A Century of Great Suspense Stories

A Matter of Principal Max Allan Collins

Rare is the writer who makes an entire subgenre his own. But that’s just what Max Allan Collins has done with his Nate Heller historical private eye novels. From Bugsy Siegel to Amelia Earhart, from Al Capone to the Lindbergh infant, Collins has brought brilliant entertainment to the worldwide reading public, making him a major writer of his generation. A New York Times best-selling author, he has also written the Dick Tracy comic strip, produced at least four other series, become a legend in the world of comic book writing, and even managed to head up a very busy rock-and-roll band while keeping up his mystery career. He has also, if that is not enough, written screenplays for Hollywood and written and produced three films of his own, most notably Mommy and Mommy 2: Mommy’s Day, both of which were praised highly by esteemed critic Leonard Maltin. Both are available on home video.

It had been a long time since I’d had any trouble sleeping. Probably Vietnam, and that was gunfire that kept me awake. I’ve never been an insomniac. You might think killing people for a living would give you restless nights. Truth is, those that go into that business simply aren’t the kind who are bothered by it much.

I was no exception. I hadn’t gone into retirement because my conscience was bothering me. I retired because the man I got my contracts through got killed — well, actually I killed him, but that’s another story — and I had enough money put away to live comfortably without working, so I did.

The A-frame cottage on Paradise Lake was secluded enough for privacy, but close enough to nearby Lake Geneva to put me in contact with human beings, if I was so inclined, which I rarely was, with the exception of getting laid now and then. I’m human.

There was also a restaurant nearby, called Wilma’s Welcome Inn, a rambling two-story affair that included a gas station, modest hotel accommodations and a convenience store. I’d been toying with the idea of buying the place, which had been slipping since the death of Wilma; I’d been getting a little bored lately and needed something to do. Before I started putting people to sleep, I worked in a garage as a mechanic, so the gas station angle appealed to me.

Anyway, boredom had started to itch at me, and for the past few nights I’d had trouble sleeping. I sat up all night watching satellite TV and reading paperback westerns; then I’d drag around the next day, maybe drifting to sleep in the afternoon just long enough to fuck up my sleep cycle again that night.

It was getting irritating.

At about three-thirty in the morning on the fourth night of this shit, I decided eating might do the trick. Fill my gut with junk food and the blood could rush down from my head and warm my belly and I’d get the fuck sleepy, finally. I hadn’t tried this before because I’d been getting a trifle paunchy, since I quit working, and since winter kicked in.

In the summer I’d swim in the lake every day and get exercise and keep the spare tire off. But in the winter I’d just let my beard go and belt-size, too. Winters made me fat and lazy and, now, fucking sleepless.

The cupboard was bare so I threw on my thermal jacket and headed over to the Welcome Inn. At this time of night the convenience store was the only thing open, that and one self-serve gas pump.

The clerk was a heavy-set brunette named Cindy from nearby Twin Lakes. She was maybe twenty years old and a little surly, but she worked all night, so who could blame her.

“Mr. Ryan,” she said, flatly, as I came in, the bell over the door jingling.

“Cindy,” I said, with a nod, and began prowling the place, three narrow aisles parallel to the front of the building. None of the snacks appealed to me — chips and crackers and Twinkies and other preservative-packed delights — and the frozen food case ran mostly to ice-cream sandwiches and popsicles. In this weather, that was a joke.

I was giving a box of Chef Boyardee lasagna an intent once-over, like it was a car I was considering buying, when the bell over the door jingled again. I glanced up and saw a heavy-set man — heavy-set enough to make Cindy look svelte — with a pockmarked face and black-rimmed glasses that fogged up as he stepped in.

He wore an expensive topcoat — tan, a camel’s hair number you could make payments on for a year and still owe — and his shoes had a bright black city shine, barely flecked with ice and snow. His name was Harry Something, and he was from Chicago. I knew him, in another life.

I turned my back. If he saw me, I’d have to kill him, and I was bored, but not that bored.

Predictably, Harry Something went straight for the potato chips; he also rustled around the area where cookies were shelved. I risked a glimpse and saw him, not two minutes after he entered, with his arms full of junk food, heading for the front counter.

