Two for the Money

by Max Allan Collins

  “About that doctor,” Jon said.

  “What about him?” Nolan said.

  “What’ll I pay him with?”

  “There should be eight thousand or so in the wall safe upstairs.”

  “Oh, yeah, behind his framed Hoover buttons. Planner keeps . . . kept . . . the combination in the kitchen, in the silverware drawer.”

  “Good. Pay Ainsworth, oh, four thousand. I know that sounds high, kid, but remember, as far as the doc knows, you could’ve murdered your uncle yourself and’re asking him to cover up. So he’ll be expecting a fat reward.”

  “What then?”

  “Sit tight. I’ll call you there at Planner’s when I get a chance. I have a notion of who maybe pulled this piece of shit.”

  “You do? Who, for Christ’s sake?”

  “Charlie.”

  “That Mafia guy? That guy? He’s dead, how can . . .”

  “He’s supposed to be dead. We’ll see. I’ll be looking into it.”

  “Okay. When can I expect your call?”

  “Just stay there at the shop. Get those things done I told you and otherwise sit tight. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Jon.”

  “Yes, Nolan?”

  “You’re doing fine.”

  And Nolan had hung up.

  Now that Planner was wrapped in a blanket and lain to temporary rest, Jon began to get the place in shape. He went into the adjoining storeroom and got the box of sawdust, which was used to clean up various sorts of messes, mostly wet. He poured the sawdust first onto the pile of vomit, and his half-digested, stinking breakfast soaked the stuff up. He swept the gunk up, and it took several dustpan loads to do so, and dumped the rancid mess into a big empty heavy-cardboard barrel. He then did the same with the blood, pouring sawdust onto the trail of it and the pool where his uncle had been lying, and some of it had started to dry, getting dark, almost black. After he’d dumped the several dustpans of bloody sawdust, he got out a can of Ajax and a bucket of water and a scrub-brush and worked on the wooden floor till all visible traces of blood were gone. He thought, rather absurdly, that it was a good thing he hadn’t cleaned the storerooms yesterday, as today’s work would’ve been needless double duty. He ran across his uncle’s false teeth, his upper plate, and gagged, but his stomach was empty now, fortunately. He held the plate by two trembling fingers and went over to the crate and lifted the lid an inch or two and pushed the teeth inside.

  Afterward he went upstairs and sat at the kitchen table and poured a water glass half full with vodka and the rest with Seven-Up. He stirred the mixture with a spoon and threw it quickly down. He wasn’t a drinking man, so he soon found himself gagging again, but by the third glass he was doing fine.

  God, what an awful experience, he thought. People died so easily in the movies and the comics. Real life was such a gruesome fucking mess. The movies never showed the poor slobs who had to clean up after the hero’s carnage; think of all the trouble Clint Eastwood was causing for people; think of what off-screen horror was happening to the survivors of a film like Halloween.

  And even when death was portrayed as bloody and awful, it was nothing like this. Jon had had only one other close experience with violent death (not counting Nolan’s near bout with the grim reaper, thanks to that Syndicate guy, Charlie) and that had been after the Port City bank job year and a half ago. The robbery had gone flawlessly, but afterward some jealousy within ranks had caused an outburst of insane violence, and Nolan and Jon had ended up sole survivors. Witnessing the head getting blown off someone he’d been friend to had been the single most traumatic incident in his life, and he wondered now if he hadn’t countered that trauma by turning from his superheroes to horror comics, where the blood was bright red and sickly humorous, where he might try to learn to live with gore, get used to it, even laugh at it. He didn’t know.

  He heard the sound of hard pounding and jumped off his chair. Where was it coming from? He got hold of himself and listened close and it was someone knocking at the back door, and it scared him shitless.

  He got up and went to the window and drew back the curtain.

  The doctor.

  That was all. It was Ainsworth, the doctor, and he let out a sigh and went downstairs to let Ainsworth in.

