Hard Cash

8

Friday, while Nolan drove into Indianapolis to see Breen’s wife, Jon drove to Cedar Rapids in his Chevy II to buy a pair of hunting jackets. He didn’t know why he was buying the jackets, exactly, just that Nolan had told him to.

He was also supposed to stop at a place called Blosser’s Costume Shop and Theatrical Supply to pick up a package for Nolan.

And of course it was like Nolan to give Jon a task or two to carry out without explaining the task or two’s significance. Jon was used to it. But he still questioned Nolan about such seemingly absurd assignments, getting nothing in particular back from the man for his trouble.

“Hunting jackets?” he’d asked. “What for?”

“One for you,” Nolan said. “One for me.”

“Okay, one for me, one for you, sure. But for what purpose, Nolan? I mean, hunting jackets? And why go all the hell the way to Cedar Rapids to get them?”

“Just do it. Yours is not to reason why.”

“I don’t believe you sometimes, Nolan.”

“And buy one of them at one store, and the other at another.”

“Why?”

“Because I want the jackets bought at separate stores.”

“Jesus. Okay. All right. I’ll do it. But what’s the costume thing about? Will you tell me that?”

“Ask for the manager. Blosser, the manager-owner. He’s a friend of mine. He knows about me. You can talk freely. He has a package for me. Oh, he may have you try something on. In fact, maybe you ought to insist on trying one of them on.”

“One of what on?”

“One of what’s in the package.”

“What is in the package?”

“Let me do the thinking.”

“Wait a minute, let me see if I got this straight. I buy the hunting jackets and pick up the packages, you do the thinking. Is that the way it goes?”

“That’s it exactly.”

“Well, I just hadn’t had it explained to me properly before. Once it’s explained to me, then I understand. But would you tell me one thing?”

“What?”

“Why do I still bother asking you questions?”

“Kid, that’s one question I wish I could answer for you.”

And so he had driven to Cedar Rapids, had bought one hunting jacket (a green plaid) in his own size, at a sporting goods store downtown, and another (a red plaid) in Nolan’s size, at a sporting goods store in an outlying shopping center, paying cash in both instances, as Nolan had also instructed.

He realized the hunting jackets had something to do with the robbery. That was self-evident. What galled him was that he couldn’t figure out what, and he knew Nolan wouldn’t tell him till the last moment.

The costume shop was on the way out of town, in a rather run-down section that was commercial along the main strip that ran through the area, but back behind which was a neighborhood that could be called lower middle class if you were in a charitable mood. It was a one-story, faded brick building sandwiched between a bait shop and a used book store that was, damn it, closed. Jon peeked in the windows of the old book store and saw thousands of used paperbacks in ceiling-high bookcases, and what looked like some old comic books and for sure some Big Little Books in locked showcases similar to those in Planner’s shop. He ran across such shops every now and then, and they were invariably closed. He sighed, shrugged, and went on into the costume shop.

The interior was spare but not seedy, with a counter and a waiting room area, similar to a laundry. An attractive if hard-looking woman of thirty or so was behind the counter, with coal-black hair, a beauty mark to the left of a red-painted mouth, and braless bouncing breasts under a satinlike yellow blouse. She looked as though she was preparing to audition for a local production of Carmen.

“Hi, honey,” she said casually, and Jon looked around to make sure she was talking to him.

She was, so he said hi himself, and did his best to return her suggestive smile. Maybe the woman did look sort of cheap and whorish, but she was also sexy-looking, in a second-rate men’s magazine way.

“What can I do you for?” she said. She was chewing gum. Not blatantly, though — not a cow chewing cud — but playing with it in her mouth, playing with it with her tongue.

“Uh, I’d like to see Mr. Blosser.”

“Not here.”

“Oh. You expect him soon?”

“Nope. Won’t be back today.”

“Well, uh, I was supposed to pick up a package for a friend of his. A Mr. Nolan?”

“Oh, sure. Your name must be Jon.”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“I’m Connie. The boss’s daughter, in case you was wondering.”

“Oh. Yeah, well, I’m pleased to meet you, Connie.”

“I’m sure. How is Nolan these days?”

“Fine. Fine. I didn’t know you knew Nolan.”

She grinned. She really was a good-looking woman, cheap or hard or not. “I know him. You ask him if I know him or not.” She laughed and her breasts jiggled.

