Two for the Money

by Max Allan Collins

  “You got any ideas?”

  “Well, maybe one. But suppose I do have a good way out. Suppose I got things straight between you and Charlie and he got off your back for good. What then? Try and get in good with the Family again and shoot for an executive position? Or maybe just continue your present career without threat of Family intervention?”

  “None of that,” Nolan said. “I want to retire.”

  “Retire?”

  “I couldn’t work now if I wanted to. The word’s out that the Syndicate people want me dead . . . and that doesn’t exactly make me a desirable working partner in the circles I move in. Me saying things are clear with Charlie, if that could happen, won’t make any difference. The people I work with would expect me to say that whether it was true or not.”

  “I see.” Werner finished his drink. “You surely have more on your mind than just retirement.”

  “I do. I want to go back to what I used to do.”

  “Nightclubs, you mean?”

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s been sixteen, seventeen years, Nolan, since you were managing clubs for Charlie. The whole nightclub scene has vastly changed.”

  “I can adjust. For twenty years, the last sixteen especially, I been going the fast pace. Been shot four times. Fires. Car wrecks. Can’t remember all the times I got the shit kicked out of me. You name it, I did it, or somebody did it to me.” He got out another cigarette and lit it. “It’s not that I want to quit this life so much as it is I’ve burnt it out. I got to try something else, and clubs are the only other thing I know.”

  Werner looked away for a moment, as if weighing each word he was preparing to say, then said, “If things could get straight with you and Charlie, I might be able to use you in one of my clubs here in the Cities. Like I say, you been away from it a while, but I’d be glad to have a man of your caliber working for me.”

  Nolan got up and poured himself another drink. “I may take you up on that offer, Werner. But if I can get to my money, I can buy my own club.”

  Werner shrugged. “Well, the offer stands.”

  “That’s generous as hell of you, and I appreciate it, don’t get me wrong, but it won’t be worth last year’s calendar if I don’t get this thing settled.” Nolan leaned over with the bottle of Scotch and refilled Werner’s drink. “You said you had an idea. Let’s hear it.”

  “It’s going to sound crazy.”

  “It’ll have to sound crazy to be worth a damn. Go on.”

  “Well, all right . . . in a word, negotiate.”

  “What are you, crazy?”

  “You got to understand, Nolan, things have changed since the days when you were working for Charlie. Things aren’t handled the way they used to be. The violence, it’s soft-pedaled now. The Family’s into businesses now, Nolan, big ones, not just front operations, but big and on-the-up-and-up businesses. The old way of handling things is passé.”

  “How does that affect me?”

  “Well, since the Cicero shooting, Charlie’s probably been getting pressure from upstairs, pressure to cool it if and when he does find you again. They’re not saying, ‘Don’t kill Nolan.’ They’re just saying, ‘Careful and no mess.’ Now, Charlie knows damn well you’re not the kind who’ll lay down and die like a good boy . . . with you, he knows there’s going to be mess.”

  “So?”

  “Take advantage of it. Offer to meet and talk. Charlie could come in from Chicago, it’s just half an hour by plane, and I can have some place set up here in the Cities as neutral ground. You could tell him that the pressure of having him out for you these past sixteen years has finally got to you; that he really got you cold over in Cicero; that you’re sorry you got mad that time and shot his little brother . . . tell him any and all the lies you like, but get it talked out.”

  “Seems to me this kind of thing doesn’t get talked out.”

  “Maybe not, but remember—Charlie was probably just as upset about the twenty thousand you relieved him of as he was about you knocking off baby brother. Money means a lot to Charlie, and then there’s his pride. He’d probably like to find a way to come out on top with you, without violating the ‘cool it’ orders coming from upstairs. You paying him off is a possible out for both of you.”

  Nolan didn’t say anything for a few moments. Then he said, “It’s worth trying.”

  Werner laid his hands out on the desk. “I’ll make the contact tomorrow morning.”

  “You can do this without getting yourself up shit creek?”

