Two for the Money

by Max Allan Collins

  “I’ll see you around.”

  “We went to a funeral today, Werner and I.”

  Nolan stopped.

  “Friend of yours.”

  The wreath.

  Werner said, “Irish.”

  Nolan ran back to the chair and lifted Charlie out of it by the lapels. “What did you do to him?”

  Charlie didn’t answer.

  Nolan squeezed his hands together, full of the cloth of Charlie’s suitcoat, and picked the little man off the ground and shouted into his face: “What did you do to him?”

  Charlie wasn’t shaken. He looked back at Nolan calmly and said, “An accident. He was working late here the other night and one of his jukeboxes fell over on him. This one right here behind me, as a matter of fact. Crushed in his rib cage. Punctured a lung.”

  Nolan heaved him back into the folding chair, knocking it over. Charlie sat on the floor and grinned up at Nolan.

  Nolan said, “I’m going to kill you, you little bastard.”

  “Are you?”

  Nolan grabbed for the .38 and a deep voice behind him said, “I wouldn’t.”

  Nolan eased his hand away from the gun butt. Charlie was getting up, the grin still on his face. He reached over and plucked Nolan’s gun out of his belt and tossed the .38 across the room, where it went skittering over the cement floor and into a pile of junk under a workbench.

  Nolan turned his head slowly around and watched a hulking figure move out of the darkness and into the weak light.

  “Hello, Tillis,” Nolan said.

  Tillis said nothing, his beefy hand surrounding his silenced Luger, which was pointed at Nolan’s stomach.

  “Tillis,” Charlie said, “before you kill Nolan for me, I want to have a word with him. So you’ll have to wait a bit.”

  Tillis nodded.

  “Nolan,” Charlie said, “there are some things you should know. First, I never heard of the name Earl Webb until you told me about it. I don’t know who took your things out of that hotel room in Cicero, whether it was cops or FBI or some wino, but however you look at it, if your cover’s blown, it’s been a long time blown, and I didn’t have a goddamn thing to do with it. Outside of it was my man who shot you and got people interested in you.”

  Nolan smiled.

  He had to smile, because it was a joke.

  Because since Charlie’s men hadn’t been in his hotel room in Cicero, and hadn’t gotten hold of the Webb material, then from the beginning it had been a joke. The first meeting with Charlie, the payoff arrangement, the planning of the robbery, the robbery itself, all of it a joke, a right answer to a question built on a false premise. An exercise to occupy his time before this inevitable confrontation with Charlie.

  But Charlie was still talking, and not paying attention to Nolan’s smile. Charlie was saying, “Second, that night at the Concort, I’d given Tillis orders to hold you for me. He didn’t know it, but when I got there, I was going to have him kill you. I was making sure I got to watch, that was all. But when I did show and found you’d gotten the best of Tillis, and you had a gun on me as well, I had to improvise the hundred thousand dollar payoff deal, since the pretense I was there under was to negotiate with you, anyway. I knew enough not to make it too easy, and I knew enough to restrict you from trying to use Webb money, since there was a chance you’d come through and pay me off. And a chance I might still get to see you die, after all. But mostly I just wanted to get rid of you that night without losing my skin. That was all. But you bit, oh, you bit.” Charlie laughed and looked for a reaction from Nolan, but didn’t get any. “No questions, Nolan?”

  Nolan said, “Why kill Irish?”

  “Nobody could be left around who had any inkling of what was going on between you and me and Werner. Especially not somebody working within the Family, like Irish was, who could report it to a Family council member. Tillis, here, he’s been staying in Davenport with Werner these past two weeks taking care of details like Calder and Irish.”

  “Details.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What about Tillis? You going to have him kill himself?”

  Tillis stayed cement-faced and Charlie laughed again. “Don’t look for a rise out of him,” Charlie said, “he knows I’ll play honest with him. It’s guys like you, Nolan, who don’t play honest with me that get screwed.”

  “Where does my buddy Werner fit into this?”

  Werner was poking imaginary dust on the floor with his foot.

  Charlie said, “He’s up for promotion, didn’t you know that, Nolan? Going to be a council member one of these days. And you, you’re a skeleton in his closet, you might say, a goddamn thorn. See, I know you and he been keeping in touch over the years. And I got proof of it, too. Witnesses. Wiretaps. Even a couple photographs. That kind of thing could kill Werner with the Family. Not altogether, maybe, but no promotion. So Werner and me four or five months back made a deal, a goddamn deal. He helps me get to you next time you contact him, I forget about his helping you in the past.”

  “Who gets the hundred thousand?”

  “Well, I do want to thank you for the money, Nolan,” Charlie said. “I mean, it’ll come in handy. I can always use a little extra retirement money. So thanks for coming here like this. Not too many men walk into suicide with a hundred thousand bucks under their arm to pay their way.”

  Nolan didn’t say anything.

  “What’s wrong, Nolan?” Charlie put his hands on his hips. “Run out of goddamn questions?”

  “Not quite,” Nolan said, turning to Tillis. “Got a cigarette?”

  Tillis looked over at Charlie, who said, “Go ahead, condemned man and all that shit.”

  Nolan walked closer to Tillis and the black got his cigarettes out with his free hand and let Nolan pick one out. Then he put them away and handed Nolan a book of matches. Nolan lit the cigarette, leaning close to Tillis, and whispered, “Give me a try at the door. I’ll slug you, and if I’m not fast enough, go ahead and shoot me.”

