Two for the Money

by Max Allan Collins

  His childhood was a good example, Jon felt, of reality’s general lack of appeal. Either it was boring—like the half dozen or so faceless relatives he’d lived with, the score of schools he’d gone to, the hundreds of kids he’d failed to get to know—or it was so goddamn tragic it was a soap opera and impossible to take seriously.

  So why not comic books?

  He had built his collection up carefully over the years, at first just hoarding the books he bought off the stands, then gradually, as he got into his teens, he began working on the older titles, seeking out other collectors and swapping, sending increasingly large amounts of hard-earned money through the mail for rare old issues, even trekking to New York each summer these past four years for the big comics convention. Jon read and reread the books, savoring the stories, studying the artwork. When he finished rereading one of the yellowing classics, he’d seal it back in its airtight plastic bag and carefully return it to its appropriate stack in its appropriate box.

  Though he was as yet unpublished, Jon considered himself already to be a full-fledged artist in the field of the graphic story (as comics were called in the more pretentious moments of fans like himself) and he felt this way primarily because he was too old now to say, “I want to draw comics when I grow up.” He was grown up, as much as he was going to anyway, and at twenty-one years of age, Jon was more than just serious about his artwork and comic-collecting; it was his lifestyle.

  The posters on his walls reflected this. More than half of them were recreations of classic comic book and strip heroes, drawn with black marker pen and water-colored, Dick Tracy, Batman, Flash Gordon, Tarzan, Captain Marvel, Buck Rogers. The latest poster was a finely detailed face of an old witch, a withered old crone with a mostly toothless grin and a single bloodshot, popping eye, and was an indication that Jon’s taste in comic art was undergoing a transition. Once the ax poster was put up, and one of the superheroes taken down, the shift from heroes to horror would become even more apparent.

  He sat on the bed and began eagerly opening his other packages. One of them was from California and was filled with underground comics. Jon smiled as he examined the cover of the latest issue of Bill Griffith’s “Zippy the Pinhead.” Not much else of the underground art was up to Griffith’s high standard of absurdity, in this batch of books anyway. He had once thought the undergrounds were where he could make his first splash, but their heyday—when Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton were making “Mr. Natural” and the “Freak Brothers,” respectively, into house- hold words—had passed into the ancient history that was the ’70s.

  Two of the other packages turned out to be rejections. Jon was very disappointed. It wasn’t so much that he’d expected to sell these “graphic stories,” but that he hadn’t realized that this was what the packages contained. He was disappointed that their contents hadn’t been more old comics or fanzines, dozens of which he’d paid for by mail order and should be showing up any day now. Both of the rejected stories were horror tales, and he was told, in a polite note from one editor, that he drew well but his style was too derivative of “Ghastly” Graham Ingels, and if he could just develop a more original style, they would be interested in seeing more. The other publisher included no note, but Jon was not surprised the story was coming back, because he’d heard through the fan grapevine that this company had gone out of business recently.

  The other package perked him up considerably. It was chock-full of EC’s, and he’d half expected the ad he had responded to was a hoax, since these EC’s had been incredibly low in price, costing only five to six dollars a piece. There were four “Vault of Horror,” two “Tales from the Crypt” and one “Crime SuspenStories.” He flopped down on the bed and one by one opened each plastic bag and eased out the comic inside. He didn’t read the stories, he just thumbed through the magazines, window-shopping.

  He had just got into the EC horror comics in the last six months or so. He’d heard of them, of course, but had never delved into the “Vault of Horror” because the prices were stiff for books printed as recently as the early fifties. And Jon’s primary interests had been the superheroes of the Golden Age of Comics, which ran roughly from 1937 to 1947, and issues reprinting newspaper strips like Dick Tracy and Buck Rogers.

  But lately he’d gone sour on superheroes. They didn’t seem relevant to his life anymore. He guessed it had something to do with knowing Nolan, meeting him, working with him.

  He smiled, remembering the first time he and Nolan had met. He glanced at the posters over his bed, which were the only noncomic art posters in the room: photos of Leonard Nimoy as Spock, Buster Crabbe in his serial days, and Lee Van Cleef decked out in his “man in black” gun-fighter apparel. Nolan had looked over Jon’s series of posters and had noticed especially the one of Lee Van Cleef, studying the black-dressed Western figure with the high cheekbones and narrow eyes and mustache, and Jon had told him who Van Cleef was, adding, “Looks something like you, don’t you think?” Nolan had shaken his head no, smiled crookedly and pointed a finger at Buster Crabbe, saying “Flash Gordon’s more my style.”

  In a way, both Van Cleef and Flash Gordon were Nolan’s style. Nolan was the sort of man Jon had always hoped to meet but never thought he really would. The sort of man Jon had admired in fantasy. Nolan was Flash Gordon, and Bogart and Superman, too. Nolan was Dick Tracy and Clint Eastwood and Captain America. Oh, he wasn’t as pretty as any of the fantasy heroes. His face was lean, hard, cruel, and his body was so scarred from bullet wounds he looked as if he’d been used for a year as some medical student’s cadaver. And Nolan could be a bastard at times, could be a real bastard, really an altogether unpleasant person to be around.

