor where card tables had been, for playing Clue with his sister, and, later, Monopoly, was the window seat, the same plaid cushions he remembered. Once again he sat and watched the trees bend slightly in the breeze, their needles shimmering, and if he leaned close to the window, he could still get that same good view of the lake, blue and sparkling where the sun hit it, pink, bobbing swimmers close to shore, the sails of skiffs white along the horizon.

And sitting there in that window seat, his mind flooded with memories, he could not keep himself from wondering what this stranger who was his father, this stranger and guns and robbery, had to do with his life.

He’d known for a long time, of course, what his father’s “business” was. No one had told him, exactly, but he’d gotten it a piece at a time, and the knowledge had been gradual, there’d been no great revelation. But the lodge seemed such an odd setting for preparing for today’s possible violence. High up on that hill, overlooking the two lakes, the lodge had been the one place where his father had allowed no contact from the “business” world. Their home, in a suburb of Chicago, had seen occasionally the hard-faced men who associated with his father “at work.” But the lodge was different.

He remembered the time his Uncle Harry had shown up at the lodge, with two men who wore trench coats and slouch hats and had faces like the Boogie Man. Walter had been eight at the time and had found the two men with Uncle Harry frightening, but no more so than Uncle Harry, who was himself no beauty contest winner, and Walter’s sister called him Uncle Scarey behind his back. Uncle Harry had told their father there was important business at Lake Geneva that he ought to tend to personally, and to come along. Dad had been furious with Uncle Harry for bringing the two men with him, and into the lodge. Walter could still hear his father’s voice: “I told you never to bring any of your goddamn goons around here! This place is for my family and myself and I don’t want you or anybody contaminating it! Now wait outside, Harry.” And Dad had shoved the two Boogie Men out the door as if they were a couple of sissies.

“Are you ready?” the older man said.

“Yes,” Walter said.

“One last thing,” he said. “Don’t be surprised at anything I do. I might have to do some things that make you sick. I might have to do some things that make you not so goddamn proud of your old man. Well, that’s too bad. You’re in it all the way now, and you got to go along with everything I do, and don’t you flinch in there, don’t you panic, don’t show a thing in your face, either. Or we’re liable to die. Now. Do you understand, Walter?”

He’d heard all this before, too. His father had gone over all of this, many times, during the past week at the lodge, though there he’d always seemed calm and now Walter wasn’t sure. And he’d told Walter how they would go about the robbery, though he’d been vague about certain aspects. But when Walter asked him what was the purpose of the robbery, was it just money? Would they be going to Mexico or Canada or South America or something to start a new life on this money? This isn’t about money, his father had said, this is a matter of blood. And that was all he would say.

“Do you understand, Walter?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Here we go then,” and the older man turned the key in the ignition of the car and pulled across the street, up to the side door of the antique shop.

5

A bell was ringing. Planner sat up suddenly straight in the soft old easy chair behind the counter; he’d been dozing. The bell kept ringing. Is that the phone? Planner got up. Is that you, Nolan? Is that your call? The bell rang on and Planner said, silently, no. Somebody at the side door.

He took time out to light himself a fresh Garcia y Vega before answering the door. He had to get rid of the sour taste in his mouth. He wondered how his mouth could taste so foul from sleeping, why, not more than fifteen minutes, a half hour. You’d think he’d slept for twelve hours, as bad as the taste was. He puffed the cigar until he felt he could live with his mouth and then slowly moved toward the side door, the bell still going.

“All right, all right,” Planner muttered, “hold your damn horses, Jesus almighty.”

He unlocked the side door and looked through the screen at the two men standing out on the cement stoop. One of them was old, maybe fifty-five, maybe more; the other was much younger, maybe twenty, twenty-five at the most. Both of them looked like tourists, probably staying at Lake McBride. They had on bright swirling-colored shirts that almost hurt to look at; be better off looking into the sun dead on. Father and his kid, most likely. Both of them had the same dark eyes, set close together, and the same general frame.

Planner tried to say, “Yes?” but his voice cracked and it came out a croak. He cleared his throat, kicked open the screen door and shot a clot of phlegm out on the gravel to the left of where the older man was standing. He grinned. He said, “Excuse me, boys, you caught me napping. Not quite awake yet. What can I do for you?”

The older guy said, “We have some things here we’d like to have appraised.”

Oh, shit. Should’ve known, Planner thought. Christ, what a nuisance. Sitting here waiting for Nolan to call, anxious as hell, and somebody comes around with piddling shit like this.

“I don’t do much appraising,” Planner said.

“We have some real nice china in the car,” the older man said. “We have some real nice pieces.”

“Well...”

“You can make us an offer, or you can just tell us what you think they’re worth. We’d be much obliged.”

“I usually charge for appraising,” Planner said. He wondered how he could be so petty; why didn’t he just tell them come on in and take a look at their damn china. But he was irritated, irritated Nolan hadn’t called yet, and couldn’t help himself taking it out on these nice folks.

“How much?”

The older man seemed to be getting a shade irritated himself, Planner thought, and with just cause, he supposed.

“Oh, a dollar,” Planner said. “But what the hell... come on in and I’ll tell you what I think of the stuff. Never mind the buck.”

“Thank you,” the older man said.

The younger one said nothing. He looked kind of pale. He wasn’t the healthiest-looking kid Planner had ever seen.

“I’ll get the box,” the older man said, and he went to the car and got a big cardboard box out of the front seat.

What’s wrong with that kid? Planner wondered. Letting his father carry that box. What was wrong with him?

Planner held the screen door open for the older man and the boy followed close on the man’s heels. Planner shut the screen and locked the side door. He didn’t like anyone coming in the side door, and besides, he had to keep it shut to keep the air-conditioning circulating.

Right away, the young man walked up to the front of the store and started browsing. Almost immediately he found the display case of political buttons and looked in at them. In spite of himself, Planner felt proud; no one could resist his buttons.

At the rear of the store, the older man was setting the large box on the counter, which ran from the front of the store clear back. The counter had once been used as the bar in a saloon back in Iowa City’s pioneer days, and was one of the more valuable antiques in the store, though it was roughed up and scarred and chipped from daily use for a century or so. Planner let out a sigh. The sigh was one part boredom, the other part anticipation. Well, he thought, might as well see what this fella has in the box; maybe it’ll take my mind off waiting for Nolan to call.

The older man was lifting some newspapers out of the box and laying them on the counter. He said to Planner, “Come take a look at this, I think you’ll find it interesting,” and Planner walked over to him and joined him at the end of the counter. The man reached both arms into the box and came back up holding an automatic in either hand. The automatics were good-size guns, not.45’s, but good size. Nine millimeters, probably. Worst of all, Planner thought, they had silencers on them. That was bad. Very bad. It meant these guys were most likely pros of some kind. Somehow he knew. Somehow Planner knew these men knew about his safe full of money. It’s all your fault, Nolan, he thought.

The older man nodded to the younger man, who was still in the front of the store. The younger man locked the front door; it was a Yale lock and was no trouble. He turned the sign around on the door so that the side reading “Closed” faced out, while the “Open” faced in. He hadn’t really been interested in buttons at all. He walked back and joined the older man and Planner. The older man gave the boy one of the silenced automatics. The boy held it tight and with some effort, as though the gun were very heavy. As though it were an anvil he was holding.

The older man watched the boy for a moment to make sure he was all right. Then he said, “Let’s go in your back room and talk. I don’t want nobody looking in the windows and seeing us talking. They might get suspicious, seeing we got a couple of goddamn guns.”

Planner didn’t like the older man. He appeared to be cool, calm, and collected, but there was a manic edge to his voice. He wasn’t crazy about the nervous kid, either. He wished he was in Tahiti.

Also, he wasn’t crazy about taking them into the backroom. There were two rooms directly behind where they were standing, and in the farthest one back was the safe. Planner would have liked to have been behind the counter, up by the cash register. He kept a Colt.32 automatic under the counter by the cash register. It wasn’t a big gun, because he didn’t want a lot of bullets flying and messing up his store, in case of a robbery; a.32 was big enough to do whatever was needed. But right now he wished it was a.357 magnum, so he could blow these fuckers into a million bloody pieces. He didn’t like either one of them at all.

“Move it,” the older man said. He shoved Planner’s shoulder with the heel of his hand.

Planner said, “All right,” and led them into the first of the backrooms. He pulled the string on the overhead hanging bulb. The room was full of boxed and crated antiques Planner was saving for some hazy future use.

“Where’s the safe?” the older man said.

Planner smiled. He’d been right! He’d been right. They knew. They did know.

The older man slapped Planner across the face with the silenced gun. The blood was salty in his mouth. The older man said, “Where’s the goddamn safe?”

“This way,” Planner said.

That’s okay, Planner thought. He had almost forgotten, but now he fully remembered that the safe was the best place in the world to lead them. Because the twin of that.32 automatic was in the safe. Tucked behind the piles of money. Waiting.

“Okay,” Planner said, tugging on the string on this room’s overhead light. This room, too, was full of crates and boxes, as well as some old chairs and tables in need of repair. There was a small work area in one corner where Planner did his own mending. In the other corner was the big old gray metal safe. So old the name of the company was worn off. A good man could open it up in ten minutes. Planner had never bought a newer, more burglarproof (ha!) safe because it seemed foolish — after all, the only people who knew that he kept goodly amounts of cash in the safe were his friends, and he had the kind of friends who could open any safe, so why bother?

“Open it,” the older man said. The younger man was standing behind him with the empty cardboard box in his arms, the silenced automatic peeking around one side of it.

That was just what Planner wanted to do. He wanted to open that safe and bring his hand out shooting that.32. But he didn’t want to be obvious.

So he said, “No.”

The older man slapped him across the face with the silenced gun again and Planner’s upper plate flew out onto the floor. The floor was all dusty and dirty and now so was his plate. He wished Jon had cleaned this room up yesterday, as he was supposed to. Feeling silly with only half his teeth in his head, he said, “You lousy son of a bitch, put that gun away and I could whale the crap out of you.”

The older man hit him again, in the stomach this time, and Planner lay down on the floor. It didn’t hurt all that bad, but he figured if he acted as if it did, maybe the guy would stop hitting him. He shouldn’t have got mad at the guy and sworn at him like that. That was stupid. He looked up and said, “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

“A friend of a friend,” the older man said. “Now open that goddamn safe.”

“What made you want to rob me for? I’m just an old feller trying to make a buck. There’s nothing in there worth taking. Oh, sure, I keep a few of my prize heirlooms in there. I’ll admit it. They’re worth some money, sure, but they mainly just make an old man happy in his last days.”

“Cut the crap,” the older man said, kicking Planner in the side. “Open the goddamn safe, I said. You can keep the heirlooms, you goddamn old buzzard, and we’ll take the money.”

Planner just looked at him.

“That’s right,” the older man said. “There’s a lot of goddamn money in that safe, isn’t there? You know it and I know it. Forget about pretending and open it.”

“Nolan will come after you,” Planner said. “I feel sorry for you bastards when Nolan comes after you.”

Something funny glittered in the older man’s eyes. He kicked Planner again and said, “Open it. Open it.”

Planner got to his feet, said, “All right, okay,” and dialed the combination lock. The latch creaked as he opened the heavy door, which swung out on its hinges to reveal six shelves, lined with stacked green.

“Jesus,” the younger man said, awestruck. It was the first word he’d uttered since coming into the store.

The older man said nothing. He just smiled, a grim, tight sort of smile, and nodded his head.

Planner said, “Toss that box over here and I’ll help you load it up, damn it,” and reached into the safe. He felt behind the stacks of money on the middle shelf, found the cold metallic surface of the automatic. He wrapped his fingers around the gun and swung his arm out, firing. Money scattered as his arm knocked stacks from the shelf, and the contact with the stacks of cash were probably what threw his aim off. The bullet splintered into the gray wood behind the older man, between him and the boy, and Planner knew he was in trouble.

He tried to drop to the floor, so he could roll and keep firing, but the room was too small, and he was too old and too slow. He was moving when he got hit by the first shot, which he didn’t even hear. He was motionless when the silenced automatic snicked and the second bullet caught him in the stomach, two small bubbling holes in his gut, and the back of him felt wet, and he felt warm, he felt hot, he felt afire, and he went to sleep.

A bell was ringing. Distant. He woke up. The older man and the younger man were on their haunches, packing the money into the big cardboard box. The box was just big enough to take all of the money. The older man said, “We can lay newspaper over the top of it, and stuff it down so we don’t go dropping money behind us. That’d be a hell of a goddamn trail to leave.” Planner’s stomach felt warm. His hand felt cold. No, something in his hand. The gun! They hadn’t taken the gun away from him. The gun!

He fired and caught the older man in the thigh. It knocked both of them down, the older man knocking into the younger, and upsetting the box of money. The older man said something unintelligible, and his gun snicked and Planner felt the third bullet enter his stomach, and he thought, Christ no! Not my stomach, I’ve got two there already. Jesus.

A bell was ringing. Distant. The phone! Nolan! Nolan, thank God!

Relieved, he died.

Two

1

The day he turned fifty, Nolan didn’t feel old anymore.

For the several years approaching this day — the day marking the start of his fiftieth year, the day he’d come to regard as the starting gun for senility — for these two long years he had become increasingly paranoid about old age. About becoming an old man: a codger; a coot. The time would’ve come for trading in his.38 Smith and Wesson for a cane and a spot on the bench in front of a court house in some small town somewhere.

Or in a rest home. In his nightmares he saw himself, a vegetable, a shell of a man, emaciated, sprawled on a bed in a ward full of other wrinkled husks of once men, tubes running into and out of his arms and nose and crotch, bottles of amber fluid hanging beside his bed, dangling like shrunken heads. The root of his dream came, no doubt, from the two occasions in the past two years when he’d been bedridden, the first time for three months, the second for six. Both times he’d been down with bullet wounds, the second time being the more serious, as he had been just barely healed up from the prior wound when these slugs entered his left side, the same approximate area of his body as before. It was during that second, more precarious ordeal that the rest home dream had begun, first as one of countless other feverish, delirious dreams, then as a recurring nightmare.

But that doctor had pulled him through, somehow, despite his great loss of blood. The doctor himself had said it was impossible to save him, but Nolan’s whispered, almost deathbed offer of, “Five grand extra if I live,” proved the trick. Money was indeed the world’s most potent miracle drug.

And now today, his birthday, fifty candles on his cake, today he felt fine, just fine. Emaciated? A shell of a man? He sat up in bed, patted his pot belly and laughed like Buddha getting his feet tickled. He felt young. He felt good.

He also felt tired, even though he’d just woken up.

But not very. He felt more good than he did tired, and why shouldn’t he feel tired? He had a right to be tired, damn it. He ought to be hung over as hell, after all that drinking last night, and he wasn’t. And he ought to be feeling physically drained, after the extended bedroom athletics with Sherry, but he didn’t. The way he acted last night you’d have thought he was a soldier on his last night before shipping overseas. Well, the morrow was here and the war had been declared over and he had his discharge papers and he felt fine.

He patted the ass of the sleeping girl next to him. She was a pretty thing, a sweet thing, a pleasant and very young plaything, who had made his summer pretty, sweet, and pleasant. And young. He knew now, in a sudden flash of self-awareness, his reason for choosing a girl, how old? Twenty? Nineteen? Better be eighteen at least. That would be the crowning touch, wouldn’t it? Of all the things Nolan had done in a long, enjoyable lifetime of crime, to get busted for statutory rape! He’d get laughed out of the business.

Right now, though, he was doing the laughing. At himself. For picking out a girl who was, yes, young enough to be his daughter. For all he knew she was his daughter; he’d never been one for keeping track of those things. He stroked her ass again and she groaned in her sleep and turned over, stretching out, her long, lithe, naked body pearled with sweat. Her legs were parted. The fountain of youth, Nolan thought, and laughed again.

He sat back in bed and listened to the girl snore. She snored like a man and he’d at first found it amusing and later it started to bug him; his present mood had him finding her snoring amusing again. She was a slender girl, with frosted hair that arced gently round a face that was all big blue eyes and pouty mouth and a semi-false look of innocence.

He thought back, with some affection, to the first time he’d seen Sherry. She was spilling coffee into a customer’s lap. The customer called her a stupid bitch and Nolan asked the man to please keep his voice down and watch where he was throwing his abusive language, and the customer had said he didn’t care, she was still a stupid bitch, and Nolan told him to get the hell out, which he did, and then Nolan took the shaken girl into his private office and sat her down and called her a stupid bitch and fired her.

She had started to cry, of course, and he’d given her a reprimand and let it go at that, since it was her first day on the job. That was his problem, Nolan knew. He was just too damn softhearted. Once on a bank job, a guy whom Nolan had jumped on for roughing up employees needlessly, had said to him, “Shit, man, you probably cry at Disney pitchers,” and though the remark wasn’t true, it had struck home. Also, Nolan had struck the guy.

But for the next week the reports continued. She spilled coffee, tea, and milk, and plates and trays of food constantly into customer laps. If just once she could have landed the crap on the floor, even, but no... into lap after lap after lap, and soon she was on the carpet again, getting one of Nolan’s lectures, and then she was crying and suddenly was on Nolan’s lap. Which was certainly an improvement over drinks and food, and as the tears welled out, so did a sob story about how much she needed this summer’s job to pay for her college. This was patently untrue, Nolan knew. She had dropped out of college, according to the data on her application form, and as far as he knew, her main reason for taking a summer job at the Tropical was to get a nice tan.

However, he liked the feel of her in his lap, and before long Sherry was back on the carpet, but in a different sense, and out of her waitress uniform both temporarily and permanently. By that afternoon her name was listed on the payroll as “Social Consultant.” And so began a relationship that was clearly immoral, entirely corrupt and wholly enjoyable.

“Unnngghhh,” she said. Her eyes were still closed.

Nolan said, “Did you say something?”

“Ungh... what time is it, honey?”

Nolan looked at his wristwatch. “Five after two.”

“Morning or afternoon?”

“Afternoon.”

“We miss breakfast?”

“And lunch.”

“I’m hungry, honey.” Her eyes were open now; half open, anyway.

“That’s understandable,” Nolan said.

“What do they call it when you mix breakfast and lunch together?”

“A goddamn mess.”

“Don’t tease me, honey.”

“You call it brunch.”

“That’s right. Brunch. Let’s have brunch.”

“Good idea. Scrambled eggs and bacon and toast?”

“Good idea, honey.”

He sat on the edge of the bed and used the phone. “This is Logan. Put Brooks on.” Logan was the name Nolan was using right now.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Logan.”

“Good morning, Brooks. Send my usual breakfast over, will you?”

“For two?”

“I said my usual breakfast, didn’t I? And Brooks?”

“Yes, Mr. Logan?”

“You scramble the damn things, this time. With milk and some grated cheese the way you do. Don’t put one of those half-ass college kids on it, for Christ’s sake.”

“When did I ever do that to you, Mr. Logan?”

“Yesterday.”

“I’ll get right on it, Mr. Logan.”

Sherry was getting out of bed, jiggling over to the dresser where she’d left her bikini. He watched her get into it. The bikini was innocence-white and Sherry was berry-brown.

Happy birthday, you bastard, he said to himself, grinning. You’re finally getting there. He was really enjoying this job, even though it was only temporary, only a trial run. The place was called the Tropical Motel, and consisted of one building, half restaurant and half bar-with-entertainment, and four buildings with sixteen motel units in each. There were also two swimming pools, both heated, one indoor, one out. The Tropical was located ten miles outside of Sycamore, Illinois, and was devoted to serving newlyweds of all ages, regardless of race, creed, or actual marital status. Nolan had known nothing about running the hotel end of it, but had been given sufficient help, so no sweat. What he was good at was running nightclubs and restaurants, that was something he’d done for years, though admittedly it had been years since he’d done it.

Seventeen, eighteen years, in fact, since the trouble with Charlie put an end to his career as a nitery manager. Nolan had managed several Chicago clubs to great success, but those clubs were owned by the Family. Of the many Families around the country (loosely united and known by various names — Syndicate, Mafia, Cosa Nostra, etc.), the Chicago outfit was the single biggest, most powerful Family of them all, and was in a very real sense the Family. And Charlie was one of the most powerful men in the Family.

It was after a violent clash with Charlie that Nolan had turned professional thief, using his organizational ability to put together strings of specialists who under his command pulled off one successful robbery after another. The world of organized crime and professional thievery don’t intersect as often as you might think, and Nolan steered clear of his old enemy Charlie for many years, without much trouble, just by staying away from places owned or controlled by the Family, avoiding Chicago itself altogether. Besides, a pro thief generally shied away from hitting any Syndicate operations, anyway, out of inter-professional courtesy.

Last year, though, Nolan had returned to the Chicago area, thinking that after sixteen years the feud with Charlie was past history. That led to the first of his two injuries: one of Charlie’s men had spotted Nolan in Cicero and tagged him with a bullet. Later, Nolan and Charlie met for a meeting of truce, in which Nolan agreed to pay Charlie a set amount of money to repay past damages. The treaty was signed but broken by Charlie, and that had led to Nolan’s second and near-fatal trial by gunfire.

And then, after months holed-up recuperating, word filtered down to Nolan that the Family wanted to send a representative to meet with him. The representative was to be Felix, counselor in the Family, a lawyer with a single client. Sending the legal arm of the Family meant reconciliation was not only possible, but imminent.

Which was beautiful, because Nolan had nearly four hundred thousand dollars and the inclination to set himself up in business with a restaurant or nightclub or both, but he wanted all past wounds with the Family to be healed before making a move.

Nolan had conferred with the man named Felix in a room in a motel at the LaSalle-Peru exit on Interstate 80. Felix had said, “We want to thank you, Mr. Nolan.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. “What for?”

“For exposing that idiot for the idiot he was.”

“Charlie, you mean.”

“Yes,” Felix had said. Felix was a small man, about five-four. His hair was gray and modishly long and his face was gray and he wore a well-cut gray suit and a tie the color of peaches. Felix could have been thirty or he could have been fifty or anywhere along the road between.

“You said ‘was,’ ” Nolan said.

“That’s right. Charlie is no longer a problem.”

“You mean Charlie’s dead.”

“Excuse my euphemism. Force of habit. Charlie is most certainly dead.”

“Maybe we ought to have a moment of silence or something.”

“The news hasn’t broken yet,” Felix said, pleasantly, “but you should be seeing something about the tragic event in the papers and on television this evening and tomorrow morning — though a ‘gangland leader’ who dies in an automobile mishap does not make nearly as good copy as one who dies by the gun.”

Nolan began to understand Felix’s friendly attitude. Nolan knew that the Family in Chicago had been much torn with political maneuvering within ranks, as for several years now the Chicago Boss of All Bosses had been living in Argentina in self-imposed exile to avoid prosecution on a narcotics charge. With the top seat vacant but still unattainable, underboss Charlie was the man with most authority, though even he was not wholly in command, as the exiled overlord had (perhaps unwisely) spread his authority out among a number of men, unwilling to see anyone gain total control. Nolan looked at Felix and realized that the lawyer was representing an anti-Charlie faction, which had apparently won their power struggle, having just pulled a relatively bloodless coup.

Which was no doubt supported by members on the executive council of the national organization of Families, who sympathized with these younger, anti-Charlie forces in the Chicago outfit. The sympathy was a chauvinistic one, as the other Families throughout the nation weren’t nearly as strong as Chicago. New York alone had five weaker, sometimes warring Families to Chicago’s powerful, monolithic one. Dumping Charlie would further destroy the strong center of power in the windy city, spreading the biggest Family in the country out among younger, less dominant gang leaders. It was all very similar to chess, or Cold War politics.

“I think we could find a place for you in the Family, Mr. Nolan,” Felix was saying.

“Like you found a place for Charlie?”

“Please. I would hope we’re here in mutual friendship, and good will.”

“Anybody who tells me Charlie is dead is a friend of mine.”

“I must say you exposed him ingeniously, and I’m sure if I knew all the details, every twist and turn of the scheme, I’d be all the more impressed.”

What Felix was referring to was something Nolan had done to countercheck Charlie in case of a double cross. When Charlie had agreed to make peace with Nolan — for a price — Nolan had included “bait money” in with the payoff, that being the marked bills from a recent bank job. Nolan’s intention had been to see if Charlie stuck by his word, and then if so, tell him about the marked bills. Charlie hadn’t, and months later, when one of the Family fences had tried to circulate those bills for Charlie, bad things started happening. Lawyers and judges-on-the-take got the trouble cleared up, but the anti-Charlie forces in the Family (with the support of the national Executive Council of Families, no doubt) had evidently seized upon the incident to depose the longtime under-boss, since Charlie’s dealings with Nolan had been behind Family backs and in violation of several council rulings. It had all worked pretty much as Nolan had intended it to.

“What about the others?” Nolan asked. “Werner? Tillis?”

These were two other men involved in Charlie’s plotting. Werner was a major cog in the wheel; Tillis was a black gunman Nolan rather liked.

“Werner is no longer a problem. And Tillis has proved helpful in Charlie’s removal. He’s working in Milwaukee now.”

“Tillis is a good man. I’m glad he’s still around.”

“And what are your plans?”

Nolan told Felix of his vague notions to start something up... a nightclub, a restaurant, something.

“We have several openings along those lines ourselves.”

“Strictly legitimate or I’m not interested. I’m retiring. I’m an old man.”

“Old? You’re scarcely fifty.”

“I’m forty-nine and I feel eighty. You ought to see my fucking side. I’d show it to you only I got to keep the bandage on because it’s draining pus. It’s a twisted bunch of stitched purple skin from where I took three bullets that by all rights should’ve killed me. Sometimes I think I did die and was resurrected and I’m Jesus Christ. But I’m not. What I am is skinny and sick and I want out of that life.”

“Strictly legitimate. We have some big openings.” Felix mentioned several of them; one was a major resort, a multi-million-dollar operation; another was a huge, beautiful, fantastically successful combination restaurant and nightclub.

“I was thinking something smaller,” Nolan said. He was stunned but he kept it inside. “Why would you put me into something as major as those places?”

“It would require an investment on your part. An investment as major as those places I mentioned.”

And then it was down-to-brass-tacks time. After much further conversation, the bottom line was this: if Nolan would invest $150,000 in the operation of his choice, he would gain twenty percent ownership and a managerial salary of $40,000 per annum with a five-year ironclad contract. It was the dream of his life, but he held back his enthusiasm. He insisted on some assurance of the Family’s good faith and intentions; perhaps a period of time during which he could prove himself to them, in some managerial capacity, while they in turn proved their trust in him. Felix said that not only did he concur with Nolan’s suggestion, but that such an arrangement was a stipulation of the agreement. Nolan would take over management of the Tropical Motel for one year, as a trial run.

“Are you tired of this bikini?” Sherry was saying.

“No,” Nolan said.

“You’ve been looking at it all summer.”

“I’m not tired of it. It’s terrific.”

“Well, if you’re tired of it, I’ll have to go get a new one. That’s all there is to it.”

The phone rang on the nightstand and Nolan picked off the receiver and said, “Yeah?”

“Mr. Logan. Good afternoon.”

It was Felix.

“When did you get in?” Nolan said.

“Half an hour ago. Are things in order for the switch?”

“I’ll just want to get together with you and see what you have in mind.”

“Fine. Is the man in Iowa ready?”

“I’m sure he is. I’ve been waiting for your call, so I can call him.”

“Good. I’m in building three, room one. Come over in ten minutes and we’ll make final arrangements.”

Nolan said fine and thumbed down the button on the phone, let it up and got the switchboard girl. He asked her to get him long distance and had a call put through to Planner. He listened as the phone rang and rang. He waited a long time. The store is long, he thought, and Planner is old; he could have customers. He waited and waited, then finally gave up. The old guy probably just stepped out for something. Across the street for an ice cream cone, maybe. And that damn Jon’s probably buried in his room reading comic books, Nolan thought, gone to the world. He smiled in spite of himself. He hung up the phone.

Sherry said, “Brunch is at the door, honey.”

“Let it in,” he said, grabbing his trousers off a chair and pulling them on. He would have his breakfast now and phone Planner again later.

2

Greer hadn’t killed anybody for two years now. He sat on the edge of the bed, arms dangling at his sides, and looked at the snub-nosed.38 Colt in his lap. He studied the gun, regarded it curiously, as though he expected the object to speak. “I wonder,” he said aloud. He was wondering if he was losing his edge.

He was a small, dark, baby-faced man. He’d been told by more than one woman that he looked like the late Audie Murphy, famous war hero and actor, the main difference being Greer was balding and his chin was sort of weak. He had the build of a fullback, scaled down somewhat, and the arms hanging loose at his sides were heavy with veined muscle.

He was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt and a dark green tie and white trousers. Under his arms were sweat stains and the loops of his shoulder holster, which X’d across the back of the white shirt. On the bed beside him was a light green sportcoat, cut especially to accommodate a shoulder-bolstered gun. He had never gotten used to this year-round, constant wearing of suits and sportcoats, though he’d been doing so since starting with Felix two summers ago. He was glad the motel room was air-conditioned, and even the blue stucco walls were cool, cooling to the sight, as was the light blue shag carpet.

The door opened and Angelo came in, carrying the room key in one hand and two ice-cold Pabsts by their necks in the other. He was six feet tall, a thin man with a round lumpy face; it was a fat man’s face, because up until recent months Angelo had been fat, and while he was trim everywhere else, he still had his double chin, puffy cheeks, and a bumpy, thick nose that all the dieting in the world wouldn’t do anything about. Angelo kicked the door shut. He was wearing a pink sportcoat and white shirt and red tie and white trousers.

“Just two beers, Ange?”

“Hey, baby, we’re on call, right? Just wet the whistles, that’s all. Never mind the good time.”

“Toss one here. Where’s the opener?”

“Don’t need one. Twist-off caps.”

“Ain’t science grand.”

Angelo sat on the twin bed opposite Greer’s. Angelo looked strange, fat head on skinny body, as if one person’s face was being superimposed somehow over the body of another. Greer twisted off the cap and swigged. So did Angelo.

Angelo said, “Hey, Greer.”

“Hey, what?”

“What d’you think of these clothes we’re wearing?”

“What d’you think?”

“I think I feel like a fairy.”

“You look like one.”

“Shit, cut it out. What d’you suppose people think when they see a couple guys dressed like us going into a motel room together?”

“I don’t know what they think. They think to each his own, I suppose.”

“Well, I feel like a fairy. Why does Felix dress us up like this, I want to know.”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“Funny man. I’ll tell you why, it’s because he thinks we look less conspicuous dressed like this. Because we got to wear coats to cover up our guns and since it’s summer he doesn’t want us to look like pallbearers in black or something, so we walk around instead like a couple of fairies.”

