Hush Money

by Collins, Max Allan

  “Hi,” she said, when she was within a foot or so of him.

  “Hi yourself.”

  “Are you a relative?”

  He grinned. “I’m somebody’s relative, I guess.”

  “But not mine?”

  “I hope not.”

  “You hope not?”

  “If I was too close a relative of yours, it would spoil the plans I’ve been making, ever since I saw you come out that door over there.”

  This time she grinned. “You’re a shy little thing, aren’t you?”

  “Normally. It’s just that sometimes I come right out and introduce myself to pretty girls. It’s a sickness. I’ll just all of a sudden blurt out my name. Which is Jon, by the way.”

  “Hi, Jon. I’m Francine.”

  “Hi, Francine. We said hi before, seems like.”

  “But we didn’t know each other then.”

  “Now that we do, can I ask you something personal? What the hell made you think I was your relative? Because we both got blue eyes?”

  “My uncle died yesterday. People are coming in for the funeral by the busload.”

  “Oh . . . hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any offense, I mean I guess I picked a poor time to make with the snappy patter.”

  “Don’t worry about it. My uncle was a nice man, but he’s dead, and I can’t see crying’ll do any good. So, listen, if you aren’t here for my uncle’s funeral, I mean if you aren’t my cousin or something, what are you doing leaning against a Cadillac in my driveway?”

  “I’m here with the guy who’s inside talking to some people who probably are relatives of yours.”

  “You mean the guy with the mustache? Sour looking guy?”

  Jon grinned again. “That’s him. Brought me along for company and then didn’t say word one the whole way.”

  “How far did you come?”

  “Iowa City. Left this morning. What time is it now?”

  “Getting close to noon, I suppose. Maybe noon already. When did you leave Iowa City?”

  “Around seven. We had some business in Des Moines first, then we drove out here. My friend didn’t say why, though. Didn’t know he was paying last respects, though I should’ve figured it.”

  “Why? Should you have figured it, I mean.”

  “Well, this friend of mine usually dresses pretty casual for a guy his age . . . sport shirt, slacks. Today, we’re setting out on a fairly long drive, and he shows up in a gray suit and tie and shined shoes, the works. And tells me to lose my T-shirt and get into something respectable, which is something he’s hardly ever done before.”

  She smirked.

  “And just what are you smirking about?”

  “Just that I guessed right, that’s all. The way you’re squirming in those clothes you’d think you were wearing a tux.”

  “Is it that obvious? Hey, is that a sketch pad?”

  “Yeah. I’m taking an art course at Drake. I was on my way to class, before you sidetracked me.”

  “Let me see.”

  She shrugged, said okay, and handed him the pad.

  “Pretty good,” he said, thumbing through. “That’s a nice horse, right there.”

  “We own a farm with some horses down the road. I do some riding sometimes.”

  “Why is it girls always draw horses?”

  “I don’t know. Never thought about it.”

  “Must be something sexual.”

  “Probably,” she said, laughing.

  “Shit,” Jon said.

  “Why shit?”

  “Shit because you are one terrific girl and I’m meeting you in the worst possible situation. Why didn’t I meet you in goddamn high school? Why didn’t I meet you in a bar in Iowa City? Why do I meet you during the warm-up for your uncle’s funeral, while my friend’s in the house talking to somebody for a minute?”

  “I think they call it fate. How long you going to be in Des Moines?”

  “Don’t know. Today and tonight, reading between the lines.”

  “Your friend doesn’t tell you much.”

  “What I don’t know can’t hurt me.”

  “That’s your friend’s philosophy, huh?”

  “Christ, I don’t know. He’s never even told me that much.”

  “Jon?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I like you.”

  “You like me. Okay. Sounds good. I like you, too, then. The back of the Caddy’s nice and roomy. Wanna wrestle or something?”

  “Tell you the truth, I wouldn’t mind it. My father, however, just might. Could you leave for a while? How long’s your friend going to be inside?”

