Hush Money (16 page)

She was confused and rightfully so, Nolan thought. Her brother’s “wartime” precautions (and they were half-assed, insufficient precautions, at that) meant nothing to her.

“Nolan, do you think maybe you could talk to Stevie? Do you think maybe you could find out what’s going on?”

“Yes.” He stroked her hair. It was incredibly blonde. “But right now just take it easy, Diane. Take it nice and easy.”

“Nolan.”

“What.”

They were whispering. She was in his arms, and they were whispering.

“Nolan, I was in love with you when I was thirteen.”

“I know you were. But you had braces, remember?”

“And I was flat-chested, too.” She took his hand and put it under her robe. “Do you think there’s been any improvement?”

“I think so.”

“I haven’t made love in a long time. I haven’t been able to. After my parents died, I . . . I was dead inside too. That’s . . . part of why the divorce happened.”

“I see.”

“That feels good. Keep doing that.”

“I intend to.”

“Nolan.”

“Hmmm?”

“Could you make love to me?”

“I could.”

“You’d have to make it gentle. I’m . . . I’m not sure what I’m doing. I mean I’m kind of mixed up.”

“I could be gentle.”

“Why don’t you kiss me and see what happens?”

He did.

“Yes,” she said. “I think it would be good.”

“I do too.”

“Where?”

It was dim there in the living room. The day outside was overcast, and once he’d gone over and drawn the curtains the room was very dark.

“Here on the couch?” he asked.

“Here on the couch’ll be fine.”

She slipped the terry robe down over her shoulders. Underneath she wore sheer beige panties and lots of pale, pale flesh; even her nipples were pale, which added to the platinum blonde hair bouncing around her shoulders and peeking through her sheer panties, gave her an almost ghostly beauty. Nolan stood and undressed and looked down at the girl, studied her delicate, softly curved body, watched her slip out of the panties and open herself to him, like a flower, and for just a moment he felt like a child molester.

But only for a moment.

14

NOLAN GOT IN
easy enough. He simply told the landlady, Mrs. Parker, that he was Steven’s favorite uncle, and that he wanted to surprise the boy, and she smiled and led him downstairs, through the laundry room, to the doorway of the basement apartment.

“There’s no lock on the door,” she whispered. “You can go on in.” She was a plump, middle-aged woman with prematurely white hair and a motherly attitude that irritated Nolan. He didn’t like being mothered by a broad so close to his own age.

He thanked her, but did not “go on in” just yet. Instead he waited several long awkward moments for Mrs. Parker to leave, which she finally did, and the smile of thanks frozen on his face like the expression on a figure in a wax museum melted away. He didn’t think the landlady would’ve understood why Steven’s favorite uncle might find it necessary to enter his nephew’s chambers with .38 in hand.

But it turned out the .38 wasn’t necessary after all.

McCracken wasn’t home.

Nolan returned the gun to the underarm holster but left his coat unbuttoned. He looked around the room. It didn’t take long.

The large basement room McCracken lived in was sparsely furnished: just a big, basically empty room, which made sense. A soldier lived here. Or anyway somebody who fancied himself a soldier, Nolan thought, fancied himself engaged in a personal, private war. This wasn’t an apartment; it was a barracks, a billet.

It didn’t take long to find the soldier’s arsenal, either. Nolan eased open the doors of a tall wardrobe, and there in the bottom of the cabinet were the weapons of the McCracken assault team: Weatherby with scope, .357 Mag Colt, 9- millimeter Browning and a Thompson sub, no less. There was ammo, of course, and about half a dozen grenades.

He went over and sat on the couch, put his feet on the coffee table. He folded his arms so he could sit and wait without getting the .38 out but still have fast access to the gun. He figured McCracken might freak at the sight of the drawn revolver, might pull a gun himself and the shooting would begin before talking had a chance to. Steve had seemed stable as a kid, but a lot of years had gone by since then; sometimes a seemingly normal child developed into a psychopath. Maybe Steve McCracken wasn’t a psychopath, but he’d sure been showing violent tendencies these past twenty-four hours or so.

In a way, Nolan couldn’t blame the boy. McCracken was a soldier trained in an unpopular, perhaps meaningless war. Why should it surprise anybody if the boy should put that training to personal, practical use? From Steve McCracken’s point of view, Nolan realized, his reasoning behind the destruction of the DiPreta family seemed valid as hell. After being a part of the military jacking itself off in Vietnam, why shouldn’t the boy seek a crusade for a change? A holy goddamn war?

McCracken was inside and had the door locked behind him and still hadn’t seen Nolan.

“How you been, Steve?” Nolan said.

Steve turned around fast, got into a crouch that spoke of training in at least one of the Eastern martial arts.

