Blood Money

1

The sun was hot and high in a practically cloud-free sky and Jon was feeling lousy. It was Tuesday afternoon, just an hour and a half after he’d left his uncle at the antique shop to join Karen at her apartment, and he was on his way back already. The late breakfast at Karen’s had been fine; she was a good cook and Jon enjoyed that side of her as much as anything. But her ten-year-old pride and joy, Larry, had a dentist’s appointment at four, and, of course, Karen had to drive the kid there and be by his side throughout the great ordeal. And so Jon had been rushed through the breakfast, forced into throwing those delicious eggs and sausage down his throat as if he was shoveling coal into a boiler.

“Why,” Jon had asked her, through a mouthful of eggs, “did you ask me over if you were in such a goddamn hurry? You didn’t say anything about the kid’s teeth on the phone.”

“What’re you bitching about?” she had said. “The price is right, isn’t it? I thought maybe you’d lower yourself to go along with me when I take Larry to his dental appointment.”

“That’s my idea of a good time,” he’d said.

“Oh,” she’d said angrily, “go read a comic book.”

Larry had been sitting at the table the whole time and the kid would flash an innocent smile now and then, batting his lashes at Jon. Larry had red hair and freckles and big brown eyes, like the kids in paintings you can buy prints of by sending in three toilet paper wrappers and a dollar-fifty. Jon hated Larry.

Jon supposed he was jealous of the kid. It was hard getting used to going with a girl — woman — who was the mother of a ten-year-old kid. Karen looked younger than thirty, and was very pretty, with long, wild, dark hair and the same brown eyes as the kid, only on her they looked good. She also had a body that wouldn’t quit.

But still it was odd, strange getting used to. Karen’s apartment was large enough that privacy wasn’t a real problem, and Larry kept pretty much to himself, having a stamp collection or some silly such thing he played around with all the time, shut tight in his room. When Larry did decide to intrude, however, he intruded big, and could, with his big-brown-eyes coaxing, dictate the course of an evening’s activities. The new Brian DePalma film they had planned to attend could be turned into the latest revival of “Son of Flubber”; a night of Cantonese dining at Ming Gardens could be transformed easily into greasy take-out tacos; and on television the educational channel’s showing of “The Maltese Falcon” on the Bogart Festival would lose out to a made-for-TV movie with someone who used to be on “Laugh-In.” When a need of Jon’s was balanced against a need of Larry’s, no contest, Larry won every time.

So Jon hated Larry, and felt quite sure that the feeling was reciprocal, even though the kid rarely said a word. But with those shit-eating big brown eyes, who needed the power of speech?

Jon had met Karen in her candle shop, which catered to a head crowd, selling incense and Zig-Zag papers and hash pipes and posters and the like, in addition to countless candles, most of which Karen made herself. He went there to buy underground comics and posters, and after a while he was haunting the place, checking for new stuff (which was ridiculous, since he bought so much mail order) but mostly just getting to know Karen. At first it was just that he was fascinated watching her boobs act as a bouncing billboard for various causes, in tee-shirts ranging from NO NUKES to SAVE THE WHALES. Later he found out she was funny and bright and crazy, when she got politics off her chest.

Jon realized that probably the primary reason he and Karen got together was because both of them were straighter than they appeared to be: Jon with his frizzy hair and Wonder Warthog tee-shirts, Karen with her equally frizzy, longer hair and ERA slogans. The turning point in their relationship was that day in the Airliner when they had been sitting drinking beers and Jon had made a confession. He told Karen sheepishly that he was not into the dope scene, in spite of his looks and certain bullshit comments he’d from time to time made. Karen had grinned and admitted the same thing, that despite her latter-day hippie appearance, she was a painfully straight, divorced woman of thirty with a ten-year-old child.

Which was the first Jon heard of her age, her broken marriage, and her kid, but he hadn’t minded, as the shared confessions had played like a scene in a movie and fantasy was something he could really get into, so they had laughed, toasted beers and joined forces.

Jon never got the details of her marriage. He did know that her husband was an attorney who lived in Des Moines and came from a long line of attorneys. Jon gathered that the marriage had come out of those prehistoric times when the pill was not so common and have-to marriages were, and Karen had dropped out as an undergrad to play wife and mother while her hubby was put through law school by his wealthy family. Later on, she proved a burden to her husband, mostly because she was “intellectually inferior” (she hadn’t even made it through college, after all). Her husband may have been a hypocritical bastard, but he was no dummy: he’d let Karen have pride-and-joy Larry and asked next to no visitation rights.

And his alimony and child-support payments were generous, too. Karen’s monetary situation was such that she could hold a long-term lease on the building, which had as a bottom floor her candle shop and above that the five-room, remodeled apartment she and Larry lived in; another apartment above that she rented out. The building was in the heart of Iowa City’s shopping district, on the back side of a block that faced the U of I Quadrangle, the candle shop bookended by a pair of busy record stores. The setup provided her a lucrative source of income.

That was all Jon knew about the former daddy of Larry, picked up here and there from bits and pieces of conversation. Jon didn’t know the guy’s name (the bitterness ran so deep in Karen she’d reverted to her maiden name) but Jon hoped one day to look up the (he assumed) red-haired, freckle-faced butthole and punch him out.

These were the things that Jon reflected on as he walked the six blocks from Karen’s downtown apartment to Planner’s antique shop. The beautiful breakfast that had been rammed down his throat was showing no signs of settling in his stomach, and he was generally disturbed over the unkind words he and Karen had tossed back and forth at one another.

He walked around to the side of the antique shop and as he was crossing the cement porch, his right foot hit something wet and he slipped and fell. He landed on his ass but broke his fall with the heels of his hands, which slid off the cement and skidded back across the gravel surrounding the porch.

“Oh shit,” he said, after the fact, and just sat there for a moment, half on porch, half on gravel.

Then he got up, slowly, and examined his scraped but not badly bleeding palms, deciding the injury wouldn’t impair his drawing too much. He dusted himself off with the untenderized sides of his hands.

He went over to the porch to see what had made him slip and saw a trickle of red, smeared where his foot had hit it, a stream trailing from the door across the cement stoop onto the gravel. He touched the red wetness and smelled his fingertips, looked at them, rubbed them together. What the hell was this, he wondered. Not paint; it’s too thin.

“What the hell,” he said aloud, shrugged, wiped the damp stuff off his fingertips onto his Wonder Warthog teeshirt and tried the door.

Locked.

Jesus, how many times had he asked his uncle not to lock the side door? But the old guy kept on doing it, anyway, wanting to keep the air-conditioning inside. It was a nuisance to Jon because his uncle had the only key to the side door and wouldn’t let it out of his keeping for Jon to have a duplicate made. Jon had a key to the front and that was enough, his uncle reasoned. Yet his uncle was always complaining about Jon coming through the front way and scaring off the customers with his bushy hair and crazy teeshirts.

This was the last straw, Jon thought. He and Planner got along, got along famously, but there were certain things that, dammit, just required an argument. And this locked-door business was one of those things.

He walked around to the front. The “Closed” sign was turned facing out for some reason, and he couldn’t see Planner when he peeked in. The old guy probably stepped out for a sandwich, Jon thought. Probably over at the Dairy Queen right now.

Or maybe Nolan called, and Planner had to leave to make some kind of preparations for Nolan. That was it. Nolan called.

He dug the key out of his pocket and opened the front door. “Planner?” he said. He repeated his uncle’s name three more times, each progressively louder, and getting no response, he locked the door again. If Planner wanted the place closed, then closed it would be.

The air hung with traces of smoke from one of Planner’s Garcia y Vegas, which didn’t do Jon’s still-churning stomach any good. The air-conditioning kept it from getting too damn stale in there, but nothing known to man could completely wipe out the memory of those potent cee-gars of Planner’s.

