Two for the Money

by Max Allan Collins

  Back in the car, the older man was watching a young guy walk around from behind the two-story structure. Must be a rear entrance back there, he thought, and this must be that kid they told me about. Planner’s nephew. He watched the boy walk past the Shell station and head toward the Iowa City business district. The boy was short, maybe five-six or-seven, but he was strongly built, his arms muscular. His hair was curly brown and long, stopping just this side of an Afro, and the older man wondered if there was any chance in hell the boy was on his way downtown for a haircut. He was wearing worn, patched jeans and a white tee-shirt with some cartoonish thing on the front. About Walter’s age, the older man thought, maybe a little younger.

  “Here’s your cone, Dad.”

  The older man turned his head and nodded to his son and took the cone. Walter came around the front of the car and got in and sat, feeling queasy as he watched his father eat the ice cream. Walter said, “Did I see a kid come out of the shop?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I didn’t see anybody go in there.”

  “It’s the guy’s nephew or something. He lives there.”

  “Oh. You didn’t say anything about that.”

  “I wasn’t sure whether the kid lived with him or not.”

  “Oh.”

  “Anyway, I’m glad he’s left.”

  “How come?”

  “Don’t be stupid. It’ll be easier with just the one guy.”

  “Oh. Yeah, of course.”

  The ice cream tasted good. And he felt good, knowing the kid wouldn’t be in there. He had no compunction about what he was going to do, but killing or even hurting some kid Walter’s age was something he didn’t care to do. He’d gone into this knowing it would be like the old days. It had to be like the old days, like coming up in those years when brains weren’t enough, you had to have balls, and balls meant shooting who you had to when you had to and the hell with manners. He had to have the right frame of mind if he expected to deal with Nolan and come out on top. So sure, this was like the old days, this was a situation where if you had to be hard, you were hard. But these last ten, fifteen soft years made it hard to be hard; it was like sex, he could still get it up, if need be, but he wasn’t no tiger anymore.

  He was glad the kid wouldn’t be around. Some old son of a bitch, what did that matter, but some damn kid? That was something else.

  2

  At two o’clock, just as the two men with guns were pulling into the Dairy Queen parking lot across the street, Planner was lighting a cigar and wondering when the phone call would come. The cigar was a Garcia y Vega, at least one box of which Planner kept under the counter always; he liked cigars, Garcia y Vegas especially, and if the occasional customers who walked into his antique shop were irritated by the smoke, well, fuck ’em. The phone call he was waiting for was from Nolan, a man who played a part in Planner’s other and primary occupation, which was planning jobs for professional thieves.

  The antique shop, however, was more than just a front. Long before the thought of using an antique shop as a front had ever entered his mind, Planner had been a collector of antiques, though like many collectors he was a specialist and only one small branch of antiquing held a fascination for him.

  Buttons.

  Planner loved buttons.

  Not buttons that hold your clothes together (though there were collectors of those around, too) but political buttons and advertising buttons and anything that pinned on, including sheriff’s and other cop badges, if they were old enough. The mainstay of his collection was the political buttons, the pride being his Lincoln tokens and the large picture buttons of Hoover. These were in a frame upstairs, while others of lesser value and importance, but gems nonetheless, graced a display case in the front of the store.

  It was that display case that let other dealers who came around know that despite the junk quality of most of the merchandise in the shop, Planner was a dealer who knew what he was doing, worthy of respect. It was with great pleasure that he would turn down offers from fat-cat dealers who would drool at the generous assortment of political buttons in the airtight case, the Willkies, the Wilsons, the Bryans. If he was feeling really generous, he might sell them one Nixon or a Kennedy or perhaps a Goldwater, but not often, as even recent buttons brought a pretty penny, since during the last three or four presidential campaigns a man had to contribute five or six bucks before the party would give him a picture button of the candidate. And who could guess what a McGovern/Eagleton would one day be worth?