  Which was maybe why those fantasy guys didn’t satisfy Jon anymore. Nolan was everything they were and more: he was real, both perfect and imperfect, everything. A superhero couldn’t come up to Nolan’s standards.

  Did it matter that Nolan was a thief? Not really, Jon thought, his opinion shaded by the fact that he, too, was a thief of major proportions, since that bank job a year and a half ago. It wasn’t what the heroes stood for, it was the way they stood for it that mattered. Jon remembered seeing the film White Heat, where the so-called good guy Edmund O’Brien double-crossed Jimmy Cagney. Cagney was a psychopathic murderer, but he had style. When they showed White Heat at the U of I student union last month, every-body in the house had booed that son of a bitch Edmund O’Brien.

  He was picking out one of the “Vault of Horror” issues to read when he heard the phone ringing out in the store. He had the urge to jump off the bed and run out there and see if it was Nolan calling, but he repressed the urge. He’d made up his mind that he was not going to jump up and down like a spastic puppy for the chance to talk to Nolan. Besides, Jon had nothing to say, really, and Nolan just about never had anything to say.

  No. This was business between Nolan and Planner (even though Jon was up to his ass involved in that business) and Jon would stay cool, the way Nolan would expect him to.

  “Hey, Jon boy!”

  The sound of Planner’s rough voice made Jon’s heart leap. Nolan had asked to talk to him! Imagine that.

  Jon joined Planner out in the store and Planner said, “It’s for you . . . it’s that woman.”

  Jon didn’t let the disappointment show in his voice. “Karen,” he said, “Good morning, honey.”

  “Morning my ass, Jonny. It’s two-thirty. Did you just wake up?”

  “Yeah, ’bout half an hour ago.”

  “Me, too. I’m hung over as hell.”

  “Me, too. Did we have a good time last night, Kare? I can’t remember it too clear.”

  “We had a couple good times. You had breakfast?”

  “I slept through it, just like you did.”

  “We missed lunch, too, you know. Come on over to the apartment and I’ll fix you some eggs.”

  “And sausage?”

  “You drive a hard bargain. And sausage.”

  “That sounds good.” />
  “Then maybe a little later I can refresh your memory about last night.”

  “That sounds better.”

  “Get your cute little ass over here, Jonny.”

  “Will do.”

  Jon hung up and noticed Planner’s reproving gaze. Jon grinned and said, “I know, I know, she’s too old for me.”

  “She’s old enough to be your mother.”

  “Oh, bull. You’re old enough to be my grandmother. And I don’t hold it against you, do I?”

  “No, but I’ll bet you hold it against her,” and now Planner, too, was grinning.

  “What would you do in my place?”

  “The same damn thing, nephew. The same damn thing.”

  “Thought so. All this time you’ve just been jealous.”

  “Sure, kid. That broad’s just about the right age for me.”

  Jon walked over to the row of penny candy Planner kept along the counter for the school kids from across the street. He took a piece of bubble gum from one of the glass bowls and unwrapped the gum and tossed the pink square into his mouth. He chewed it up good and walked back to Planner and blew a healthy bubble and popped it at his uncle.

  “Smartass kid,” Planner said, trying not to smile.

  “See you later, Unc,” Jon said, and went out the back way.

  4

  The older man took his time eating the ice cream cone. It irritated Walter that his father could be so calm, just sitting there eating that goddamn ice cream as if they were at the beach or something. He was irritated enough to speak, and in a tone more harsh than he generally dared use when he spoke to his father. He said, “How can you just sit there and eat that goddamn stuff?”

  The older man said, “What?”

  “I said . . . nothing. Nothing, Dad.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Now what did I tell you? I told you don’t be nervous. We’re going in and do it and we’ll be out and done in nothing flat. So don’t be nervous, understand?”

  “I’m not nervous.”

  The older man studied his son’s face carefully. The boy was naturally pale, but he seemed to be even whiter than usual. But aside from shaking his foot on the leg crossed over one knee, the boy was showing no overt signs of tension.

  “It’s not going to be hard,” the older man said. “I’ll handle all the hard stuff. All you have to do is back me up and keep your damn wits about you.”

  “I know, Dad.”

  “But I won’t lie to you. It won’t be pleasant in there.”

  “You told me.”

  “It won’t be pleasant in there because that’s the way it has to be.”

  “You told me a hundred times, Dad.”

  “Don’t smart-mouth me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Don’t. And I’m just telling you this because I look at you right now and you know what I see? I see a kid, I see a goddamn college kid who’s liable to go in there and crap his pants, and I can’t afford that, understand, and you can’t afford it either.”

  “Dad . . .”

  “You didn’t have to be part of this. I didn’t want you to be part of this, remember. But you wanted to help. You begged me to help. Fine, that’s fine talk, but this is now, this is right now and we’re about to go across that street and do the kind of thing they don’t teach you in school, understand, so if you want out now, say so, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Dad . . .”

  “I’ll drive you back to the lodge. Right now. I’ll drive you back to the goddamn lodge and come back down here tomorrow and do it alone.”

  “Dad, you couldn’t do it alone . . .”

