“No problem,” Jon said. He wasn’t worried: he’d been into bodybuilding since he was eight years old and clipped a Charles Atlas coupon off the back cover of a Superman comic book.
Jon dug his feet in and gripped the rope with his gloved hands, as Nolan eased himself down into the well, and Jon put his back into it, pulling away as Nolan went down.
As they’d thought, a brick gave every now and then, and threw them a scare, and strained some of Jon’s muscles, back muscles particularly, but about five minutes later, Nolan was down there. Kneeling beside her. Cradling her in his arms.
Jon called down: “How is she?”
Nolan shouted up: “Breathing!”
That was a start.
Then Jon could hear a voice; not Nolan’s: hers.
Soft, so soft he could barely hear her, and he couldn’t make it out at all. But she was saying something to Nolan.
Then he understood a word; her voice had managed to be loud enough to echo faintly up the well: “Nolan!”
And they were embracing down there.
“You want me to come back later?” Jon called down.
Nolan didn’t respond.
He and Sherry were standing now. He was helping her, but she was standing, too. So nothing major was broken. Good. They both stood and embraced and then Nolan seemed to have his hands on her shoulders, looking right at her, telling her something.
“I’m coming back up!” Nolan shouted.
And Jon braced the rope, pulled as Nolan climbed the bricks. The trip up took a little longer, but there were no slips, no scares. Jon pulled him up over the edge of the well, and Nolan, a little winded, sat there and smiled.
“There’s a soft bed of sand and leaves down there,” he said. “She landed on her back, her weight evenly distributed. Nothing broken, looks like.”
“That’s great.”
“That’s lucky. She hit her head pretty bad, though. On the way down, probably. Concussion, I think. She’s cold, but not frostbitten, I don’t think. She was better off down there than out on this snowy ground. She was away from the elements.”
“What do we do now?”
Nolan frowned. “Where’s Lyle?”
“Huh?”
Jon looked around. No Lyle.
“Oh. Shit. I sort of forgot about him.”
Surprisingly, all Nolan did was shrug. “Well, we’ll find him. He’s not going anywhere. I got the keys to his Camaro.”
Jon shrugged back at him. “I got your Trans Am keys. Think he’s dangerous?”
“Is he going to go find a gun and come after us? No. He’s nothing, without his ‘pa.’ He’s just a bug. He’ll get stepped on sooner or later.”
“What about Sherry?”
Nolan untied the rope from around his waist, then tossed it gently into the well like a fisherman casting his line. “I told her to tie it around her waist,” he said. “We’re going to haul her out.”
And they did. Sherry didn’t try climbing the bricks, but she held on to the rope firmly and, with both men pulling, they had her out of the ground and back among the living in a matter of minutes.
Her face was smudged and bruised, her clothes torn and dirty, the socks on her feet shredded and caked with blood, but Jon didn’t remember ever seeing a more beautiful woman.
She didn’t say anything; she just hugged Nolan and wept into his chest.
Then pulled away and looked at Nolan and said weakly, but wryly, “I suppose you think I’m a sissy, crying like this.”
Nolan glanced at Jon, who just shrugged.
Then Nolan, noting her lack of shoes, lifted her in his arms and carried her out of the forest, like a groom carrying his bride over the threshold.
23
LYLE PULLED off the main drag onto the asphalt, and for the first time today, he smiled. He was close to home.
Then the smile went away, as he remembered there wouldn’t be nobody there. Pa was dead. Cindy Lou took off someplace. And it was just him, now.
Just him.
And he couldn’t stay long at home, no. He knew that murderer who killed Pa would come after him. Maybe he should go after them himself —Nolan and that curly-haired kid, he was partly responsible, too. Maybe Lyle should find a gun and go kill them both.
But he wasn’t sure. There was no one to ask about it.
Lyle had made about all the decisions in one day he was capable of. He felt good about that; he felt good about how he got away from Nolan and the kid. They’d been busy trying to get that girl out of that well. It occurred to Lyle, in an insight that came as close to irony as he was capable, that his fucking up and not killing the girl had turned out to be something good—without her still being alive, those two wouldn’t have got distracted, and he couldn’t have made a quiet break for it.