Jon got behind the counter and sat down in Planner’s soft old easy chair. His stomach continued to grind away in its attempt to digest breakfast; his conscience nagged him slightly about the semi-arguments he’d had with Karen. He found himself staring at the phone on the counter.

“What was that dentist’s name?” he muttered to himself. “Paulson? Paulsen?” He picked up the phone book and tried to find the listing and couldn’t. Finally he looked in the yellow pages under “Dentists-Orthodontists” and found it: Povlsen. Odd damn spelling. He dialed the number and asked the girl who answered if Karen was there and was told just a moment.

“Yes?” the voice said.

“Hi, Kare.”

“Hi, Jon.” Her voice was neutral; she couldn’t make up her mind whether she was mad or not.

“Listen. I want to tell you something.”

“I’m listening.”

“I mean, you can talk, can’t you? Has Larry had his teeth worked on yet?”

“Yes. That is, the doctor’s working on him right now.”

“Well, why aren’t you...?”

“The doctor said I... I shouldn’t be in there... said Larry was too old for that sort of thing.”

Good man, Jon thought.

“Kare?”

“Yes, Jon?”

“Thanks for breakfast. Thanks for asking me over.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice.

He got out of the chair and sat up on the counter. “And listen, something else...”

“What?”

“I want your bod.”

“Jon...”

“So when are you going to be done at the dentist’s. I want to fill your cavity.”

She laughed and said, “That’s medicine I’ll gladly take. I’ll be home in half an hour.”

“Good,” he said, and suddenly noticed the trail of red across the floor down at the end of the counter. “Hey, Kare, hold on, will you?”

“Sure, Jonny.”

The thin red streak led from the side door across the floor and around into the first back room. What the hell was it, anyway? It wasn’t... blood?

He followed the red trail into the second back room and found the slumped shell of his uncle.

Jon started to shake.

He approached his uncle tentatively, bent down saying, “Unc? Uh... Planner?”

He shook his uncle’s shoulder and could feel how slack the body was, and turned him off his side and saw Planner’s face, saw the queer smile, saw how white the face was, saw the blood his uncle was soaking in, and ran back to the phone.

“Je... Jesus,” he sputtered into the receiver.

“Jonny?”

“Listen... something... something terrible’s happened.”

“What should I do, Jonny?”

“Nothing. Go... go home when... Larry’s through and... I’ll call you in an hour. O... okay?”

“Are you all right?”

“I... will be.”

He hung up.

Shaking, he felt the cramp buckle him over, overpower him, and he heaved his breakfast onto the old wooden floor of his uncle’s antique shop.

2

The housing addition had a vaguely English look to it, rough wood, watered-down Tudor architecture, occasional stone. It was more plush than your run-of-the-mill housing addition, carefully laid out on gently rolling hills, each lawn spacious and immaculately tended, though the spread-out nature of the addition and the lack of trees made it look barren and lonely and cold against the clear sky. It was on the edge of Iowa City, on one of the less-traveled routes out of town, just beyond a modest commercial area dominated by a Giant grocery store, Colonel Sanders Chicken, and filling stations. On the other side it was surrounded by sprawling farmland, and at that very moment a farmer was on a tractor working slow and hard along the horizon, making the cluster of houses seem out of place and somehow irrelevant, to the farmer’s life at least. Though the houses were not crackerbox identical, there was still a housing addition sameness to them, which was only emphasized by the contrived effort to avoid repetition that amounted mainly to alternating one-story homes with split-levels. Walter slowed as he approached one of the one-story homes, focusing his vision on the number on the door, making sure this was the one he was after.

This particular house was dark wood with light stone and sat on a corner next door to a house that was light wood with dark stone. It was just another house in another (if elite) housing addition, with the only noticeable difference being that this had a red Mercedes Benz in the driveway instead of a Ford LTD or a Cadillac. The house was a surprise to Walter, as the whole addition had been. It was not the sort of neighborhood where he’d expected to find the home of a dope peddler.

Of course Sturms was more than a dope peddler, Walter supposed, though he didn’t know what else you’d call him, really. Supplier, maybe. From the looks of the housing addition Sturms evidently thought of himself as a district sales manager or something.

Walter had a low regard for people who dealt in drugs, and knew his father, Charlie, shared that low regard. Once they had discussed the subject and his father had told him that the Chicago Family was only into drugs because they had to be, and they were in it mainly as financiers, not fucking around with diddlyshit pushers and such.

Walter guessed that in Iowa City circles Sturms was probably considered to be “the Man,” which wasn’t particularly impressive, since most towns have one. Just the same, Charlie had assured his son that Sturms was important, in a small-time way, because he was the dope guy in Iowa City, and Iowa City was one of the big drug centers in that part of the Midwest.

And Sturms was important for another reason. He was important to this Iowa City trip, because if Walter and Charlie ran into any trouble, Sturms was someone they could turn to.

“Doesn’t he know you?” Walter had asked, on the drive down from Wisconsin that morning. “Doesn’t he know you’re supposed to be dead?”

“He’d know me by name, sure,” his father had said, “but not by sight. And we sure as hell won’t be handing him no goddamn calling card. Look, I just mentioned him ’cause if we get in a tight squeeze, we can call on the guy, see, just drop a few of the right names and he’ll jump for us, is all.”

It made sense that Sturms wouldn’t know Charlie. Walter knew that his father had been high up enough in the Family to make it unlikely for a nobody like Sturms, stuck clear out here in Iowa, to know him personally. And, too, his father looked different now, since his “death.” Walter figured an old friend could easily pass Charlie on the street without recognizing him. Charlie had lost weight, was damn near skinny. And there was the work that plastic surgeon did, too, changing Charlie’s bumpy, several-times-broken nose into something small and straight, right off a movie star’s face.

All of this floated down Walter’s mental stream, but he wasn’t thinking about any of it, really; these were non-thoughts, passing quickly, skimming across the surface of his mind, part reflex action, part Walter’s semiconscious attempt to stay calm. He had driven slowly through the housing addition, noting the children on bicycles, the teen-aged boys mowing lawns, a husband or wife hosing down family cars in drives, none of it making any impression on him, no more than a boring sermon in church, though all this middle-class straight life reminded him to keep calm, to drive slow, to make as if the man sitting next to him was just taking a nap.

Walter thought about a lot of things, but the only thing he really thought about was his father, because his father was hurt and his father’s being hurt was the only thing that was really on Walter’s mind.

They’d come out of the antique shop awkwardly, with Walter trying to keep his one arm under the huge cardboard box of money, while looping his other arm around his wounded father’s waist. It was like being in one of those races at a picnic where they strap your leg and somebody else’s together and tell you to run. It was like that, only with blood.

Walter’s father had trailed blood out of there and Walter had been very worried. He knew that his father had high blood pressure and also knew that having high blood pressure could make a wound worse for a person, maybe make him bleed more, maybe make him more prone to shock. In the car he had looked at the wound in his father’s leg, exposed as it was just below the line of the Bermuda shorts, and Walter was stunned by the realization of how frail his father’s legs looked, how skinny they were, how the flesh just hung helpless on the bone. Walter was surprised, too, that such a small wound could leak so much blood. His father had stopped the bleeding by ramming a wadded handkerchief in against the hole in his bare thigh, but the wadded handkerchief hadn’t stopped Walter’s worrying.

Charlie would say, “Don’t worry, just get out of here,” whenever Walter asked him about the leg. Charlie had said it while Walter helped him out the antique shop door, and he said it while Walter helped him into the car, and he said it as Walter drove out Dubuque Street toward the Interstate 80 approach. And then Charlie passed out.

