She slipped into the cool sheets of the other bed and waited to see if anything was going to happen. Nothing did, except over in that other bed her father kept on snoring, and pretty soon so was she.
Today, Daddy had slept in till ten. She was awake at eight, and was all showered and made up and dressed and ready for a day of shopping when he woke. But when Daddy got up, he informed her he wanted her to stay right here, in the room and around the Holiday Inn; no shopping spree for her, this trip. She’d asked him why.
“I got to keep an eye on you,” he said.
“What do you mean, Daddy?”
“There’s some terrible people in this world. A lot of girls your age just disappear and never get seen again.”
She could tell from the tone of his voice there’d be no arguing with him; so she’d let it pass, and joined him for a late breakfast in the coffee shop. The rest of the day Daddy and his friends the Leech brothers—creepy people—sat in the room and talked business, while she either watched TV (she had a couple soap operas and game shows she’d started following since quitting school) or walked around the motel, snooping. She spent a couple of hours in the video arcade room playing Galaga and Donkey Kong Jr. A day dull as spit.
They had supper in the motel restaurant (those yucky Leeches, too), and Daddy bought her a filet mignon, her favorite, and said, “I miss your mother, sometimes.”
She hadn’t said anything; just sat and cut her meat up into little pieces.
“Even after all these years. You look so much like her, darlin’.”
And she knew she wasn’t out of the woods yet. Tonight would be another long night. It was awful to be scared of your own father. Maybe it was time. Time to get out of the house and start her own life, like her friend Ginger who was out in L.A., now, doing great probably.
After supper, Daddy and the Leeches went to the hotel bar to do some drinking, and she felt she had to grab her chance and just get out. She’d seen in the morning paper that Hellfyre was in town playing at a riverfront club and that knowledge had been nibbling at her brain all day. So she went and got the keys to the pickup from the room, leaving Daddy a note saying she’d be back before midnight, and now here she was, in the back of a van with a cute guy from a band. She’d kind of figured it would go this way, only with that bass player from Hellfyre; but what the hell—she liked this Nodes keyboard guy even better.
“Getting warm in here,” he said.
“Sure is,” she said. “Take off your shirt, why don’t you?”
He had a great build, a little mini Rambo. What a hunk! She eased on top of him and started kissing his smooth chest, which was as hairless as Don Johnson’s. His hands were on her ass, which was still in the jeans, making circles, rubbing. She was getting hot. He kissed and fondled her breasts, and she got hotter.
She unzipped his pants, pulled them down under his pecker, which was medium size and pretty. She went down on him awhile, and he tasted salty and good, and made him moan; she liked doing that. He was all hers. Then she let him pull the tight jeans off her, then her black lacy panties, and soon he was on her and in her, filling the hollow spot.
She fucked with an animal urgency, as if trying to prove something, pumping with her hips, and he was hot, too, slamming it home. They came together, noisily, rocking the van. It wasn’t just another fuck to her—it was special; it was about something more than just a quickie in the parking lot. She was proving to herself that her horny old daddy hadn’t ruined sex for her.
She wondered if it had been just another fuck for Jon.
14
NOLAN HADN’T slept more than a couple of hours in a couple of days. He was using his drug of choice—caffeine—to keep on top of things. It was 2:25 A.M. and he was drinking his seventh cup of coffee of the night. This would be the last cup. He had to be able to let the tiredness through, once the meet was over; he had to get some sleep tonight. Everything rode on tomorrow.
Last night he’d sat up planning this elaborate fucking heist he wanted no part of. It was part of the deal; Comfort expected it of him. And in a sense he was relieved to be planning it: Comfort had the balls to sack Brady Eighty, but he certainly didn’t have the brains.
Not that Cole Comfort wasn’t smart. He was—or anyway, he was shrewd. But Comfort’s lowlife penny-ante instincts would have defeated him, had he not pulled Nolan in for organization and strategy; he’d have been the proverbial kid in a candy store, Nolan knew—running pell-mell through the mall taking things right and left, your typical American consumer gone berserk, a manic shopper with a credit card from hell.
