Fly Paper

5

The riots could have been last week, the way this neighborhood looked. Buildings stood black and gutted from flames; no one had even bothered boarding up the broken-out, blown-out windows, which stared from the buildings like the empty sockets of gouged-out eyes. Other blocks had fared better, their buildings untouched by flame, some stores none the worse for wear, open for business. But even these more fortunate blocks showed the scars of violence, their wounds no less ugly for the pus being dried up and crusted over. The sites of many small businesses were vacant now, abandoned by their white proprietors in the wake of black unrest, leaving behind storefront windows broken out and never replaced, nothing remaining but jagged edges of glass, like teeth in the mouth of a screaming man. Outrage had fired this violence, from which had come further outrage: one emigrant had boarded up his storefront window and written, in an angry red scrawl: “AFTER 20 YRS. SERVICE, CHASED FROM OUR HOME,” a star of David beneath the words like a signature. Passing by the boarded-up store was a thin black woman in a pale, worn, green dress, trudging along like a parody of a weary darkie, pulling a child’s wagon filled with groceries, and her face told the whole story: she’d had to walk blocks and blocks to a grocery store, and hoped like hell nothing spoiled. She seemed to shake her head a little as she moved along past her neighborhood corner grocery, which was an empty, burned-out shell.

Nolan sat in the back of the taxi cab, listening to the meter tick his money away, and half listening to the cabbie, who’d been pointing out the sights like a cynical tour guide. The cabbie had grown up in this part of Detroit himself and was saddened and somewhat pissed off about what had happened here since he’d left it for a better neighborhood.

Back at the airport, Nolan had chosen this black cabbie over a white one, because he wasn’t sure if the white cabbie would’ve wanted to drive him into this neighborhood. Matter of fact, Nolan was a little ill at ease himself; he’d feel a hell of a lot better armed, but he hadn’t been able to carry heat on the plane because of skyjacking precautions. He’d brought a gun along, of course, a pair of them in fact: two S & W .38s with four-inch barrels. But they were packed away in his suitcase (no sweat from airport security on that — only hand-carried bags routinely got checked), and a .38 nestling between his fresh socks and change of underwear wouldn’t do him much good down here. The suitcase, and Jon, ought to be at the hotel by now; this taxi ride had been one that Nolan felt better taken alone, so he’d sent the kid on ahead with the luggage on the airport-to-hotel shuttle bus.

Which was considerably cheaper than this damn taxi, but then, you didn’t find a shuttle running from airport to ghetto and had to expect to pay the price. The price in this case was double stiff: the tinny racket of that disembodied mechanical head hooked to the dash, wolfing down Nolan’s money, was depressing enough, let alone having to put up with the cabbie’s gloomy line of patter.

The cabbie was a thickset, very black man with white hair and white mustache, and was maybe a year or two older than Nolan. “Yessir,” the cabbie was saying (why couldn’t I get a sullen one, Nolan thought, or at least one of those mumble-mouths you can’t make heads or tails of), “this neighborhood was hit super-bad, rioting and lootings and snipings and you name it. Bad hit as any place in the country.”

Nolan grunted, to show he was paying attention. He glanced at the meter and winced: attention wasn’t all he was paying — fourteen bucks and climbing. Christ!

The cabbie rambled on. “Martin Luther King weren’t the only thing got killed, that time. This whole neighborhood went down with him. Look at it. You ever seen a place so tore-up?”

“No,” Nolan said, though it wasn’t true. Berlin had been like this, after the war.

“You know, where I’m taking you, it’s about the only business in the area didn’t get hurt. All them cars, and not even a antenna busted off. And a white fella runs it, can you beat that?”

“No.”

“Huh?”

“No, I can’t beat that.”

Nolan’s lack of interest finally dawned on the guy, and shut him up. Which was no big deal, as they were within a block of Bernie’s Used Auto Sales anyway.

Bernie’s was indeed a white man’s business that had gone untouched in the rioting, and with half a block of cars sitting out in the open like that, it was a wonder. The big garage next to the lot had gone untouched as well, not even a broken pane of glass. It was not hard to figure: Bernie’s business was not one the neighborhood would like to lose. A grocery store was expendable, but not Bernie’s.

Nolan got out of the taxi, looked at the meter, which read “$15.50.” He handed the cabbie a twenty and waited for change, but the guy just grinned, said “Thanks,” and roared off. Nolan now understood how the cabbie had made it to a better neighborhood.

Immediately, a salesman approached Nolan, saying, “What can we do for you, my man?” His words were mild enough, but his tone and expression said, What the fuck you doin’ here, whitey? He was a lanky, chocolate-colored guy who couldn’t keep still. Nolan hated goddamn funky butts like this; he liked people who didn’t move anything but their mouths when they talked, and not much of that. This guy was a fluid son of a bitch poured into a white-stitched black suit and a wide-brimmed gangster hat. The band was wide and black, the hat itself white, and Nolan had seen George Raft in a similar one, years ago. It looked better on Raft.

“Tell Bernie I’m here.”

The guy stopped dancing, narrowed his eyes on Nolan. “Uh, like who should I say...”

“Tell him Nolan.”

“He’s not...”

“He’s expecting me. Didn’t he tell you? No, I don’t suppose he would. Tell him.”

The guy’s eyes filled with something, and it wasn’t love. “Okay,” he said. “Wait here till I see if it’s cool with the man.”

“Okay.”

The salesman strode off, but his butt seemed slightly less funky now. His reaction to Nolan had been a natural one, as most of Bernie’s white customers never showed their faces around here, making arrangements to see Bern at his suburban home or at one of his junkyards. Nolan walked around the lot while he waited, taking a look at Bernie’s stock.

The lot was packed with cars, of recent vintage mostly, every make and model from Volks to Mercedes, Pinto to Caddy. An impressive selection, but to the casual observer, nothing unusual. Nolan was not a casual observer, and he was smiling, thinking of the one thing that separated Bernie’s from your run-of-the-mill used-car lot: virtually every car on the well-stocked lot was a stolen one.

But the skill and workmanship of Bernie and staff saw to it that every car sold off the lot was not only untraceable, but offered to the public at bargain pricing and with full warranty. This was why Bernie’s had been an oasis in a desert of rioting: nobody kills the golden goose, and Bernie was him, Bernie was the goose who’d provided this neighborhood with countless golden eggs. Rip off a car in the morning, and by early afternoon Bern’s cash was in your pocket, and Bern was cool, he paid off fair, no hassle, no shuck. And on top of being where you could unload the car you stole for ready cash, Bernie’s was a mother of a cheap place to buy wheels. If there was one white dude in the neighborhood who deserved being called brother, it was Bern, baby, Bern.

Nolan wasn’t precisely sure how Bernie worked this gig, but he did know that Bernie had been a jump-title expert for years. Last Nolan knew, Bernie owned a chain of junkyards all over the Detroit area and, by matching up stolen cars with junked cars of the same make, he simply spot-welded the junker’s serial numbers onto the stolen job — under the hood, inside the door and, when possible, on the frame — and presto, a “new” car ready for titling. Legislation had, in recent years, crippled jump-title rackets badly, especially on the large scale that Bernie worked; but fortunately, a southern state notorious for its lax titling laws was glad to have Bernie’s trade, and the particular county Bernie did his business through even went so far as to service him by mail-order. Sounded far-fetched, but Nolan remembered the time in Alabama, not so very long ago, when he’d stolen a car and, with no proof of ownership whatever, driven up to the courthouse, got the auto tided, and driven it away.

“Yer fat!”

Nolan turned, and Bernie was standing there, a short, massively muscled man with not an ounce of flab on him; he had a round face with round eyes and round nose and, when he spoke, a round mouth. If he hadn’t had a full head of curly brown hair, he’d have looked like a talking cueball. He was wearing the world’s dirtiest coveralls, with “Bernie’s” emblazoned over one breast pocket “How’d you get so goddamn fat?”

“I’m an old man, Bernie. I live a soft life these days.”