Walter had pulled into a driveway that led down to a tree-sheltered fraternity house and backed out and headed back on Dubuque toward the downtown. He stopped at a Standard station to use the pay phone. He found Sturms’ number in the phone book and dialed.

“Yes,” a voice had said. A bored tenor voice.

“Mr. Sturms?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“You don’t know me, but we have mutual friends.”

“Really.”

“I was told you could help out in a pinch. I have a man with me who needs help. He needs a doctor.”

“Who is this?”

“We have mutual friends.”

“You said that before. What kind of mutual friends?”

“Chicago friends. Milwaukee friends.”

“Name one.”

“Harry in Milwaukee. Now listen, I’m not screwing around. We need some help here.”

“How bad do you need the doctor?”

“I don’t know. Not bad I hope. But bad enough to bother you when I rather wouldn’t.”

“The guy isn’t dying or anything, is he?”

“Not unless it’s from old age, waiting on you to make up your mind if you’re going to help us or not.”

“Shit. I guess you better bring him out to my place. Where are you now?”

Walter told him. Sturms gave Walter directions.

And so now Walter was pulling into the oversize driveway of the house that was dark wood with light stone. He stopped the blue Olds alongside the red Mercedes, his foot on the brake, the car still in gear. He stared at the dark rough wood of the double garage doors and after ten seconds honked the horn once. He reached a hand over and patted his father’s shoulder, as if to reassure the unconscious man.

The garage door swung suddenly up and out of view and a man motioned at Walter to pull the Oldsmobile inside and Walter did. The man shut the garage door and walked over to meet Walter as he got out of the car.

The man was thirty-five years old and had light brown hair that was stylishly long and had been shaped by an expensive barber. He wore a long sleeve rust-color shirt, with slightly puffy sleeves, a pale yellow scarf tied around his neck. His trousers were brown and flared. His skin was tanned and he was handsome in a standard sort of a way, except for a broad, flat nose. He was five ten and built like a linebacker.

Walter said, “Is the doctor here?”

Sturms said, “I haven’t been able to get him.”

“Jesus. What’s the problem?”

“Out on a house call. What happened anyway?”

“My father’s been shot.”

“How?”

“Never mind how. You don’t really want to know how, do you?”

“I guess not. How bad is he?”

“Caught a bullet in his thigh. He’s unconscious.”

“Let me take a look at him.”

Walter led Sturms around to the other side of the car. Sturms just peeked in the window, then turned to Walter and said, “Let’s go inside.”

“You going to help me move my father?”

“He’s all right where he is.”

“Well...”

“Moving him inside won’t help him any. Come on. We’ll try the doctor again.”

Walter followed Sturms into the house. The first room was the kitchen, where all the appliances were pastel green and the wood was maple brown. Dozens of bottles of pills sat on the counter. Walter’s surprise registered on his face.

Sturms grinned, said, “Wondering why I’d leave my stock out in the open like that, kid?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.”

“That’s not merchandise. Those are vitamins I take. I wouldn’t touch that shit I sell. Haven’t even touched grass in years.”

Walter was led into a large living room with an open-beam ceiling of the same dark rough wood as the outside and pebbled plaster walls the same rust color as Sturms’ shirt. The carpet was burnt umber, and thick and fluffy like whipped egg whites. There was a sofa, a recliner and a chair with an ottoman, all dark brown imitation leather with button-tufted seats and backs. Cocktail table, end tables, even the stereo and television complex were dark Spanish-style hand-carved wood, looking lush and expensive. It was an attractive room, only slightly marred by two out of place abstract paintings over the sofa, a red spattered on a field of white, and a white spattered on a field of red. Sturms told Walter to sit, and Walter went to the sofa so he could sit with his back to the paintings. Air whooshed out of the cushion as Walter settled his ass uneasily down.

Sturms left the room momentarily and came back with a yellow telephone, which he plugged into a jack behind one of the sofa’s end tables. He brought the phone around in front of Walter and sat it in front of him, on the cocktail table, next to a bowl of artificial fruit.

“Now call Harry in Milwaukee,” Sturms said. “I want some proof of who you are.”

“You haven’t even called the doctor yet,” Walter said.

“I’ll get you something to drink while you’re doing that. What would you like? A beer? Maybe a Pepsi?”

“You haven’t even called the doctor yet, have you?”

“You call Harry. Then I’ll call the doctor.”

“You son of a bitch,” Walter said, and jumped up off the sofa.

Sturms showed Walter the gun. Walter didn’t know where the gun had come from, but Sturms most certainly did have it. It was an automatic, silenced, smaller than the ones Walter and his father had carried earlier that day. Those nine millimeters were under the seat of the Olds right now, not doing Walter a hell of a lot of good.

“What’s going on, honey?” a female voice said.

AA tall woman with a shag brunette haircut and dark tan skin was standing in the background. Like Sturms’ gun, she’d popped up from nowhere. She was wearing purple hot pants and a matching halter, though the halter was of a lighter material than the pants. Her breasts bobbled braless under the skimpy halter and Walter sat down again.

“Nothing, baby,” Sturms said. “Go get my friend and me a couple of beers, will you?”

“Sure thing, honey.”

“My wife,” Sturms explained, as she took her time bobbling out. “Sweet kid. She painted those pictures there, on the wall, behind you.”

“Talented,” Walter said.

“Now why don’t you call Harry?”

“I don’t know his number.”

“I thought he was a friend of yours.”

“He’s a friend of that man bleeding out there in your fucking garage.”

“All right,” Sturms said, sticking the gun down in his waistband. “I’ll call him and let you talk to him.”

He crouched and dialed the number from memory. It took a few seconds for the direct-dialing long-distance wheels to turn, and then he said, “Could I speak to Harry, please... Mr. Sturms in Iowa City is calling... I’ll hold... Hello, Harry, it’s good to hear your voice... No, everything was fine with the last shipment, no problem, everything’s terrific... No, it’s something else... I have a guy here says he’s a friend of yours, wants some help from me... I’ll put him on.”

Walter took the phone and said, “This is Walter.”

“Walter?” The connection was good; Walter’s Uncle Harry was coming through fine. “Walter, something didn’t go wrong today, did it?”

“I’m afraid so. Dad’s been hurt.”

“Oh, Christ. How bad is it?”

“Just his thigh, took one in the thigh. But he’s unconscious, and you know his high blood pressure trouble. You can’t die from a thigh wound, can you?”

“Depends on what gets hit. How bad’s he bleeding?”

“Bad at first, but we stopped it. I don’t think some major artery got hit or anything, if that’s what you mean.”

“Listen, you tell Sturms get a doctor for you, and get your father patched up and hit the road. Did things go okay otherwise?”

Walter hadn’t even thought about that. He hadn’t even thought about the old guy at the antique shop his father had shot.

“It could’ve gone smoother,” Walter said.

“What about the money?”

“We got it.”

“Good. Well, then, have Sturms get a doctor for you straight away and...”

“Sturms won’t do it till he gets the word from you that I’m worth helping.”

“Put the cocksucker on.”

Walter said, “He says put the cocksucker on.”

Sturms flinched and took the phone. Walter could hear his uncle yelling, but couldn’t make out the exact words. Sturms said, “You bet, Harry... Right away... Goodbye, sir.”

He hung up.

“Look,” Sturms said, “sorry I hassled you. Let’s forget it and start over.”

“Never mind trying to get in good with me,” Walter said. “Get your ass on that phone and get a doctor for my father.”

Sturms nodded.

The brunette bounced back in and gave Walter a Pabst in a bottle. She gave her husband one, too, but he was busy on the phone and just set the bottle down. She smiled at Walter and said, “Do you really think I’m talented?”