And if Nolan had to be in on this goddamn thing, at least let it be done right. He found himself using muscles he hadn’t used in a long time; he found some part of him that liked being back in the old life. He found himself caught up in the planning, thinking it through, studying each detail, making lists and maps and charts, getting lost in the work.
It also helped him keep his nerves and emotions in check. He wasn’t thinking about Sherry in any other terms than doing what was needed to get her back. He wasn’t letting himself deal with what the bastards might be putting her through. He wasn’t contemplating life without her. He was doing what was needed to get her the fuck back.
And that required doing two things: cooperating with Comfort, or anyway pretending to, planning his heist; and working behind Comfort’s back to find where they were keeping Sherry. He might on some level be caught up in the momentum of the heist; but his goal was still to shut it down and get the girl safely back. He had Winch and Dooley on his side, on the sly; and tonight he would talk to the high-tech guy, Fisher, after the meet.
Fisher was a good man—clueing him in would be a risk, but a minimal one; Nolan knew from past experience that Fisher shared Winch’s distaste for violence, and Comfort’s kidnaping of Sherry to coerce Nolan’s participation would not likely sit well with the slightly stuffy electronics whiz.
And some light, however faint, was showing up down at the end of the tunnel. Jon had gotten a piece of something. In more ways than one.
Jon had showed up at the restaurant just after midnight and Nolan took him into the cement-walled back room where Nolan’s desk and file cabinet kept company with boxes of liquor and food. The kid seemed dazed, confused.
“What the hell happened to you?” Nolan had demanded. The kid hadn’t checked in with Nolan in hours.
“I couldn’t use the phone in the van,” Jon explained, breathlessly, “because I had company in there, till just a few minutes ago.”
And Jon had told him about Cindy Lou Comfort, who turned out, of all things, to be a groupie of sorts for bands like Jon’s; she’d even gone to see Jon’s band on occasion, and knew him from it.
“I was in the van with her for two hours,” Jon said. “I didn’t find out where Sherry is exactly, but some of what I did learn is going to be helpful.”
Jon filled him in, including the news that Sherry wasn’t at the nearby Holiday Inn: she was somewhere on the Illinois side, being watched by Lyle.
“You’ve narrowed the state down, anyway,” Nolan said, darkly.
“She’s kind of an innocent kid,” Jon said, “for a little slut. I get the idea she’s only vaguely aware of what her father does. She’s also having some problems with him—she made some vague references that I think may mean he’s hitting on her.”
“Hitting on her?”
“Sexually,” Jon said, shrugging, embarrassed.
“He’s a class act, our Cole. She doesn’t know who you are?”
“She knows my name is Jon and I used to play keyboards for the Nodes. That’s it. She’s a troubled kid—she’s thinking about hopping a bus to California, to go live with some friend of hers out there.”
“So is every other teenage girl in the Midwest.”
“I suppose. But how many of ’em have a homelife with Cole and Lyle Comfort in it?”
“We could snatch her.”
“What?”
“We
could snatch her and swap her for Sherry.”
“Jeez, Nolan—”
“If you’re thinking that would make us no better than Comfort himself, kid, you’re dead bang full of shit. On our worst day we’re better than that evil worthless cocksucker, who started this, remember. He grabbed Sherry, so all bets are off!”
Jon did something unusual: he touched Nolan’s arm.
“I’m with you,” Jon said. “Whatever it takes.”
Nolan’s hands were shaking; he looked at them shaking and shook his head disgustedly. “Goddamn coffee,” he said.
Now it was just after two-thirty and everybody was here, most of them sitting at that long table—including Nolan, who had taken Comfort’s position at its head; Comfort sat to Nolan’s left, on the corner of the table, as if almost sitting at the head reminded everybody he was really in charge—just deferring to Nolan for this one planning session. Jon again sat off to the side at a small table.
