Two for the Money (6 page)

“Small. On an upper floor.”

“I see.”

“Which I will pay for.”

“I see.”

“Just see you don’t see.”

“I’ll see that I don’t.”

“Fine. How much for the room?”

“Uh. Uh, thirty-five dollars.”

Nolan counted off seven fives. “Can I have the key?”

The clerk reached behind and handed Nolan a key that said 714.

Nolan handed him another five. “And that’s for your trouble.”

“That’s not necessary, Mr. Logan . . .”

“I insist.”

The clerk took the money.

Nolan said, “You want me to sign the register or anything?”

“Oh, yes, yes, any name at all . . .”

Nolan took the register, smiled softly to himself and signed “E. Webb, Cicero, Illinois,” then handed the register back to the clerk, who said, “And I’ll do my best to keep from spoiling the surprise for Mr. Werner.”

Nolan left the check-in counter, the two packages under his arm, and walked to the pair of elevators and pushed up. While he waited for his ride, he glanced down at the bill in his hand.

One five.

The big bankroll.

Several people got on the elevator with him, and a boy of around six years said, “Whatcha grinnin’ about, mister?” Nolan pressed the last five into the kid’s hand and waited for his floor.

The only method Nolan had ruled out completely from the number of ways Charlie might handle his visit was that of Charlie playing it straight. Oh, Charlie could conceivably fly in from Chicago, drive to the hotel to talk things over with Nolan, carrying no firearms and accompanied by no bodyguards and radiating good will.

And Christ might decide to make his second coming tonight.

Nolan wasn’t counting on either. At the very least he expected Charlie to show up armed. Setting up those ground rules had been something Nolan had done because he knew Charlie expected him to ask for them. So he’d asked.

Nolan figured there were three courses of action, all similar, which seemed equally probable turns for Charlie to take.

First, a party unknown might arrive at the hotel in the late afternoon or early evening and go up to Nolan’s room to kill him, with Charlie not even bothering to fly in.

Or, party unknown might go up to Nolan’s room and get him at gunpoint and hold him for Charlie to execute personally.

Or, finally, party unknown might show up, take Nolan captive (maybe or maybe not beat the piss out of him), and hold him for Charlie, who would arrive later to discuss peace terms.

Any way he looked at it, Nolan figured he had company coming, and he spent the early afternoon getting ready for it.

Since he was going to be moving upstairs into that extra room, he packed his bag, which took ten seconds, and set it next to the Penney’s box by the door, picking up the wrapped package from Irish at the same time.

He took the package into the bedroom, sat on the bed, tore the wrapping paper off and got out the guns. Then he added his bolstered .38 to the three from Quad City Jukebox Service and cleaned and oiled them. When he was done, he loaded all four and placed one of the fresh Smith and Wessons in his holster, an aging leather strapwork that looped around both shoulders with a band running across the back, so that from the front, if his jacket hung open, none of the rig was visible. The other guns he tossed on the bed.

There was a small table lamp with shade on the night-stand. Nolan unscrewed the knob atop the lamp and removed the shade, leaving the bulb and its spare metal framework exposed. He took a hanger and twisted it apart and bent it into a new shape, a spiral that would fit down over the bulb and its framework. He took one of the .38s and slipped the trigger guard over the curved end of the hanger. The gun hung there like a bulky Christmas ornament. He put the shade back on. He slipped his hand down
in, found the gun, and brought it out, slowly. He did it again, quickly. The gun didn’t show through the shade, nor did the butt poke above it. This would do just fine—as long as he remembered not to turn the damn thing on.

Then he dropped the other guns, one each, into his side sportcoat pockets, went over to the door, and grabbed up his bag and suit box. The elevator took him up to the next floor, where he used the key marked 714, and before he got half a look at his spare room he was sitting on the bed, revolvers next to him, doing his lamp-shade trick again. He pushed the lamp back so that it almost touched the wall, got up from the bed, and dug into his bag, getting out two clean handkerchiefs. These he wadded, knotting them to keep their bunched shape, and stowed them in the top drawer of the nightstand.