“Soft life, my ass. Come on, Nolan, let’s go in the back and have some beer.”

Why Bernie didn’t have a potbelly from constant beer guzzling was one of the mysteries of life Nolan would never understand. Maybe the man just worked hard enough to offset all those suds: Bernie, never content to live high on the carloads of cash his business brought him, spent most of his time in there doing the drudge work — painting the cars, doing body work, replacing parts, everything. It was obvious that Bernie didn’t need to do illegal work to make a good living; but the illegal route had led to his own shop, his own operation, and freedom was always worth a little risk. One thing was for sure, Nolan thought: Bernie ran the most efficient automotive firm in Detroit And probably the most honest.

The back room was a cubbyhole with a small desk and a large cooler of beer. The desk was cluttered with car manuals, the Red and Blue Books of this and many a year, bills and receipts, and so on. Nolan knew the reason for the mess: Bernie kept good books, but felt that overly neat records made the IRS unduly suspicious. Besides, he got a kick out of making them come in and dig. If they wanted to come and look for ways to screw you, cross your legs and make ’em work their asses off getting in.

Bernie popped a top and handed a foaming beer to Nolan, did the same for himself. “So yer fat, and you ain’t dead.”

“Yes I’m fat, no I’m not dead.”

“You already told me why you’re fat. Now tell me why you ain’t dead.”

“Didn’t you hear about the change of regime in Chicago?”

“No. I got no Family ties, never did have. I’m an independent and like to stay clear of that shit. You know me, Nolan. So what, the people that wanted you dead, those Family people, are out? And what, the new people love you?”

“Something like that.”

“What are you up to now?”

Nolan told Bernie about the Tropical.

“Sounds boring.”

“It is. But it’s a good deal, for the immediate present, and I don’t want to blow it”

“How could you blow it?”

“Well, you see, Bernie, I’m here on business. Detroit’s never been my idea of a place to vacation.”

“So?”

“The Family people I’m fronting for don’t want me straying from the straight and narrow. They got a name and background set up for me, so I can front the Tropical with no static from the law or anybody. Somebody runs a check on me, I sound like the president of the goddamn Chamber of Commerce. Hell, I’m even a college graduate, would you believe that?”

“I believe you can pass for one,” Bernie said, getting a fresh beer. “I joined this country club, and it’s full of those Phi Beta crappers. They’re some of the dumbest, most boring assholes I ever hung around with. If Thelma didn’t insist we belong, I’d get the hell out.”

Bernie’s social-climbing wife, and the indignities he suffered because of her, was a topic Nolan could do without, so he steered around it, saying, “Anyway, Bern, my point is, there are certain of my former activities the Family doesn’t want me engaging in.”

“Shit, you’re even starting to sound like a damn college man. Okay, so you’re here for a heist. And you want the lid kept on it.”

“Right, Bern.”

“What do you need, a car? You can have a car as long as you’re in town, Nolan. On the house. Course, if you wreck it, I’ll expect you to buy the thing. That’s only fair, I mean.”

“More than fair. But you could help me another way.”

“Whatever it is, I’ll do what I can.”

“I need some supplies for the job. And I figure the less people I talk to, better off I am. Can you get me what I need?”

“Think so. Anything short of a tank, anyway. What is it you want?”

Nolan told him.

“What the hell you need those for?”

“I don’t want the guys I’m heisting to see me. If they see me, I’ll have to shoot them.”

“Getting soft, Nolan? Ain’t fat bad enough?”

“I never been one to kill without reason, Bernie.” That was true enough, but Nolan didn’t go into the rest of it — that his main reason was, he didn’t want to subject Jon to violence that extreme. If he could help it.

“Well, okay, Nolan. You always known what you was doing. Sit and have another beer — there’s plenty in the cooler. I’ll go get a man to rustle that crazy shit up for you. Run you about twenty-five bucks per. What you want, a couple?”

Nolan nodded.

“Okay, good as done. But I were you, I’d remember those toys’re no substitute for firepower. You can’t beat a gun, no way.”

“Oh, I’ll have a gun, Bern. I may be getting soft and fat, but I’m not crazy.”

6

The ballroom was filled with long tables, tables stacked with the wares of dozens of individual dealers, and hundreds of kids-of-all-ages were filing past the tables, stopping to examine those wares. The dealers ranged from small-time local collectors getting rid of their duplicates, to big-time operators who’d come from either coast in vans loaded with boxes and boxes of rare material. The goods of both were scrutinized with equal suspicion by prospective buyers, who slipped the books from their plastic bags to make sure each was properly graded, fairly priced, going over each yellowing artifact like a jeweler looking for flaws in a diamond. A generally cordial mood reigned, however, and the horse-trading, the bickering over an item’s monetary worth, was considerably more amiable than what you might run into at a pawnbroker’s, say, or an antique shop. Jon, in his jeans and sweatshirt, fit in well with this crowd, who hardly looked prosperous, unless you noticed that greenbacks of just about every denomination were clutched in the countless hot little hands like so much paper. Though the throng included kids below teen-level, as well as men into middle age and beyond, most were closer to Jon’s age, and ran to type: male; glasses; skin problems; skinny (or fat) or short (or tall); ultra-long hair (or ultra-short); T-shirts with super-heroes on them. If Nolan were here, he’d look at this crowd and figure them for the bums of tomorrow — hell, bums of today — but in reality these were highly intelligent, if slightly screwball young adults, potential Supermen even if they did look more like offbeat Clark Kents.

What was going on was a comic book convention. This ballroom in a downtown Detroit hotel had been converted into “Hucksters’ Hall,” and Jon, like all the scruffy fans wandering through the room in search of pulp-paper dreams, was dropping money like a reckless Monopoly player: in his first twenty minutes, Jon passed GO, spent his $200. This is what he purchased: three Big Little Books, two Flash Gordon, one Buck Rogers; one Weird Fantasy comic with a story by Wood; and two Famous Funnies comics with old Buck Rogers strips inside and covers by Frazetta. All of it was the comic book version of science fiction; that is, pirates in outer space: Killer Kane hijacking Buck’s rocket ship; Ming the Merciless holding Dale Arden captive to lure Flash into a trap; pirates flying the skull-and-crossbones in the sea of outer space. Great stuff.

So why was he so damn unhappy?

Not about the prices he’d had to pay — he’d done all right on the items he picked up so far, by shrewd if halfhearted haggling — and not in disappointment at the size of this convention, though it really didn’t compare to the New York Cons, whose Huckster rooms were breathtaking, both in scope and prices. This convention was not, after all, totally devoted to comics, being the Detroit Three-Way Fan-Fare, a joint gathering of comics freaks, science-fiction enthusiasts and old-movie buffs. Since Jon fell into each category, he naturally was more than pleased with the arrangement.

But right now he was feeling low, an exceptional state of affairs considering he was now in the middle of the atmosphere that most nearly fit his conception of heaven: namely, a room full of comic books. Not unhappy exactly, more like unnerved. Moody. Jumpy. Ill at ease.

Tonight — the prospect of tonight — was scaring the bejesus out of him.

When Nolan had suggested going to Detroit and ripping off old man Comfort, the convention came immediately to Jon’s mind; but he decided to wait for the right moment to spring the idea on Nolan. When Jon did ask if it was okay if they stayed at this particular hotel, Nolan’s left eyebrow had raised and he’d said, “Comic books. It has something to do with comic books... I don’t know how in hell it can, but it does.”

Jon admitted as much, pointing out, “The convention’ll get my mind off the job — I won’t get all fumble-ass nervous about the thing. You can do your setup work, getting the car and the other stuff, and I can spend the afternoon looking at old comic books. It’ll keep my mind from dwelling too much on tonight.”