  If he was feeling particularly ornery, Planner would show dealers the Lincoln tokens and the Hoovers upstairs and would listen to their eager bids and pretend to consider and then calmly refuse. Even if a dealer got down on his knees (which had happened a couple times) Planner would shake his head solemnly no. Back downstairs, to rub salt in the wound, Planner would point out the barrel of buttons next to the front display case, a barrelful of zilch buttons Planner sold to the school kids for a quarter a throw.

  Also, from dealers who came around and from stops he made to keep his “buying trips” looking honest, Planner had managed, over these past thirteen or fifteen years, to fill in the gaps of his own collection, picking up damn near every button he needed. But even before he got into the antique trade, Planner had had one of the best goddamn button collections in the U.S. of A. (if he did say so himself) and so, when he was picking out some way to semi-retire, the antique hustle had been a natural.

  Sometimes, sitting behind the counter, smoking a Garcia y Vega, Planner would wonder if he could actually make a living selling antiques, you know, straight-out legitimate. Even though he purposely filled his shop with unspectacular horseshit, he did pretty good, better than he needed to with a situation that was basically a front. But the little old ladies in tennis shoes would ooo and ahh at the god-damnedest junk, and he would constantly (three or four times a year) have to spend a day going to flea markets and yard sales and load his station wagon with more bottles and jars and furniture and china and kettles and toys and crap and more crap. When he’d bought the place, it had been jampacked with junk, which he’d thought would last for years and years. Six months, it had been, and he was out scouting flea markets to replenish his supply. Occasionally he’d run onto an honest-to-God antique for next to nothing and these he would pack carefully away in one of his backrooms. One day he might sell them, but not now. Somehow it seemed crazy to sell an antique, a real one that is, since an antique’s value is its age, and tomorrow it’s going to be older and hence more valuable.

  In that way, and many others, the antique shop was more than a simple front. In addition to feeding Planner’s button habit, and turning a nice dollar itself now and then, the antique shop was just the sort of nebulous one-man business operation that made it damn near impossible for the IRS to get to you. Just the same, Planner reported a healthy income and gave the feds their healthy share, faking his own bookkeeping, which required both math skill and imagination. It was a time-consuming task, doing the books and other records, but he would find ways to amuse himself, such as inventing wild merchandise when writing up fake sales slips, his favorite being “One Afghanistan banana stand, $361.” He had told that one to Nolan once, thinking he would laugh, but Nolan had said, “That’s a little silly, isn’t it? You’re getting senile.” Nolan implied that if Planner got too goddamn cute with his records, the IRS would smell something, should they go sniffing. Planner didn’t think so. Anyway, the tax boys, classically, didn’t care how you made your money, they just wanted their piece of your action.

  Probably the best angle was that as an antique dealer, Planner could make frequent buying trips and on them gether the information that would enable him to put together “packages” for clients like Nolan. These trips aroused no suspicion whatsoever, neither locally nor wherever he chose to go.

  On the trips he got his information by playing the role of a cantankerous but friendly old antique dealer, and while putting on the eccentric act had been a chore at
first (fifteen, sixteen years ago when he got started) he found that now, at sixty-seven, the role was much easier to play convincingly. People weren’t surprised when an old guy like him would want to talk for a while, and he could always manipulate a stranger into a lengthy and rewarding conversation. The information was easy to get: he’d act paranoid and tell about his shop and how he was afraid of being robbed and ask about alarm systems and safes and such. He’d admire the layout of, say, a jewelry store and tell about how he was thinking of remodeling his place along similar lines and just how is everything put together here, exactly. He’d express dissatisfaction with his present payroll system for his staff of ten employees (all nonexistent, of course) and ask advice. And on and on. No trick to it.

  He puffed his cigar and grinned to himself. It was a damn good life. Much better than it had been for those years and years he’d spent actually working on jobs, the bank hits, the armored cars, the payroll robberies, all of it. When he was young, he’d found it stimulating, but before long (oh, even into his late twenties) his nerves had started to bother him. Planning ahead of time was one thing, but being on the job when the shit hit the proverbial fan and you got to improvise is another thing entirely. He worked things out so that at age fifty he could “sort of” retire, which he had, and a good thing too. He wouldn’t like to work in the field the way things were now. He wouldn’t enjoy working with the kind of people that were in the trade these days, if you could even call it a trade anymore.