“Excuse me, miss,” Harry Something said, depositing his groceries before Cindy. His voice was nasal and high-pitched; a funny, childish voice for a man his size. “Could you direct me to the sanitary napkins?”

“You mean Kotex?”

“Whatever.”

“The toiletries is just over there.”

Now this was curious, and I’ll tell you why. I had met Harry Something around ten years before, when I was doing a job for the Outfit boys. I was never a mob guy, mind you, strictly a freelancer, but their money was as good as anybody’s. What that job was isn’t important, but Harry and his partner Louis were the locals who had fucked up, making my outsider’s presence necessary. Harry and Louis had not been friendly toward me. They had threatened me, in fact. They had beaten the hell out of me in my hotel room, when the job was over, for making them look bad.

I had never taken any sort of revenge out on them. I occasionally do take revenge, but at my convenience, and when a score strikes me as worth settling. Harry and Louis had really just pushed me around a little, bloodied my nose, tried to earn back a little self-respect. So I didn’t hold a grudge. Not a major grudge. Fuck it.

As to why Harry Something purchasing Kotex in the middle of the night at some backwoods convenience store was curious, well, Harry and Louis were gay. They were queens of crime. Mob muscle who worked as a pair, and played as a pair.

I don’t mean to be critical. To each his own. I’d rather cut my dick off than insert it in any orifice of a repulsive fat slob like Harry Something. But that’s just me.

And me, I’m naturally curious. I’m not nosy, not even inquisitive. But when a faggot buys Kotex, I have to wonder why.

“Excuse me,” Harry Something said, brushing by me.

He hadn’t seen my face — he might not recognize me, in any case. Ten years and a beard and twenty pounds later, I wasn’t as easy to peg as Harry was, who had changed goddamn little.

Harry, having stocked up on cookies and chips and Kotex, was now buying milk and packaged macaroni and cheese and provisions in general. He was shopping. Stocking up.

And now I knew what he was up to.

I nodded to surly Cindy, who bid me goodbye by flickering her eyelids in casual contempt, and went out to my car, a blue sporty Mazda I’d purchased recently. I wished I’d had the four-wheel drive, or anything less conspicuous, but I didn’t. I sat in the car, scooched down low; I did not turn on the engine. I just sat in the cold car in the cold night and waited.

Harry Something came out with two armloads of groceries — Kotex included, I presumed — and he put them in the front seat of a brown rental Ford. Louis was not waiting for him. Harry was alone.

Which further confirmed my suspicions.

I waited for him to pull out onto the road, waited for him to take the road’s curve, then started up my Mazda and glided out after him. He had turned left, toward Twin Lakes and Lake Geneva. That made sense, only I figured he wouldn’t wind up either place. I figured he’d be out in the boonies somewhere.

I knew what Harry was up to. I knew he wasn’t exactly here to ski. That lardass couldn’t stand up on a pair of skis. And he wasn’t here to go ice-fishing, either. A city boy like Harry Something had no business in a touristy area like this, in the off-season — unless Harry was hiding out, holing up somewhere.

This would be the perfect area for that.

Only Harry didn’t use Kotex.

He turned off on a side road, into a heavily wooded area that wound back toward Paradise Lake. Good. That was very good.

I went on by. I drove a mile, turned into a farmhouse gravel drive and headed back without lights. I slowed as I reached the mouth of the side road, and could see Harry’s tail lights wink off.

I knew the cabin at the end of that road. There was only one, and its owner only used it during the summer; Harry was either a renter, or a squatter.

I glided on by and went back home. I left the Mazda next to the deck and walked up the steps and into my A-frame. The nine millimeter was in the nightstand drawer. The gun hadn’t been shot in months — Christ, maybe over a year. But I cleaned and oiled it regularly. It would do fine.

So would my black turtle-neck, black jeans, black leather bomber jacket, and this black moonless night. I slipped a .38 revolver in the bomber jacket right side pocket, and clipped a hunting knife to my belt. The knife was razor sharp with a sword point; I sent for it out of the back of one of those dumb-ass ninja magazines — which are worthless except for mail-ordering weapons.