  “I don’t know. He never—”

  “—tells you anything.”

  “Right.”

  “Right. So leave a note. Here, tear a corner off one of the sketch pad pages. I’ll get a pen out of my purse.”

  They did all that, and Jon said, “Swell. Now. What do I write?”

  “Did you see a sleazy little joint called Chuck’s on the way here? Just outside of town?”

  “Weird Mexican or Spanish-type architecture? Yeah. I mentioned it to my friend as we passed by.”

  “And what did your friend say?”

  “He grunted.”

  “Does that mean he did or didn’t notice the place?”

  “Where my friend’s concerned, one grunt’s worth a thousand words. He noticed it.” Jon scribbled a note and left it on the dash of the Cadillac.

  Chuck’s was a white brick and cement block building with a yellow wooden porchlike affair overhanging from the upper of the two stories. There was black trim on the yellow porch-thing and around windows and doors, and it looked vaguely Spanish as Jon had said. On the door to Chuck’s was the following greeting:

  No Shoes No Shirt No Service

  “No shit,” Jon said.

  Francine laughed, and they went in. The place, which was appropriately dark and clean, provided lots of privacy for Francine and Jon, as they were the only customers in the place right now. They chose a booth.

  “I’m glad I didn’t meet you in high school,” Jon said. “I take back what I said before.”

  The barman came over and said, “What’ll you have?” and they ordered draw beers. The barman went away, and she said, “Why do you take back what you said?”

  “Why do I take back what I said about what?”

  “About wishing you’d met me in high school.”

  “Oh! Well. If I’d met you in high school, I couldn’t have got near you.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Silly, huh? Let me remind you about high school. You are president of the student council. I am hall monitor. You are Representative Senior Girl. I am left out of the class will. You are cutest and most popular of all the cheerleaders. I am assistant statistician for the basketball team. You go steady with the captain of the basketball team. I play with myself in the corner and get pimples. You are a vision of loveliness. I am a lowly wretch who . . . What you laughing at? This is serious stuff I’m layin’ on you. This is the story of our lives. Am I right?”

  “I plead guilty to a couple of those charges. But I’m not a high-school kid anymore, Jon. I hope I’m not that shallow anymore.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being shallow. I’m not saying you are, but keep in mind how boring most deep people usually are. Let’s be shallow together, you and me. We can go wading together or something. Wonder where those beers are? Say, uh, I hate to ask this, but are you going with anybody or anything?”

  “Broke up. You?”

  “Breaking up, I think.”

  “Let’s not bore each other with any of the details, Jon, what d’you say?”

  “Fine with me.”

  The beers came.

  “Hey,” she said, sipping. “Why were you so interested in my sketch pad back at the house?”

  “I’m an art major myself. Or was ’til I dropped out.”

  “Dropped out, or . . . ?”

  “No, I didn’
t flunk out. One thing I left out of my soliloquy before was ‘You’re rich, I’m poor.’ No money.”

  “What about a scholarship?”

  “Well, I did have good grades, yes, I did, but I didn’t see eye to eye with the art professors, so recommendations for scholarships were kind of scarce where I was concerned.”

  “Why didn’t you and the profs see eye to eye?”

  “Because I want to draw comic books when I grow up.”

  “You what?”

  And he repeated what he’d said and told her in fascinating detail of his aspirations to be a cartoonist, of his massive collection of comic art, of the projects he was currently working on in that field, in trying desperately to break in. Despite what he’d said about the merits of being shallow, he was a very intense and sincere young man, so enthusiastic about his chosen profession that she had no doubt he would eventually make it. To find out she handed him her sketch pad and pencil and told him to draw, and while he continued to talk, and while they put away three beers each (or was it four?) he drew her picture, at her request.

  “Make it cartoon style,” she told him, and he nodded and went on talking.

