Hush Money

11

Nolan didn’t hear the shot, but he did hear Vincent DiPreta let out a gush of air and smack against the side of the house. He turned around and saw that DiPreta, hit in the chest — through the heart or so near it, it didn’t make much difference — had slid down to where the house and gravel met and was sitting there, staring at his lap, only his eyes weren’t seeing anything.

If Nolan had left the DiPreta place when he first started to a few minutes before, he would have missed the shooting. But he’d gone out to the car, found Jon’s note and had gone back into the house for a moment, to use the phone and call the kid, who understandably had gotten bored and had hitched a ride down the road to a bar for a drink. Nolan had decided to tell Jon to call a cab and go back to the motel or go over on the East Side for the afternoon and hunt through the moldy old shops for moldy old funny books; the rest of the day’s activities, Nolan had decided, were perhaps better handled alone. The kid would just get in the way and would be all the time wanting to know what was going on. Later, if it proved he needed some back-up, he’d call Jon in off the bench.

He hadn’t spent much time at the DiPretas. He’d known that if he was going to be nosing around Des Moines, as Felix wanted him to, he’d better let the DiPretas know he was in town, even if he didn’t tell them the real reason why. Felix hadn’t told him to talk to the DiPretas, but then Felix hadn’t told him much at all about how to handle the situation, probably because Felix knew it wouldn’t do any good. Nolan would handle things his own way or say piss on it.

Vincent DiPreta had answered the door, though it was the Frank DiPreta residence. Nolan remembered Vince as a fat man, but he wasn’t anymore; he looked skinny, sick, and sad. And old. More than anything, old, as if his brother’s death had aged him overnight.

He didn’t recognize Nolan and said, “Who are you?” But not surly, as you might think.

“My name’s Nolan. We did business years ago.”

“Nolan. Ten, eleven years ago, was it?”

“That’s right”

“Come in.”

Nolan followed DiPreta through a room with a gently winding, almost feminine staircase and walls papered in a blue and yellow floral pattern that didn’t fit the foundation the house had been built on. They went to the study, which was more like it, a big, cold dark-paneled room with one wall a built-in bookcase full of expensive, unread books, another wall with a heavy oak desk up against it, and high on that wall an oil painting of Papa DiPreta. Papa had been dead four or five years now, Nolan believed. In the painting Papa was white-haired and saintly; in real life he was white-haired. Another wall had framed family pictures, studio photographs, scattered around a rack of antique guns like trophies. There was a couch. They sat.

“It’s thoughtful of you to call, Mr. Nolan. We’re doing our receiving of friends and relatives at the funeral home, not here, to tell you the truth, but you’re welcome just the same. Would you care for something to drink?”

“Thank you, no. Too early.”

“And too early for me. Also too late. I don’t drink anymore, you know. Or at least not often. Damn diet.”

“You’ve lost weight. Looks good.”

“Well, it doesn’t, I lost too much weight, but it’s kind of you to say so. Did you make a special trip? I hope not.”

“No. I was in town for business reasons and heard about your tragedy. I’m sorry. Joey was a nice guy.”

“Yes, he was. You haven’t done business with us for some time, have you?”

Nolan nodded. “I’m in another line of work now.”

“What are you doing these days?”

“I manage a motel. Near Chicago.”

Something flickered in DiPreta’s eyes. “For the Family?”

“Yes,” Nolan said.

The door opened, slapped open by Frank DiPreta, who walked in and said, “Vince, I... who the hell are you? Uh... Nolan, isn’t it? What the hell are you doing here?”

“He came to pay his respects,” Vince said.

“That’s fine,” Frank said, “but that’s being done, at the funeral parlor. Our home we like kept private.”

Nolan rose. “I’ll be going then.”

“No,” Frank said. “Sit down.”

Nolan did.

Frank sat on the nearby big desk so that he could look down at Nolan, just as his father was looking down in the painting behind him. This was supposed to make him feel intimidated, Nolan supposed, but it didn’t particularly. These were old men, older than he was, and he could take them apart if need be.

“Nolan,” Frank said, smiling warily, narrowing his eyes. “Nolan. Haven’t seen you in years.”