“Golf pros dress like this,” Greer said. “Golf pros are athletes, aren’t they? You know any fairy athletes?”

“Golf pros aren’t athletes. Football players are athletes. Hockey players are athletes.”

“Drink your beer, fairy.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay. Just next time you go into the bar after it, okay? Greer.”

“Huh?”

“Greer, what you doing with your gun in your lap?”

“Nothing.”

“Beating it off, or what?” Angelo laughed and swallowed at the same time and it sounded like something going down a drain.

“You’re funny as a crutch, Ange.”

“Hey, you uptight today? Something on your mind today, Greer? Your forehead’s all wrinkled up. You been thinking again?”

“Look,” Greer said, “quit being cute long enough to tell me something. How long you been doing this bodyguard thing for Felix, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Maybe three years. Yeah, three years, a year longer than you.”

“What were you doing before that?”

Angelo smiled. “People borrow money they sometimes forget to pay back and somebody’s got to remind them of their obligation. You know.” Angelo laughed and swallowed again.

“Backing up the shylocks,” Greer said. “Pretty tough work. You have to kill guys sometimes doing work like that.”

Angelo nodded. “Not often, though. It’s bad business. How you going to get money out of a dead guy?”

“I used to hit guys,” Greer said.

“Yeah, you told me before. You were a real scary guy.”

“I used to do hits for Tony Action.”

“Sure, Tony Action. Mr. Machismo. They say he tied his wife to a chair in the kitchen and poured gas on her and gave her a light. That’s one way to duck divorce. Now me, my wife ties me up in the kitchen and feeds me her food and I get gas.” Angelo thought that was pretty funny. This time he devoted all his attention to laughing, no swallowing at all.

“Tony Action was really something,” Greer said. “You can laugh, but man, I mean to tell you. Really something.”

“Well, Tony is dead now, and I for one am never sorry to see one of those flashy tough asses get their ass shot off, they attract attention and give the rest of us a bad name, and you ought to be glad you had a reputation for being good help. Most of Tony’s guys got stepped down. You’re the only one who got fucking promoted.”

“I was lucky,” Greer said. “Don’t get me wrong. Working for Felix is good. It’s a good job. It’s just...”

“It’s just what?”

“I feel I’m getting soft in this job,” Greer said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s like you say... we wear pink coats and follow a lawyer around, that’s what I mean.”

“You rather lay your balls on the chopping block every day? You’re a fucking nut.”

“No, no... it’s just that even though we’re following a lawyer around, we’re carrying guns, and that means we’re here because there’s some chance something might happen. And when it happens, I don’t want to be out of shape, you know?”

“Hey, Greer, tell you what... let’s go sit in the bar and wait till some fruits pick us up and bring them back here and you can beat the fuck out of ’em. How does that sound?” Angelo laughed-swallowed. He couldn’t have been having a better time at a party.

“You got a warped sense of humor, Ange. You really do.”

“What is it? You think maybe something’s going to happen on that overnight hike you’re going on tonight? Don’t worry, that guy Nolan will be along to protect you. Or is that it? Is that who you’re nervous about?”

“Bullshit.”

“Say, Felix isn’t going to try and cross this guy Nolan, is he? Is that why you’re nervous, baby?”

“Why don’t you just finish your beer, Angelo.”

“They tell stories about Nolan. He never burned up any women in the kitchen, but they tell stories about him.”

“Look,” Greer said, “all Felix said was I’d be going along. My understanding is that the guy has some money stashed somewhere, and that I’m supposed to escort him and the cash to one of our Chicago banks. If I’m worried about anything, it’s that money. All that money’s a big responsibility.”

“How much is it, anyway?”

“Felix wasn’t specific. I’d guess a couple hundred thousand, at least.”

“That’s probably right,” Angelo nodded. “You know I heard Felix say Nolan was behind that bank heist in Iowa a year or two back. The one that came close to eight hundred thousand. There were three or four men in on the job, I think. So he ought to have a couple hundred thousand at least is right.”

“Should,” Greer said. He sipped the beer. “Uh, what kind of stories you heard about him?”

“You ever hear how the thing between him and Charlie got going?”

“That’s before my time.”

“Mine, too. But my older brother Vinnie... you know Vinnie?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s in his era. Told me all about it. Charlie had a brother name of Gordon, an asshole from way back, and Charlie set this asshole Gordon up with part of the Chicago action. A bigger part than Gordon could handle, according to Vinnie. Anyway, Nolan is managing nightclubs and making quite a rep. He takes over a loser on Rush Street and turns it into a moneymaker in two months. And he does his own bouncing, I might add. So this Gordon, not content to leave ride a good thing, tries to move Nolan out of the club racket into strongarm, of all things. Nolan doesn’t want no part of enforcer stuff, and tells Gordon so. Now Gordon was a lot like Charlie, see, only less brains. All the pride, but lots less brains. And so Gordon tells Nolan, look, he doesn’t care, if he says crap, Nolan is supposed to ask how high, and that line of garbage. He tells Nolan to kill a guy, some guy who’s a friend of Nolan’s who works in his club. Nolan says no way. A few days go by and this guy, this friend of Nolan’s, turns up in Lake Michigan and he isn’t swimming. Nolan gets mad. He goes to Gordon and shoots the asshole and splits with twenty grand of the Family’s money.”

Greer smiled. He put his gun in his shoulder holster. “So that’s why Charlie hated Nolan so much. Nolan killed his brother.”

Angelo smirked, batted a hand at the air, “Oh, hell, Gordon was no loss to anybody. Not even Charlie. It was pride. Keep in mind Charlie’s pride, Greer. That was one puffed-up son of a bitch. Nolan’s play made a fool out of Charlie. He killed Charlie’s brother, right? And he stole Charlie’s money. And he got away clean. Worst of all, he got away clean. For years Charlie had an open contract out on Nolan. Nobody collected. Made Charlie look bad. Real bad. When all this happened, nearly twenty years ago, Charlie was underboss in Chicago. The day Charlie died he was still the same damn thing.”

Greer nodded. “And he probably died blaming that on Nolan.”

“Probably,” Angelo agreed. He sighed. “I could use another beer.”

“Me, too.”

“But we’re on call, better not. And besides, I’m not about to go walking into that bar again. A guy practically whistled at me last time.” Angelo grinned, tried to drain one last drop out of the Pabst.

The phone on the nightstand rang. Angelo reached over and answered it. He said, “Yes, sir... yes, sir... right away, sir.” He hung up.

Greer said, “Felix?”

“Felix,” Angelo said. “I think we’re about to get a nice close look at this guy Nolan. Come on.”

Greer put on his coat.

3

After brunch, Nolan called the bar and had them send over some beer in a cooler to Felix’s room. Send over eight bottles, he said, five Schlitz and three German imported. Nolan didn’t know if Felix drank beer, but it seemed early in the day for anything else, and if Felix did drink beer, it would be German imported.

He pushed the tray of dishes aside, got up from the edge of the bed where he’d been sitting and eating, and went to the bureau where he took out a dark yellow short-sleeve Banlon and pulled it on. He got a brown sports jacket out of the closet and put it on.

“Doesn’t go with your slacks,” Sherry said.

His slacks were black.

Nolan nodded, took off the coat, and hung it back in the closet. He found a charcoal gray sports jacket and climbed into it. He turned to Sherry, who was still eating her eggs, for approval.

“That’s better,” she said.

“One thing,” he said, “I can’t figure out.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“What are you, my mother, sister, or daughter?”

She grinned, cheeks puffed with food. “Whichever’s dirtiest,” she said, not too distinctly.

He grinned at her, feeling affection for her against his best judgment. “See you later,” he said.

“How long you going to be?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll be at the pool.”

“I kind of figured that.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Your bikini.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, I’m not going to swim, just going to sun.”

“You get much more sun you’re going to have to ride in the back of the bus.”

“I will? Why?”

“That was a joke.”

“Really? Must’ve been before my time or something.”

He sighed. “Everything’s before your time.”

“Don’t belittle me, Logan. I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.”

“Yes you were. Yesterday. Just yesterday.”

“Give us a kiss.”

He went over and pecked her forehead.

“A kiss, dammit.”

“You got egg on your mouth.”

“I’ll wipe it off.”

She did, and he kissed her, but it still tasted like eggs. Maybe it was just his imagination. He kissed her again. No, he thought, eggs, all right.

“Sorry I didn’t get your joke,” she said.

“It wasn’t much of a joke,” he said.

“Well, you can’t expect me to be looking for jokes from you. You don’t make jokes that often. Next time tell me first.”

“Are you saying I don’t have a sense of humor?”

“Let’s just say it wasn’t what attracted me to you.”

“I must have a sense of humor.”

“Why?”

“I put up with you, don’t I?”

She made a mock-angry face and said, “Happy birthday, you S.O.B.”

“How’d you know it was my birthday?”

“You told me last night, or I mean this morning. You were pretty drunk. You sang yourself the ‘Happy Birthday’ song.”

“Told you I had a sense of humor. Did I really do that? After a certain point things get a little hazy. Did I do it in front of anybody, for Christ’s sake?”

“Just me. We were back in the room by then, with the champagne.”

“I don’t remember any of that.”

She pointed toward the corner by her side of the bed and sure enough, there was an empty bottle of champagne, lying on its side like a casualty of war. Two water glasses had in them each a quarter of an inch or so of by now very flat champagne. It was, unfortunately, all coming back to him.

“Do me a favor,” he said.

“Sure.”

“Don’t ever tell me what else I did. I got a certain self-image to maintain.”

“Yeah, I know. You’re a tough guy. You told me that, too.”

“Please,” he said. “You’re twisting the knife.”

“Okay, okay. Logan?”

“What?”

“Are you?”

“Are I what?”

“A tough guy?”

“Sure. I eat babies.”

“I hope that’s another joke.”

“Well, it is. Sort of.”

“I been wanting to ask you something for a long time.”

“Ask.”

“Where’d you get all the funny scars?”

“Don’t ask.”

She accepted that graciously, taking a swallow of milk and smiling at him with a milk mustache. “See you later, Logan. I’ll be sunning.”

“At the pool.”

“Right.”

They said goodbye to each other.

When Nolan knocked at Felix’s door, somebody else answered. It was a balding, baby-face guy in a light green coat with a dark green tie. There was a dull hardness to the guy’s matching light green eyes, and he was packing a gun under his left arm, though the coat was cut to hide it. The guy looked familiar but Nolan couldn’t place him.

“Come in, come in,” Felix’s silky voice said, from somewhere behind the gunman.

Nolan came in and found Felix sitting on the edge of the big double bed, at its foot. Felix was wearing a lemon sports coat and lemonade tie. His trousers were tan. His face wasn’t gray this time, but brown, as brown as Sherry’s. Felix had evidently been to Miami recently. His graying hair was styled, covering one fourth of his ears, and he looked overall very with it. Beside him on the bed was an ashtray and a pack of Gauloises Disque Bleu and the ashtray had half a dozen of the cigarettes stubbed out in it. Though Felix wasn’t smoking at the moment, chain smoking probably explained the flaw in Felix’s well-groomed looks: his teeth were as yellow as his sportscoat.

To Felix’s left, sitting on a straightback chair, was another bodyguard, a tall guy with a round face that didn’t quite go with the rest of him. The tall gunman was wearing a pink coat and red tie, which made him look like a fag or something. Felix’s idea of class, probably.

“Shut the door and sit down, Greer,” Felix told the baby-face. Greer did as he was told. “Nolan, my friend, make yourself comfortable. Angelo, give Mr. Nolan your chair.”

Angelo did so.

“And thank you, Nolan,” Felix continued, “for being kind enough to send over some refreshment. Very thoughtful. Would you like something to cool yourself off, Nolan?”

Nolan said, “Get me a Schlitz,” to Angelo.

Felix said, “Lowenbrau, Angelo.”

“And,” Nolan said, “crack open a couple Schlitz for you and what’s-his-name, Angelo.”

Angelo looked to Felix for approval. He got it.

“Thanks,” Angelo said to Nolan. He had a gruff voice that didn’t fit the red coat and tie, as his head didn’t fit his body.

Nolan waited till everybody had beers and then figured all the bullshit preliminaries were over and said, “What’s the word, Felix?”

Felix smiled, turned to Angelo and said, “Bring me a glass,” and Angelo brought him a bathroom glass still wrapped in paper. Felix waited for Angelo to tear off the wrapping and hand him the glass. Then Felix poured the golden liquid out of the green bottle and sipped it and said, “Have you heard from your friend in Iowa?”

“I’m having trouble getting through to him.”

“Trouble?”

“I’ve tried twice. Nothing to worry about. He may try to call me. I told the switchboard girl to route the call to me here in this room if he does.”

“Do you think there could be a problem on his end?”

“No. It’s nothing. You got to understand he’s an eccentric old guy with a mind of his own. He feels like stepping out for a while, he steps out for a while.”

“I see. I hope everything is all right.”

“Everything’s cool. The money’s safe where it is, like it has been for almost a year now. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“I wish I could share your confidence,” Felix said, wagging his head gravely. “I won’t feel safe until the money is in that bank of ours.”

“Me, too, but no sweat. I can’t see how anybody could know where the cash is. Do you know where it is?”

“No,” Felix said.

“Maybe you’re telling the truth,” Nolan said, “I don’t know.” He took a gulp of his beer, giving Felix a chance to say something, then went on. “You know enough to find out, that’s for sure. You know about the bank job, and I went so far as to tell you the money’s stashed in Iowa someplace. Send some boys snooping to find out about me, you could figure where the stuff is, easy enough. Charlie could’ve figured it out, if he wasn’t dead.”

Felix smiled meaninglessly, like a sphinx.

“But nobody else could,” Nolan said. “Unless you leaked what you know about me. Or unless you talked as loose as I am now in front of bodyguard clowns like these two.” Nolan caught out of the corner of his eye Greer narrowing his. “Nobody in my field knows I’m the one who pulled that particular job, and if they did, they sure wouldn’t figure I’d leave the money sit where I did. For this long especially.”

“What you’re saying,” Felix said, taking a genteel sip from his glass of beer, “is this hiding place is so stupid it’s smart.”

Nolan shrugged, took another gulp of beer. They’d been over all of this before, a lot of times. Nolan had resisted handing the money over to the Family immediately because he didn’t trust them, he wanted to fully understand their intentions before making any final steps. Now, after these months at the Tropical, he felt assured that the offer Felix had made in that other room in the motel at the LaSalle-Peru exit on Interstate 80 was legitimate. Of course, even by Family standards the amount of money involved was a sizable one, but it didn’t seem logical that they’d try to get at it through so elaborate a double cross. And why should they double-cross him? Nolan was convinced that the Chicago Family was grateful to him, glad to be rid of Charlie. After all, they had entrusted Nolan with the reins of the Tropical, an expensive bauble for even the Family to be tossing casually around, and had been paying him well for this “trial run.” But still he’d waited until recently to tell Felix he was ready to transfer the money, and it was only yesterday that he’d mentioned to the lawyer that Iowa was where he had to go to get it.

Felix said, “What I had in mind was this. You will leave here this evening, around eight or nine, and arrive in Iowa, wherever in Iowa it is, sometime after midnight, depending on how far you’re going. We have a car for you with a specially rigged trunk compartment, so that you can get stopped by the police, for God knows what reason, and still get by even a fairly thorough search. You will deliver the money to our bank in Riverside an hour and a half before opening — that’s seven-thirty, Daylight Savings Time — and the bank president, a Mr. Shepler, will be waiting for you.”

“Fine. What’s the name of the bank in Riverside and how do I get there?”

“Just leave that to Greer.”

“To who?”

“Greer,” he said, nodding toward the baby-face gunman.

“Why should I leave it to him, Felix?”

“He’ll be accompanying you, Nolan. You wouldn’t want all that money to go unguarded.”

Nolan sighed. He took two long swallows from the Point Special, set the half-empty can on the floor beside his chair and got up. Felix was starting to get on his nerves. Felix was starting to be a pompous ass. Nolan paced for a moment, till the urge to tell Felix those things went away. Then he said, “I don’t like muscle, Felix.”

“Nolan...”

“What do I need muscle for? I can take care of myself.”

“It’s a big responsibility for one man.”

“I’ll pick up somebody else when I get there.”

“Who?”

“Never mind who. The other guy who has a say in where this money is going, that’s who.”

“A partner of yours? Is he capable?”

“All my partners are capable,” he said, but that wasn’t quite true. It was Jon he was talking about, and Jon was just a kid, hardly a seasoned veteran. But Jon was who he wanted, not some mindless strongarm. And he didn’t want any Family accompaniment at all.

Nolan sat back down and finished his beer in one long swig. He was getting surly and he knew it. He supposed he ought to stay nice and businesslike around Felix, but the pompous little prick was getting to him. Nolan put the empty can on the floor. He said, “Greer? Is that your name?”

Greer nodded, sitting forward in his chair. Greer sensed Nolan’s hostility and unbuttoned his green sportscoat.

“Are you good for anything, Greer?” Nolan asked.

Nolan watched the hood bristle, then he said, “Greer, get me a Schlitz.”

Greer got up slowly, a pained look on the baby-face, and went over to the cooler of ice and beer and got one.

Nolan said, “Well, Felix, I suppose if you insist he go along...”

Greer handed Nolan the beer and Nolan reached inside Greer’s coat and took the.38 from out of the underarm holster and pushed the snub-nose up under Greer’s Andy Gump chin.

“You son of a bitch,” Greer hissed.

“Shut up,” Nolan said, pushing him backward, toward the straightback chair. Greer crouched and got a fierce expression on his face, as if he was thinking of doing something. Nolan gave him a look and the hood sat down. Over on the other side of the room Angelo was smiling.

Nolan said, “Felix, is that who you want to go along and protect me?”

Greer waved his hands and said, “I wasn’t expecting...”

“You weren’t expecting,” Nolan said. “I suppose if somebody wants to hit us en route, they’ll announce it.”

Greer said, “You fucking son of a bitch...”

Felix said, “Greer.”

And Greer got quiet.

Nolan examined the gun. “I got no respect for a man who carries a snub-nose,” he said, tossing the gun back to Greer, hard. “You can’t aim the damn things, they shoot different every time. And all that damn fire coming out of the muzzle, and noisy, shit. What kind of bodyguard are you, anyway, carrying a snub-nose?”

“You’ve made your point,” Felix said. “You’ll go alone.”

“Fine,” Nolan said.

Felix was explaining to Nolan how to get to the Riverside bank, drawing a little map on note paper, when the phone rang. Felix told Angelo to answer it and Angelo did, then said, “It’s for somebody named Logan.”

“That’s my name here,” Nolan explained, and went to the phone.

“Nolan?” the phone said. “Nolan, Christ, Nolan, is it you?’

“Jon?” Nolan said. “Calm down, Jon, what’s wrong?”

“It’s Planner, Nolan.”

“What about him?”

“They killed him, Nolan, somebody killed him.”

“Jesus, kid. Stay calm. Don’t go hysterical on me. Jon?”

“Yes. I’m okay.”

“Now tell me about it.”

“He’s dead, Nolan. Planner’s dead.”

“You said that already. He’s dead. Go on.”

“He’s dead, and the money...”

“Yes?”

“It’s gone. All of it.”

Nolan drew a deep breath, let it out.

“Nolan? You okay?”

Suddenly he felt old again.

“Yeah, kid. Go on.”

4

Joey ordered lobster. He sipped his white wine as he watched the waitress sway away, a college girl in a yellow and orange Polynesian-print sarong. Nice ass on the kid, Joey thought, nice ass.

He was a fat, dark little man in a two hundred-and-fifty-dollar suit, a dollar for every pound he weighed. The suit was tan, its coat wide-lapelled, trousers flared. His shirt was rust color and his tie was white and wide and thickly knotted. His hair was black, brought forward to disguise a receding forehead, but skillfully so, by a barber who had shaped the hair well, leaving it long on the sides, partially covering Joey’s flat, splayed ears. Lamb-dropping eyes crowded the bridge of his narrow, hooking nose, and his teeth were white as porcelain. He wore a one-carat diamond pinkie ring on his left hand, and a two-carat diamond ring on the third finger of his right hand.

The wine was calming him down. This was his third glass and his stomach felt pleasantly warm. Not fluttering, as it had when he’d gotten Felix’s call, asking (demanding) in that soft Felix voice for Joey to come down to the Tropical for the evening. Joey’d been angry and afraid, but had shown neither emotion to Felix (hope to God!) and of course had said, yes, yes, sure. He was pissed off, but he said yes, Felix. He was pissless scared, but he said, what time should I be there, Felix?

He’d been angry because it was four o’clock in the damn afternoon when Felix called to say come spend the evening with me. It was what, sixty some miles to the Tropical from the city, and all the rush-hour traffic to contend with on the expressway. And what kind of notice was that, anyway, four fucking o’clock in the afternoon, come down tonight, Jesus.

He’d been afraid because his life had taken on a constant undercurrent of fear since the fall of Charlie, and it took very little to bring that fear bobbing to the surface. He knew he shouldn’t feel that way, but there it was. He knew he was secure in his position. So what if he got his start with the Family because he was Charlie’s cousin, that didn’t mean there was anything to worry about now. He was too high, too big, too important, too valuable. It was unthinkable, Jesus.

After all, think of how much money he’d made for the Chicago Family these past years. How many millions had the housing project shuffle brought the Family coffers? He smiled, sipped the wine. And that was nothing next to the cigarette stamp dodge. When he was fronting that tobacco distributing company, the boys must’ve made fifteen million on the counterfeit tax stamp angle, and when it did fall through and went to court, the judge, being a Family judge, dismissed the case for lack of evidence.

And now, why, shit, he was a public figure. You can’t do nothing to a public figure. He was Joey, for Christ’s sake, not just any Joey, but the Joey, his name up in glittering lights for the whole goddamn town to see. The opening, last year, had been fabulous, greatest day of his life. All the big-name stars and the TV cameras and the reporters, it was something. One of the columnists had said, “Mannheim Road, the West Side’s answer to Rush Street, was the scene of Chicago’s biggest happening since the Fire: the opening of reputed gangland protege Joey Metrano’s $11-million-plus hostelry, Joey Metrano’s Riviera.” And that famous one, Kupcinet (Kup himself!) said, “Joey Metrano, called by some a ‘cheap braggart of a hoodlum,’ has brought Vegas to Chicagoland with his Riviera.”

The lobster came, two nice tails surrounding a butter pot. And speaking of nice tails, that waitress was giving him a honey of a smile as she put the food in front of him. He smiled right back at her, getting mileage out of the caps. She was blonde, or sort of blonde, having kind of light brunette hair streaked or tipped or whatever the hell they called it. When she served his iced tea, she spilled some of it in his lap, and be damned if she didn’t dab it up with a napkin, oh, sweet Jesus. “I’m so sorry, sir,” she said, and he told her the pleasure was all his. When she gave him the baked potato, she brushed a pert breast against his shoulder, and Joey couldn’t help but wonder if it was an invitation, especially the sexy damn way she said, “Sour cream on your potato, sir?”

Jesus, Jesus, what he’d give for some of that stuff tonight. The little broad had a fresh look to her, not like the Chicago meat — lookers, sure, but it seemed like every one of them been giving head since they was ten and humping since eight, and it would be something to get a piece of something that wasn’t up the ass with experience.

But he had little hope for any action in this dump. In fact, using college girl help was just one sign of this being a half-ass operation. Look at the place, just fucking look at it. The room was so tasteless, with fishnet on the phony-bamboo walls, and Hawaiian and Caribbean and African and Oriental and all sorts of mishmash goddamn stuff hanging on the walls. What’d they do, bring in some guy from Nebraska who saw a travelog once and give him fifty bucks and say, “Do it up exotic.” Tropical, my ass, he thought. No taste.

Now his place, Joey Metrano’s Riviera, that was a different story. (About $10 million different!) Take just one of the things he had going there. Take, for example, the lounge, the Chez Joey (just like in Sinatra’s movie) with its gold-brocade walls and the plush gold carpet, and the gold chairs and gold tablecloths and gold drapes and the girls dressed in Rome-type mini-togas, gold also. Now there was class. Take the food, for instance. He forked a bite of lobster and studied it. This lobster was good, but the lobster he served, why, it made these suckers look like shrimps. What did Nolan know about running a restaurant, anyway.

The bit of lobster went down the wrong way, and, for a moment, he choked.

Nolan.

He shivered. (It was cold in here, damn air-conditioning.) Joey hadn’t wanted to think about Nolan, about Nolan being under the wing of the Family, about Nolan running this place here, this Tropical, for the Family. Word had it Nolan was going to move up, and fast. It was spooky, after Charlie and Nolan hating each other for so long, and an open Family contract out on Nolan for all those years. But times change, and Charlie the powerful underboss was now Charlie the deposed underboss.

And Joey? Joey was Charlie’s cousin.

Nothing to worry about, shit. Not a thing. Felix wouldn’t let Nolan do anything. Nolan was nothing to the Family, and Joey was so much.

Like the Riviera. Think how much money the Family made off just building the place, never mind the profit it was turning now. And he, Joey, was the one who wined and dined the various savings and loan guys, one firm anteing up $6 million (for an under-the-table inducement of a mere hundred grand). The rake-off for the Family from these multi-million buck loans was simple and immense. Family construction and supply outfits handed in inflated estimates of cost, and so Joey Metrano’s Riviera (which an appraiser today might put at, say $5 million) had had a provable projected cost of over $11 million.

After dinner he copped a few more feels from the waitress with the nice ass, then settled back with one last glass of wine. He was just starting the second one last glass of wine when Nolan came out of somewhere and approached Joey’s table.

“Hope you enjoyed your dinner, Joe,” Nolan said.

Why did Nolan look so tall, Joey wondered, when he couldn’t have been more than six foot or so? He supposed it was the long, hard lines in his face, the prominent cheekbones, the narrow, almost chink-looking eyes.

“How you doing?” Joey asked, motioning for Nolan to sit down.

Nolan sat.

“What are they calling you here?” Joey asked, in a whisper. “Felix told me but I forgot.”

“Logan,” Nolan said.

“Listen,” Joey said, “where is Felix, anyway?”

“Felix got called back to the city,” Nolan said. “He said I should put you up for the night. He’ll be back early tomorrow morning.”

“Aw, shit,” Joey said, unable to keep the infuriated feeling down inside him. “Aw, shit, goddamn shit. I come all the way down here, I cancel my goddamn evening, and aw, shit.”

“It’s not my fault, Joe,” Nolan said. “I’ll make you as comfortable as possible.”

“I know it’s not your fault, No... Logan. And listen, I want you to know something. Just because I was Charlie’s cousin, well, it doesn’t mean, you know.”

“Sure,” Nolan said. “No reason for hard feelings between us. You weren’t your cousin’s keeper.”

“Ha, that’s a good one. Uh, Logan, nobody was Charlie’s keeper, all right. He had a mind of his own, all right.”

“Too bad how he died.”

Joey swallowed. “Uh, yeah, real tragic is what it was.”

What was Nolan fishing for? Joey could feel beads of sweat forming on his forehead. Surely Nolan knew Charlie’s “death” was a Family cover-up. Surely Nolan knew Charlie was spared the usual blow-him-apart-and-stuff-him-in-the-trunk-of-a-car gangland execution, because Charlie was too high up for that. Charlie was a goddamn underboss.

Nolan said, “He was disfigured in the accident, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Joey said. “Burnt up. Both burnt up. He and his son. They were in the car together.”

“Was quite a drop-off, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah it sure was.”

“Not much left of the bodies.”

“No. Burnt to a crisp, like I said. No doubt it was Charlie, though.”

Did he know? Did Nolan know?

“I never doubted it was Charlie,” Nolan said.

“They could check it out through Charlie’s bridgework, through his dentist, you know. And rings and other identifying things like that.”

“Well, Joe, it’s not really a pleasant after-dinner topic, is it? Let’s let it pass. Let me just assure you I hold you no grudge, just for being blood kin of an old enemy... and let me say, too, that I hold no grudge for that old enemy, either. I’m not one to speak bad of the dead. Rest in peace, I always say.”

“R... right. Some wine, Logan?”

“No thanks.” Nolan bent close, like a conspirator. “Listen. I saw you flirting with Janey.”

“Janey?”

“The waitress.”

“Well, hey, I mean Christ, uh, I didn’t mean anything by...”

“Cool it,” Nolan said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Well, then, uh, why...”

“Why mention it? Now listen, Joe, just between the two of us, I mean, we’re two of a kind, right? You run a hotel; I run a motel. The only difference is you’re in the city and I’m in the country, right?”

“Uh, right.”

“Now tell me, you have some pretty foxy chicks working in that Riviera of yours, don’t you?”

“Well, sure, sure I do.”

“And sometimes you, you know, dip into the old private stock, know what I mean?” Nolan grinned, the grin of lechery.

“I know what you mean,” Joey said, returning the grin.

“So if you like Janey, I think maybe I can work something out for you.”

“Terrific, I mean, Christ, would you do that for me, Nolan? Er, Logan? I never expected...”

“Forget it. You just return the favor for me sometime, okay? Next time I’m in the city for an overnight, just fix me up with one of those foxy ladies in a Roman toga.”

“Hey, you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours, right?”

“Right, Joe.”

“Listen, I’m not checked in or anything.”

“I already took care of that,” Nolan said. “I sent your driver, Brown, back to the city to get a change of clothes for you.”

“Oh... well, Brown is...”

“Yeah, he’s sort of a bodyguard, too, I know, but don’t worry. You’re on vacation here. Nobody’s going to hurt you.” Nolan grinned again and whispered. “Unless some foxy chick bites you on the ass, you know what I mean?”

“I know what you mean.”

Nolan got up. “Enjoy yourself, Joe.”

Half an hour later, Joey was in bed under the covers in his room. He was naked. He was waiting.

Too good to be true, he thought. He’d really misjudged Nolan. Back in the old days Nolan had been a tough customer, but the years must’ve softened him up. All those stories about Nolan being such a hardass, why, shit. He was friendly, would you believe it, and not just a little naive. If Nolan really thought Charlie could die accidentally, in a car crash, well...

A knock at the door.

“It’s open,” he said.

She came in.

“Lock it, will you, sugar?” he said.

She did.

“It’s dark,” she said.

“I’m over here.”

“Don’t you want to see me?” she said.

“I... I don’t know if you’ll want to see me. I... I could stand to lose some weight, sugar.”

“I don’t care about that,” she said.