He’d outsmarted them, and he nodded to himself, flushed with self-satisfaction, as he drove, his mouth a tight smug line as he pondered all the people in his life who’d told him he was stupid, including Pa sometimes, and how he’d pulled one over on that supposedly real smart Nolan.
Nolan didn’t know Lyle had a little magnetic spare-key box tucked under the Camaro. Lyle had run across the road to the car and reached under for the key and there it was: right where Pa had had him put it—after Lyle locked his keys in the car half a dozen times or so, and Pa got tired of getting calls to come drive out in the truck to wherever and use the shim to unlock the car door.
First Lyle went to the Holiday Inn, to pick up Cindy Lou, only a note was waiting, for Pa and him. It said: “Good-bye, Daddy. Good-bye, Lyle. I have went to find a new life. Please don’t come looking. I will try and call Christmas. Love and kisses, Cindy Lou Comfort.” She had real good handwriting.
He lit out of there. Part of him wanted to crawl in that motel bed and sleep forever and a day; but he knew Nolan and the kid would be coming after him. He threw all his clothes and things and Pa’s too in the Camaro trunk and took off.
When he went by the Brady Eighty mall, he said, “So long, Pa.”
Then he caught Interstate 80 west, and kept the speed at fifty-five. He wanted to go faster, but Pa said never break little laws when you’re on your way home from breaking a big one. Even though the mall haul, as Pa liked to call it, sort of was a bust, Lyle supposed that rule still applied.
He was headed for home. He knew that might be a mistake—Nolan maybe could find out where the Comforts lived—but Lyle just had to go there. All his things were there. All of his clothes, except the few he had with him; all his records and tapes. He’d gather his things and take off somewhere. Hide or something. He supposed he’d have to leave the big-screen TV behind.
A little after eight, the morning still young, he stopped at the Howard Johnson’s near Iowa City and ate some breakfast, eggs and bacon and toast and juice. He was real hungry, but afterward, waiting for the girl to bring him his ticket, it hit him all of a sudden. Pa was dead. Pa wasn’t never coming back. Ever.
He started to bawl, right there in the Howard Johnson’s.
And then he ran to the can and puked up his whole breakfast.
Then he had to pay for the breakfast, talk about gyps.
He felt ashamed, as he drove away from the HoJo’s. Here he’d been by himself in the car, where he could’ve cried and nobody seen him, and he waits till he’s in a damn restaurant to break down like a baby. Pa wouldn’t be pleased.
He caught 218 and headed south. He was traveling through farmland and, even covered over by snow, the friendly terrain made him feel better because it made him think of home.
He knew he ought to feel angry about what they done to Pa, but mostly he just felt sorry they done it. What Pa said about it not mattering when somebody died, ’cause everybody died sooner or later, didn’t seem to make so much sense to Lyle now. Maybe Pa meant, where other people was concerned.
He’d miss Cindy Lou, too, but at least she wasn’t dead. He wished he could join her, wherever she was; it was too bad she was his sister, ’cause no
girl fucked and sucked like Cindy Lou. Not that he was sorry she was his sister—with Pa gone, her (and Willis, who was in the pen) was all the family he had left. If she tried to call at Christmas, though, nobody’d be home. Lyle had to stay away from the house, after today, in case Nolan tracked him down.
Lyle thought of Willis again, when he saw a sign that said eighteen miles to Fort Madison at the junction of 218 and 2. He was tempted to stop by, but he didn’t know whether it was visiting day or not.
And then about the time Lyle crossed over the Iowa/Missouri border, he remembered his Uncle Daniel. That was what he’d do! He’d stop for his things at the house and go right on down to Nashville. Uncle Daniel and the boys would take him in. And his Uncle Daniel could tell what to do about those murderers! His mouth was pinched with decision. He pounded the steering wheel with a fist. That was it. That was the answer. Uncle Daniel.
