Hard Cash

by Collins, Max Allan

  When he was finished, he went across the hall and got out of the suit and took a shower and got into some comfortable, casual clothes. It was Saturday night. He had a meeting to go to.

  Bank business, of a sort.

  11

  NOLAN RODE. Jon drove. It was Jon’s car, the Chevy II. Thursday night they’d taken the Buick, Nolan’s car or, rather, the car Nolan had been left to use by his business partner, Wagner, who was currently enjoying the Florida warmth while Nolan and Jon froze their asses off in Iowa. Nolan felt it unwise to have one certain car seen several times in the area of the Rigley cottage within these few days, even though the cottage was pretty well isolated and there wasn’t really much chance of anybody seeing either car. When he explained all that to Jon, the boy said, rather skeptically, “Well, I guess it doesn’t hurt being careful.”

  And Nolan said, “It’s not that being careful doesn’t hurt, kid. It’s that being sloppy can kill you.” Jon hadn’t seemed so skeptical after that.

  Is that the turn up there?” Jon asked

  “Is it?” Nolan said.

  It was, but he wasn’t about to tell Jon. He’d spent all day with Jon, driving the gravel and blacktop back roads of the area, familiarizing himself and the kid as well with all the possible routes between the cottage and Iowa City and the cottage and Port City. And he had it all down, himself. But Jon would be doing the driving, so it was Jon who had to know where he was.

  “It’s the turn,” Jon said. “I recognize that farmhouse over there.”

  “Well, then. Turn.”

  Jon turned. He said, “I’m only having trouble because it’s dark. It won’t be dark the day of the heist, you know.”

  “If you can find your way around these roads in the dark,” Nolan said, “daytime won’t be any problem.”

  Jon thought about that, seemed to get the point, yawned and said, “Anyway, they keep this blacktop nice and clear. Not like some of those others we were on today.”

  It hadn’t snowed since Thursday, but it had stayed cold, and the ground was snow-covered.

  “Some rich bastard farmer owns most of this,” Nolan said, gesturing to the side of the road that was cornfield; trees lining the river were on the other side. “County keeps the roads around here clear for him and a couple others like him.”

  “Yeah, well the Iowa City streets are still packed with ice and snow.”

  “Maybe if you bought a couple hundred acres of farmland in downtown Iowa City, that’d change. Hey, slow down.”

  Jon did, but said, “What for? Rigley’s cottage isn’t for a half-mile or so. And anyway, I’m only doing forty-five in the first place.”

  “Stop a second. I want to get a look at that cottage there. Rigley’s closest neighbor. See anything?”

  It was a small, paint-peeling clapboard cottage, crowded by trees, close to the river, on stilts—nothing lavish, nothing at all like Rigley’s. No cars were around. No lights on inside.

  “Nothing,” Jon said.

  “Rigley says the people who own it don’t use it much. Trying to sell it. He says they don’t use it at all this time of year.”

  “Looks like he’s right”

  “Looks like.”

  They drove on.

  The little bluff Rigley’s cottage sat on was the only clear spot along a good three-quarters of a mile of thickly clustered trees—long, tall, skinny things growing close to and even in the water like weeds gotten out of hand. Ugly damn trees. Especially in their wintertime gray and skeletal state, though Nolan figured they probably weren’t any beauties even in the green of summer. The close-to-a-mile stretch of land Rigley’s cottage was in the midst of was damn near swamplike, and accounted for the isolation of the cottage in an area otherwise heavily populated with cottages and cabins. The bluff, an island clearing in the sea of tree-littered and marshy land, provided safety from flooding, which made possible the houselike luxury of the cottage. Isolated as it was, it seemed acceptable to Nolan as a meeting place; even suitable, perhaps, as a place to gather after the heist to split up the take.

  A gravel drive cut through overhanging trees to the cottage, which wasn’t visible from the blacktop, and as he pulled onto the drive, Jon said, “You think these hunting jackets are really necessary?”

  They were wearing the hunting jackets Jon had gone to Cedar Rapids to pick up.

