Hard Cash (6 page)

“Do you ever think about it, Nolan?”

“About what?”

“Dying. Death.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“When you think about it, you get paranoid. Then you’re slow when you should be fast. Punchy when you should be alert.”

“Is that what happened to my husband?”

“Maybe. Sometimes you can’t avoid it. Sometimes you get hit by a truck even when you look both ways. That’s the way it is. Life. A gamble.”

She smiled, rather bitterly, he thought. “Well, my man never was much of a gambler.”

“I’m sorry about Breen. I really am. He was a good man.”

“Even if he did run out on you once?”

“Even then. I’d have done the same in his place.”

“That’s what it’s about, isn’t it? Survival.”

“You could put it that way.”

“Nolan. Tell me.”

“What?”

“Why did he do it?”

“Heisting, you mean? You know why. To support the gambling.”

“Not the heisting. The women. Why . . . why wasn’t I enough?”

“Why did he gamble? Why can some men quit smoking and others puff away, even after they’ve seen the X-rays? I don’t know. I don’t understand people. I can barely tolerate them, let alone understand them.”

She sighed. “More coffee?”

“No.”

“I loved him, Nolan.”

“Yeah. Well, you must have. To put up with his gambling and his women both. And not every woman can stand being married to somebody in my business.”

“I thought you were out of the business.”

“You’re never out.”

“I guess not Listen, there’s . . . there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“Okay.”

“I want to talk upstairs. There’s something of his I want to give you.”

“Okay.”

She led him upstairs.

Into a darkened room.

The shade was drawn, but some of the light from outside was seeping in; overcast day that it was, the seepage didn’t amount to much. But he could see the bed, the double bed, and he could see Mary, disrobing.

She stood and held her arms out to him.

She stood naked and said, without saying it,
Am I so ugly? Wouldn’t I be enough for most men?

She would have been plenty, for just about anybody. Sure, her thighs were a little fleshy, and there was a plumpness around her tummy, and she had an appendix scar. And her breasts didn’t look quite as firm as they once had. But big breasts never do, and they were nice and big, pink nipples against ivory flesh. He walked over and put a hand on one of the breasts, felt the nipple go erect. He put his other hand between her legs. He put his mouth over hers.

There was carpet up here. Downstairs, bare floors. But up here, on Mary’s insistence, no doubt, was plush carpeting, tufted fuzzy white carpeting, and they did it on the floor, and when she came, she cried finally, and they crawled up on the bed and rested.

Outside, it snowed.

7

SHE WALKED HIM
out to the car.
They had rested for several hours, and then she fixed him something to eat—nothing fancy, just a sandwich—and it was early evening all of a sudden, and he was saying he had to get back. Something doing in Iowa City tomorrow, he said, and she got his coat for him.

She’d been surprised how good he looked. She hadn’t seen him for several years, since the last time he’d stopped at the bar to talk to her husband about some job. She’d heard from her husband of Nolan’s troubles, that he’d been shot damn near to death several times the last couple of years, and she’d expected that to show on him. No. Some gray hair at the temples, but Nolan stayed the same. Handsome, in that narrow-eyed, mustached, slightly evil way of his. His body remained lithe, muscular; scarred but beautiful. He’d felt so beautiful in her. . . .

“You’ll be back then?” she said, leaning against the car, by the window. He was behind the wheel; the engine was going. The snow had let up.

“I’m going to poke into your husband’s killing a little, yes,” he said. “But it’s not the movies. No revenge, Mary. I don’t believe in that. I’m doing it to protect my own ass.”

She smiled. “And my ass has nothing to do with it.”

“Well. Maybe just a little. Take care of that ass, okay, till I get back and can take over?”

“Sure. And watch your own while you’re at it. Next week, did you say?”

“Probably. I’ll probably give you a call.”

And he was gone.

She went back into the house, into the kitchen, and drank the last of the pot of coffee she’d made.

She wondered if Nolan would really find her husband’s murderer, and if he did and took care of whoever it was, would she feel any better about it?

Now she felt very little. Anger, there was anger. Some sorrow. But more than anything there was confusion. Her husband had been blown to hell by a shotgun. In the company of one of his barmaid bitches. Naked, the two of them.

She wondered if there was any significance to the bitch’s body being in the back room, while her husband had been in the outer bar. To open the cash register, she supposed; it would have been locked after closing, and he would have had to reopen it for the thieves. She wondered if she should have mentioned any of that to Nolan. And that one other strange thing: the bottle her husband had had in his hand. He’d evidently grabbed for that bottle off the shelf just as he’d died, or as he’d realized he was about to die. What kind of crazy reflex action was that? To grab a bottle of Southern Comfort off the shelf?