“Turn on the light then.”

She was in a flowing red silk robe, tied at the waist, brushing the floor. She undid the belt. The robe fell in a red silk puddle at her feet.

“My God,” Joey said. “You’re beautiful.”

She was beautiful. She had brown skin, coffee-skin, ivory white where some wisp of a bikini had done its enviable job. Her nipples were large and copper-colored and as yet soft, but he would see to that; they would soon be as erect as he was. Her legs were long, muscular, tapering. She smiled at his appreciation. She turned in a circle, like a model, saying, “You like?”

Her ass was perfection. Oh, that dimpled ass! Oh my God.

She stood at the foot of the bed, hands on her hips, legs spread, that tangle of hair between them open and inviting and she said, “Anything I can do for you?” and she pulled the covers off him.

Joey patted the bed beside him. She crawled onto the bed like a cat, and wiggled into his arms, and he turned her on her side and he eased himself up against her, gently ever gently, saying, you sweetheart, oh honey, oh sugar, and the guy with the camera came in and the flashbulbs started popping.

“Jesus fuck!” Joey said. Spots in front of his eyes.

She was gone. Blinking. Where was she?

She had the robe on again, how could she have the robe on again so fast? She was standing back beside the door, which was closed, and Nolan was there.

Nolan was there.

Oh God. Nolan was there and some guy with a camera. Oh God, some guy with a camera and...

And so what? Joey wasn’t married. Joey never had time for that. So, so what? What did he care? Scandal? A damn laugh. Nolan was an asshole.

“You’re an asshole, Nolan,” Joey said, “if you think those pictures are worth a goddamn.”

Nolan said, “How many shots did you get?”

The guy with the camera said, “Six. Six good ones. I got more than butts, too. I got faces plain as day.”

“Okay,” Nolan said. “Now get out of here.”

The guy with the camera did.

Joey got out of bed and pulled on his trousers. His dignity was ruffled, and he was a little confused, flustered, but that was all. He said, “Nolan...”

“Joe,” Nolan said, “allow me to introduce you to Felicia Colletta.”

Colletta?

“Who?” Joey said. “Colletta?”

“Colletta. That’s right. You know the name.”

He knew the name if it was that Colletta, the Family Colletta.

“You know how Mr. Colletta feels about his daughters,” Nolan said.

Colletta. Boss of the biggest New York Family. Colletta, with four beautiful daughters from age fourteen to twenty-two. Four beautiful daughters Colletta loved with an Old World paternal passion.

“You probably heard about his older daughter Angela,” Nolan was saying, “who is married now. You probably heard about the college kid who screwed Angela when she was fifteen.”

Colletta had a guy use acid on the kid, Joey didn’t want to think about where.

“Felicia’s going to turn eighteen this summer, aren’t you, Felicia? Mr. Colletta sent her here to the middle West where she could breathe some clean country air.”

This wasn’t happening.

“All right, Felicia,” Nolan was saying, “thank you so much. Don’t say a word about this to anyone, you hear?”

And she was nodding and leaving.

Joey sat down on the bed.

Nolan came and joined him.

Nolan said, “I want you to tell me about Charlie.”

Joey said, “No.”

“The pictures will be destroyed. I’ll bring you the camera and let you take the film out and expose it yourself.”

“This is a goddamn hoax.”

“Okay.”

“That isn’t Felicia Colletta.”

“Okay. See you, Joey.”

Nolan got up.

Joey grabbed Nolan’s sleeve. “That... that isn’t Felicia Colletta, is it?”

“If you say so, Joe. See you.”

Nolan walked to the door and put his hand on the knob.

“Nolan!”

“Yes?”

“I’ll tell you.”

“All right.”

“Charlie’s death... Charlie’s death wasn’t an accident. The Family did it.”

And Nolan started to laugh. “I’ll have the best shot blown up to poster size and send it to you, Joe.”

“You bastard.”

“See you, Joe.”

“Come back, you fucker!”

“What do you want, Joe?”

“Nolan... you know, Nolan. You know, don’t you?”

“I think so,” Nolan said, nodding. “But I want to hear it from you.”

Joey put his head in his hands. Sobbing was coming up out of him, out of his gut somewhere. It was hard to talk through it.

“Charlie,” Joey said, chest heaving, “Charlie is still alive.”

5

There was no moon and you could count the stars on your fingers. Nolan lay on his back on the rubber raft, floating around the deep end of the pool, studying the sky. He was having a hard time deciding whether the sky was black or dark blue, and finally compromised on Smith and Wesson blue-black. He found watching the lustreless sky soothed him, and after a while he noticed he could make out some clouds up there and figured they were probably responsible for his problem pinning down the sky’s color. The clouds were like charcoal smoke clinging to the sky, blending with it, making the sky look light in places, as though it were wearing out.

It was restful, drifting around the pool, the easy movement of the water lulling him. There was no one to bother him, as it was eleven-thirty now, and at eleven the pool was closed to Tropical guests. The gas torches that surrounded the pool flickered and danced on the water’s surface, and Nolan watched and enjoyed the reflecting flames when he wasn’t looking at the sky.

He needed this interlude, needed it to drain away what tension he had left from the preceding hours of rant and rush. The news of the robbery at Planner’s had led to a frantic afternoon and evening, beginning with an hour of heated, involved conversation with Felix and ending with the preparations for having Joey Metrano down for a chat. But now that Nolan’s theory about Charlie had been proved correct, there was no need for everybody to run around like a bunch of idiots in heat. What there was a need for was rest for Nolan, time for him to relax, sort things out, calm himself before setting out for his money.

He hadn’t thought about Planner being dead. Now that he was feeling good again, he wouldn’t allow such thoughts to push forward in his mind and spoil his mood. He wasn’t good at sorrow anyway, and it didn’t occur to him to feel in any way guilty about the old man’s death. Nolan figured Planner knew the rules and risks of the game. Besides, most of Nolan’s friends didn’t get to be as old as Planner had.

Sherry’s head bobbed up out of the water beside him and she arose wet and grinning, the water splashing up and around and on her as if it was having as good a time as she was. “Hey, this is fun!” she sputtered, treading water. “I ought to go swimming more often!”

Nolan shook his head. This was probably the first time she’d been swimming this summer, though she’d spent most of every day at the pool. Sunning. Just now Nolan had convinced her to go to the pool with him and she’d found nothing else to do there but swim.

Nolan said, “How you doing, Felicia Colletta, child of the underworld?”

Sherry giggled, paddling hands and feet to stay above water. She said, “I just hope you keep me in mind come Academy Award time.”

“Don’t know about that,” Nolan told her, “but if I ever cast a stag film, you’re the first one I’ll call.”

She made a face and slapped at the water to get him wet, then decided that wasn’t enough and overturned the raft and dumped him, arms flailing, into the deep. “Don’t be afraid of the water,” he heard her say, “it won’t bite!” Which struck him as a very hypocritical thing for this queen of suntan lotions to say.

The pool was heated, so the water was luxuriously warm, like a lazy bath, and Nolan stayed down under for a while, waiting for her to come looking for him. She did, and he grabbed for her, and she slipped away from him, swimming down toward the shallow section, underwater all the way, stroking like a frog. He caught up with her just as she was getting on her feet at the far end of the pool, and he pinched her ass just as her head cleared the water. She was still squealing as he got to his feet laughing and saw Felix standing there, back far enough to keep from getting wet, but standing there just the same, looking vaguely annoyed.

“Hello, Felix,” Nolan said.

“What are you doing?” Felix said.

“Right now I’m getting out of the swimming pool,” he said, and did, giving Sherry his hand and helping her out, too.

Felix said, “I hope you’re enjoying yourself.”

“I am,” Nolan said.

Nolan went to the lounge chair where he’d left his towel and dried off. There was a small round metal table next to the chair, a canopied table with a pitcher of martinis and ice on it. Nolan poured three glasses from the pitcher and gave one to Sherry and one to Felix and kept the third.

“Thank you,” Felix said. His tone was almost friendly now; evidently he was dropping the reproving manner, having gotten nowhere with it. He sipped the drink and said, “What sort of martini is this?”

“Vodka,” Nolan said.

“Oh,” Felix nodded, and took a seat beside Nolan’s lounge chair, checking it first for moisture.

“How’s Joey doing?” Nolan asked.

Sherry had finished her drink already and was diving back into the pool.

Felix said, “Pretty girl. We should do something for her for helping out.”

“I’ll do something for her,” Nolan said. “What about Joey?”

“Well, he’s not pleased that you’ve taken his clothes away from him.”

“It’s one way to keep him in his room.”

“And he doesn’t like my sending Greer in to watch him all the time, either.”

“That’s another way.” Nolan was beginning to get quietly pissed off at this smug little lawyer.

Earlier, Nolan had assured Joey that the Family would hear nothing of their conversation, and Joey had talked easier that way, but after Nolan was finished with him, Felix and the two bodyguards had shouldered into the room to find things out for themselves. Nolan hadn’t stayed around to watch, as redundant violence irritated him, but it wasn’t his show anymore, so he’d let it pass.

“Other than that,” Felix was saying, “Joey Metrano’s turned into a humble, quiet little guy. He’s full of apologies and bowing and scraping. He knows that his life is hanging by the slenderest of threads now that he’s admitted helping Charlie hoax the Family.” Felix said the word “Charlie” as though he were spitting out a seed. “He’ll be taken back to the city tomorrow morning and kept under close watch. I don’t need to go over what Joey told us, do I? He probably told you much the same. Says all he was doing was keeping some of his cousin’s money in a bank account, and knows he’s one of several doing that for Charlie, though he insists he doesn’t know who any of the others are. Claims he had nothing to do with helping Charlie pull off the phony death, other than knowledge of the fact, and says he doesn’t know who did. Well, what do you think, Nolan? Is he lying or not? You think there’s any chance he knows where Charlie is?”

“No,” Nolan said. Charlie was too smart to tell Joey much, and it figured he wouldn’t let his different co-conspirators know each other either. Less you know, less you can tell under duress. “I figure Joey’s telling the truth. I questioned him pretty thorough.”

Felix said, “I questioned him rather thoroughly myself, or I should say Greer and Angelo did. So I have to agree with you. It would seem Joey’s told us everything he knows.”

Nolan said, “No wonder he’s a humble, quiet little guy. It’s been a bitch of a night for him.”

Felix leaned close, like a quarterback giving the signals. “We better come to some kind of mutual understanding, Nolan, about how we’re going about handling this affair. I can’t be sure how many people were involved in helping Charlie put over his little charade, but I think it should be obvious to you that there is going to be some, shall we say, extensive inter-Family housecleaning.”

“Give me two days.”

“What can you do in two days?”

“Try me.”

“What are you asking?”

“Leave me alone for two days. Give me that long before you start weeding out your bad stock.”

“Where will you start?”

“I have some people in mind to see.”

“What sort of people?”

“Family people. Some people who seem likely bedfellows for Charlie.”

“Such as?”

Nolan told him.

Felix nodded. “They’re well insulated, you know. Not that easy to get at.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“You’ll be needing some information from me, addresses, telephone numbers, that sort of thing.”

“Yes.”

Felix thought for a moment. Then he said, “Is there a phone I could use?”

Nolan pointed across the pool, where there was a snack bar, closed now, of course, but with a phone on the counter. Felix got up and walked over to the counter and used the phone. Nolan watched Sherry swim. She was graceful.

Ten minutes later Felix was back. “Two days,” he said.

“Thanks,” Nolan said.

“You know, I still don’t understand how you guessed Charlie.” Felix laughed, “I mean a dead man, my God. I would have assumed it was someone from your field.”

They’d been over that this afternoon and Nolan didn’t want to go into it again.

“Call it a hunch,” Nolan said.

It was, of course, much more than a hunch. Nolan knew it was possible that a pro thief had pulled the job, some heistman down on his luck who needed ready cash and knew Planner’s safe in the back room usually had a good piece of change in it. But it was unlikely as hell. Maybe in sheer desperation, but otherwise Nolan couldn’t see a professional hitting Planner: you don’t hit one of your own. The old guy had virtually no enemies in the trade, and was a valued friend of everyone who knew him and made use of him.

And right there was another reason: Planner had too many friends to risk stealing from him. Whoever pulled this had ripped off not only Planner, but maybe a dozen professionals who’d entrusted emergency money to Planner’s safekeeping. What it came down to was this: let it leak you were the one who wasted Planner, a hundred guys would drop the hammer on you.

An amateur, then?

No. Someone outside the trade was even more unlikely. Why would some amateur pick an antique shop to knock over, and a shabby one at that? If he did, how would he know about that safe, way back in the second of two storerooms? No, an amateur would probably just empty the cash register and run.

Most important, nobody — nobody outside of Nolan, Jon and Planner — knew an eight-hundred-thousand-buck haul from a bank job was nestled in that safe. Very few people knew for sure Nolan had pulled that particular job, and no one would likely figure he’d leave the money with Planner.

Except maybe Charlie.

Charlie might’ve figured it.

Charlie not only knew that Nolan had pulled the bank heist, he also knew Nolan had been wounded after the robbery and wounded badly, because it was Charlie and his people who shot Nolan, in that fucking double cross Charlie pulled. He would’ve known Nolan would have to hole up close by. He would’ve known Nolan hadn’t had the time or health to get properly rid of the money; he could’ve figured that the money had stayed right there where Nolan was holing up. Charlie could’ve used his vast Family resources to investigate Nolan’s working habits, his associates, especially in the immediate area, to determine precisely where Nolan was hiding, sooner or later coming up with Planner.

When the Family started negotiating with Nolan, a Nolan who was still just getting on his feet, Charlie’s inside sources (the same people within the Family who helped Charlie “die”) could’ve relayed word to him that Nolan was resisting transfer of the money. And Nolan had told Felix and others who pressed moving the money to a Family bank, “I’m not sweating the money’s safety. It’s been okay where it is this long and a while longer won’t make a difference.” Perhaps these words of Nolan’s (foolish words, he knew now) had gotten back to Charlie.

But Charlie was dead.

Sure.

That auto-wreck business had smelled to Nolan from word go, but he’d wanted Charlie to be dead so bad he’d accepted it. Even then he’d questioned Felix, who had told him that this pretense of an accident was a necessity, that Charlie was simply too high in the Family to die anything but a “natural” death.

Sure.

That was where the hunch part did come in. Deep down in Nolan’s gut, Charlie didn’t feel dead. Nolan had ignored the tingle in his gut, chalking it up to all that time the feud with Charlie had lasted, figuring there was bound to be mental residue left after all the emotional and physical violence Charlie had caused him over the years. But now with Planner dead and the money, all that money stolen, Nolan was listening to everything his gut had to say.

So how could Felix be expected to understand? This was a complex chain of logic intertwined with instinct and was something an attorney in a tailored suit could never comprehend.

“When are you going to get started?” Felix was asking.

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Not tonight?”

“Tomorrow morning. Tonight I’m going to get some sleep.”

“Whatever you think is best, I suppose. Nolan?”

“What?”

“Why is it you haven’t told me just where the hell in Iowa the scene was of this afternoon’s fiasco?”

“Because you already checked with the switchboard to see where the long distance call was from.”

“Oh. Don’t you think it would be wise to get to Iowa City as soon as possible and start investigating?”

“Felix.”

“What?”

“I asked for two days and you said I could have them.”

“Right, but that doesn’t mean...”

“Felix.”

“What?”

“How can I put this? Felix. You’re full of shit.”

Felix drew a breath. “Am I really?”

“Yeah. You are. You’re a lawyer, Felix. Don’t tell me how to handle the sort of thing you know nothing about, okay? I get married and want a divorce, I’ll come to you.”

“You’re tense, Nolan,” Felix said tensely. “I’m going to forget you’ve said this.”

“I don’t give a damn what you do. You’re just a goddamn lawyer.”

“Just a goddamn lawyer...”

“Okay, so you represent the Family. That powerful organization that clutches the city of Chicago by its very balls. That powerful organization that let one balding old hood named Charlie turn it into the world’s biggest asshole. But don’t feel bad. Look what that guy Nader did to General Motors.”

Felix smiled and wagged his head. “By God, you’re right. Pour me another vodka martini.”

“Sure, Felix.” Nolan did.

Felix took the martini and nibbled it, then said, “Why don’t you take one of my men with you? Take Angelo if you don’t like Greer.”

“Felix...”

“Now this is one thing I’m going to have to insist on. This is not the lawyer talking now, this is from upstairs, as they say. The Family has a big interest in this affair. You have to understand. It’s more than just money now that Charlie’s turned up.”

“Suppose you’re right,” Nolan said. “Give me Greer then. He’ll need to take a car for himself, by the way.”

“Why?”

“Why don’t I just explain that to Greer.”

“Well, all right, whatever it takes to make your investigation a success.”

“Look, you said that before, that word ‘investigate’... I’m not going to investigate, Felix. I don’t know how to do that. I’m not the goddamn FBI. I’m not going to Iowa City and snoop around, because all the action there is over and I got a friend there covering things for me. What I’m going to do is go around knocking heads together, Family heads, because that’s who was involved in faking Charlie’s send-off. Right?”

“Correct,” Felix said, his smile damn near feeble.

Nolan said, “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your help. You deserve credit for thinking of Joey Matrano. We’d been in trouble if we picked the wrong guy to work over.”

Nolan had said that to unruffle Felix’s feathers, and it worked nicely, sparking Felix into a rambling, self-glorifying explanation of how he had known that if Charlie were alive, Joey would know, and of Charlie’s friends and relatives in the Family, Joey would be easiest to break, and so on. Nolan tried not to fall asleep. Across the pool, the phone on the snack bar counter began to ring during the closing moments of Felix’s oration.

Nolan said, “That’ll be for me,” and went after it.

The switchboard girl said, “I’ve got a long-distance call from Iowa City for you,” and Nolan said, “Put him on,” hoping Jon had better tidings this time around than last.

“Hello?” a voice said. Not Jon’s. A female voice.

“Yes? This is Logan.”

“Uh, is your name Logan or Nolan or what? Jon says Nolan and then tells me ask for Logan and... oh, Christ, I suppose that’s unimportant, I mean...”

She was almost crying.

“Hey!” Nolan said. “Who is this? What’s wrong?”

“I suppose I shouldn’t be upset. Jon said if I got worried, really got worried, I should call you. He explained that this was... a dangerous situation. That men with guns were involved.”

“Settle down. My name is Nolan. All right? I’m Jon’s friend. All right? And I’m your friend, too. Now tell me your name.”

“Karen.”

“All right, Karen. Now what’s the problem?”

“I’m sorry to bother you, I really am, I shouldn’t be bothering you, I’m just easily upset, I guess.”

“Why are you upset, Karen?”

“It’s Jon. He said he’d be back by eight, and, well, you know what time it is now.”

That was bad.

“It’s nothing to worry about, Karen.”

“There was something else...”

“What?”

“Well, he gave me a number to call. I was supposed to try him there, before bothering you. He said don’t bother you unless I was really upset or worried or something.”

“Do you know whose number it was?”

“Jon said it was a doctor he was going to see.”

That made sense, Nolan thought. “Go on, Karen.”

“Well, I called the doctor a half hour ago and he said... he said he hadn’t seen Jon. He doesn’t even know Jon, he says. Didn’t understand what the hell I was talking about.”

Shit.

“Okay,” Nolan said. “Don’t worry. You did right calling, Karen. You’ll hear from me soon.”

Her sigh of relief came over clear on the phone. “Thanks,” she said. “I mean it, thanks. Whatever the hell your name is.”

“Now give me your address and phone number.”

She did, and Nolan found a note pad to jot them down.

After he’d hung up, he went over to where Sherry was swimming and told her to go back to the room and wait for him. She nodded yes, grabbed up her towel, and scooted off. Nolan walked over to Felix and said, “Looks like you get your wish after all.”

Felix looked up from his third martini and said, “How’s that?”

“My friend in Iowa City is in trouble, I think. You go get Greer and have him ready to go in the parking lot within fifteen minutes or I’m leaving without him.”

Three

1

The sun was hot and high in a practically cloud-free sky and Jon was feeling lousy. It was Tuesday afternoon, just an hour and a half after he’d left his uncle at the antique shop to join Karen at her apartment, and he was on his way back already. The late breakfast at Karen’s had been fine; she was a good cook and Jon enjoyed that side of her as much as anything. But her ten-year-old pride and joy, Larry, had a dentist’s appointment at four, and, of course, Karen had to drive the kid there and be by his side throughout the great ordeal. And so Jon had been rushed through the breakfast, forced into throwing those delicious eggs and sausage down his throat as if he was shoveling coal into a boiler.

“Why,” Jon had asked her, through a mouthful of eggs, “did you ask me over if you were in such a goddamn hurry? You didn’t say anything about the kid’s teeth on the phone.”

“What’re you bitching about?” she had said. “The price is right, isn’t it? I thought maybe you’d lower yourself to go along with me when I take Larry to his dental appointment.”

“That’s my idea of a good time,” he’d said.

“Oh,” she’d said angrily, “go read a comic book.”

Larry had been sitting at the table the whole time and the kid would flash an innocent smile now and then, batting his lashes at Jon. Larry had red hair and freckles and big brown eyes, like the kids in paintings you can buy prints of by sending in three toilet paper wrappers and a dollar-fifty. Jon hated Larry.

Jon supposed he was jealous of the kid. It was hard getting used to going with a girl — woman — who was the mother of a ten-year-old kid. Karen looked younger than thirty, and was very pretty, with long, wild, dark hair and the same brown eyes as the kid, only on her they looked good. She also had a body that wouldn’t quit.

But still it was odd, strange getting used to. Karen’s apartment was large enough that privacy wasn’t a real problem, and Larry kept pretty much to himself, having a stamp collection or some silly such thing he played around with all the time, shut tight in his room. When Larry did decide to intrude, however, he intruded big, and could, with his big-brown-eyes coaxing, dictate the course of an evening’s activities. The new Brian DePalma film they had planned to attend could be turned into the latest revival of “Son of Flubber”; a night of Cantonese dining at Ming Gardens could be transformed easily into greasy take-out tacos; and on television the educational channel’s showing of “The Maltese Falcon” on the Bogart Festival would lose out to a made-for-TV movie with someone who used to be on “Laugh-In.” When a need of Jon’s was balanced against a need of Larry’s, no contest, Larry won every time.

So Jon hated Larry, and felt quite sure that the feeling was reciprocal, even though the kid rarely said a word. But with those shit-eating big brown eyes, who needed the power of speech?

Jon had met Karen in her candle shop, which catered to a head crowd, selling incense and Zig-Zag papers and hash pipes and posters and the like, in addition to countless candles, most of which Karen made herself. He went there to buy underground comics and posters, and after a while he was haunting the place, checking for new stuff (which was ridiculous, since he bought so much mail order) but mostly just getting to know Karen. At first it was just that he was fascinated watching her boobs act as a bouncing billboard for various causes, in tee-shirts ranging from NO NUKES to SAVE THE WHALES. Later he found out she was funny and bright and crazy, when she got politics off her chest.

Jon realized that probably the primary reason he and Karen got together was because both of them were straighter than they appeared to be: Jon with his frizzy hair and Wonder Warthog tee-shirts, Karen with her equally frizzy, longer hair and ERA slogans. The turning point in their relationship was that day in the Airliner when they had been sitting drinking beers and Jon had made a confession. He told Karen sheepishly that he was not into the dope scene, in spite of his looks and certain bullshit comments he’d from time to time made. Karen had grinned and admitted the same thing, that despite her latter-day hippie appearance, she was a painfully straight, divorced woman of thirty with a ten-year-old child.

Which was the first Jon heard of her age, her broken marriage, and her kid, but he hadn’t minded, as the shared confessions had played like a scene in a movie and fantasy was something he could really get into, so they had laughed, toasted beers and joined forces.

Jon never got the details of her marriage. He did know that her husband was an attorney who lived in Des Moines and came from a long line of attorneys. Jon gathered that the marriage had come out of those prehistoric times when the pill was not so common and have-to marriages were, and Karen had dropped out as an undergrad to play wife and mother while her hubby was put through law school by his wealthy family. Later on, she proved a burden to her husband, mostly because she was “intellectually inferior” (she hadn’t even made it through college, after all). Her husband may have been a hypocritical bastard, but he was no dummy: he’d let Karen have pride-and-joy Larry and asked next to no visitation rights.

And his alimony and child-support payments were generous, too. Karen’s monetary situation was such that she could hold a long-term lease on the building, which had as a bottom floor her candle shop and above that the five-room, remodeled apartment she and Larry lived in; another apartment above that she rented out. The building was in the heart of Iowa City’s shopping district, on the back side of a block that faced the U of I Quadrangle, the candle shop bookended by a pair of busy record stores. The setup provided her a lucrative source of income.

That was all Jon knew about the former daddy of Larry, picked up here and there from bits and pieces of conversation. Jon didn’t know the guy’s name (the bitterness ran so deep in Karen she’d reverted to her maiden name) but Jon hoped one day to look up the (he assumed) red-haired, freckle-faced butthole and punch him out.

These were the things that Jon reflected on as he walked the six blocks from Karen’s downtown apartment to Planner’s antique shop. The beautiful breakfast that had been rammed down his throat was showing no signs of settling in his stomach, and he was generally disturbed over the unkind words he and Karen had tossed back and forth at one another.

He walked around to the side of the antique shop and as he was crossing the cement porch, his right foot hit something wet and he slipped and fell. He landed on his ass but broke his fall with the heels of his hands, which slid off the cement and skidded back across the gravel surrounding the porch.

“Oh shit,” he said, after the fact, and just sat there for a moment, half on porch, half on gravel.

Then he got up, slowly, and examined his scraped but not badly bleeding palms, deciding the injury wouldn’t impair his drawing too much. He dusted himself off with the untenderized sides of his hands.

He went over to the porch to see what had made him slip and saw a trickle of red, smeared where his foot had hit it, a stream trailing from the door across the cement stoop onto the gravel. He touched the red wetness and smelled his fingertips, looked at them, rubbed them together. What the hell was this, he wondered. Not paint; it’s too thin.

“What the hell,” he said aloud, shrugged, wiped the damp stuff off his fingertips onto his Wonder Warthog teeshirt and tried the door.

Locked.

Jesus, how many times had he asked his uncle not to lock the side door? But the old guy kept on doing it, anyway, wanting to keep the air-conditioning inside. It was a nuisance to Jon because his uncle had the only key to the side door and wouldn’t let it out of his keeping for Jon to have a duplicate made. Jon had a key to the front and that was enough, his uncle reasoned. Yet his uncle was always complaining about Jon coming through the front way and scaring off the customers with his bushy hair and crazy teeshirts.

This was the last straw, Jon thought. He and Planner got along, got along famously, but there were certain things that, dammit, just required an argument. And this locked-door business was one of those things.

He walked around to the front. The “Closed” sign was turned facing out for some reason, and he couldn’t see Planner when he peeked in. The old guy probably stepped out for a sandwich, Jon thought. Probably over at the Dairy Queen right now.

Or maybe Nolan called, and Planner had to leave to make some kind of preparations for Nolan. That was it. Nolan called.

He dug the key out of his pocket and opened the front door. “Planner?” he said. He repeated his uncle’s name three more times, each progressively louder, and getting no response, he locked the door again. If Planner wanted the place closed, then closed it would be.

The air hung with traces of smoke from one of Planner’s Garcia y Vegas, which didn’t do Jon’s still-churning stomach any good. The air-conditioning kept it from getting too damn stale in there, but nothing known to man could completely wipe out the memory of those potent cee-gars of Planner’s.

Jon got behind the counter and sat down in Planner’s soft old easy chair. His stomach continued to grind away in its attempt to digest breakfast; his conscience nagged him slightly about the semi-arguments he’d had with Karen. He found himself staring at the phone on the counter.

“What was that dentist’s name?” he muttered to himself. “Paulson? Paulsen?” He picked up the phone book and tried to find the listing and couldn’t. Finally he looked in the yellow pages under “Dentists-Orthodontists” and found it: Povlsen. Odd damn spelling. He dialed the number and asked the girl who answered if Karen was there and was told just a moment.

“Yes?” the voice said.

“Hi, Kare.”

“Hi, Jon.” Her voice was neutral; she couldn’t make up her mind whether she was mad or not.

“Listen. I want to tell you something.”

“I’m listening.”

“I mean, you can talk, can’t you? Has Larry had his teeth worked on yet?”

“Yes. That is, the doctor’s working on him right now.”

“Well, why aren’t you...?”

“The doctor said I... I shouldn’t be in there... said Larry was too old for that sort of thing.”

Good man, Jon thought.

“Kare?”

“Yes, Jon?”

“Thanks for breakfast. Thanks for asking me over.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice.

He got out of the chair and sat up on the counter. “And listen, something else...”

“What?”

“I want your bod.”

“Jon...”

“So when are you going to be done at the dentist’s. I want to fill your cavity.”

She laughed and said, “That’s medicine I’ll gladly take. I’ll be home in half an hour.”

“Good,” he said, and suddenly noticed the trail of red across the floor down at the end of the counter. “Hey, Kare, hold on, will you?”

“Sure, Jonny.”

The thin red streak led from the side door across the floor and around into the first back room. What the hell was it, anyway? It wasn’t... blood?

He followed the red trail into the second back room and found the slumped shell of his uncle.

Jon started to shake.

He approached his uncle tentatively, bent down saying, “Unc? Uh... Planner?”

He shook his uncle’s shoulder and could feel how slack the body was, and turned him off his side and saw Planner’s face, saw the queer smile, saw how white the face was, saw the blood his uncle was soaking in, and ran back to the phone.

“Je... Jesus,” he sputtered into the receiver.

“Jonny?”

“Listen... something... something terrible’s happened.”

“What should I do, Jonny?”

“Nothing. Go... go home when... Larry’s through and... I’ll call you in an hour. O... okay?”

“Are you all right?”

“I... will be.”

He hung up.

Shaking, he felt the cramp buckle him over, overpower him, and he heaved his breakfast onto the old wooden floor of his uncle’s antique shop.

2

The housing addition had a vaguely English look to it, rough wood, watered-down Tudor architecture, occasional stone. It was more plush than your run-of-the-mill housing addition, carefully laid out on gently rolling hills, each lawn spacious and immaculately tended, though the spread-out nature of the addition and the lack of trees made it look barren and lonely and cold against the clear sky. It was on the edge of Iowa City, on one of the less-traveled routes out of town, just beyond a modest commercial area dominated by a Giant grocery store, Colonel Sanders Chicken, and filling stations. On the other side it was surrounded by sprawling farmland, and at that very moment a farmer was on a tractor working slow and hard along the horizon, making the cluster of houses seem out of place and somehow irrelevant, to the farmer’s life at least. Though the houses were not crackerbox identical, there was still a housing addition sameness to them, which was only emphasized by the contrived effort to avoid repetition that amounted mainly to alternating one-story homes with split-levels. Walter slowed as he approached one of the one-story homes, focusing his vision on the number on the door, making sure this was the one he was after.