  “Yes,” Nolan said. He had already explained that as hunters they wouldn’t raise undue suspicion in the wooded river area.

  “So who’s going to see us with all these trees and everything?”

  “People in cottages across the river, maybe. Anybody else who happens to be driving along that blacktop back there.”

  “But it’s dark out. It’s the darkest damn night I ever saw, Nolan. The river’s right over there, and I can’t even see it.”

  Nolan was getting a little bored with Jon’s questions and complaints and said, very deliberately, “It won’t be dark the day of the heist, you know.”

  “Oh. Yeah. So we’ll be wearing the jackets then, too.”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t know that”

  “Now you do.”

  “That doesn’t explain the Santa Claus suits.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  Jon sighed and said nothing. He pulled the Chevy II in beside Rigley’s Eldorado and parked it. They got out. The cottage was dark.

  “Listen, kid, I want you to do something for me in there.”

  “Sure. What?”

  “Don’t be a smart-ass.”

  “Don’t be a smart-ass? What do you mean?”

  “I mean don’t be a smart-ass in there. Be nice to them.”

  “Nice to them! After all that shithead and his bitch did to us, you say be . . .”

  “Nice to them. I’m going to be nice to them. I’m not going to like it, but I’m going to do it. So are you.”

  “Why?”

  “Think about it. If you can’t figure it out, I’ll tell you later. Now let’s go in.”

  He went up four wooden steps and knocked.

  The girl, Julie, answered right away. She looked good. Pink fuzzy sweater caressing her abundant boobs, pink plaid slacks hugging the accommodatingly wide hips. She was one fine piece of ass, Nolan had to admit, even if she was kind of heavily made-up, especially around those huge brown eyes of hers, as if they needed any emphasizing.

  She didn’t ask them in; she just held open the door and stepped aside. A cold, businesslike bitch, her attitude contrasting with the almost blatant sexual come-on of her makeup and wardrobe. All of which, she seemed to be making clear, was exclusively for Rigley. Nobody else was to get any ideas.

  Which normally would have been fine with Nolan. He didn’t believe in getting sexually involved with somebody else’s woman, at least not on a heist, he didn’t. But he didn’t like the bitch’s icy attitude. He wanted to break through that. He wanted to build both her and Rigley’s confidence in him.

  And that wouldn’t be any simple task. As he stepped inside, Nolan could feel waves of uneasiness shimmering in the room like heat over asphalt. He got out of his hunting jacket. Jon was doing the same. The girl made no move to hang them up. No hostess-playing for her. Nolan handed his coat to Jon to hang up.

  The fire was going. The animated outdoor-scene beer sign was also going. There were no other lights on in the room. All the shutters were shut, as if the overcast, black night out there was high noon or something. Rigley was behind the bar, mixing up a pitcher of Manhattans. He was casually attired, for Rigley anyway: yellow and gray pattern turtleneck sweater and (Nolan saw as Rigley came around the bar to greet them) gray slacks that looked as if they’d never been worn before—in fact, they hardly looked as if they were being worn now.

  Pitcher of Manhattans in one hand, Rigley extended the other, giving Nolan a smile as white and perfect as it was insincere. Rigley’s executive cool was even phonier tonight than usual: the tiny ice cubes inside the pitcher were clinking around, k
eeping time with the banker’s trembling hand, and yes, the tic at the edge of his right eye was going again. Nolan had the urge to take the man by the shoulders and shake him and say, “Settle down, damn it!” But it passed.

  Rigley lifted the pitcher as if making a toast, and said, “Can I pour you one, Logan?”

  “That’d be fine,” Nolan said. “Jon’ll have one too.”

  “I don’t think I want . . .” Jon began, then caught Nolan’s look and said, “That’d be . . . nice. Thank you.”

  The girl was looking at Jon’s T-shirt, which had some underground comic character on it (a guy with a pointed head and five o’clock shadow in a clown suit, labeled “Zippy the Pinhead”) and she seemed almost on the verge of a smile. And suddenly she was speaking. Saying to Jon, “I like it. Your shirt. It’s really cute.”

