Hush Money (9 page)

Jon asked Nolan if he wanted a beer, and Nolan said no, he’d been drinking Scotch all night and maybe he ought to have some coffee before Felix got there. Jon fixed instant coffee and had a cup himself. They didn’t say much for the next few minutes, just sitting and drinking their coffee and enjoying the silence. Finally Nolan spoke, in a soft tone that their guest in the outer room wasn’t likely to pick up, “Kid, you did all right out there.”

“Yeah, well I hope I didn’t screw things up for you with that Family lawyer.”

“I can handle Felix. He ought to know better than to send the likes of that around.”

“How was your friend?”

“Wagner? Okay for a guy whose hobby is heart attacks.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. He’s one of those guys who pushes himself all the time. Runs all day, then goes home and runs in place. He owns that restaurant downtown, that Elks Club they converted.”

“I hear it’s really something. Seafood restaurant, isn’t it?”

“Haven’t been in there myself.” Nolan sipped his coffee. “He asked me in.”

“He asked you in? He asked you to
buy
in, you mean, as a partner?”

“Yeah.”

“Well?”

“Well what.”

“You going to do it?”

“Don’t know. Might be hard. You know where I stand with the Family.”

Jon lowered his voice even further. “You mean that if they found out about Detroit they might get pissed off? Is that what you mean?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“But don’t you want out of the Tropical? Aren’t you getting bored with that?”

“The word is numb.”

Out in the other room, Cotter said, “A cab’s pulling in. Felix is getting out.”

By the time Nolan got downstairs and outside, Felix was sitting in the back seat of the Continental, waiting with the door open for Nolan to join him. The plush interior seemed large even for a Continental, but perhaps the diminutive Felix just made it seem that way. The lawyer was wearing a gray suit, so perfectly in style he might have picked it up at the tailor’s that afternoon; his shirt was deep blue and his tie light blue. He had a Miami suntan, and a face so ordinary, so bland, if you looked away for a second you forgot it. His hair was prematurely gray and cut in a sculpted sort of way that made it look like an expensive wig. Felix was older than thirty and younger than fifty, but Nolan wouldn’t lay odds where exactly.

Nolan leaned into the car and said, “So we’re out of the motel and into the back seat. You really think that’s an improvement, Felix?”

“Nolan, please,” Felix said, his annoyance from the inconvenience Nolan had caused him showing around the edges of his voice. “Can’t you set aside your perverse sense of humor for the moment so we can get on to business at hand?”

Felix was right.

Nolan got in, shut the door, settled back to listen.

Felix cleared his throat, folded his hands like a minister counseling one of his congregation. “I’m here to make a proposition, Nolan. I’m going to have to be vague at first, and I hope you’ll bear with me. The Family is facing a, well, sensitive situation, and I can’t go into detail until I feel reasonably sure you’ll be along for the ride.”

Vague is right
, Nolan thought, but he didn’t say anything.

“Once we get into the . . . problem at hand, I think you’ll understand my caution. Before I do, may I ask a question? May I ask what your financial situation is currently?”

Nolan hesitated. Could it be Felix knew about the Detroit heist, and that this meeting was a pronouncement to the effect that Nolan was once again in the bad graces of the Chicago Family?
No,
Nolan thought,
that couldn’t be it; otherwise, what was that bullshit about wanting Nolan “along for the ride”?

“You know my situation, Felix,” he said.

“Yes, I do,” Felix said. “If you’ll excuse my bluntness, it can be stated this simply: You’re broke.”

Good,
Nolan thought.
They don’t know about Detroit; this has nothing to do with that.

“If not ‘broke’ exactly,” Felix continued, “your savings from these few months at the Tropical can’t be much to write home about, eh, Nolan?” And he laughed at his little joke.

Nolan didn’t; he just nodded.

“You’ve shown a great capability at the Tropical, Nolan. Which was of course no surprise to anyone in the Family. As you know, before, when you were more financially solvent, the Family was anxious to have your participation in a more important, more rewarding operation. But then you had some money troubles and—well, I don’t have to go into that, do I? Nolan . . . are you familiar with the Hacienda outside of Joliet?”

“Sure.”

