Fly Paper

by Collins, Max Allan

  Also, Sam had told Breen that he closed out a route after hitting an area a certain number of times; this was the third go-round for the Iowa Interstate 80 route, and it would not be used again, not for several years, anyway. He would develop a new route in untapped territory and add it to his list. And he would be closing out his account at the local bank. This time, the month of meter lootings had tallied $47,000; he had another $110,000 in the Iowa City bank from the other two times he’d hit the area.

  Tonight was the payoff. Breen would receive just under twelve thou for his month of hardass work. The $47,000 would be split four ways, with Sam taking a double cut because the package had been put together by the old man. That was fair, Breen thought, and though $12,000 was hardly the best he’d ever done in a heist, it would be enough to get him out of the woods with his bookie and his alimony-hungry ex-wife. Now, if he could just stay away from the damn nags.

  He approached the farmhouse, a ramshackle clapboard the Comforts had picked up for cheap rent, not unlike the equally run-down farmhouse outside Detroit, where the Comforts actually lived, a sprawling shack filled with luxurious possessions bought with the spoils of Comfort heisting. Bunch of slobs, Breen thought, glad tonight would be the end of ’em.

  “Come on in, Breen,” Sam said, standing in the doorway, framed in light. “Come get your cut.” The white-haired, pot-bellied old sot was wearing a green cotton sportcoat with patched elbows over a T-shirt showing the brown suspender straps holding up the baggy brown pants; the old man needed a shave and stood there scratching his ass in the doorway. Fucking slob, Breen thought. Somewhere in the house, the kid would be sitting in his underwear sucking up weed. Nice family.

  Breen approached Sam, bracing himself for the blast of whiskey breath, heading up the slanted cement walk toward the house and saying, “After tonight, I’m out, Sam. I’ve had it; this meter bit is not my bag. You’re going to have to add somebody different to the string after tonight.”

  “Fine with me,” Sam said, jovial. “Terry’ll be out of stir next month, and we were going to ask you out anyway.” They were about ten feet apart. Sam’s hand moved out from behind him, where he’d seemed to be scratching his ass, and something glittered in the light coming from inside the house.

  Gun metal.

  Breen rolled to the left, tumbling on the grass, but old Sam’s shot caught him anyway. More gun-fire broke the solitude of the Iowa country evening, explosions as terrifying to Breen as nuclear war. Breen was almost back to his car when another slug caught him in the leg. No matter. He scrambled behind the wheel anyway, ignoring the gunfire behind, ignoring the pain. The back windshield shattered into a sudden spiderweb with a hole punched in its middle, and he felt one of the back tires sag flat.

  But he made it out of there. He drove the half-mile into Iowa City, not even looking behind him to see if the Comforts were following. He knew he could lose them; he’d been in Iowa City before and could wind through streets and confuse them. He did that, though he had no idea if they were back there or not. He was getting delirious. He looked down at himself and he was all bloody.

  Then he remembered Planner.

  That was why he’d been to Iowa City before. To see Planner, that old guy at the antique shop who put together most of Nolan’s packages. He could go there for help. He could go see Planner.

  He got there, somehow, and stumbled up to the side of the shop and slammed his fist against the door, slammed his fist against the wood again and again, hard as hell, as much to stay awake and keep some sensation going in his body as to rouse somebody inside.

  Finally somebody answered. A wild-haired hippie kid, and Breen’s hopes sunk in his chest. He mumbled something, like who the hell was this kid, and dropped to the floor just inside the door.

  4

  THIS WAS ONE of those rare times when all the Charles Atlas muscle-building came in handy. Jon was carrying the bleeding man like an absurdly oversize babe in arms. The guy was heavier than Jon and a shade taller too, and so made quite a load. Jon hauled the fleshy freight to his room in the rear of the shop, hoping that following his impulse to help the guy wasn’t some gross error in judgment. Anytime something like this came up, Jon wished he had Nolan around to check with, to consult.

  But Nolan isn’t here, Jon thought, so screw wishful thinking.