Jon swallowed. “Okay, I’ll tell him you said hello.”

She reached under the counter and flopped two large white string-tied suit-type boxes up in front of her. “Here. This one is yours. It’s a small. You better try it on.” She motioned him behind the counter, and he followed her through a narrow hallway to some dressing cubicles in the rear of the store. She handed him the box marked “Small” and left, pulling the cubicle’s curtain shut on him.

He opened the box.

There was something red in it.

Red and partly white. Trimmed in white.

The red was a cheap but plush-looking velvetlike material; the white was fluffy stuff — cotton, he guessed. There was also red gloves of the same material, trimmed in the same white fluff.

It looked like a Santa Claus costume.

He took it out of the box.

It was a Santa Claus costume.

He put it back in the box and went back out front, quickly, leaving the costume behind.

“That was quick,” the woman said. “Fit okay, does it?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know... I didn’t try it on.”

“How come?”

“Well, there has to be some mistake.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, it’s a... would you come with me a minute?”

He took her back to the dressing cubicle and showed her.

“Yeah,” she said. “A Santa Claus costume. So?”

“This is what is supposed to be in this box?”

“Sure.”

“What’s in the other box?”

“Another Santa Claus costume. That’s a total of two. One small, the other’s large.”

“And that’s what Nolan wanted me to pick up for him?”

“Shit, yes. Didn’t he tell you?”

“I’m afraid he doesn’t tell me much of anything.”

“Yeah, that’s Nolan, all right Listen... you need any help getting into that, honey, just give Connie a call, you hear?” She winked and chewed her gum seductively and left him there with a hard on and a Santa Claus suit.

It fit fine. He looked at himself in the cubicle’s shadowy mirror, and damned if the world’s shortest, most clean-shaven Santa Claus wasn’t staring him in the face. He asked Connie about the lack of a beard, after getting back into his street clothes.

“Oh, the beards are in the other box, with the large suit,” she said. “The caps are in there too.”

“Caps?”

“Caps. You better try yours on.” She opened the other suit box and got out a floppy red cap with white ball on the end. “The beards are adjustable, around the ears, but the caps could be trouble... there, see? You got too much hair for a small. I’ll go back and get a medium.”

She did, and insisted that Jon try that one on too, and he did, and she tweaked his cheek and said, “Gonna bring me anything for Christmas, Santa?”

He grinned, trying to keep the red from crawling up his neck. “We’ll see,” he said.

“I wonder what the heck Nolan wants with Santa Claus suits,” she said, shaking her head. “Somehow he don’t seem the Santa type. Unless he’s gonna empty stockings instead of fill ’em.”

Jon nodded his agreement and watched her put the cap back in the box and tie some string around it.

“Don’t forget to tell Nolan I said hi,” she said. “And maybe I’ll see you when you bring the suits back after Christmas, huh, honey?”

It took him almost an hour to get back to Iowa City. The overcast day had everybody cautious and using their headlights, and he got caught behind some old ladies going forty-five. So did a lot of other cars; the traffic was heavy, and passing was difficult — no, impossible — and he followed the old girls to the Interstate, after which he was back to Iowa City in short order. He parked the Chevy II behind the antique shop and went in the side door, which was unlocked.

That wasn’t right; surely he’d locked the door when he left. Yes, he remembered locking it.

Too early for Nolan to back from Indianapolis. Wasn’t it?

He shut the door. Softly. Silently.

Listened.

Heard nothing.

Quietly he moved behind the long, saloon-style counter behind which his uncle had sat day after day puffing his foul-smelling cigars. He set his packages on the counter. In a drawer, below the cash register, was one of his uncle’s .32 automatics. Jon got it out Softly. Silently.

He explored the downstairs. Nothing in the main room, with its antiques and showcases and counter and all. Nothing in his own room, except half the comic books in the world.

But what about the other back room? The one that had included Planner’s workshop area, as well as where many very valuable antiques were crated away for future sale, and where the big old safe was...

The safe’s door was open.

Otherwise, the room was as empty as the rest of the downstairs.

But someone had been in here, opened the safe and, of course, found nothing in it. There hadn’t been anything of value kept in the safe since Nolan and Jon’s money had been stolen from it months before, the time Planner himself was killed defending that money. Killed in this very room. Jon had, in fact, scrubbed his uncle’s blood from the floorboards of this room...