But the big change was the presence of Lyle Comfort, who sat next to his father; Lyle was a handsome, well-groomed kid in expensive clothes—he wore a rust-colored leather jacket and a shirt with a faint yellow and gray puzzle pattern, had curly brown hair and brown eyes and a tan and a blank fashion-model expression. He looked like a city kid, on first glance, but if you looked hard, Lyle was a dumb-as-a-post country kid, who learned how to dress from TV and magazines.
The Leeches were again lined up on one side of the table, but Fisher was sitting on their side, tonight, down at the far end, still with a shirt pocket full of pens and gizmos, still with a notepad in front of him—open to a page of notes he’d already taken. Neither the slight, easygoing Winch nor the dour, basset-faced Dooley, sitting next to Lyle Comfort, gave anything away; they seemed completely at ease—what they knew about Nolan’s situation, they kept close to the vest. Nolan’s favorite kind of people: pros.
Tonight the Leeches had taken their stocking caps off, and spoiled their uniformity: one was sandy-haired, one was brown-haired, the other was brown-haired balding. They were sitting there putting the beer away pretty good. Nolan had relented and put two pitchers of beer on the table—this meet would take a while, and a nod to sociality wouldn’t hurt.
Lyle Comfort’s presence here, however, was disturbing.
If Lyle was here, who was watching Sherry?
Before the meet began, Nolan cornered Cole Comfort and put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Nice to have your son with us tonight, Cole.”
Comfort nodded, not knowing what Nolan was getting at.
“Who’s minding the store?” Nolan asked Comfort.
Now Comfort got it. “Never you mind,” he said.
Nolan whispered in Comfort’s ear. “If she’s dead, so are you.”
Comfort pulled away, shaken, nervous. “She’s fine. Don’t talk about that here.”
Nolan laughed harshly. “Here? Meeting here at all is moronic, meeting at the place we plan to hit in twenty-four hours. Less than twenty-four hours.”
“We’re here,” Comfort said. “Let’s have our meet.”
“You know, if the cops prowl the parking lot, this will make two nights in a row that pickup of yours and that pimpmobile of the Leeches’ll be out in front of my restaurant in the wee hours.”
The Leeches drove a yellow Camaro with gaudy racing stripes. Very inconspicuous—if this were Tijuana.
“You said the cops don’t prowl the mall,” Comfort said, irritably.
“My information is that they haven’t been lately, yes. But that information was casually obtained. We didn’t stake out the lot like we should have, seeing if they are prowling, and if so, what the pattern is, if any.”
“Aw shut up,” Comfort said. He prodded Nolan with a pointing finger. “And leave this negative horseshit behind, when you’re running through your plans, front of the others.”
“Don’t poke me, Cole,” Nolan said.
“I’ll do what I fuckin’ well please.”
“I’m sure you will. But I’d ask you to keep in mind, I’ve been upholding my end of the bargain. I’m helping you heist your mall—my mall—and I’m giving it my best shot.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know you are. I appreciate that.”
“I expect Sherry back—unharmed—and my full share. Jon’s, too.”
“We been through all that . . .”
“Just so we understand each other.”
Now Nolan was talking while the seated group studied photocopies of a map he’d made of the mall.
“The stores with the X’s,” Nolan said, looking down toward Dooley, “are the ones we’ll need opened, Phil.”
“No problem,” the locksmith said.
Comfort said, “Were you out to Brady Eighty today, Phil?”
“Yeah. I walked the mall. They use those sliding glass doors that lock together; a few have metal cage doors. In either case, picking the locks is no big deal.”
Nolan asked, “How long will it take you to open each shop?”
“Five to fifteen minutes.”
A Leech said, “Fifty stores, that’s a lot of time.”
Nolan said, “We won’t be opening fifty stores.”
Comfort scowled at Nolan and slammed a fist on the table and the beer pitchers sloshed. He said, “How many times do I have to say it? We’re looting the whole motherfucker! We’re taking it all!”
“Cole,” Nolan said, smiling tightly, “as much as you may wish to take every spool of thread and Snickers bar and Slinky, we got a finite amount of time, and finite manpower. We got to pick and choose.”