  As he carried the man, Jon looked him over carefully, trying to get past that first impression of a guy covered with blood. The man was in his early forties, Jon estimated; he had short dark hair, and wore a light blue sportshirt, bloodstained on the lower right side, and summery white slacks, also stained with blood down the left lower leg. The blood on his face apparently had gotten there when a hand had touched one or both of the wounds, and speckles and smears of blood were spread variously around his clothing in spots other than those immediately around the wounds. Jon eased him onto the bed, went upstairs, and came back down with some bandage makings, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a basin of water, and several washcloths.

  The wounds weren’t bad, really. Not near as bad as he’d at first thought, from the shock of the blood-soaked clothes; it was the light colors that made the red stand out so, the light blue shirt and white pants, and the guy must’ve run after he was shot, scattering blood around on his clothes. Jon was relieved to find the leg just nicked, and the side wound showed evidence of the bullet going through clean, nothing important having been hit. Or that was Jon’s guess, anyway; if the slug had caught an artery there’d be blood gushing everywhere, but the bleeding here wasn’t severe at all. Jon washed the wounds clean and applied bandages that were tight, but not tourniquet-tight.

  The guy came around just as Jon was finishing.

  He said, “Who . . . who the hell are you?”

  “You asked that before,” Jon said. “Suppose you tell me who the hell you are, and we’ll see about who I am afterwards.”

  “Where’s Planner?”

  Jon’s suspicions were confirmed: this was an associate of his late uncle, someone who’d run into trouble on a heist or something and had come here for help. That had been Jon’s first guess, and as he’d been in a similar boat that time with Nolan, his instinct had been to help this man.

  “I said, where’s Planner, kid? You do know who I’m talking about?”

  “I know who you’re talking about,” Jon said. Then, after a moment, “Planner was my uncle.”

  “Was?”

  “He’s dead. Few months now.”

  “Jesus.” The guy propped himself up on his elbows and spoke, almost to himself. “Jesus Christ, these days everybody good’s either dead or in jail, seems like. . . . Jesus H. Christ. How’d it happen, anyway?”

  Jon started to hesitate again, but those last comments from the guy sounded right, so he said, “My uncle was keeping money in his safe for some people. Two men came in and took the money and killed him.”

  “Shit! Is that right? Shit. Somebody ought to find those guys and . . .”

  “Somebody did. You feeling okay? You look kind of pale. You better lay back and take it easy.”

  “I feel okay.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think your wounds are too serious, but you better lay back and take it easy just the same.”

  “I appreciate this, kid, you taking me in, patching me up like this.”

  “If you appreciate it so damn much, you might tell me who you are and what’s going on.”

  “Well, I’m in the business your uncle was in. You know what sort of business your uncle was in, don’t you, kid?”

  “I do. I’m in that line of work myself.”

  “Antiques, you mean? Like all this old comic book bullshit you got in here?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Okay, then. So who have you worked with, if that’s the line of work you’re in.”

  “Nolan. He’s the only one so far. Him and some people you wouldn’t know.”

  “I thought Nolan had Family troubles.”

  “Not anymore.”<
br />
  “You worked with Nolan? What, on your first job? What’d he want to screw around with a goddamn kid like you for? No offense.”

  “Because big-deal pros like you wouldn’t come near him. No offense. That Family trouble, remember?”

  The guy was convinced. He said, “My name is Breen,” and held out his hand, which Jon shook; for a guy just shot, Breen had a hell of a grip. “An old whoremonger named Sam Comfort and his pothead kid Billy just pulled a double-cross, with me on the shitty end of the stick. I wouldn’t be talking about it right now if the senile old fart hadn’t been half crocked when he started shooting.”

  Jon had never heard of the Comforts. He said so.

  “Well, you’re lucky. They aren’t a family, they’re a social disease.” He sat up again, quickly. “Hell! Listen, you better move my car. I left it outside, and the Comforts know about Planner and might figure I came here. You got a gun? I don’t carry one, goddamn it, or I might’ve stayed there and shot it out with the fuckheads. But you better get a gun and go out there and move that goddamn car of mine, the windshield’s shot to shit, and if nothing else, you don’t want some cop spotting it and asking questions.”

  “Okay,” Jon said.

  “Do you have a gun, kid?”

  “I got a couple.”