This particular house was dark wood with light stone and sat on a corner next door to a house that was light wood with dark stone. It was just another house in another (if elite) housing addition, with the only noticeable difference being that this had a red Mercedes Benz in the driveway instead of a Ford LTD or a Cadillac. The house was a surprise to Walter, as the whole addition had been. It was not the sort of neighborhood where he’d expected to find the home of a dope peddler.

Of course Sturms was more than a dope peddler, Walter supposed, though he didn’t know what else you’d call him, really. Supplier, maybe. From the looks of the housing addition Sturms evidently thought of himself as a district sales manager or something.

Walter had a low regard for people who dealt in drugs, and knew his father, Charlie, shared that low regard. Once they had discussed the subject and his father had told him that the Chicago Family was only into drugs because they had to be, and they were in it mainly as financiers, not fucking around with diddlyshit pushers and such.

Walter guessed that in Iowa City circles Sturms was probably considered to be “the Man,” which wasn’t particularly impressive, since most towns have one. Just the same, Charlie had assured his son that Sturms was important, in a small-time way, because he was the dope guy in Iowa City, and Iowa City was one of the big drug centers in that part of the Midwest.

And Sturms was important for another reason. He was important to this Iowa City trip, because if Walter and Charlie ran into any trouble, Sturms was someone they could turn to.

“Doesn’t he know you?” Walter had asked, on the drive down from Wisconsin that morning. “Doesn’t he know you’re supposed to be dead?”

“He’d know me by name, sure,” his father had said, “but not by sight. And we sure as hell won’t be handing him no goddamn calling card. Look, I just mentioned him ’cause if we get in a tight squeeze, we can call on the guy, see, just drop a few of the right names and he’ll jump for us, is all.”

It made sense that Sturms wouldn’t know Charlie. Walter knew that his father had been high up enough in the Family to make it unlikely for a nobody like Sturms, stuck clear out here in Iowa, to know him personally. And, too, his father looked different now, since his “death.” Walter figured an old friend could easily pass Charlie on the street without recognizing him. Charlie had lost weight, was damn near skinny. And there was the work that plastic surgeon did, too, changing Charlie’s bumpy, several-times-broken nose into something small and straight, right off a movie star’s face.

All of this floated down Walter’s mental stream, but he wasn’t thinking about any of it, really; these were non-thoughts, passing quickly, skimming across the surface of his mind, part reflex action, part Walter’s semiconscious attempt to stay calm. He had driven slowly through the housing addition, noting the children on bicycles, the teen-aged boys mowing lawns, a husband or wife hosing down family cars in drives, none of it making any impression on him, no more than a boring sermon in church, though all this middle-class straight life reminded him to keep calm, to drive slow, to make as if the man sitting next to him was just taking a nap.

Walter thought about a lot of things, but the only thing he really thought about was his father, because his father was hurt and his father’s being hurt was the only thing that was really on Walter’s mind.

They’d come out of the antique shop awkwardly, with Walter trying to keep his one arm under the huge cardboard box of money, while looping his other arm around his wounded father’s waist. It was like being in one of those races at a picnic where they strap your leg and somebody else’s together and tell you to run. It was like that, only with blood.

Walter’s father had trailed blood out of there and Walter had been very worried. He knew that his father had high blood pressure and also knew that having high blood pressure could make a wound worse for a person, maybe make him bleed more, maybe make him more prone to shock. In the car he had looked at the wound in his father’s leg, exposed as it was just below the line of the Bermuda shorts, and Walter was stunned by the realization of how frail his father’s legs looked, how skinny they were, how the flesh just hung helpless on the bone. Walter was surprised, too, that such a small wound could leak so much blood. His father had stopped the bleeding by ramming a wadded handkerchief in against the hole in his bare thigh, but the wadded handkerchief hadn’t stopped Walter’s worrying.

Charlie would say, “Don’t worry, just get out of here,” whenever Walter asked him about the leg. Charlie had said it while Walter helped him out the antique shop door, and he said it while Walter helped him into the car, and he said it as Walter drove out Dubuque Street toward the Interstate 80 approach. And then Charlie passed out.

Walter had pulled into a driveway that led down to a tree-sheltered fraternity house and backed out and headed back on Dubuque toward the downtown. He stopped at a Standard station to use the pay phone. He found Sturms’ number in the phone book and dialed.

“Yes,” a voice had said. A bored tenor voice.

“Mr. Sturms?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“You don’t know me, but we have mutual friends.”

“Really.”

“I was told you could help out in a pinch. I have a man with me who needs help. He needs a doctor.”

“Who is this?”

“We have mutual friends.”

“You said that before. What kind of mutual friends?”

“Chicago friends. Milwaukee friends.”

“Name one.”

“Harry in Milwaukee. Now listen, I’m not screwing around. We need some help here.”

“How bad do you need the doctor?”

“I don’t know. Not bad I hope. But bad enough to bother you when I rather wouldn’t.”

“The guy isn’t dying or anything, is he?”

“Not unless it’s from old age, waiting on you to make up your mind if you’re going to help us or not.”

“Shit. I guess you better bring him out to my place. Where are you now?”

Walter told him. Sturms gave Walter directions.

And so now Walter was pulling into the oversize driveway of the house that was dark wood with light stone. He stopped the blue Olds alongside the red Mercedes, his foot on the brake, the car still in gear. He stared at the dark rough wood of the double garage doors and after ten seconds honked the horn once. He reached a hand over and patted his father’s shoulder, as if to reassure the unconscious man.

The garage door swung suddenly up and out of view and a man motioned at Walter to pull the Oldsmobile inside and Walter did. The man shut the garage door and walked over to meet Walter as he got out of the car.

The man was thirty-five years old and had light brown hair that was stylishly long and had been shaped by an expensive barber. He wore a long sleeve rust-color shirt, with slightly puffy sleeves, a pale yellow scarf tied around his neck. His trousers were brown and flared. His skin was tanned and he was handsome in a standard sort of a way, except for a broad, flat nose. He was five ten and built like a linebacker.

Walter said, “Is the doctor here?”

Sturms said, “I haven’t been able to get him.”

“Jesus. What’s the problem?”

“Out on a house call. What happened anyway?”

“My father’s been shot.”

“How?”

“Never mind how. You don’t really want to know how, do you?”

“I guess not. How bad is he?”

“Caught a bullet in his thigh. He’s unconscious.”

“Let me take a look at him.”

Walter led Sturms around to the other side of the car. Sturms just peeked in the window, then turned to Walter and said, “Let’s go inside.”

“You going to help me move my father?”

“He’s all right where he is.”

“Well...”

“Moving him inside won’t help him any. Come on. We’ll try the doctor again.”

Walter followed Sturms into the house. The first room was the kitchen, where all the appliances were pastel green and the wood was maple brown. Dozens of bottles of pills sat on the counter. Walter’s surprise registered on his face.

Sturms grinned, said, “Wondering why I’d leave my stock out in the open like that, kid?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.”

“That’s not merchandise. Those are vitamins I take. I wouldn’t touch that shit I sell. Haven’t even touched grass in years.”

Walter was led into a large living room with an open-beam ceiling of the same dark rough wood as the outside and pebbled plaster walls the same rust color as Sturms’ shirt. The carpet was burnt umber, and thick and fluffy like whipped egg whites. There was a sofa, a recliner and a chair with an ottoman, all dark brown imitation leather with button-tufted seats and backs. Cocktail table, end tables, even the stereo and television complex were dark Spanish-style hand-carved wood, looking lush and expensive. It was an attractive room, only slightly marred by two out of place abstract paintings over the sofa, a red spattered on a field of white, and a white spattered on a field of red. Sturms told Walter to sit, and Walter went to the sofa so he could sit with his back to the paintings. Air whooshed out of the cushion as Walter settled his ass uneasily down.

Sturms left the room momentarily and came back with a yellow telephone, which he plugged into a jack behind one of the sofa’s end tables. He brought the phone around in front of Walter and sat it in front of him, on the cocktail table, next to a bowl of artificial fruit.

“Now call Harry in Milwaukee,” Sturms said. “I want some proof of who you are.”

“You haven’t even called the doctor yet,” Walter said.

“I’ll get you something to drink while you’re doing that. What would you like? A beer? Maybe a Pepsi?”

“You haven’t even called the doctor yet, have you?”

“You call Harry. Then I’ll call the doctor.”

“You son of a bitch,” Walter said, and jumped up off the sofa.

Sturms showed Walter the gun. Walter didn’t know where the gun had come from, but Sturms most certainly did have it. It was an automatic, silenced, smaller than the ones Walter and his father had carried earlier that day. Those nine millimeters were under the seat of the Olds right now, not doing Walter a hell of a lot of good.

“What’s going on, honey?” a female voice said.

AA tall woman with a shag brunette haircut and dark tan skin was standing in the background. Like Sturms’ gun, she’d popped up from nowhere. She was wearing purple hot pants and a matching halter, though the halter was of a lighter material than the pants. Her breasts bobbled braless under the skimpy halter and Walter sat down again.

“Nothing, baby,” Sturms said. “Go get my friend and me a couple of beers, will you?”

“Sure thing, honey.”

“My wife,” Sturms explained, as she took her time bobbling out. “Sweet kid. She painted those pictures there, on the wall, behind you.”

“Talented,” Walter said.

“Now why don’t you call Harry?”

“I don’t know his number.”

“I thought he was a friend of yours.”

“He’s a friend of that man bleeding out there in your fucking garage.”

“All right,” Sturms said, sticking the gun down in his waistband. “I’ll call him and let you talk to him.”

He crouched and dialed the number from memory. It took a few seconds for the direct-dialing long-distance wheels to turn, and then he said, “Could I speak to Harry, please... Mr. Sturms in Iowa City is calling... I’ll hold... Hello, Harry, it’s good to hear your voice... No, everything was fine with the last shipment, no problem, everything’s terrific... No, it’s something else... I have a guy here says he’s a friend of yours, wants some help from me... I’ll put him on.”

Walter took the phone and said, “This is Walter.”

“Walter?” The connection was good; Walter’s Uncle Harry was coming through fine. “Walter, something didn’t go wrong today, did it?”

“I’m afraid so. Dad’s been hurt.”

“Oh, Christ. How bad is it?”

“Just his thigh, took one in the thigh. But he’s unconscious, and you know his high blood pressure trouble. You can’t die from a thigh wound, can you?”

“Depends on what gets hit. How bad’s he bleeding?”

“Bad at first, but we stopped it. I don’t think some major artery got hit or anything, if that’s what you mean.”

“Listen, you tell Sturms get a doctor for you, and get your father patched up and hit the road. Did things go okay otherwise?”

Walter hadn’t even thought about that. He hadn’t even thought about the old guy at the antique shop his father had shot.

“It could’ve gone smoother,” Walter said.

“What about the money?”

“We got it.”

“Good. Well, then, have Sturms get a doctor for you straight away and...”

“Sturms won’t do it till he gets the word from you that I’m worth helping.”

“Put the cocksucker on.”

Walter said, “He says put the cocksucker on.”

Sturms flinched and took the phone. Walter could hear his uncle yelling, but couldn’t make out the exact words. Sturms said, “You bet, Harry... Right away... Goodbye, sir.”

He hung up.

“Look,” Sturms said, “sorry I hassled you. Let’s forget it and start over.”

“Never mind trying to get in good with me,” Walter said. “Get your ass on that phone and get a doctor for my father.”

Sturms nodded.

The brunette bounced back in and gave Walter a Pabst in a bottle. She gave her husband one, too, but he was busy on the phone and just set the bottle down. She smiled at Walter and said, “Do you really think I’m talented?”

3

“Easy now, Planner,” Jon soothed, “easy now, this isn’t going to hurt a bit.” He lowered Planner’s blanket-wrapped body into the empty wooden crate. He’d felt lucky to find the crate, which was six feet long and a bit wider than necessary, but it sufficed. It had held an antique chest of drawers Planner had stored away. Jon had liberated the crate for this present purpose, the probably valuable antique shoved into a storeroom corner.

“There now,” Jon said softly, whispering, “there now, unc, that’ll be fine, won’t it?” The blanket-wrapped body was comfortably settled in a soft bed of excelsior lining the crate’s bottom. Jon replaced the lid on the crate and said, “Goodbye, Planner.”

Maybe he was an asshole, talking to Planner like that. But he just couldn’t think of his uncle’s body as some cold chunk of meat, even though he knew that was what it was. The body was Planner, for God’s sake, and looked as much like Planner as it had when there hadn’t been bullet holes in it, and the only way Jon could deal with the situation was to keep talking to Planner. It seemed natural to keep talking to Planner.

And when he’d lifted the body, it had seemed light and heavy all at once. Could this featherlight bundle of flesh have walked and breathed? Could this granite-heavy load of bulk be the body of a frail old man? He held the body like a baby in his arms, and he felt as though he were parodying that famous statue at the Vatican, the one that got defaced, and he gave out a nervous little laugh that wasn’t really a laugh at all, and said, “Aw, shit, Planner, you can’t be dead.”

But he was, of course, and there was work to be done. Work for the living. Nolan had said so.

After throwing up, Jon had grabbed for the phone and dialed Nolan direct. It took a while to get through, what with the switchboard operator at that motel or whatever it was trying to track Nolan down. It’d seemed an hour before Nolan came on, and Jon’s bladder was about to burst.

“Jon?” Nolan had said. “Calm down, Jon, what’s wrong?”

And Jon had told Nolan about Planner, about Planner being dead.

“Jesus, kid. Stay calm,” Nolan had said, his voice as soft, as sure of itself as ever. “Don’t go hysterical on me.”

Don’t go hysterical on me. Nolan had told him that once before, after the bank job, when everything had exploded into blood and death, and Jon had been able to hang on, because Nolan was there. He’d been able to make it because Nolan was a rock and Nolan was there, and now Nolan’s voice was coming over that hunk of plastic, disembodied but here just the same, reassuring him, calming him, enabling him to survive, for the moment anyway.

“Go on,” Nolan was saying.

“He’s dead, and the money...”

Jon hadn’t realized yet what it meant, but he could remember seeing the safe door swung open and the shelves empty.

The money. Good God, the money.

“It’s gone,” he told Nolan. “All of it.”

Nolan was silent for a moment. A long moment.

“Nolan?” Jon asked, panic rising in his chest, catching in his throat.

“Yeah, kid,” the steady voice said. A rock again. “Go on.”

“The money’s gone. I just came in and... and found Planner and it must’ve all just happened.”

“How do you know?”

“Hell, I wasn’t gone more than an hour, and the... blood... it’s still wet, uh, fresh.” He remembered slipping in the stream of it on the back stoop. “You know, Nolan, you wouldn’t think Planner had so much blood in him. You wouldn’t think it could seep all the way back to the porch like that.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean somehow it ran from the back room, where the safe was cleaned out, back onto the porch and... shit, that couldn’t be Planner’s blood, could it? What do you figure?”

“I figure Planner got a shot off at whoever shot him.”

“Of course. Bad, you suppose?”

“Bad enough he left some blood behind.”

“Nolan, should I call the police or what? I mean, we were robbed and Planner was murdered and...”

“Christ no! Use your damn head.”

“That was stupid. I’m sorry I even said it, Nolan.”

“Never mind that. Did Planner have a gun in his hand?”

“I... I haven’t really looked that close yet. If you want to know the truth, all I’ve done so far is spot Planner’s body, puke out my guts, and call you on the phone.”

“You go look the back room over. I’ll hold on.”

Jon set the receiver on the counter and went back for a look. He found one of his uncle’s two.32 automatics clutched in an already stiffening hand, and he found across from Planner the place in the wall where one of the bullets had gone in. And the beginning of the trail of blood was at the safe, where the guy would’ve been crouched down, emptying the shelves. He went back to the phone and reported what he’d found to Nolan.

“Okay,” Nolan said. “Now listen to me. Are you pulled together? Are you settled down?”

“Yes. I’m settled down.”

And Nolan told him what to do. Told him to contact that doctor, Ainsworth, the one that patched Nolan up and treated him while he was holed up at Planner’s. Contact the doctor and pay him to make out a false death certificate, verifying Planner’s demise as by natural causes. Pay him plenty, to fill out the forms and such and help keep the cops from coming and having a close posthumous peek into Planner’s setup. Then clean the place up, get rid of the gun Planner fired at whoever shot him. Put Planner in a box and arrange to have him cremated. Do all of that, and then ask around at the places in the neighborhood, that Dairy Queen, the filling station next door, ask if they saw anybody leaving Planner’s around that time. But don’t act suspicious in asking. Make something up, like whoever it was was going to sell you something and didn’t leave an address, something like that.

“About that doctor,” Jon said.

“What about him?” Nolan said.

“What’ll I pay him with?”

“There should be eight thousand or so in the wall safe upstairs.”

“Oh, yeah, behind his framed Hoover buttons. Planner keeps — kept — the combination in the kitchen, in the silverware drawer.”

“Good. Pay Ainsworth, oh, four thousand. I know that sounds high, kid, but remember, as far as the doc knows, you could’ve murdered your uncle yourself and’re asking him to cover up. So he’ll be expecting a fat reward.”

“What then?”

“Sit tight. I’ll call you there at Planner’s when I get a chance. I have a notion of who maybe pulled this piece of shit.”

“You do? Who, for Christ’s sake?”

“Charlie.”

“That Mafia guy? That guy? He’s dead, how can...?”

“He’s supposed to be dead. We’ll see. I’ll be looking into it.”

“Okay. When can I expect your call?”

“Just stay there at the shop. Get those things done I told you and otherwise sit tight. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Jon.”

“Yes, Nolan?”

“You’re doing fine.”

And Nolan had hung up.

Now that Planner was wrapped in a blanket and lain to temporary rest, Jon began to get the place in shape. He went into the adjoining storeroom and got the box of sawdust, which was used to clean up various sorts of messes, mostly wet. He poured the sawdust first onto the pile of vomit, and his half-digested, stinking breakfast soaked the stuff up. He swept the gunk up, and it took several dustpan loads to do so, and dumped the rancid mess into a big empty heavy-cardboard barrel. He then did the same with the blood, pouring sawdust onto the trail of it and the pool where his uncle had been lying, and some of it had started to dry, getting dark, almost black. After he’d dumped the several dustpans of bloody sawdust, he got out a can of Ajax and a bucket of water and a scrub-brush and worked on the wooden floor till all visible traces of blood were gone. He thought, rather absurdly, that it was a good thing he hadn’t cleaned the storerooms yesterday, as today’s work would’ve been needless double duty. He ran across his uncle’s false teeth, his upper plate, and gagged, but his stomach was empty now, fortunately. He held the plate by two trembling fingers and went over to the crate and lifted the lid an inch or two and pushed the teeth inside.

Afterward he went upstairs and sat at the kitchen table and poured a water glass half full with vodka and the rest with Seven Up. He stirred the mixture with a spoon and threw it quickly down. He wasn’t a drinking man, so he soon found himself gagging again, but by the third glass he was doing fine.

God, what an awful experience, he thought. People died so easily in the movies and the comics. Real life was such a gruesome fucking mess. The movies never showed the poor slobs who had to clean up after the hero’s carnage; think of all the trouble Clint Eastwood was causing for people; think of what off-screen horror was happening to the survivors of a film like The Wild Bunch.

And even when death was portrayed as bloody and awful, it was nothing like this. Jon had had only one other close experience with violent death (not counting Nolan’s near bout with the grim reaper, thanks to that Syndicate guy, Charlie) and that had been after the Port City bank job year and a half ago. The robbery had gone flawlessly, but afterward some jealousy within ranks had caused an outburst of insane violence, and Nolan and Jon had ended up sole survivors. Witnessing the head getting blown off someone he’d been friend to had been the single most traumatic incident in his life, and he wondered now if he hadn’t countered that trauma by turning from his superheroes to horror comics, where the blood was bright red and sickly humorous, where he might try to learn to live with gore, get used to it, even laugh at it. He didn’t know.

He heard the sound of hard pounding and jumped off his chair. Where was it coming from? He got hold of himself and listened close and it was someone knocking at the back door, and it scared him shitless.

He got up and went to the window and drew back the curtain.

The doctor.

That was all. It was Ainsworth, the doctor, and he let out a sigh and went downstairs to let Ainsworth in.

Ainsworth was the standard country doctor image come to life. He was fifty-five, slightly chubby, and had a mustached, lined, wise and friendly old face. He was Iowa City’s longest practicing abortionist, aider-and-abetter of draft dodgers (for a price) and doer of sundry other medically shady deeds. Jon had gone to Ainsworth for help when Nolan was hurt because a while back Jon had paid two hundred bucks for a statement from the good doctor to the effect of his having epilepsy, in the form of severe migraine headaches, winning the boy his 4F from Uncle Sam. How was Jon to know his number in the draft lottery would turn out to be one of the least likely to be called? But life was a gamble.

“What’s the problem?” Ainsworth said, locking the door behind him. He was wearing a blue long-sleeve sweater, over a white Banlon, and yellow pants: golf clothes. Jon had caught him at the country club, where he’d learned to look in previous dealings with Ainsworth.

“My uncle’s been shot,” Jon said.

“What’s his condition?” the doctor asked.

“Dead,” Jon said.

“Oh. I see.”

“Why don’t you come upstairs and have some vodka and Seven Up and we’ll talk.”

They did.

“I fully understand your position,” he said. “Your uncle’s, shall we say, sideline, would make it desirable to prevent the police from taking an active interest in his death.”

“That’s it exactly.”

“Your uncle has a long history of heart trouble, and...”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Well, let’s say he will have a history of heart trouble, when I finish rewriting his records.”

“Oh.”

“And so, his death by coronary came as no surprise to me, I can assure you.”

“What else needs to be done?”

“Can you come by around seven? I’ll have the necessary papers and forms ready for you to sign.”

“Where? At your house?”

“Heavens, no. My office, of course. And I think I can have your uncle’s remains disposed of for you, as well. There’s a crematorium in West Liberty that does good work. They can pick your uncle up tomorrow afternoon, I’m sure.”

“Won’t they notice Planner had his ‘coronary’ in a rather peculiar way?” Jon asked, on his fourth glass of vodka and pop.

“Well, perhaps I’d best go downstairs now and bandage your uncle. That way anyone glancing in won’t see anything, even if the poor man gets stripped of his clothes... though that shouldn’t happen, as these West Liberty folks do good, discreet work, mind you.”

“Whatever you think.”

“And have you a nice suit of your uncle’s? You and I had probably best put one of his suits on him.”

“Oh Christ. That won’t be pleasant.”

“A tragedy like this one rarely is. And as for me, well, I was a friend of your uncle’s, and you’ve both done a lot of business with me, you and your uncle and that friend Mr. Nolan of yours as well, so you do whatever you think is fair.”

Jon got up and went to the silverware drawer to get the combination to Planner’s wall safe.

4

The doctor put two pillows under Charlie’s feet. He took the pulse of his unconscious patient, casting a cursory glance at the wounded thigh. Then he gave Walter a brief smile — one of those meaningless smiles doled out by doctors like another pill — and walked to a sink across the room to wash up.

Walter stood at his father’s upraised feet, wishing he could do something to help, watching the doctor’s every action, wondering why the man moved so damn slow.

Or maybe it was just him. Maybe the doctor wasn’t slow at all. Walter couldn’t be sure. His sense of time was fouled up. Was that business at the antique shop just this afternoon? It seemed years ago.

Moments earlier — or was it hours? — the doctor had offered to give Walter a hand carrying Charlie, but Walter had refused, wanting to bear both the weight and responsibility of his father in his own arms, following the doctor through the darkened waiting room and down a short narrow hall and into a closet of a room, where Walter had eased his father onto a padded examining table that sat high off the floor, like a sacrificial altar. The table was white porcelain with its padded, contoured surface black but mostly covered by white crinkly tissue paper. In fact, almost everything in the room was white: stucco walls, mosaic stone floor, ceiling tile overhead, counters, cabinets, sink, everything.

Except the doctor’s clothes. Walter thought the blue sweater and yellow slacks were grossly inappropriate. He would’ve felt more secure if his father’s welfare were in the hands of a man in traditional white; he had the feeling this guy wouldn’t know the Hippocratic oath if he tripped over it.

The doctor removed his sweater and folded it neatly and deposited it on a chair by the sink and began ceremoniously to wash his hands. Jesus, Walter thought, what does he think he is, a damn brain surgeon? The shirt beneath the sweater turned out to be white, but that was no consolation to Walter, as it was an off-white, sporty Banlon, with rings of sweat under the arms and wrinkled from eighteen holes of golf.

The doctor dried his hands and moved from the sink to a counter, where he filled a modest-sized hypo from a small bottle of something.

“What’s that?” Walter said.

“Morphine,” the doctor said cheerfully, beaming at Walter with all the sincerity of a politician. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

“All right,” Walter said. There was a chair directly behind him and he backed into it and sat.

The doctor administered the hypo, then went back to the counter and unscrewed the cap on a bottle of cloudy liquid. He dabbed some of the liquid onto a folded strip of gauze.

“Ammonia,” the doctor said, anticipating Walter’s question. He walked across the room and held the gauze under Charlie’s nose and Charlie came around quickly, thrashing his arms like a man waking from a nightmare, finally pushing himself to a sitting position with the heels of his hands.

“Goddamn shit,” he said to the doctor, “what’d you hold under my nose? Who... who the hell are you? Where the hell am I? What’s going on?”

The doctor smiled again. He did that a lot. He said, “You’ll have to ask your young friend here about that.”

Walter got up and came around the other side of the table and squeezed his father’s shoulder. “You’re going to be all right, Dad.”

“Of course I’m going to be all right,” Charlie said, his speech slightly muddy. “I’m all right now. I feel just fine.”

“You should,” the doctor said, “you’re full of morphine.”

Suddenly Charlie noticed his wound, said, “Jesus,” and settled back down on the table.

The doctor continued to work while Charlie talked to Walter. What the doctor did was give Charlie several shots — a tetanus toxoid, some Novocain around the wound — and proceeded to debride the wound, stripping away the flesh that had died of shock on the bullet’s impact. What Charlie said to Walter was, “You stupid goddamn kid, we should be long gone from here by now, what the hell you doing dragging me to a doctor for? Christ, a little goddamn scratch on the leg and you’re dragging me to a doctor, what the hell you use for brains, boy,” and more along those lines.

After the doctor was through debriding the wound, and his father was through sermonizing, Walter said, “Dad, you were unconscious and I felt I should get you to a doctor. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.

Then Walter turned away and walked to the window and separated two blades of the white Venetian blinds and stared out into the street. It was twilight and a few seconds after he started looking, the streetlights came on. The doctor’s office was on the back edge of the Iowa City downtown, where the businesses trailed off into the residential district. The street was quiet, right now anyway, and almost peaceful to watch. The traffic ran mostly to kids of all ages sliding by on bikes, with only an occasional car, and every now and then a bird would cut from this tree to that one. Walter felt better now. He was relieved that his father was coming out of it. His father yelling at him for staying in town and going to a doctor was a disappointment, but to be expected, he supposed. It wasn’t worth brooding over.

While Walter stared out at the quiet street, the doctor applied a pressure dressing to the wound and explained to Charlie that carrying that bullet in his leg wasn’t going to hurt him any, and going in after the slug just wasn’t worth the time and trouble. Charlie said he knew that, that a lot of his friends had bullets in them.

“Hey,” Charlie said.

“Yeah?” Walter said.

“Listen. Listen, thanks.”

“It’s okay.”

“Come here a minute.”

“Okay.”

Walter joined his father. The doctor said that he was going across the hall to get some pills for Charlie and left the room. Charlie asked Walter to tell him what had been happening.

Walter explained about going to see Sturms, and calling Uncle Harry, and then having trouble getting hold of the doctor. Seemed the doctor’s wife was out of town and it wasn’t till Sturms thought of the country club that they got a lead on the guy. Unfortunately, the doctor had left the club on an emergency call and hadn’t told anyone what or where the emergency was. They had continued calling the man’s home, and finally someone at the country club called back and said the doctor had returned to the club for supper and cocktails and Sturms had got him on the line and set things up.

“What’s the doc’s name?” Charlie said.

“Ainsworth,” Walter said. “Sturms says he’ll do anything for a buck. Built his practice on abortions and draft dodge. Still helps Sturms out, with O.D. situations, different drug things. I guess the reason Ainsworth stays out of trouble is he’s done work for important people in the area and has too much on too many of them for anybody to bother him.”

There was the sound of talking outside the room and Charlie jerked up into a sitting position. “What the hell’s that? Who the hell’s that goddamn quack talking to? You bring Sturms along or something?”

“No, I told you, Dad, he just set it up and never left his house.”

“You got a gun?”

“Right here,” he said, pulling the silenced nine-millimeter from his waistband. After getting caught by Sturms he wasn’t taking chances.

“Go out and see what the hell’s happening.”

“Okay.”

“And watch your ass.”

“Okay.”

Walter peeked out into the hall. Ainsworth was talking to a young guy, a guy about Walter’s age, maybe a year or so younger. He was short with long, wild curly hair and a well-muscled frame. He was wearing jeans and a tee-shirt with the words “Wonder Wart-Hog” above a cartoon, caped hog. Ainsworth was saying, “You’re a little early, Jon,” standing by the entrance to a room that Walter assumed was the doctor’s private office. Walter shut the door.

“I think it’s just some thing about drugs he’s doing for Sturms,” Walter told his father.

“Help me up,” Charlie said.

“Dad...”

“Help me up, goddammit.”

Walter guided his father off the high table, put an arm around his waist and moved him over to the door. Charlie shook free of his son and stood on one leg.

“Give me the gun,” he ordered.

Walter gave it to him.

Charlie cracked the door and looked out.

“It’s the goddamn kid,” Charlie said to himself.

“Who?”

“The kid, it’s the goddamn kid who lives with that old guy at the antique shop. His nephew or something.” Charlie’s eyes narrowed and his lips were drawn back tight. “I smell a cross.”

Charlie pushed through the door, slammed against the wall, lost his balance momentarily, got it back quick. He hobbled forward, nearing the doctor and Jon, the gun as steady in his hand as his legs under him weren’t.