3

“Easy now, Planner,” Jon soothed, “easy now, this isn’t going to hurt a bit.” He lowered Planner’s blanket-wrapped body into the empty wooden crate. He’d felt lucky to find the crate, which was six feet long and a bit wider than necessary, but it sufficed. It had held an antique chest of drawers Planner had stored away. Jon had liberated the crate for this present purpose, the probably valuable antique shoved into a storeroom corner.

“There now,” Jon said softly, whispering, “there now, unc, that’ll be fine, won’t it?” The blanket-wrapped body was comfortably settled in a soft bed of excelsior lining the crate’s bottom. Jon replaced the lid on the crate and said, “Goodbye, Planner.”

Maybe he was an asshole, talking to Planner like that. But he just couldn’t think of his uncle’s body as some cold chunk of meat, even though he knew that was what it was. The body was Planner, for God’s sake, and looked as much like Planner as it had when there hadn’t been bullet holes in it, and the only way Jon could deal with the situation was to keep talking to Planner. It seemed natural to keep talking to Planner.

And when he’d lifted the body, it had seemed light and heavy all at once. Could this featherlight bundle of flesh have walked and breathed? Could this granite-heavy load of bulk be the body of a frail old man? He held the body like a baby in his arms, and he felt as though he were parodying that famous statue at the Vatican, the one that got defaced, and he gave out a nervous little laugh that wasn’t really a laugh at all, and said, “Aw, shit, Planner, you can’t be dead.”

But he was, of course, and there was work to be done. Work for the living. Nolan had said so.

After throwing up, Jon had grabbed for the phone and dialed Nolan direct. It took a while to get through, what with the switchboard operator at that motel or whatever it was trying to track Nolan down. It’d seemed an hour before Nolan came on, and Jon’s bladder was about to burst.

“Jon?” Nolan had said. “Calm down, Jon, what’s wrong?”

And Jon had told Nolan about Planner, about Planner being dead.

“Jesus, kid. Stay calm,” Nolan had said, his voice as soft, as sure of itself as ever. “Don’t go hysterical on me.”

Don’t go hysterical on me. Nolan had told him that once before, after the bank job, when everything had exploded into blood and death, and Jon had been able to hang on, because Nolan was there. He’d been able to make it because Nolan was a rock and Nolan was there, and now Nolan’s voice was coming over that hunk of plastic, disembodied but here just the same, reassuring him, calming him, enabling him to survive, for the moment anyway.

“Go on,” Nolan was saying.

“He’s dead, and the money...”

Jon hadn’t realized yet what it meant, but he could remember seeing the safe door swung open and the shelves empty.

The money. Good God, the money.

“It’s gone,” he told Nolan. “All of it.”

Nolan was silent for a moment. A long moment.

“Nolan?” Jon asked, panic rising in his chest, catching in his throat.

“Yeah, kid,” the steady voice said. A rock again. “Go on.”

“The money’s gone. I just came in and... and found Planner and it must’ve all just happened.”

“How do you know?”

“Hell, I wasn’t gone more than an hour, and the... blood... it’s still wet, uh, fresh.” He remembered slipping in the stream of it on the back stoop. “You know, Nolan, you wouldn’t think Planner had so much blood in him. You wouldn’t think it could seep all the way back to the porch like that.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean somehow it ran from the back room, where the safe was cleaned out, back onto the porch and... shit, that couldn’t be Planner’s blood, could it? What do you figure?”

“I figure Planner got a shot off at whoever shot him.”

“Of course. Bad, you suppose?”

“Bad enough he left some blood behind.”

“Nolan, should I call the police or what? I mean, we were robbed and Planner was murdered and...”

“Christ no! Use your damn head.”

“That was stupid. I’m sorry I even said it, Nolan.”

“Never mind that. Did Planner have a gun in his hand?”

“I... I haven’t really looked that close yet. If you want to know the truth, all I’ve done so far is spot Planner’s body, puke out my guts, and call you on the phone.”

“You go look the back room over. I’ll hold on.”

Jon set the receiver on the counter and went back for a look. He found one of his uncle’s two.32 automatics clutched in an already stiffening hand, and he found across from Planner the place in the wall where one of the bullets had gone in. And the beginning of the trail of blood was at the safe, where the guy would’ve been crouched down, emptying the shelves. He went back to the phone and reported what he’d found to Nolan.

“Okay,” Nolan said. “Now listen to me. Are you pulled together? Are you settled down?”

“Yes. I’m settled down.”

And Nolan told him what to do. Told him to contact that doctor, Ainsworth, the one that patched Nolan up and treated him while he was holed up at Planner’s. Contact the doctor and pay him to make out a false death certificate, verifying Planner’s demise as by natural causes. Pay him plenty, to fill out the forms and such and help keep the cops from coming and having a close posthumous peek into Planner’s setup. Then clean the place up, get rid of the gun Planner fired at whoever shot him. Put Planner in a box and arrange to have him cremated. Do all of that, and then ask around at the places in the neighborhood, that Dairy Queen, the filling station next door, ask if they saw anybody leaving Planner’s around that time. But don’t act suspicious in asking. Make something up, like whoever it was was going to sell you something and didn’t leave an address, something like that.

“About that doctor,” Jon said.

“What about him?” Nolan said.

“What’ll I pay him with?”

“There should be eight thousand or so in the wall safe upstairs.”

“Oh, yeah, behind his framed Hoover buttons. Planner keeps — kept — the combination in the kitchen, in the silverware drawer.”

“Good. Pay Ainsworth, oh, four thousand. I know that sounds high, kid, but remember, as far as the doc knows, you could’ve murdered your uncle yourself and’re asking him to cover up. So he’ll be expecting a fat reward.”

“What then?”

“Sit tight. I’ll call you there at Planner’s when I get a chance. I have a notion of who maybe pulled this piece of shit.”

“You do? Who, for Christ’s sake?”

“Charlie.”

“That Mafia guy? That guy? He’s dead, how can...?”

“He’s supposed to be dead. We’ll see. I’ll be looking into it.”

“Okay. When can I expect your call?”

“Just stay there at the shop. Get those things done I told you and otherwise sit tight. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Jon.”

“Yes, Nolan?”

“You’re doing fine.”

And Nolan had hung up.

Now that Planner was wrapped in a blanket and lain to temporary rest, Jon began to get the place in shape. He went into the adjoining storeroom and got the box of sawdust, which was used to clean up various sorts of messes, mostly wet. He poured the sawdust first onto the pile of vomit, and his half-digested, stinking breakfast soaked the stuff up. He swept the gunk up, and it took several dustpan loads to do so, and dumped the rancid mess into a big empty heavy-cardboard barrel. He then did the same with the blood, pouring sawdust onto the trail of it and the pool where his uncle had been lying, and some of it had started to dry, getting dark, almost black. After he’d dumped the several dustpans of bloody sawdust, he got out a can of Ajax and a bucket of water and a scrub-brush and worked on the wooden floor till all visible traces of blood were gone. He thought, rather absurdly, that it was a good thing he hadn’t cleaned the storerooms yesterday, as today’s work would’ve been needless double duty. He ran across his uncle’s false teeth, his upper plate, and gagged, but his stomach was empty now, fortunately. He held the plate by two trembling fingers and went over to the crate and lifted the lid an inch or two and pushed the teeth inside.

Afterward he went upstairs and sat at the kitchen table and poured a water glass half full with vodka and the rest with Seven Up. He stirred the mixture with a spoon and threw it quickly down. He wasn’t a drinking man, so he soon found himself gagging again, but by the third glass he was doing fine.