  “Maybe I ought to back you up. Maybe you ought to help me out of this bed, and I’ll stand at the window or something and back you up . . .”

  “Look. Lean back and shut up. For a guy just got shot, you’re sure lively. If you don’t talk yourself to death, you’ll do it to me.”

  “Say,” Breen said. “You do know Nolan, don’t you?”

  Jon grinned, told the guy to shut up and rest, and left him.

  Back upstairs, Jon stuck one of his uncle’s .32 automatics in his waistband, threw on a wind- breaker, and went down to move the car. First he drove his own car, an old Chevy II he’d had for some time, out of the garage in the rear and re-placed it with Breen’s Mustang. Then he shut the garage door and pulled the nose of the Chevy II up just close to touching. The door had no windows, and the way the garage was built into the shop’s back end, it had windows on the left side only, and those were opaque and grilled, with no way for anyone to see whether or not the Mustang was in there, short of breaking in. Not that breaking in didn’t sound like something the Comforts were easily capable of.

  He was just inside the door when light came shooting through one of the side windows in the shop, the lights from the front beams of a car pulling in. The Comforts had come calling. He took the windbreaker off and stuck the .32 in his belt behind his back, leaving right hand on hip for easy access.

  The knock came soon enough, and Jon sucked in wind. He told himself to be calm, damn it, calm, and wondered if once, just once, he could pull off something without Nolan holding his hand. There was a night latch on the door, which Jon left bolted, cracking open the door to stare into a gray-eyed, wrinkled old face that had to belong to Sam Comfort. It was the sort of face that looked kind, superficially, but actually was full of the smile-lines that come from a sadistic sense of humor. Sixty-some years ago, you would’ve found this man a child, pulling the wings off butterflies.

  “Who the hell are you?” Sam Comfort asked.

  Jon was getting tired of that question. On top of his case of nerves, it was especially irritating, and he moved his right hand further back on his hip, closer to the .32, rubbing the sweat off his palm as he did. He said, “It’s after midnight, mister. We’re closed.”

  Comfort’s boozy breath was overpowering, but the gray eyes were not unclear; he was the type of man who could drink you under the table and not feel it himself.

  He said, “I’m not a customer.”

  ‘That makes us even,” Jon said, “because I’m not selling anything.”

  “I’m an old friend of Planner’s.”

  “I don’t care what you are,” Jon said, and started to close the door.

  Thick, strong fingers curled around the door’s edge and held it open. “I said I’m a friend of Planner’s. Tell him an old friend’s here to see him.”

  “Let go of the door.”

  Comfort did, tentatively.

  Jon said, “My uncle—Planner—is dead.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Sorry. I hadn’t heard. How did it happen, boy?”

  “Heart attack.” Which was what the death certificate had said, anyway, and an expensive damn piece of paper that was, too.

  “And you’re his nephew, then? Taking over the business, are you?”

  “No. I got no interest in antiques, and I’m going to sell all the stock at once, soon as a good buyer turns up, and will you please get out of here and let me get some sleep?”

  The gray eyes narrowed, then eased up. “Well, I’m sorry to see you so hostile to an old friend of your uncle’s, and I’m sorry to hear the news about his untimely end. Please accept my condolences.”

  “Sure. Sorry if I was short.”

  “Understandable. Say, what you keep in that garage of yours?”

  “If it was a garage, I’d keep my car in it. But it isn’t, it’s a storeroom. Good night.”

  And he pushed the door shut and locked it, and stepped to one side in case any bullets should come flying through. Several heartbeats later, he crept to the side window and looked out to see the old man join a long-haired kid, leaning up against their Buick Electra. They shared a few moments of heated conversation, most of the heat coming from the old man, as the kid was a spacey type. Then both men shrugged. The old man got behind the wheel, the kid next to him, and they drove away.

  When he rejoined Breen, the man was asleep and snoring. Jon was at first relieved that he wouldn’t have to listen to any more of the talkative man’s ramblings, but then he thought better of it, shook the guy awake, and told him about the brush with the Comforts.

  “You’re okay, kid,” Breen said, grinning. “You handled old Sam beautiful, sounds like.”