  “Yeah, well, thanks,” Jon said.

  “I wouldn’t mind having one myself.”

  “Well,” Jon said, looking at her breasts with a cheerfully awestruck expression, “I’m not sure if they come in your size.”

  And the girl smiled. Even showed some teeth. She was proud of those big boobs of hers, and Jon had said just the thing to win her over. A more obvious off-color sort of remark might have soured her, especially had it come from Nolan; but Jon’s boyish, almost naive manner put it over perfectly. Nolan nodded his approval at the lad, who then proceeded to nearly undo the good he’d just done by blurting, “Couldn’t somebody turn on some lights? I’m going fuckin’ blind in here.”

  Rigley looked puzzled for half a second, then embarrassed, as evidently he was the one who’d thought dimming the lights would provide the appropriate atmosphere for crime and conspiracy.

  Nolan looked at Jon and Jon looked away, and Nolan said to the girl, “Maybe if you could turn on that light behind the bar, there,” and the girl did.

  The awkward moment passed, and Rigley went back to what he was doing, which was distributing Manhattans to each of the four seats at the table.

  Nolan told everybody to have a seat.

  He waited for everybody to get settled and was about to begin when Rigley got up quickly, saying, “Oh, I almost forgot,” and brought back a manila folder, identical to the one he’d shown Nolan Thursday night. The one chock-full of blackmail material. And there was almost another awkward moment, as Nolan felt himself getting mad all over again.

  This time, thankfully, the folder contained material of a more agreeable nature: the photographs of the interior and exterior of the bank that Nolan had requested of Rigley, as well as a listing of employees and a timetable of their work activities, plus a floor plan prepared for the occasion by Rigley, which indicated where each person worked and where each alarm button was located, and a wealth of other pertinent information. Rigley had done a good job, and Nolan told him so.

  “And I have to admit,” Nolan continued, “your basic plan for the robbery is a good one. Some refinements would be necessary, of course, and I’d need to go over these photographs and plans and such you brought me first, but otherwise I see no reason why your scenario wouldn’t be followed very close. Almost to the letter.”

  All of that was true—it was a good plan—but the point of all the compliments was to put Rigley at ease. And it did. Rigley’s tic, his overall nervousness, seemed to have disappeared. He was smiling, sipping his Manhattan.

  “However,” Nolan said, “I’m afraid all of your work maybe was for nothing.”

  “What do you mean?” Rigley said, brows knitted.

  The girl was silent, but her expression asked the same question.

  “Now, I don’t want anyone to misunderstand my motives,” Nolan said, “but I think it would be best all around, for all concerned, if we called it off.”

  “What?” Rigley said. Almost shouted. “Call it off? Call off the robbery? Why, for Christ’s sake?”

  Nolan shrugged. “The only way I can explain it is by saying I’ve reached fifty years of age and never spent a day of it in jail, even though for the better part of the last twenty I was robbing banks like yours, Rigley. And do you know how I managed that? Managed to stay alive and not behind bars? By being careful. By having certain rules. By demanding certain conditions . . . ideal conditions . . . for any heist I was part of.”

  “What in hell could be more ideal than this?” Rigley demanded. “What in hell more could you ask in a bank robbery than the help of the president of the bank? I mean, I’ve heard of inside tracks, but this is ridiculous.”

  “You’re right,” Nolan said, nodding. “But I’m not talking about the job itself.”

  The girl, who had the painfully skeptical expression of a doctor listening to a patient explain how he caught clap off a toilet seat, leaned forward and said, “Then just what are you talking about?”

  And Nolan told them about the break-in Friday. He told them of two men (neither of whom Jon got a look at) who came in, rummaged through the entire antique shop, including opening a safe, apparently but not necessarily looking for money, and were interrupted by Jon, whom they promptly conked on the head before getting the hell out.

  Before Rigley and the girl could begin expressing their obvious disbelief, Jon leaned forward, parted his hair, and showed them the bump. Then he sat back and said, “And that ain’t special effects, boys and girls. I’m too much of a coward to let myself be conked on the head just to back up a phony story.”

