And Sturms was important for another reason.
He was important to this Iowa City trip, because if Walter and Charlie ran into any trouble, Sturms was someone they could turn to.
“Doesn’t he know you?” Walter had asked, on the drive down from Wisconsin that morning. “Doesn’t he know you’re supposed to be dead?”
“He’d know me by name, sure,” his father had said, “but not by sight. And we sure as hell won’t be handing him no goddamn calling card. Look, I just mentioned him ’cause if we get in a tight squeeze, we can call on the guy, see, just drop a few of the right names and he’ll jump for us, is all.”
It made sense that Sturms wouldn’t know Charlie. Walter knew that his father had been high up enough in the Family to make it unlikely for a nobody like Sturms, stuck clear out here in Iowa, to know him personally. And, too, his father looked different now, since his “death.” Walter figured an old friend could easily pass Charlie on the street without recognizing him. Charlie had lost weight, was damn near skinny. And there was the work that plastic surgeon did, too, changing Charlie’s bumpy, several-times-broken nose into something small and straight, right off a movie star’s face.
All of this floated down Walter’s mental stream, but he wasn’t thinking about any of it, really; these were non-thoughts, passing quickly, skimming across the surface of his mind, part reflex action, part Walter’s semiconscious attempt to stay calm. He had driven slowly through the housing addition, noting the children on bicycles, the teen-aged boys mowing lawns, a husband or wife hosing down family cars in drives, none of it making any impression on him, no more than a boring sermon in church, though all this middle-class straight life reminded him to keep calm, to drive slow, to make as if the man sitting next to him was just taking a nap.
Walter thought about a lot of things, but the only thing he really thought about was his father, because his father was hurt and his father’s being hurt was the only thing that was really on Walter’s mind.
They’d come out of the antique shop awkwardly, with Walter trying to keep his one arm under the huge cardboard box of money, while looping his other arm around his wounded father’s waist. It was like being in one of those races at a picnic where they strap your leg and somebody else’s together and tell you to run. It was like that, only with blood.
Walter’s father had trailed blood out of there and Walter had been very worried. He knew that his father had high blood pressure and also knew that having high blood pressure could make a wound worse for a person, maybe make him bleed more, maybe make him more prone to shock. In the car he had looked at the wound in his father’s leg, exposed as it was just below the line of the Bermuda shorts, and Walter was stunned by the realization of how frail his father’s legs looked, how skinny they were, how the flesh just hung helpless on the bone. Walter was surprised, too, that such a small wound could leak so much blood. His father had stopped the bleeding by ramming a wadded handkerchief in against the hole in his bare thigh, but the wadded handkerchief hadn’t stopped Walter’s worrying.
Charlie would say, “Don’t worry, just get out of here,” whenever Walter asked him about the leg. Charlie had said it while Walter helped him out the antique shop door, and he said it while Walter helped him into the car, and he said it as Walter drove out Dubuque Street toward the Interstate 80 approach. And then Charlie passed out.
Walter had pulled into a driveway that led down to a tree-sheltered fraternity house and backed out and headed back on Dubuque toward the downtown. He stopped at a Standard station to use the pay phone. He found Sturms’s number in the phone book and dialed.
“Yes,” a voice had said. A bored tenor voice.
“Mr. Sturms?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“You don’t know me, but we have mutual friends.”
“Really.”
“I was told you could help out in a pinch. I have a man with me who needs help. He needs a doctor.”
“Who is this?”
“We have mutual friends.”
“You said that before. What kind of mutual friends?”
“Chicago friends. Milwaukee friends.”
“Name one.”
“Harry in Milwaukee. Now listen, I’m not screwing around. We need some help here.”
“How bad do you need the doctor?”
“I don’t know. Not bad I hope. But bad enough to bother you when I rather wouldn’t.”
“The guy isn’t dying or anything, is he?”
“Not unless it’s from old age, waiting on you to make up your mind if you’re going to help us or not.”
“Shit. I guess you better bring him out to my place. Where are you now?”
