“Oh really? You done that already?”
“No. Tonight. Going out to his place tonight and see what he has to offer.”
“Sounds like fun. Care for some company?”
“Naw . . . it’ll be a drag. This guy’s agency is really small-time, I’m just looking at these acts out of friendship. Or pity. You’d fall asleep, the acts’ll be so bad.”
She made a face. “Well, looks like another rip-snorter of an evening for old coffee-tea-or-me,” she said, apparently feeling brushed off. “Suppose I’ll just catch another movie tonight, and if I’m lucky maybe get molested walking back to the hotel.”
“Don’t give me that,” he said. “I can’t picture you sitting home alone unless you wanted to.”
“I thought you said you didn’t believe what you read in paperbacks? My life isn’t any swinging party. This is the first time I’ve gotten any in weeks.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, really. I been a lousy nun lately. Ever since my marriage broke up, last year.”
“You were married? I thought a stewardess had to be single.”
“Haven’t you heard of Women’s Lib and equal rights and all? The airlines can’t pull much of that crap these days, though God knows they’d like to. And in my case, maybe I’d be better off, at least as far as the old anti-wedlock rule goes. The marriage, it just didn’t work out, with my being a flight attendant and gone days at a time. My husband was balling some secretary at his office, some mousy little twerp with boobs like ping pong balls.”
Nolan shrugged. “Then losing him should be no great loss. He’s obviously an idiot. But there’s plenty of other guys in the world.”
“Yeah, and plenty of other idiots, too. Like there’s this pilot who’s been chasing me, but he’s married, and he’s obnoxious as hell too, so I been ducking him. I have had a fling or two, tiny ones, with some interesting passengers I’ve met on longer flights. But those guys also are married, usually, and I come out of an afternoon like this one feeling like a whore or something. How about you?”
“I never feel like a whore.”
“I mean, are you married? Don’t be a prick.” She said “prick” in a nice way, with affection.
“Not married. Never have been. It’s an institution that holds little appeal to me.”
“After a two-year marriage that was just slightly less successful than the war in Vietnam, I tend to agree with you. Hey, you know something?”
“What?”
“I sort of like you. Your personality is a little on the sour side, but I like it. And your sexual enthusiasm, especially considering you think of yourself as an old man, has me somewhat winded, I’ll admit, but I like that too. Let me make you a proposition. Why don’t you come back tonight and see me, when you’re through hearing those auditions? Then we can resume our conversation . . . and whatever else you’d care to resume.”
“It could be late.”
“I’ll give you the spare key. Let yourself in and crawl under the covers with me. How does that sound to you?”
Nolan smiled. “That sounds fine.”
They chatted for a while longer, and she mentioned that she had a flight tomorrow, and he mentioned he’d be taking a flight tomorrow himself, and it turned out to be the same one. That was a happy coincidence, and Nolan felt unnaturally pleased that this afternoon’s encounter would be continued tonight and, in a way, on the plane tomorrow. In his younger days, he preferred light involvement with his women, in-and-out situations; but he found, as he grew older, that he liked-something more—not much more, maybe, but something.
He got dressed, and as he went to the door, he turned and said, “Hey! Your name. What the hell is it?”
“Hazel.”
“Like your eyes,” he said.
“Like the fat maid in the funnies,” she said, squinching her nose.
“Well, you’re in the right hotel for that”
“Yeah, I noticed. Comic book fans all over the place, kids in costumes, kids wearing T-shirts with cartoon characters on them. A kid with a T-shirt like that tried to pick me up in the bar, just before you showed, would you believe it?”
“Sure, woodwork’s full of ’em. Listen, I got to get going. I’ll see you tonight”
“Okay. Hey!”
“What?”
“Your name? What’s your name?”
He hesitated for a moment; he better not use the Logan name. He was registered as Ryan, but for some reason he wanted to give her the name he himself felt most comfortable with. So he said, “Nolan,” and to hell with it
“Is that a first name,” she asked, “or a last?”