“What the hell’s going on here?” Charlie demanded.

The doctor started pushing the air with his palms. “Put that gun away! Put that gun away!”

Jon had a puzzled look on his face that rapidly dissolved into a knowing one. He pointed his finger at Charlie, as if he was aiming back another gun. “You,” he said. “I know you.” A red sheet of rage flashed across his face and Jon leaped at Charlie, like an animal jumping out of a tree.

And Charlie slapped Jon across the forehead with the heavy gun. The kid folded up and dropped hard to the floor. Charlie didn’t even lose his balance.

“Why... why in heaven’s name did you do that?” the doctor sputtered.

Charlie looked at the doctor and so did Charlie’s gun. “Are you pulling a double cross, Ainsworth? Do you know who this kid is?”

“Why, that’s... that’s just Jon, Ed Planner’s nephew. He’s only here to...”

Charlie limped painfully up to the doctor and held the gun against the man’s throat, right along his Adam’s apple. “Why is he here?”

“His... his uncle passed away today and I was helping him with the funeral arrangements, death certificate, and so on. Jon and his uncle’re like you people... have to steer clear of the authorities.”

“And do you know how his uncle ‘happened’ to pass away?”

“He was... shot.”

“And who the fuck do you think shot him?”

“Oh my God.”

Charlie stepped back a pace, said, “Walter.”

“Yes?”

“Help the doc here carry the kid in that room.”

Walter and Ainsworth carried Jon into the examining room, Charlie following them in on wobbly legs.

“No, not on the table,” Charlie said. “Just drop him on the floor there.”

They did.

The jolt seemed to rouse Jon. He stirred, shook his head, looked up. He raised a middle finger to Charlie and said, “Nolan knows you’re alive. Kiss your ass goodbye, big shot.”

Charlie slapped Jon with the gun and put him to sleep again.

Walter said, “What are you going to do, Dad?”

“I don’t know. Let me think. Help me up on the table. I want to sit down.”

Walter helped his father.

He watched his father sitting there, the close-set eyes narrowing, the lips moving ever so slightly. Was his father deciding to go ahead with the next phase of some secret master plan? Or just throwing together some spur-of-the-moment piece of strategy? Walter didn’t know and couldn’t guess. But a full minute went by before the eyes softened, the lips settled into a tight grin and a false calm washed across the tan, lined face and Charlie said, “We’ll take the little bastard with us.”

Why? Walter wanted to ask it, but knew he shouldn’t. He was glad of his father’s decision, in a way. He had a feeling the alternative would’ve been to kill the kid named Jon.

“Come here, Ainsworth,” Charlie said.

The doctor shuffled over. The room was air-conditioned and near-cold, but the doctor was sweating profusely.

“Where’s the stuff you were going to get for me?”

The doctor looked down at his right hand, which was clenched in a nervous fist. He opened it and revealed two little white packets. “Antibiotic,” the doctor said, handing one of the little envelopes to Charlie, “and painkiller,” handing him the other one. “Instructions are written on the packets.”

Charlie told the doctor about his high blood pressure and asked if it made any difference about anything. The doctor said no, but that the high blood pressure probably added to Charlie’s passing out from the wound, perhaps had made him bleed somewhat more than the average person might.

“Okay, Doc,” Charlie said, “you’re doing fine. You getting more relaxed now? Not so nervous anymore?”

Ainsworth nodded.

“Good. You don’t need to be nervous. Nothing’s going to happen to you. You’re a friend of Sturms and Sturms is a friend of a friend of mine, so we’re all friends and nothing’s going to happen to you. But I want your help. Give that kid something that’ll keep him out for a while.”

“How long?” Ainsworth asked.

“Oh, four hours maybe. Can do?”

“Yes.”

Walter watched the doctor go to the counter and fill a big hypo with clear fluid. It seemed to Walter that the doctor was moving faster than before.

Walter sat down and swallowed and looked at what was going on in front of him: a doctor in a golf outfit was giving a horse-size hypo to a weird-looking, long-haired kid who was slumped unconscious on the floor; and a man in a bright Hawaiian print shirt and bermuda shorts, thigh bandaged, hand squeezed tight around a cannon of a gun, was sitting high on an examining table, seeming to tower over the rest of the room, ruling over the insanity and violence that hung in the air of this white, unpadded cell.

Walter closed his eyes and wished it would all go away.

5

Jon woke to darkness.

He was hot. He was sticky. He hurt.

For the first few moments he was aware of nothing else: just the sauna-like heat of the room, his shirt and jeans damp, clinging to his body; the staleness of the air, like some musty old museum; the overall pain, a sluggish doped aching that coursed through his arms and legs and seemed to culminate in the throbbing between his temples; and the extreme darkness of the room, the lack of any light at all, making him think for one awful half-awake moment that he had gone blind.

Or had been blinded.

Maybe he was in hell. Maybe this was the end of an EC horror comic and he was trapped in some ironic hell for robbing that bank last year. The thought made him laugh, but the laugh got caught in his throat and came out as something else, something that smacked more of despair than amusement.

“All right,” he said aloud, but not loudly. “Okay.” Just a whisper. He was telling himself that he was alive. Assess the situation, he told himself, his head foggy. Take your time. Slowly now.

He was on his back. He could feel something hard and metallic under him, but circular, like large rings, and springy. Springs? Bedsprings? He moved his body slightly, jiggled the surface beneath him. Yes. He was on a bed. On the exposed springs of an old-fashioned bed.

He smiled and the sweat running down his face got into his mouth and tasted salty. He didn’t mind. He was on a bed somewhere, alive, and that beat being in hell by a long shot.

He tried to get up off the bed and found he couldn’t. He wasn’t paralyzed, he knew that. He could lift the trunk of his body several inches off the bed, maybe half a foot. He wasn’t paralyzed.

What, then?

He lay there and breathed deep, slow, trying to let his mind clear, which it did, gradually. The fuzziness went away and he realized he was bound, he could feel the rope around his wrists, around his ankles. Rope was looped around ankles and wrists, not tight, but secure. His circulation wasn’t cut off or anything, but working with his fingers he found the chance of slipping the loops up around over his hands was nonexistent. The rope he was bound with was not thick and coarse, but more on the order of clothesline, and didn’t scrape his skin or make him particularly uncomfortable. There was a lot of leeway in the rope, which he’d decided was tied to the bedposts, and he actually had his arms free at his sides and could lift them or his legs in the air and do just about anything with them except push himself up and walk off — without taking the bed with him, anyway.

So. His situation was this: on his back, on a bed, tied to the bedposts, God knew where.

Where? Was he in Ainsworth’s office? That was where he last remembered being. Not likely, unless Ainsworth had taken to collecting antique beds. Antiques! He’d been taken back to Planner’s and tied to an old antique bed! But the only one in the shop was Jon’s, and it was small, with a box spring. Planner didn’t have any other antique beds.

Planner. Planner was dead. Planner was more than dead. Planner was murdered. Murdered by that son of a bitch Charlie.

Charlie.

Jon hadn’t recognized Charlie immediately. Jon’d come to Ainsworth’s office early, but not by design; he was just walking by on his way to grab a quick sandwich at the Hamburg Inn and saw Ainsworth’s lights on and thought what the hell and stopped. He’d just been standing there saying hello to Ainsworth and Ainsworth had been getting ready to show him into the private office to fill out some forms and such and that madman had come tumbling out into the hall, waving an automatic that looked like the Gun of Navarone. It took Jon a few seconds to recognize the man, but the pieces had fallen together quickly: gun and bandaged thigh had gelled with Nolan’s mention of Charlie, and Jon had known.

He had only seen Charlie one time before — that night when Nolan got shot up by Charlie and his men — and then only for moments and not close up, but the image of the wild little man had stuck in Jon’s mind: short and dark with powder-white hair and two black little eyes stuck together close like beads on the face of a cheap rag doll.

And so Jon had jumped at the crazy gun-waving madman in the hallway at Ainsworth’s office, leaped at him, mind full of Nolan bleeding and Planner dead and got knocked cold to the floor by a backhand blow from Charlie’s gun-in-hand.

He had come to twice after that, both times in Ainsworth’s examining room. The first time he’d come out of it, he’d looked up at Charlie and fingered the sucker and told him what Nolan would do to him. And Charlie had whacked him to the floor again. The second time he woke up, just half woke, and saw Ainsworth coming down on him, and it was like some fish-eye camera angle in a monster movie, distorted, out of focus, Ainsworth as Dr. Frankenstein bug-eyed and sweaty above a hypo the size of Cleveland. And as the needle jammed into his arm, he glanced up and saw that little asshole Charlie sitting, sitting way up there like some court jester who’d made his way to the throne by poisoning the king and queen.

That was the last thing he could remember, and it wasn’t a pleasant memory to dwell on, though it was vivid enough. How much time had passed since then? He could feel his watch on his wrist, right under where the rope was looped, but in all the knocking about the thing had probably conked out on him. Why couldn’t he be a normal person and have a Bulova with a luminous dial? But no, he had to be different — he had to wear an antique Dick Tracy watch that ran when it felt like it.

Never mind that, he told himself. Never mind superfluous thoughts. Think. What could have happened? Where was he? Why had Ainsworth stuck a needle in his arm?

To put him out, of course. He’d been doped. But why? Getting knocked out, or just tied up, would keep him indisposed long enough for Charlie to get away. Why dope him and tie him up and clobber him? Just for the sheer hell of it? Why not just kill him?

Jon tried to make sense of it, tried to develop logical theories about where he was and who had put him there, but all he came up with was questions, more questions. He had the feeling that Charlie had not only done all this to him, but was still around, that Charlie had taken him off somewhere and was keeping him captive. He even remembered, vaguely, delirious, strange dreams of travel, a ride, dreams of an ocean voyage that might have been a drive in a car.

But there was no sense in it, none at all. Why would Charlie have any interest in Jon?

Fuck it, he thought. He decided to concentrate his efforts on getting loose. Prospects were dim, but he had to try, didn’t he? He started out slowly, tugging first at his right wrist, then moving to the left, then each foot got a prolonged effort. He spent a good while at it, kicking, tugging, struggling, making absolutely no progress at all. Finally he heaved up off the bed, came down hard, repeated the process, again, and again, at the same time thrusting his legs upward and outward and every way, flailing his arms, pounding his butt on the springs, hoping to break the bed if nothing else and maybe, somehow, slip rope over broken bent bedpost and...

But in the end all he got was tired. Very tired, and he found himself getting drowsy, and found also that after staring up at the darkness for a time there was little else to do but sleep. So he did.

“Wake up.”

Jon’s eyes opened. Light. It was light in the room now.

“Hey, wake up.”

Jon’s eyes focused. He saw a young guy of maybe twenty, twenty-two years, about his age, sitting on a chair by the bed. He was thin and pale and had the same close-set eyes as Charlie.

“Who the hell are you?” Jon said. “Some relative of Charlie’s?”

“I’m his son.”

“You got my sympathy.”

“I brought some food for you. You want some food?”

Jon sat up.

“Hey,” he said. “I sat up.” He shook his hands; they were free. His legs had been freed, too. The ropes hung untied on the bedposts of, yes, an old antique bed, a brass one, and quite attractive; the nicest bed Jon had ever been tied to. The room was still dim, but light was creeping under the drawn shade on a window directly across from the foot of the bed.

“Look,” Charlie’s son said, “I’m sorry about the ropes and everything. I didn’t know he’d tied you up like this. Dad has a tendency to be overdramatic. He’s... he’s been acting a little strange lately.”

“Like killing my uncle, you mean,” Jon said. “What’s he going to do to me? What’s going on? Where the hell am I?”

“Do you want this food?”

The guy had set up a tray by the bed and on it was a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon and some milk.

“Sure I want the food,” Jon said. “I feel like I haven’t eaten for hours.”

“You haven’t. You been out fifteen hours. First five or six hours you were unconscious, from the stuff that doctor gave you. I suppose you woke up sometime in the night and squirmed a while, then fell back asleep.”

Jon frowned at the guy. “Give me the food.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll be back in half an hour and take the dishes off your hands and see how you’re doing. I’m not going to tie you up.”

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll get away?”

“Take a look at the two-story drop out that window and decide for yourself. And I don’t think you’ll be breaking down the door, either. The wood’s four inches thick and the lock’s pretty firm.”

“Let me eat, why don’t you.”

“See you later.”

The guy left and Jon started in on the food. It tasted good to him, but wasn’t as good as the last meal he’d eaten, which had also been a breakfast of scrambled eggs. Hell, right now he wouldn’t even have minded the company of Larry, that wide-eyed brat of Karen’s.

Karen.

His gut ached with the thought of her. He put down his fork and rubbed a spot over his left eye.

She’d be worried as hell. She’d have spent a miserable night. He’d called her and told her a little about the situation, not much, but enough to worry her to death, god-dammit. Mentioned she should watch her step about whom she let into the apartment. “There’s a guy with a gun involved,” he’d told her. When he’d told her that, she’d insisted on having a number to call for help, if she couldn’t find him or he didn’t show up or something. Jon had given her Nolan’s number at the Tropical and while he hadn’t liked doing that, he’d supposed an emergency might come up, requiring that sort of thing, and he sure as hell didn’t want her phoning the police. He’d also given her the doctor’s number, and he wondered what Ainsworth had said when she called him, as she must’ve. The good doctor would’ve lied through the teeth, no doubt. But would he tell Karen a soothing lie, or one that would upset her? Would she then have called Nolan? If so, would it do any good? How in hell could Nolan find him? Shit, he didn’t know where he was. He could have a phone fall out of the sky, plop down in his lap, a direct line to Nolan and what would he say? “Help, save me! And while you’re at it, tell me where I am.”

Piss.

Jon ate. As he did he glanced around the room. All the furniture had been covered up with sheets, but he could tell this was a girl’s room, or had been once; one of the pieces of furniture had the shape of a make-up table with tall mirror, and the walls were papered in pink with blue bells on it. The rest of the room was rugged, running to rough, barn-like wood, from the unvarnished floor to the open-beamed ceiling that followed the slant of the roof. If a girl’s room could be so rustic, Jon figured, the place must be a large cabin or cottage of some kind.

He had just finished his milk when the guy came back in.

“How was breakfast?”

“It was swell. Now if I could just have a cake with a file in it.”

“Listen, I don’t blame you for being bitter.”

“No shit.”

The guy sat wearily down, frustration obvious on his face. For some reason he seemed to want Jon to like him, or approve of his actions. Jesus. Jon studied him.

He wasn’t particularly big; in fact, he was slender, his arms thin. He was wearing a tank-top tee-shirt, blue, and white jeans. He had a college boy look to him, as if he should be out hazing some pledges for a fraternity somewhere.

Jon made his decision. He would watch the guy and find an opening and go with it. Take the guy down and get the hell out. It would be easy. Find an opening and cream the guy. Easy.

“I’d like to tell you what’s going on,” the guy was saying, “but I don’t know myself, really. I’m just as scared as you are, believe it or not, maybe more. I’m in this situation because I wanted to stand beside my father and I guess I didn’t realize just exactly who my father was.”

“That he’s a maniac, you mean.”

“That’s your point of view. He’s still my father, and I’m in this with him, to the end. Whether I like it or not, at this point. I guess I could go to jail a long time.”

“If Nolan finds you, don’t sweat jail.”

“Who is this Nolan?”

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“Wait. Just wait.”

“Look. I’m trying to tell you I’m going to help you, if I can.”

“Oh?”

“I won’t let Dad, uh, do anything... extreme.”

“Like kill me?”

He shrugged. “Like kill you,” he admitted.

“Get me out of here, then.”

“I can’t.”

“You won’t.”

“All right I won’t. But stay cool. It’ll be all right.”

“You’re crazier than your father.”

“Could be. Anyway, can I get you something? We got some beer. Something to read maybe?”

“How about your father’s obituary.”

“I try to help you and you hassle me.”

“I'm just an ungrateful bastard, I guess.”

“I noticed your watch.”

“What?”

“Your watch. I noticed it. What kind of watch is that?”

“It’s just a watch.”

“You some kind of comic book nut or something?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“That watch has, who? Dick Tracy on it? And the tee-shirt you’re wearing is some other cartoon character. Thought it followed, your being a comic book nut.”

“All right, so I like comic books. What of it?”

“Christ, you're hostile. Just thought you might like to look through the box of old comics we got in the attic, up in the other house. At least I think they’re still up there, if they haven’t been thrown in the trash or something.”

Jon perked, getting interested in spite of himself. “How... how old are these comics?”

“I don’t know. They were my cousin’s, and he’s older than I am. My sister and I used to read them when we were kids, coming up here summers.”

“Well, I guess I wouldn’t mind taking a look at them.”

“Okay. Your name’s Jon, right? Mine’s Walter. Walt.”

“It’s a pleasure.”

Walt ignored the sarcasm and said, “I’ll go over and get them for you.”

Jon watched him leave, the door shut and lock behind him. He sat on the bed and wondered if there would be any good books in the box. You never knew when you were going to luck onto a find. If that cousin was older than Walter, why those comics could be early fifties or before, and that meant there could be some good shit in...

Jesus Christ Almighty!

Goddamn comic book fever! He slammed a fist into his thigh. It was a blindness that came over him; all collectors feel it, he supposed, but he felt it deep. No logic to it, or reason. Just the fever.

You’re an asshole, he told himself, meaning it. Your uncle’s dead, murdered by this creep and his old man, and you’re all of a sudden grateful to him, you’re his buddy, just because he’s got some moldy old comic books he’s going to show you. You’re trapped in a room somewhere, held prisoner by a senile old Mafiosi and his loving kid, probably going to get your balls shot off any minute, and all you can do is slobber at the mouth over the chance of seeing some old comics. You goddamn idiot. Shape the fuck up.

“Okay,” he said aloud, after a moment.

He was okay. The fever was in check. He was sane again.

He formed his plan. He would sit on the edge of the bed, wait for his buddy Walter to stroll in with the box in his hands, and as the guy was putting the box down on the bed, Jon would kick him in the side of the head. That would do the trick.

Get ready, he told himself.

He got ready.

The door opened and in Walter came, arms full of an aging cardboard box, falling apart at the sides. Now’s your chance, Jon told himself, don’t blow it, asshole.

“Here they are,” Walter said, coming over to the bed with the box.

Jon braced himself, his leg was tensed and ready to kick, and he noticed the comic on top of the stack in the box.

An EC.

“Vault of Horror” number 18.

What a beautiful cover! A couple kissing by a wishing well, out of which was crawling an oozing, decomposing ghoul. What an artist that Johnny Craig was. Jon didn’t have that issue; it was an early one, kind of hard to find.

He grabbed hold of the box and settled it in his lap and started flipping through titles. They weren’t all EC’s, but many of them were; there was an early one, “Crypt of Terror” 17, worth probably sixty bucks, and some rare science-fiction titles like “Weird Fantasy” and “Weird Science.” Jesus, here was a “White Indian” with Frazetta art! What a find! The box was a treasure chest. This was fantastic.

“Enjoy yourself,” Walter said.

And was out the door.

Four

1

Nolan got out of the car. He moved slowly, but he was alert, and his movements were both deliberate and fluid. You would never guess he’d just driven well over two hundred miles in under three hours. He stood and looked in the window of the shop; a hanging wooden sign, with the words “Karen’s Candle Corner” spelled out in red melted wax, dominated a display case of candles and knicknacks, while in the background faces on posters seemed to stare out of the dim shop like disinterested observers.

He watched in the reflection of the window as the black Chevy pulled in behind his tan Ford, and wondered if anyone in the world besides cops and hoods still drove black Chevys.

Greer got out of the car, made a real effort to shut the door silently but it made a noise that echoed in the empty street. It was three o’clock in the morning (a bank time-and-temperature sign spelled it out just down the street) and downtown Iowa City could have been a deserted backlot at some bankrupt Hollywood studio. The sky overhead was a washed-out gray and the streetlamps provided pale, artificial light.

Nolan watched Greer approach in the reflection. The dark little man yawned, stretched his arms, scratched his belly. Greer had discarded the Felix-dictated sporty ensemble and now had on an ordinary, rumpled brown suit, such as a fertilizer salesman might wear. A common sense outfit, Nolan thought, encouraged; maybe Greer wasn’t such a hopeless schmuck after all.

As for Nolan, he was wearing the same clothes he’d worn all day: yellow turtleneck, gray sports jacket, black slacks. The only wardrobe change he’d made before leaving the Tropical was taking his jacket off long enough to sling on his worn leather shoulder rig. Like Nolan, the holster was old but dependable, and he felt good having a Smith and Wesson.38 with four-inch barrel snuggled under his arm.

Greer walked up to Nolan and they looked at each other in the reflection.

Greer said, “You move right along, don’t you?”

Nolan shrugged.

Greer said, “What were you trying to do, lose me?”

Nolan said, “If I was trying to lose you, you’d be lost.”

Greer yawned again, said, “Wish to hell you’d’ve stopped for coffee.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“Listen, what’s happening? What are we doing in Iowa City, for Chrissake?”

“I’m going to talk to a woman. This is her place.” He pointed to the floor above the shop, where the lights were on. “She’s a civilian, so don’t go waving guns around.”

“What do you take me for?”

Nolan said nothing.

“Hey, why don’t you go fuck yourself, Nolan? I don’t like being here any more than...”

“Shut up. Don’t be so goddamn defensive. Are you still pissed off because I made a fool of you this afternoon?”

“Well, I...”

“I did that because I didn’t want Felix sending anybody with me, I wanted to be left alone with this. But Felix sent you anyway, so let’s forget about that.”

Greer sighed, grinned, said, “Okay. I’ll just stay in the background and do what you tell me to.”

“Good.”

Between the candle shop and a record store was a doorway, beyond which were steps. Nolan and Greer went up them. When they got to the landing, they found two doors; one was labeled “Karen Hastings,” the other was blank. Nolan knocked on the labelled door.

A voice from behind the door said, “Who is it?” The voice was female and firm, masking the fear pretty well.

“Nolan. Jon’s friend.”

The door opened tentatively, the night-latch chain still hooked. The face that peeked out was haggard but pretty, framed by long, curly brunette hair. “You’re Nolan?”

“Yes.”

“How... how do I know that?”

“You don’t, unless you recognize my voice from the phone.”

“Prove you’re Nolan.”

“How?”

“What’s Jon’s hobby?”

“Pardon?”

“Jon’s hobby, what is it?”

“He collects funny books.”

She unlatched the door. She was a little startled by seeing Greer in the background. Nolan glanced back over his shoulder at Greer, who in the darkness of the stairwell looked somewhat like the gunman he was.

“Don’t worry about him,” Nolan said. “He’s here to help, too.”

“Okay, come in, both of you.”

They stepped in and were hit by the coolness of the air-conditioned apartment. Nolan looked the woman over quickly: she was nicely built, kind of busty, pretty face accented by a large but sensual mouth; she wore a short-sleeve scoop-neck sweater, rust-color, no bra, and a long dark dress. Her clothes and free-flowing hair were styles befitting a girl twenty or younger, though she was thirty or more. A singularly attractive woman, Nolan summed her up as, though too old for a kid like Jon.

“Heard anything from Jon?”

“No,” she said, regret in her face. “Not a word. What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know. I’ll find out.”

“You got here fast. That was an Illinois area code, wasn’t it? I looked it up. What’d you do, drive it straight?”

Nolan nodded, exchanging a brief smile with Greer.

“Well, sit down, I’ll get you some coffee.”

“We’ve got some things to do, maybe you shouldn’t waste time...”

“It’s already ready. I’ll just go in the kitchen and pour it out. Besides, both of you look dead on your feet. Excuse me.”

She left and Nolan and Greer took seats on the sofa. The room was panelled in deep, rich brown, the walls cluttered with paintings and arrangements of related bric-a-brac; the theme of the wall opposite them was Camelot, lots of brass knights’ heads and crossed broadswords and an oil painting of a surreal castle in blues and grays. The furniture was modern, in masculine browns mostly, with thick colorful candles stuck on everything that wasn’t moving. Nolan got two impressions from the room: first, she got stuff wholesale as a shopkeeper and consequently had more decorative shit than any ten people needed; and second, she was trying to compensate for the lack of a live-in male by all the wood and dark colors.

She came back with coffee, which was strong and black. Greer sipped it and smiled and said, “Thanks, ma’am,” like a shy cowboy in an old movie.

She sat next to Nolan on the sofa and said, “Can we do anything? I’ll do whatever you want me to. I feel I can... trust you. You’re the man Jon speaks about, aren’t you? He never mentioned your name, until tonight, anyway... but you’re the man he talks about, the older man he looks up to, respects. Am I right?”

Nolan felt strangely touched, both by the woman’s open concern for Jon, and her telling of Jon’s affection for him. He was having trouble fighting the notion that Jon was dead, and the woman’s small emotional outburst chipped at his personal wall.

“I thought you were,” she said, nodding, though he hadn’t replied.

“Are you willing to take some risks?” Nolan asked her.

“Of course, anything... but I have a child here, my son Larry, and... I wouldn’t want anything to happen to him.”

“Could you send him to a friend’s place?”

“It’s three o’clock in the morning.”

“I know. Could you do it?”

She nodded. “I’ll have to make a phone call.”

“Make it.”

She left again.

Greer said, “Nice-looking woman.”

Nolan said, “Yeah.”

“She isn't wearing a bra,” Greer whispered. “I can't get used to that. She isn't wearing a bra, did you notice?”

“No,” Nolan lied.

That ended that line of conversation.

“Good coffee,” Greer said.

“Good coffee,” Nolan said.

She came back and said, “I’ll have to get Larry ready.”

“How old is he?”

“Ten.”

“Is he a cripple?”

“No.”

“Tell him to get himself ready. Can he walk where he’s going?”

“I... I think so. It’s just two blocks.”

“Good. Go tell him and come back.”

This time she was gone thirty seconds, no longer.

“Now what?” she said.

“I want you to make another phone call.”

“All right.”

“I want you to call that doctor back. Do you think he’ll recognize your voice?”

“Not if I don’t want him to.”

“Good. Do you know his name?”

“No. Jon didn’t leave me his name, just the number.”

“Get the phone book.”

She did.

“Now look up the number of a Dr. Ainsworth. Okay? Got it? Now, is that the number Jon left you to call?”

She nodded.

“Good. Have you heard of Ainsworth? Know him?”

“I don’t know him,” she said. “Know of him. Girl friend of mine got a nice, quiet abortion from him. I heard he’ll help you if you get into a drug jam, and without reporting anything to the cops. He does valuable work, but word is he’s a real pirate.”

“Where’s your phone?”

“I can plug it into a jack right here in the living room, if you like.”

“Do that.”

She did, and Nolan told her what to say.

She was excellent. She did better than Nolan had hoped, weaving his basic material into a piece of drama fit for stage or screen. Her voice was best of all, a pleading, whining thing that sounded like the voice of a girl far younger than this mother of a ten-year-old boy. She said, “Is this Dr. Ainsworth?... It is? Oh, wow, thank God, thank God, I got you, mister... I mean, Jesus, I’m sorry I woke you, but I need you, Christ, we need you bad... I’ll try to calm down, but it isn’t easy, you know, I mean my boyfriend, I’m afraid he’s OD’ed, Jesus, can you help?... Bad shape, he’s really bad, I mean I’m fucked up myself, you know? But I know he’s bad, really bad and you got to help, I heard from a girl friend of mine you’re okay, you’ll help out and keep the trouble down as much as possible... I mean, I got money, we both got money, that’s no problem, we just don’t want any hassle with cops, but if you won’t help I’ll call whoever I have to to get help, I mean you got to get here fast... oh, Christ, hurry, mister, please... You’re beautiful. Bless your soul, man.” She gave him her address, blessed him again, and hung up.

“Nice going,” Nolan said.

“Really good,” Greer said.

“Thanks,” she said, almost blushing, “I just hope I didn’t overdo. I was a little nervous.”

“That probably helped,” Nolan said.

“Either of you guys want more coffee? I know I do.”

Nolan said, “Yeah.” So did Greer.

She got up and went after it.

While she was gone, a small boy not much over five feet tall walked into the room, an overnight case in his hand. He was wearing blue jeans and a red-and-white striped tee-shirt and he had big brown eyes and a headful of red hair and more freckles than Doris Day.

“I’m going now, Mom!” he hollered.

She rushed into the living room, kissed him on the forehead and said, “Be a good boy, Larry, don’t cause Mrs. Murphy any trouble.”

“I won’t, Mom.”

“Be sure to thank her for letting you stay with Tommy, and apologize for bothering them so late.”

“I will, Mom.”

“You’re a good boy.” She kissed him on the head again and went back to the kitchen.

“How ya doin’, sonny?” Greer asked the kid.

“Bite my ass,” the boy said, and went out the front door, slamming it behind him.

“Little bastard,” Greer said.

“I kind of like him,” Nolan said.

The boy’s mother came back and refilled their coffee cups.

They waited for Ainsworth.

2

Fifteen minutes later, the knock came at the door. They had had time to drink their cups of coffee and bring a chair in from the kitchen and Karen had found the rope Nolan had asked for.

Nolan said, “Let him in,” and Karen nodded yes.

Greer had his gun out, on Nolan’s request. Nolan had both big hands unencumbered. Greer stood behind the door, so that he would be hidden when Karen opened it. Nolan stood to the other side, flat against the wall.

Karen freed the night latch, opened the door.

Behind Karen was a bureau with mirror and in it Nolan could see Ainsworth in the doorway; he hoped Ainsworth wouldn’t notice him in the mirror, but wasn’t worried, as things would be moving faster than that. Ainsworth was standing there with a pompous, fatherly smile on his face; he was wearing a dark suit and green tie. What an asshole, Nolan thought; an emergency phone call and he still takes time to put on his country doctor outfit.

“I came as soon as I could,” Ainsworth was saying, “what’s the problem, young lady?”

Nolan grabbed the doctor by the arm and yanked him into the apartment. Behind him, Karen shut the door, locked it, refastened the night latch. Greer got into full view, holding the.38 in his right hand with that casual but controlled grasp that only a professional knows how to master.

Ainsworth said, “Oh, my God!” and his pudgy face looked very white around the brown mustache.

Nolan slammed him into the kitchen chair and tied him up. Ainsworth still had his black doctor’s bag in hand as he sat roped to the chair. Nolan knocked the bag out of his hand and glass things rattled and maybe broke. Ainsworth repeated what he’d said before, though this time it sounded more a prayer and less an expression of surprise.

Nolan put both his hands on the doctor’s shoulders and said, “How’s it going, Ainsworth?”