  “I think so. I’ll just tell Charlie that you got me at gunpoint or something and proposed the idea and that it sounded good to me, so I thought I should let him know. He’ll eat it up. Charlie always has been a melodramatic bastard.”

  Nolan nodded.

  “Tomorrow I call him.”

  “I appreciate this, Werner.”

  “I owe you, Nolan, for a lot of times. No need to talk that end of it. Where you staying?”

  “Nowhere, yet. My bag’s across the highway behind a bush.”

  “There’s a hotel of mine between here and downtown Davenport. Called the Concort Inn.”

  “Yeah, saw it on the way out here. Nice-looking place.”

  “I’ll call over and have them get a room ready for you. On me. You’ll be registered as Logan. Okay?”

  “Good enough.”

  “You need any entertainment?”

  “Female you mean?”

  “What the hell you think I mean?”

  “Tomorrow night maybe. Tonight I’ll just sleep.”

  “You are getting old.”

  “That’s right.”

  Werner unlocked the door to the study and walked with Nolan to a side door and let him out. The watchdog, Calder, was nowhere to be seen, and was probably still safely out of the picture, though Nolan was keeping his eyes open this time around.

  From the doorway Werner said, “Nolan, we’ll make this thing work. The shooting has to stop.”

  Nolan said, “Unless it’s just starting,” and turned toward the highway.

  3

  The phone rang Nolan awake.

  He grabbed for the receiver, glancing at his watch: seven o’clock.

  “Nolan?”

  “Morning, Werner.”

  “I just got through talking to Charlie.”

  “Bet he was happy you called him this early.”

  “Delighted. When he got the screaming out of his system, he agreed to fly in tonight.”

  “I see. What about ground rules?”

  “I’m supposed to check with you on that and call him back. If your terms are acceptable, then in he flies.”

  “Okay—you, me, Charlie. In my hotel room. No bodyguards. No guns.”

  “I think he’ll agree to that.”

  “Good. Call me back.”

  Half an hour later the phone rang again and got Nolan out of the shower. He wrapped a towel around himself and walked across the plush pink carpet to answer it.

  “Nolan?”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Your ground rules are fine.”

  “Good.”

  “Nolan, this might just work out.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you like the room?”

  “The bridal suite’s appropriate, somehow.”

  “Thought you’d like it. Got any other needs?”

  “Just the answer to one question. Does Irish still run that jukebox concession up here?”

  “Cavazos? Yes, he does. I’m his silent partner, as a matter of fact, have been ever since you sent him around, seven or eight years back. It’s a lucrative little piece of action.”

  “He still got the same sideline?”

  “Now wait a minute, Nolan, you said no guns, in your own ground rules. . . .”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with the meeting,” he said. “All my personal belongings got stolen, Werner, back in that Cicero hotel a month ago. I need some traveling security.”
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br />   “Well. I can understand that. Yes, he’s still in the same sideline. He supplies all my men, for a start. What’ll you use for money?”

  “Put up my balls as collateral, I guess. About all I got right now.”

  “You need anything else?”

  “Besides my balls you mean? No.”

  “Talk to you later, then.”

  “Talk to you later.”

  Nolan dropped the phone into its cradle and went back to his shower.

  4

  Since Nolan had neither a car nor enough cash on hand to rent one, he was grateful that the Concort Inn was only a few blocks from downtown Davenport. The modern seven-story hotel was perched on the edge of the city, a blue slab facing away toward Bettendorf, as if ashamed of keeping company with the couple of seedy blocks separating it from the Davenport business district. Nolan’s destination was in the less seedy of the two blocks closest to the hotel.

  The air was still late October brisk, but the sun was out, and there weren’t many clouds. The one-way street Nolan was walking along branched off from the four-lane highway and angled into the downtown area, and though he had the sidewalk to himself, the street was heavy with traffic— women, mostly, on their way to some midweek shopping.