8

FRIDAY, WHILE NOLAN
drove into Indianapolis to see Breen’s wife, Jon drove to Cedar Rapids in his Chevy II to buy a pair of hunting jackets. He didn’t know why he was buying the jackets, exactly, just that Nolan had told him to.

He was also supposed to stop at a place called Blosser’s Costume Shop and Theatrical Supply to pick up a package for Nolan.

And of course it was like Nolan to give Jon a task or two to carry out without explaining the task or two’s significance. Jon was used to it. But he still questioned Nolan about such seemingly absurd assignments, getting nothing in particular back from the man for his trouble.

“Hunting jackets?” he’d asked. “What for?”

“One for you,” Nolan said. “One for me.”

“Okay, one for me, one for you, sure. But for what purpose, Nolan? I mean, hunting jackets? And why go all the hell the way to Cedar Rapids to get them?”

“Just do it. Yours is not to reason why.”

“I don’t believe you sometimes, Nolan.”

“And buy one of them at one store, and the other at another.”

“Why?”

“Because I want the jackets bought at separate stores.”

“Jesus. Okay. All right. I’ll do it. But what’s the costume thing about? Will you tell me that?”

“Ask for the manager. Blosser, the manager-owner. He’s a friend of mine. He knows about me. You can talk freely. He has a package for me. Oh, he may have you try something on. In fact, maybe you ought to insist on trying one of them on.”

“One of what on?”

“One of what’s in the package.”

“What is in the package?”

“Let me do the thinking.”

“Wait a minute, let me see if I got this straight. I buy the hunting jackets and pick up the packages, you do the thinking. Is that the way it goes?”

“That’s it exactly.”

“Well, I just hadn’t had it explained to me properly before. Once it’s explained to me, then I understand. But would you tell me one thing?”

“What?”

“Why do I still bother asking you questions?”

“Kid, that’s one question I wish I could answer for you.”

And so he had driven to Cedar Rapids, had bought one hunting jacket (a green plaid) in his own size, at a sporting goods store downtown, and another (a red plaid) in Nolan’s size, at a sporting goods store in an outlying shopping center, paying cash in both instances, as Nolan had also instructed.

He realized the hunting jackets had something to do with the robbery. That was self-evident. What galled him was that he couldn’t figure out what, and he knew Nolan wouldn’t tell him till the last moment.

The costume shop was on the way out of town, in a rather run-down section that was commercial along the main strip that ran through the area, but back behind which was a neighborhood that could be called lower middle class if you were in a charitable mood. It was a one-story, faded brick building sandwiched between a bait shop and a used book store that was, damn it, closed. Jon peeked in the windows of the old book store and saw thousands of used paperbacks in ceiling-high bookcases, and what looked like some old comic books and for sure some Big Little Books in locked showcases similar to those in Planner’s shop. He ran across such shops every now and then, and they were invariably closed. He sighed, shrugged, and went on into the costume shop.

The interior was spare but not seedy, with a counter and a waiting room area, similar to a laundry. An attractive if hard-looking woman of thirty or so was behind the counter, with coal-black hair, a beauty mark to the left of a red-painted mouth, and braless bouncing breasts under a satinlike yellow blouse. She looked as though she was preparing to audition for a local production of
Carmen
.

“Hi, honey,” she said casually, and Jon looked around to make sure she was talking to him.

She was, so he said hi himself, and did his best to return her suggestive smile. Maybe the woman did look sort of cheap and whorish, but she was also sexy-looking, in a second-rate men’s magazine way.

“What can I do you for?” she said. She was chewing gum. Not blatantly, though—not a cow chewing cud—but playing with it in her mouth, playing with it with her tongue.

“Uh, I’d like to see Mr. Blosser.”

“Not here.”

“Oh. You expect him soon?”

“Nope. Won’t be back today.”

“Well, uh, I was supposed to pick up a package for a friend of his. A Mr. Nolan?”

“Oh, sure. Your name must be Jon.”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“I’m Connie. The boss’s daughter, in case you was wondering.”

“Oh. Yeah, well, I’m pleased to meet you, Connie.”

“I’m sure. How is Nolan these days?”

“Fine. Fine. I didn’t know you knew Nolan.”

She grinned. She really was a good-looking woman, cheap or hard or not. “I know him. You ask him if I know him or not.” She laughed and her breasts jiggled.

Jon swallowed. “Okay, I’ll tell him you said hello.”