  “Why don’t you show your gratitude,” Jon said, “by telling me what all this is about.”

  Breen did. He told Jon he’d been working a month of parking meter heists (“Small potatoes, kid, but over the long haul, she adds up!”); told him old man Comfort had over a hundred and fifty gees, cash, from several such runs of meter heisting in the area, and had tried to kill Breen less than an hour earlier, to avoid paying Breen’s $12,000 share.

  “Listen,” Jon said. “I’m going to call Nolan. I think maybe he’ll have some ideas concerning the Comforts.”

  Breen thought that was fine.

  Jon went out to the phone that sat on the long counter behind which Planner had constantly sat puffing expensive cigars. Jon sat on the counter, dialing the phone, thinking of his uncle’s violent death, wondering if he was being a fool to follow in those bloody footsteps. But he forgot that when he heard Nolan’s, “Yeah?”

  “Nolan? You got to come here, right away.”

  “What’s the problem, kid?” Nolan’s voice was calm, but Jon seemed to detect a note of enthusiasm in it.

  “You know a guy named Breen?”

  “I do.”

  Jon filled Nolan in on what had happened to Breen, and how he’d come bleeding up to Jon’s doorstep.

  “What about a doctor?”

  “I bandaged him up, Nolan. He’ll last okay. Maybe tomorrow we can get Doc Ainsworth in for a look at him. So far, I been more concerned about the Comforts than anything.”

  “Rightly so. And you were right not bringing in a doctor, because the Comforts might be watching. You locked the doors, of course? And moved Breen’s car?”

  “Of course. And the Comforts have already come around once.” He’d held that back to shock Nolan with—saved it for effect.

  But he should have known better with Nolan, who just said an emotionless, “Well?”

  And Jon told him about the run-in with Sam Comfort.

  “You’re doing better all the time, kid. In fact, what do you need me for there? You got things
under control.”

  “Well, for one thing, these damn Comforts got me sweating. They’re unpredictable, judging from what Breen says, and from what I saw of them.”

  “Did you fool old Sam, you think?”

  “I got an idea what was going on in that head. He could come barging in with a gun right now and I wouldn’t be surprised. You know the Comforts pretty well, Nolan?”

  “I worked a job with that crusty old son of a bitch, years ago. He didn’t cross me, because I didn’t give him the opening. But if my back had been to him, he’d have put the knife in, no doubt about it. Breen was stupid to work with him in the first place. Everybody knows Sam is as crazy as he is unreliable.”

  “Well, Nolan, what do you think?”

  “I’ll come, yeah.”

  “It’s not that I need help, exactly . . .”

  “I know, kid. You just like having me around.”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “And that hundred and fifty thousand of Comfort’s is another.”

  “Right.”

  “We’re about due, Jon. Maybe we can help my old buddy Breen and do ourselves a favor, too.”

  Jon grinned into the phone. “Right.”

  Two

  5

  THE RIOTS COULD have been last week, the way this neighborhood looked. Buildings stood black and gutted from flames; no one had even bothered boarding up the broken-out, blown-out windows, which stared from the buildings like the empty sockets of gouged-out eyes. Other blocks had fared better, their buildings untouched by flame, some stores none the worse for wear, open for business. But even these more fortunate blocks showed the scars of violence, their wounds no less ugly for the pus being dried up and crusted over. The sites of many small businesses were vacant now, abandoned by their white proprietors in the wake of black unrest, leaving behind storefront windows broken out and never replaced, nothing remaining but jagged edges of glass, like teeth in the mouth of a screaming man. Outrage had fired this violence, from which had come further outrage: one emigrant had boarded up his storefront window and written, in an angry red scrawl: “AFTER 20 YRS. SERVICE, CHASED FROM OUR HOME,” a star of David beneath the words like a signature. Passing by the boarded-up store was a thin black woman in a pale, worn, green dress, trudging along like a parody of a weary darkie, pulling a child’s wagon filled with groceries, and her face told the whole story: she’d had to walk blocks and blocks to a grocery store, and hoped like hell nothing spoiled. She seemed to shake her head a little as she moved along past her neighborhood corner grocery, which was an empty, burned-out shell.