They’d been sitting on the plane at the time, having driven to the Quad City Airport in Moline for a Friday morning flight to Detroit. They hadn’t phoned ahead any hotel reservations, as it was Nolan’s intention to find a cheap motel once they got there. He’d made the intention known to Jon, who hadn’t been surprised by it, considering that right then they’d been sitting in the plane’s tourist section, another of Nolan’s money-saving tactics. Their conversation had to be couched in euphemisms, as they took up only two of three adjoining seats, the window seat being occupied by a conservatively dressed businessman who might be offended by discussion of the armed robbery pending.

Jon had discovered, through experience, that Nolan was something of a cheapskate. While Nolan had earned some half-million dollars in his fifteen years as a professional thief, he’d kept the bulk of it salted away in banks, while living a painfully spartan existence. Nolan had been satisfied with modest apartments and second-hand Fords because he lived for tomorrow — that is, had planned an early retirement from the heist game, a retirement that would include a nightclub Nolan wanted to own and operate through his “twilight years.”

But now that Nolan had been wiped out of his half-million nest egg, not once but twice (Jon’s along with it, the second time) you’d think the guy would’ve learned you might as well enjoy yourself today since a safe’s liable to fall on you tomorrow.

But no. With Nolan it was tourist-class seats and cheap motels and, Jon supposed, a hamburger joint for supper.

So when Nolan didn’t seem to be buying the argument about the hotel with the comics con being a way to keep Jon’s mind off the job, Jon mentioned the special room rate; if thrift didn’t win Nolan over, nothing would. “We can have a double room for twenty bucks, Nolan. That’s less than half price. People attending the convention get the rooms less than half price.”

“Okay, kid. Whatever you want.”

It pleased him he was finally beginning to find the means to occasionally come out on top with Nolan.

Not that Jon didn’t still admire the man. But Nolan’s cheapness was at least a chink in the armor; it was nice to know the guy wasn’t perfect, that he was human in a few ways, at least. Nicer still was knowing that in the ways that counted — survival, for instance — Nolan was a rock. Jon liked to cling to that rock.

He could’ve used that rock right now.

Because the convention wasn’t proving to have the distracting effect he’d thought it would.

That old man, Sam Comfort, with his spooky gray eyes and sadism-lined face, was a constantly recurring image in Jon’s mind, a strong, chilling image that could crowd out even the four-color fantasies strewn out along the dealers’ tables in Hucksters’ Hall. Tonight. Tonight Jon and Nolan would be going up against that crazy, crazy old man, and if all went well, they’d come away with a strongbox full of that senile old bastard’s money. Which was dandy, only they hadn’t done the thing yet; it lay ahead to be done, tonight.

And Jon was scared shitless at the thought.

He’d been eager at the prospect, sure; he was hot to get back some of that money he’d lost a month-and-a-half ago, and when Nolan outlined the plan to rip off Sam Comfort and Son, it had sounded good to him, and still did. But that was back in Iowa City, in homey, security-lined surroundings, where planning a robbery was like plotting the story of a new comic strip. The execution of the plan seemed light-years away, the hazy end result of a sharp but abstract concept. And this, this was Detroit, they were here already, and a few hours from now Jon would be laying his ass on the line.

He’d done it before, of course, laid his ass on the line in one of Nolan’s potentially violent undertakings (hell of an unpleasant word, that — undertaking, Jesus!) but that didn’t make things any easier. Last year, he’d gone into that first robbery with a very naive sort of attitude, an out-of-focus view, a comic-book idea of action and adventure and derring-do. Then, when everything had turned to shit, guns blasting into people and throwing blood around and turning human beings into limp and lifeless meat, Jon had suddenly realized that Nolan’s life was not capes and bullets-bouncing-off, it was the real goddamn thing. The bullets went through you, and blood and bone and stuff came flying out the other side, and afterward, Jon would’ve been glad to take Nolan’s advice to “let this cure you of living out your half-ass fantasies.” But no sooner had Nolan got out those words, than the situation erupted into violence once again, and Jon had to respond in kind, had to pull Nolan’s ass out of the fire, and get him to where he maybe could be kept alive.

When the cordite fumes had lifted from the situation, when the blood had been cleaned up and the people buried, when the bank robbery and its gory aftermath had fuzzed over in his mind and become just an exciting memory, Jon had been lulled into thinking it had been sort of fun and, after all, he’d come out of it with not a scratch. So he’d fallen into the trap again, equating Nolan’s life with goddamn Batman or something, only to be reminded, the hard way, that the game Nolan played was for high stakes, the highest — life or death — not to mention those lesser gambles, getting maimed, maybe, or jailed. He’d been reminded of that when those guys shot his uncle and stole the money and got him back in the thick again. And now, with that nightmare just beginning to fade in his mind, he was suckering himself back into Nolan’s precarious lifestyle once more, hopefully to recoup some of the money they’d both lost last go-round.

Not so many hours ago, Jon’d had a talk with Breen, and that talk was lingering in the back of Jon’s head, nagging him as much as the image of old man Comfort. Nolan had arrived around two-thirty in the morning and, after a talk with Breen, had driven out to the house on Iowa City’s outskirts to see if the Comforts were still around. Nolan figured they wouldn’t be, but felt it best to check, and had Jon stay with Breen at the antique shop, armed, in case the Comforts attacked while Nolan was gone.

During that time, while they waited for Nolan’s return, Jon and Breen had talked. Breen’s first question was, “Are you related to Nolan or something? His fucking bastard kid or something?” Breen seemed slightly irritated.

Jon was taken aback by the question. “Not that I know of. What the hell makes you come up with an idea like that?”

“I don’t know,” Breen said, shaking his head. “I known Nolan a long time, and I never seen him act like this.”

“Like what?”

“He’s goddamn pampering you, kid. Isn’t like him. You know what he said to me?”

“No.” Which was true. Jon had not been a party to Breen and Nolan’s conversation.

“He said he had to be careful old man Comfort didn’t see who was robbing him! Can you imagine?”

Jon said, “What’s wrong with that? Comfort and Nolan know each other, and so of course Nolan doesn’t want him to know who’s pulling the job.”

“Don’t you see it? He’s puttin’ on the kid gloves when he ought be bare-knuckle punchin’. This kind of thing, when you heist another heister, you got to kill the guy. You don’t leave people like that alive after ripping ’em off. Not people like Sam Comfort, you don’t. Or he’ll come around and cut off your dick and feed it to you.”

Jon swallowed at that not particularly appetizing thought. “So what?” he said, straining to sound flip. “That.just means Nolan is right — you got to keep Comfort from knowing who it is, otherwise you got a lot of... you know, bloodshed on your hands.”

Breen sat up in bed, groaning just a little from his gunshot wounds. “Now, I’ll admit,” he said through tight lips, “I’ll admit that Nolan’s always been one to avoid killing when he could, but not in a case like this. You got to lance a boil like the Comforts. It’s safer all around, just to go in and blow those bastards’ heads off and call it a night.”

“Big talk, Breen. And you don’t even carry a gun.”

“Right, I don’t, but Nolan does. I wouldn’t go for killing the Comforts or anybody, but I wouldn’t think of ripping them off, either, not for revenge or nothing. I’m lucky to be out of it with my ass. I’m a coward. Ask Nolan. I ran out on him that time in Chicago, when those syndicate boys shot him up. And that’s another reason this thing puzzles me. Nolan says he’s going to give me a share of the take, like he’s going after the Comforts as a favor to me. What for? He owes me nothing. I’m lucky he doesn’t kick my fuckin’ butt in for running the hell out on him that time. So what is it with him? Why’s he jumpin’ on this like it’s his golden opportunity? Why’s he a goddamn humanitarian where the Comforts are concerned?”

And at this stage Jon had realized what lay behind Breen’s point of view. After the robbery, the Comforts might naturally figure that Breen had had a hand in it, to get back at them for their double-cross and get his due from the parking meter heisting. So of course Breen wanted the Comforts dead; of course he was uneasy about Nolan sparing the lives of that miserable family. Breen himself was the one most likely to (gulp) get his dick cut off and fed to him.