For a period of several months, eleven years ago, Nolan had led a small group of men (three, including himself) who hijacked truckloads of merchandise that were then sold to the DiPretas for distribution and sale to various stores in the chain of discount houses the DiPretas owned and operated throughout the Midwest. Truckloads of appliances, for the most part, penny-ante stuff, really. A stupid racket to be into, Nolan eventually decided, especially at the cheap-ass money the DiPretas paid; and when he discovered the DiPretas were loosely affiliated with the Family (who at the time wanted Nolan’s ass) he abandoned the operation right now and left the DiPretas up in the air. His present claim of calling to pay his respects to the bereaved family wouldn’t hold up so well if Frank DiPreta’s memory was good.

“In fact,” Frank was saying, “you sort of disappeared on us, didn’t you, Nolan? I hear you were pissed off at Joey and Vince and me for paying you so shitty. You quit us, is what you did, right?”

Nolan shrugged. “I was mad at the time. But Joey and me got back together a couple times after that, when I was passing through, several years later. Didn’t he tell you? Played some golf together. Patched up our differences.” He smiled and watched the faces of the two men, trying to tell how well his lie had fared.

“I see. What about the Family? Not so long ago I heard stories about you having problems with the Family. You patch up your differences with them, too?”

“There was a change of regime. You know that. You’re tied in with the Family yourselves, aren’t you? The people I had problems with are gone.”

“So what are you doing?”

“Running a motel for them.”

“No, I mean, what are you doing in town? Besides paying respects.”

Nolan grinned. “Running a motel doesn’t pay so good, and sometimes you got to do a little work on the side. I brought some money in to sell Goldman.”

That was plausible. That was something they could check on if they wanted to. It was also true. In the Midwest the place to sell hot money was Goldman, who ran three pawnshops and paid a higher percentage on marked bills than even the best guys back east. Having the Detroit money to unload in Des Moines had proved a blessing, because it provided a perfect cover.

But Frank still wasn’t satisfied. “So what sort of job did that money come from?” he wanted to know.

“Rather not say.”

Vince said, “It’s none of our business, Frank. He was in town, heard about Joey, stopped by to pay his respects.” He turned to Nolan. “You have to excuse my brother, Mr. Nolan. He’s still upset about Joey.”

“Bullshit,” Frank said. “I think the Family sent this son of a bitch in to check on us. To see why we haven’t called them and asked for help. To handle this them fuckin’ selves. Well, we don’t want the goddamn Family’s help, understand? Like when they fucked up the McCracken thing that time, which is maybe the cause of all this, too.”

For the first time Vince DiPreta perked up, seemed almost alive. “What do you mean, Frank?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“Look,” Nolan said, “I’m not into that side of the Family’s affairs. If you know anything at all about my past history with the Family, you know that’s the truth.”

Frank thought for a moment, finally nodded. “That’s right. When you quit, you quit because you didn’t want any part of the Family, outside of club work and the like. Yeah, I did hear that. Okay, Nolan. Maybe I misjudged you. Maybe not. If you came to pay condolences, fine. If not, well...”

“Daddy?”

A blonde girl of nineteen or twenty came in. She was a sexy-looking little thing and didn’t look like a DiPreta, though she obviously was, as Frank introduced her as his daughter and went over to her and took her outside the study and talked to her for a while.

“Change your mind about that drink, Mr. Nolan?”

“Scotch would be fine.”

Vince DiPreta got the drinks and they sat on the couch and drank them while Frank talked to his daughter.

Frank came back in, saying, “Kids,” shaking his head, but his mood seemed somehow mellowed.

“Fine looking girl,” Nolan said.

“Takes after her mother. Okay, Nolan. So maybe I’m being paranoid or something, but I got call to be suspicious. And I’m going to tell you what’s going down ’round here, so that if you’re an innocent bystander like Vince seems to think you are, then you can get your damn ass out of the way, and if you’re some damn idiot the Family sent in to troubleshoot and spy on us, then it’s best you know the score and know what you’re in for. Somebody’s trying to wipe us out. The DiPreta family, I mean. I got an idea who, but that much I’m not going to tell you. So far Joe’s been killed, and I about got killed this morning, and...”

“Wait,” Nolan said. “Somebody tried to kill you?”

“Threw a goddamn hand grenade through the window right on the fuckin’ table. In the coffee shop where I was eating breakfast, for Christ’s sake. Do you believe it? But he wasn’t really trying to kill me. Just throw a scare into me for now. The grenade had just enough powder to go boom and make everybody pee his pants. And I was about that scared myself, I’ll tell you. Here, take a look at this. This is something he left me to remember him by.” He took a card from his sports-coat pocket. “An ace of spades. Vince was sent one yesterday. Joey was, the day before yesterday. The day before he got it. Now me.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. But if you’re smart, Nolan, you’ll get your ass out of Des Moines. Because the shooting’s just started.”