“Whatever you want,” he said, and went out.
This time he had the elevator to himself, and damn glad of it.
Jon was in the coffee shop, working on a Coke.
Nolan joined him at the counter, said, “How much you blow on funny-books so far?”
The kid grinned. “Four hundred and thirty-five bucks and feeling no pain.”
Nolan had no criticism of that. It was a harmless enough indulgence. Besides, he remembered Jon showing him a copy of a comic book, two years ago when he first met the kid; the comic had cost Jon two hundred bucks, which had seemed insane to Nolan, but just recently he had seen an article about an eighteen-year-old kid who’d paid eighteen hundred dollars for that same comic. Nolan asked Jon about it at the time, and Jon had said, rather bitterly, “That stupid clod . . . with him shelling out all that dough, and with all the news coverage he got, shit, prices’ll inflate like crazy again. That comic wasn’t worth any eighteen hundred bucks. Why, it wasn’t worth a penny more than a grand.”
Considering the interest Jon had made on his two- hundred-buck investment, Nolan was impressed, and no longer ridiculed his young friend’s hobby. In fact, he counted himself a sucker, because he too had owned that comic book (bought it off the stands, when he was a kid) and after reading it had thrown his dime investment in the trash.
“How’d it go, Nolan?”
“We have wheels. No problem.”
“Good. Rest of the stuff, too?”
“Rest of the stuff, too.”
“What about the farmhouse?”
“Drove out there, had a look around. No, nobody saw me. I drew up a layout of the farm and all. We can go over it later, up in the room.”
“Fine.”
“Nervous?”
“Yes.”
“Thought the funny-books would distract you.”
“Me too. No soap. Tried to pick up a woman in the bar to see if that would distract me. But it fizzled too.”
Nolan glanced at Jon’s Wonder Warthog T-shirt, and wondered if—but no, that was ridiculous.
“Look, kid, there’s one thing I want you to do for me.”
“What’s that?”
“Go buy some hose.”
“Sure. Go buy some hose? Like rubber hose?”
“Like nylon hose. The kind women stick their legs in.”
“Stockings? What the hell for, Nolan?”
“I thought we’d pose as Avon ladies.”
“Oh. You mean masks. We’ll pull ’em over our heads, you mean.”
“Just buy them.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t want to go in buying hose. What’re you, crazy?”
“Too embarrassing?” Jon smiled.
“Hell yes. Why don’t you want to?”
“Too embarrassing,” Jon admitted.
“Right, and I’m in charge, you’re my flunky, and when I say buy hose, goddammit, you buy hose.”
“Well, they’ll probably take me for some kind of pervert or something.”
“Probably.” Nolan grinned. He was in a good mood.
“What are you so happy about?”
“It’s going to be clockwork, kid. We’re going to fill our pockets with Sam Comfort’s ill-gotten gains, and he won’t be the wiser.”
Now Jon was grinning too. “You make me feel better. I don
’t think I’m nervous, anymore. I don’t even mind buying the hose. If the salesgirl asks me what I want nylons for, I’ll just tell her I want ’em ’cause they’ll go so good with my black lace garter belt.”
“That’s the spirit, kid. Here, I’ll even pay for your damn Coke.”
8
IT WAS FRIDAY evening, eight-fifteen. The country was calm and quiet tonight, the traffic along this gravel back road seemingly nonexistent. Across the way was a two-story gray frame farmhouse, beginning to sag, whose paint was peeling like an over-baked sunbather. It was a slovenly, ramshackle structure, a shack got out of hand; it sat in a big yard overgrown with big weeds, its location remote even for the country, the lights of neighboring farmhouses barely within view. The place was, in effect, isolated from civilization, which suited the people who lived there. And it suited Nolan and Jon’s purpose, as well.
Jon had been studying the hovel the Comfort clan called home. He shook his head. “Dogpatch,” he muttered.
“What?” Nolan said.