But what Breen said did bother Jon. Was Nolan taking undue risks, to spare Jon? Was Nolan avoiding violence with the Comforts to keep things from getting too rough for Jon? Was Breen right — with people like the Comforts, were you better off just killing them? That final concept was one Jon didn’t really think he could stomach. Did Nolan know that, too, Jon wondered?

After spending another hundred bucks, Jon left the Hucksters’ Hall and went upstairs to the room he and Nolan would share. It was a dreary cubicle, despite the hotel’s lavish lobby, dining area, and bar, and was robbery even at convention rates. He undressed, had a cold shower, and got dressed again and went down to the bar, to have a drink and fog his mind if not clear it.

It was an off-time right now: the bar was part of a big nightclub setup, with stage and arena of tables over to the right, and the room was almost as big as the ballroom where the comic dealing was going on, only this was as empty of people as Hucksters’ Hall was full. Up at the bar was a pretty woman with short brown pixie hair. She was wearing slacks and a sweater over a blouse — casual clothes but very stylish, in dark, soft colors: blues, browns. She was thin as a model, but full-breasted. Jon supposed she was in her early thirties, close to Karen’s age.

Why did he have to think of Karen at a moment like this? Now, along with all those other bad vibes running through him — fear and depression and edginess — now he felt guilty, too. Because he was thinking of going up and sitting next to that woman at the bar, pinning his hopes on the improbable possibility of his picking her up, thinking that maybe a little sex game (even if conversation was as far as it got) would drain off his tension. But, no — just thinking of it made things worse; now he felt guilty for possibly betraying Karen.

Fortunately he was able to brush the guilt quickly from his mind. He just thought about this morning, when he’d called Karen to tell her as tactfully as possible that he would be attending the comics convention, and she’d gone into a fury, a goddamn rage about him missing her birthday for a stupid bunch of comic books. She’d given him no chance to explain (and he couldn’t have — Karen knew of Nolan and disapproved of Nolan-sponsored activities even more than she did comic books), and she’d really been quite unreasonable.

So, conscience clear, he sat down next to the pretty brunette and smiled and built a strategy. And when the bartender came around, Jon ordered a Scotch on the rocks for himself (he hated Scotch, but it sounded rugged), and as he turned to her to ask what she’d have, damn if the bartender didn’t card him!

His outline for seduction erased itself on his mental blackboard and, as he looked at the beautiful, dark-haired, full-breasted woman in her early thirties sitting next to him, with her finely chiseled features and a smile turning from invitation to condescension, Jon decided not even to bother digging his I.D. out of his wallet, just forgot the Scotch and the woman and got the hell out of there.

He went back up to the cubicle, had another cold shower, and got dressed again and went down and spent another hundred on comic books. It killed the time till he was supposed to meet Nolan in the coffee shop downstairs.

7

Nolan stepped onto the elevator and was all alone, except for a girl with sharply pointed ears and skin tinted a dark green. She was wearing a silver sarong that made her look as though she’d been wrapped in aluminum foil, like a sandwich. She was young, probably sixteen, a chunky but not unattractive girl — considering she was green and had pointed ears.

It was Nolan’s sincere hope that she would not be going all fifteen floors down to the lobby, as he was. He’d just come from the hotel room, where he’d found evidence that Jon was developing a cleanliness fetish — the boy apparently had had at least a couple of showers already, as all the towels were used up and the floor was wet. All of which was only in keeping with this nuthouse hotel, this asylum populated by kids so weird, they made Jon seem normal.

Like, for instance, this green, pointy-eared girl with whom he shared the elevator. Nolan hoped she’d get off soon so he wouldn’t have to say anything to her. Strangers were always a pain to talk to, let alone green ones. She would ask him if he wondered why she was made up this way, and he would say no, but it would be too late: they would be talking, and this was a particularly slow elevator that could make a fifteen-floor ride seem a lifetime. Besides, he figured he already knew why she was dressed this way: there was going to be a full moon tonight, and she was just getting an early start.

“I bet you’re wondering why I’m dressed like this,” she said, in a squeaky voice.

Nolan said nothing, but he did manage a smile. Sort of.

“Normally I wouldn’t be wearing this.”

“Oh?”

“At least, not till tomorrow night. There’s a convention going on, you know, comic books and ‘Star Trek’ and things, and the costume ball isn’t till tomorrow night.”

“Oh.”

“This is just for the press conference. Some of us were asked to dress up now for the press conference. Some newspaper and TV people are here, doing interviews and stuff about the con. If you watch the six o’clock news, you just may see me.”

The elevator was now at ballroom level, just a floor above the lobby. The doors slid open and, crowded in front of the ballroom entrance, were maybe a hundred and fifty people, mostly kids five years either side of Jon in age, some in strange get-ups, and cameramen and reporters and newsmen shuffling around, jockeying various equipment and holding mikes up to some people standing under klieg lights a shade brighter than the aurora borealis.

Nolan stepped to the rear of the elevator; he did not want to be on the six o’clock news.

The green girl shouted, “Scotty!” and ran out of the elevator and into the crowd, toward a red-cheeked, roughly handsome dark-haired guy who looked familiar to Nolan; some television actor, he guessed. He caught the actor’s eye and smiled sympathetically and the actor shook his head, as if to say, “I wish I was going down to the bar like you, my friend.” The poor actor was swamped by girls and reporters, and Nolan wondered how anybody could ever stand going into a business as hair-raising as that.

The doors slid shut and Nolan got out at the lobby. He quickly went into the bar and had a Scotch, as much for that put-upon actor as himself.

Sitting on the stool next to him was a very pretty girl with short brown hair, wearing a chic pants outfit. Nolan gave her a look that asked if he could buy her one, and she gave him back a look that said he could.

“Gin and tonic,” she said, in a voice designed to order gin and tonics.

Nolan glanced at his watch. He was running early. He hadn’t really expected his buddy Bernie to be able to supply him with everything he needed, and so quickly. It was a good hour-and-a-half till he was supposed to meet Jon in the coffee shop, and he decided to kill some time.

He examined the girl’s delicate but distinct features (her eyes were a hazel-green color you don’t run into that often) and asked, “Model?”

She shook her head. “Flight attendant.”

“Stewardess, you mean.”

She gave him a firm little smile. “Flight attendant,” she said.

“Don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry what?”

“I don’t believe what I read in paperbacks.”

She laughed, and the bartender brought her the gin and tonic. She looked at him, examining him in much the same way he had her. “Gangster?”

“Right the first time.”

“Don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry what?”

“I don’t believe what I read in paperbacks, either.”

They both laughed, and in her room on the tenth floor, forty-five minutes later, she kissed his cheek and played with the salt-and-pepper hair on his chest and said, “No, really, what are you?”

“I told you downstairs. Gangster, like you guessed.”

“Come on.”

“Very specialized gangster, though.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. All I do is see to it nobody gives Sinatra a bad time.”

She laughed again, and the covers fell down around her waist, and he got a long look at her breasts. They were full, very, too full for her otherwise slender body, but he didn’t mind. The nipples were small, which made the breasts look even bigger. They were coral color, her nipples, and he liked them. He leaned over and nibbled one.

“Hey!” she said. “You’re a horny S.O.B., aren’t you? Don’t be a glutton.”

“Lady,” he said, between nibbles, “I’ll take all the servings I can get. I don’t often eat at restaurants this nice.”

“Quit it,” she giggled, in a tone that said go ahead.

Ahead was where he went, and they had a good time, their second. Nolan believed in going twice whenever possible, because the second time can be done slow and lovingly, without the urgency that makes the first round so good but so frantic. She had an ass as nice as her breasts, not skinny like the rest of her; something soft and fleshy and fun to fill his hands with.

She was doing him a lot of good: his bridges with Sherry were getting burned a bit faster than he had anticipated, and that was a relief. He realized his separation from Sherry had been a little heavy on his mind, and though he hated to admit it, even to himself, he missed the girl, damn it; and he didn’t like going into a heist with that sort of emotional preoccupation working on him.

