Authors: Max Allan Collins
He smiled broadly. “Now ain’t that shit. I didn’t know
you by sight but you knew me. See me play ever?”
Nolan nodded. “You weren’t bad. You weren’t good either, but then we can’t all make it onto the Wheaties box.”
The smile vanished. “How would you like to wear your white ass around your neck?”
“How would you like your black ass shot the fuck off?”
The toothy smile returned, and Tillis said, “Yeah, you’re some kind of motherfuck, you are.”
“Let’s keep my family out of this. I’d rather talk about yours. Family, that is.”
“Clever motherfuck, too.”
“You know, Tillis, there’s no reason in the world why I shouldn’t kill you right now. You coming up here with a silenced automatic . . . it’s a finger pointing at Charlie sending you to kill me.”
“Come off it, man, what you expect? You think Mr. Charlie’s goin’ to figure
you
to play by the rules? What kind of dumbass motherfuck are you, anyway?”
“A dumbass motherfuck with a .38 pointed at your thick black head.”
Tillis laughed and the laugh had gravel in it. “You know something, Nolan, goddamn you? I like the way you think. You got a real logical way of looking at things.”
“Thought you’d like it. Now, get on your feet, Tillis. We’re going to the john.”
“You mean me and the white folks are goin’ to use the same one?”
“Cute, Tillis. On your feet.”
The big man pushed up slowly, then his body tensed and he started to move forward. Nolan let him look down into the four-inch barrel on the Smith and Wesson, and Tillis’s face split apart into his big white grin.
Nolan smiled momentarily, then waved Tillis on. Tillis moved slowly out of the vestibule and into the living room and followed Nolan’s motions into the bathroom.
“Put the lid down on the stool and sit.”
“What you doin’, man?”
“Just do it, Tillis.”
“Okay, okay.”
Nolan tossed him the long strip of nylon cord. “Loop this behind the pot and tie your feet together. Firmly.”
Tillis bent down and wound the cord behind the toilet and knotted it around his feet.
“Now make a couple fists and hold them out.”
Tillis did so.
“I’m putting my gun away for a moment now, Tillis, so I can tie your hands. If you want to try something, go right ahead.”
Tillis grinned. “Won’t try no tricks.”
Nolan stuck the gun in his belt and knotted one of the short strands around Tillis’s massive wrists.
Tillis said, “Shove a smoke in my mouth for me, man?”
Nolan got out his cigarettes and held one out for Tillis to grab with his lips. Nolan picked a book of matches off the sink counter and lit Tillis’s cigarette, then fired one for himself.
“Why you tying me up, Nolan?”
“Why d’you think?”
“Cause you hate niggers?”
“Does it show?”
Tillis laughed. “Ain’t nothin’ like an honest bigot.”
Nolan laughed a little himself. “Don’t hand me that shit. Not after your ‘Mr. Charlie’ cracks.”
“Oh?”
“Don’t play naive, Tillis. You and I both know why you’re in this business.”
The gravelly laugh echoed within the four close walls. “You’re one smart motherfuck, aren’t you, Nolan? It’s just like football, right? Get paid by white men to beat on other white men.”
Nolan said, “There’s a lot of black guys in football, Tillis, and you knocked them around too. What if ‘Mr. Charlie’ had wanted you to work over a brother instead of me?”
Tillis shrugged. “Just like in football. My greedy nature just ain’t that discriminatin’.”
Nolan said, “Just so we understand each other. Okay. Now, I’m going to lean down and tie your feet again. If you try kicking me in the face while I’m down there, you’re going to find yourself singing soprano in a gospel choir somewhere.”
Tillis laughed again, but more softly. “Know something, Nolan?”
“What’s that, Tillis?”
“You got style. You been around and all, and you’re kinda old, but you still got style. Hope like hell I don’t get orders to kill you sometime.”
Nolan bent down and tied the short piece of nylon cord around Tillis’s ankles, knotting it securely. “I feel sure you’ll get over it, should the occasion arise.”
Tillis’s dark face was sober. “Hey, man, no shit. I hope it don’t work out that way.”
Nolan nodded. “I know what you mean.”
The phone rang in the other room.
Tillis’s grin came back. “That’ll be Mr. Charlie, checkin’ to see how well I got things under control.”
The voice in the receiver said, “Tillis?”
“He’s on the stool. Message?”
The receiver went silent for several moments, then the voice, which was a rough-edged baritone, returned. “Nolan?”
“Hello, Charlie.”
“What happened to Tillis?”
“I told you. On the crapper.”
“The years haven’t changed you much for the better, have they, Nolan?”