  Planner had been in the trade when it was a trade. He started young, young enough to have worked with Dillinger a few times. There wasn’t anybody around today, needless to say, who could compare to Dillinger, except for Nolan, who was almost an old-timer himself, and that guy Walker, and a few others, Busch, Peters, Beckey, not many. Every string you put together these days has got somebody you can’t be sure of, he thought, and one or maybe two somebodies you never heard of and got to trust what some other somebody told you about ’em. It was hard to find pros these days, people who really knew what they were doing.

  Like Nolan and that bank job, a year ago November. Even with that team of amateurs, Planner thought, Nolan had managed to put together a professional score. Most people these days, when they hit a bank, clean out a teller cage or two or three (picking up mostly bait money, the marked bills every teller keeps on hand for just such occasions) and come off with a grand total of two, maybe three thousand. Shit, Planner thought, Nolan wouldn’t cross the street for three thousand. Because he knew what he was doing, Nolan had knocked that bank the hell over, he’d cleaned that bank’s vault out of every damn cent, choosing the day when the bank would be brimming with cash (the first Monday of the month) and got away with close to eight hundred thousand bucks.

  Most of which, Planner thought, swallowing, is back there in that safe of mine. He felt suddenly uncomfortable. His cigar went out and he relit, using an old-fashioned kitchen match. He wished Nolan would call.

  “Hey, Unc, I’m talking to you. Snap out of it.”

  “Huh?” Planner woke from his reverie and noticed his nephew Jon was standing across the counter from him, grinning. The boy had a mop of curly hair and was wearing a tee-shirt picturing a manlike pig (or piglike man) in a superhero outfit, including cape, under the words “Wonder Warthog.” Planner grinned back at his crazy nephew and said, “What the hell, I didn’t even see you there, Jon. I’m getting old. You say something?”

  “I just wanted to know if I got any mail.”

  Planner nodded and reached under the counter, pulling out four wrapped packages and a long cardboard tube. Jon was always getting stuff in the mail; it was that damn fool comic book collecting of his, mostly.

  Jon took the bundles in his arms and said, “Great!” His eyes were lit up like a four-year-old on his birthday. The boy nodded toward the long tube and said, “That’s my EC poster, I’ll bet. Made a good haul today.”

  “Just take that nonsense away and don’t bother me.”

  Jon laughed. “Yeah, I can see how busy you are, Unc. Hey, has Nolan called yet?”

  “No.”

  “Be sure to say hello to him for me.”

  “You know I will.”

  “Thanks, Unc.”

  The boy disappeared into the back of the store, where his room was stuck way in the back. Planner was glad Jon was living here; he felt better having someone else around what with all the cash in the safe. After all, half of that eight hundred thousand dollars from Nolan’s bank job belonged to Jon. Yes, Planner thought, smiling, relighting his Garcia y Vega once again, remembering how he brought Nolan and Jon together, my nephew’s a very wealthy boy, thanks to his old uncle.

  But Planner wouldn’t feel at ease, couldn’t feel at ease, until that money was out of his safe and in some bank where it belonged. There were reasons for keeping it here, sound ones, but he would be glad, glad hell, overjoyed, when Nolan’s call came through saying special arrangements’ve been made and the money can be moved.

  He was used to keeping money in the safe, and large amounts of it, too. Personally, he didn’t have much faith in banks, having seen too many of them fail in the Depression and having had a hand in the robbing of a goodly number as well. So he usually had twenty to fifty thousand dollars in that big old safe of his in his farthest-back backroom, as well as smaller but still substantial amounts belonging to various clients like Nolan who liked to have little nest eggs stuck here and there for emergencies. But Nolan and Jon’s little nest egg—eight hundred thousand dollars—Christ! If there was such a thing as too much money, that was it; it hardly fit into the safe, all of it, between it and the other money in there, near a million all together crowded into that poor old safe, and had been for almost a year now.

