Two for the Money

by Max Allan Collins

  “Well, the ground rules set for this meeting say no guns, but I’m not about to go into this thing bareass naked. Werner didn’t seem eager to tell me, but I finally gathered from him that you still got firearms for a sideline. Is that right?”

  The shaggy red eyebrows knitted together and Irish nodded.

  “I figure I can trust Charlie only with a gun in my hand. Can you fix me up?”

  Irish got up from the sofa. “Come with me.”

  Nolan followed him out of the room and down to the floor below. Irish unlocked the door, and Nolan saw that behind it was a second door, a steel one with a combination lock. The little man dialed it till it clicked free, then eased the door open and they went in.

  The room was the size of a small gymnasium, covering the combined space of the first floor’s workshop and waiting room. The walls were padded with thick bulging tan canvas, as were floor and ceiling. Across the room a third of the way down was a wooden platform with a waist-high tablestand running along in front of it. Two metal cabinets were against the left wall, each as wide as a man with outstretched arms, and so tall they almost touched the ceiling. Covering the far end wall was a sheet of metal, which descended from the ceiling and slanted down into a catchbin; halfway down, a row of ten standard pistol range targets were lined across the metal sheet.

  The two men walked over to the platform.

  Irish said, “You still hot for .38s?”

  “Smith and Wesson, if you got ’em. Four-inch barrels. Never could stand snub noses.”

  “Well, you can’t always be picky. How many you need?”

  “Several, at least.”

  “You want the kind of piece I think you want, no serial number and still in top shape, you take what’s available. I got three Smith and Wesson .38s in stock, with four-inchers, and of the three, two are like new. The other one’s been around, and it’s got a pull to the left. I got a Colt Police Special that’s a hell of a lot more reliable.”

  “Let’s see them.”

  Irish walked over to the big steel cabinets, twirled the combination lock on one of them, and swung open the double doors. There were compartments and drawers inside, and after he’d done some fishing around, Irish came up with four guns and a box of cartridges. He scooped them all up in his arms, walked over to Nolan, and laid them on the tablestand in front of him.

  “Don’t sweat the noise. Soundproof as shit.”

  Nolan nodded, loading three bullets into one of the Smith and Wessons.

  He tried all four guns. The Smith and Wessons were all good, but one of them did pull a hair to the left, and it was also slightly rusted. The Colt was fine.

  “You’re right, Irish. I’ll take the two S and Ws and the Colt.”

  “You need three?”

  “Got to be safe. The only gun I got is on me. I had a couple others that got lifted by Charlie’s men in Cicero, along with a lot of other stuff.”

  “Got a job on the line?”

  “I don’t think so, Irish. I called Planner while I was healing up, and the only thing he had for me was a bad bet at best. Since Charlie shot my last job out from under me, nobody in the trade wants near me. Nobody worth a damn, anyway.”

  “Jesus. I hope you get this thing with Charlie straightened out.”

  “I will, Irish. One way or the other one.”

  “You want that drink now?”

  “I’ll pass again. Walk me down?”

  “Sure. Let me put the guns in a box for you and wrap it up. Need any ammo?”

  “Yeah. Better make it five or six packs. And throw some Three-in-One oil in, too, would you?”

  “Okay.”

  Later, the two men stood by the open garage door downstairs and talked of jobs they worked together. After half an hour had gone, Nolan asked Irish how much he owed him for the guns and ammunition, and was his credit good?

  “You don’t owe me anything, Nolan. . . . I’m in to you for much more than money could ever repay. . . . I’m so goddamn lucky you got Werner to set me up. . . .”

  “Werner’s the lucky one. I never met a man who knows more about mechanical things than you. I don’t care if it’s cars or tools or guns or . . .”

  “Or jukeboxes?”

  “Yeah. Those too, I suppose. What exactly are you doing for Werner? The jukebox thing’s a front, I assume?”