He felt a chill, and for a moment was very scared, and then it passed. Whoever it was had been here and gone. He walked out into the other room and put the gun back in its drawer.

He was halfway up the stairs, his arms full of the packages with the hunting jackets and Santa Claus suits, when he heard the noise.

Talking.

Someone was talking up there on the second floor. And it sure as hell wasn’t Nolan.

And the talking was coming this way. Toward the stairs. They were going to come down the stairs!

He couldn’t be soft or silent about it now. He had no choice but to clomp down the stairs and head toward that drawer with the gun in it, but they were closer to him than he had imagined, on his damn heels before he was even out of the stairwell. And the packages were flying and he was face down on the floor, one of the men on his back and the other standing in front of him. Jon couldn’t see anything of whoever it was except shoes. Black shoes and white socks. The shoes were old-fashioned, lacing halfway up the ankle. Clodhoppers, shoes a farmer might work in; the socks were loose and dirty.

That’s all Jon saw of the two men, as he later deduced the number of his assailants to be: the shoes and socks of one of them, and nothing of the other, because the other was on Jon’s back, holding him down.

Nobody said a word; certainly not Jon, whose lips and teeth were mashed into the wooden floor.

And then one of the black shoes flew at Jon’s temple, and Jon went away for a while.

He woke up on the couch upstairs.

There was coldness on the side of his head.

“Oh... fuck...” he heard himself saying. He sat up. The coldness, an ice pack, slid off the side of his head.

Nolan handed Jon a cold beer. Jon grabbed at it, guzzling at the can like the Frankenstein monster taking his first drink.

“Aren’t you even going to ask me how my day in Indianapolis went?” Nolan said.

Jon just looked at Nolan. Then laughed. “Hey. You got me an ice pack. For my kicked-in head. You’re some kind of nurse, Nolan. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

“If you want a doctor, I can get Ainsworth over here. That’s a hell of a lump you got. Concussion maybe.”

“No doctor. I’m okay.”

“You mean you think you’re okay.”

“I don’t think anything. I think all my think got kicked all over the floor downstairs.”

“Somebody was into the safe.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I think they were looking around upstairs, too.”

“Nothing valuable taken?”

“Nothing valuable to take. Except some of the antiques, which they didn’t touch. And a couple thousand in the wall safe, which they didn’t find. So you got here before they left, and they kicked you in the head? See who it was?”

“I know exactly who kicked me in the head. We can have the cops put out an APB, my description is so exact.”

“Who, then?”

“A black farmer shoe with a dirty white sock and a foot in it.”

“Terrific. Another beer?”

“No. This one’ll do me. I’ll just lay back down here. What the hell time is it?”

“Oh, around eleven I guess.”

“When did you get back?”

“Not long ago. I hauled you upstairs and got you an ice pack and you woke up.”

“I’m not sure about that last part. Jesus. Now I know what they mean when they say ain’t that a kick in the head.”

“Listen. Breen was murdered.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s why you went to Indianapolis.”

“I mean Breen was murdered, and then you were kicked in the head and our place was gone through. Nothing’s gone, but it was gone through, all right.”

“You think there’s a connection? Between Breen and today?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“Me? You’re asking me, Nolan? For an opinion? Christ, I’m not ready for that. You better just kick me in the head. That I can handle. That I’ve had experience with.”

“This heist. Maybe we should scratch it.”

“Yeah, sure, only we aren’t calling the shots. Rigley is. Or Rigley’s girl friend is.”

“Maybe Rigley and company’ll change their mind when I explain something funny’s going on.”

“Is something funny going on?”

“I don’t know.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I think I better try to talk Rigley out of it. The back of my neck is starting to tingle on this thing, and I think we better get out, if we can.”

“And if we can’t?”

“Go ahead with it, I guess. I think we better forget about bringing in another man. That okay with you? Breen would’ve been perfect, but he’s dead, and with what I got in mind for the heist, there really isn’t the time to recruit anybody else. Or the need either. We can get by, just the two of us. Don’t you think?”

Jon rubbed the lump over his temple. “Maybe I will have another beer.” He got up and went after the beer, then came back and said, “Santa Claus suits?”