Walter told him. Sturms gave Walter directions.
And so now Walter was pulling into the oversize driveway of the house that was dark wood with light stone. He stopped the blue Olds alongside the red Mercedes, his foot on the brake, the car still in gear. He stared at the dark rough wood of the double garage doors and after ten seconds honked the horn once. He reached a hand over and patted his father’s shoulder, as if to reassure the unconscious man.
The garage door swung suddenly up and out of view and a man motioned at Walter to pull the Oldsmobile inside and Walter did. The man shut the garage door and walked over to meet Walter as he got out of the car.
The man was in his vague thirties, with the build of a linebacker, and had light brown hair that was neither long nor short and had been expensively styled to look natural. He wore a long-sleeve rust-color shirt and white slacks and was tanned and handsome in a standard sort of a way, except for a broad, flat nose.
Walter said, “Is the doctor here?”
Sturms said, “I haven’t been able to get him.”
“Jesus. What’s the problem?”
“Out on a house call. What happened anyway?”
“My father’s been shot.”
“How?”
“Never mind how. You don’t really want to know how, do you?”
“I guess not. How bad is he?”
“Caught a bullet in his thigh. He’s unconscious.”
“Let me take a look at him.”
Walter led Sturms around to the other side of the car. Sturms just peeked in the window, then turned to Walter and said, “Let’s go inside.”
“You going to help me move my father?”
“He’s all right where he is.”
“Well . . .”
“Moving him inside won’t help him any. Come on. We’ll try the doctor again.”
Walter followed Sturms into the house. The first room was the kitchen, where all the appliances were pastel green and the wood was maple brown. Dozens of bottles of pills sat on the counter. Walter’s surprise registered on his face.
Sturms grinned, said, “Wondering why I’d leave my stock out in the open like that, kid?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact.”
“That’s not merchandise. Those are vitamins I take. I wouldn’t touch that shit I sell. Haven’t even touched grass in years.”
Walter was led into a large living room with an open-beam ceiling of the same dark rough wood as the outside and pebbled plaster walls the same rust color as Sturms’s shirt. The carpet was burnt umber, and thick and fluffy like whipped egg whites. There was a sofa, a recliner and a chair with an ottoman, all dark brown imitation leather with button-tufted seats and backs. Cocktail table, end tables, even the stereo and television complex were dark Spanish-style hand-carved wood, looking lush and expensive. It was an attractive room, only slightly marred by two out of place abstract paintings over the sofa, a red spattered on a field of white, and a white spattered on a field of red. Sturms told Walter to sit, and Walter went to the sofa so he could sit with his back to the paintings. Air whooshed out of the cushion as Walter settled his ass uneasily down.
Sturms left the room momentarily and came back with a yellow telephone, which he plugged into a jack behind one of the sofa’s end tables. He brought the ph
one around in front of Walter and sat it in front of him, on the cocktail table, next to a bowl of artificial fruit.
“Now call Harry in Milwaukee,” Sturms said. “I want some proof of who you are.”
“You haven’t even called the doctor yet,” Walter said.
“I’ll get you something to drink while you’re doing that. What would you like? A beer? Maybe a Pepsi?”
“You haven’t even called the doctor yet, have you?”
“You call Harry. Then I’ll call the doctor.”
“You son of a bitch,” Walter said, and jumped up off the sofa.
Sturms showed Walter the gun. Walter didn’t know where the gun had come from, but Sturms most certainly did have it. It was an automatic, silenced, smaller than the ones Walter and his father had carried earlier that day. Those nine millimeters were under the seat of the Olds right now, not doing Walter a hell of a lot of good.
“What’s going on, honey?” a female voice said.
A tall brunette with a short haircut and dark tan skin was standing in the background. Like Sturms’s gun, she’d popped up from nowhere. She was wearing a warmup outfit, a trimmed-in-brown beige tee-shirt and matching short shorts, breasts bobbling under the skimpy top. Walter sat down again.
“Nothing, baby,” Sturms said. “Go get my friend and me a couple of beers, will you?”