  “Oh no, it’s more than a front; you’d be surprised what a little moneymaker it is. We keep it crappy-looking around here sort of on purpose, so nobody official wants to spend much time nosing around. But the juke business is big. Got some thousand jukes in the area, another thousand-and-a-half pinballs, couple thousand cigarette machines, and then there’s candy machines and gum, working out of our other place over in Moline. Got a whole building up the block just for trucks. I also service the slots Werner’s got in the gambling room downstairs at the Maricaibo over in Milan. And, of course, I keep Werner’s boys supplied in good clean workable gunware, and let ’em use the range upstairs for practice when they want. . . . For a sideline Werner lets me provide the same service to any of my old working pals, whenever they pass through the Cities. I only wish I’d been able to supply you sooner, Nolan.”

  “Thanks, Irish. You know I appreciate it.”

  “Forget it. Any time, anything.”

  “Say, you wouldn’t know where I could line up a car, would you?”

  “Sure. Phony registration and out-of-state plates and all? Fresh paint job to cool the heat? A cinch. Just give me a call, number’s in the book. Friend over in East Moline can fix you up fine.”

  “Good. I got nothing going right now, but I may need a car later.”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, Irish, I better let you go back upstairs to your little girlfriend.”

  “Only not so little, huh? You’re sure you maybe don’t want to borrow her tonight? Maria’s her name. Fantastic.”

  “How’s the wife?”

  “Oh, fine, pregnant of course. Jesus Christ, five kids we got. Why I had to be born Catholic I’ll never know.”

  “Yeah, it’s tough. I bet your priest looks forward to your confession.”

  “You crazy, Nolan? Think I trust those bastards to keep their mouths shut?”

  “I’ll see you, Irish.”

  “Good luck with Charlie.”

  “Yeah.”

  5

  The first thing Nolan did after taking leave of Irish and his jukeboxes was walk on downtown to find a bank to get his hundred-dollar bill broken up.

  Three blocks from the warehouse he came to the First National Bank of Davenport. He went in and scanned the faces of the five tellers at the five windows in front of him: two men, one wearing salt-and-pepper hair and darkrimmed bifocals, putting the push on sixty, the other middle-aged with a brown butch and dimpled chin; and three women, two of them female counterparts of the men, the third an attractive young brown-eyed blonde.

  Nolan opted for the blonde.

  “Yes sir?”

  “Break this into fives for me, will you?” He handed her the hundred.

  “Of course.” She pulled open her money drawer and counted out the fives, holding them out for Nolan to take. Her brown eyes were large, long lashes fluttering around them. “Anything else I can do for you, sir?”

  “Matter of fact there is. You could tell me how to get to the local YMCA.”

  “Yes, well, it’s a YM and YWCA combined.”

  “I could get a room there, couldn’t I?”

  “I think so. If you stay on the male side.”

  “Do my best. How do I get there?”

  “Oh. Yes. Well, walk down toward the river one block, till you get to Second Street, then take a right and go five blocks I think it is, five or six. Anyway, can’t miss it, it’s kitty-corner from the bridge.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Are you just passing through the Cities?”

  “Business trip.”

  Salt-and-Pepper-Pushing-Sixty cleared his throat in the window next do
or, looking pointedly at the blonde teller over the tops of his dark-framed bifocals. There was a shrug in the girl’s smile, and Nolan smiled back, folding his stack of fives in half and turning away from the window.

  He paused for a moment before leaving the bank, pocketing the twenty splinters from his hundred-dollar bill. Must not be too ungodly old, he thought, if a pretty young girl like that teller can show interest. Encouraging.

  Lingering by the door for a moment, he caught himself glancing around the bank’s interior, casing the place almost subconsciously. A guard at the door gave him a fisheye and Nolan got himself quickly back onto the street.

  Looking suspicious inside a bank was never good practice, Nolan thought, but especially not when he had a package under his arm filled with revolvers and ammunition.