She reached under the counter and flopped two large white string-tied suit-type boxes up in front of her. “Here. This one is yours. It’s a small. You better try it on.” She motioned him behind the counter, and he followed her through a narrow hallway to some dressing cubicles in the rear of the store. She handed him the box marked “Small” and left, pulling the cubicle’s curtain shut on him.

He opened the box.

There was something red in it.

Red and partly white. Trimmed in white.

The red was a cheap but plush-looking velvetlike material; the white was fluffy stuff—cotton, he guessed. There was also red gloves of the same material, trimmed in the same white fluff.

It looked like a Santa Claus costume.

He took it out of the box.

It
was
a Santa Claus costume.

He put it back in the box and went back out front, quickly, leaving the costume behind.

“That was quick,” the woman said. “Fit okay, does it?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know . . . I didn’t try it on.”

“How come?”

“Well, there has to be some mistake.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, it’s a . . . would you come with me a minute?”

He took her back to the dressing cubicle and showed her.

“Yeah,” she said. “A Santa Claus costume. So?”

“This is what is
supposed
to be in this box?”

“Sure.”

“What’s in the other box?”

“Another Santa Claus costume. That’s a total of two. One small, the other’s large.”

“And that’s what Nolan wanted me to pick up for him?”

“Shit, yes. Didn’t he tell you?”

“I’m afraid he doesn’t tell me much of anything.”

“Yeah, that’s Nolan, all right Listen . . . you need any help getting into that, honey, just give Connie a call, you hear?” She winked and chewed her gum seductively and left him there with a hard on and a Santa Claus suit.

It fit fine. He looked at himself in the cubicle’s shadowy mirror, and damned if the world’s shortest, most clean-shaven Santa Claus wasn’t staring him in the face. He asked Connie about the lack of a beard, after getting back into his street clothes.

“Oh, the beards are in the other box, with the large suit,” she said. “The caps are in there too.”

“Caps?”

“Caps. You better try yours on.” She opened the other suit box and got out a floppy red cap with white ball on the end. “The beards are adjustable, around the ears, but the caps could be trouble . . . there, see? You got too much hair for a small. I’ll go back and get a medium.”

She did, and insisted that Jon try that one on too, and he did, and she tweaked his cheek and said, “Gonna bring me anything for Christmas, Santa?”

He grinned, trying to keep the red from crawling up his neck. “We’ll see,” he said.

“I wonder what the heck Nolan wants with Santa Claus suits,” she said, shaking her head. “Somehow he don’t seem the Santa type. Unless he’s gonna empty stockings instead of fill ’em.”

Jon nodded his agreement and watched her put the cap back in the box and tie some string around it.

“Don’t forget to tell Nolan I said hi,” she said. “And maybe I’ll see you when you bring the suits back after Christmas, huh, honey?”

It took him almost an hour to get back to Iowa City. The overcast day had everybody cautious and using their headlights, and he got caught behind some old ladies going forty-five. So did a lot of other cars; the traffic was heavy, and passing was difficult—no, impossible—and he followed the old girls to the Interstate, after which he was back to Iowa City in short order. He parked the Chevy II behind the antique shop and went in the side door, which was unlocked.

That wasn’t right; surely he’d locked the door when he left. Yes, he remembered locking it.

Too early for Nolan to back from Indianapolis. Wasn’t it?

He shut the door. Softly. Silently.

Listened.

Heard nothing.

Quietly he moved behind the long, saloon-style counter behind which his uncle had sat day after day puffing his foul-smelling cigars. He set his packages on the counter. In a drawer, below the cash register, was one of his uncle’s .32 automatics. Jon got it out Softly. Silently.

He explored the downstairs. Nothing in the main room, with its antiques and showcases and counter and all. Nothing in his own room, except half the comic books in the world.

But what about the other back room? The one that had included Planner’s workshop area, as well as where many very valuable antiques were crated away for future sale, and where the big old safe was. . . .

The safe’s door was open.

Otherwise, the room was as empty as the rest of the downstairs.

But someone had been in here, opened the safe and, of course, found nothing in it. There hadn’t been anything of value kept in the safe since Nolan and Jon’s money had been stolen from it months before, the time Planner himself was killed defending that money. Killed in this very room. Jon had, in fact, scrubbed his uncle’s blood from the floorboards of this room. . . .

He felt a chill, and for a moment was very scared, and then it passed. Whoever it was had been here and gone. He walked out into the other room and put the gun back in its drawer.

He was halfway up the stairs, his arms full of the packages with the hunting jackets and Santa Claus suits, when he heard the noise.

Talking.

Someone was talking up there on the second floor. And it sure as hell wasn’t Nolan.