He laughed. “And you, Charlie?” Nolan paused briefly,
then added, “Come on up. Bring Werner if you want. Any more men you got along, leave downstairs.”
“You heeled, Nolan?”
“You mean is the wound better?”
“You know what I mean. You’re the one said no guns, remember?”
“Well, hell, Charlie, Tillis was such a pansy, I just used my hands on him.”
“For a man who wanted ground rules, you don’t stick by them too goddamn close, do you?”
Nolan smiled into the mouthpiece. “It’s your rules I play, Charlie,” he said, and hung up.
The open area by the elevators was empty, so Nolan had no qualms about waiting there with the .38 in hand. The gun was in his palm facing inward, and if any of the Concort’s other patrons wandered by before Charlie and Werner came up, chances were good they wouldn’t notice anything.
The elevator doors parted like the Red Sea, and Charlie stepped out, Werner on his heels as though bearing a bridal train.
Charlie wasn’t a large man, and he didn’t look much like what a mob guy named Charlie should look like. His hair was short-cropped like Werner’s, only stark powder white, and he had a deep Miami tan identical to Werner’s. Resemblance between the two ended there, outside of the Brooks Brothers cut of their dark suits. The five-foot-nine Werner seemed to tower over the diminutive Charlie, even though he was standing behind him and trying not to. In spite of his size, or lack of it, Charlie was not a man Nolan planned to underrate. Nolan knew the little man was an old school tough, not remotely akin to Werner’s businessman breed, and Charlie’s use of acutely unsubtle muscle like Tillis was proof that he hadn’t changed. Charlie was no parody of a hood, however; he had acquired, over the years, the look of a calm, polished executive—in advertising, perhaps, or insurance. But Nolan knew, too, that cement overshoes and one-way rides and machine gun executions
would never be out of style as far as Charlie was concerned.
Nolan tilted his palm upward and let the two men get a look at the gun in it, then motioned them toward his suite. No one said anything until the door to the suite was shut behind them.
“Strip off the overcoats,” Nolan said, “and then the suit-coats. And do it the nice, easy way you know I want you to.”
The two obeyed Nolan’s commands and let themselves be subjected to a fast but thorough frisk.
When he was through, Nolan said, “Well, can you beat that, you’re both clean.”
“Some people keep their word,” Werner said, petulant.
Charlie’s six-foot voice was heard in person by Nolan for the first time in sixteen years. He said, “Shut up, Werner.”
“Let him talk, Charlie,” Nolan said. “He isn’t happy with me, so let him blow the steam off now and have it done.”
“You’ve really put me on the spot, Nolan, do you know that?” Werner’s face had a slight flush, his country club cool gone. “I urge Charlie to fly in for negotiations, and he’s nice enough to accept your terms, and
you
show up waving a gun around in the air. Can’t you understand this is business, and you can’t handle business matters that way in this day and . . .”
“Jesus, Werner,” Charlie said, “will you just shut up and let Nolan and me handle our differences ourselves?”
Werner clamped his lips together, and the slight flush was replaced by a slight pout.
“Okay,” Charlie said, “you wanted to talk, Nolan? Okay. Then let’s get started.”
Nolan nodded. “Here on out, ground rules apply. This afternoon I checked out another room we’ll use to do our talking. I’ll leave my gun down here, locked in the closet, do the same with the one I took from Tillis. Then we go upstairs to the other room and talk.”
Charlie lowered his head in acceptance.
“You got another room?” Werner said. “What the hell’s
wrong with this one? Why wasn’t I informed of this?”
Nolan didn’t answer him, and Werner’s pout evolved into a scowl, but disappeared when Nolan dumped his .38 and Tillis’s silenced Luger into the closet, locking it with his room key.
Nolan opened the door for them. “Let’s go, gentlemen.”
Charlie said, “What about Tillis?”
“He really is in the can, alive and well; I tied him up in there. He’ll be okay. Don’t be hard on the boy, Charlie. He isn’t really a pushover.”
“He won’t be so easy next time,” Charlie said.
“There won’t be a next time, remember, men?” Werner reminded them. “These are peace talks we’re having.”
“Just shut up,” Charlie said. “This world doesn’t need any more goddamn diplomats than it’s already got.”
“We agree on something, anyway,” Nolan said, and gestured toward the elevators.
The trio again remained silent until they were shut inside the smaller of Nolan’s two Concort rooms.
“You haven’t exactly trusted me to the goddamn heights, have you, Nolan?” Charlie’s mouth wore a sour smile.