  As he rounded the corner, his eyes were drawn to a window filled with three lines of huge lettering: QUAD CITY/JUKEBOX SERVICE/INCORPORATED, bright red print out-lined in heavy black. The window fronted the bottom floor of a five-story warehouse-style brick building across the street in the center of the block. To the building’s right was a narrow alley.

  Nolan found a hole in the flow of cars and crossed the street, walking up to the window. Beneath the foot-high red lettering were smaller red letters outlined in black: HERMAN CAVAZOS, MANAGER.

  Herman?

  So that was Irish’s real first name. Nolan smiled to himself as he moved over to the front door and tried it.

  Locked.

  He peered into the room beyond the window, peeking between the huge red letters. There was a waiting room in there, as wide as the building but not very deep, with a reception desk and a couch. The room managed to look both messy and unused at the same time. There was no one in it.

  Nolan walked around the side of the building into the alley and found a side entrance, also locked, and a triple-size garage door with a row of head level windows running across it. He looked in and saw a huge cement-floored room. Coin-operated entertainment, new and old, was scattered across the floor: jukeboxes, pinball machines, cigarette vendors, and coin-run machines of many kinds.

  Nolan tried the handle on the garage door and found it unlocked. He swung the big door over his head and walked in.

  No one around.

  Since this was Wednesday, it didn’t really figure as a day off, but that was the only way Nolan could see it.

  Of course, there were four floors above this one, and somebody might be on one of them, so Nolan decided to give it a try. He yelled, “Irish!”

  He didn’t get an answer; he tried again.

  After half a dozen tries, he got a response. A distant voice from behind a closed door yelled, “Who the hell’s down there!”

  “IRS!”

  “In a pig’s ass!”

  “We tax those too!”

  Footsteps came clomping down the stairs behind the closed door, which snapped open, and the figure that belonged to the voice appeared in the doorway.

  He was a small man, a few inches over five feet, with a nut-brown complexion and carrot-red hair. Nolan had never questioned the strange racial mix: he’d been told the little man was called Irish, and he’d left it at that.

  “Nolan!”

  Irish stayed in the doorway for a moment, repeated “Nolan!” and began to cross the cement floor at a walk that was nearly a run. He grabbed Nolan’s hand and pumped it.

  “Nolan!”

  “You dress good for a mick-spic jukebox jockey.”

  Irish was wearing a light blue cotton suit, the cut of which had not come off a rack, with a pale yellow shirt and a striped tie in shades of yellow and blue. His Latin complexion and the red hair, with shaggy red eyebrows hanging over deepset brown eyes, made startling contrasts with the pale colors of his clothing.

  “And you,” Irish said, “dress piss poor for an IRS man.”

  Nolan raised an eyebrow and said, “Some joke. Round now, a joke’s the only place I can afford even thinking about the federal boys.”

  “You got trouble, Nolan?”

  “Up the ass. Where is everybody? Don’t you work all week like the other nine-to-five folks?”

  “My guys are out today making their weekly run of service calls and deliveries—we do that every Wednesday. But what’s this with you? Something happen, you have a job go sour?”

  “Like month-old milk. Someplace handy we can sit and talk?”

  “Sure. Upstairs. Come on.”

  They walked across the jukebox-filled floor, sidestepping machines, parts, and tools, and started up the rickety steps. They passed three doors on as many landings, going on up till they stopped at the fourth landing. The stairway and all the woodwork in the building looked poor, paint-peeling and seemingly rotting; and when Irish opened the final door, Nolan was stunned to see the room behind it.

  “Like it, Nolan?”

  “I take it Werner treats you well.”

  The room was large, lush. It had thick white wall-to-wall carpeting, with side walls paneled in rich, dark wood; the back wall was taken up by a bar and three shelves of booze behind it, against textured white wallpaper with red swirls. An open door in the middle of the paneled wall at the left revealed hints of a bedroom decorated in deep blues, and the other wall bore a large framed print of one of Dali’s studies in soft washes. There wasn’t much furniture, just a 26-inch Sony TV in the corner to the left of the door and console stereo stretched across a side wall. The only other furniture in the room, outside of a couple of stools at the bar, was a sofa, long, and fat and white, looking very soft and very comfortable, and reclining on it was a lovely young girl of twenty or so, dressed in blue lace panties, also looking very soft and comfortable. Her skin was the color of dark butterscotch, her legs long, breasts small but nicely formed. The breasts Nolan couldn’t actually see that well, as her long black hair came down around both shoulders and partially covered them.