They were sitting in the dark blue, year-old Ford Nolan had leased from Bernie that afternoon. The motor was off, lights too; the car was parked in a cornfield across the road from the Comfort homestead. They were a good half-block down from the house, the nose of the car approaching but not edging onto the dirt access inlet that bridged ditch and gravel road. They had entered a similar access inlet to cross the corner of the field, having cut their lights as they drove down the road that eventually would have intersected the one running past the Comfort house. They’d rumbled slowly across the recently harvested ground, like some prehistoric beast lumbering after its prey at snail’s pace. The only sound had been that of corn husks cracking under the wheels, but the stillness of the night and the insecurity of the situation had magnified that husk-cracking in Jon’s perception, unsettling him. The moon seemed to Jon a huge searchlight illuminating the field, making him feel naked, exposed, unsettling him further. But nothing had happened, and now they sat in the car, in the cornfield, getting ready. They were dressed for their work, in black: Nolan in knit slacks and turtleneck sweater; Jon in jeans and sweatshirt (the latter worn inside-out because the other side bore a fluorescent Batman insignia). The clothes were heavy, warm, which was good, as the night was a cool, almost cold one. Both wore guns in holsters on their hips, police-style: .38 Colt revolvers with four-inch barrels, butts facing out. Between them on the seat were two olive-drab canisters, looking much like beer cans, but with military markings in place of brand names, and levers connecting to pin mechanisms. Also on the seat was a package of nylon stockings, unopened.
Jon let his Dogpatch remark lie; he’d just been thinking aloud, and though Nolan had been very tolerant lately about Jon’s comics hobby, now was no time to put that tolerance to a test by going into the resemblance the Comfort place held to something Al Capp might have drawn.
Nolan said, “You want me to go over it once more?”
“No,” Jon said.
“Okay.” Nolan was sitting back in the seat, loose, apparently relaxed, but Jon thought he sensed an uncharacteristic tightness in the man’s voice, perhaps brought on by concern over Jon’s relative inexperience in matters of potential violence.
They’d been over the plan several times, first at the hotel, in their room, and again on the way here, in the car. Nolan would come up behind the Com¬fort farmhouse, through the pasture in back; the ground was open, open as hell, but there were trees along the property line, and also a barn, and those would provide whatever cover Nolan needed. Jon would allow Nolan five minutes, during which time Nolan would jimmy the basement window open, crawl inside, deposit his calling card, and crawl out After those five minutes were up, Jon would initiate phase two of the plan, in that weed-encroached front yard.
Jon felt sure everything would go without a hitch, but he wished he could also be sure Nolan felt the same way. Jon’s own confidence was undercut somewhat by the lack of confidence he suspected in Nolan, an attitude that stemmed back to that discussion they’d had about firearms, back at the hotel.
“I don’t exactly understand,” Jon had said, “how we’re going to subdue these dudes—I mean, what do we do, brain ’em with the butts of our guns, or what?”
“For Chrissake, kid,” Nolan had answered, eyes narrowed even more than usual, “never go swinging a gun butt around. You got the barrel pointing at you, and you can end up with a hole in your chest big as the one in your damn head. Why do you think I prefer a long-barreled gun?”
“Better aim, you said.”
“Yeah, that. And this too—with a long barreled gun you can put a guy to sleep without firing a shot.”
“So, what then? We brain ’em with the gun barrels?”
“You would if it was called for. But it isn’t. I told you what the plan was, and you didn’t hear any part where you go slugging people with a gun, did you? All right, then. You just leave the subduing to me—and leave the gun in its holster, dig?”
“Look, I’m capable of using it if I have to, Nolan.”
“Maybe, but don’t act like it’s something to look forward to. By now, you been through enough shit like this to tell the difference between what we’re about to do and some goddamn comic-book fairy tale. If we get in a totally desperate situation, sure, use the gun. That’s what it’s there for. But since we got the element of surprise working for us, I don’t see that happening.”