  “All right,” the girl said, taking over (as Rigley seemed too confused at the moment to actually talk), “suppose it’s true. What exactly does any of that have to do with anything? Two people break into your shop and try to rob you. So what?”

  “First let me tell you about something else,” Nolan said. “Something that happened to a friend of mine. A guy who set up a robbery Jon and I were on not long ago, and who worked with me on a lot of things over the years. Real pro. Thursday night he was murdered. For the contents of a cash register, amounting to maybe fifty bucks. He ran a bar, you see, and after closing, somebody came in and blew my friend’s head all over the wall.”

  Nolan paused for dramatic effect, but the girl was not impressed. She said, “I still see no relationship to what we’re doing here.”

  “Maybe there isn’t any relationship. I’d go so far as to say there probably isn’t. But I don’t like coincidences. A thief, a friend of mine, is killed for nickels and dimes. Call it cute, or ironic, or anything you want. Only the next day, two guys break into where I live, and Jon interrupts them before much damage is done, but anyway they’re apparently trying to rob us. Again, ironic, cute, robber gets robbed. Big laugh. But suppose something’s going on. Some old friends or enemies of mine are in the neighborhood with something in mind.”

  “Isn’t that rather far-fetched?” Rigley said, finally regaining his faculty of speech.

  “Isn’t it rather far-fetched that within twenty-four hours, a few hundred miles apart, two professional thieves who did a lot of work together are the object of two robberies themselves? One of them killed, head blown off by a shotgun like the one you were waving around the other night, sweetheart.”

  “Wait one fucking minute, now,” the girl said. “You aren’t accusing us of having anything to do with . . .”

  “I didn’t say that. Thursday night, we were together, so the shotgun thing is a true coincidence. I grant you that. But from my point of view, why not? Why couldn’t you have hired some people to dig up further blackmail material on Jon and me? That would at least explain the break-in at our place.”

  “I think it’s all a bunch of bullshit,” the girl said.

  “We had nothing to do with it,” Rigley said. “Any of it.”

  “Okay. So who did?”

  “You’re making mountains out of molehills,” Rigley said. “You’re desperate to find an excuse to get out of this situation, and so are trying to scare us out, confuse and frighten us into letting you off the hook.”

  Nolan smiled. A friendly smile. It hurt him to do it; he hated Rigley and the bitch
, and being civil to them would give him an ulcer if he had to keep it up much longer. But he smiled. He said, “I’m not trying to get off any hook. It’s a good heist. It really is. It’ll be easy, fast money for Jon and me. We’ve done it before, so why not again? But don’t you see the reason the two of us are around to rob your bank a second time is that we’re careful, we only work under certain conditions, and that it’s foolish to pull a heist when there’s possibly something going on that could fuck up that heist? Don’t you see that?”

  “No.”

  “No.”

  “Okay. I tell you what. We’ll postpone it. Postpone it a month. Give me time to see what’s going on, if anything. That’s all I ask.”

  “No!” Rigley shouted. He slammed his hands on the table, and everybody’s drinks spilled, the pitcher, everything. “No! No, goddammit, you’re just playing with us, I’m not postponing anything, no!”

  And Rigley got up and ran behind the bar and got a bottle off the shelf and shakily poured himself a shot and downed it and then another and . . .

  The girl, quietly, leaned over and touched Nolan’s hand. Her touch was warm, and for the first time she extended a trace of sexual promise to Nolan. She said, “Please. Understand. This is hard for George. He’s been a respectable member of the establishment for too many years for this to be easy for him. Do you have any idea how long it took him to gather the courage to approach you at that restaurant? He’s been watching you for months. Planning this, building himself up, gearing himself to be capable of an act that he is barely capable of even now. Asking him to postpone the robbery would be suicidal not only for George, but for all the rest of us, for any of us involved with the robbery. George is an intelligent and capable man in his chosen profession, just as you are in yours. But where crime is concerned, George is an amateur. We have to go ahead with the robbery, and as soon as possible.”