He had no special precautionary plan in mind for the leftover Colt—getting those three guns this morning hadn’t been for Charlie alone, since he needed them on hand anyway—so he rather absently shoved the Colt behind the pillow of the room’s single bed, enough of the Nervous Nellie routine for awhile.

He glanced around the room.

Room, hell, it was a closet with gland trouble, but that was okay by him. In a small room he could have control; he could see windows and door all at once. That suite of his downstairs was something else again—a vestibule and a living room and a bedroom and two cans and lots and lots of windows and no possible way to see all of it at once. In this room he could.

Nolan checked the window that took up most of the far wall of the crackerbox. It was locked, which was good. He noticed a fire escape beyond the window, going down into the alley, which was good and bad.

Then he showered again, making it cold to keep him alert, shaved, and got into his new suit. He slipped on one of the ties he had bought, a solid blue color, and strung on the shoulder-holster. The suit didn’t show the jut of the gun too
badly, and it fitted well for a rack cut, though it did pinch at the shoulders.

As he straightened his tie in the bathroom mirror, Nolan wondered if the man Charlie sent would appreciate his dressing to the teeth for him. Somehow he doubted it.

He left the room and took the elevator down to the lobby. At the check desk, the clerk smiled and said, “Well, hello again, Mr. Logan, is there something more I can do for you, sir?”

“There a phone in there?” Nolan motioned toward the entrance to the Concort Lounge across the lobby.

“Yes, there is, the bartender has a phone behind the bar so orders can be called in.”

“Yeah. Well I’ll be in there for a while. You suppose if anybody comes around and wants my room number that you could ring me over there and tell me about it?”

“I could just send whoever it is over and . . .”

“No. This has to do with that surprise we were talking about earlier. Give the guy my number, send him up to the room,
then
call me.”

The clerk was puzzled but trusting, and said he’d be glad to do it. Anything for a friend of Mr. Werner’s.

Nolan went into the lounge, pushing the saloon-style swinging doors aside, and walked over to the bar. He told the bartender about the call he was expecting, then went over and took a booth parallel to the swinging doors, where he could get a slatted but partially visible view of the check-in desk on the other side of the lobby.

He ordered a Scotch and water, charged it to Werner and looked down at his watch.

Ten after three.

He sat back and waited, nursing the Scotch with a patience he guessed was coming from old age.

At quarter till four, the first Scotch was gone, and he started on another.

At ten after five Nolan looked up from his third Scotch as the saloon-syle doors swung open and a tall, burly black man in a well-tailored navy suit shoved through them. The big man stood in the doorway for a moment, briefly ran his eyes across the lounge’s half-dozen faces, then ambled over to the bar.

Though they’d never met, Nolan recognized him.

The hard face, with its rugged structure, nearly flat nose, close-set eyes, squared-off jaw, and forehead of solid bone, was unmistakable. And the six-foot-three, 270-pound frame, with its aircraft carrier shoulders, wasn’t exactly commonplace, either.

His name was Tillis, and he’d played pro guard on an eastern NFL team a few seasons back, but was forced out in his third year of play because of knee trouble. The story Nolan had heard was that some mob guy fairly high up had been a fan of Tillis’s team, and when Tillis had to quit pro ball, the guy offered him a job. A job with the organization that, as Werner had told Nolan, was calling itself the Family these days.

Nolan remembered seeing Tillis play ball a couple of times. He hadn’t impressed Nolan as the most savvy lineman in the NFL, but when he didn’t get faked out or double-teamed, he could be one mean, effective sonofabitch. Set an unnecessary roughness record his rookie year, Nolan recalled.

Tillis was at the bar now, downing a shot of Jim Beam. He motioned for another, threw it down, then sauntered back out of the lounge.

Nolan got to his feet casually and went over to the still
gently swaying doors and glanced out over them toward the check-in desk.

Tillis was there, questioning the desk clerk, who was showing all the composure of a toastmaster who’s just discovered his fly is open. When the clerk had told Tillis what he wanted to know, the black man walked over to the two elevators, jabbed at the button between them, and got his ride right away. As the elevator doors met behind him, Nolan stepped out from the lounge and walked over to the check-in desk.

The clerk was reaching for the phone when Nolan said, “Forget it. I’m here.”