“Oh... oh... oh...”

“Try not to shit. This lady has an expensive carpet down and if you shit, I’m going to make you clean it up.”

“No... No... No...”

He wasn’t saying no; he was trying to say Nolan.

“I’m glad you remember me,” Nolan said. “I put on weight since you saw me last. And believe I’d let my beard grow out. How’ve you been, Doc?”

Ainsworth began to make a whimpering sound.

Nolan turned to Greer and Karen. “Ainsworth here is a good old friend of mine. I owe him a lot. Don’t I, Ainsworth?”

“I... I helped you,” he said. “Don’t... don’t forget I helped you.”

“Saved my life is what you did,” Nolan said. He grinned. Nolan didn’t grin often and when he did, it wasn’t pleasant. Knowing that, he reserved the grin for special occasions. “I’ll never forget what all you did for me. And it only cost me, what was it? A paltry seven thousand bucks. Why, hell. You must’ve been running a special that day, Ainsworth.”

“What... what do you want with me?”

Nolan’s grin disappeared. “Don’t fuck around.”

“I’m... I’m not... oh Lord, good Lord, man!”

“You know why I’m here.”

“They... they made me do it.”

“Who made you do what?”

“Your friend... Jon... the boy...” The doctor closed his mouth, his eyes.

“Ainsworth,” Nolan said, his voice flat, nothing in it at all, “I’m the one who advised Jon to go to you. To help him about his uncle. So I share the guilt I’m sure you feel right now. Why don’t you get that guilt off your shoulders? Pretend this is confession and I’m a priest. Pretend you’re face to face with Christ himself and you can’t lie, because the consequences are too goddamn great.”

“I was helping Jon,” Ainsworth said, his face tight with sincerity, “believe me. I like the boy. You know that, you believe that, don’t you, Nolan? I like him, and Planner, too. He came for help and... so did these other men. I didn’t... didn’t know, didn’t guess there was any relation between these other men and Planner’s... death.”

“What did these men look like?”

“One of them was old, the other was young. Father and son, I think they were. Sure of it, from... from their conversation. The father was short and thin, had a dark tan. His hair was white and cut in a butch. He was maybe sixty years old. His eyes, I noticed his eyes especially... they were set close together, and dark. His son had the same eyes, but not so... so frightening. The son was light-complected, skinny, his hair was sort of long, and, brown, I think. His hair wasn’t as long as... as Jon’s, but it was longer than his father’s.”

“Did they use any names?”

“The son’s name was Walter. I think. I only heard the name used once, and I can’t be positive about it. The father’s name was... it was Charlie. At least that was what... what Jon called him.”

Nolan sighed. “You better tell it all.”

“The older man had been shot in the thigh. It wasn’t a bad wound, but he passed out from it and that scared his kid enough to bring him to me. While I was treating the older man, Jon showed up. We had some papers to fill out, regarding Planner’s death, you see, and... well, he just showed up. It was a coincidence that they were here at the same time, you have to believe that! I didn’t betray Jon, you have to believe that! I like the boy.”

Nolan put his hand on Ainsworth’s throat. He didn’t squeeze, or grip the flesh; he just laid his hand alongside the doctor’s throat and said, “What happened to Jon? What did they do to him?”

“They... they took him with them.”

Nolan removed his hand. He took a step back, then another. He began to pace for a moment. He was stunned by what the doctor had told him. He was also somewhat relieved, as it meant Jon was maybe still alive. But it made no sense. Charlie should have shot Jon, should kill him, and then take right off. Get the hell out of the country. Now.

But this was no ordinary man. No sane, reasoning mind.

This was Charlie.

Nolan walked back over to Ainsworth and slapped him hard. “Is that the truth?”

Ainsworth’s eyes teared, and his tongue licked feebly at blood in the corner of his mouth. “Why... why’d you hit me?”

“Is it the truth?”

Ainsworth nodded and kept nodding until Nolan took Ainsworth’s chin in one hand and looked at him, like an archeologist studying a skull.

“Was Jon all right when you saw him last?”

“Yes. Yes he was. Well, he was unconscious, but...”

“Unconscious?”

“Yes, you see I gave the boy something to put him out, so he wouldn’t be any trouble to them in the car. The older man... Charlie? The older man, Charlie, said he wanted me to give Jon something that would keep him out for four hours... which I assume was the approximate length of time they had to travel.”

“You saw them put Jon in their car? What kind of car was it?”

“I... I helped them. We wrapped him in a blanket and put him on the floor in the backseat. Of an Oldsmobile, last year’s model, I believe, blue, dark blue. It... it was a good thing that I gave him a shot and put him out, you know.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because that... that older man, Charlie, he... didn’t seem to like Jon much. Jon... sassed him. And the one named Charlie was... was rough with the boy.”

Nolan heard Karen make a noise behind him. He turned and she was crying. He should have thought about that before, should have known her emotional attachment to the boy would make this hard for her. He should’ve had her leave the room. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t thought of anything, really. Just get to Ainsworth and shake the truth out of him.

“Are you... are you going to let me go, now?” The doctor was much more calm now; his face had returned to its natural color.

“Not just yet,” Nolan said.

Greer was lighting up a cigarette. “You want one, Nolan?”

“No thanks, I gave it up.”

Greer shrugged. “Thought you might have some other use for it.”

Ainsworth’s face turned pale again.

Nolan said, “No. I can do fine with just my hands.”

All at once the doctor began to shake and sweat, as though he were going into a dance routine. “I told you everything, Nolan! Those men forced me to help them, at gun point! I wouldn’t...”

“How much did they pay you?”

“Nothing. I assume I’ll be paid through... nothing.”

“You assume what?”

“Nothing... nothing. I just meant to say I... assumed I was lucky to get off with my life.”

“You said you assumed you’d be paid through somebody. Who?”

“Nolan, please...”

“I don’t want to hit you, Ainsworth. I’m not the sort of guy that gets his rocks off hurting people. Don’t make me do something I find distasteful. That’ll just make me mad and you’re the only one around I’d have to take it out on. So tell me who.”

“His name is Sturms.”

Karen said, “There’s a Sturms in town who has an insurance agency. I’ve heard some rumors about him. Having to do with drugs.”

Nolan turned to Ainsworth. “Well?”

“It’s true,” he admitted. “Sturms is... important in town. I help him out with things. He’s the one that sent those two men to me.”

Nolan turned to Greer. “Untie him.”

Greer nodded and went over to Ainsworth and did so.

Nolan said, “Karen, how you doing?”

She smiled and said, “At least Jon is alive.”

“That’s how I look at it.”

“Do you think you can find him?”

“Yes.” He went over to Ainsworth and picked him up by the lapels. He dragged him over to the couch and plopped him down, kicking the kitchen chair to one side. He picked up the phone from off the end table and tossed it on Ainsworth’s lap. “Call your Sturms. Get him over here.”

“I... I can’t do that.”

“Ainsworth.”

“Okay. Okay, okay, just give me a moment to... compose myself.”

“If you try anything, I’m going to feed that phone to you.”

“Listen, I’m scared of you, all right? Does that satisfy you, Nolan? I’m scared to death of you, is your ego satisfied? I’m scared to death and I’m going to do whatever you say so... so don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried.”

Ainsworth swallowed. He picked up the receiver and dialed. It took a while to get an answer, but finally the doctor said, “Sturms? Ainsworth... I’m sorry, really I’m sorry, but we got a problem... you got to get over here right away, I can’t talk about it on the phone... I can’t... I can’t handle it, I don’t have my bag with me. Okay.” He told him the address and hung up.

Ainsworth smiled and Nolan said, “What did you tell him?”

“What?”

“What did you tell him?”

“What do you mean, what did I tell him? You were right here, you heard what I told him!”

“You said, ‘I don’t have my bag with me.’ What’s that, some kind of signal, some goddamn code, what?”

“I... I... I just meant, I couldn’t handle it, I mean, you, uh...”

“Do you remember when you were treating me?”

He swallowed again, touched his face where Nolan hit him, his mouth where the blood had been. “Sure I remember.”

“What d’you treat me for?”

“You’d been shot. I... I took care of you after you were shot.”

“And what did you do for Charlie?”

“For Charlie? I... patched him up. Patched up a bullet wound.”

“Let me ask you a question, then. You’re a man of science, you’re a man of logic. What do you suppose happens to people who fuck around with people like Charlie and me?”

Ainsworth said, “I told Sturms he should bring a gun with him.”

“You asshole,” Nolan said, and hit him in the face.

“My nose,” Ainsworth sputtered. “My nose, you broke it, I think you broke my nose, I told you and you hit me anyway, broke my nose. What am I going to do?”

“Heal yourself,” Nolan said. “Karen, get him a towel or something. Greer, get that bag of his, look in it.”

Greer went after the bag, fished around inside, held up a small low-caliber automatic, the sort a woman might carry in her purse.

“Toss it here,” Nolan said.

Greer did, and Nolan caught it in his left hand, without looking. He dropped the little gun into his sports coat pocket.

The doctor’s self-diagnosis proved incorrect; a simple nosebleed was all it was, and after it subsided, Nolan tied Ainsworth back up to the chair and dragged him into the kitchen, where Karen found herself a carving knife and sat watch over him.

Nolan and Greer positioned themselves the same way as before, except this time Nolan had his.38 in hand, and when the knock came at the door, Karen did as she’d been told and held the knife to her charge’s throat and Ainsworth yelled from the kitchen, “Come on in, it’s open!”

He may have been important in Iowa City, but Sturms wouldn’t have been shit elsewhere. His arm, extended awkwardly, came in first. He had the silenced automatic clutched tight in a whitening hand, his gun arm held straight out in front of him, elbow locked, like a man groping through the dark, trying not to bump into furniture. All but smiling, Nolan grabbed Sturms by the wrist and shook gun from hand and held the four-inch barrel of the.38 against the man’s temple.

“I’ll do whatever you say,” Sturms said.

3

Nolan bit into the cheeseburger.

Angelo said, “Why be pissed at me? It’s not my idea.”

Of course not. It was Felix’s idea. But that didn’t make it any more palatable. Nolan chewed the bite of cheeseburger, dragged a French fry through ketchup.

Angelo sat across from him in the booth, wearing a light blue sports jacket and dark blue shirt and light blue tie, also Felix’s idea. The thin gunman with the fat face sat and stuffed himself with a big plate of pancakes, saying, “My wife’d kill me if she found out I gone off my diet.” It was nearly dawn, and breakfast had seemed in order to Angelo, though Nolan had gone for cheeseburger-in-the-basket. They were in a truck-stop restaurant on the tollway, not far from Milwaukee.

Angelo said, “Anyway, here are the addresses Felix sent for you. He said you’d be needing them.”

Nolan put down the sandwich and took the piece of paper. He looked over the names, addresses, and phone numbers and thought, well, at least Felix did a good thorough job of it. He folded the paper and slipped it in his sports coat pocket and said thanks to Angelo.

“You’re welcome. And look, I’m as sorry as you are I got to tag the hell along.”

“You’re not tagging along.”

“An order is an order, Nolan.”

“An order is a bunch of words.”

“And those words got meaning, and this order means I got to stick to you like batshit, Nolan, like it or not.”

“Angelo, it’s a shame you lost all that weight.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s good to have some weight on you when you’re trying to get over a bad injury.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Nolan shrugged.

Angelo’s round face showed irritation, his big bump of a nose twitching like an animated lump of clay. “Hey, you make me tired, all that tough-guy stuff. How do you keep it up, all day long, the tough-guy stuff? Don’t you know some of us go home to the wife and kids, and live, you know, pretty normal lives, and all this tough-guy stuff just doesn’t make it, it isn’t real life, you know?”

Nolan leaned close to the chubby face and pointed with a French fry. “You want to hear about real life? I’ll tell you about it. Real life is you in a ditch with your arms broken if you think you’re coming with me.”

Angelo grinned suddenly, scooped a tall bite of pancakes into his mouth and chewed while he said, “You don’t frighten me. I don’t pee my pants when you say boo, Nolan. I’m not a fucking kid like Greer. You shook him up with all that taking his gun away nonsense, back with Felix at the Tropical yesterday, but your show, it doesn’t move me. That’s what it is, you know, a show, a act, and I know it, so drop it already. Your type, Nolan, your type talks a hell of a show but you die like everybody else.”

“I’m alive,” Nolan said.

“Today. How’d you do with Greer, anyway? You slap the kid around and make yourself feel like a champ, or what? Jeez.”

“We got along okay,” Nolan said, softly, not knowing quite how to react to this guy. “I’d trade you in for him gladly.”

“I bet you would. Rather have somebody you can push around, right?”

No, Nolan thought; that wasn’t it, not quite. Maybe Angelo wasn’t scared of Nolan, but the reverse was equally true. But Nolan did prefer dealing with someone more predictable. He didn’t know what to make of this chubby-faced thin man, who talked about the wife and kids and hinted at guns and death out on the edges of his conversation.

Nolan liked known quantities. He didn’t like the idea of taking any Family man along on the very delicate calls he was planning to make in Milwaukee these next few hours, but at least with Greer he would have been able to depend on unquestioning workmanship. Greer had shown himself to be an unobtrusive pro back at Iowa City, with Karen, Ainsworth, and Sturms.

Sturms had been no problem, none at all. He came in and, in spite of a slight case of nerves because of the guns pointed at him, the well-groomed glorified drug peddler told Nolan everything he knew of Charlie’s trip to Iowa City. Told Nolan about the phone calls from Charlie’s son, and how cautious he, Sturms, had been about helping the pair, insisting on the son calling Harry in Milwaukee for confirmation.

Nolan felt now that his initial appraisal of Greer had been hasty. Greer hadn’t done anything especially noteworthy in Iowa City, but he’d provided good solid back-up, and when Nolan suggested that Greer stay behind to watch over Sturms and Ainsworth, there’d been no smartass arguments or indignant refusals. Greer had just accepted it, without making necessary Nolan’s going into the obvious need for keeping the two men from getting to a telephone to warn Harry that Nolan was on his way to Milwaukee. Greer had only said that he’d have to call and check first with Felix, and Nolan had said go ahead.

But Felix hadn’t taken Nolan’s leaving Greer behind as graciously as had Greer himself.

“You knew this before you left,” the shrill voice had said from over the phone, “you knew then that you’d be leaving my man behind. That’s why you insisted on his taking a separate car, isn’t it? You want to shake loose from the Family on this, don’t you, Nolan? You see this only as a personal vendetta, and insist on ignoring the more far-reaching consequences.”

Nolan had denied the charges, but allowed Felix to carry on with his summation to the jury a while longer before interrupting to remind the lawyer that that list of addresses and phone numbers promised earlier would come in handy now. Felix had agreed and set up this meeting at the tollway truck stop, where Angelo was to deliver the list.

Nolan sipped his coffee, his second cup, and hoped things would be okay in Iowa City. He had confidence in Greer, now, but soon Greer would be leaving Karen’s apartment, releasing the two men, and Karen would be left to live in Iowa City, where both Ainsworth and Sturms roamed free, a couple of choice V.I.P. enemies for a young woman in a small town.

But they wouldn’t do anything about it. Before he’d gone Nolan had explained to them that after their release they would be expected to stay out of Karen’s hair. If, in fact, one hair on her head was touched, Nolan promised he’d come around and cut their balls off. Whether they were responsible or not.

“If you don’t think I’m serious,” Nolan had said, “check with Charlie’s brother Gordon.”

And Sturms had said, “I thought Charlie’s brother Gordon was dead.”

And Nolan hadn’t said anything.

Reflecting on that, he smiled a little, and thought that perhaps this Angelo was right about the hardnose routine; maybe it was just a routine, which he’d put into use now that he was getting old — fifty! — and perhaps didn’t have the stuff to back himself up anymore. An aging hoodlum, propped up on verbal crutches.

But that wasn’t right either, because he’d always found that saying things for effect was a powerful tool, when used with restraint, and he’d handled that tool long and well. If people think you’re hard, they’ll leave you be, and save you needless grief — not to mention energy and ammunition.

Not that he was the melodramatic son of a bitch Charlie was.

The old bastard. Now there was a guy who talked tough, always had, and was no fake: Charlie backed it up, every time. Nolan had never feared Charlie — but he knew enough to respect him. Not his word, which Charlie kept only when it was to his advantage to do so, but respect his threats, no matter how ridiculous they might seem. Charlie would hang a man by the ass from the ceiling of a warehouse with a meat-hook, in a day when such tactics were thought to be long dead and almost quaint memories of the Prohibition era. Charlie would have a man taken to a basement somewhere and tied to a stool and a dead bird shoved in his mouth and two men shooting behind either ear of the “stool pigeon” in a ritual that in being a cliché was no less terrifying and, well, efficient. Charlie might lie to you, but never in his threats, because Charlie was a melodramatic son of a bitch, who took delight in seeing his melodramatic notions brought into play, and that was probably part of why he snatched Jon.

Nolan got up from the booth without excusing himself and felt Angelo’s eyes on his back as he headed for the cash register where a girl broke several of his dollars into change. He headed for the phone booth in the recession between two facing restrooms and closed himself inside the booth. A light and a fan went on and Nolan sat and looked over the list, though he knew already the best place to start.

Tillis.

Tillis was an enforcer who had worked for Charlie for the last five years or so, and was presently working for Charlie’s late wife’s brother Harry in Milwaukee. Tillis was one of a select few blacks serving the upper echelon of the Chicago Family, and had broken the racial barrier in a time-honored American way: he was an athlete, and a good one. The six-three, two-seventy black had played pro ball in the NFL, but left early in a promising career because of a bum knee, and it was long-time football buff Charlie who gave the ex- guard a new team to play for — the mob.

Nolan and Tillis had met last year, in the flare-up of the long-smoldering feud with Charlie. Being soldiers in opposing armies didn’t keep the two men from liking each other, and Tillis had, in fact, secretly helped Nolan in a tight spot with Charlie, and without Tillis, Nolan might not have been alive today.

But Tillis’ loyalty to Charlie was something to contend with, as Nolan had little doubt that without Tillis, Charlie might not have been alive today, either.

Four of the telephone numbers on the list pertained to Tillis. Two were work-oriented: Harry’s office and a Family-owned restaurant; the others were apartments: one was in Tillis’ name, the other in a woman’s. Nolan tried the woman and got Tillis on the line in ten rings.

There was a rumble, as a throat was cleared and a mind struggled to uncloud, and Tillis finally said, “Uh, yeah... yes, what is it?”

“How you doing, Tillis?”

“Is that you, Corio? Is something up? Am I suppose to come down or something?”

“No, it’s not Corio.”

“Well, Jesus Christ, fuck, who is this, do you know what time it is? Shit, it’s so goddamn late it’s early.”

“This is Nolan. Remember me?”

“Nolan! You crazy motherfuck, are you still alive? Man, never thought I’d be hearing your voice again. What’s happening?”

“Want to talk to you, Tillis. You going to be where you are for a while?”

“All day, unless I get a call from the Man, saying do some work. Got the day off and I’m planning on spending it in bed with my woman.”

“I’ll come talk to you, then.”

“Okay. You know how to get here?”

“I’ll find it.”

“When should I expect you?”

“Well, I’m calling long distance, never mind from where. I’m about three hours, maybe four from Milwaukee. Look for me late morning, early afternoon.”

“Okay, man. What’s this about?”

“Don’t you know?”

“Maybe.”

“Yeah. Well, do me a favor and don’t call your present employer, okay? I want to talk to you, not a roomful of Harry’s button men.”

“We were always straight with each other, Nolan.”

“Right. You’re the straightest guy that ever shot me, Tillis. You’re my pal.”

“Same old mouthy motherfuck, ain’t you, Nolan? See you round noon and my woman’ll whip up some soul food for you.”

“What kind of soul food?”

“Your people’s kind, man. Irish stew.” Tillis’ laugh was booming even over the phone. “Can you get into that?”

“I can dig it,” Nolan said, smiling.

Nolan hung up the phone, checked his watch. He could make it to Tillis’ place in forty minutes or so from here. Being five or six hours early should help avoid any problems that could come if Tillis decided to call Harry and some of the boys. He liked Tillis, but didn’t particularly trust him.

Phoning Tillis was risky, but it saved time. Going around to the various places on the list looking for him would have been a lengthy pain in the ass, and besides, nobody could shoot you over the phone. Now he had Tillis nailed down in one spot, and by lying about when he’d be there, Nolan was as protected in the situation as he could hope to be.

On his way back he ordered his third cup of coffee, then sat down in the booth, not even glancing at Angelo. He knew he should be moving faster, and that the twenty minutes he’d have spent in this truck stop could prove decisive. But he also knew that unless he got some caffeine and food in him, he wasn’t going to last. He’d been up all night, criss-crossing the damn Interstate, first to Iowa and now back to Illinois and Wisconsin, and he hadn’t had a meal since the scrambled egg breakfast he’d shared with Sherry some sixteen hours ago. A few years back all of this would have rolled off him; now was a different story. Happy birthday, he thought, with as much humor as bitterness.

He wasn’t thinking about Jon. He wouldn’t. Couldn’t. If the boy was alive, Nolan would find him. If the boy was dead, Nolan would see some people suffer.

“I’m talking to you, Nolan,” Angelo was saying.

“I’m not listening,” Nolan said. He looked down and realized he’d finished his cheeseburger and fries; he didn’t remember doing it.

Angelo said, “I’m willing to give you a sort of a break, you know?”

“No. I don’t know.”

“You don’t want me along, right? You seem to take one look at me and your mouth fills up with rotten things to say. And me, I don’t relish spending the day in the company of a sour would-be hardass like you.”

“We don’t like each other. Agreed.”

Angelo smiled, his pudgy face almost cherubic. “You see, it’s like this... I got this lady friend in Milwaukee, and when I found out I was going to be in town today I called her up and she was free. And, well, I wouldn’t mind spending the morning with this lady friend, you know what I mean?”

“What about your wife you’re always talking about?’

“She’s at home with the kids where she belongs, what d’you mean what about my wife? Anyway, the only reason I’m insisting on staying with you is I got to stay in tight with Felix. I mean, I want to hang onto my job, you can understand that, it pays good, keeps my family in nice clothes and their stomachs filled, you know?”

Nolan nodded.

“So here’s what I thought. I’ll kind of let you go your own way, but I’ll leave the number for you to call. It’s a greasy spoon on the north side of Milwaukee, my lady friend lives up above. The guy’ll relay whatever message you got for me upstairs. I think it would work out okay, but you worry me a little. I mean, Jesus, if you go and get killed you’ll put me in a very sticky situation.”

“I wasn’t planning on getting killed.”

“That’s just it, who does? And you, you’re due to get it one of these times, I mean, I heard the stories about you. But I’m willing, if you’ll promise to cover for me with Felix, and call that number I’ll give you every half hour or so, to let me know things are going okay, and give me some idea of where you’re going to be. And we’ll have to meet someplace afterward and get our stories together. I don’t know. Jeez. What d’you think?”

“I think I like you better now,” Nolan said. He waved at a waitress, to get one last cup of coffee. “Let me buy you some more pancakes.”

“Okay,” Angelo said, “but my wife is going to kill me.”

4

When he got there, Nolan thought he’d screwed up. Or maybe that kid at the filling station told him wrong. The neighborhood was upper middle class, full of big two-story white houses, old but with good Gothic lines and well kept up. The streets were wide and lined with shade trees and two cars per family. The lawns sloped away from sidewalks and were well tended, green trimmed hedges crowding porches, separating this yard from that one. What the hell was Tillis doing here?

Balling some white chick, most likely, Nolan mused, allowing himself a small smile. He got out of the tan Ford and walked up onto the porch of this particular house, the one in which Tillis’ woman supposedly lived. The porch was screened in and had an old-fashioned swing on it and the paper was here but hadn’t been brought in yet. He noticed he was standing on a rubber mat that said the Stillwell family. Before he knocked, he thought it over and backed down off the porch and took a look around. This was the right number, all right. Because the porch was roofed, the second floor seemed to sit way back, emphasizing the Gothic shape of the house, its gingerbread trimming. Some of the windows up there were stained glass and it was an absurd obsolete old house that Nolan would have liked to live in, in another life, and only reaffirmed his thoughts about the neighborhood being wrong for Tillis — what’s a rotten guy like you doing in a nice place like this?

The he spotted something, something stuck onto one of the clear windows between two stained; it was a decal pasted on the glass, a bright red circle with an upside down Y in it, and he understood. A peace emblem. So. The upper floor was an apartment, rented out to some college student, or what’s worse, teacher. Well, everybody needs extra money these days, even folks in beautiful old tree-shaded neighborhoods couldn’t be particular about their roomers any more. Things were tough all over.

Inside a doorway in back, he went up a spastic stairway that required three right turns of him and finally deposited him on an over-size landing in front of a white door. On the door was a slot with a card in it saying Phyllis Watson. Nolan knocked. He had his.38 out, which he didn’t think he’d need, but caution never hurt anybody; he also stood to one side of the door, back to the wall.

A pretty white girl with puffy brown eyes and long brown hair that was tousled and a little bit greasy opened the door and stepped out on the landing wearing a shortie terrycloth robe. This anti-war girl was just full of love and trust, not to mention stupidity, and Nolan thought Tillis ought to train his women a little better; she certainly had no hesitation about answering the door (which didn’t seem to have a night-latch on it, as far as Nolan could tell) and coming out to say hello with most of her skin showing.

Nolan noticed what great legs the girl had and that her shortie terrycloth robe was belted at the waist, not too securely, enabling him to see one-third of two melony breasts. She was a tall girl, which made sense with Tillis being so big, and Nolan put his hand over her mouth and dragged her back inside the apartment, nudging the door shut with his foot.

The kitchen was ordinary, tidy. He showed her the gun and whispered into her ear, “Don’t scream,” and marched her into the next room, his one arm around her waist with the gun poking her side, the other arm reached up across melony breasts to cover her mouth; they walked in step together, clumsily, as though doing a dance they just learned together at Arthur Murray’s.

The room was high-ceilinged, trimmed in carved woodworking that isn’t done these days, and had once been the house library, judging from the walls of bookcases on either side of the room. They moved quickly through the library, which with lounging pillows and shag carpet and couch and easy chairs and TV had been reconverted into a living room, and on to the bedroom, where an air conditioner stuck in a window was cooling Tillis, who was asleep on his stomach, on top of the covers, naked.

Carefully, like a contortionist, without moving the arm across melony breasts or the one around her waist, Nolan stretched out a foot and kicked the bed.

Tillis roused, rolled over, sat up in bed, said, “What the fuck,” rubbed sleep from his eyes.

Nolan said, “Surprise.”

Tillis said, “Nolan?”

“Tell this girl I’m a friend and not to scream when I let her go.”

“Phyllis, honey, he’s my friend, don’t go screaming, honey.”

“And tell her not to jab me in the balls or anything.”

“Don’t go jabbing him in the balls or nothing, honey.”

He let her go and she squirmed onto the bed and put her arms around Tillis. She was whiter than usual, being scared, and up against the big naked black man she made quite a contrast. Her eyes were full of confusion and hate, and she twisted up her face at Nolan and spat, “Pig.”

“Hardly,” Nolan said.

“Racist motherfucker,” she said.

“Peace,” Nolan said, making the sign.

“Cool it, Phyllis honey,” Tillis said laughing, patting her backside, “He really is a friend. Sorta. He just got reason to play things a little close to the vest. He’s a little more cautious than some people I know.”

Phyllis said, “You mean I should have been more careful about just opening the door for him like I did?”

“We talked about that before, honey. I ain’t no goddamn plumber, you know.”

“I’m sorry, Tillie.”

“It’s okay. You gonna put the gun down, Nolan?”

“Down,” Nolan said, lowering it. “Not away.”

Tillis grinned, his white smile flashing in the darkened room; he looked like a sinister Louis Armstrong. He turned to Phyllis, said, “Be a good girl and get me some pants.”

“Just pants,” Nolan told her as she crossed in front of him, going to a dresser.

“What makes you so goddamn paranoid, man?” Tillis wanted to know.

“Old age,” Nolan said, watching Tillis climb into his trousers.

“I thought you’d be in one of those homes by now,” Tillis said, “boppin’ round the grounds in a wheelchair with a shawl around your shoulders.”

“Last time you told me that, I just finished knocking you on your black ass.”

“And this time you caught me cold, with my black ass really hangin’ out. Yeah, you’re old all right, but you’re good.”

Nolan grinned back at him, said, “This time I thought we’d skip the preliminaries. My ribs hurt for a week last time we tangled.”

“Must be that arthritis gettin’ to you.”

“Must be. Let’s go talk in the other room. How about your friend getting us some coffee?”

“Good idea. Phyllis, honey, do what the man says.”

“Is there a phone in the kitchen?” Nolan asked.

“No,” Tillis said, pointing to the nightstand phone. “Only one in the apartment’s here.”

“Okay,” Nolan told the girl, “go make the coffee.”

“Get fucked,” she told him.

“Fine with me,” he said. “First take off your robe.”

She started to spit back a reply, but saw that Tillis was laughing at what Nolan said, and she shrugged helplessly and went off to the kitchen.

Nolan and Tillis took seats in the library-living room. Tillis sat on the couch, Nolan on an easy chair across. He glanced at the books in the case behind him and recognized only one author; he hadn’t heard of James Baldwin, Leroi Jones, Germaine Greer or Joyce Carol Oates, but he knew Harold Robbins.

Tillis said, “You’re early, man.”

“I made good time on the tollway.”

“I wouldn’t’ve called Harry in on you, you know.”

“Thought crossed your mind, though, didn’t it?”

Tillis grinned, then got serious fast. “What’s this about, anyway?”

“You asked me that on the phone.”

“Want you to tell me, man. Want to hear you say it.”

“It’s Charlie, Tillis.”

“Charlie’s dead.”

“Yeah. And you helped crucify him. Only on the seventh day he rose.”

“What makes you think he’s alive?”

“Nothing much. Just that yesterday he murdered a friend of mine, stole around a million dollars from me, and kidnapped a kid I know. That’s all.”

“Shit. You jivin’ me? You’re a shifty motherfuck, I know that much. You shitin’ me?”

“No shit at all. He’s alive and I know it. If I wasn’t sitting on this, the boys from Chicago would be coming around and checking out all Charlie’s friends.”

Tillis leaned over, hands folded, and thought for several long moments. When he looked up, his dark eyes were big and solemn and brimming with honesty. “All right, man. I’m gonna tell it. Gonna tell it all to you. You got to help me save my ass is all I ask. Whew. Jesus. The shit hit the fan this time, right? Shit, man.”