  Ainsworth was the standard country doctor image come to life. He was fifty-five, slightly chubby, and had a mustached, lined, wise and friendly old face. He was Iowa City’s longest practicing abortionist, once-and-future aider-and-abetter of draft-dodgers and doer of sundry other medically shady deeds.

  “What’s the problem?” Ainsworth said, locking the door behind him. He was wearing a blue long-sleeve sweater, over a white Banlon, and yellow pants: golf clothes. Jon had caught him at the country club, where he’d learned to look in previous dealings with Ainsworth.

  “My uncle’s been shot,” Jon said.

  “What’s his condition?” the doctor asked.

  “Dead,” Jon said.

  “Oh. I see.”

  “Why don’t you come upstairs and have some vodka and Seven-Up and we’ll talk.”

  They did.

  “I fully understand your position,” he said. “Your uncle’s, shall we say, sideline, would make it desirable to prevent the police from taking an active interest in his death.”

  “That’s it exactly.”

  “Your uncle has a long history of heart trouble, and . . .”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, let’s say he will have a history of heart trouble, when I finish rewriting his records.”

  “Oh.”

  “And so, his death by coronary came as no surprise to me, I can assure you.”

  “What else needs to be done?”

  “Can you come by around seven? I’ll have the necessary papers and forms ready for you to sign.”

  “Where? At your house?”

  “Heavens, no. My office, of course. And I think I can have your uncle’s remains disposed of for you, as well. There’s a crematorium in West Liberty that does good work. They can pick your uncle up tomorrow afternoon, I’m sure.”

  “Won’t they notice Planner had his ‘coronary’ in a rather peculiar way?” Jon asked, on his fourth glass of vodka and pop.

  “Well, perhaps I’d best go downstairs now and bandage your uncle. That way anyone glancing in won’t see anything, even if the poor man gets stripped of his clothes . . . though that shouldn’t happen, as these West Liberty folks do good, discreet work, mind you.”

  “Whatever you think.”

  “And have you a nice suit of your uncle’s? You and I had probably best put one of his suits on him.”

  “Oh, Christ. That won’t be pleasant.”

  “A tragedy like this one rarely is. And as for me, well, I was a friend of your uncle’s, and you’ve both done a lot of business with me, you and your uncle and that friend Mr. Nolan of yours as well, so you do whatever you think is fair.”

  Jon got up and went to the silverware drawer to get the combination to Planner’s wall safe.

  4

  The doctor put two pillows under Charlie’s feet. He took the pulse of his unconscious patient, casting a cursory glance at the wounded thigh. Then he gave Walter a brief smile—one of those meaningless smiles doled out by doctors like another pill—and walked to a sink across the room to wash up.

  Walter stood at his father’s upraised feet, wishing he could do something to help, watching the doctor’s every action, wondering why the man moved so damn slow.

  Or maybe it was just him. Maybe the doctor wasn’t slow at all. Walter couldn’t be sure. His sense of time was fouled up. Was that business at the antique shop just this afternoon? It seemed years ago.

  Moments earlier—or was it hours?—the doctor had offered to give Walter a hand carrying Charlie, but Walter had refused, wanting to bear both the weight and responsibility of his father in his own arms, following the doctor through the darkened waiting room and down a short narrow hall and i
nto a closet of a room, where Walter had eased his father onto a padded examining table that sat high off the floor, like a sacrificial altar. The table was white porcelain with its padded, contoured surface black but mostly covered by white crinkly tissue paper. In fact, almost everything in the room was white: stucco walls, mosaic stone floor, ceiling tile overhead, counters, cabinets, sink, everything.

  Except the doctor’s clothes. Walter thought the blue sweater and yellow slacks were grossly inappropriate. He would’ve felt more secure if his father’s welfare were in the hands of a man in traditional white; he had the feeling this guy wouldn’t know the Hippocratic oath if he tripped over it.