I walked along the edge of the lake, my running shoes crunching the brittle ground, layered as it was with snow and ice and leaves. The only light came from a gentle scattering of stars, a handful of diamonds flung on black velvet; the frozen lake was a dark presence that you could sense but not really see. The surrounding trees were even darker. The occasional cabin or cottage or house I passed was empty. I was one of only a handful of residents on Paradise Lake who lived year-round.

But the lights were on in one cabin. Not many lights, but lights. And its chimney was trailing smoke.

The cabin was small, a traditional log cabin like Abe Lincoln and syrup, only with a satellite dish. Probably two bedrooms, a living room, kitchenette and a can or two. Only one car — the brown rental Ford.

My footsteps were lighter now; I was staying on the balls of my feet and the crunching under them was faint. I approached with caution and gun in hand and peeked in a window on the right front side.

Harry Something was sitting on the couch, eating barbecue potato chips, giving himself an orange-mustache in the process. His feet were up on a coffee table. More food and a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun were on the couch next to him. He wore a colorful Hawaiian shirt; he looked like Don Ho puked on him, actually.

Hovering nervously nearby, was Louis, a small, skinny, bald ferret of a man, who wore jeans and a black shirt and a white tie. I couldn’t tell whether he was trying for trendy or gangster, and frankly didn’t give a shit, either way.

Physically, all the two men had in common was pockmarks and a desire for the other’s ugly body.

And neither one of them seemed to need a sanitary napkin, though a towelette would’ve come in handy for Harry Something. Jesus.

I huddled beneath the window, wondering what I was doing here. Boredom. Curiosity. I shrugged. Time to look in another window or two.

Because they clearly had a captive. That’s what they were doing in the boonies. That’s why they were stocking up on supplies at a convenience store in the middle of night and nowhere. That’s why they were in the market for Kotex. That’s what I’d instinctively, immediately known back at the Welcome Inn.

And in a back window, I saw her. She was naked on a bed in the rustic room, naked but for white panties. She was sitting on the edge of the bed and she was crying, a black-haired, creamy-fleshed beauty in her early twenties.

Obviously, Harry and Louis had nothing sexual in mind for this girl; the reason for her nudity was to help prevent her fleeing. The bed was heavy with blankets, and she’d obviously been keeping under the covers, but right now she was sitting and crying. That time of the month.

I stood in the dark in my dark clothes with a gun in my hand and my back to the log cabin and smiled. When I’d come out into the night, armed like this, it wasn’t to effect a rescue. Whatever else they were, Harry and Louis were dangerous men. If I was going to spend my sleepless night satisfying my curiosity and assuaging my boredom by poking into their business, I had to be ready to pay for my thrills.

But the thing was, I recognized this young woman. Like Harry, I spent a lot of hours during cold nights like this with my eyes frozen to a TV screen. And that’s where I’d seen her: on the tube.

Not an actress, no — an heiress. The daughter of a Chicago media magnate whose name you’d recognize, a guy who inherited money and wheeled-and-dealed his way into more, including one of the satellite super-stations I’d been wasting my eyes on lately. The Windy City’s answer to Ted Turner, right down to boating and womanizing.

His daughter was a little wild, frequently seen in the company of rock stars (she had a tattoo of a star — not Mick Jagger, a five-pointed star star — on her white left breast, which I could see from the window) and was a Betty Ford clinic drop-out. Nonetheless, she was said to be the apple of her daddy’s eye, even if that apple was a tad wormy.

So Harry and Louis had put the snatch on the snatch; fair enough. Question was, was it their own idea, or something the Outfit put them up to?

I sat in the cold and dark and decided, finally, that it just didn’t matter who or what was behind it. My options were to go home, and forget about it, and try (probably without any luck) to get some sleep; or to rescue this somewhat soiled damsel in distress.

What the hell. I had nothing better to do.

I went to the front door and knocked.

No answer.

Shit, I knew somebody was home, so I knocked again.

Louis cracked open the door and peered out and said, “What is it?” and I shot him in the eye.

There was the harsh, shrill sound of a scream — not Louis, who hadn’t had time for that, but the girl in the next room, scared shitless at hearing a gunshot, one would suppose.