The clerk jumped slightly, then turned and motioned toward the elevators and said, “It’s a big colored man,” and Nolan nodded thanks.

Nolan took the same elevator Tillis had used when it came back down. It was self-service, and Nolan had it to himself. By the time he’d reached his floor and the doors had begun to slide open, he had his .38 unholstered and palmed.

His room was around the corner to the right of the elevators. When he got to the corner, he stopped and glanced carefully around it.

Tillis was at the door to Nolan’s suite, trying a ringful of keys in the lock. When one key didn’t work, he tried another, and just as he seemed to be running out of them, one got results.

Tillis gently prodded the door open, and behind him Nolan not-so-gently prodded the back of Tillis’s skull with the side of the .38 barrel.

The big black tumbled like a small tree to the soft carpeting in the suite’s vestibule and lay still.

Nolan shut the door and night-latched it. He was stepping around the bulky supine figure when a thick arm shot out, caught him behind the right ankle and jerked, setting Nolan down on his tailbone so hard that his spine did a xylophone imitation.

A beefy black fist rushed toward his face, but Nolan batted it away with the .38, and seeing that Tillis was on his feet, Nolan had a flash memory of the ex-guard’s bad knees and drove a kick into the black’s right kneecap that would have been good for a forty-yard punt.

Tillis landed on his side but started to spring back, and Nolan slapped him across the temple with the .38 barrel.

This time Tillis seemed to be soundly out, but Nolan was getting to the point where he didn’t trust himself with knocking guys cold anymore. He leaned over cautiously, flipped open the well-cut navy suit, brushed aside the blue and white striped tie, and lifted a silenced Luger from a shoulder clip under Tillis’s left arm. Backing up with care, Nolan pocketed the Luger, keeping his revolver trained on the man.

He needed something to tie Tillis up with; he knew he should have picked up some rope when he’d had the time earlier in the afternoon, but he hadn’t, so now he had to improvise.

He tore off the nylon draw-cord from the drapes in the suite’s living room, all the while keeping an eye on the reclined figure in the vestibule and a gun tightly in hand. Reluctantly he laid the .38 down on a nearby lampstand to use his pocket-knife on the nylon cord, cutting it into three lengths, two of them a foot-and-a-half or so each, the other a good three feet.

Some sounds came from the otherwise lifeless mass over by the door.

He slipped the lengths of rope in his belt and walked over to give Tillis a gentle kick in the ribs. “Wake up.”

“Oh, shit . . . my fuckin’ head . . .”

“Wake up.”

The black man pushed himself to his hands. His close-set eyes zoomed in on Nolan and burned slowly. “You? You’re Nolan? You were in the bar downstairs, weren’t you, motherfuck?”

“That’s right.”

“I seen your picture once, but I didn’t recognize you from it.”

“I changed. You saw a picture maybe fifteen, sixteen years old.”

“I didn’t think I was gettin’ sent after some goddamn senior citizen.”

“And I don’t suppose you thought you’d get knocked on your ass by one either.”

A slight smile appeared on the black’s lips, and he slowly eased himself into a sitting position. “Didn’t have no mustache in that picture I seen. You had it long?”

“It comes and goes. It’s the old age that sticks around.”

“Jesus, man, you ought to give one of them retirement villages some thought.”

“I got to say one thing for you,” Nolan said. “You know what kind of games not to play. No pretending you can’t understand why I clobbered you. No fake innocence, no claim of just accidentally getting into the wrong room or some such fairy tale.”

The big head wagged side to side. “Why should I lie, man? I was sent to check you out, that’s all, make sure you wasn’t going to pull something.”

“You mind, just for the record, telling me who sent you?”

“Shit, you know that as well as I do, man,” the black said, grinning. “Mr. Charlie.”

Nolan had to smile at Tillis’s double meaning. Then the smile left his face and he said, “This visit was just a precaution, then? No beating? No bullet in the head?”

“Yeah, man, you know, like a social call.”

“And the silenced Luger you had with you was a party favor.”

“Oh,
that.
Just ’cause it had a silencer on don’t mean I was going to shoot you or nothing, man. It’s a habit of mine. Noise gets on my nerves.”

“You used to go for the kind of noise a crowd makes, didn’t you, Tillis?”