“Sure thing, honey.”
“My wife,” Sturms explained, as she took her time bob-bling out. “Sweet kid. She painted those pictures there, on the wall, behind you.”
“Talented,” Walter said.
“Now why don’t you call Harry?”
“I don’t know his number.”
“I thought he was a friend of yours.”
“He’s a friend of that man bleeding out there in your fucking garage.”
“All right,” Sturms said, sticking the gun down in his waistband. “I’ll call him and let you talk to him.”
He crouched and dialed the number from memory. It took a few seconds for the direct-dialing long-distance wheels to turn, and then he said, “Could I speak to Harry, please . . . Mr. Sturms in Iowa City is calling. I’ll hold . . . Hello, Harry, it’s good to hear your voice. No, everything was fine with the last shipment, no problem, everything’s terrific. No, it’s something else . . . I have a guy here says he’s a friend of yours, wants some help from me. I’ll put him on.”
Walter took the phone and said, “This is Walter.”
“Walter?” The connection was good; Walter’s Uncle Harry was coming through fine. “Walter, something didn’t go wrong today, did it?”
“I’m afraid so. Dad’s been hurt.”
“Oh, Christ. How bad is it?”
“Just his thigh, took one in the thigh. But he’s unconscious, and you know his high blood pressure trouble. You can’t die from a thigh wound, can you?”
“Depends on what gets hit. How bad’s he bleeding?”
“Bad at first, but we stopped it. I don’t think some major artery got hit or anything, if that’s what you mean.”
“Listen, you tell Sturms get a doctor for you, and get your father patched up and hit the road. Did things go okay otherwise?”
Walter hadn’t even thought about that. He hadn’t even thought about the old guy at the antique shop his father had shot.
“It could’ve gone smoother,” Walter said.
“What about the money?”
“We got it.”
“Good. Well, then, have Sturms get a doctor for you straight away and . . .”
“Sturms won’t do it till he gets the word from you that I’m worth helping.”
“Put the cocksucker on.”
Walter said, “He says put the cocksucker on.”
Sturms flinched and took the phone. Walter could hear his uncle yelling, but couldn’t make out the exact words. Sturms said, “You bet, Harry . . . Right away . . . Good-bye, sir.”
He hung up.
“Look,” Sturms said, “sorry I hassled you. Let’s forget it and start over.”
“Never mind trying to get in good with me,” Walter said. “Get your ass on that phone and get a doctor for my father.”
Sturms nodded.
The brunette bounced back in and gave Walter a Pabst in a bottle. She gave her husband one, too, but he was busy on the phone and just set the bottle down. She smiled at Walter and said, “Do you really think I’m talented?”
3
“Easy now, Planner,” Jon soothed, “easy now, this isn’t going to hurt a bit.” He lowered Planner’s blanket-wrapped body into the empty wooden crate. He’d felt lucky to find the crate, which was six feet long and a bit wider than necessary, but it sufficed. It had held an antique chest of drawers Planner had stored away. Jon had liberated the crate for this present purpose, the probably valuable antique shoved into a storeroom corner.
“There now,” Jon said softly, whispering, “there now, Unc, that’ll be fine, won’t it?” The blanket-wrapped body was comfortably settled in a soft bed of excelsior lining the crate’s bottom. Jon replaced the lid on the crate and said, “Good-bye, Planner, ’bye.”
Maybe he was an asshole, talking to Planner like that. But he just couldn’t think of his uncle’s body as some cold chunk of meat, even though he knew that was what it was. The body was Planner, for God’s sake, and looked as much like Planner as it had when there hadn’t been bullet holes in it, and the only way Jon could deal with the situation was to keep talking to Planner. It seemed natural to keep talking to Planner.
And when he’d lifted the body, it had seemed light and heavy all at once. Could this featherlight bundle of flesh have walked and breathed? Could this granite-heavy load of bulk be the body of a frail old man? He held the body like a baby in his arms, and he felt as though he were parodying that famous statue at the Vatican, the one that got defaced, and he gave out a nervous little laugh that wasn’t really a laugh at all, and said, “Aw, shit, Planner, you can’t be dead.”