Nolan pointed toward the bed. “Sit down, both of you.” He pulled a chair over and sat facing them, his arm resting on the nightstand by the bed. “You didn’t expect me to trust you, Charlie, and I didn’t expect you to trust me, so let’s forget all that now and get started, okay?”
Charlie again nodded assent.
Nolan got out his cigarettes, offered them around. Charlie refused, getting out a metal case of his own, and Werner also turned him down, mumbling that he’d quit. Nolan fired Charlie’s cigarette and his own, then went on. “You know, Charlie, it would’ve been easy for me to kill you downstairs in the suite. Even had Tillis handy to build a frame around.”
“Why so generous, Nolan?”
“Killing you’s not the answer. Not at this point, anyway. Your boy Tillis had some influence on me, too, I suppose.”
“Tillis? How so?”
“When I asked him if he was sent to kill me or just to check me out, he said the latter, and I believe him. I read Tillis as an open kind of guy, the kind who can’t lie worth a damn.”
Charlie nodded.
“If I figured you sent Tillis to kill me, you’d be dead by now . . . but I can’t blame you for taking precautions when I did the same thing.”
“And if Tillis had been sent to kill you,” Charlie said, working an ominously bland tone into his voice, “he would’ve gotten it done.”
Nolan smiled and said, “A strong possibility. He’s a good man. Anyway, I think maybe you really are willing to talk, Charlie, and can see I am, too . . . so okay, so let’s play peacemaker.”
Werner said, “Now we’re finally getting on the right track.”
Charlie said, “Shut up.”
“You know about my cover name, Charlie,” Nolan continued. “Without it, there’s a lot of money I can’t get to. A decade-and-a-half of money.”
“That’s right, Nolan. Because all I got to do is let somebody know about that cover of yours . . . say, for instance, the FBI . . . and you’ll be busted in every sense of the word . . . busted as in broke, busted as in iron bars.”
“You got the cards,” Nolan agreed.
“I hear you want to quit heisting. Want to shuck your evil ways and get back in the club business.”
“You hear correct. Since your boys queered that job of mine back in Cicero, there isn’t a decent heist man left who’ll work with me. And I’m getting old, Charlie, and so are you. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of pretending I’m a kid.”
Charlie sat up. “I’m getting old, Nolan, you’re right on that count. And I’ve mellowed . . . I wouldn’t be here tonight if I hadn’t mellowed . . . but I can’t let this thing between us
die easy.” He smiled; his teeth were white as a shiny sink. “Sixteen years of hate doesn’t just turn to mist and drift off because we’ve had five minutes or so of goddamn chit-chat. There’s one hell of a lot more to this than that, Nolan, and a certain grudging respect we maybe got for each other, just for living this long, doesn’t change things for either of us.”
Nolan drew on the cigarette and gave the smoke a go at his lungs. “What do you want, Charlie?”
“I don’t want to kill you, Nolan, not really. My poor dead brother’s been gone a long time now, and like the anti-capital punishment boys would say, your death won’t bring him back. It’s been said revenge is a fire that burns in a man, but all fires cool with time . . . besides, even I got to admit you had cause to shoot the damn fool like you did . . . and the money you took? A drop in the bucket.” Charlie leaned forward, his eyes intense. “But do I hate you, Nolan? Do I hate you as I sit across from you like this, while the two of us chatter like a couple goddamn schoolgirls? Yes. I do, Nolan. Yes.”
Nolan knew when not to say anything.
Charlie went on, his face a soft red. “Why? Reasons, Nolan. Reasons you never once had occur to you in these sixteen years past.”
Charlie seemed to catch himself getting close to some self-appointed mark, and he stopped for a heartbeat and leaned back, trying to disguise his trembling. Nolan realized suddenly that the man had been working, working hard for restraint, to maintain a calm outer shell during these minutes of “friendly” conversation.
Nolan said, “What reasons, Charlie?”
Charlie forgot self-control and lurched forward, veins throbbing over his collar, letting loose words held in for too many years. “You made a
clown
out of me, Nolan!” He cupped his knees with his hands, and bones and veins on them stood out vividly. “You killed my brother, you stole my money, and then you got away with it! Everybody in the Family knew about it. Everybody knew a goddamn nobody
in the organization, a goddamn club manager, had made a goddamn clown out of me! No, I don’t have reason to hate you, Nolan, you didn’t do anything but
destroy my life!
Because of what you did, I never rose an inch with the Family; sixteen years after your grandstand stunt I’m still stuck in the same goddamn spot I was in then. If you hadn’t screwed things up for me, Nolan, Jesus, I might have made top man, I might be top man in the Family today!”