  The doctor removed his sweater and folded it neatly and deposited it on a chair by the sink and began ceremoniously to wash his hands. Jesus, Walter thought, what does he think he is, a damn brain surgeon? The shirt beneath the sweater turned out to be white, but that was no consolation to Walter, as it was an off-white, sporty Banlon, with rings of sweat under the arms and wrinkled from eighteen holes of golf.

  The doctor dried his hands and moved from the sink to a counter, where he filled a modest-sized hypo from a small bottle of something.

  “What’s that?” Walter said.

  “Morphine,” the doctor said cheerfully, beaming at Walter with all the sincerity of a politician. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

  “All right,” Walter said. There was a chair directly behind him and he backed into it and sat.

  The doctor administered the hypo, then went back to the counter and unscrewed the cap on a bottle of cloudy liquid. He dabbed some of the liquid onto a folded strip of gauze.

  “Ammonia,” the doctor said, anticipating Walter’s question. He walked across the room and held the gauze under Charlie’s nose and Charlie came around quickly, thrashing his arms like a man waking from a nightmare, finally pushing himself to a sitting position with the heels of his hands.

  “Goddamn shit,” he said to the doctor, “what’d you hold under my nose? Who . . . who the hell are you? Where the hell am I? What’s going on?”

  The doctor smiled again. He did that a lot. He said, “You’ll have to ask your young friend here about that.”

  Walter got up and came around the other side of the table and squeezed his father’s shoulder. “You’re going to be all right, Dad.”

  “Of course I’m going to be all right,” Charlie said, his speech slightly muddy. “I’m all right now. I feel just fine.”

  “You should,” the doctor said, “you’re full of morphine.”

  Suddenly Charlie noticed his wound, said, “Jesus,” and settled back down on the table.

  The doctor continued to work while Charlie talked to Walter. What the doctor did was give Charlie several shots—a tetanus toxid, some Novocain around the wound—and proceeded to debride the wound, stripping away the flesh that had died of shock on the bullet’s impact. What Charlie said to Walter was, “You stupid goddamn kid, we should be long gone from here by now, what the hell you doing dragging me to a doctor for, Christ, a little goddamn scratch on the leg and you’re dragging me to a doctor, what the hell you use for brains, boy,” and more along those lines.

  After the doctor was through debriding the wound, and his father was through sermonizing, Walter said, “Dad, you were unconscious and I felt I should get you to a doctor. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.

  Then Walter turned away and walked to the window and separated two blades of the white Venetian blinds and stared out into the street. It was twilight and a few seconds after he started looking, the streetlights came on. The doctor’s office was on the back edge of the Iowa City downtown, where the businesses trailed off into the residential district. The street was quiet, right now anyway, and almost peaceful to watch. The traffic ran mostly to kids of all ages sliding by on bikes, with only an occasional car, and every now and then a bird would cut from this tree to that one. Walter felt better now. He was relieved that his father was coming out of it. His father yelling at him for staying in town and going to a doctor was a disappointment, but to be expected, he supposed. It wasn’t worth brooding over.

  While Walter stared out at the quiet street, the doctor applied a pressure dressing to the wound and explained to Charlie that carrying that bullet in his leg wasn’t going to hurt him any, and going in after the slug just wasn’t worth the time and trouble. Charlie said he knew that, that a lot of his friends had bullets in them.

  “Hey,” Charlie said.

  “Yeah?” Walter said.

  “Listen. Listen, thanks.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Come here a minute.”

  “Okay.”

  Walter joined his father. The doctor said that he was going across the hall to get some pills for Charlie and left the room. Charlie asked Walter to tell him what had been happening.

  Walter explained about going to see Sturms, and calling Uncle Harry, and then having trouble getting hold of the doctor. Seemed the doctor’s wife was out of town and it wasn’t till Sturms thought of the country club that they got a lead on the guy. Unfortunately, the doctor had left the club on an emergency call and hadn’t told anyone what or where the emergency was. They had continued calling the man’s home, and finally someone at the country club called back and said the doctor had returned to the club for supper and cocktails and Sturms had got him on the line and set things up.

  “What’s the doc’s name?” Charlie said.