  As Nolan walked down Second Street, he passed by a Penney’s store with a sign in the window reading “Close-out Sale on Men’s Suits.” He had a distaste for assembly-line clothes, more from the fact that he had a nonexistent suit size that fell between two standard ones than from anything else. Clotheshorse he was not, but as it stood now, his entire wardrobe consisted of what he had on—white shirt, black slacks, blue sportcoat, and brown corduroy overjacket. The bag back at his hotel room had nothing more in it than a safety razor, can of lather, toothbrush and paste, spray deodorant, and three or four changes of socks and underwear. No best-dressed-man lists this season.

  Inside the store Nolan found a light gray suit that fitted him all right, a little tight in the shoulders maybe, and a couple of years out of style, but all right, and he cut his stack of twenty fives to thirteen buying it. Two sale ties brought the bills down to twelve.

  With the second, less incriminating bundle under his arm, Nolan returned to the street and walked on.

  The hundred-dollar bill had been a safety catch of his, a single C note pinned inside his inner sportcoat pocket to provide loose change in case his wallet got lifted or lost. Nothing more than a habit he’d picked up in those early years in Chicago, but a habit he’d hung onto. He’d never imagined the time would come when he’d be down to that hundred alone.

  A hundred-buck stake, he thought. Christ.

  The hundred and twenty-five he’d had in his wallet when the Cicero fiasco came up had gone relatively fast during the opening weeks of his month-plus recuperation at the girl’s apartment. In the last few weeks of his stay, he knew, the girl’d had to dip into her personal savings. He almost felt guilty about not letting her know about the extra hundred pinned in his coat, but he’d known he’d need it to get him started when he was back on his feet again, so there’d been no choice.

  Now the remaining twelve pieces of his shattered hundred were a folded lump in the same inner sportcoat pocket where the bill had been pinned. Nolan had asked for the hundred in fives because that way it looked like a lot of money without being as awkward as a stack of one hundred ones. Childish, he realized, senility setting in at last, but he hated like hell feeling broke. And anyway, he might find the need to make the remainder of his cash look like more than it was.

  Down Second five blocks, the last two of which had gotten as seedy as the blocks surrounding Irish’s place, and Nolan came to the YM–YW.

  A huge parking lot encircled the building, separating it from its tenement neighbors on the left, and on the right from the busy street that led onto the Rock Island Centennial Bridge. Set apart like that, the building took on an aloof quality that Nolan couldn’t link with recollections of YMCAs of his youth. The Ys in his memory were composed of crumbling brick and young sweat and old tennis shoes; this one was sheet glass and cement and scalloped steel.

  Nolan edged his way through the packed car lot, went up the walk and into the building. The lobby was like the outside, only with carpeting. Over on the right was the reception desk, the kind you stand behind. This time Nolan didn’t have a choice of personnel, there being only one clerk on reception duty, an unattractive girl in her late twenties. He paid her ten dollars for the room and didn’t ask to see it.

  Back out on the street, having waded his way through the lot of cars, Nolan winced at the dry, biting cold on his face and decided he wasn’t up to the dozen-or-so-blocks walk to the hotel. He cut one of the fives in half with a cab ride back and finished off the other half with an eleven o’clock roll and coffee in the Concort coffee shop.

  After breakfast, Nolan strolled out into the lobby and picked up a message at the check-in desk: “Call me at 555-7272, Werner.” He walked to the phone booth next to the lounge entrance and put in the call. When the ringing stopped, it was replaced by the sound of a female voice saying, “Flaming Embers Restaurant, can I help you?” It was the kind of voice that went well with bedroom eyes.

  “Speak with Mr. Werner, please?”

  “Just a moment, sir, I’ll ring his extension for you.”

  He heard the click of the button going down, and the ringing started in again, only to be replaced by another ultra-feminine voice, which asked for Nolan’s name. Nolan said, “Logan,” and after a thirty-second wait, Werner was on the line.

  “Where you been all morning, old friend?”

  “Bought myself a new suit. Never go to your own funeral poorly dressed, I always say.”

  “Funeral, hell. You’re making a wise move. Charlie’s ready to sit down with you. You’ll get results with him tonight.”

  “What time tonight?”

  “Eight o’clock’s the set time. I’ll be going out to the airport to pick him up at six-thirty or so. His plane’ll be in at seven something.”