“Tillis, you’re going to be in trouble. I’m your only hope.”

“The Great White Hope, that’s my old buddy Nolan. Jesus Christ. Let me catch my breath. My whole fuckin’ world’s crashing down in my head. This is bad news for the big shitter, Nolan. Christ all fuckin’ mighty.”

“You started to tell me.”

“Okay. Now you know about Charlie and me. I didn’t love the sucker, but he helped me out, stayed by me. I didn’t go to college first to play ball like most of the dudes, and I didn’t play ball long enough to have a name that was gonna make me a goddamn announcer with Howard Cosell on the tube or nothin’. My football career, shit, when that fuckin’ knee went, I mean maybe I coulda got a job selling tires or something... right here, folks, here’s our boy Tillis, he’ll show you the tires, he played ball with the pros, shook hands with Joe Namath, this boy did.”

“Tillis.”

“Yeah. Anyway, Charlie. He did right by me. Paid me good, treated me with respect, unless he got real mad or something. I didn’t love him, but who do you think I was gonna love in the goddamn Family? Wasn’t exactly a truck-load of soul brothers around me. I had to develop a goddamn taste for pasta, let me tell you. Charlie did me right, and then you come along and fucked him in the ear with those marked bills you passed him, and then this political thing started happening, only it was going on all the time, I guess, but this trouble you brought Charlie brought it to a head. The younger bunch was buckin’ the old regime, Charlie bein’ the main one, you know. It was a political deal, power play, like General Motors or the court of some fuckin’ king or the goddamn Democratic Party. So those of us lined up with Charlie were maybe gonna get chopped when he did. Wasn’t no if — just when. There was a bunch of us. Anyway, me and some other guys took a hand in helping the people against Charlie in the Family get rid of him. Only, as you guessed, I guess, we faked it. It was a couple of bums off skid row who got roasted in that fire when Charlie’s car accident’ly on purpose cracked up. We just used some stuff to make it look like Charlie. See, Charlie knew he didn’t have a chance, so him and his kid were going to like pretend to die in this crash and take off somewhere, South America, I don’t know where really. Charlie had plenty of money put in other people’s accounts, people he trusted, so money was no hassle.”

“Hold it. Why’d he include his kid in the crash?”

“The kid was workin’ in the Family. Just an overblowed accountant, but Charlie was afraid the kid would get wasted along with him. Guess the kid always wanted to work with his father, wanted to be a part of the Family, saw it as... I don’t know, adventure, I guess. Or a family tradition or some goddamn thing. Charlie never went for it, really, that business about working your kids into the Family ain’t so true anymore. But this kid of his insisted, and when the boy got out of college Charlie gave him this token desk thing, away from the guns and that side of it. Charlie was like a lot of guys, wanted his kids to get an education, be respectable. I think his daughter was in the fuckin’ Peace Corps, can you get into that?”

“Why didn’t Charlie leave, like he was supposed to?”

“Nolan, I swear to God I thought that sucker was in Argentina or someplace, with his buddy the Boss of the Bosses. Swear to shit, I thought that’s where he was. But Nolan, I’m no fuckin’ wheel, remember. I’m a cog, man, and Charlie was pretty foxy about who he had help him, well, die... and just as foxy about how much each of us knew exactly. Like, I know some of the people involved, but not all.”

Nolan got out of the chair, walked over and sat on the couch next to Tillis. He handed Tillis the list Felix had made up. “How many of those people were in this with Charlie?”

Tillis studied the list. The girl in the terrycloth robe came in and gave them cups of coffee. Tillis told her to go back out to the kitchen and she did.

“I see Charlie’s daughter is on this list,” Tillis said.

“Yeah.”

“You gonna bother her?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“Well?”

“I’m not going to tell you any names.”

“What?”

“Listen. My ass is grass because of this. I gotta move slow on this, think it through. You’re in pretty good with the Family, now, right? I heard you made the peace with that tight-ass lawyer, Felix what’s-his-name.”

“Yeah, the Family’s behind me. I already admitted that. But they’re going to sit on this till I say go. You got my word. I can save your damn ass. You maybe aren’t going to get a pension out of the deal, and a penthouse overlooking Lake Michigan, but you’ll be alive.”

“Maybe I can get that job selling tires,” Tillis said, with a rueful grin. “God. I got about as much chance to get outa this as a turd in a toilet.”

“Mine’s the only hand can stop the guy from flushing it.”

“I know, man.”

“Listen to me, Tillis. Charlie’s fucking nuts. He’s out of his mind. He wants to hurt me and I got to stop him. He’s got my money, Tillis. Worse than that, he’s got this kid. I like this kid, Tillis.”

“You don’t like anybody.”

“Hell, I like you. I must be capable of liking any damn body.”

“What do you mean, a kid?”

“Well, he’s about twenty. He was in on that last job of mine.”

“That bank number?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you’re talking about a man, not a kid.”

“Compared to you and me, he’s a kid, Tillis. And compared to Charlie.” Nolan sipped his coffee; it was weak. “Maybe he’s dead.”

“Charlie?”

“The kid. Jon’s his name. If Charlie killed that kid, I’m nailing the bastard to the wall. That bastard is a cancer that’s got to be cut out of the human race.”

Tillis shook his head, said, “I can’t imagine him messing around with a young kid, especially somebody you’re fond of, Nolan. Too much like his own son, you know? Charlie wouldn’t want anybody hurting his kid, and that’s what you might do to get back at him, so I can’t...”

“Charlie’s capable of anything, as long as it’s insane. As far as his own precious kid is concerned, Charlie’s got his pride ’n’ joy at his side, the kid’s been in it with him from word go.”

“What? Momma, that man has flipped out.”

The phone rang in the bedroom. Tillis said, “Phyllis, honey, go get that!”

Tillis said, “You’ll want to get to Harry, right? That’s the next step.”

“Right. I figure he knows what’s happening.”

“You probably figure right, man. Maybe I’m a cog, but ol’ Harry’s a wheel.”

Phyllis trudged through the room, all but pouting, plodding along toward the trilling phone.

Tillis said, “I think maybe I know the best way to handle it.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Let me go pump him.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Now listen, you go down there, try to see Harry downtown, you’re gonna have to break some people in half. Maybe you get busted in half yourself, and that kid, and that money, ain’t never gonna be found. You be better off trust me in this.”

“Come on.”

“Tillie!” Phyllis yelled.

“Hey, I’m not stupid, man. I know how close those Chicago dudes are, I can feel ’em on my neck, breathing hot and hard, man. Shit. Remember, I used to work with those boys in the windy town, and I know how tough some of them mothers are. This town is nothin’. We’re a suburb of Chicago that got outa hand and that’s all. Those guys, they think it’s 1927 or something.”

“Tillie!” the girl called again. “Guy says it’s urgent!”

Nolan followed him into the bedroom. Tillis took the phone and said, “Yeah?... What?... What?... Jesus fuck... How long ago?... Where do we go from here, man?... No, I’ll come to you... Downtown I guess, be cops at the house... Yeah.” Tillis hung the phone up, said, “Somebody shot Harry.”

Nolan sat on the bed. “Say again.”

“Somebody killed him. He was coming out of his house. He was in his goddamn pajamas, gettin’ the paper off the porch. Some guy came by, in a car it must’ve been, and shot him. You know what with?”

“No.”

“A grease gun, they think. A fuckin’ grease gun. I don’t believe it.”

“Harry lives in a kind of nice neighborhood, doesn’t he? Didn’t that cause a scene? Didn’t everybody see the guy that did it, his car at least?”

“That fuckin’ grease gun must’ve been silenced. He laid there ten minutes before his wife found him. Can you put a silencer on a fuckin’ grease gun, a submachine gun like that?”

“Sure could. It wouldn’t make any more noise than somebody shuffling cards.”

“Who? The Family? They do it, Nolan? You been shittin’ me all along? Settin’ me up?”

“No. But it could be the Family. It could be that bastard Felix using me. Or it could be Charlie, killing everybody who helped him, anybody who could lead somebody to him.”

“Jesus. I got to get downtown. Jesus.”

“Is there anybody else who could tell you something?”

“Huh?”

“About Charlie. Anybody else in Harry’s regime here you can pump? Who’s second in command? Vito?”

Tillis nodded.

“Isn’t Vito Harry’s cousin, makes him some kind of half-ass relative of Charlie’s, then, too, right?”

“Yeah. Well. Nolan, Jesus. Okay, I guess my head’s straight. Yeah. You want, you can stay here, I’ll call the information to you if I can get it. If I can’t get nothin’, I’ll call you and you can try some of the other people on that list. But I suggest you move on to the Chicago names, man, because this town’s gonna be a fuckin’ funny farm for a while.”

“If I stay here, and wait for you to call, am I an asshole?”

“I’m not going to screw you, Nolan. I helped you before.”

“Yeah. I’ll show you the scars.”

Tillis mustered a weary grin. “Well, you want to watch me get dressed?”

“I don’t want to, but I’m going to.”

Before he left, dressed in his brown suit and black shoulder holster, the Luger in it unloaded at present, Tillis kissed Phyllis goodbye and said, “Later,” to Nolan, adding, “Take care of this girl while I’m gone, Nolan, I like her,” and Nolan knew what he meant, felt better about trusting Tillis.

Nolan and Phyllis retired to the living room. Nolan took Tillis’ place on the couch and Phyllis took the easychair. She stared sullenly at him, unaware that her spread legs were giving Nolan a view worthy of the most raunchy porno mag.

“What do you do?” Nolan said.

“What Tillis tells me to,” she said, still sullen.

“For a living, I mean.”

“I’m a grad student.”

“You go to college, you mean? What do you study?”

“I’m in the Afro-American Studies program.”

Nolan looked at her thighs and got ready to ask her what the hell she meant, but the scream broke in.

He jumped up, and so did the girl.

The noise, the scream had come from outside. He pressed up against the clear glass and looked down and saw Tillis sprawled across the tan Ford, his unloaded Luger in his hand, a ribbon of blood across his chest. Even from the second floor, Nolan could see the wide white rolled-back eyes, the bulging tongue.

Didn’t take a college education to tell Tillis was dead.

5

The modern buildings of Northern Illinois University rose to the left like the set of a science fiction film with a big budget. The rich Illinois farmland dissolved into a blur of plastic college-town shopping center, apartment building and franchise restaurant living; the highway became a shaded street along which kids of both sexes wearing tee-shirts and cut-off jeans walked and pedaled bikes. Then, after blocks of pizza places and boutiques and McDonald’s hamburgers and dormitories, a wide, off-center intersection appeared from nowhere, as if to separate one half of Dekalb from the other. That seemed only right, as this other part of town was so different it was like passing through to another dimension; the business district beyond the intersection had no doubt been much the same for many years, the narrow main street lined with one- and two-story buildings, drug stores, dress shops, five and dime, hardware stores and only rare indications (“Adult Books in Rear” — “Water Bed Sale”) that this was a college town and not just a congregating point for area farmers and sedately middle class townspeople. Dekalb was a schizophrenic town. Even Nolan noticed it.

“Hey, look at the jugs on that one,” Angelo said, pointing to a tall blonde girl with a short haircut, cut-off jeans and green tee shirt. “Bouncy bouncy.”

“Just drive,” Nolan said.

“Sour ass,” Angelo said.

Nolan still wasn’t happy about being with Angelo, though he supposed he should’ve been grateful to his chubby-faced companion. It was just an hour and half ago that Nolan had been looking out the window and watching the crowd form, a crowd of briefcase-carrying men ready to leave for work and curlered women in housewifely robes and gleeful little kids in bright summer shirts, all looking on in fascinated horror at the big black dead man sprawled across the tan Ford. Nolan’s tan Ford, and at that moment of no damn use at all, as far as transportation went. Nolan hadn’t bothered trying to calm the hysterical Phyllis Watson, who had started to scream, pummeling him with hard little fists. Instead, he had knocked her cold with a solid right cross, sincerely hoping he hadn’t broken the girl’s jaw, and went down the stairs and out of the house, cutting through the backyards of houses behind, moving away from the scene of Tillis’ death as quickly as possible. He’d gone to a filling station, called the number Angelo had left, and after fifteen minutes and two cups of coffee in the station’s adjacent cafe, Nolan had gladly hopped in a car beside Angelo and got the hell out of Milwaukee. Somebody would have to go back for the tan Ford, which belonged to the Tropical Motel and could conceivably cause some problems, but that was one of those details that would have to be ironed out later. Some asshole like Felix could sweat over that.

Now Nolan was with Angelo in a black Chevy (naturally) in Dekalb, Illinois. Nolan wasn’t happy about being in Dekalb, for several reasons. For one thing, Dekalb was only fifteen miles from the Tropical, his starting point on this largely fruitless trip, which already had lasted some nine or ten hours. Being so close to home served to remind him of how far he hadn’t gotten; he sensed he was going around in a big circle that included all of Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin. He felt like a traveling salesman with nothing to sell.

Another reason for his discontent was that he was in Dekalb to do something he would rather not do. Something he had told Tillis he wouldn’t do.

He was going to bother Charlie’s daughter.

He was, in fact, probably going to kidnap her.

Angelo said, “What should I do, stop at a filling station and ask, or what?” They jostled across the railroad tracks that slanted across Dekalb’s main street, announcing the decline of the business district.

“No,” Nolan said, “we’re already on the right street. She must live over one of these stores downtown here.” He checked the street number on the list of names, checked it against the numbers they were passing. “Yeah, just another couple blocks. Keep it slow.”

Back on the Interstate they had stopped long enough to call Felix. Nolan had questioned the lawyer, hard, about the violent doings in Milwaukee, and Felix had said, “Do you really think we would do that to people who could lead us to the man we really want?” The man they really wanted being Charlie, of course. Felix was careful about what words he used on the phone.

“I don’t know,” Nolan had answered. “I been dealing with crazy people so much I’m feeling that way myself.”

“Nolan, be reasonable. We’re fighting the same battle, for Christ’s sake.”

“But who is on what side, is what I want to know.”

“Let me send some people to help you out. This is getting big.”

“I already got your Angelo along, and that’s one man too many. Oh, and you can call your man Greer and take him off those people in Iowa City. Not much chance of anybody warning Harry about anything anymore.”

“If you’re through making your ridiculous accusations, Nolan, I have something to tell you. Something important. We have a lead on Charlie.”

That had pleased Nolan, but still he said, “I thought this was my show.”

“I told you, it’s bigger than that now. We won’t get in your way, but we have interests in this affair far wider than your own, and resources at our disposal that a single man — even a most competent one, like yourself — could not hope to match.”

“So what have you got?”

“We’ve located a pilot who’d been chartered by Harry. He was to fly up to a private air field in the Lake Geneva area and take a passenger to Mexico.”

Felix paused, for applause Nolan guessed.

When he didn’t get any, Felix continued. “The guy, the pilot, has done some work for us before — has picked up merchandise of ours in Mexico, occasionally, if you get my meaning.”

“Go on.”

“Harry’s death was reported on the radio and television about half an hour ago, and this pilot heard it and immediately called Vito up and asked him if this chartered plane thing was still on. Vito knew nothing about it, but thought it smelled funny and called Chicago to see what we made of it.”

“What you made of it was the plane was for Charlie.”

“Naturally. I told Vito to tell the pilot to go ahead and be where he was supposed to be at the proper time. We’ll have our men waiting there, at the private field.”

“If the field’s near Lake Geneva, odds are Charlie’s holed up someplace close by.”

“I would think so. Seems to me he used to have a lodge or summer home of some kind in that neck of the woods. We’re running a check on it now, trying to see exactly where it was.”

“What time was that meeting at the airfield supposed to be?”

“It was set for last night but the ‘passenger’ ran into some difficulty and they’d rescheduled the next possible time. Which was one o’clock today.”

“Tonight, you mean?”

“This afternoon, I mean.”

“Jesus. Not much time. Where is this air field, anyway?”

Felix gave Nolan directions; they were complicated and Nolan had to write them down. He knew the Lake Geneva area fairly well, but there were a hell of a lot of country roads around there to confuse things.

“You don’t really think Charlie will go ahead with the flight, do you, Felix? He’s pretty likely to’ve heard the news about Harry and Tillis by now and figure something’s up.”

“Nolan, it’s pretty likely, too, that Charlie was responsible for what happened to Harry and Tillis. Tidying up after himself. He’s certainly ruthless enough to handle things that way. If our people aren’t responsible for what happened in Milwaukee — and Nolan, I assure you we aren’t — then who else could it be but Charlie?”

That was a good question, and it was still on Nolan’s mind even as Angelo wheeled the black Chevy down a side street and slid into a diagonal parking stall next to the cycle shop over which Charlie’s daughter lived.

“Don’t tell me,” Angelo grunted. “You want me to keep my ass in the car, right?”

Nolan nodded. “And if somebody comes at you with a silenced grease gun, try to get out of the way.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“But if you can’t, fall on the horn and warn me before you breathe your last, okay, Angelo?”

“Nolan, what the fuck makes you such a nice guy?”

“The company I keep.”

To the left of the row of motorcycles and the window full of Yamaha signs was a doorless doorway, beyond that a stairway. At the bottom of the stairs were two mailboxes: apartment one had somebody called Barry West in it; apartment two had Joyce Walters. Walters wasn’t Charlie’s name, and Joyce wasn’t married, but she was Charlie’s kid just the same.

Nolan didn’t like this. It gave him a bad taste in his mouth. Charlie was a crazy man, and that made anyone who chose to play by Charlie’s rules a crazy man, as well.

But shit. What else was there to do? Where else could he turn? Milwaukee was out; it was a madhouse at the moment, and the two men he needed to talk to were both dead. Chicago? Might be a few people there worth seeing, but he doubted it, doubted he’d find out anything he hadn’t found out already, from Joey Metrano. No, it was obvious Charlie had done his most recent arranging through Harry, in Milwaukee, so Chicago was no good, and besides, Felix would have Family men poking around the city, and as for that meeting at the air field, that was the same damn thing: Family people would be in control there, too. And Charlie wasn’t likely to show anyway; he’d much more likely be holed up, trying to regroup, trying to find some new way to get out of the country, now that the plane was out. Unless Felix was right and Charlie was going around shooting those who’d helped him. But Nolan simply couldn’t believe that, even though there was a cockeyed Charlie-like logic to it.

There was only one name on that list worth talking to. Only one person he could try.

The daughter.

And he knew that the best thing for him to do would be grab her, take her with him and try to work out a trade with Charlie — the girl for Jon and the money. If anyone would know where Charlie was, the daughter would, and if Nolan kidnapped her and worked out a swap, the whole damn problem could be solved in one easy stroke. Nolan wouldn’t even have to kill the old bastard; he could leave that to Charlie’s Family friends.

So it was easy. Just take the girl. Exchange of prisoners. Simple.

But he’d be playing Charlie’s game, doing what Charlie had done to Jon, and that gave him a bad taste in his mouth.

He knocked. A voice from within said, “One moment,” a girl’s voice, medium-range, firm.

She opened the door a crack and peered out at Nolan, looked him over, said, “Oh. You’re a friend of my father’s, I suppose.” She gave out a heavy sigh. “I imagine you want to come in and talk to me.”

“If I could,” Nolan said.

She let him in, with another sigh, as if she’d known he was coming and was resigned to the fact. “Come in,” she said, though he already was, “if you feel you have to.”

Nolan walked over to a worn green couch, sat. The apartment was spare but spotless; the furniture old but service-able. The only concession to luxury was a tiny portable TV that sat in a corner so low that your neck would have to ache no matter where you chose to watch, perhaps as punishment for doing so. The floor was hard varnished wood, scrubbed but too old to shine. The walls were flat, unpebbled plaster, white and very clean; they were bare except for a wooden carved thing over the couch, from some culture Nolan couldn’t conceive of, and three posters, all on the wall directly across from him. One poster had an abstract drawing and the words “War Is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things,” while the other two showed photographs of starving children, one labeled Biafra, the other Cambodia. It wasn’t the most cheerful apartment Nolan had ever been in.

“Excuse me if I was rude before,” she said. “Would you care for something to drink?”

He shrugged. “Coffee,” he said.

“I have a pot of tea in the kitchen.”

“Fine.”

She wasn’t gone long. She gave him the tea and on the saucer next to the cup was a single cookie, a vanilla Hydrox. Nolan bit the Hydrox in half and a hungry-eyed kid from Biafra caught his attention; the mouthful went down hard.

“I don’t believe this is necessary,” she said. “But I suppose you people mean well doing it.”

She was a girl who might have been pretty, had she a mind to. She was small and had those same dark, close-set eyes her father had, though on her the effect was much different; there was a softness in the eyes that outer layers of strength couldn’t mask. She sat in a straightback chair across from him, right by the Cambodia poster, and crossed her legs, tugging down her long skirt. She wasn’t bad-looking, really, he thought, considering she was Charlie’s kid and dressed like a goddamn nun, black skirt and short-sleeve white blouse, tucked neatly in. Her dark hair probably looked good when it hung loose to her shoulders; right now it was in a tight bun, pulled back from attractive features that had been totally denied make-up.

“I said, I don’t believe this is necessary,” she repeated, “but I suppose you people mean well doing it.”

“Pardon?”

“Believe me, I know this is awkward for you. But I do understand what this is all about. As you must know, when Daddy died, Uncle Harry came down and talked to me, to try to soothe me, calm me. What upset Uncle Harry was I wasn’t upset. I wish he could have understood that as far as I was concerned my father had died long before that stupid crash, and that my brother’s death was of a far greater importance to me, because I had... I had hope for Walter. But Walter was stubborn. Stubborn as hell, and he wanted to walk in his father’s footsteps, God alone knows why. So I could accept his death, too.”

Nolan sipped his tea. He felt uncomfortable. He wished he’d thought this out better, planned exactly how he was going to handle the daughter. But who could have planned for a girl like this, anyway? Nothing to do but sit here and let her talk.

“So, as I said, this is entirely unnecessary. I heard the news on the television, and I was saddened for a moment, but I must admit that while Uncle Harry was a nice man in his way, I feel the world will be a better place without him. People like my uncle, and my father, are destructive, to themselves and to their society. My family had long been a part of organized corruption, our family history is long and illustrious in that regard. My mother’s father, my grandfather, why they write books about him! Famous people played him in the movies, I was a celebrity as a little girl because of it — the only kid on the block whose grandpa was on ‘The Untouchables’! No, I won’t miss Uncle Harry, just like I won’t miss my father. You want to know who I miss? Walter, sure, Walt, but mostly, I miss my mother, I wish I could sit and talk to my mother. She was ten years older than Daddy, she was a good woman and always pretended she didn’t realize Daddy married her because she was somebody’s daughter. She was young when she died, in her early sixties, and she died more of neglect than anything else, but she was too much in love with Daddy ever to complain — at least she never complained loud enough for me to hear. My whole family was caught up in that other Family, it drained the life out of all of us, and so please tell your people not to come bother me anymore. It’s so ridiculous now, there’s not a close blood relative left and yet still they feel obliged to send you, out of some insane, archaic sense of duty or custom or something. Excuse me. I hope I haven’t offended you. But you must understand. My father was dead long before he was killed in that crash. He was morally dead. My uncle, too. Can you understand that?”

Nolan nodded. He cleared his throat, said, “Uh, you were in the Peace Corps, weren’t you?”

“Yes. Guatemala. I was in the Central American jungle, with very primitive people, who believe in evil spirits and that sort of thing. We built them a school. It was a good experience, but it was as much escape as service, and I realize now that my joining the Peace Corps was somewhat hypocritical. I’m back in college again, taking a degree in English this time, because I want to help where I’m needed most, and where my own moral need is greatest. I hope to teach in the slums, the ghettos. In Chicago, if at all possible. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He did.

“No,” he said.

“I want to go into the jungle where it’s my father’s kind who are the evil spirits. His kind who need warding off. With education, with patience, with love, maybe a person like me can teach the underfed, the underprivileged, educate them into understanding that hell is what the heroin dealers offer, to realize the absurdity of spending five dollars a day on a game of chance when your family is starving, to know what it is to...”

He stopped listening to her. Bleeding-heart liberals gave him a pain in the butt. She was doing her best, he supposed, but she was starting to sound like the naive, condescending child she was.

“I’m sorry Uncle Harry is dead,” she said after a while, “and please thank whoever it was that sent you. But that part of me is gone now. I won’t miss Uncle Harry. I’ll admit I miss my mother. My brother, too. And I miss the father of my childhood.”

“I knew you when you were little,” Nolan said. It was a shot in the dark, untrue, of course. But he tried it.

“You did?”

“I came around to your summer place once. On business.”

She found a smile somewhere and showed it to him. “I won’t lie and say I remember you, but I guess you could’ve seen me when I was a child. I can remember that Daddy was secretive about that place, about Eagle’s Roost.” She grinned, forgetting herself. “He bawled Uncle Harry out one time, bawled him out terrible, for bringing business people around to the lodge. I can remember it so clearly. Maybe you were one of the men with Uncle Scary, uh, Harry that time. Maybe that was the time you saw me.”

“I think it was,” Nolan said. “I remember how mad your father got.”

“Oh, he could get mad all right, but we had good times at the lakes. My best memories are there, at Eagle’s Roost, we were a family there more than anywhere else. Up so high, away from everything, where we could look down at both those pretty blue lakes. We had a sailboat, a little one, for two people, you know? And Daddy and I would...” She stopped. “That was a long time ago.”

“Your lodge was up around Lake Geneva, wasn’t it?”

“Well, the lakes, Twin Lakes, actually, but in that area, yes. It’s kind of a unique place, sort of a shame no one’s using it now, been all shut up for several years. Got the best view in the whole area, up on that hill on that little piece of land between the two lakes. Eagle’s Roost... a beautiful place, but just a memory now, one pleasant one I have, anyway.” She got up. “Would you like another cup of tea before you go?”

“Yes, please. Never mind the Hydrox.”

They drank the second cup of tea quickly, in silence.

Finally she said, “Did you wonder about my name, on the mailbox?”

“Not really,” he said.

“I changed it. Legally. I’m not a part of that family anymore. I’d been meaning to change it for years, but always thought I’d be getting married one day, and, well...” She touched her hair. “I’ve other things to do for the time being. Do you think it odd, me changing my name?”

“No,” Nolan smiled. “I’ve done it a few times myself.”

He rose, handed her his empty cup and left.

6

It was no problem finding Eagle’s Roost. The narrow strip of land between Lake Mary and Lake Elizabeth had only the one, steep hill. Standing at the bottom and looking up, Nolan thought the hill looked like the Matterhorn, but in reality it was only a hundred some feet, going up at an eighty-degree angle, flattening out level on top. From the foot of the hill all you could see of what was up there was the tall row of pines lining the edge and sheltering the lodge from view, the breeze riffling through their needles. But it was there, Nolan knew, Eagle’s Roost was up there.

Nolan and Angelo left the black Chevy a quarter of a mile away, back behind a bend on the blacktop road. Both men were carrying Smith and Wesson.38s; Angelo’s was a Bodyguard model, a five-shot revolver with a two-inch barrel, good for shooting people close up, but not much else; the four-inch barrel on Nolan’s revolver assured far greater accuracy and he didn’t like working with supposed professionals who didn’t observe such simple facts. But he felt he could use some support, so he’d let Angelo come along anyway. They circled the bottom of the hill, staying down low, moving carefully through dense foliage like soldiers in a jungle.

It was noon, but the sun overhead was under a cover of clouds, so the heat was modest, tempered by gentle lake winds. The sun would come out now and then, but mostly the day was pleasantly overcast, a day of floating shadows that rolled cool and blue and gray across the green Wisconsin landscape. Nolan could smell the lake in the air and envied, for a moment, the people out boating, skiing, swimming. Then he squeezed the.38 in his hand, as if to reassure the weapon of his intent, and pressed on.

“Fucking bugs,” Angelo said, swatting.

Nolan hadn’t noticed them. He pointed, said, “Over there.”

They could see the lake now, as well as smell it. This was Lake Mary and Elizabeth was over on the other side of the steep hill. A combination boathouse and garage, possibly with sleeping rooms on the upper floor, was maybe twenty yards from the bottom of the hill, some hundred yards from the lake front. But what Nolan was pointing to was the driveway extending from the boathouse and cutting through the thick foliage to a big wrought-iron gate that opened onto a road that ran through a subdivision of summerhouses nearby. The big padlocked gate was the most awesome feature of a five-foot brick wall that separated the grounds of Eagle’s Roost (which even from this distance could be seen spelled out backward in wrought-iron on the gate) from those of the subdivision.

“Go back to the car,” Nolan said. “Drive down through that bunch of houses and wait by the gate. If I screw up and Charlie gets away from me somehow, he’s probably going to come tearing out through there.”

Angelo nodded. “No other way out?”

“Just those steps we saw on the other side of the hill. If Charlie’s wounded, and I think he is, he won’t be coming down an incline like that. Besides, a car’d have to be waiting to pick him up, and where would that come from?”

“Maybe he’s got people helping him.”

“Risk it.”

“Okay, then. I’m on my way.”

“Angelo.”

“Yeah?”

“Family guys are probably going to start showing up, and I’d appreciate you keeping them away, for a while. I want time with Charlie alone.”

“I’ll do my best, Nolan. But it’s not you I work for, remember.”

“Do it for the sake of our friendship.”

A grin split Angelo’s chubby face and he said, “Well, since you put it that way...” And he trudged off through the high grass and weeds toward the blacktop.

Down in front of the subdivision was a beach, where girls and women sunned, and swimmers, kids mostly, romped close to shore. Out on the lake, sailboats and motorboats of various sizes and shapes skimmed across the water. The cool breeze was soothing, and Nolan could have dropped down into a soft bed of grass and fallen asleep, had this been another time.

But it wasn’t.

He moved toward the boathouse, which was two stories of yellow stucco trimmed with brown wood, Swiss Chalet-style. Wooden stairs on either side met in a balcony that came across the front of the building and faced the lake, but not around the back. Trees and bushes and out-of-hand weeds crowded the boathouse; it had been some good time since a gardener tended these grounds.

He approached slowly, keeping down, pushing through the heavy bushes around the house, keeping under their cover. On his haunches, he moved along the side of the stucco wall, then eased carefully out onto the gravelled drive, the balcony overhead shading him as he edged along the garage door. The brown wood of the garage door didn’t quite match the wood trim and stairs and balcony, being more modem than the rest of this ’20s vintage building; the door had windows strung across it that allowed Nolan to peek in at the blue Oldsmobile inside. One half of the garage had been meant for boat storage, but no boat was there now, just a dirty, long-discarded tarp that lay slumped across the spot where a boat had once rested. The garage was empty of people and, except for the Olds and the tarp, any sign of human life. Not a rake or a saw or a car-jack or a pile of old newspapers, nothing. People didn’t live here anymore.