  “Ainsworth,” Walter said. “Sturms says he’ll do anything for a buck. Built his practice on abortions and draft dodge. Still helps Sturms out, with O.D. situations, different drug things. I guess the reason Ainsworth stays out of trouble is he’s done work for important people in the area and has too much on too many of them for anybody to bother him.”

  There was the sound of talking outside the room and Charlie jerked up into a sitting position. “What the hell’s that? Who the hell’s that goddamn quack talking to? You bring Sturms along or something?”

  “No, I told you, Dad, he just set it up and never left his house.”

  “You got a gun?”

  “Right here,” he said, pulling the silenced nine-millimeter from his waistband. After getting caught by Sturms he wasn’t taking chances.

  “Go out and see what the hell’s happening.”

  “Okay.”

  “And watch your ass.”

  “Okay.”

  Walter peeked out into the hall. Ainsworth was talking to a young guy, a guy about Walter’s age, maybe a year or so younger. He was short with a headful of curly hair and a well-muscled frame. He was wearing jeans and a tee-shirt with the words “Wonder Warthog” above a cartoon, caped hog. Ainsworth was saying, “You’re a little early, Jon,” standing by the entrance to a room that Walter assumed was the doctor’s private office. Walter shut the door.

  “I think it’s just some thing about drugs he’s doing for Sturms,” Walter told his father.

  “Help me up,” Charlie said.

  “Dad . . .”

  “Help me up, goddammit.”

  Walter guided his father off the high table, put an arm around his waist and moved him over to the door. Charlie shook free of his son and stood on one leg.

  “Give me the gun,” he ordered.

  Walter gave it to him.

  Charlie cracked the door and looked out.

  “It’s the goddamn kid,” Charlie said to himself.

  “Who?”

  “The kid, it’s the goddamn kid who lives with that old guy at the antique shop. His nephew or something.” Charlie’s eyes narrowed and his lips were drawn back tight. “I smell a cross.”

  Charlie pushed through the door, slammed against the wall, lost his balance momentarily, got it back quick. He hobbled forward, nearing the doctor and Jon, the gun as steady in his hand as his legs under him weren’t.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” Charlie demanded.

  The doctor started pushing the air with his palms. “Put that gun awa
y! Put that gun away!”

  Jon had a puzzled look on his face that rapidly dissolved into a knowing one. He pointed his finger at Charlie, as if he was aiming back another gun. “You,” he said. “I know you.” A red sheet of rage flashed across his face and Jon leaped at Charlie, like an animal jumping out of a tree.

  And Charlie slapped Jon across the forehead with the heavy gun. The kid folded up and dropped hard to the floor. Charlie didn’t even lose his balance.

  “Why . . . why in heaven’s name did you do that?” the doctor sputtered.

  Charlie looked at the doctor and so did Charlie’s gun.

  “Are you pulling a double cross, Ainsworth? Do you know who this kid is?”

  “Why, that’s . . . that’s just Jon, Ed Planner’s nephew. He’s only here to . . .”

  Charlie limped painfully up to the doctor and held the gun against the man’s throat, right along his Adam’s apple. “Why is he here?”

  “His . . . his uncle passed away today and I was helping him with the funeral arrangements, death certificate, and so on. Jon and his uncle’re like you people . . . have to steer clear of the authorities.”

  “And do you know how his uncle ‘happened’ to pass away?”

  “He was . . . shot.”

  “And who the fuck do you think shot him?”

  “Oh, my God.”

  Charlie stepped back a pace, said, “Walter.”

  “Yes?”

  “Help the doc here carry the kid in that room.”

  Walter and Ainsworth carried Jon into the examining room, Charlie following them in on wobbly legs.

  “No, not on the table,” Charlie said. “Just drop him on the floor there.”

  They did.

  The jolt seemed to rouse Jon. He stirred, shook his head, looked up. He raised a middle finger to Charlie and said, “Nolan knows you’re alive. Kiss your ass good-bye, big shot.”