Comfort thought about that, just momentarily, waved a hand at Nolan dismissively, and said, “You’re right.” Then he looked at his photocopy of the map. “These places you X’ed are the targets, then—”
“Twelve stores,” Nolan said, “not counting the three big department stores, all of which are worth hitting.”
“And not counting the bank,” Winch said.
“Right,” Nolan said. “Not counting the bank.”
“What’s this double X,” Dooley asked, “near the back entry, on the east side of the building.”
“That’s where the maintenance and security people work out of,” Nolan said. “The security guy will be off duty, and we’ll drop a Mickey Finn in the janitor’s coffee.”
“Who will?” a Leech asked.
“I’ll take care of that,” Nolan said. “Now, note the three major department stores—Petersen’s on the east end, Penney’s in the middle, and I. Magnin at the west end. I. Magnin, of course, is the most important of these. Expensive merchandise.”
Another Leech said, “And that’s where the loading docks are.”
“Right,” Nolan said. “Behind each of the major department stores. Which is perfect for us. Easy loading access to one of the semis, no matter what store you’ve been ‘shopping’ at.”
He went on to explain why he’d chosen the various stores—the leather shop, for example, carried an inventory of leather goods and furs amounting to well over a quarter mil—and indicated a priority list, which shops to hit first, and began making assignments. To best utilize manpower, the truck cabs would sit empty with the exception of the middle one, where Jon would sit, as point man.
“Why him?” Comfort said.
“Why not?” Nolan said.
“Somebody’s gotta watch,” a Leech said. “Let him do it. He’s just a little guy.”
“What about guns?” Dooley asked.
“What about them?” Nolan said.
Comfort said, “Whoever wants to carry, carry. If you need something, just ask; I got some extra pieces. I’ll be packing and my boy will and the Leeches. I assume you will too, Phil.”
Dooley nodded, but Winch said, “I don’t have shit to do with guns.”
Comfort shrugged. “Up to you.”
Fisher looked up from his note-taking to say, “I have a stun gun. I don’t like bullets. Very crude.”
A Leech said, “Why ain’t the Walgreen’s got an X?�
�
“Why should it?” Nolan asked. “That’s dime-store stuff.”
Another Leech said, “They got a pharmacy.”
Yet another Leech said, “Meaning drugs.”
Nolan looked at Comfort, who shook his head no, violently.
“No, sir,” he said. “That’s one thing I won’t abide. I never dirtied my hands with dope.”
The Leeches looked at each other, doing comic takes, as if to say, “The guy’s crazy, but what are you gonna do?” Nolan tended to share that sentiment; the notion of Cole Comfort drawing the line somewhere was pretty fucking absurd.
Fisher said, “I was in DeReuss Jewelry today. I spotted the tear-gas alarm. It’s a wall-mount—turns on and off with a cylindrical key.”
“I saw it too,” Dooley said, nodding. “I could pick it, like any lock.”
“I’d suggest not,” Fisher said. “It could have a time sequence of some kind—turn the key right for three seconds, back three seconds, and right again, or whatever.”
“It’s bound to be a simple sequence,” said Dooley, nodding, “but that doesn’t make it easy to guess.”
“I’d suggest just knocking the metal plate off,” Fisher said, “and jumping the wires. Not much different from hot-wiring a car, actually.”
“And that would take care of the tear gas,” Nolan said.
“Should,” Fisher said.
“You know, a mall’s a big place,” a Leech said, making as profound an observation as Nolan guessed a Leech could make.
“And we’re going to be all spread out,” another Leech said.
“How’ll we keep in touch?” the final Leech said.
“Yes, Uncle Donald,” Jon said. “How?”
Nolan almost smiled at that, but again it was lost on the Leeches. “Walkie-talkies,” Nolan said. “Clip right on your belt. Radio Shack has plenty in stock; I checked.”
“Did you buy them at a discount?” Jon asked wryly.
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