  Charlie said, “What are you doing over there?”

  Tillis looked at Nolan with large wet eyes and whispered back, “Don’t do it, man.”

  Nolan flicked the cigarette in Tillis’ face, smashed his fist into the black’s jaw and ran for the door, throwing it open and running out into the alley. He heard Tillis fall behind him and Charlie’s voice yelled, “Get off your ass, you black bastard, get him!”

  Nolan leaned for a split second against the bricking at the mouth of the alley and saw Jon in his place, motor going, and ran toward him, out into the street.

  Jon saw Nolan coming and reached around to unlatch the door in back.

  The car was a few feet away and Nolan felt-heard the thunk of a silenced slug digging into the pavement by his heels.

  “Start moving, kid!”

  The Chevy II began to take off gradually up the street and Nolan ran for it, reaching out for the handle on the open door. His hand touched, caressed the steel of the handle, and he got it, had hold of it, and the bullet caught him in the side, going in just above where the healed-up wound was.

  He felt his hand slip away from the handle and he heard Jon braking and he said, “No! Keep moving!”

  The boy kept the car going slowly ahead and Nolan could feel the handle on his fingertips again but he couldn’t reach around, then he did, he had it, but his fingers wouldn’t grasp, couldn’t grasp. The Chevy was nearly to a halt and Nolan yelled, “Go, boy! Go on!”

  “Nolan . . .”

  Another bullet tore into him, his shoulder this time, and the door handle glided away from his hand. He looked up and saw dimly Jon’s face looking back at him, horror, frustration, fear-pain on the boy’s face, and Nolan slapped the air and yelled, “Get out of here!” and Jon’s face turned away and the Chevy was gone.

  Nolan rolled to the curb and lay there, a fetal ball, absorbing the warmth of his oozing wounds, clutching their damp heat in against him, protecting him from the crisp night air.

&nbs
p; Nolan looked up after either an hour or a second and saw the three men standing in the street above him. Tillis wore a deadpan, but there was regret in his eyes. Nolan knew Tillis had done all that could be expected; he’d given Nolan a chance, Nolan had blown it, and it was over. If Werner had regrets, they weren’t showing; his face was an expressionless mask. Only Charlie seemed happy. Charlie was smiling.

  “Don’t feel bad, Nolan,” Charlie said, putting his hands on his knees and bending down by Nolan’s feet. “Sometimes there isn’t anything left to do but die, is there, old friend? But don’t hurry yourself on my account. Take your time, you cocksucking son of a bitch, I want to enjoy this.”

  Nolan pushed himself up on his elbows, feeling not pain but numb throbbing, and sent his right foot flying upward and sank a deep kick into Charlie’s crotch.

  The kick lifted the little hood into the air and dropped him to the curb, where he sat down and buried his hands between his legs and a soundless scream hissed out of him like air rushing from a low-pitched radiator.

  Nolan lay there smiling softly while Werner and Tillis went to Charlie and helped him to his feet. Charlie was wobbly but he limped over to Nolan and kicked him in the side, where both the new and old wounds were. Nolan didn’t give a damn; he couldn’t feel it anyway.

  Charlie looked like he wanted to say something, but he couldn’t verbalize the depth of hatred apparent in his face. He waved an arm toward the warehouse across the street and tried to gather the strength and dignity necessary to cross by himself.

  A car came around the corner, stopped by Charlie and a man stuck his head out the window and said, “Trouble here?” and Werner told him that his friends had had a little too much to drink and the man went on. Werner rushed over to Charlie’s side to offer help but Charlie, tears streaming down his face, batted him away.

  Werner watched as Charlie hobbled across the street. Once Charlie was back inside, Werner turned to Nolan, leaned down by him and said, “Nolan?”

  Nolan was still smiling.

  “Nolan . . . hey, look, I couldn’t avoid this . . . he forced me, Charlie did . . . I want you to believe me, Nolan . . . listen to me . . . I’m sorry as hell about this . . . I mean it, and I wanted you to know . . . Nolan?”

  Nolan motioned him nearer and Werner bent his ear down next to the bleeding man’s lips.

  “Fuck off,” Nolan said.

  Another car rounded the corner and Werner motioned to Tillis and the two men crowded around Nolan and pretended to help him to his feet.

  Nolan heard Jon’s voice say, “Lay him in the back or I’ll blow you apart.”

  He felt himself being lifted, there were hands on him, and then he was in the backseat of the Chevy II, half-sitting, half-lying, and the door was open and Jon was out there, slapping Werner with a .38, and Nolan watched Werner float to the cement and hit hard. And then Jon was slugging Tillis, a tiny white fist flying at that big black face, and Tillis went down, too. Nolan knew Jon was strong, but that strong?

  He thought, I’m dreaming, and closed his eyes. After a while he thought he heard Charlie’s voice, but then the car was moving and that was behind him.

  6

  “How bad?” Jon asked.

  He opened his eyes. It was dark. They were on the highway, the Interstate. “Crazy bastard,” Nolan said. His voice sounded strange in his ears. “Told you to leave.”

  “You’d better not talk, Nolan.”

  “Crazy asshole kid,” he said, “what’d you come back for?”

  “I’m taking you to Planner. He’ll help you.”

  “Asshole kid . . .”

  “You shut up, Nolan.”

  Nolan shook his head. “Comic books,” he said. He closed his eyes.

  BOOK TWO

  Blood Money

  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 ha
d 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.