So sex this afternoon was a real lucky break for him. Made him feel purged. Made him feel great, like a fucking kid.

“Don’t get the wrong idea,” she said, sitting up again, her breasts hanging loose now, sagging just a little, as though tuckered out.

“Wrong idea about you?” he said. “Or about stewardesses?”

She grinned; a good grin, the sort many pretty girls avoid. “Either one. Want a smoke?”

“No. Gave ’em up.”

“How come?”

“Not healthy. Man gets to be my age, he better watch his ass.”

“What do you mean ‘your age’? How old are you, anyway?”

“Forty-eight,” Nolan lied.

“That’s not so old. I’m thirty-five, which is kind of old for a flight attendant.”

At least thirty-five, Nolan thought, saying, “You look like twenty, kid.” He stroked a breast. Kissed her neck.

“Hey, give me a break... enough’s enough. For right now, anyway. So tell me, what is your racket? What are you doing in Detroit?”

“I manage a nightclub, Chicago area,” he said. (Which was semi-true, after all: the Tropical did use entertainment in their bar setup.) He told her that a friend of his, an old army buddy, had a little talent agency up here, and he’d promised to check out some of the guy’s new clients.

“Oh really? You done that already?”

“No. Tonight. Going out to his place tonight and see what he has to offer.”

“Sounds like fun. Care for some company?”

“Naw... it’ll be a drag. This guy’s agency is really small-time, I’m just looking at these acts out of friendship. Or pity. You’d fall asleep, the acts’ll be so bad.”

She made a face. “Well, looks like another rip-snorter of an evening for old coffee-tea-or-me,” she said, apparently feeling brushed off. “Suppose I’ll just catch another movie tonight, and if I’m lucky maybe get molested walking back to the hotel.”

“Don’t give me that,” he said. “I can’t picture you sitting home alone unless you wanted to.”

“I thought you said you didn’t believe what you read in paperbacks? My life isn’t any swinging party. This is the first time I’ve gotten any in weeks.”

“Bullshit.”

“No, really. I been a lousy nun lately. Ever since my marriage broke up, last year.”

“You were married? I thought a stewardess had to be single.”

“Haven’t you heard of Women’s Lib and equal rights and all? The airlines can’t pull much of that crap these days, though God knows they’d like to. And in my case, maybe I’d be better off, at least as far as the old anti-wedlock rule goes. The marriage, it just didn’t work out, with my being a flight attendant and gone days at a time. My husband was balling some secretary at his office, some mousy little twerp with boobs like ping pong balls.”

Nolan shrugged. “Then losing him should be no great loss. He’s obviously an idiot. But there’s plenty of other guys in the world.”

“Yeah, and plenty of other idiots, too. Like there’s this pilot who’s been chasing me, but he’s married, and he’s obnoxious as hell too, so I been ducking him. I have had a fling or two, tiny ones, with some interesting passengers I’ve met on longer flights. But those guys also are married, usually, and I come out of an afternoon like this one feeling like a whore or something. How about you?”

“I never feel like a whore.”

“I mean, are you married? Don’t be a prick.” She said “prick” in a nice way, with affection.

“Not married. Never have been. It’s an institution that holds little appeal to me.”

“After a two-year marriage that was just slightly less successful than the war in Vietnam, I tend to agree with you. Hey, you know something?”

“What?”

“I sort of like you. Your personality is a little on the sour side, but I like it. And your sexual enthusiasm, especially considering you think of yourself as an old man, has me somewhat winded, I’ll admit, but I like that too. Let me make you a proposition. Why don’t you come back tonight and see me, when you’re through hearing those auditions? Then we can resume our conversation... and whatever else you’d care to resume.”

“It could be late.”

“I’ll give you the spare key. Let yourself in and crawl under the covers with me. How does that sound to you?”

Nolan smiled. “That sounds fine.”

They chatted for a while longer, and she mentioned that she had a flight tomorrow, and he mentioned he’d be taking a flight tomorrow himself, and it turned out to be the same one. That was a happy coincidence, and Nolan felt unnaturally pleased that this afternoon’s encounter would be continued tonight and, in a way, on the plane tomorrow. In his younger days, he preferred light involvement with his women, in-and-out situations; but he found, as he grew older, that he liked-something more — not much more, maybe, but something.

He got dressed, and as he went to the door, he turned and said, “Hey! Your name. What the hell is it?”

“Hazel.”

“Like your eyes,” he said.

“Like the fat maid in the funnies,” she said, squinching her nose.

“Well, you’re in the right hotel for that”

“Yeah, I noticed. Comic book fans all over the place, kids in costumes, kids wearing T-shirts with cartoon characters on them. A kid with a T-shirt like that tried to pick me up in the bar, just before you showed, would you believe it?”

“Sure, woodwork’s full of ’em. Listen, I got to get going. I’ll see you tonight”

“Okay. Hey!”

“What?”

“Your name? What’s your name?”

He hesitated for a moment; he better not use the Logan name. He was registered as Ryan, but for some reason he wanted to give her the name he himself felt most comfortable with. So he said, “Nolan,” and to hell with it

“Is that a first name,” she asked, “or a last?”

“Whatever you want,” he said, and went out.

This time he had the elevator to himself, and damn glad of it.

Jon was in the coffee shop, working on a Coke.

Nolan joined him at the counter, said, “How much you blow on funny-books so far?”

The kid grinned. “Four hundred and thirty-five bucks and feeling no pain.”

Nolan had no criticism of that. It was a harmless enough indulgence. Besides, he remembered Jon showing him a copy of a comic book, two years ago when he first met the kid; the comic had cost Jon two hundred bucks, which had seemed insane to Nolan, but just recently he had seen an article about an eighteen-year-old kid who’d paid eighteen hundred dollars for that same comic. Nolan asked Jon about it at the time, and Jon had said, rather bitterly, “That stupid clod... with him shelling out all that dough, and with all the news coverage he got, shit, prices’ll inflate like crazy again. That comic wasn’t worth any eighteen hundred bucks. Why, it wasn’t worth a penny more than a grand.”

Considering the interest Jon had made on his two-hundred-buck investment, Nolan was impressed, and no longer ridiculed his young friend’s hobby. In fact, he counted himself a sucker, because he too had owned that comic book (bought it off the stands, when he was a kid) and after reading it had thrown his dime investment in the trash.

“How’d it go, Nolan?”

“We have wheels. No problem.”

“Good. Rest of the stuff, too?”

“Rest of the stuff, too.”

“What about the farmhouse?”

“Drove out there, had a look around. No, nobody saw me. I drew up a layout of the farm and all. We can go over it later, up in the room.”

“Fine.”

“Nervous?”

“Yes.”

“Thought the funny-books would distract you.”

“Me too. No soap. Tried to pick up a woman in the bar to see if that would distract me. But it fizzled too.”

Nolan glanced at Jon’s Wonder Warthog T-shirt, and wondered if — but no, that was ridiculous.

“Look, kid, there’s one thing I want you to do for me.”

“What’s that?”

“Go buy some hose.”

“Sure. Go buy some hose? Like rubber hose?”

“Like nylon hose. The kind women stick their legs in.”

“Stockings? What the hell for, Nolan?”

“I thought we’d pose as Avon ladies.”

“Oh. You mean masks. We’ll pull ’em over our heads, you mean.”

“Just buy them.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t want to go in buying hose. What’re you, crazy?”

“Too embarrassing?” Jon smiled.

“Hell yes. Why don’t you want to?”

“Too embarrassing,” Jon admitted.

“Right, and I’m in charge, you’re my flunky, and when I say buy hose, goddammit, you buy hose.”

“Well, they’ll probably take me for some kind of pervert or something.”

“Probably.” Nolan grinned. He was in a good mood.

“What are you so happy about?”

“It’s going to be clockwork, kid. We’re going to fill our pockets with Sam Comfort’s ill-gotten gains, and he won’t be the wiser.”