God, what an awful experience, he thought. People died so easily in the movies and the comics. Real life was such a gruesome fucking mess. The movies never showed the poor slobs who had to clean up after the hero’s carnage; think of all the trouble Clint Eastwood was causing for people; think of what off-screen horror was happening to the survivors of a film like The Wild Bunch.

And even when death was portrayed as bloody and awful, it was nothing like this. Jon had had only one other close experience with violent death (not counting Nolan’s near bout with the grim reaper, thanks to that Syndicate guy, Charlie) and that had been after the Port City bank job year and a half ago. The robbery had gone flawlessly, but afterward some jealousy within ranks had caused an outburst of insane violence, and Nolan and Jon had ended up sole survivors. Witnessing the head getting blown off someone he’d been friend to had been the single most traumatic incident in his life, and he wondered now if he hadn’t countered that trauma by turning from his superheroes to horror comics, where the blood was bright red and sickly humorous, where he might try to learn to live with gore, get used to it, even laugh at it. He didn’t know.

He heard the sound of hard pounding and jumped off his chair. Where was it coming from? He got hold of himself and listened close and it was someone knocking at the back door, and it scared him shitless.

He got up and went to the window and drew back the curtain.

The doctor.

That was all. It was Ainsworth, the doctor, and he let out a sigh and went downstairs to let Ainsworth in.

Ainsworth was the standard country doctor image come to life. He was fifty-five, slightly chubby, and had a mustached, lined, wise and friendly old face. He was Iowa City’s longest practicing abortionist, aider-and-abetter of draft dodgers (for a price) and doer of sundry other medically shady deeds. Jon had gone to Ainsworth for help when Nolan was hurt because a while back Jon had paid two hundred bucks for a statement from the good doctor to the effect of his having epilepsy, in the form of severe migraine headaches, winning the boy his 4F from Uncle Sam. How was Jon to know his number in the draft lottery would turn out to be one of the least likely to be called? But life was a gamble.

“What’s the problem?” Ainsworth said, locking the door behind him. He was wearing a blue long-sleeve sweater, over a white Banlon, and yellow pants: golf clothes. Jon had caught him at the country club, where he’d learned to look in previous dealings with Ainsworth.

“My uncle’s been shot,” Jon said.

“What’s his condition?” the doctor asked.

“Dead,” Jon said.

“Oh. I see.”

“Why don’t you come upstairs and have some vodka and Seven Up and we’ll talk.”

They did.

“I fully understand your position,” he said. “Your uncle’s, shall we say, sideline, would make it desirable to prevent the police from taking an active interest in his death.”

“That’s it exactly.”

“Your uncle has a long history of heart trouble, and...”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Well, let’s say he will have a history of heart trouble, when I finish rewriting his records.”

“Oh.”

“And so, his death by coronary came as no surprise to me, I can assure you.”

“What else needs to be done?”

“Can you come by around seven? I’ll have the necessary papers and forms ready for you to sign.”

“Where? At your house?”

“Heavens, no. My office, of course. And I think I can have your uncle’s remains disposed of for you, as well. There’s a crematorium in West Liberty that does good work. They can pick your uncle up tomorrow afternoon, I’m sure.”

“Won’t they notice Planner had his ‘coronary’ in a rather peculiar way?” Jon asked, on his fourth glass of vodka and pop.

“Well, perhaps I’d best go downstairs now and bandage your uncle. That way anyone glancing in won’t see anything, even if the poor man gets stripped of his clothes... though that shouldn’t happen, as these West Liberty folks do good, discreet work, mind you.”

“Whatever you think.”

“And have you a nice suit of your uncle’s? You and I had probably best put one of his suits on him.”

“Oh Christ. That won’t be pleasant.”

“A tragedy like this one rarely is. And as for me, well, I was a friend of your uncle’s, and you’ve both done a lot of business with me, you and your uncle and that friend Mr. Nolan of yours as well, so you do whatever you think is fair.”

Jon got up and went to the silverware drawer to get the combination to Planner’s wall safe.

4

The doctor put two pillows under Charlie’s feet. He took the pulse of his unconscious patient, casting a cursory glance at the wounded thigh. Then he gave Walter a brief smile — one of those meaningless smiles doled out by doctors like another pill — and walked to a sink across the room to wash up.

Walter stood at his father’s upraised feet, wishing he could do something to help, watching the doctor’s every action, wondering why the man moved so damn slow.

Or maybe it was just him. Maybe the doctor wasn’t slow at all. Walter couldn’t be sure. His sense of time was fouled up. Was that business at the antique shop just this afternoon? It seemed years ago.

Moments earlier — or was it hours? — the doctor had offered to give Walter a hand carrying Charlie, but Walter had refused, wanting to bear both the weight and responsibility of his father in his own arms, following the doctor through the darkened waiting room and down a short narrow hall and into a closet of a room, where Walter had eased his father onto a padded examining table that sat high off the floor, like a sacrificial altar. The table was white porcelain with its padded, contoured surface black but mostly covered by white crinkly tissue paper. In fact, almost everything in the room was white: stucco walls, mosaic stone floor, ceiling tile overhead, counters, cabinets, sink, everything.

Except the doctor’s clothes. Walter thought the blue sweater and yellow slacks were grossly inappropriate. He would’ve felt more secure if his father’s welfare were in the hands of a man in traditional white; he had the feeling this guy wouldn’t know the Hippocratic oath if he tripped over it.

The doctor removed his sweater and folded it neatly and deposited it on a chair by the sink and began ceremoniously to wash his hands. Jesus, Walter thought, what does he think he is, a damn brain surgeon? The shirt beneath the sweater turned out to be white, but that was no consolation to Walter, as it was an off-white, sporty Banlon, with rings of sweat under the arms and wrinkled from eighteen holes of golf.

The doctor dried his hands and moved from the sink to a counter, where he filled a modest-sized hypo from a small bottle of something.

“What’s that?” Walter said.

“Morphine,” the doctor said cheerfully, beaming at Walter with all the sincerity of a politician. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

“All right,” Walter said. There was a chair directly behind him and he backed into it and sat.

The doctor administered the hypo, then went back to the counter and unscrewed the cap on a bottle of cloudy liquid. He dabbed some of the liquid onto a folded strip of gauze.

“Ammonia,” the doctor said, anticipating Walter’s question. He walked across the room and held the gauze under Charlie’s nose and Charlie came around quickly, thrashing his arms like a man waking from a nightmare, finally pushing himself to a sitting position with the heels of his hands.

“Goddamn shit,” he said to the doctor, “what’d you hold under my nose? Who... who the hell are you? Where the hell am I? What’s going on?”

The doctor smiled again. He did that a lot. He said, “You’ll have to ask your young friend here about that.”

Walter got up and came around the other side of the table and squeezed his father’s shoulder. “You’re going to be all right, Dad.”

“Of course I’m going to be all right,” Charlie said, his speech slightly muddy. “I’m all right now. I feel just fine.”

“You should,” the doctor said, “you’re full of morphine.”

Suddenly Charlie noticed his wound, said, “Jesus,” and settled back down on the table.

The doctor continued to work while Charlie talked to Walter. What the doctor did was give Charlie several shots — a tetanus toxoid, some Novocain around the wound — and proceeded to debride the wound, stripping away the flesh that had died of shock on the bullet’s impact. What Charlie said to Walter was, “You stupid goddamn kid, we should be long gone from here by now, what the hell you doing dragging me to a doctor for? Christ, a little goddamn scratch on the leg and you’re dragging me to a doctor, what the hell you use for brains, boy,” and more along those lines.

After the doctor was through debriding the wound, and his father was through sermonizing, Walter said, “Dad, you were unconscious and I felt I should get you to a doctor. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.

