Hard Cash

6

Nolan had never been to Breen’s house before, but he didn’t have trouble finding it. Indianapolis was an easy town to get around in, for all its size, a town whose streets crisscrossed like a big checkerboard. And anyway, he’d been to Breen’s bar a number of times, and the house was in the same neighborhood.

He parked the Buick in the driveway, behind a battered green Mustang he recognized as Breen’s. There were no other cars in the drive, though there was room; none were parked along the curb in front, either. Which surprised Nolan. Breen’s funeral had been in the morning, and this was fairly early afternoon, so he’d expected a bunch of cars belonging to friends and relatives who’d be making sympathetic shoulders available to the bereaved widow. But then, it would be like Mary Breen to tell everybody to get the hell out. She always was a private person, who at a time like this wouldn’t be about to put up with the hypocritical condolences of, say, her brother Fred, who had never really gotten along with Breen anyway and probably at this very moment was entertaining visions of taking over the bar for himself, or her mother, a café waitress at fifty-four, who felt her daughter had married below her station.

The street was quietly middle class, not unlike the one in Iowa City that the antique shop was on. The house was a brown brick two story, a shade smaller than most in the neighborhood, but then, only Breen and Mary had lived there, so it had been plenty big, Nolan supposed. There was snow on the ground in spots, and the sky was overcast, and he guessed it had been a good enough day for a funeral: a somber day but not a depressing one, really.

There were two sets of four cement steps up a tiny terraced lawn, and another set of four steps to the door, which had a plastic Christmas wreath on it. Nolan knocked.

She answered right away.

She looked good. She also looked sad, of course, but he didn’t think she’d been crying, or anyway not much.

“Nolan,” she said with soft surprise. “I didn’t expect you to come.”

He had said he would try to, on the phone yesterday, but evidently she had figured he was just saying that.

“It’s cold out here,” Nolan said. “I didn’t come all the way from Iowa City to stand on a stoop and freeze my ass off in Indianapolis. Invite me in already.”

She grinned and shook her head. “You’re something. Come on in.”

He did, got out of the coat, and Mary took it and went somewhere with it. He was in a small vestibule. The stairs to the second floor were in front of him, a study to the left, the living room to the right. It was Breen’s house, all right; a gambler’s house. Nothing but the essentials: some serviceable, warehouse sale furniture; bare hardwood floors, not even a throw rug; a console TV that looked ten years old at least and was probably black and white; bare walls. That was the living room, if you called that living. The study was pretty good size but was also mostly empty, just a desk with chair and a single filing cabinet. It was actually a bigger room than the living room, and Nolan thought he knew why: Breen must have done the bar’s bookkeeping out there so that he could call it his office, which would rack out to a sizable tax deduction.

Mary came back from wherever she put the coat and said, “Let’s go out in the kitchen.”

She fixed him coffee out there. It was a bright room, white trimmed in red, with all the necessary appliances and some unnecessary ones too. Mary was not the type of woman who would let Breen extend his gambler’s stinginess where she was concerned, not without a hell of a fight, anyway.

She was a good-looking woman. She looked like what Marilyn Monroe would have if the movie studios hadn’t fixed her nose and bleached her brown hair and told her not to smile with her gums showing. She was Marilyn Monroe at forty-one, a housewife Marilyn, getting a little pudgy.

She sat at the kitchen table with Nolan. She was wearing a dark green turtleneck sweater and dark green pants. Her eyes were light green, not red at all.

Nolan looked into the light green eyes and said, “Isn’t it time you cried?”

She looked into her coffee. She smiled. Her gums showed. It was a nice smile anyway. Fuck the movie studios.

“I’ll get around to it,” she said.

“Tell me about the funeral,” he said.

“Do you really want to hear about the funeral?”

“No.”

“Why did you come?”

“I thought you might want somebody to talk to who knew the score.”

She laughed. Not much of a laugh, but a laugh. “Nobody at the funeral knew what he was, you know. Except for Fred, who knows vaguely. But nobody else. It was mostly his regular customers from the bar. None of you people. Not that I expected any of you. I know it’s a thing you people have, not poking into each other’s private lives. It’s a sensible thing, seeing each other only when you’re working. It’s a cold business. Necessarily cold, I guess.”