Now Jon was grinning too. “You make me feel better. I don’t think I’m nervous, anymore. I don’t even mind buying the hose. If the salesgirl asks me what I want nylons for, I’ll just tell her I want ’em ’cause they’ll go so good with my black lace garter belt.”

“That’s the spirit, kid. Here, I’ll even pay for your damn Coke.”

8

It was Friday evening, eight-fifteen. The country was calm and quiet tonight, the traffic along this gravel back road seemingly nonexistent. Across the way was a two-story gray frame farmhouse, beginning to sag, whose paint was peeling like an over-baked sunbather. It was a slovenly, ramshackle structure, a shack got out of hand; it sat in a big yard overgrown with big weeds, its location remote even for the country, the lights of neighboring farmhouses barely within view. The place was, in effect, isolated from civilization, which suited the people who lived there. And it suited Nolan and Jon’s purpose, as well.

Jon had been studying the hovel the Comfort clan called home. He shook his head. “Dogpatch,” he muttered.

“What?” Nolan said.

They were sitting in the dark blue, year-old Ford Nolan had leased from Bernie that afternoon. The motor was off, lights too; the car was parked in a cornfield across the road from the Comfort homestead. They were a good half-block down from the house, the nose of the car approaching but not edging onto the dirt access inlet that bridged ditch and gravel road. They had entered a similar access inlet to cross the corner of the field, having cut their lights as they drove down the road that eventually would have intersected the one running past the Comfort house. They’d rumbled slowly across the recently harvested ground, like some prehistoric beast lumbering after its prey at snail’s pace. The only sound had been that of corn husks cracking under the wheels, but the stillness of the night and the insecurity of the situation had magnified that husk-cracking in Jon’s perception, unsettling him. The moon seemed to Jon a huge searchlight illuminating the field, making him feel naked, exposed, unsettling him further. But nothing had happened, and now they sat in the car, in the cornfield, getting ready. They were dressed for their work, in black: Nolan in knit slacks and turtleneck sweater; Jon in jeans and sweatshirt (the latter worn inside-out because the other side bore a fluorescent Batman insignia). The clothes were heavy, warm, which was good, as the night was a cool, almost cold one. Both wore guns in holsters on their hips, police-style: .38 Colt revolvers with four-inch barrels, butts facing out. Between them on the seat were two olive-drab canisters, looking much like beer cans, but with military markings in place of brand names, and levers connecting to pin mechanisms. Also on the seat was a package of nylon stockings, unopened.

Jon let his Dogpatch remark lie; he’d just been thinking aloud, and though Nolan had been very tolerant lately about Jon’s comics hobby, now was no time to put that tolerance to a test by going into the resemblance the Comfort place held to something Al Capp might have drawn.

Nolan said, “You want me to go over it once more?”

“No,” Jon said.

“Okay.” Nolan was sitting back in the seat, loose, apparently relaxed, but Jon thought he sensed an uncharacteristic tightness in the man’s voice, perhaps brought on by concern over Jon’s relative inexperience in matters of potential violence.

They’d been over the plan several times, first at the hotel, in their room, and again on the way here, in the car. Nolan would come up behind the Comfort farmhouse, through the pasture in back; the ground was open, open as hell, but there were trees along the property line, and also a barn, and those would provide whatever cover Nolan needed. Jon would allow Nolan five minutes, during which time Nolan would jimmy the basement window open, crawl inside, deposit his calling card, and crawl out After those five minutes were up, Jon would initiate phase two of the plan, in that weed-encroached front yard.

Jon felt sure everything would go without a hitch, but he wished he could also be sure Nolan felt the same way. Jon’s own confidence was undercut somewhat by the lack of confidence he suspected in Nolan, an attitude that stemmed back to that discussion they’d had about firearms, back at the hotel.

“I don’t exactly understand,” Jon had said, “how we’re going to subdue these dudes — I mean, what do we do, brain ’em with the butts of our guns, or what?”

“For Chrissake, kid,” Nolan had answered, eyes narrowed even more than usual, “never go swinging a gun butt around. You got the barrel pointing at you, and you can end up with a hole in your chest big as the one in your damn head. Why do you think I prefer a long-barreled gun?”

“Better aim, you said.”

“Yeah, that. And this too — with a long barreled gun you can put a guy to sleep without firing a shot.”

“So, what then? We brain ’em with the gun barrels?”

“You would if it was called for. But it isn’t. I told you what the plan was, and you didn’t hear any part where you go slugging people with a gun, did you? All right, then. You just leave the subduing to me — and leave the gun in its holster, dig?”

“Look, I’m capable of using it if I have to, Nolan.”

“Maybe, but don’t act like it’s something to look forward to. By now, you been through enough shit like this to tell the difference between what we’re about to do and some goddamn comic-book fairy tale. If we get in a totally desperate situation, sure, use the gun. That’s what it’s there for. But since we got the element of surprise working for us, I don’t see that happening.”

Jon was determined now to make a good showing tonight, to regain Nolan’s confidence by behaving like a cold, hard-ass professional, not like some naive kid. Next to him, Nolan was opening the package of nylons, and Jon listened to the crackle of cellophane and waited for Nolan to hand him one of the stockings.

But instead there was a long moment of silence, and even in darkness Jon had no trouble making out the stunned look on Nolan’s face.

“Kid.”

“Yeah?”

“I think we’re going to have to make a change of plan.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I don’t think we’re going to be able to split up. You’re going to have to follow along pretty close behind me.”

“Why’s that?”

Nolan held up the nylons.

Panty hose.

“Panty hose,” Nolan said.

Jon started to sputter. “Nolan, shit, I mean, that’s all the girls are wearing these days. I should’ve checked to make sure they were the old-fashioned kind. I mean...”

Nolan dug in his pocket and got out his knife.

“Nolan — what’re you doing?”

A grin flashed under Nolan’s mustache, a grin so wide and out of character, it startled Jon. “I’m not going to kill you, kid,” he said, “I just got to perform some hasty surgery.”

Nolan separated the siamese twins; he handed one amputated leg to Jon and kept the other. “You know, kid,” Nolan said, “this is a hell of a lot of trouble to go to, just to get your way.”

“Get my way?”

“Yeah. But you win. From now on, I buy all the nylons.”

They both grinned this time, and enthusiasm ran through Jon like a drug. “I won’t let you down, Nolan.”

“I know you won’t.”

Nolan pulled the stocking over his head, immediately disfiguring himself. “Five minutes, Jon.”

“Five minutes, Nolan.”

And Nolan was gone.

Five minutes? Five hours was what it seemed. Jon made a concerted effort not to study his watch, not to follow the second hand around. But he did, of course, and the time was excruciatingly slow in passing, the seconds pelting him like the liquid pellets of the Chinese water torture; the ticking of his watch seemed abnormally loud, as if in an echo chamber, and he wondered how the hell a relic like that (a Dick Tracy watch, circa late ’30s) could put out such a racket.

He thought he saw something moving across the road, over in the Comfort yard, but it was only the tall weeds getting pushed around by the wind. That brought his attention to the farmhouse, which was what he was supposed to be doing anyway — watching the house, keeping alert for anything out of order that might be going on over there. The Comforts couldn’t be expected to stick to Nolan and Jon’s game plan, after all; and as Nolan had said more than once, you never can tell when the human element might enter in and knock a well-conceived plan on its well-conceived ass.

Jon sat studying the old gray two-story, and thought back to the verbal tour of the place Breen had given him last night. Though from the run-down exterior you’d never guess it, the Comfort castle was, according to Breen, expensively furnished and equipped with modern appliances and gadgetry galore. Its shabby appearance was no doubt partially purposeful at least; as a thief himself, old Sam Comfort would have an unnaturally suspicious and devious mind, certainly capable of devising a defense of this sort: that is, living in a house that looked like a junk heap on the outside, but was a palace on the inside. Crafty as hell, because judging from what he could see, Jon could hardly imagine a less likely prospect for a robbery. Looting a place like that — why, you’d be lucky to come away with a six-pack of beer and a handful of food stamps.