Then Walter turned away and walked to the window and separated two blades of the white Venetian blinds and stared out into the street. It was twilight and a few seconds after he started looking, the streetlights came on. The doctor’s office was on the back edge of the Iowa City downtown, where the businesses trailed off into the residential district. The street was quiet, right now anyway, and almost peaceful to watch. The traffic ran mostly to kids of all ages sliding by on bikes, with only an occasional car, and every now and then a bird would cut from this tree to that one. Walter felt better now. He was relieved that his father was coming out of it. His father yelling at him for staying in town and going to a doctor was a disappointment, but to be expected, he supposed. It wasn’t worth brooding over.

While Walter stared out at the quiet street, the doctor applied a pressure dressing to the wound and explained to Charlie that carrying that bullet in his leg wasn’t going to hurt him any, and going in after the slug just wasn’t worth the time and trouble. Charlie said he knew that, that a lot of his friends had bullets in them.

“Hey,” Charlie said.

“Yeah?” Walter said.

“Listen. Listen, thanks.”

“It’s okay.”

“Come here a minute.”

“Okay.”

Walter joined his father. The doctor said that he was going across the hall to get some pills for Charlie and left the room. Charlie asked Walter to tell him what had been happening.

Walter explained about going to see Sturms, and calling Uncle Harry, and then having trouble getting hold of the doctor. Seemed the doctor’s wife was out of town and it wasn’t till Sturms thought of the country club that they got a lead on the guy. Unfortunately, the doctor had left the club on an emergency call and hadn’t told anyone what or where the emergency was. They had continued calling the man’s home, and finally someone at the country club called back and said the doctor had returned to the club for supper and cocktails and Sturms had got him on the line and set things up.

“What’s the doc’s name?” Charlie said.

“Ainsworth,” Walter said. “Sturms says he’ll do anything for a buck. Built his practice on abortions and draft dodge. Still helps Sturms out, with O.D. situations, different drug things. I guess the reason Ainsworth stays out of trouble is he’s done work for important people in the area and has too much on too many of them for anybody to bother him.”

There was the sound of talking outside the room and Charlie jerked up into a sitting position. “What the hell’s that? Who the hell’s that goddamn quack talking to? You bring Sturms along or something?”

“No, I told you, Dad, he just set it up and never left his house.”

“You got a gun?”

“Right here,” he said, pulling the silenced nine-millimeter from his waistband. After getting caught by Sturms he wasn’t taking chances.

“Go out and see what the hell’s happening.”

“Okay.”

“And watch your ass.”

“Okay.”

Walter peeked out into the hall. Ainsworth was talking to a young guy, a guy about Walter’s age, maybe a year or so younger. He was short with long, wild curly hair and a well-muscled frame. He was wearing jeans and a tee-shirt with the words “Wonder Wart-Hog” above a cartoon, caped hog. Ainsworth was saying, “You’re a little early, Jon,” standing by the entrance to a room that Walter assumed was the doctor’s private office. Walter shut the door.

“I think it’s just some thing about drugs he’s doing for Sturms,” Walter told his father.

“Help me up,” Charlie said.

“Dad...”

“Help me up, goddammit.”

Walter guided his father off the high table, put an arm around his waist and moved him over to the door. Charlie shook free of his son and stood on one leg.

“Give me the gun,” he ordered.

Walter gave it to him.

Charlie cracked the door and looked out.

“It’s the goddamn kid,” Charlie said to himself.

“Who?”

“The kid, it’s the goddamn kid who lives with that old guy at the antique shop. His nephew or something.” Charlie’s eyes narrowed and his lips were drawn back tight. “I smell a cross.”

Charlie pushed through the door, slammed against the wall, lost his balance momentarily, got it back quick. He hobbled forward, nearing the doctor and Jon, the gun as steady in his hand as his legs under him weren’t.

“What the hell’s going on here?” Charlie demanded.

The doctor started pushing the air with his palms. “Put that gun away! Put that gun away!”

Jon had a puzzled look on his face that rapidly dissolved into a knowing one. He pointed his finger at Charlie, as if he was aiming back another gun. “You,” he said. “I know you.” A red sheet of rage flashed across his face and Jon leaped at Charlie, like an animal jumping out of a tree.

And Charlie slapped Jon across the forehead with the heavy gun. The kid folded up and dropped hard to the floor. Charlie didn’t even lose his balance.

“Why... why in heaven’s name did you do that?” the doctor sputtered.

Charlie looked at the doctor and so did Charlie’s gun. “Are you pulling a double cross, Ainsworth? Do you know who this kid is?”

“Why, that’s... that’s just Jon, Ed Planner’s nephew. He’s only here to...”

Charlie limped painfully up to the doctor and held the gun against the man’s throat, right along his Adam’s apple. “Why is he here?”

“His... his uncle passed away today and I was helping him with the funeral arrangements, death certificate, and so on. Jon and his uncle’re like you people... have to steer clear of the authorities.”

“And do you know how his uncle ‘happened’ to pass away?”

“He was... shot.”

“And who the fuck do you think shot him?”

“Oh my God.”

Charlie stepped back a pace, said, “Walter.”

“Yes?”

“Help the doc here carry the kid in that room.”

Walter and Ainsworth carried Jon into the examining room, Charlie following them in on wobbly legs.

“No, not on the table,” Charlie said. “Just drop him on the floor there.”

They did.

The jolt seemed to rouse Jon. He stirred, shook his head, looked up. He raised a middle finger to Charlie and said, “Nolan knows you’re alive. Kiss your ass goodbye, big shot.”

Charlie slapped Jon with the gun and put him to sleep again.

Walter said, “What are you going to do, Dad?”

“I don’t know. Let me think. Help me up on the table. I want to sit down.”

Walter helped his father.

He watched his father sitting there, the close-set eyes narrowing, the lips moving ever so slightly. Was his father deciding to go ahead with the next phase of some secret master plan? Or just throwing together some spur-of-the-moment piece of strategy? Walter didn’t know and couldn’t guess. But a full minute went by before the eyes softened, the lips settled into a tight grin and a false calm washed across the tan, lined face and Charlie said, “We’ll take the little bastard with us.”

Why? Walter wanted to ask it, but knew he shouldn’t. He was glad of his father’s decision, in a way. He had a feeling the alternative would’ve been to kill the kid named Jon.

“Come here, Ainsworth,” Charlie said.

The doctor shuffled over. The room was air-conditioned and near-cold, but the doctor was sweating profusely.

“Where’s the stuff you were going to get for me?”

The doctor looked down at his right hand, which was clenched in a nervous fist. He opened it and revealed two little white packets. “Antibiotic,” the doctor said, handing one of the little envelopes to Charlie, “and painkiller,” handing him the other one. “Instructions are written on the packets.”

Charlie told the doctor about his high blood pressure and asked if it made any difference about anything. The doctor said no, but that the high blood pressure probably added to Charlie’s passing out from the wound, perhaps had made him bleed somewhat more than the average person might.

“Okay, Doc,” Charlie said, “you’re doing fine. You getting more relaxed now? Not so nervous anymore?”

Ainsworth nodded.

“Good. You don’t need to be nervous. Nothing’s going to happen to you. You’re a friend of Sturms and Sturms is a friend of a friend of mine, so we’re all friends and nothing’s going to happen to you. But I want your help. Give that kid something that’ll keep him out for a while.”

“How long?” Ainsworth asked.

“Oh, four hours maybe. Can do?”

“Yes.”

Walter watched the doctor go to the counter and fill a big hypo with clear fluid. It seemed to Walter that the doctor was moving faster than before.