The Hacienda was a resort purporting to be a slice of “old Mexico,” with such rustic old Mexican features as two golf courses, three swimming pools, and a dinner theater with name performers. The decor had a rich, Spanish look to it, and the most expensive of the resort’s four expensive restaurants was a glorified taco stand where patrons were served Americanized Mexican dinners at lobster prices, and nobody seemed to mind. Nobody seemed to mind, either, that you could’ve gone to Mexico itself on a three week vacation for the cost of a week at the Hacienda. And Nolan, who had been there before, knew why: the Hacienda was just the sort of elaborate, glossy hokum the rich widows and the honeymooners and the rest of the tourist trade eat up. It was a fantastic piece of work, and he’d have done anything to have a shot at running it.

“How would you like to rim the Hacienda, Nolan?”

“Now who’s got a perverse sense of humor, Felix?”

“The present manager is being moved into a similar operation at Lake Geneva. The opening at the Hacienda is there to be filled. By you, if you say the word.”

Felix had a “Let’s Make a Deal” tone in his voice: Which door will you take, Nolan, one, two, or three?

“What do you want me to say, Felix? The Tropical bores my ass off. You know that. Of course I want something bigger. Of course I want the Hacienda.”

“You’d have to buy in, naturally.”

“Well, no problem. You can have my watch as down payment.”

“One hundred thousand dollars would buy you a considerable block of stock, with options to buy more. Your salary would start at sixty thousand a year and climb. How does that sound to you?”

It sounded fine, but Nolan was starting to wonder if Felix did know about the Detroit haul. One hundred thousand bucks was, after all, Nolan’s split, prior to the loss of thirty grand or so he’d take fencing the hot money.

“You see, Nolan, the Family has . . . an assignment, you could call it, for you that wouldn’t take much of your time and effort. But it’s an assignment that you are uniquely qualified to carry out. And it’s an assignment that would pay one hundred thousand dollars.”

Nolan thought for a moment, shrugged. “My mother’s already dead. Who else is there I could kill for you?”

And Felix laughed, nervousness cracking his voice in a way that told Nolan he was perhaps not far wrong.

Three: Friday Morning

8

CARL REED’S STUDY
was an afterthought, a cubbyhole that in the architect’s original house plan was a storage room, just an oversize closet, really. But in the ten years Carl and his family had been living in their ranch-style home on the outskirts of West Lake, Iowa (a village just west of Lake Ahquabi, just south of Des Moines), the cubicle-size study had provided an invaluable sanctuary from evenings disrupted by the sounds of two teenagers growing up. Of course there was only one teen-ager around the house these days. Len was twenty-one now and taking prelaw at the U of I, while Len’s wife (a pretty little brunette girl from Des Moines who was a year older than him, with her B.A. degree behind her) taught second grade and took the burden off Dad as far as paying the kid’s bills was concerned. Which was nice for a change. Carl’s daughter Amy was seventeen, a high-school senior, a cheerleader and student council member and, with her 3.9 grade average, a potential class salutatorian. She was also a potential political radical, or so she liked to say; anyway, she was to the left of her liberal dad. Amy would be living at home next year (commuting to Drake in Des Moines) where her old man, thank the Lord, could still keep an eye on her. You’d think growing up in a little flyspeck town in the middle of Middle America would serve to isolate or at least protect a child somewhat; but apparently it didn’t. Perhaps that was because Des Moines was so close by. Whatever the reason, the kids around here were as wild and disrespectful as anywhere else, and maybe that was the way it should be: Carl wasn’t sure. But he was sure that growing up in a vacuum wasn’t good for a child, as he’d once thought it might be, and was glad his daughter had a mind, even if it didn’t necessarily mirror his own.

And that was typical of the sort of decisions Carl made in his little study: quiet, perhaps not particularly important decisions. They were the leisurely reflections of a man who grabs leisurely reflection where he can, in the midst of a life full of the wearing of various hats: politician, banker, father, husband and lover (both of those hats being worn in the presence of his wife Margaret who seemed as lovely to him today as twenty-seven years ago when they’d met on the Drake campus after the war, and thank God for Margaret’s sustaining beauty, because Carl just didn’t have the time to fool around).