Not that they had in mind stealing any of the possessions the Comforts had acquired through years of applied larceny; the creature comforts the Comfort creatures had assembled for themselves were of no interest to Jon and Nolan. There was only one thing in that house that interested them: the strongbox of cash kept somewhere within those deceptively decayed walls. Breen had reported that old Sam kept a minimum of fifty thousand in that box at all times, and there was a good chance the Comforts (having just returned from Iowa City) hadn’t yet banked their latest parking meter bonanza. Which meant, in all probability, that some two hundred grand was locked up within that metal box.

He checked his watch.

Thirty seconds shy of five minutes.

He withdrew the gun from the holster, hefted it, put it back. Took a deep breath. Another. The butterflies in his stomach began to disperse.

Ten seconds.

He pulled the nylon mask down over his face. It didn’t impair his vision particularly, though he could feel it contorting his features, feel it tight on his face. It was a strange feeling, like pressing your face against a window.

Five minutes, and he left the Ford, got down in the ditch, and walked till he was across from the house, then crawled across the gravel road, moved up and over the opposite ditch, and into the high weeds of the Comforts’ front yard. The weeds were more than sufficient cover; he traveled on his hands and knees and couldn’t be seen. He was within a few yards of the house when he heard a muffled pop, and after a moment smoke began to fill the air. Nolan had said the smoke would penetrate, and penetrate it did, in spades. The smoke was curling out through openings the house didn’t know it had, from around windows and between paint-peeling boards and from every damn where — gray, creeping smoke — and if Jon didn’t know better, he’d have sworn the house was on fire.

Which was, of course, the idea.

To convince the Comforts their house was burning.

To panic the old man into grabbing his treasure box of loot and abandoning his ship.

By this time, Jon was right up by the cement steps that rose to the front door, and he pulled the pin on his little olive-drab can, which made it pop and sprayed out smoke, blowtorch fashion, to the accompaniment of a loud hissing sound. As he retreated to the tall weeds, Jon wondered how so much smoke could fit into one little can. Earlier, he’d asked Nolan about the canisters; why, he’d wanted to know, was the top of the can gray and the rest green? Because, Nolan explained, the green was for camouflage purposes, while the top of the can was marked the color of smoke it made. Jon almost wished they’d used one green smoke bomb and one red one; it wouldn’t have looked like a fire, but it sure would’ve freaked out that pothead Billy Comfort. The poor burned-out bastard would’ve thought he was hallucinating.

Nolan should be coming around the house any time now. The smoke was thickening, but Jon wasn’t having too much trouble maintaining a reasonable level of vision, even with the nylon mask. A figure was coming around from the left of the house. Must be Nolan, Jon thought, but then he saw the outline of the figure’s head: it was a head with a bushy mane of hair, Afro-bushy.

It was Billy Comfort, speak of the goddamn devil.

The shaggy-haired figure was moving toward Jon, and Jon ducked behind the cement steps. Billy was carrying a pole of some sort, and though he apparently hadn’t spotted Jon, he was heading straight for the smoke grenade, which was still spewing its gray guts out, hissing away like a big sick snake. As Billy approached, Jon suppressed a cough, covering his already nylon-covered mouth, wondering where the hell Nolan was, or, for that matter, old man Comfort.

Billy knelt beside the smoke grenade, fanning the fumes away with his free hand. He nudged the blisteringly hot canister with one foot, like a Neanderthal trying to figure out what fire was. Finally, he said, “Far fuckin’ out,” and began to laugh and cough simultaneously.

Jon’s hand touched the butt of the .38 lightly. Nolan had said leave the subduing to me, but Nolan wasn’t around. Somebody had to subdue Billy Comfort, and right now, before Billy went screaming out the truth of the deception to his old man.

So Jon did what he thought best.

He tackled Billy, burying his head in Billy’s balls.

Billy yelped accordingly, and his foot connected with the smoking can and he slipped on it, like a contestant taking a fall in a log-rolling contest, and he went down hard, the air escaping from him in a big whoosh. Jon clasped a hand over Billy’s mouth and grinned in what proved to be a premature victory, because Billy managed to swing something around that caught Jon on the side of the head and blacked him out.

When Jon awoke, seconds later, he saw right away what it was that had put him to sleep: the handle of that pole Billy was carrying, only it was more than just a pole: it was the wooden shaft of a five-pronged pitchfork. And Jon looked up through the smoke-and-nylon haze and saw in Billy’s eyes a haze of another sort: a druggy haze. Billy was high, and Billy was on to the game. Maybe he’d even witnessed Jon and/or Nolan planting the smoke bombs; perhaps he’d been back in that barn, smoking or snorting or doing God-knows-what sort of dope, when he’d spied suspicious things going on up by the house, and had grabbed a pitchfork as a make-do weapon and come rushing to the rescue of home and hearth.

So that’s how it stood: Billy with one foot on Jon’s chest, smoke floating around them like a choking fog, Billy raising the pitchfork to impale Jon and put him to sleep again.

Permanently.

9

Nolan crossed the gravel road in a crouch, hopped down into the ditch. It must have rained here recently, as the ditch was damp and got his shoes muddy. When he was safely within the sheltering trees that divided the Comfort land from the neighboring spread, Nolan cleaned his shoes off on the trunk of one of the clustered evergreens.

He was uncomfortable in the nylon mask; the thing was hot, even on a cool night like this. He pulled it off and stuffed it in his pants pocket. He’d put it back on when he got up by the house. Right now, he preferred having his vision completely unimpaired; enjoyed having the clear, crisp country air fill his lungs without a damn nylon filter.

Panty hose, he thought, and grinned momentarily.

In his left hand was the olive-drab canister, the U.S. Army smoke grenade identical to the one he’d left with Jon. With his right hand he withdrew the long-barreled .38 from the police holster; it was going to be necessary to rap a head or two, and perhaps do more than that, should something go out of kilter, despite what he’d told Jon about going easy with the firearms. He’d taught him well, but Jon’s experience under fire was more than limited; if push came to shove, Jon would be armed, would be able to respond, but Nolan didn’t want that kid waving a .38 around frivolously.

He stayed within the thick evergreens, got up parallel to the big gray barn and, crouching again, crossed half a block’s worth of pasture and then flattened himself against the barn’s back side. He could hear cattle or something stirring around in there, but not a Comfort, surely; the Comforts owned this land, according to Breen, but leased both pasture and barn to a farmer whose own property adjoined the Comforts’ in back. Which made the Comforts a part of the landed gentry, Nolan supposed, which was a hell of a thought.

The house was maybe a hundred yards from the barn, maybe a shade more than that. Open ground and, with the moon full and the house fairly well lit up, not easily crossed unseen. He got on his hands and knees and began to crawl, like a commando training under the machine-gun fire of some square-jaw sergeant.

He crawled two feet, and his hand — the one with the gun in it — sank into something soft which, on closer examination, proved to be cow dung. Nolan wasn’t happy about have gunk all over his hand, or his gun either, and wiped both clean on the grass. Holstering the .38, he swore to himself and crawled on. But the pasture was a cow-pattie minefield and, several feet later, the same hand ran into the same substance, a bit drier this time but no less irritating. So he said a mental “Fuck it,” got back up in a crouch, and moved on. What the hell, he thought, it wasn’t like the Comforts were out watching for him, and you can’t expect a city boy to go crawling through cow shit, not for anybody or anything.

A barbed-wire fence separated the Comforts’ yard from the pasture, and Nolan squeezed under the fence without so much as snagging his sweater — a much more successful enterprise than his aborted attempt at crawling across the cow-pattie beachhead. The weeds were waist high in the yard and, keeping in his low crouch, he proceeded until the weeds ended and the gravel drive, which circled the place, took over. The family Buick was parked alongside the house on the left, which meant it would be a toss-up which door Sam would head for — front or back — when the “fire” broke out. Before he left the high weeds to cross the drive, Nolan got out the nylon mask, pulled it on, and drew the .38 again. Down to business, cow shit or no cow shit.