He wondered if they still had their record business; that’s where all their moonshine money went, Pa said. It had something to do with people paying them to make records, which never got released or something. Pa said it was Vanity, but Lyle didn’t think she recorded in Nashville. Pa also said it was a sweet scam. Anyway, Lyle’d have to learn to put up with country western, but that was all right. Small price to pay for a home.
And they had good-looking gash in Nashville; he’d been there before. A real foxy singles scene. He’d fit in just fine.
He had relaxed after that. He had, for the first time, hours into the long drive, pushed a tape into the cassette deck. He turned the music up real loud and filled his brain with Billy Idol. He was tired of thinking.
He ate lunch at a truck stop outside of Kirksville; he was on Highway 63, now. He didn’t bawl and he kept the lunch down—two cheeseburgers and a load of fries and a Cherry Coke. Uncle Daniel. That was the ticket.
Now, hours later, midafternoon, sun reflecting off the snowy ground, he turned off the asphalt road onto the familiar gravel one. Almost home. He felt a bittersweet twinge. It would be great to be home, but sad to go in an empty house, nobody waiting for him.
Well, he’d just pack his stuff and go. He hoped he could get all the clothes and records and tapes and stereo stuff in the car. He shrugged. He’d just have to make do.
He pulled onto the cinder path, enjoying the crunching sound the tires made; he’d heard it so many times before. Then, like something on a Christmas card, there was the house—the aluminum siding Pa conned that guy out of was holding up real good. After some time passed, maybe Lyle could sell the place; his uncle would know. The old homestead looked real homey, snow touching the rusty vehicles on the overgrown lawn. The silo and the barn reminded Lyle that his were farmer roots; of course, Pa taught him early that farming was a fool’s game.
He pulled up in front and locked up the Camaro—Pa taught him that; some people just can’t be trusted—and headed up the steps onto the porch. He felt sad being here but a little happy, too, even if it turned out to be the last time.
He had a house key tucked away in his billfold, and he used that, but the door wasn’t locked. That struck him as funny. He went on in, and the first thing he saw was the big-screen TV, and he sighed and shook his head about having to leave that behind. Then he saw the man, a stranger, sitting over at the left, on the couch, under a John Wayne western velvet painting, the real big one, right where Pa always sat.
The man was heavyset and wore white, like a doctor; but his face looked funny—first off, he hadn’t shaved in a long time, his cheeks were real stubbly; second off, his eyes were puffy and red. And he looked kind of familiar, even though Lyle was pretty sure he never saw him before. There were empty beer cans on the floor, a lot of them, all of them crushed by a hand that didn’t give a shit about nickel deposit. Next to the stranger, on the couch, was an ashtray that was overflowing from crushed-out cigarettes and ashes. But the man wasn’t smoking right now.
“Who are you?”
“Are you Lyle Comfort?”
“Yes, sir. Are you a doctor?”
“I’m a butcher.”
That’s when Lyle saw the knife in the man’s lap. A long knife. A shiny knife.
“I don’t understand,” Lyle said.
The man smiled, but it wasn’t at all friendly.
“My name’s McFee,” he said.
“Huh?” Lyle said.
The man rose; the knife was so long he held it by the handle with one hand and cradled the blade in the other.
“I’m Angie’s father.”
And as the blade came down, Lyle understood. He finally understood.
About the Author
Max Allan Collins, who created the graphic novel on which the Oscar-winning film Road to Perdition was based, has been writing hard-boiled mysteries since his college days in the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa. Besides the books about Nolan, the criminal who just wants his piece of the American dream, and killer-for-hire Quarry, he has written a popular series of historical mysteries featuring Nate Heller and many, many other novels. At last count, Collins’s books and short stories have been nominated for fifteen Shamus awards by the Private Eye Writers of America, winning for two Heller novels, True Detective and Stolen Away. He lives in Muscatine, Iowa with his wife, Barbara Collins, with whom he has collaborated on several novels and numerous short stories. The photo above shows Max in 1971, when he was first writing about Nolan and Quarry.
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