  “Maria,” Irish said, “wait in the bedroom, will you? This is a friend come to talk with me.”

  She got up. She was quite tall, five-nine at least. It figured, Nolan thought; Irish always did go in for big girls: his wife was practically six feet. Now that the girl was on her feet, her breasts didn’t look so small, Nolan noticed. Her nipples were very pink against her dark skin.

  She walked over to the door, flashing an ivory smile at Nolan.

  “Go on, now, Maria, shoo,” Irish said.

  “Yes, Herman,” she answered, bouncing attractively into the adjoining bedroom, closing the door after her.

  “She makes friends easily,” Irish said. “Maybe you’ll want to take her out while you’re in town.”

  Nolan laughed, softly. “Herman. Can’t get over it. Herman.”

  Irish flashed a Cheshire cat grin as he slipped out of his sportcoat and tossed it on the stereo. “I knew you’d have something to say about that . . . you’re lucky you got even ‘Irish’ out of me, I never got a first name out of you, you know.” He went over to the sofa and sat down, gestured for Nolan to join him. “A well-kept secret, that name of mine, while I was still in the trade. But when I became a more or less legitimate businessman, I could hardly hang out a shingle saying ‘Irish Cavazos.’ž”

  “Suppose not.”

  “How about a drink?”

  “No thanks. Haven’t had breakfast yet.”

  “Nolan turning down free booze? Not changing in your old age, are you, for Chrissake?”

  “The old age part’s right, anyway. To be honest, Irish, my stomach gives me hell when I drink in the morning.”

/>   “Whatever happened to that cast-iron sonofabitch I used to know, name of Nolan? The one that hit that armored car with me ten years ago?”

  “He’s the same sonofabitch, Irish. Just ten years older, and pounded to tin foil. Are you forgetting who it was talked you into quitting the business?”

  “I’m not forgetting it, Nolan. I owe you a hell of a lot for that. . . . If you hadn’t sent me and my savings to your old buddy Werner eight years ago, chances are I’d be either in stir or under the ground.”

  “You were a clumsy bastard, Irish. Great with machines, but clumsy with everything else. It scared me when you worked a job without me.”

  “Yeah, well, you gave me discipline, Nolan, and when I was on a job with you, I was okay, you could make me feel at ease. But the biggest favor you or anybody else ever did me was you telling me to get out while I had my ass in one piece.”

  “So I did both you and Werner a favor.”

  “You know the way I owe you, Nolan . . . just like Werner owes you for a hundred times . . . and that’s why I know I can ask you this and you won’t take it wrong: what in the name of Jesus and Mary and any remaining Saints are you doing around here? You know what’ll happen if anybody who knows you or that face of yours sees you? And reports to Charlie, who’s minutes away from the Cities?” Irish stopped and half his mouth smiled, the other frowned. “Incidentally, Nolan, that mustache of yours won’t fool anybody. You got a face worse than fingerprints.”

  “Tell me about it. I just got through healing up from a slug in the side. One of Charlie’s boys spotted me in Cicero.”

  “Then what the hell are you doing still in the area?”

  “Werner’s helping me set up a meeting with Charlie. We’re going to try to talk it out.”

  “Come on, Nolan, you don’t really think . . .”

  “I don’t know, Irish. I’m getting old. So is Charlie. Because of him I can’t get to any of the cash I’ve piled up.”

  “Jesus, what happened? You didn’t get your cover blown, did you?”

  “Right the first time. Charlie’s onto my cover tag, so I got to get this thing settled before he starts giving it out to people like free samples.”

  “Why’d you come to see me?”