“I came.”

“You did come, Nolan. Damn it if you didn’t. But you didn’t come to the funeral. Why?”

“I don’t go to funerals.”

“Neither did he. Till today. Tell me something, Nolan. Do you ever think of me?”

He sipped his coffee. “Every winter. When it first snows. I think of you then.”

She smiled again, faintly this time, and said, “The back seat of a car. Like a couple teenagers.”

“Well, we were younger.”

“Yeah, but not that young. Snowing to beat hell, and we’re out in the country, God knows where, in the damn car parked with the engine going and the heater going, and I’m in that fuzzy coat and you’re dropping your drawers. Christ. Maybe we were that young at that.”

“You got some more coffee for me?”

“Sure.”

She poured coffee, sat back down, and said, “I don’t blame you for skipping the funeral, Nolan. I don’t blame any of those other people who worked with him, either, for not coming. I mean, how the hell are they supposed to know he’s even dead, right? You people don’t keep in such close touch, I mean. If you hadn’t happened to call, even you wouldn’t be here, right? So his bar customers are there. Nobody else, except for his first fucking wife, the bitch who sucked him dry for alimony and child fucking support — she has the balls to be there. With his two kids, who that bitch has already ruined. Jesus.”

“Hey. Take it easy. Who the hell did you think would be there?”

She slammed her fist on the table, and the coffee cups jumped. “Where were those fucking bookies? They’re there when it’s time for Breen to pay up. They’re there with a hot tip for the sucker. They’re there extending credit at shylock rates. But when Breen’s planted in the fucking ground, oh, no. They aren’t there then, even though they fucking put him there!”

So that was why she hadn’t cried: she was too angry. She was too pissed off about her husband’s death to mourn him yet.

“Is that what happened?” Nolan asked. “Do you think it was somebody he owed money to who killed him?”

“Well, the cops say it’s robbery. He probably had, what, fifty bucks in the till, and the cops say his head was blown off for that. Can you buy that, Nolan? Fifty bucks got his head blown off? Not me, no, I don’t buy it, I don’t buy it at all.”

“Mary, people been killed for a lot less.”

“I know, but people like my husband? A guy like him, a professional thief who always dealt in the thousands of dollars, getting wasted by some cheap punk for a few bucks? I mean, it’s too cute, too... you know, ironic, too... it’s bullshit, is what it is.”

“Maybe. Wasn’t there someone with him when he was killed?”

Her jaws clenched. She rubbed her cheek, as if she was sanding wood. “Yeah there was someone with him. There was a bitch with him. But what about this morning, at his funeral, Nolan, where were they then, his bitches, his young goddamn cunts? Where were they? They’d lay him, yeah, but not to rest. Shit”

“Mary.”

“Will you tell me something? Will you tell me something, Nolan? Am I some ugly old woman? Am I a wife you cheat around on?”

“Settle down. You’re not old, and you’re not ugly. But Breen did cheat around on you. You know that. I know it. I also know seven years ago, before you and Breen were married, when you and Breen were just going together, when you were just a barmaid of his yourself, that one time you and I went for a ride when it was snowing out.”

Her mouth quivered a little, and she said, “Yeah, well, I knew then. I knew that he loved me, in his way, that he wanted to marry me, but that he was getting in other girls’ pants every chance he could get and I had to strike back somehow. Not that I told him, or wanted him to find out, Christ no. But after that I could live with it better somehow, live with his running around on me. And what the hell, I liked you, Nolan. But you were hopeless. You were a goddamn wall no woman could hope to get behind and make something at all permanent with you. Maybe now there’d be a chance, but then? No way. And so we went for a ride in the country that time, and it was snowing, and it was something special to me. I never cheated on him again, did you know that? And when he cheated on me, when I knew he was or thought he was, I’d remember that time, hold it close to me like some precious goddamn stone, and... shit I’m going sentimental on you, Nolan. Can a tough guy like you take it? Jesus.”

“Mary. Do you think it could be the barmaid?”

“Do I what?”

“The killing. Could it have been somebody after the barmaid. A jealous husband. Jealous boyfriend.”