“You think you know who’s doing it?”

“Maybe. You going to be in town long?”

“Just tonight, I figure.”

“Good. Give my regards to the Family. Vince, I’m going upstairs, sack out awhile. Wake me in an hour, will you? Got some things to take care of later.”

Frank DiPreta left the room.

Vincent DiPreta sat and stared at the door his brother had gone out; his face was sagging, heavily lined, tired, like a basset hound’s. He turned to Nolan and said, “Did the Family send you, Mr. Nolan?”

“No.”

“Another drink?”

“Please.”

After a third drink and some idle conversation, about pro football mostly, Nolan had gone out to the car, where he’d found the note from Jon and had gone back in to use the phone. DiPreta had gone out the door with Nolan as Nolan went out to the Cadillac for the second time.

And Vince DiPreta had been shot, by a silenced rifle, apparently, and Nolan, who didn’t intend to be next in line of fire, dove for the ground.

12

Nolan hit the gravel hard and rolled, kept rolling ’til he bumped against the side of the Cadillac. The shot had come from the other side of the Cad, beyond the huge lawn and white picket fence, from somewhere in the gray thickness of trees covering the section of land adjacent to the DiPreta place. He reached up and opened the door of the Cadillac, then carefully crawled inside the car, like a retreating soldier climbing into the security of his foxhole. He kept well below window level, lying on his belly while he fumbled under the seat for the holstered .38. He withdrew the gun, left the holster, got into a modified sitting position, leaning to the side toward the seat and still below window level, started the car, and began backing out.

The rearview mirror gave him a good view of the drive, which went straight back to the highway; but there was a gate, and since he couldn’t afford to get out and play sitting duck opening the thing, he built up some speed, butted the picket fence open, and swung out sharply onto the shoulder of the road and a semi whizzed past and almost blew him into the ditch. For once he was grateful for the bulk of the Cad.

With the semi out of the way, the four-lane was free of traffic, or anyway the two lanes of it closest to Nolan were, the ones heading back to town. Over across a dividing gully the other two lanes were entertaining brisk traffic. He decided not to wait for it to let up and pulled out into what for public safety was the wrong direction but for his purpose the right one, his purpose being to head toward where the shooting had come from. He pushed the gas pedal to the floor.

He met only two cars: a Corvette whose driver didn’t blink an eye, just curved around Nolan and headed on toward Des Moines; and another Cadillac, like Nolan’s but blue, and this driver too had sense to get the hell out of Nolan’s way. The driver in the Corvette had been a young kid and could have been Steve McCracken, but Nolan knew catching the Vette would have been an impossibility, even if he’d had room to make a U-turn and give it a try.

He found what he was looking for soon enough: a gravel side road, bisecting the four-lane and running along the edge of the grove from which the sniping had been done. Nolan pulled in. The air was full of dust. The gravel had been stirred up just recently, by the assassin’s car, no doubt, on its way home after a successful mission.

Nolan drove ’til the dust in the air began to dissipate, and it did so at a point roughly parallel to the DiPreta place across the grove. He slowed, figuring this was approximately where the assassin’s car had been parked. It proved a good theory, as on the side of the road opposite the grove was a cornfield, and an access inlet to the cornfield was apparently where the assassin had left his car while entering the grove to do his sniping.

Nolan pulled into the inlet, got out of his car, crossed the road, the ditch, then walked up a slight incline to stare out over the October-barren grove. The trees were gray, as was the sky, their fallen leaves had been picked up and borne away, leaving the ground bare around them, but for the browning grass. It was a naked and uninviting landscape, a perfect backdrop for dealing out death, and Nolan noticed for the first time it was kind of cold today.

He also noticed for the first time, on his way back to the Cadillac, that he was filthy from rolling around in the gravel. He started brushing himself off and noticed he’d torn his suitcoat under the right sleeve, and that the crotch was ripped out of his pants. Shit, he thought, two hundred goddamn dollars shot to shit. Somebody was going to answer.