But he was, of course, and there was work to be done. Work for the living. Nolan had said so.
After throwing up, Jon had grabbed for the phone and dialed Nolan direct. It took a while to get through, what with the switchboard operator at that motel or whatever it was trying to track Nolan down. It’d seemed an hour before Nolan came on, and Jon’s bladder was about to burst.
“Jon?” Nolan had said. “Calm down, Jon, what’s wrong?”
And Jon had told Nolan about Planner, about Planner being dead.
“Jesus, kid. Stay calm,” Nolan had said, his voice as soft, as sure of itself as ever. “Don’t go hysterical on me.”
Don’t go hysterical on me . . . Nolan had told him that once before, after the bank job, when everything had exploded into blood and death, and Jon had been able to hang on, because Nolan was there. He’d been able to make it because Nolan was a rock and Nolan was there, and now Nolan’s voice was coming over that hunk of plastic, disembodied but here just the same, reassuring him, calming him, enabling him to survive, for the moment anyway.
“Go on,” Nolan was saying.
“He’s dead, and the money . . .”
Jon hadn’t realized yet what it meant, but he could remember seeing the safe door swung open and the shelves empty.
The money. Good God, the money.
“It’s gone,” he told Nolan. “All of it.”
Nolan was silent for a moment. A long moment.
“Nolan?” Jon asked, panic rising in his chest, catching in his throat.
“Yeah, kid,” the steady voice said. A rock again. “Go on.”
“The money’s gone. I just came in and . . . and found Planner and it must’ve all just happened.”
“How do you know?”
“Hell, I wasn’t gone more than an hour, and the . . . blood . . . it’s still wet, uh, fresh.” He remembered slipping in the stream of it on the back stoop. “You know, Nolan, you wouldn’t think Planner had so much blood in him. You wouldn’t think it could seep all the way back t
o the porch like that.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean somehow it ran from the backroom, where the safe was cleaned out, back onto the porch and . . . shit, that couldn’t be Planner’s blood, could it? What do you figure . . . ?”
“I figure Planner got a shot off at whoever shot him.”
“Of course. Bad, you suppose?”
“Bad enough he left some blood behind.”
“Nolan, should I call the police or what? I mean, we were robbed and Planner was murdered and . . .”
“Christ no! Use your damn head.”
“That was stupid. I’m sorry I even said it, Nolan.”
“Never mind that. Did Planner have a gun in his hand?” “I . . . I haven’t really looked that close yet. If you want to know the truth, all I’ve done so far is spot Planner’s body, puke out my guts, and call you on the phone.”
“You go look the backroom over. I’ll hold on.”
Jon set the receiver on the counter and went back for a look. He found one of his uncle’s two .32 automatics clutched in an already stiffening hand, and he found across from Planner the place in the wall where one of the bullets had gone in. And the beginning of the trail of blood was at the safe, where the guy would’ve been crouched down, emptying the shelves. He went back to the phone and reported what he’d found to Nolan.
“Okay,” Nolan said. “Now listen to me. Are you pulled together? Are you settled down?”
“Yes. I’m settled down.”
And Nolan told him what to do. Told him to contact that doctor, Ainsworth, the one that patched Nolan up and treated him while he was holed up at Planner’s. Contact the doctor and pay him to make out a false death certificate, verifying Planner’s demise as by natural causes. Pay him plenty, to fill out the forms and such and help keep the cops from coming and having a close posthumous peek into Planner’s setup. Then clean the place up, get rid of the gun Planner fired at whoever shot him. Put Planner in a box and arrange to have him cremated. Do all of that, and then ask around at the places in the neighborhood, that Dairy Queen, the filling station next door, ask if they saw anybody leaving Planner’s around that time. But don’t act suspicious in asking. Make something up, like whoever it was was going to sell you something and didn’t leave an address, something like that.
Two for the Money Page 26