Hush Money (8 page)

“Something urgent? You want Nolan to go to Chicago right away, then?”

“More urgent than that, kid. Felix came himself. He’s waitin’ out at the Howard Johnson’s. Something’s come up that can’t fuckin’ wait, kid, so shake it, will you?”

“I know where Nolan is. I can call him.”

“Then call him, for Christ’s sake.”

“Okay. You can get up now, if you want. If you can.”

“Don’t worry about me. I can get up, all right. You ain’t that fuckin’ tough, you little punk.”

“I thought we were on friendly terms now. I thought you weren’t looking for trouble.”

“Friendly terms, my fuckin’ ass. You best keep your balls covered when you see me comin’, kid. I like to even my scores.”

“Then you better not forget to give me a nose bleed, too, while you’re at it.”

“Fuck you. Give me my gun, why don’t you, before you shoot your dick off or something?”

“When Nolan gets here. Let’s go out and call him. Come on, get up. This time I’ll be following you, remember.”

And Jon, gun in hand, followed the guy into the living room, deposited him on the couch. Jon pulled a chair up opposite the guy so he could face him, keep an eye on him, and used the phone on the coffee table between them. Jon’s hand trembled around the receiver. He was acting tough, as Nolan would’ve wanted him to. He’d handled himself well, he knew that. But he was trembling just the same.

7

NOLAN PULLED
the Eldorado in next to a Lincoln Continental and got out, confused.

The Eldorado, which was gold, and the Continental, which was dark blue, took up all three of the slantwise spaces alongside the antique shop. Nolan’s Eldorado was actually the Tropical’s. His ever owning a Cadillac was unlikely, because he saw them as the automotive equivalent of an alcoholic, swilling gas with no thought of tomorrow. As far as he was concerned, a Cadillac was just a Pontiac with gland trouble. Still, being behind the wheel of one for the past couple of months had given him a feeling of—what?—prestige he guessed, and seeing the Lincoln Continental was somehow a sobering experience.

Neither car made much sense in the context of the old antique shop, which was a two-story white clapboard structure bordering on the rundown, whose junk-filled showcase windows wouldn’t seem likely to attract even the most eccentric of wealthy collectors. In fact the shop looked more like a big old house than a place of business, which was only right because, other than the Dairy Queen and grade school across the way and the gas station next door, this was a residential neighborhood, a quiet, middle-class Iowa City street lined with trees still thick with red and copper leaves. The inhabitants of this shady lane would’ve been shocked to know of the different sort of shadiness attached to various activities centered for some years now in the harmless-looking old shop. This thought occurred to Nolan as he opened the trunk of the Eldorado, reaching behind the spare tire for the holstered Smith & Wesson .38 stowed there. Not that the thought worried him. It was late now, approaching midnight, the street was empty, no one at all who might notice him. Even the gas station across the alley was closed. He shut the trunk, slung on the shoulder holster, grabbed his sports coat out of the back seat, slipped into the coat.

He’d immediately recognized the Lincoln Continental as Felix’s, but that only served to confuse him further. What in hell was Felix doing in Iowa City? The answer to that was obvious enough: he was here to see Nolan. But why? No obvious answer there.

No pleasant one, anyway.

The side door to the shop wasn’t locked. Nolan withdrew the .38 and went in, cautious to the point of paranoia. There was always the chance that Jon had lost control of the situation since calling or, worse yet, that Jon had been forced to make the call in the first place. Nolan doubted the latter, as he felt pretty sure Jon would’ve sneaked a warning into his words somewhere,
some
indication, implication of trouble, and Nolan had been over Jon’s words and their inflections a dozen times in the course of the ten-minute drive from Wagner’s house out on the edge of town.

But being careful never hurt, and when the footing wasn’t sure, Nolan was the most careful man alive. Because alive was how he intended to stay.

“Nolan?” Jon called from upstairs. “Is that you, Nolan?”

“It’s me.”

“Come on up.”

Nolan leaned against the wall at the bottom of the stairwell. He said, “How you hanging, kid?”

“Loose, Nolan. Nice and easy and loose. Come on up.”

That convinced him. Jon’s voice had nothing in it but relief Nolan was there.

And once upstairs he found that Jon did indeed have things well in hand. Sitting on the couch was a rat-faced little mustached man, his blue suit cut large in the coat to accommodate shoulder holster and gun, though the latter was presently being trained on its owner by Jon, and the way the suit was rumpled it was apparent the guy had been on the floor a couple of times lately and not making love, either. Also the guy was holding some Kleenex to his nose and had a generally battered look about him. Nolan put his gun away and Jon said hello.

“You’re getting better all the time, kid,” Nolan said, unable to repress a grin. “I got to learn to stop underestimating you.”

Jon, too, was unable to suppress his reaction, getting an aw-shucks look, which faded quickly as he said, “I’m not so sure you did underestimate me, Nolan. The first time I fouled up. I hit him in the nose—” Jon bobbed his head forward to indicate what he’d hit the guy with—”but he bounced back and it wasn’t till I kicked him in the balls that I finally got him.”

Nolan nodded. “That’ll do it.”

The rat-faced guy lowered the Kleenex and said, “You two fuckers gonna gloat all night, or can we get over to the Howard Johnson’s and see Felix? He’s been waiting half an hour. What do you say?”