Well, he’d have to go back to the motel and change. He got back in the car, returned the .38 to its holster under the seat, and headed back to Des Moines. He had a lot to do, and he really couldn’t spare the time, but he didn’t figure he better go running around town with the crotch hanging out of his pants.

He did not stop at the DiPreta place. Vince was dead; nothing he could do would help Vince now. Frank was probably still upstairs sleeping, and Nolan didn’t want to be the one to wake him with the latest war bulletin. Hopefully Frank would assume the shooting had taken place after Nolan had left, though the possibility remained that Frank might assume Nolan was in some way a part of the shooting, an accomplice perhaps. Especially if that gate had been conspicuously damaged when Nolan butted it open with the tail of the Cadillac. Even so, that would have to be taken care of later. Nolan had more important things to do presently, such as getting into pants with the crotch sewn in them, and he just didn’t have time to fool around with the DiPretas right now.

It took longer getting back to the motel than Nolan would have liked. He worked the key in the door with some impatience; but when he went to push it open, the door caught: night-latched.

“Jon,” Nolan said.

Noise from within; bedsprings.

“Jon, for Christ’s sake, shake your ass.”

Which from the sound of the bedsprings was exactly what the kid was doing.

Finally Jon peeked out. He looked a little wild-eyed. His hair was all haywire, even more so than usual. He wasn’t wearing a shirt; even with as little of him as was showing, that was evident.

“Hey,” Nolan said. “I live here. Remember?”

“Nolan, uh, Nolan...”

“What are you doing, sleeping? Didn’t you sleep enough in the damn car on the way up this morning?”

“Uh, Nolan, uh...”

“What?”

He whispered out of the side of his mouth, “I got a girl in here.”

“Congratulations,” Nolan said. “I’m glad the day is going right for somebody. Now let me in.”

“Well, you kind of interrupted us.”

“I’ll wait out here while you finish. Don’t be long.”

“Jesus, Nolan!”

“Look. We got something in common right now, you and me. We’re both in kind of sticky situations. I got no crotch in my pants, for one thing, but I don’t have time to explain at the moment. I’m just here to make a pit stop, you know? Change my clothes, say hello, and I’m off.”

“Yeah, you do look messed up. What you been doing, rolling around in gravel or something?”

“Jon.”

“Yes?”

“You and your girl friend go over to the coffee shop for five minutes so I can come in and change my clothes. Okay? I mean, I am paying for the room, you know.”

“No kidding?” Jon said, genuinely surprised. “I figured we’d be going Dutch, like usual.”

“Jon.”

“Okay, okay. One second.”

It was more like two minutes, and Nolan was somehow uncomfortable, hanging around outside a motel run by the DiPretas — or rather the DiPreta, as Frank was about the only one left, he guessed.

Jon came out in T-shirt and jeans, with the girl in tow. She was a pretty young blonde, stunning in fact: white blonde hair and a real shape to her. She looked familiar in some funny way, but maybe that was just wishful thinking. She seemed embarrassed, almost blushing, and Nolan smiled at her to put her at ease.

“So you’re Jon’s friend,” she said.

“So you’re Jon’s friend,” Nolan said.

Jon said, “Why don’t you go on and order, Francine. I got to talk to Nolan a minute.”

She said okay and both Nolan and Jon took time out to study the nice things going on under the blue sweater-dress as she walked away.

Then Jon said, “Nolan, I’m sorry about this, I didn’t figure it would do any harm to...”

“No harm done. I’m glad you found a way to amuse yourself. But listen, don’t call me Nolan. I’m registered Ryan.”

“Oh. Sorry. What’s going on, anyway?”

“You and me are getting screwed in Des Moines. We’re just going about it two different ways. Now go away and eat and let me change.”

Jon did.

Nolan was pleased to find that the war between the sexes had been fought on only one of the twin beds, and sat on the unused one and stripped off coat and tie and shirt and sat for a moment pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. Things were happening fast. He wanted to catch his breath a second.

But just a second.

He rose, got out of the pants and took out a pair of dark, comfortable slacks, a lightweight black turtleneck sweater, and a green corduroy sports coat from his suitcase and put them on. He walked into the bathroom and splashed some water on his face and remembered who the girl was.

Christ!

He all but ran over to the coffee shop. It was a long, narrow aqua-blue fish tank of a room, and toward the rear of the place was the window that earlier today had been broken out by the tossing of a grenade; the window was covered over now with cardboard. Jon and the girl were sitting one booth away. As he approached them Nolan tried to convince himself that the girl with Jon was not Frank DiPreta’s daughter, but when he got up close to the horny little bastard and bitch, that’s who she was, all right.