  He didn’t let her see the page as he sketched, and he hardly seemed to be looking at her; he seemed to be concentrating on talking to her, telling her of his hopes and dreams and such until she finally began to doubt he was drawing her at all. It certainly had to be a big sketch because he was all over the damn page, and it was a big page at that.

  “Here,” he said at last and handed the sketch pad to her.

  There was not a single sketch on the page.

  There were five.

  In one Francine looked remarkably like Daisy Mae of Li’l Abner, though still recognizably Francine. In another she looked like one of those exotic girls Steve Canyon used to run around with before he got married: it was a full-figure pose of Francine in a slinky, low-cut gown, with a flower behind one ear. And in another she had Little Orphan Annie’s big vacant eyes and, as it was another full-figure pose, a couple of things Annie doesn’t have at all. In the fourth sketch Jon had drawn her as underground artist R. Crumb might have, with undersize breasts and exaggerated thighs, truckin’ on down the street. The final sketch was fine-line style, a realistic drawing that showed her how very beautiful the artist must consider her to be.

  “Is this your own style, this one here, Jon?”

  “I wish it was. That’s in the style of Everett Raymond Kinstler, a portrait painter who worked in the comics in the fifties. He did Zorro. One of the greats, but not as well known as he should be.”

  She was sitting, staring at the page. “Jon.”

  “Yeah?”

  “This is beautiful. It’s wonderful. I mean it. I’m going to frame this, so help me. You’re good, Jon. Terrific.”

  “Yeah, well, my problem is all I can do is imitate. I can do everybody’s style, but I don’t have one of my own.”

  She leaned across the table and kissed him. On the mouth. It started quick and casual but developed into something slower, longer.

  The barman cleared his throat. He was standing by the booth. “Excuse me. I hate to bust up a beautiful romance.”

  Jon got a little flushed. “Then don’t.”

  “Cool off, kid. Your name Jon?”

  “Yes, my name’s Jon. What of it?”

  “Jesus, I said cool off. I don’t care if you kiss her, hump her under the table if you want to. Jesus. There’s a phone call for you.”

  “Nolan,” Jon said.

  “Who?” Francine said.

  The barman was gone already.

  “My friend,” Jon said.

  He got up and came back a minute later.

  “He’s got some things to do,” Jon said, “and said if I can hook a ride back to the motel with you, he can go it alone for the time being. What say?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. I’ll go back and tell him.”

  Jon did, came back, sat down again.

  “Jon?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Would you like me to take you back to the motel?”

  “Yeah. I thought we already agreed to that.”

  “I know. But I wonder if you’d think I was out of line if I asked to go back to the motel with you.”

  “With me?”

  “That’s right. I mean, I looked under the table, and it’s land of dirty under there.”

  “Kind of dirty under there.”

  “I prefer sheets.”

  “You prefer sheets.”

  “Yes.”

  “You prefer sheets. Let me see if I got this straight. You’re beautiful, you met me forty-five minutes ago, and you want to go to the motel with me?”

  Later, in the motel room, in his arms, she would offer a possible explanation for her impulsive outburst of promiscuity: “Maybe my uncle’s death is getting to me more than I thought. I was trying not to think about him dying, and I was trying so hard I wanted to get my mind completely off it and just have some fun. And you came along and that was that. You know, there’s something about making love that makes you feel protected from death and closer to it at the same time.”

  And Jon would tell her his uncle, too, had died recently, a couple of months ago, and she would say she was sorry, and he would go on to say he had loved the guy, that his uncle had been the closest relative he’d ever had, closer, even, “than my goddamn mother.” And she would comment that life was sad sometimes, and he would agree, but go on to say that sometimes it isn’t, and they would make love again.

  But that was later, in the motel room.

  For right now, Francine just said, “Yes,” and let it go at that.

  Four: Friday Afternoon and Night

  11

  NOLAN DIDN’T HEAR the shot, but he did hear Vincent DiPreta let out a gush of air and smack against the side of the house. He turned around and saw that DiPreta, hit in the chest—through the heart or so near it, it didn’t make much difference—had slid down to where the house and gravel met and was sitting there, staring at his lap, only his eyes weren’t seeing anything.