Jon was determined now to make a good showing tonight, to regain Nolan’s confidence by behaving like a cold, hard-ass professional, not like some naive kid. Next to him, Nolan was opening the package of nylons, and Jon listened to the crackle of cellophane and waited for Nolan to hand him one of the stockings.
But instead there was a long moment of silence, and even in darkness Jon had no trouble making out the stunned look on Nolan’s face.
“Kid.”
“Yeah?”
“I think we’re going to have to make a change of plan.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I don’t think we’re going to be able to split up. You’re going to have to follow along pretty close behind me.”
“Why’s that?”
Nolan held up the nylons.
Panty hose.
“Panty hose,” Nolan said.
Jon started to sputter. “Nolan, shit, I mean, that’s all the girls are wearing these days. I should’ve checked to make sure they were the old-fashioned kind. I mean . . .”
Nolan dug in his pocket and got out his knife.
“Nolan—what’re you doing?”
A grin flashed under Nolan’s mustache, a grin so wide and out of character, it startled Jon. “I’m not going to kill you, kid,” he said, “I just got to perform some hasty surgery.”
Nolan separated the siamese twins; he handed one amputated leg to Jon and kept the other. “You know, kid,” Nolan said, “this is a hell of a lot of trouble to go to, just to get your way.”
“Get my way?”
“Yeah. But you win. From now on, I buy all the nylons.”
They both grinned this time, and enthusiasm ran through Jon like a drug. “I won’t let you down, Nolan.”
“I know you won’t.”
Nolan pulled the stocking over his head, immediately disfiguring himself. “Five minutes, Jon.”
“Five minutes, Nolan.”
And Nolan was gone.
Five minutes? Five hours was what it seemed. Jon made a concerted effort not to study his watch, not to follow the second hand around. But he did, of course, and the time was excruciatingly slow in passing, the seconds pelting him like the liquid pellets of the Chinese water torture; the ticking of his watch seemed abnormally loud, as if in an echo chamber, and he wondered how the hell a relic like that (a Dick Tracy watch, circa late ’30s) could put out such a racket.
He thought he saw something moving across the road, over in the Comfort yard, but it was only the tall weeds getting pushed around by the wind. That brought his attention to the farmhouse,
which was what he was supposed to be doing anyway—watching the house, keeping alert for anything out of order that might be going on over there. The Comforts couldn’t be expected to stick to Nolan and Jon’s game plan, after all; and as Nolan had said more than once, you never can tell when the human element might enter in and knock a well-conceived plan on its well-conceived ass.
Jon sat studying the old gray two-story, and thought back to the verbal tour of the place Breen had given him last night. Though from the run-down exterior you’d never guess it, the Comfort castle was, according to Breen, expensively furnished and equipped with modern appliances and gadgetry galore. Its shabby appearance was no doubt partially purposeful at least; as a thief himself, old Sam Comfort would have an unnaturally suspicious and devious mind, certainly capable of devising a defense of this sort: that is, living in a house that looked like a junk heap on the outside, but was a palace on the inside. Crafty as hell, because judging from what he could see, Jon could hardly imagine a less likely prospect for a robbery. Looting a place like that—why, you’d be lucky to come away with a six-pack of beer and a handful of food stamps.
Not that they had in mind stealing any of the possessions the Comforts had acquired through years of applied larceny; the creature comforts the Comfort creatures had assembled for themselves were of no interest to Jon and Nolan. There was only one thing in that house that interested them: the strongbox of cash kept somewhere within those deceptively decayed walls. Breen had reported that old Sam kept a minimum of fifty thousand in that box at all times, and there was a good chance the Comforts (having just returned from Iowa City) hadn’t yet banked their latest parking meter bonanza. Which meant, in all probability, that some two hundred grand was locked up within that metal box.
He checked his watch.
Thirty seconds shy of five minutes.
He withdrew the gun from the holster, hefted it, put it back. Took a deep breath. Another. The butterflies in his stomach began to disperse.
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