  When Nolan was staying there, Planner hadn’t felt so nervous about the money. At first, when Jon brought Nolan in all shot up like that and that doctor trying to keep Nolan patched together, there had been too much excitement to be nervous. Then, when Nolan was healing up from the wounds, feeling pretty good and able to move around some, Planner felt fairly safe; even under the weather, Nolan was a good man to have around. And of course Jon had moved from his apartment into that room in back of the shop, and Jon was a strong, tough kid, don’t let his size fool you, who’d seen Nolan through a rough spot and proved to his uncle that he could handle himself.

  But near a year Nolan had been gone and all that money had been sitting in that safe, brother. Nerve-racking.

  Well, Planner thought, doesn’t do any good to sit and worry like some goddamn old maid. Nolan will call today and that money’ll be out of here by tomorrow night. Maybe sooner.

  He let out a sigh and suddenly noticed how nice and cool it was in the shop. That old air-conditioner of his was really putting out. He’d had it a long time, but it was still working like a son of a bitch. Just because a thing is old, he thought, doesn’t mean it’s not worth a damn. He smiled at the thought.

  He got out from behind the counter and poked his nose outside the front door. The day was hot, a real scorcher, but the sun was big and yellow in the sky, and the sky was blue without any clouds at all. It was a beautiful day.

  Now call, Nolan, damn you.

  3

  The ax was embedded in the man’s head, the blood gushing down his forehead, yet somehow he was still standing, implanted there in the doorway, his eyes wide and dead but staring. The other man gasped in horror, the sweat streaming down his face, the guilt apparent in his terror-swollen eyes.

  Jon grinned. He laughed out loud.

  It was the most beautiful poster he’d ever seen in his life. He held it out in front of him, drinking it all in. He couldn’t believe how fantastic the artwork looked blown up to this huge size; the violent scene had originally appeared as a comic book cover back in the early fifties, and blown up to a 22” by 28” poster, and in full-blooded color yet, was some trip. Almost reluctantly he allowed the poster to roll itself back up, and he tossed it on his as yet unmade bed, to be put u
p on the wall later that day.

  Of course it wouldn’t be easy finding a place to display that beautiful poster: the walls of the little room were full as it was. In its former life, the room had been one of Planner’s storerooms, and after Planner and Jon had cleared and cleaned it, what remained was a dreary cubicle with four unpainted gray-wooden walls and a cement floor.

  Jon had met the challenge by papering the gray-wood walls with poster after poster after poster, and the cement floor was covered by shag throw rugs and Jon’s considerable collection of comic books. The comics were neatly boxed, three deep along each wall, with a filing cabinet in one corner that contained the more valuable comics. Planner had contributed a genuinely antique single bed with a carved walnut headboard, and a nonmatching walnut four-drawer chest of drawers. The room was cluttered but orderly, though against one wall was a wooden drawing easel with an expensive-looking swivel chair such as an executive might have back of his desk, easel and chair surrounded by scattered paper and pencils.

  Comic art was Jon’s life. It went far beyond a simple hobby, and Jon was fond of his uncle but thought Planner’s button-gathering was dumb, just not sensible at all. Those precious political buttons of Planner’s were artifacts of a boring and unpleasant reality, while comics were “immortal gateways to fantasy,” as Jon had said in an article he was working on for submission to a fanzine.

  He supposed his love for comics had something to do with his fucked-up childhood. Jon was a bastard, he hoped in the literal sense alone, and his mother had liked to think of herself as a chanteuse. What that amounted to was she sang and played piano in bars, and not very well. Because his mother was on the road most of the time, Jon’s childhood had been spent here and there, with this relative and that one, Planner part of the time, and Jon hadn’t lived steady with his mother until those last few years when she was serving cocktails in bars instead of singing in them. She was dead now, hit by a car some three years ago, perhaps by choice. Jon hadn’t known her well enough to get properly upset, and he had occasional feelings of guilt for never having cried over her.