There was a couch in the study, and a desk with chair and not much else. There were books and an occasional keepsake (such as the dime store loving cup inscribed “World’s Greatest Golfer” from his kids a couple of Christmases ago) in the ceiling-to-floor bookcase behind the desk. The other walls were cluttered with framed letters (the one from Robert Kennedy, particularly, he treasured) and photographs of him with various state and national political leaders (shaking hands with then-Governor Harold Hughes on the steps of the Capitol building). Sometimes he wondered whether his private sanctuary being decorated with the mementoes of his political life was a sign of idealistic dedication to public service or just overblown feelings of self-importance. Not that those two traits were necessarily contradictory. It was possible, he supposed, for a man to be both an idealist and a pompous ass. He just hoped he didn’t fit the description himself.

This study, then, was his private, self-confessional booth, a place for the sort of soul-searching everyone must go through, now and then, to retain sanity in a chaotic universe. But tonight (or this morning, as it was nearly one-thirty already; he’d been sitting here for hours now) his usual run of the soul-searching mill was set aside for more practical concerns. And first priority was the sorting out of the events of the day—or, rather, yesterday—to try and make some coherent meaning out of them, to try and find the proper response for Carl H. Reed to make to these events.

The shooting at the country club, on the heels of Joey DiPreta’s bribery attempt, seemed to have happened years ago, rather than mere hours. The events seemed to recede in his memory like a nightmare that, while vividly realistic as it runs its course, begins to fade immediately on waking. They were the stuff of madness, and his subconscious was trying desperately to protect his psyche, but Carl wouldn’t let it; he sat at his desk and set those events out before himself and examined them one by one.

Perhaps the most confusing of all was the only event he himself had controlled: his conduct at the police station. The station was on the East Side, across from the old post office and near the bridge, an ancient, rambling stone building he had driven by daily but had never really seen before, not before today, when he found himself in the company of two detectives, who ushered him into a gray-walled cubicle about the size of this study but hardly as pleasant and asked him questions about the shooting.

And he hadn’t told them.

Why? Even now he wasn’t sure. Oh, he’d told them about the shooting itself, of course. What was there to tell? The eerie experience of seeing the bullet tear through DiPreta
followed
by the sound of gunfire. He’d told them that, and they’d nodded.

But when one of them—the hatchet-faced, pockmarked guy with the short-cropped gray hair—Cummins his name was—began to ask questions (such as “Were you aware of Joseph DiPreta’s alleged connections to organized crime?”) Carl had held back. Held back the conversation leading up to the shooting. Held back DiPreta’s offer of fifty thousand dollars “hush money.”

And it certainly wasn’t because he’d had second thoughts about the offer; it wasn’t that Carl was waiting for another DiPreta to come around so he could accept this time. Quite the reverse was true. Every time he thought about Joey DiPreta’s offer he got indignant all over again.

So what had it been? Why hadn’t he said anything?

“Carl?”

He turned in his chair. It was Margaret, peeking in the door behind him. She was in an old blue dressing gown and her hair was in curlers and she wore no makeup and she was beautiful.

“Dear?” he said.

“I thought you might like a drink.” And she handed him a Scotch on the rocks.

Margaret didn’t approve of drinking, and Carl had long ago had to put aside his college-days habit of two-fisted drinking, at home anyway. The liquor cabinet was stocked strictly for social affairs, and a before-dinner or before-bedtime cocktail was not the habit around this household. So for Margaret to fix and bring him a drink was an occasion. He was suitably impressed.

“Thank you, Maggie. What have I done to deserve this?”

She came over and sat on the edge of the desk. She smiled in mock irritation. “You’ve stayed up close to two in the morning, worrying me half to death with your brooding, is what you’ve done.”

“Is Amy off to bed?”

“Yes. You shouldn’t have told her she could stay up for that late movie. It just got over a few minutes ago, can you imagine? And on a school night.”

“She’s a young woman, Maggie. If she wants to trade sleep for some silly movie, that’s up to her.”

“The Great Liberal. If I had my way, the girl would have some discipline.”

“The Great Conservative. If you had your way, she’d be in petticoats.”

And they laughed. It was a running argument/joke that came out of one of the better kept secrets in the state: Maggie Reed was a conservative Republican who canceled her husband’s vote every time they went to the polls—with one obvious exception.

“Carl . . .”