“Maybe. Maybe. I hadn’t thought of that but maybe. Or one of his other bitches, jealous of the new one. Are you saying you agree with me, Nolan? That you think something’s strange about his death?”

“Yeah, I agree. Or sort of agree. Coincidences bother me. I know they’re possible. I been caught up in them before. But I never believe in a coincidence till I look down its throat and up its ass. Then I believe in it. Not until. So. Could you give me a list of the people Breen was involved with, with his gambling?”

“Easily. We didn’t have any secrets where his gambling was concerned. Hell, I helped him handicap. I never caught the bug, but I was around the gambling scene too long not to be at least semi-involved.”

“Good. What about his girls?”

“In that case he was a little secretive. Mostly the girls working in the bar, I guess. They would stay on as help till they tired of him, or vice versa, but usually vice. He was not the best lay in the world, you know.”

Nolan smiled. “That’s not the way he used to see it.”

“Well, he wasn’t really in a position to know, if you know what I mean. Hey, Nolan, what are you going to do? Play detective? Find the killer? I didn’t know you read Mickey Spillane.”

“You want me to level with you, don’t you, Mary?”

“Of course I want you to level. Did you come clear from Iowa to bullshit me?”

He spread his hands. “Personally, I don’t give a damn who killed your husband. Matter of fact, he ran out on me one time. Justifiably, but I just mention it by way of showing I don’t owe him any posthumous favors. However. In this business, when somebody you worked with is killed, in circumstances that are even remotely suspicious, it doesn’t pay to ignore the matter. Your husband worked with me on a lot of jobs. Something out of one of those past jobs might have crawled out of the woodwork and killed him. Which affects me, obviously. So I can’t feel comfortable till I find out who was responsible for your husband’s killing. Plus, I admit I got some feelings for you. I figure maybe you would feel better if you knew what was really behind his death.”

“Do you ever think about it, Nolan?”

“About what?”

“Dying. Death.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“When you think about it, you get paranoid. Then you’re slow when you should be fast. Punchy when you should be alert.”

“Is that what happened to my husband?”

“Maybe. Sometimes you can’t avoid it. Sometimes you get hit by a truck even when you look both ways. That’s the way it is. Life. A gamble.”

She smiled, rather bitterly, he thought. “Well, my man never was much of a gambler.”

“I’m sorry about Breen. I really am. He was a good man.”

“Even if he did run out on you once?”

“Even then. I’d have done the same in his place.”

“That’s what it’s about, isn’t it? Survival.”

“You could put it that way.”

“Nolan. Tell me.”

“What?”

“Why did he do it?”

“Heisting, you mean? You know why. To support the gambling.”

“Not the heisting. The women. Why... why wasn’t I enough?”

“Why did he gamble? Why can some men quit smoking and others puff away, even after they’ve seen the X-rays? I don’t know. I don’t understand people. I can barely tolerate them, let alone understand them.”

She sighed. “More coffee?”

“No.”

“I loved him, Nolan.”

“Yeah. Well, you must have. To put up with his gambling and his women both. And not every woman can stand being married to somebody in my business.”

“I thought you were out of the business.”

“You’re never out.”

“I guess not Listen, there’s... there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“Okay.”

“I want to talk upstairs. There’s something of his I want to give you.”

“Okay.”

She led him upstairs.

Into a darkened room.

The shade was drawn, but some of the light from outside was seeping in; overcast day that it was, the seepage didn’t amount to much. But he could see the bed, the double bed, and he could see Mary, disrobing.

She stood and held her arms out to him.

She stood naked and said, without saying it, Am I so ugly? Wouldn’t I be enough for most men?

She would have been plenty, for just about anybody. Sure, her thighs were a little fleshy, and there was a plumpness around her tummy, and she had an appendix scar. And her breasts didn’t look quite as firm as they once had. But big breasts never do, and they were nice and big, pink nipples against ivory flesh. He walked over and put a hand on one of the breasts, felt the nipple go erect. He put his other hand between her legs. He put his mouth over hers.

There was carpet up here. Downstairs, bare floors. But up here, on Mary’s insistence, no doubt, was plush carpeting, tufted fuzzy white carpeting, and they did it on the floor, and when she came, she cried finally, and they crawled up on the bed and rested.

Outside, it snowed.