I paid no attention to her and pushed the door open — there was no night latch or anything — and stepped over Louis, and pointed the nine millimeter at Harry, whose orange-ringed mouth was frozen open and whose bag of barbecue potato chips dropped to the floor, much as Louis had.

“Don’t, Harry,” I said.

I could see in Harry’s tiny dark eyes behind his thick black-rimmed glasses that he was thinking about the sawed-off shotgun on the couch next to him.

“Who the fuck...”

I walked slowly across the rustic living room toward the couch; in the background, an old colorized movie was playing on their captive’s daddy’s super-station. I plucked the shotgun off the couch with my left hand and tucked it under my arm.

“Hi, Harry,” I said. “Been a while.”

His orange-ringed mouth slowly began to work and his eyes began to blink and he said, “Quarry?”

That was the name he’d known me by.

“Taking the girl your idea, or are you still working for the boys?”

“We... we retired, couple years ago. God. You killed Louis. Louis. You killed Louis...”

“Right. What were you going to put the girl’s body in?”

“Huh?”

“She’s obviously seen you. You were obviously going to kill her, once you got the money. So. What was the plan?”

Harry wiped off his orange barbecue ring. “Got a roll of plastic in the closet. Gonna roll her up in it and dump her in one of the gravel pits around here.”

“I see. Do that number with the plastic right now, for Louis, why don’t you? Okay?”

Tears were rolling down Harry’s stubbly pockmarked cheeks. I didn’t know whether he was crying for Louis or himself or the pair of them, and I wasn’t interested enough to ask.

“Okay,” he said thickly.

I watched him roll his partner up in the sheet of plastic, using duct tape to secure the package; he sobbed as he did it, but he did it. He got blood on his Hawaiian shirt; it didn’t particularly show, though.

“Now I want you to clean up the mess. Go on. You’ll find what you need in the kitchen.”

Dutifully, Harry shuffled over, got a pan of warm water and some rags, and got on his knees and cleaned up the brains and blood. He wasn’t crying anymore. He moved slow but steady, a fat zombie in a colorful shirt.

“Stick the rags in the end of Louis’ plastic home, would you? Thank you.”

Harry did that, then the big man lumbered to his feet, hands in the air, and said, “Now me, huh?”

“I might let you go, Harry. I got nothing against you.”

“Not... not how I remember it.”

I laughed. “You girls leaned on me once. You think I’d kill a person over something that trivial? What kind of guy do you think I am, Harry?”

Harry had sense enough not to answer.

“Come with me,” I said, and with the nine millimeter’s nose to Harry’s temple, I walked him to the door of the bedroom.

“Open it,” I said.

He did.

We went in, Harry first.

The girl was under the covers, holding the blankets and sheets up around her in a combination of illogical modesty and legitimate fear.

Her expression melted into one of confusion mingled with the beginnings of hope and relief, when she saw me.

“I’ve already taken care of the skinny one,” I said. “Now Harry and me are going for a walk. You stay here. I’m going to get you back to your father.”

Her confusion didn’t leave, but she began to smile, wide, like a kid Christmas morning seeing her gifts. Her gift to me was dropping the blankets and sheets to her waist.

“Remember,” I said. “Stay right there.”

I walked Harry out, pulling the bedroom door shut behind me.

“Where are her clothes?”

He nodded to a closet. Same one he’d gotten the plastic out of.

“Good,” I said. “Now let’s go for a walk. Just you and me and Louis.”

“Loo... Louis?”

“Better give Louis a hand, Harry.”

Harry held the plastic-wrapped corpse in his arms like a B-movie monster carrying a starlet. The plastic was spattered with blood, but on the inside. Harry looked like he was going to cry again.

I still had the sawed-off shotgun under my arm, so it was awkward, getting the front door open, but I managed.

“Out on the lake,” I said.

Harry looked at me, his eyes behind the glasses wary, glancing from me to his plastic-wrapped burden and back again.

“We’re going to bury Louis at sea,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Just walk, Harry. Okay? Just walk.”