Bit Nolan was well-versed in the major American martial art and calmly withdrew the primary instrument of that art from his shoulder holster. He showed the gun to Steve McCracken, said, “Sit down, Steve. On the floor. Over there on the floor just this side of the middle of the room.”

And the boy did as he was told. “Who the hell are you?” he said, sitting Indian-style. His voice was deep, but it sounded young, like a voice that had just changed.

“I guess I don’t look the same,” Nolan said. “Your sister didn’t recognize me at first, either. I think it’s the mustache.”

“Mustache my ass, I’ve never seen you before in my life. And what’s this about my sister . . . ?”

“I wouldn’t have recognized you, either. You’ve grown.”

Grown was right: Steve McCracken was more than a foot taller than the last time Nolan had seen him. Of course, then Steve was ten or twelve years old. Now he was in his mid-to-late-twenties and a massively built kid, whose whitish blonde hair and skimpy mustache made him look more like a muscle-bound California surf bum than a one-man army.

“If you’re here to shoot me,” Steve said, “get on with it.”

“Christ, you’re a melodramatic little prick. I guess it figures. You used to love those damn cowboy movies you and your dad used to drag me to. Randolph Scott. Christ, how you loved Randolph Scott.”

“Who . . . who are you?”

“I’m the guy who used to sit between you and your dad, when we went to Comiskey Park to watch the Sox on Sunday afternoons.”

“Nolan?”

Nolan nodded.

“I haven’t seen you since I was a kid,” Steve said. He seemed confused.

“You’re still a kid. And a screwed-up kid at that, and since your dad isn’t around anymore, I guess I’m all that’s left to get you straight again.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean somebody’s got to put a stop to what you’re doing before you get your ass shot off.”

“You go to hell.”

Nolan grinned. “Good. I like that. It’ll save time if we can skip the pretense and get right down to it. You been killing and generally terrorizing members of the DiPreta family. It’s crazy and it’s got to stop.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Will you listen to me? Will you hear me out?”

‘Why should I?”

“Because I got a gun on you.”

“Well, that is a good reason.”

“I know it is. But I’d like it better if we could forget the goddamn guns for a minute and go over and sit at that table and have some beer and just talk. What do you say?”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

Nolan rose from the couch. Steve got up off the floor, headed for the refrigerator. Nolan put the .38 away. Steve got the beers. Nolan approached the table. Steve handed him one beer, kept the other. They sat.

“Let me ask you a question, Nolan.”

“All right. I may not answer, but all right.”

“What makes you think you can trust me? How do you know I won’t hit you in the eye with a can of beer or something?”

“You might,” Nolan conceded, nodding. “You might even take my gun away from me. I don’t think you’re that good, really, but it’s possible.”

“Suppose I did. Suppose I took your gun away from you. What’s to prevent me from using it on you?”

“Your own inflated damn idea of yourself.”

“My what?”

“You’re a man with a cause. You make up your own rules, but you stick to them. This morning, for instance. You wouldn’t really toss a live grenade into a room full of mostly innocent bystanders. Oh, you don’t mind throwing a firecracker and scaring folks a little—that’s part of unnerving the shit out of Frank and causing more general chaos in the DiPreta ranks. But you don’t kill anybody but DiPretas, and maybe DiPreta people, and since you don’t know whether or not I’m a DiPreta man yet, I figure I’m safe for the moment.”

“That’s a pretty thin supposition, Nolan.”

“Not when you add it to my being an old friend of your father’s. After all, you’re in this because of your father, and you’re not about to go killing off his friends unless you’re sure they got it coming.”

“I get the feeling you’re making fun of me.”

“Well, I do think you’re something of an ass, if that’s what you mean. But I don’t mean to make light of this situation. I spent the afternoon with your sister, Steve. I like her. I understand she’s got a nice little daughter.”

“What’s your point?”

“I was hoping you’d have seen it by now. Look, how do you think I found you? Your phone is unlisted, isn’t even in your name, is it?”

“No, it isn’t. How
did
you find me?”

“Diane gave me the address.”

“But I told her not to give it out under any—”

“And yet here I am. I sweet-talked it out of her, but there are other, less pleasant ways of getting information out of people.”

“They wouldn’t dare—”

“They wouldn’t? You mean the DiPretas wouldn’t? Why? Because it’s not nice? You shoot Joey DiPreta with a Weatherby four-sixty Mag, tear the fucking guts right out of the man, and you expect the DiPretas to play by some unspoken set of knightly rules? You’re an ass.”

Steve looked down at the table. “They don’t have any idea it’s me, anyway.”

“They don’t? I heard Frank DiPreta, just a few hours ago, say he had a good idea who was responsible for Joey’s death. And I also know for a fact the Chicago family has a line on you, has had for months.”