“Felix sent you?” Nolan said, acting surprised. “I don’t believe it. And you say he’s waiting to see me out at the Howard Johnson’s? I don’t believe that, either.”

“I wouldn’t fuck around, I were you,” the guy said. “You think Felix came all the way from Chicago just to check out the fuckin’ Howard John son’s.”

“Maybe he likes the clams,” Nolan said.

“I’m laughin’,” the guy said. “I were you, Nolan, I’d shake a fuckin’ leg.”

“Don’t call me Nolan,” Nolan said.

“Oh? Why the fuck not?”

“Because,” Nolan said, “I don’t know you and you don’t know me, and it’s an arrangement that’s worked fine ’til now, so leave it alone.”

Jon said, “Nolan, I had no idea he works for that Felix character. I mean, the guy broke in the house and came up on me when I was asleep, and I saw his gun and . . .”

“You did the right thing. It’s just a little surprising Felix would send such low-caliber help around. I didn’t know the Family was hurting so bad.”

“Hey, Nolan,” the guy said, “tell you what. How ’bout you suck my dick and choke on it?”

Nolan went over and grabbed the guy’s ear and twisted. “Be polite,” he said.

“Christ! Awright, awright! Christ almighty, let go my fuckin’ ear! Here on out, I’m Emily fuckin’ Post!”

“Okay,” Nolan said and let go of the ear.

The guy sat with one hand on his ear and the other covering his nose and eyes with Kleenex; if he’d had another hand to cover his mouth, he could’ve been all three monkeys.

Nolan reached over and picked the phone off the coffee table and tossed it on the guy’s lap.

“Make a call,” Nolan said. “I want to talk to Felix.”

“Call him yourself, motherfucker!”

“I thought I told you to be polite.”

“Okay, okay! Shit. Jesus.” The guy stopped to look at lie Kleenex and decided his nose was no longer bleeding. He composed himself. He dialed the phone and when he got the desk clerk he asked for Felix’s room.

“This is Cotter,” the guy said. “Well, I’m here with Nolan now is where I am. . . . Yeah, at the antique shop. . . .
Well, I had a little trouble. . . . No, just a little trouble. I guess you might say I didn’t handle this the best I could. . . . Yeah, I guess you could say that too. Look, Nolan wants to talk to you.” Cotter covered the mouthpiece and said, “Hey, I was supposed to bring you out to see him right away, and now I’m calling up and you’re wanting to talk to him and it’s making me look bad. Give me a goddamn break and don’t go into the, you know, little hassles we been havin’. I mean I come out on the shitty end of the stick anyway, right? A fuckin’ half-hour nosebleed, you twistin’ my fuckin’ ear off my head, and I’m sittin’ here with my balls needin’ a fuckin’ ice pack or something, so give me a goddamn break, what do you say?”

“Sure,” Nolan said and took the phone.

“Nolan?” Felix said. “What’s going on there?”

“Hello, Felix,” Nolan said. “Say, are you missing an incompetent asshole? One turned up here.”

“Nolan, I apologize,” Felix said. “I don’t know what’s been happening there, but you have my apologies. This was a rather hastily contrived affair and I regret its being so rough around the edges.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean, Felix?”

“I have a room here at the motel, Nolan. This is a very important matter I’ve come to discuss with you, a matter of utmost urgency. Can you come out here straight away so we can put our heads together?”

“Well, I tell you, Felix. We put our heads together maybe four or five times so far this year and each time it’s in a motel room. Every damn time I see you it’s in a motel room. I start to feeling like some cheap whore meeting a businessman on his lunch hour.”

Felix laughed at that, trying to keep the laugh from sounding nervous, and came back jokingly, “Now how can you compare yourself to a whore, Nolan, with the kind of money you make?”

“Call girl, then. What’s in a name? Either way you get screwed.”

“Nolan . . .”

One nice thing about Felix was that he was afraid of Nolan. Nolan had learned early on that intimidation was his most effective means of dealing with Felix, which was one of the big advantages of going through a middle-man lawyer instead of dealing with the Family direct.

“Felix, maybe you don’t think it’s important, maybe you don’t think it’s worth talking about, but when you send a guy around who breaks into my friend’s house and sticks a gun in my friend’s face, I guess I get a little—I don’t know—perturbed, you could say. So I don’t think I want to come see you at Howard Johnson’s, Felix, whether you come all the way from Chicago to see me or China or where. You come here and we’ll talk, if I’m over being perturbed by that time.”

“Nolan, I don’t even have the car here.”

“Take a cab, Felix. Hitchhike. Walk. Do what you want.”

Nolan hung up.

Cotter said, “Thanks a whole fuckin’ bunch, pal. Now I’m really gonna get my fuckin’ ass fried. Thanks, fucker, thanks for—”

“Jon, take that Kleenex he’s been bleeding in and stick it in his mouth, will you? I’m tired of listening to him.”

“Hey,” Cotter said. “Here on out, I’m a deaf mute.” And he covered his mouth.

Nolan dragged a chair over by the window and had Cotter sit in it.

“You watch for Felix,” he told him. “And let us know when he’s here.”

So Cotter sat by the window and Nolan and Jon sat at the table in the kitchen, from which they could see Cotter plainly through the open archway.