  If Nolan had left the DiPreta place when he first started to a few minutes before, he would have missed the shooting. But he’d gone out to the car, found Jon’s note and had gone back into the house for a moment, to use the phone and call the kid, who understandably had gotten bored and had hitched a ride down the road to a bar for a drink. Nolan had decided to tell Jon to call a cab and go back to the motel or go over on the East Side for the afternoon and hunt through the moldy old shops for moldy old funny books; the rest of the day’s activities, Nolan had decided, were perhaps better handled alone. The kid would just get in the way and would be all the time wanting to know what was going on. Later, if it proved he needed some back-up, he’d call Jon in off the bench.

  He hadn’t spent much time at the DiPretas. He’d known that if he was going to be nosing around Des Moines, as Felix wanted him to, he’d better let the DiPretas know he was in town, even if he didn’t tell them the real reason why. Felix hadn’t told him to talk to the DiPretas, but then Felix hadn’t told him much at all about how to handle the situation, probably because Felix knew it wouldn’t do any good. Nolan would handle things his own way or say piss on it.

  Vincent DiPreta had answered the door, though it was the Frank DiPreta residence. Nolan remembered Vince as a fat man, but he wasn’t anymore; he looked skinny, sick, and sad. And old. More than anything, old, as if his brother’s death had aged him overnight.

  He didn’t recognize Nolan and said, “Who are you?” But not surly, as you might think.

  “My name’s Nolan. We did business years ago.”

  “Nolan. Ten, eleven years ago, was it?”

  “That’s right”

  “Come in.”

  Nolan followed DiPreta through a room with a gently winding, almost feminine staircase and walls papered in a blue and yellow floral pattern that didn’t fit the foundation the house had been built on. They w
ent to the study, which was more like it, a big, cold dark-paneled room with one wall a built-in bookcase full of expensive, unread books, another wall with a heavy oak desk up against it, and high on that wall an oil painting of Papa DiPreta. Papa had been dead four or five years now, Nolan believed. In the painting Papa was white-haired and saintly; in real life he was white-haired. Another wall had framed family pictures, studio photographs, scattered around a rack of antique guns like trophies. There was a couch. They sat.

  “It’s thoughtful of you to call, Mr. Nolan. We’re doing our receiving of friends and relatives at the funeral home, not here, to tell you the truth, but you’re welcome just the same. Would you care for something to drink?”

  “Thank you, no. Too early.”

  “And too early for me. Also too late. I don’t drink anymore, you know. Or at least not often. Damn diet.”

  “You’ve lost weight. Looks good.”

  “Well, it doesn’t, I lost too much weight, but it’s kind of you to say so. Did you make a special trip? I hope not.”

  “No. I was in town for business reasons and heard about your tragedy. I’m sorry. Joey was a nice guy.”

  “Yes, he was. You haven’t done business with us for some time, have you?”

  Nolan nodded. “I’m in another line of work now.”

  “What are you doing these days?”

  “I manage a motel. Near Chicago.”

  Something flickered in DiPreta’s eyes. “For the Family?”

  “Yes,” Nolan said.

  The door opened, slapped open by Frank DiPreta, who walked in and said, “Vince, I . . . who the hell are you? Uh . . . Nolan, isn’t it? What the hell are you doing here?”

  “He came to pay his respects,” Vince said.

  “That’s fine,” Frank said, “but that’s being done, at the funeral parlor. Our home we like kept private.”

  Nolan rose. “I’ll be going then.”

  “No,” Frank said. “Sit down.”

  Nolan did.

  Frank sat on the nearby big desk so that he could look down at Nolan, just as his father was looking down in the painting behind him. This was supposed to make him feel intimidated, Nolan supposed, but it didn’t particularly. These were old men, older than he was, and he could take them apart if need be.