He walked. I followed behind, nine millimeter in one hand, sawed-off in the other. Harry in his Hawaiian shirt was an oddly comic sight, but I was too busy to be amused. Our feet crunched slightly on the ice. No danger of falling in. Frozen solid. Kids ice-skated out here. But not right now.

We walked a long way. We said not a word, until I halted him about mid-way. The black starry sky was our only witness.

“Put him down, Harry,” I said. The nine millimeter was in my waistband; the shotgun was pointed right at him.

He set his cargo gently down. He stood looking gloomily down at the plastic shroud, like a bear contemplating its own foot caught in a trap.

I blasted both barrels of the shotgun; they blew the quiet night apart and echoed across the frozen lake and rattled the world.

Harry looked at me, stunned.

“What the fuck...?”

“Now unroll Louis and toss him in,” I said, standing near the gaping hole in the ice. “I’m afraid that plastic might float.”

Horrified, the big man did as he was told. Louis slipped down the hole in the ice and into watery nothingness like a turd down the crapper.

“Slick,” I said, admiringly.

“Oh Jesus,” he said.

“Now you,” I said.

“What?”

I had the nine millimeter out again.

“Jump in,” I said. “Water’s fine.”

“Fuck you!”

I went over quickly and pushed the big son of a bitch in. He was flailing, splashing icy water up on me, as I put six bullets in his head, which came apart in pieces, like a rotten melon.

And then he was gone.

Nothing left but the hole in the ice, the water within it making some frothy reddish waves that would die down soon enough.

I gathered the weapons and the plastic and, folding the plastic sheet as I walked, went back to the cabin.

This was reckless, I knew. I shouldn’t be killing people who lived on the same goddamn lake I did. But it was winter, and the bodies wouldn’t turn up for a long time, if ever, and the Outfit had used this part of the world to dump its corpses since Capone was just a mean street kid. Very little chance any of this would come back at me.

Nonetheless, I had taken a risk or two. I ought to get something out of it, other than killing a sleepless night.

I got the girl’s clothes and went in and gave them to her. A heavy-metal t-shirt and designer jeans and Reeboks.

“Did you kill those men?” she said, breathlessly, her eyes dark and glittering. She had her clothes in her lap.

“That’s not important. Get dressed.”

“You’re wonderful. You’re goddamn fucking wonderful.”

“I know,” I said. “Everybody says the same thing. Get dressed.”

She got dressed. I watched her. She was a beautiful piece of ass, no question. The way she was looking at me made it clear she was grateful.

“What can I do for you?” she said, hands on her hips.

“Nothing,” I said. “You’re on the rag.”

That made her laugh. “Other ports in a storm.”

“Maybe later,” I said, and smiled. She looked like AIDS-bait to me. I could be reckless, but not that reckless.

I put her in my car. I hadn’t decided yet whether or not to dump the brown rental Ford. Probably would. I could worry about that later. Right now, I needed to get her to a motel.

She slept in the car. I envied her, and nudged her awake when we reached the motel just inside the Illinois state line.

I’d already checked in. I ushered her in to the shabby little room, its floor space all but taken up by two twin beds, and she sat on the bed and yawned.

“What now?” she said. “You want your reward?”

“Actually, yes,” I said, sitting next to her. “What’s your father’s number?”

“Hey, there’s time for that later...”

“First things first,” I said, and she wrote the number out on the pad by the phone.

I heard the ring, and a male voice said, “Hello?”

I gave her the receiver. “Make sure it’s your father, and tell him you’re all right.”

“Daddy?” she said. She smiled, then she made a face. “I’m fine, I’m fine... the man you sent... what?”

She covered the receiver, eyes confused again. “He says he didn’t send anybody.”

I took the phone. “Good evening, sir. I have your daughter. As you can hear, she’s just fine. Get together one hundred thousand dollars in unmarked, nonsequential tens, twenties and fifties, and wait for the next call.”

I hung up.

She looked at me with wide eyes and wide-open mouth.

“I’m not going to kill you,” I said. “I’m just turning a buck.”

“You bastard!”

I put the duct tape over her mouth, taped her wrists behind her and taped her ankles too, and went over and curled up on the other bed, nine millimeter in my waistband.

And slept like a baby.