“Maggie?”

“Did . . . did what happened this afternoon upset you terribly? Does it bother you terribly, what you saw?”

Carl sipped the Scotch. He nodded. “That’s part of what’s on my mind, I guess. Come on. Let’s go over and sit on the couch. What’s it like outside? Kind of stuffy in here.”

“There’s a nice breeze. I’ll open the window.”

Maggie opened the window by the couch and they sat together and he told her about Joey DiPreta and the offer he’d made. He hadn’t been able to tell the police, but Maggie he could tell. She listened with rapt interest and with an indignation similar to his own. The very idea of someone even considering her husband corruptible got up the Irish in her.

“What did the police say when you told them about this?”

“That’s just it, Maggie. That’s what I’m sitting here mulling over. You see, I didn’t tell the police what I’ve just told you.”

“Carl . . . why not?”

“I’m not sure, exactly. Have you ever been inside the police station?”

“Just downstairs. To pay parking tickets.”

“Well, then you know the atmosphere, at least.”

“You mean the halls seem so cold and clammy.”

“That’s it. And there’s an antiseptic odor, like a public restroom that’s just been cleaned. I can’t explain it, but that atmosphere got to me, somehow, and I found myself hesitating when that detective, Cummins, began asking questions.”

“
Are
you going to tell them?”

“I don’t know. There was something about that fella Cummins that . . . I don’t know.”

“What was it about the detective that made you lie to him, Carl?”

“Dear, I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell the truth.”

“Now you do sound like a politician.”

“Please. That’s hitting below the belt. If you want to talk about
that
kind of politician, talk about my predecessor, Grayson—one of your Republicans, incidentally—who was on the DiPreta payroll and raked in God knows
how
much money.”

“You must’ve had a reason, Carl, for holding back when that detective questioned you.”

“Well, I did have a reason. Or not a reason, really . . . a feeling. Instinct. Something about that man Cummins. I just didn’t feel comfortable with him. Didn’t trust him is what it boils down to, I guess.”

“Didn’t trust him?”

“I guess not, or I would have told him what I knew. It was just that his voice stayed so flat, so controlled, while his eyes . . . shifting around all the time, narrowing, nervous . . . God, Maggie, the damn eagerness in those eyes. Lord.”

“Could he be on the DiPreta payroll himself, Carl?”

“That thought occurred to me. Of course. And why not? If the DiPretas can buy a state highway commissioner, they can buy a lowly damn detective on the Des Moines police force. Sure.”

“Then I think you did the right thing. Holding back, I mean. But where do you go now?”

“I don’t know. I have to admit the whole thing’s got me a little bit scared, Maggie. Maybe more than a little bit. Suppose I had talked freely to Cummins. When word of my refusing Joey DiPreta’s offer got back to the surviving DiPretas, that and my telling of that offer to the police, well, I might not have made it home tonight. I might have had a mysterious accident of some sort, got run off the road by a drunken driver, something of that sort.”

“My God, Carl, now you’re starting to get
me
scared, too.”

“You should be. Because the DiPretas are going to make their offer again. I don’t know when or how, but they will. My business meeting with Joey DiPreta was interrupted, but as soon as the smoke clears, the rest of the family will be there to take up where Joey left off. Since I said nothing to the police, the DiPretas will assume Joey either didn’t get a chance to make his offer or that he did and I accepted. Either way, they’ll be wanting to see me.”

“What can you do? Couldn’t you go to the newspapers?”

“Telling the press isn’t a bad idea, Maggie, but I have no evidence. Just my word about what a dead man told me. I’ve been thinking it over. Carefully. I’ve been examining what I’ve seen today, and heard. I’ve been thinking about what options are open to me. And I’ve decided to amass evidence on my own. DiPreta said that as soon as I begin to delve into the highway commission records it’ll become apparent enough what was going on during Grayson’s administration. So I’ll begin that examination, tomorrow. Today. As a full-time project. And I’ll keep the lid on, too.  Minimum of secretarial help, and then only in a way that could not make clear what I was up to. It’ll be a tough, time-consuming job, but it shouldn’t take me long, if I get at it, and when I have the evidence amassed,
then
I will talk to the press. I’ll hold a press conference and tell the damn
world
. But not ’til then.”