To the left of the bar area was a stairway. Nolan crossed the room like an Indian and started up the stairs, at the top of which was the light of an open doorway. As he climbed he noticed the tightness of his facial muscles, how tense his neck was, and consciously loosened himself, fanning his.38 out in front of him in a fluid, almost graceful motion. Nolan stepped into the hallway on the balls of his feet. The hall was narrow, three doors on each side, all of them shut tight. One by one he stood before the doors and listened, not opening any of them, only listening, pressing an ear tenderly against the heavy wood, searching for a sound. A dripping faucet behind one door told him he’d found the can, but he heard nothing else until he’d worked his way down both sides of the hall. This final door was to one of the rooms that faced the hill; the rooms on this side were more likely for holding a prisoner than those with views of the lake and a balcony running by. He listened and then he heard a voice, a man’s voice.

He stood to the left of the door, back to the wall, and reached across and turned the knob and nudged the door barely open. Then with a quick kick he knocked it open all the way and flattened back against the wall and heard the snick of a silenced gun and watched the slug splinter into the door opposite. Still flat to the wall, he peered around between fully open door and doorjamb, hopefully to fire through the crack into the room at whoever shot at him, and saw Jon standing there, holding an automatic in one trembling hand.

“It’s Nolan,” Nolan said softly, and stepped into the doorway.

“Nolan!”

“Quiet,” he said, walking into the room.

“I could’ve killed you.”

“Well, you didn’t.”

The room had pink wallpaper, a big bed with open springs and sheet-covered furniture. On the bed was a young guy in his early twenties, wearing a blue tee-shirt and white jeans and tied to the bed. One of his feet was bare; this was explained by the sock stuffed in his mouth, as a make-do gag.

“I bet that tastes sweet,” Nolan said. “Charlie’s kid?”

“Charlie’s kid. His name is Walt. God, am I glad to see you, Nolan.”

“Where’d you get the gun and the ropes?”

“From him. Those are the ropes I was tied up with for longer than I’d care to talk about.”

“How long you been in control here?”

“Five minutes maybe. Had a chance earlier, but I blew it. Anyway, he came around a while ago to see if I had to take a piss or anything and I kicked him in the nuts.”

“You’re learning.”

“He’s really a pretty decent guy, for a kidnapper. He was going to help me.”

“Then why’d you feel it necessary to kick his balls in?”

“He kept talking about helping me, but he never got around to doing it.”

“I see. Where’s Charlie?”

“Up on that hill there, I guess. In that house up there. You can see the place from the window.” He walked over to the window and Nolan came along. Jon pointed out and said, “See?”

This side of the hill was just as steep, but there was no row of pines blocking the view. The house was two stories of yellow stucco, like the boathouse, but was much bigger and of that pseudo-Spanish architecture so common in the twenties. With its turrets and archways, it was a genuine relic, the castle of latter-day robber barons, built during the blood-and-booze era by the father of Charlie’s late wife. Someday people would pay fifty cents to hear a tour guide tell about it. Maybe today would provide a sock finish for the guide’s line of patter.

“Somewhere down in those bushes,” Jon said, “is an underground elevator or something. Or maybe a hidden stairway. Over to the right of those cobblestone steps, see? I watched Walt last time he came back from the house and he came out of those bushes.”

Nolan scratched his chin with the hand the.38 was in. “Kind of figured there was some other, easy way up there, besides steps. There’s steps in front and back both, but with Charlie wounded — he is wounded, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Jon nodded, “his thigh. I saw him back in Ainsworth’s office, his thigh was all bandaged. That’s the last time I saw Charlie, was back there in Iowa City. Christ, that reminds me, how’s Karen? How the hell is she? Did you see her?”

“Yes. She’s fine. How about you? You all right?”

“I am now that you’re here. How’d you find me, anyway?”

“We can shoot the bull later, kid. Right now we got things to do.”

“Listen, why don’t we just... no. Forget it.”

“Something on your mind?”

“No, nothing, forget it.”

“You were going to say, why don’t we just take off while we got our asses in one piece?”

“Well, yes. Being alive sounds pretty damn good to me at the moment.”

“Do what you want. I’m staying.”

“Yeah, well, me too, of course. And I understand how you feel about this guy Charlie, it’s a real thing between you two, been going on a lot of years and...”

“Fuck that. The money’s what I care about. That son of a bitch has three quarters of a million dollars, our three quarters of a million dollars, Jon. And all that money sounds pretty damn good to me. That’s what I call being alive.”

“I’d almost forgotten about the money — how could I forget that much money. Seems so long since yesterday. Yesterday Planner was alive, Nolan, do you realize that?” Jon’s hand whitened around the nine-millimeter automatic. “I’m glad we’re going to do something about... about what they did to Planner.”

“Look. One thing we don’t need to be is emotional. We got no time for revenge. That’s for the crazy assholes, like Charlie. I want that bastard breathing, for the time being anyway. I got to shake our money out of him. God knows what he’s done with it.”

“The money,” Jon said, nodding, loosening up. “That’s what’s important.”

Nolan pointed at Walter, whose close-set eyes were big from listening intently to the conversation. “What about him? Have you gotten anything out of him?”

“We hadn’t got very far in our conversation when you got here. I was asking him yes and no questions so he could shake his head and answer, and he claimed he wouldn’t scream or anything if I ungagged him, but I wasn’t convinced yet.”

“It’s just the two of them, then, right? Charlie and the kid?”

“Far as I know. Why not ask Walt, here?”

“Take the sock out of his mouth.”

Jon did.

Walter tried to spit the taste out of his mouth, didn’t quite get the job done.

“This is Nolan,” Jon said. “The guy I told you about.”

Walter said nothing. He had a blank expression, as though he couldn’t make up his mind whether to be outraged or scared shitless.

“How about it, Walt?” Nolan asked. “Just you and your dad?”

Walter said nothing.

Jon said, “I don’t think he’s going to say anything.”

Nolan said, “Well. I’m going up the hill.”

“Wait,” Walter said. “Don’t hurt him! He’s just a poor old man!”

Nolan said nothing.

Jon said, “What do I do?”

Nolan stuffed the sock back into Walter’s mouth and said, “Stay here and guard Junior. If Charlie comes out on top, you’ll have good bargaining power.”

“Don’t talk that way! How could that old bastard come out on top over you?”

“Oh I don’t know. Maybe shoot me, like the other two times.”

“Jesus, Nolan.”

“Come on, I’ll help you take him downstairs. Ground floor’ll be better for you and if you set up behind the bar you’ll have a decent vantage point, and you’ll be right by the garage. He didn’t have car keys on him, by any chance?”

“No.”

“Can you hot-wire a car, kid?”

“My J.D. days pay off at last. Sure I can hot-wire a car, can’t everybody?”

“Good man. Come on.”

They dragged Walter down the stairs into the game room.

“See you kid,” Nolan said.

“See you, Nolan,” Jon said. But he didn’t quite sound sure.

7

The elevator hadn’t seen regular use for years, having only recently been brought back into service for Charlie’s homecoming to Eagle’s Roost. Nolan stood inside the cramped, steel-frame cage, finger poised over a button that said UP. Should he press the damn thing?

He didn’t know.

All he knew was the elevator would deliver him somewhere inside that yellow stucco dinosaur up there. But somewhere covered a lot of unchartered territory. Still, it would be an easy, quick way inside the place; he would avoid that steep, out-in-the-open climb, wouldn’t have to worry about approaching the many-windowed house on all that flat surrounding ground. And there was surprise in it, too: no way in hell Charlie would figure Nolan for coming up the damn elevator.

But the cage was doorless, and gave him absolutely no place to hide, nowhere to shoot from behind, nothing to help him work out a defense in case he was dropped into a waiting Charlie’s lap. And as basic as this elevator system was, Nolan expected no sliding door to await him at the end of his upward ride.

Chances were good, however, that the elevator would open onto an entryway of some kind, with coat racks and such, a vestibule type of thing. Or perhaps somewhere in or near the kitchen, since anyone coming to a summer place like this for a stay would surely come bearing groceries. Neither kitchen or vestibule seemed highly likely places for Charlie to be hanging around.

He pressed the button.

The motor wheezed and coughed, the cable groaned as it lifted the cage. That was okay. He had known there’d be noise, especially with an elevator as old as this. Charlie would be expecting his son to be coming back and the sound of the elevator wouldn’t surprise him. And if Charlie was waiting for Walter by where the elevator came up, no problem either, as long as the old man was expecting the kid and not Nolan, he’d be easy to overcome.

To get to the underground elevator, Nolan had had to shove his way through the brush and weeds that had overtaken what had once been a well-worn pathway, and sure enough, just in that area Jon had pointed out from the boathouse window, Nolan found an entrance. A heavy wrought-iron gate, which was being choked to death by ugly, clinging weeds, had been swung open to one side and a rock shoved against it to keep it open. He had then entered a narrow, low-ceilinged passageway, with plywood walls and a gravel floor; the air was dank and stale, the atmosphere falling somewhere between dungeon and cattle shed.

The passageway, and the elevator itself, said something about the mobster mentality, or at least first-generation mobster mentality, and this, as much as the obvious age of everything, dated it all back to Capone days, in Nolan’s mind. After going to the fantastic expense of tunneling a hundred feet down through a hill, and then out thirty or forty feet more through the side of the hill to make the passageway, the first owner of Eagle’s Roost had then spared all expense, getting the most fundamental, bare-ass elevator system he could, and putting in a passageway that could’ve been the gateway to Shanty Town. Those old mobsters betrayed their beginnings every time; they reverted to the penny-squeezing of poverty-stricken upbringings, whenever given half a chance. Those bastards knew how to suck up the money, Nolan thought, but they never learned how to spend it.

And that none of it had ever been extensively revamped said something about Charlie, a first-generation mobster himself, who hadn’t been born into the Family, he’d married into it. Like his wife’s father, Charlie had known hard times, and like Nolan, he was a product of Depression years. While the elevator had apparently been kept in good working order and minor renovations made (electric motor replacing hydraulic, perhaps), Charlie had never put a new elevator in, or modernized the rustic passageway. Nolan could understand the psychology of it, because he shared Charlie’s inability to enjoy money, had never really been good at spending it, afraid somehow to get accustomed to luxury, as if getting ready for the next Depression. With it came a tendency to hoard your money for a rosy retirement, which wasn’t the best policy for men in high-risk fields, like Nolan and Charlie.

In fact, this wasn’t the first time Nolan had lost all his money in one fell swoop, wasn’t even the first time Charlie had been responsible. Not long ago Charlie had exposed Nolan’s well-established cover name and cost him his hoarder’s life savings. And Nolan had done the same for Charlie, hadn’t he? Exposing him to the Family and ending a lifelong career?

And so now they were down to this. Two men who hadn’t been young for a long time, who for reasons obscured by the years had done their best to wreck one another’s lives (and with considerable success), two men alone in a house, with guns. Going up in that elevator, impressions of the long conflict with Charlie flashing through his mind, Nolan might have felt a sense of destiny, a feeling that here at last would be an end to the struggle, an answer to a question long ago forgotten, an end to the senseless waste of each other’s lives. But he didn’t. His mind was full of one thing: the money. He had squeezed the need for revenge out of his perception. Charlie was just a man who had taken Nolan’s money, and Nolan had to get that money back.

The elevator chugged to a halt.

Nolan had been right, on two counts: no door, sliding or otherwise, greeted him, just a metal safety gate that creaked unmercifully when he folded it back, and yes, he was in a vestibule, to the right of which he could see the shelves of a pantry, to the left the white walls of a kitchen.

But he was wrong, too, on just about everything else.

Charlie was in the kitchen.

Charlie was sitting on one of four plastic-covered chairs at a gray-speckled formica-top table in the surprisingly small kitchen, its walls crowded with appliances, sink, cabinets, with one small counter strewn with Schlitz beer cans and empty TV dinner cartons.

In front of Charlie, on the table, was a silenced nine-millimeter automatic. Also in front of him were six more Schlitz cans. Charlie was wearing his underwear, a sleeveless tee-shirt and gray boxer shorts. The flesh of his limbs looked as gray as the shorts, a tan that had sickened, and flaccid; his right thigh was bandaged; on his upper left arm was a tattoo of a rose, nicely done. Charlie had a new nose; it was pink, unlike the gray-tan skin surrounding it. He was sleeping.

He was, in fact, snoring, quite loudly, contentedly, even drunkenly. His head was resting on folded arms and he looked both very young and very old.

Nolan took a chair next to him at the Formica-top table. He picked up the gun and stuffed it in his belt. Charlie didn’t stir. Nolan sat and studied his old enemy, the adversary who’d given him so much hell for so many years, tried to see the maniac he’d come looking for, and saw only a frail old sleeping drunken man.

It was all disappointing somehow. An anticlimax that turned years of running, hating, fighting into an absurd, unfunny joke. He felt foolish, a little. And vaguely sad.

But this wasn’t a time for reflection; there was money to find, and Nolan grabbed the tattooed gray arm and shook the sleeping man and said, “Come on, Charlie, wake up.”

Like the curtain of a play, the lids on the close-set eyes raised slowly, and Charlie lifted head from folded arms and gradually got himself into a sitting position. He yawned. He smiled. He said, “Hello, Nolan.”

“Well, hello Charlie.”

“It’s been a long time.”

“Yeah. We got to quit meeting like this.”

“I see you took my gun, Nolan.”

Charlie’s speech was thick but clear, each word let out after careful consideration.

Nolan shook his head. “Why’d you have to get drunk on your ass like this, Charlie?”

He shrugged, looked almost embarrassed. “A hell of a thing, I know. I guess I wanted to be numb for the goddamn bullets.”

“I won’t kill you, Charlie, not if you give my money back.”

The laughter came rumbling out of Charlie’s gut and he touched his forehead to the Formica top and cackled. When he looked up at Nolan he had tears in his eyes from laughing. “You stupid goddamn asshole, you think I’m afraid of you, afraid you’re going to kill me? Get away, get away, you silly bastard.”

“Charlie.”

“You can’t kill me, Nolan. Not you or the whole goddamn fucking Family. Nobody can kill me, I died a long time ago; don’t you read the goddamn papers? How can you kill a goddamn dead man? You tell me! I’m getting another beer.”

Charlie got up and weaved toward the refrigerator and Nolan was up and on him, latched onto his arm and dragged him out into the adjacent room.

They were in the big main room of the lodge now, a high-ceilinged hall with open beams and much dark wood and lots of doors and windows. The bulk of Eagle’s Roost was right here in this one big room, the ceiling coming down on the back third, indicating the partial second floor; everything but sleeping and cooking had been done in this hall, or so the covered furniture all around would indicate; a few pieces were uncovered, the sofas, the long dining table that was over to the left, as you faced the black-brick fireplace with its elk’s head above. In spite of the coolness of the day, it was rather warm in the hall, almost as if the fireplace had been going or the heat’d been on. Nolan dragged Charlie over to the semicircle of sofas facing the fireplace. Nolan tossed the little man onto one of the sofas, sat opposite him. Between them was a large round marble coffee table with a radio on it. Charlie had started to laugh again and was rocking side to side, holding his stomach, buckling with laughter.

Charlie’s laughter subsided and he looked at Nolan and grinned. “I won, Nolan. I beat you. For years I’ve hated your fucking guts, for months all I’ve done is think about seeing you die. And now I don’t even hate you anymore. I forgive you, Nolan. I forgive you for shooting my brother eighteen years ago and stealing my money and making a fool out of me in the Family. Yeah, that’s right, I told you before, remember? How you wrecked my goddamn life, how I never moved an inch with the Family after you killed my brother Gordon and made me look stupid. But, Nolan, I forgive you. No shit, I forgive you. I even forgive you for passing me those marked bills, and look what that did to me. I don’t hate you, anymore, Nolan, now that I’ve won. Now that I’ve won I can look at you and just not give a goddamn.”

“Where’s my money, Charlie? I’ll knock it out of you if I have to.”

Charlie waved his hands at Nolan, gave him a Bronx cheer. “No way, I’m too far gone to feel it, you’d have to knock me out before you hurt me and then what would I tell you?”

Nolan closed his eyes. Well, Nolan thought, he wants to talk, so humor him, sneak up on him that way.

“Did you kill Harry, Charlie? Did you kill Tillis?”

“Hell, no. Did you?” Charlie’s grin disappeared and he got suddenly somber. He rubbed his cheek. “I shouldn’t talk lightly of that. Harry was... he was my friend and he was my wife’s brother, you know. I liked him and he helped me. He did a lot. He’s the one who helped me get the bead on you, for one thing, he was bankrolling jobs for people like you, ripoff guys, and had the connections it took to run down your friends and the people you work with. We even knew you stayed with that guy Planner for a while, but we weren’t sure that was where you left the money, not until I heard you were going to go to Iowa to move it.”

“How did you find that out?”

“One of Felix’s boys was working for me. Right under that goddamn pimp lawyer’s nose. We knew all about you planning to switch the money to a Family bank, but you were pretty goddamn careful about telling where you were hiding it, weren’t you? Waited until the last minute to tell Felix where it was, and even then all you said was ‘Iowa,’ though it wasn’t any goddamn trick figuring out where in Iowa.” Charlie glanced slowly around the high-ceilinged hall. “Walter and me were just waiting at the lodge here to get the word where the money was, to know where to go to get it. It was good staying here with my boy, Nolan. I wish now he wasn’t involved in this, but just the same it was good being with him, in this place. This place has a lot of memories for me, a lot of my good hours were spent at the Roost, and I don’t mind ending it here, even though I always wanted to keep that part of my life outside. But you can’t do that, can you, Nolan, you can’t get away from what you are and you might as well come face to goddamn face with it.” He slammed his fist down on the marble of the coffee table in front of him. “Jesus! It was so fucking perfect, had it all worked out, just come back here with that money and hop on that goddamn plane to Mexico and fly down to Argentina like we had set up and Walter and me, we could’ve built a new life together... Walter’s so goddamn smart, I can’t believe it, you know he’s a college man... but then I got hit in the leg, that old bastard Planner hit me in the goddamn leg and made me kill him, and we got stuck in goddamn Iowa City and lost time there and messed up the flight and had to put it off till today and then Jesus, you were onto me and the Family was onto me, and then I hear on the radio they’re killing off everybody who helped me... Harry... Tillis. Jesus.”

“You think the Family killed those guys?”

“Who else? I knew they’d be on me, when that kid, that friend of yours Jon, told me back in that doctor’s office, told me you knew I was the one that took the money, told me you were coming after me. I knew about you and your new ties with the Family. That if you knew I was alive, so did they. They’re coming today, aren’t they? Are they outside now, Nolan?”

“If they are, they got here on their own. They know you’re alive, yes, but they gave me two days to find you and get my money back.”

“Don’t shit me, not with Harry and Tillis shot all to shit.” He bent over and looked very sober. “Nolan, I want to work out a trade with you. Listen to me. You take care of Walter, get him out of here before the Family comes. You see that he stays alive.”

“What do I get in return?”

“That kid friend of yours, that Jon. Walter’s holding him down at the boathouse right now. Why the hell else would I take that kid Jon with me? I knew you were coming after me, that if you caught up with me, I could use the kid as a buffer. He’s your friend, saved your life once — I know, I was there.”

“Sorry. Jon is holding a gun to your son’s head right this minute. You don’t have the edge you thought you had, Charlie.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t have time to lie to you, Charlie. We got to get on with this before those people you mentioned start showing up.”

“No, no,” Charlie said, whimpering, his eyes filling with tears. “Walter’s got to get out, nothing to happen to Walter, not Walter, he’s the only thing left. Please God.”

“Tell me what you did with the money, Charlie, and I’ll help your kid get out of this.”

“Do I get your word on that?”

“Sure.”

“You always called me a melodramatic bastard, remember?”

“I still do, Charlie.”

“Well, that’s true, I guess it’s true but you... you got your own quirk. You’re straight, in your crooked way. You give your word and you keep it. So I know if you give me your word, you’re going to stand behind it, Nolan. I’m sure of it.”

That wasn’t particularly true, but Nolan let it slide by. Charlie was saying all that in order to convince himself he could trust Nolan, and Nolan knew it.

“What did you do with the money, Charlie?”

“You promise, you promise you’ll help Walter?”

“Sure.”

Charlie let out a relieved sigh. He smiled on one side of his face and said, “A funny goddamn way for us to finish it up, Nolan. Me turning to you to save my kid’s ass. My God. You know something else funny? I didn’t even need that goddamn money of yours. I got all kinds of money, in this guy’s account and that one, money to live a couple goddamn lifetimes, if I had ’em. No, I took that money because I hated you, I wanted you to bleed, I wanted to hurt you the one place you could feel it, in your goddamn pocketbook. It was for blood, not money, and now neither one means a goddamn thing. Why’d we do it to each other? What the hell was the goddamn point?”

From behind them came a sound — bup bup bup bup bup bup — no louder than someone giving a deck of cards a hard shuffle, and Charlie screamed, “Mother of God!” and jumped behind the sofa. Nolan dove under the coffee table, turned it on its side and held it in front of him like a shield, while the slugs ate up the room, tearing into the dark wood walls, ripping apart the leather sofas, knocking down furniture, their white sheets flying in the air, like dancing ghosts. Charlie went scrambling over to the dining area, got behind the big long table and tipped it over with a crash, got sheltered behind its thick wood while the slugs splintered away at its surface, bup bup bup bup bup.

Silence.

Nolan peeked out from behind the table and the bup bup bup started in again, but not before Nolan saw the gun and the man behind it. The gun was a grease gun, a submachine gun that fired.45 slugs and looked as if it had been put together with discarded tin cans; the barrel had been screwed off and a tubular silencer put on its place; two magazines had been taped together so the guy could flip it around and shove in a fresh round without missing more than a half-second of action.

The guy behind the grease gun had a chubby face and a skinny body and all of a sudden Nolan knew who Charlie’s pipeline to Felix was. All of a sudden Nolan knew who killed Tillis and Harry and why.

Nolan had his.38 in one hand and the silenced automatic of Charlie’s in the other and started firing at Angelo, shooting haphazardly, firing both guns like some two-gun kid in a Western. With that grease gun out there, aiming was out of the question, even though the guy was standing out in the open, over by a side door directly behind where Nolan had been sitting.

Charlie dove from behind the table, pitched himself into the kitchen, caught one in the gut just as he went through the doorway. Nolan could see the little man in underwear crawling off through the kitchen, out toward the elevator. Somehow Nolan sensed that Charlie was not so much trying to get away as making an attempt to get to Walter and warn him. Well, luck to you, Charlie, Nolan thought.

Angelo yanked the magazine out, flipped it around and shoved it in place and Nolan blew Angelo’s kneecap apart with a.38 slug. Angelo fell on his face, like a pratfalling clown, but much harder, and on his side started in firing the grease gun again and the room was splintering, chunks of the marble top started to fly and Nolan held his breath, hoping Angelo’s pain and rage and reflex would empty that damn, damn gun.

It did. The bup bup bup trailed away and Nolan spun out and pointed the.38 at Angelo’s head and Angelo threw the empty grease gun, whipped it at Nolan. The metal of the gun smashed into his head, slashed a red crease across his forehead, and he fired the.38 wildly, missed, and blacked out.

When he came to a second later, he looked up, blinked the blood from his eyes, saw Angelo kneeling on his good knee in front of him. “Are you awake, Nolan?”

Nolan nodded.

“Good,” Angelo said. “I want you awake, you overrated bastard. Some fucking tough guy,” and Angelo lifted the Bodyguard Smith and Wesson.38 and let Nolan look into its short snub-nose, let him wait for the blossom of fire and smoke.

“Hold it!”

The voice came from behind them.

“What the hell’s happening here?”

It was Greer.

The baby-faced man was standing in the doorway over where moments before Angelo had been firing the grease gun. Greer had his own snub-nose.38 in his right hand.

“Greer,” Angelo said, his eyes moving back and forth.

“What you doing, Ange?”

“I’m going to kill this son of a bitch, Greer,” Angelo said. “He tried to pull a cross, tried to team up with Charlie and cross the Family.”

“I don’t believe you,” Greer said, and shot Angelo through the throat.

Angelo’s.38 went off, but Nolan had had sense to duck and roll as Greer fired, and Angelo’s gun clattered to the floor and he clutched with both hands under his double chin and flopped onto his back and gurgled and died.

Nolan said, “Jesus.”

Greer came over and helped him up. “Where’s Charlie?”

“Shit,” Nolan said, and headed for the kitchen.

When he got there the elevator had gone to the bottom. Charlie had somehow found strength to punch DOWN. Nolan pressed the button and heard the elevator whine and moan and start its ascent. When it got back up, Charlie was still inside the cage.

He was sitting against the steel wall, his lower tee-shirt and shorts soaked with red. His eyes were shut.

Nolan crouched down beside the little man and yelled as though Charlie were a hundred yards away. “Charlie! For Christ’s sake, Charlie!”

The close-set eyes flickered.

“Charlie,” Nolan said, putting a hand on the little man’s shoulder. “Thank God you’re alive.”

“Never thought I’d live to... hear you... say that, Nolan.”

“Where is it, Charlie? What did you do with my money?”

“I won, Nolan. I beat you.”

“You want me to help your boy, don’t you? Well, where’s the money, what’d you do with it?”

“You promise... promise you’ll... help Walter?”

“I’ll do whatever you want, just what did you do with my money!”

“You’ll keep your word... if I tell you what I did with it?”

“Yes, dammit! Don’t die on me, you son of a bitch!”

“All right,” Charlie said, and he told Nolan what he’d done with the money.

The look of dismayed surprise on Nolan’s face tickled Charlie’s ass and Charlie let out one big, raucous belly laugh and held his bleeding belly and died that way.

8

Nolan got to his feet unsteadily. He felt as if he, too, had been ripped into by Angelo’s grease gun. He stepped out of the elevator and wandered into the kitchen, took a seat at the formica-top table, sat and stared at the cluster of empty Schlitz cans in front of him, pressed his hands against his temples.

Greer said, “What’s going on?”

Nolan pointed toward the vestibule and Greer went over and saw Charlie and came back.

“That’s a nasty gash on your forehead,” Greer said.

Nolan said, “Get me a beer, will you? Should be some in that refrigerator.”

Greer brought Nolan a Schlitz, got one for himself and sat with Nolan at the table.

“You okay, Nolan?”

“I don’t know yet.” He gulped down the beer. He belched. “That was nice shooting in there. I take back what I said about snub-nose.38s.”

Greer grinned. “How do you know I was aiming at Ange?”

Nolan managed to return the grin, said, “Where’d you come from, anyway? I didn’t expect you to show up like the fucking marines.”

“Came straight from Iowa City. Felix called me and said to get my butt up to this place.”

It hadn’t taken Felix long to track down Eagle’s Roost. “How’d you beat Felix’s boys up here?”

“I didn’t. Not the first wave anyway. Two Family guys, friends of mine, are lying back in those pine trees with their guts shot out of them. Didn’t you hear gunfire?”

Nolan shook his head no. “Angelo was using a grease gun with a silencer. You make more noise breathing than it makes shooting.”

“What was he up to, anyway?”

“Covering his tracks. He was in with Charlie.”

“Shit. Wait’ll Felix finds out.”

“That’s what Angelo must’ve been thinking. He knew he was up shit crick when the Family got onto Charlie. I figure he killed Tillis and Harry because they were his fellow conspirators and could implicate him. Same goes for killing Charlie. He probably hoped to make it look like I was going around shooting the guys responsible for taking my money, and leave it looking like Charlie and me killed each other in a crossfire.”

“Maybe he was after the money, too.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“What about the money?”

“Gone. All of it. Gone.”

“How, for Christ’s sake?”

Nolan told Greer what Charlie did with the money.

Greer shook his head, said, “Old bastard must’ve been crazy.”

“Yeah,” Nolan agreed. “Like the rest of us.”

Nolan told Greer to relay word to Felix about the money, told him he’d be at the Tropical waiting for Felix to come talk. There would be plans to cancel, new arrangements to be made.

Jon had the Olds hot-wired and ready to go in the boathouse garage, but it was unnecessary, because Nolan had found Charlie’s keys on the kitchen counter. Nolan and Jon laid Walter in the backseat; somewhere along the line the sock had been taken out of his mouth, but he wasn’t saying much anyway. Nolan didn’t answer any of Jon’s questions about what had happened or where the money was. Finally Jon asked if he could run upstairs and get something before they left, and Nolan said okay. When Jon came back with a box full of comic books, Nolan didn’t even say anything; he just opened the trunk for the boy and thought, well, at least somebody got something out of this.

They drove out of the garage, stopped to unlock the gate, where Nolan told Jon to get in the backseat with Walter and untie him.

Nolan started driving again and talked to Walter in the rearview mirror. “Your father is dead.”

Walter made a move to grab Nolan and Jon stopped him.

“Easy,” Nolan said. “I didn’t kill your old man, one of his own cohorts did. What I’m doing now is answering his dying request, God knows why, and hauling your ass away from that place before more Family people show up.”

“Where are you taking me?” Walter said.

“I’m going to drop you off at your sister’s apartment in Dekalb. She’ll be glad to see you, I think, if she isn’t off feeding the world’s hungry.”

They were passing through the subdivision of summer homes now. Nolan slowed the Olds and let a little boy and girl in swimming suits cross in front of him.

Walter said, “Won’t they be coming after me?”

“I don’t think so. You’re no threat to anybody. I’ll do some talking for you.”

“But I’m supposed to be dead — that body in the crash, it was identified as me, from clothes and a ring...”

“You’ll think of something.”

“I suppose... suppose I could just show up alive and act dumb, say I was dropping acid on the Coast for a year, something like that.”

Nolan nodded. “It’ll work out. Get yourself a job in an office.”

“Nolan,” Jon said.

“Yeah?”

“Are you going to say anything about the money, or aren’t you?”

“Forget about it.”

“What do you mean, forget about it?”

“It’s gone, kid. Up in smoke. Let it go.” He pulled off the subdivision drive onto the blacktop. He was thinking about Sherry, about climbing in the sack with Sherry and forgetting things for a while.

“Nolan,” Jon said, getting pissed, “what the hell happened to our money?”

Walter knew. Walter was smiling.

“Charlie burned it,” Nolan said.

Content

Max Allan Collins
Blood Money

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Two

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Three

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Four

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