Walter sat down and swallowed and looked at what was going on in front of him: a doctor in a golf outfit was giving a horse-size hypo to a weird-looking, long-haired kid who was slumped unconscious on the floor; and a man in a bright Hawaiian print shirt and bermuda shorts, thigh bandaged, hand squeezed tight around a cannon of a gun, was sitting high on an examining table, seeming to tower over the rest of the room, ruling over the insanity and violence that hung in the air of this white, unpadded cell.

Walter closed his eyes and wished it would all go away.

5

Jon woke to darkness.

He was hot. He was sticky. He hurt.

For the first few moments he was aware of nothing else: just the sauna-like heat of the room, his shirt and jeans damp, clinging to his body; the staleness of the air, like some musty old museum; the overall pain, a sluggish doped aching that coursed through his arms and legs and seemed to culminate in the throbbing between his temples; and the extreme darkness of the room, the lack of any light at all, making him think for one awful half-awake moment that he had gone blind.

Or had been blinded.

Maybe he was in hell. Maybe this was the end of an EC horror comic and he was trapped in some ironic hell for robbing that bank last year. The thought made him laugh, but the laugh got caught in his throat and came out as something else, something that smacked more of despair than amusement.

“All right,” he said aloud, but not loudly. “Okay.” Just a whisper. He was telling himself that he was alive. Assess the situation, he told himself, his head foggy. Take your time. Slowly now.

He was on his back. He could feel something hard and metallic under him, but circular, like large rings, and springy. Springs? Bedsprings? He moved his body slightly, jiggled the surface beneath him. Yes. He was on a bed. On the exposed springs of an old-fashioned bed.

He smiled and the sweat running down his face got into his mouth and tasted salty. He didn’t mind. He was on a bed somewhere, alive, and that beat being in hell by a long shot.

He tried to get up off the bed and found he couldn’t. He wasn’t paralyzed, he knew that. He could lift the trunk of his body several inches off the bed, maybe half a foot. He wasn’t paralyzed.

What, then?

He lay there and breathed deep, slow, trying to let his mind clear, which it did, gradually. The fuzziness went away and he realized he was bound, he could feel the rope around his wrists, around his ankles. Rope was looped around ankles and wrists, not tight, but secure. His circulation wasn’t cut off or anything, but working with his fingers he found the chance of slipping the loops up around over his hands was nonexistent. The rope he was bound with was not thick and coarse, but more on the order of clothesline, and didn’t scrape his skin or make him particularly uncomfortable. There was a lot of leeway in the rope, which he’d decided was tied to the bedposts, and he actually had his arms free at his sides and could lift them or his legs in the air and do just about anything with them except push himself up and walk off — without taking the bed with him, anyway.

So. His situation was this: on his back, on a bed, tied to the bedposts, God knew where.

Where? Was he in Ainsworth’s office? That was where he last remembered being. Not likely, unless Ainsworth had taken to collecting antique beds. Antiques! He’d been taken back to Planner’s and tied to an old antique bed! But the only one in the shop was Jon’s, and it was small, with a box spring. Planner didn’t have any other antique beds.

Planner. Planner was dead. Planner was more than dead. Planner was murdered. Murdered by that son of a bitch Charlie.

Charlie.

Jon hadn’t recognized Charlie immediately. Jon’d come to Ainsworth’s office early, but not by design; he was just walking by on his way to grab a quick sandwich at the Hamburg Inn and saw Ainsworth’s lights on and thought what the hell and stopped. He’d just been standing there saying hello to Ainsworth and Ainsworth had been getting ready to show him into the private office to fill out some forms and such and that madman had come tumbling out into the hall, waving an automatic that looked like the Gun of Navarone. It took Jon a few seconds to recognize the man, but the pieces had fallen together quickly: gun and bandaged thigh had gelled with Nolan’s mention of Charlie, and Jon had known.

He had only seen Charlie one time before — that night when Nolan got shot up by Charlie and his men — and then only for moments and not close up, but the image of the wild little man had stuck in Jon’s mind: short and dark with powder-white hair and two black little eyes stuck together close like beads on the face of a cheap rag doll.

And so Jon had jumped at the crazy gun-waving madman in the hallway at Ainsworth’s office, leaped at him, mind full of Nolan bleeding and Planner dead and got knocked cold to the floor by a backhand blow from Charlie’s gun-in-hand.

He had come to twice after that, both times in Ainsworth’s examining room. The first time he’d come out of it, he’d looked up at Charlie and fingered the sucker and told him what Nolan would do to him. And Charlie had whacked him to the floor again. The second time he woke up, just half woke, and saw Ainsworth coming down on him, and it was like some fish-eye camera angle in a monster movie, distorted, out of focus, Ainsworth as Dr. Frankenstein bug-eyed and sweaty above a hypo the size of Cleveland. And as the needle jammed into his arm, he glanced up and saw that little asshole Charlie sitting, sitting way up there like some court jester who’d made his way to the throne by poisoning the king and queen.

That was the last thing he could remember, and it wasn’t a pleasant memory to dwell on, though it was vivid enough. How much time had passed since then? He could feel his watch on his wrist, right under where the rope was looped, but in all the knocking about the thing had probably conked out on him. Why couldn’t he be a normal person and have a Bulova with a luminous dial? But no, he had to be different — he had to wear an antique Dick Tracy watch that ran when it felt like it.

Never mind that, he told himself. Never mind superfluous thoughts. Think. What could have happened? Where was he? Why had Ainsworth stuck a needle in his arm?

To put him out, of course. He’d been doped. But why? Getting knocked out, or just tied up, would keep him indisposed long enough for Charlie to get away. Why dope him and tie him up and clobber him? Just for the sheer hell of it? Why not just kill him?

Jon tried to make sense of it, tried to develop logical theories about where he was and who had put him there, but all he came up with was questions, more questions. He had the feeling that Charlie had not only done all this to him, but was still around, that Charlie had taken him off somewhere and was keeping him captive. He even remembered, vaguely, delirious, strange dreams of travel, a ride, dreams of an ocean voyage that might have been a drive in a car.

But there was no sense in it, none at all. Why would Charlie have any interest in Jon?

Fuck it, he thought. He decided to concentrate his efforts on getting loose. Prospects were dim, but he had to try, didn’t he? He started out slowly, tugging first at his right wrist, then moving to the left, then each foot got a prolonged effort. He spent a good while at it, kicking, tugging, struggling, making absolutely no progress at all. Finally he heaved up off the bed, came down hard, repeated the process, again, and again, at the same time thrusting his legs upward and outward and every way, flailing his arms, pounding his butt on the springs, hoping to break the bed if nothing else and maybe, somehow, slip rope over broken bent bedpost and...

But in the end all he got was tired. Very tired, and he found himself getting drowsy, and found also that after staring up at the darkness for a time there was little else to do but sleep. So he did.

“Wake up.”

Jon’s eyes opened. Light. It was light in the room now.

“Hey, wake up.”

Jon’s eyes focused. He saw a young guy of maybe twenty, twenty-two years, about his age, sitting on a chair by the bed. He was thin and pale and had the same close-set eyes as Charlie.

“Who the hell are you?” Jon said. “Some relative of Charlie’s?”

“I’m his son.”

“You got my sympathy.”

“I brought some food for you. You want some food?”

Jon sat up.

“Hey,” he said. “I sat up.” He shook his hands; they were free. His legs had been freed, too. The ropes hung untied on the bedposts of, yes, an old antique bed, a brass one, and quite attractive; the nicest bed Jon had ever been tied to. The room was still dim, but light was creeping under the drawn shade on a window directly across from the foot of the bed.

“Look,” Charlie’s son said, “I’m sorry about the ropes and everything. I didn’t know he’d tied you up like this. Dad has a tendency to be overdramatic. He’s... he’s been acting a little strange lately.”

“Like killing my uncle, you mean,” Jon said. “What’s he going to do to me? What’s going on? Where the hell am I?”