  “I could. It wouldn’t be no goddamn picnic, but I could.”

  “I’m not nervous, Dad.”

  He looked at his son and saw resolve in the young face. He smiled briefly and squeezed his son’s arm, reaching over the box with the newspapers and guns in it to do so.

  He felt better now, now that he could have confidence in his son again. But that ice cream, which had gone down so smooth, so easy, so cool and refreshing, the damn stuff was churning in his stomach, making him feel queasy. All of a sudden he was nervous, and it almost made him laugh. Worrying about his son being nervous had got him that way.

  Funny, Walter thought, where the hell did that outburst come from? His father had been sitting there for an hour, looking so calm it was unnatural, as though he were on pot or something. And then out of nowhere the old man had let go with this practically hysterical lecture. Walter was stunned; he never would have suspected that his father’s placid surface was hiding such turbulent undercurrents.

  Not that he hadn’t had the notion that something was (how should he put it?) wrong with his father. Right now he was wishing he could summon courage to look at his father, to study him, observe his behavior. (Walter was a business major, but he’d taken several psychology courses as electives.) He wondered now, as he’d wondered more than once in the past few weeks, if his father was, well, sane.

  Up until this uncharacteristic outburst of a moment ago, the old man seemed normal enough to Walter: quiet, self-sufficient, a hard but not unaffectionate man. But Walter knew these were superficial judgments, biased judgments from a child who desperately wanted to love and respect a father. He had never known his father all that well, really. Dad had been gone so much of the time, the business had been so demanding. Walter had felt much closer to his mother, and if she were still alive today, the situation would most certainly be different, to say the least.

  The distance between Walter and his father had been shortened only these past months, these last several weeks especially. The old guy was no longer the aloof, godlike, benevolent family dictator, but a human being, a man willing to meet his son as an equal . . . or at least as a peer.

  Walter liked that. It was a new experience and he liked it, even now, even sitting in this car waiting to . . . to do what they were going to.

  This last week, at the lodge at Eagle’s Roost, had been wonderful and terrible. The memories the place aroused were double-edged, pleasant this moment and painful the next. Like a fire, nice to look at until you got too close. He at times felt he and his father were ghosts haunting the empty old lodge, perhaps in search of other ghosts who could share remembrances of other, better times. He could hear the voices, his mother, his sister, his father, too, and once he heard himself, a high-pitched voice, prepuberty, and he laughed; he heard all these voices, especially late at night and early in the morning, he really heard them, but then of course he was trying to hear them.

  He sat in the main room downstairs, that huge open-beamed, high-ceilinged room, dark wooded, dominated by the black brick fireplace and the elk head above it. There were three brown leather sofas arranged in a block C that opened onto the fireplace, forming a room within the room, an area before the hearth where throw rugs and pillows were scattered for lounging. But the pillows and throw rugs were gone now, and when he and his father arrived, the sofas, like all the other furniture, were covered with sheets. Walter had uncovered the center sofa, where he sat and stared at the fireplace, as though it were warm and roaring rather than cold and barren. They uncovered the long table in the dining area to the left of the sofas, and he and his father sat alone together at the table, eating TV dinners and canned food and other survival rations that didn’t jibe with the memories of sumptuous feasts at this same table. On the other side of the room, where Mother’s sewing table still stood, covered of course, and faded areas on the wood floor where card tables had been, for playing Clue with his sister, and, later, Monopoly, was the window seat, the same plaid cushions he remembered. Once again he sat and watched the trees bend slightly in the breeze, their needles shimmering, and if he leaned close to the window, he could still get that same good view of the lake, blue and sparkling where the sun hit it, pink, bobbing swimmers close to shore, the sails of skiffs white along the horizon.

  And sitting there in that window se
at, his mind flooded with memories, he could not keep himself from wondering what this stranger who was his father, this stranger and guns and robbery, had to do with his life.

  He’d known for a long time, of course, what his father’s “business” was. No one had told him, exactly, but he’d gotten it a piece at a time, and the knowledge had been gradual, there’d been no great revelation. But the lodge seemed such an odd setting for preparing for today’s possible violence. High up on that hill, overlooking the two lakes, the lodge had been the one place where his father had allowed no contact from the “business” world. Their home, in a suburb of Chicago, had seen occasionally the hard-faced men who associated with his father “at work.” But the lodge was different.

  He remembered the time his Uncle Harry had shown up at the lodge, with two men who wore trench coats and slouch hats and had faces like the Boogie Man. Walter had been eight at the time and had found the two men with Uncle Harry frightening, but no more so than Uncle Harry, who was himself no beauty contest winner, and Walter’s sister called him Uncle Scarey behind his back. Uncle Harry had told their father there was important business at Lake Geneva that he ought to tend to personally, and to come along. Dad had been furious with Uncle Harry for bringing the two men with him, and into the lodge. Walter could still hear his father’s voice: “I told you never to bring any of your goddamn goons around here! This place is for my family and myself and I don’t want you or anybody contaminating it! Now wait outside, Harry.” And Dad had shoved the two Boogie Men out the door as if they were a couple of sissies.

  “Are you ready?” the older man said.

  “Yes,” Walter said.