The house had many windows, and lights were on in most of the rooms, but all the window shades were drawn. This was frustrating, because Nolan had to make sure both father and son were present in the house, and where. The shade of one window on the right side of the house allowed an inch or two clearance at the bottom to peer through, and since Breen had given him a full layout of the house, it didn’t surprise Nolan to find that the room beyond the window was the living room. He was, however, slightly surprised to find that Breen’s description of the Comfort place had not been an exaggeration: the house really was as lavishly — and tastelessly — furnished as Breen had said. The living room had wall-to-wall red shag carpeting and a sofa and reclining chair covered in a yellowish leather; there were any number of heavy, expensive wood pieces of various and totally nonmatching styles, as well as a couple of clear plastic scoop-seated chairs. Everything in the room was of high quality, but was slapped together like a furniture store’s warehouse sale. Drab, old, pale wallpaper, faded and peeling, was a backdrop to all this expensive but oddly coupled furniture, and the high point of the room was the Hamms beer sign over the sofa, lit from within, displaying a shifting panorama of shimmering “sky blue waters.” Lying on the sofa, sipping a Hamms, basking in the glow of a color television console the size of a foreign car, was Sam Comfort — a skinny old man with a potbelly, wearing gray longjohns, the buttons open halfway down his chest He was watching “Hee-Haw.”

None of the other, shaded windows around the house afforded Nolan any view, though from Breen’s description he knew where everything was: adjacent to the living room was a kitchen (with space-age refrigerator, of course — stick a glass in a hole in the door and you get ice water) and Sam’s bedroom, which were side by side and together took up the same space as the rather large living room; in there somewhere was a toilet — Nolan didn’t remember exactly where — unless the Comforts still went the outhouse route, or maybe the cows weren’t the only ones crapping in the pasture. According to Breen, the old man’s room was unlike the others in the house, as it alone did not show signs of acquired affluence; the master bedroom was as empty and functional as the old man’s mind. Upstairs was a bedroom for Terry (the statutory rapist presently being rehabilitated) and another for Billy — also an office affair Sam used for planning sessions and the like. Nolan could see colored lights flashing behind the shade on Billy’s window; Breen said Billy’s room was a pot freak’s retreat, water bed and strobe lights and black-light posters and tons of stereo equipment, enough wattage in the latter to power a fair-size radio station. He could hear the faint throb of rock music coming from that upper floor room, and he would have to make the hopefully safe assumption that Billy was mind-tripping up there, as was the boy’s usual practice.

Satisfied that he’d pinpointed both Comforts, Nolan went to work on the basement window in back of the house. The window came open easily, soundlessly, with the proper prying from his knife. He climbed down inside the Comforts’ lowest level, a washing machine right below the window serving as a step down for him, making his entry a quiet one.

He used a pen-flash to examine the room. This end of the long basement was the laundry room; the other was being converted into a bar and recreation area. This was the first remodeling the Comforts had undertaken, and they were apparently doing the work themselves, as it was pretty slipshod: boards, cans of paint, various building bullshit lying around.

Which was good, because this was the makings of a fire hazard; this made a logical reason for a basement fire, and should help to con Sam as he quickly tried to make some logic out of a fire breaking out in his house. The remodeling was almost finished, but not quite: the bar was in and linoleum was on the floor, but the ceiling wasn’t tiled, which was also good: those open ceiling beams would insure the effectiveness of the smoke bomb’s penetration.

Nolan knelt with the canister, pulled the lever, heard its pop, left it on the floor, mid-basement, turning his head away even before he’d let go of the can, as already its stream of smoke was shooting out like water from a firehose. The can hissed as it dispersed its contents, and Nolan headed toward the laundry end of the basement, then hopped up onto the washing machine and out the window.

He immediately returned to his view of Sam Comfort relaxing in the living room. A smile formed under the nylon mask as Nolan watched bewilderment grow on Sam’s face, first as Sam sniffed smoke, then as he saw smoke. After a slapstick double-take, the old clown jumped from the couch as if goosed and ran upstairs via the stairwell opening in the far corner of the room. The positioning of those stairs was a break for Nolan; with this view of the action, he’d be able to key on whether or not Sam opted for the front door, here in the living room, or the back door, out in the kitchen. Sam was only gone half a minute, then came tumbling out of the stairwell, a man who’d all but fallen down the stairs, coughing from the ever-thickening smoke, showing signs of panic, shaking in his damn underwear. As Sam came into clearer view in that smoke-clogged receptacle of a room, Nolan could see plainly under one of Sam’s arms an oversize green metal strongbox — Bingo! — while slung over Sam’s other arm was a double-barreled shotgun. He’s panicked all right, Nolan thought, but the old coot’s as suspicious and crafty as ever.

A sound — pop! — turned Nolan’s head, in reflex, before he realized the sound was only Jon’s smoke grenade going off, meaning things were running to plan. When he turned back, the old man was no longer in sight.

Shit! The room was pretty well dense with smoke now, and Nolan couldn’t tell if the front door was slightly ajar, which would have indicated whether Sam had gone out that way. Damn it, there was nothing to do but circle behind the house, and if Sam wasn’t back there, come on around and catch him out the front. Damn!

Nolan ran.

Sam wasn’t in back, nor was the back door ajar.

Alongside the house, where the Buick was, no sign of Sam there, either.

And what about Billy? An ugly chain of deduction was forming in Nolan’s mind. Sam had gone upstairs for three reasons, hadn’t he? To get the strongbox; to grab the shotgun; to warn his boy Billy. But Sam hadn’t been up there very long, barely long enough to do all those things. Why hadn’t Billy been following along on his daddy’s heels, down those steps? Why hadn’t Sam yelled “Fire!” when smoke first began trailing into the room, to warn Billy immediately? Shouldn’t that have been Sam’s natural reaction?

If, then, Billy hadn’t been upstairs, where had he been? And more important, where the hell was he now?

Once around the front of the house, Nolan knew the answer to that. Nolan’s questions about Billy were, for the most part, anyway, answered: Billy had not been in the house; Billy had been outside, Christ knows why or where. And Billy was onto the “burning house” trick. In fact, Billy was right next to the smoke grenade Jon had planted.

And Billy was grinning. The smoke was just as thick out here as in the house, but Nolan could see that Billy was grinning. Billy was laughing, or was doing something like laughing, a combination of rasping smoke-cough and sick snickering. Billy was stoned out of his head, and Billy was standing with one foot on Jon’s chest, getting ready to heave one mother of a pitchfork down into Jon, punching steel teeth through the kid, pinning him to the earth like a scarecrow.

Nolan was still running, a slow but steady jog, and he bumped into Sam, who’d come out the front door, and the two men came face to face and for just a moment. Nylon mask or no, Nolan felt he could sense recognition in Sam’s flat gray eyes.

Nolan slapped the old man across the side of the face with the .38 and Sam said, “Unggh!” and toppled, colliding with Nolan. Nolan hit the ground and was on his feet again within the same second, and he brought up the .38 and fired twice.

The shots broke the country calm like cracks of thunder. The bullets hit Billy Comfort in the chest and rocked him, shook him like a naughty child, exploded through him, blood squirting from the front of him, a spatter of bone and organs and more blood bursting out his back. He pitched backward, gurgling, dying.

Jon was awake now and rolling to one side as Billy Comfort’s last effort in life — the hurling of the pitchfork — came to no account: the fork quivered in the ground, right next to Jon, but not, thankfully, in him.

Nolan looked at Jon and, with their stocking-distorted features, they exchanged a look that had in it any number of things — relief and shock and frustration among them, perhaps regret as well — and suddenly Jon’s face distorted further under the mask, as he yelled, “Nolan! The old man!”

And as he remembered Sam Comfort, whom he’d merely cuffed out of the way so he could take care of more important business, as he recalled the crazy old man with a shotgun, Nolan heard the country calm shatter a second time in gunfire.