“Do you want this food?”

The guy had set up a tray by the bed and on it was a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon and some milk.

“Sure I want the food,” Jon said. “I feel like I haven’t eaten for hours.”

“You haven’t. You been out fifteen hours. First five or six hours you were unconscious, from the stuff that doctor gave you. I suppose you woke up sometime in the night and squirmed a while, then fell back asleep.”

Jon frowned at the guy. “Give me the food.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll be back in half an hour and take the dishes off your hands and see how you’re doing. I’m not going to tie you up.”

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll get away?”

“Take a look at the two-story drop out that window and decide for yourself. And I don’t think you’ll be breaking down the door, either. The wood’s four inches thick and the lock’s pretty firm.”

“Let me eat, why don’t you.”

“See you later.”

The guy left and Jon started in on the food. It tasted good to him, but wasn’t as good as the last meal he’d eaten, which had also been a breakfast of scrambled eggs. Hell, right now he wouldn’t even have minded the company of Larry, that wide-eyed brat of Karen’s.

Karen.

His gut ached with the thought of her. He put down his fork and rubbed a spot over his left eye.

She’d be worried as hell. She’d have spent a miserable night. He’d called her and told her a little about the situation, not much, but enough to worry her to death, god-dammit. Mentioned she should watch her step about whom she let into the apartment. “There’s a guy with a gun involved,” he’d told her. When he’d told her that, she’d insisted on having a number to call for help, if she couldn’t find him or he didn’t show up or something. Jon had given her Nolan’s number at the Tropical and while he hadn’t liked doing that, he’d supposed an emergency might come up, requiring that sort of thing, and he sure as hell didn’t want her phoning the police. He’d also given her the doctor’s number, and he wondered what Ainsworth had said when she called him, as she must’ve. The good doctor would’ve lied through the teeth, no doubt. But would he tell Karen a soothing lie, or one that would upset her? Would she then have called Nolan? If so, would it do any good? How in hell could Nolan find him? Shit, he didn’t know where he was. He could have a phone fall out of the sky, plop down in his lap, a direct line to Nolan and what would he say? “Help, save me! And while you’re at it, tell me where I am.”

Piss.

Jon ate. As he did he glanced around the room. All the furniture had been covered up with sheets, but he could tell this was a girl’s room, or had been once; one of the pieces of furniture had the shape of a make-up table with tall mirror, and the walls were papered in pink with blue bells on it. The rest of the room was rugged, running to rough, barn-like wood, from the unvarnished floor to the open-beamed ceiling that followed the slant of the roof. If a girl’s room could be so rustic, Jon figured, the place must be a large cabin or cottage of some kind.

He had just finished his milk when the guy came back in.

“How was breakfast?”

“It was swell. Now if I could just have a cake with a file in it.”

“Listen, I don’t blame you for being bitter.”

“No shit.”

The guy sat wearily down, frustration obvious on his face. For some reason he seemed to want Jon to like him, or approve of his actions. Jesus. Jon studied him.

He wasn’t particularly big; in fact, he was slender, his arms thin. He was wearing a tank-top tee-shirt, blue, and white jeans. He had a college boy look to him, as if he should be out hazing some pledges for a fraternity somewhere.

Jon made his decision. He would watch the guy and find an opening and go with it. Take the guy down and get the hell out. It would be easy. Find an opening and cream the guy. Easy.

“I’d like to tell you what’s going on,” the guy was saying, “but I don’t know myself, really. I’m just as scared as you are, believe it or not, maybe more. I’m in this situation because I wanted to stand beside my father and I guess I didn’t realize just exactly who my father was.”

“That he’s a maniac, you mean.”

“That’s your point of view. He’s still my father, and I’m in this with him, to the end. Whether I like it or not, at this point. I guess I could go to jail a long time.”

“If Nolan finds you, don’t sweat jail.”

“Who is this Nolan?”

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“Wait. Just wait.”

“Look. I’m trying to tell you I’m going to help you, if I can.”

“Oh?”

“I won’t let Dad, uh, do anything... extreme.”

“Like kill me?”

He shrugged. “Like kill you,” he admitted.

“Get me out of here, then.”

“I can’t.”

“You won’t.”

“All right I won’t. But stay cool. It’ll be all right.”

“You’re crazier than your father.”

“Could be. Anyway, can I get you something? We got some beer. Something to read maybe?”

“How about your father’s obituary.”

“I try to help you and you hassle me.”

“I'm just an ungrateful bastard, I guess.”

“I noticed your watch.”

“What?”

“Your watch. I noticed it. What kind of watch is that?”

“It’s just a watch.”

“You some kind of comic book nut or something?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“That watch has, who? Dick Tracy on it? And the tee-shirt you’re wearing is some other cartoon character. Thought it followed, your being a comic book nut.”

“All right, so I like comic books. What of it?”

“Christ, you're hostile. Just thought you might like to look through the box of old comics we got in the attic, up in the other house. At least I think they’re still up there, if they haven’t been thrown in the trash or something.”

Jon perked, getting interested in spite of himself. “How... how old are these comics?”

“I don’t know. They were my cousin’s, and he’s older than I am. My sister and I used to read them when we were kids, coming up here summers.”

“Well, I guess I wouldn’t mind taking a look at them.”

“Okay. Your name’s Jon, right? Mine’s Walter. Walt.”

“It’s a pleasure.”

Walt ignored the sarcasm and said, “I’ll go over and get them for you.”

Jon watched him leave, the door shut and lock behind him. He sat on the bed and wondered if there would be any good books in the box. You never knew when you were going to luck onto a find. If that cousin was older than Walter, why those comics could be early fifties or before, and that meant there could be some good shit in...

Jesus Christ Almighty!

Goddamn comic book fever! He slammed a fist into his thigh. It was a blindness that came over him; all collectors feel it, he supposed, but he felt it deep. No logic to it, or reason. Just the fever.

You’re an asshole, he told himself, meaning it. Your uncle’s dead, murdered by this creep and his old man, and you’re all of a sudden grateful to him, you’re his buddy, just because he’s got some moldy old comic books he’s going to show you. You’re trapped in a room somewhere, held prisoner by a senile old Mafiosi and his loving kid, probably going to get your balls shot off any minute, and all you can do is slobber at the mouth over the chance of seeing some old comics. You goddamn idiot. Shape the fuck up.

“Okay,” he said aloud, after a moment.

He was okay. The fever was in check. He was sane again.

He formed his plan. He would sit on the edge of the bed, wait for his buddy Walter to stroll in with the box in his hands, and as the guy was putting the box down on the bed, Jon would kick him in the side of the head. That would do the trick.

Get ready, he told himself.

He got ready.

The door opened and in Walter came, arms full of an aging cardboard box, falling apart at the sides. Now’s your chance, Jon told himself, don’t blow it, asshole.

“Here they are,” Walter said, coming over to the bed with the box.

Jon braced himself, his leg was tensed and ready to kick, and he noticed the comic on top of the stack in the box.

An EC.

“Vault of Horror” number 18.

What a beautiful cover! A couple kissing by a wishing well, out of which was crawling an oozing, decomposing ghoul. What an artist that Johnny Craig was. Jon didn’t have that issue; it was an early one, kind of hard to find.

He grabbed hold of the box and settled it in his lap and started flipping through titles. They weren’t all EC’s, but many of them were; there was an early one, “Crypt of Terror” 17, worth probably sixty bucks, and some rare science-fiction titles like “Weird Fantasy” and “Weird Science.” Jesus, here was a “White Indian” with Frazetta art! What a find! The box was a treasure chest. This was fantastic.

“Enjoy yourself,” Walter said.

And was out the door.