  “I see.”

  “It’ll be just you and me and him. No bodyguards, no guns, just the three of us.”

  “A cozy Family scene. All we need is a fireplace.”

  “That’s right. Nonviolence is in this year.”

  “I hope Charlie’s heard about that.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You’ll be following your own ground rules, won’t you, friend? My neck is out for you, you know. What about that visit out to Cavazos’s you said you were going to make?”

  “Pure social call. I don’t have the money to buy fresh socks, let alone guns.”

  “Well, if you need anything, anything but guns, that is, I’ll see you get it. We go back a few years.”

  “So do Charlie and I.”

  “Play by the rules, now, Nolan. You’re the one set them up, after all.”

  “Right. See you tonight.”

  Nolan cradled the receiver and got out of the booth, headed back to the check-in clerk.

  When Nolan introduced himself, the desk clerk—a short, dark, eager young man—spent a good thirty seconds assuring Nolan he would do “anything for a friend of Mr. Werner’s.” Nolan got out the roll of fives.

  “Now, Mr. Logan, please, Mr. Werner said everything was to be taken care of, no charge whatsoever, Mr. Werner said . . .”

  “Said I was an old friend of his,” Nolan finished. “That’s right, and I’m planning a little surprise for Mr. Werner tonight, as a matter of fact. I just hope he doesn’t get wind of it. Hate for it to get spoiled for him.”

  “A surprise?”

  “That’s right. This is something kind of personal between Mr. Werner and myself. But you could help, if you’re willing.”

  “Well, certainly, anything I can do.”

  “Good. I’ll need another room.”

  “Is there something unsatisfactory about your present suite?”

  “No. I need an extra room. It has to do with the surprise.”

  “Oh.” The clerk leaned forward and smiled and said, “What is it, are you bringing in another old friend of Mr. Werner’s? Or perhaps several? A surprise party, is that what it is? In that case you’ll be needing a catering service, you’ll need champagne and . . .”

  “Just an extra room.”

  “Well, certainly . . .”

  “Small. On an upper floor.”

  “I see.”

  “Which I will pay for.”

&nb
sp; “I see.”

  “Just see you don’t see.”

  “I’ll see that I don’t.”

  “Fine. How much for the room?”

  “Uh. Uh, thirty-five dollars.”

  Nolan counted off seven fives. “Can I have the key?”

  The clerk reached behind and handed Nolan a key that said 714.

  Nolan handed him another five. “And that’s for your trouble.”

  “That’s not necessary, Mr. Logan . . .”

  “I insist.”

  The clerk took the money.

  Nolan said, “You want me to sign the register or anything?”

  “Oh, yes, yes, any name at all . . .”

  Nolan took the register, smiled softly to himself and signed “E. Webb, Cicero, Illinois,” then handed the register back to the clerk, who said, “And I’ll do my best to keep from spoiling the surprise for Mr. Werner.”

  Nolan left the check-in counter, the two packages under his arm, and walked to the pair of elevators and pushed up. While he waited for his ride, he glanced down at the bill in his hand.

  One five.

  The big bankroll.

  Several people got on the elevator with him, and a boy of around six years said, “Whatcha grinnin’ about, mister?” Nolan pressed the last five into the kid’s hand and waited for his floor.

  6

  The only method Nolan had ruled out completely from the number of ways Charlie might handle his visit was that of Charlie playing it straight. Oh, Charlie could conceivably fly in from Chicago, drive to the hotel to talk things over with Nolan, carrying no firearms and accompanied by no bodyguards and radiating good will.

  And Christ might decide to make his second coming tonight.

  Nolan wasn’t counting on either. At the very least he expected Charlie to show up armed. Setting up those ground rules had been something Nolan had done because he knew Charlie expected him to ask for them. So he’d asked.

  Nolan figured there were three courses of action, all similar, which seemed equally probable turns for Charlie to take.

  First, a party unknown might arrive at the hotel in the late afternoon or early evening and go up to Nolan’s room to kill him, with Charlie not even bothering to fly in.