Nolan cleared his throat, smiled. It was a smile that Jon understood. It was a smile that didn’t have much to do with smiling, and Jon excused himself, and he and Nolan headed for the restroom, which Nolan locked, turning to Jon and saying, “Where did you pick her up, Jon?”

“At that place this morning.”

“The DiPreta place, you mean.”

“Yeah, right. That’s her name, Francine DiPreta. And she picked me up, if you must know. Right there at that place we drove to this morning, where you went in and—”

“She’s the daughter of the guy I went to see, in other words. You’re banging the daughter of the guy I went to see.”

“Well, I didn’t figure that made her off limits or anything. Come on, Nolan, you saw her. Would you turn that down?”

“It would depend on the statutory rape charge in this state, I suppose.”

“That’s right. You got no call to get all of a sudden moral or something, Nolan.”

“Fuck, kid, I’m not talking morality. I’m talking common sense. Okay, do you know who her father is? Besides somebody I went to see today.”

“No. I don’t know who her father is. Some rich guy, I assume.”

“Yeah, he’s rich. For one thing, he owns this motel.”

“This, uh, motel?”

“Right. You’re screwing the girl in her father’s motel.”

“Gee.”

“Gee? Gee? Do people still say that? Do they say that in the funny papers or what?”

“I’ll take her right home.”

“No. Don’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because her uncle just got killed.”

“I thought her uncle died yesterday.”

“Not died, got killed. And this is another uncle. Two uncles in two days, killed. And did you notice that broken window out in the coffee shop?”

Jon nodded.

“Somebody threw a grenade through that window this morning at your girl friend’s old man.”

“What’s it all mean, Nolan?”

“Think about it. He’s a rich guy. He’s a rich guy I have dealings with. He’s a rich guy I have dealings with who has had two brothers killed in the last two days and a grenade tossed in his lap this morning.”

“He’s a mob guy.”

“He’s a mob guy. You’re screwing a mob guy’s daughter in a mob guy’s motel. There you have it.”

Jon swallowed. “Are you mad at me, Nolan?”

“Mad? No. Hell, I admire you. You got balls, kid.”

“What should I do, Nolan?”

“Have fun, I guess. That’s a nice looking piece of ass you lined yourself up with. Maybe it’ll have been worth it.”

“Okay, so I fucked up. I admit it. But how was I to know? You bring me along and don’t tell me a damn thing...”

Nolan slapped the toilet lid down and sat. His tone softened. “I know. It is my fault. If I’m going to bring you into these things, if I’m going to trust you to be capable of helping me out, I shouldn’t keep you in the dark all the time. It’s my fault. But Christ, kid, think with your head, not your dick. A grade-school kid could put two and two together and come up with four, right? You should have put me and that girl’s father together and come up with hands-off-the-daughter.”

Jon nodded. “I was an asshole.”

“You and me both. We’re doing our talking in the right room.”

Jon grinned. “They say all the assholes hang out here.”

Nolan grinned back, said, “Go out and have something to eat with your girl friend. Take her back to the room soon as possible and make sure none of the help sees you going in.”

“I shouldn’t take her home, huh? And I shouldn’t mention knowing who she is and all?”

“What do you think?”

“I think I shouldn’t mention knowing who she is.”

“Look, lad, she probably doesn’t even know who she is herself. She probably figures Daddy is in the motel business and leaves it go at that.”

“What’s going on, anyway?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Bullshit! You just got through saying how—”

“I know, but it’s complicated and there isn’t time. But listen. If somebody should come looking for me, which I doubt, because I don’t see anybody in Des Moines linking the Ryan name to me, but if somebody does, just play it straight. Just say you’re a friend of mine and I’m out handling some personal business. Got that?”

“Nolan, what the hell else could I tell anybody? You haven’t told me shit about what’s coming off around here.”

“That’s so when your girl friend’s father starts pulling out your toenails with pliers to make you talk, you won’t have a thing to say. Now get going.”

13

Nolan didn’t expect anybody to be home. He’d gotten the credit card out of his wallet to open the door, looked around the apartment-house hall to make sure no one was watching him, and then, as he was about to slide the card between door and jamb, decided maybe he’d better ring the bell, just to be sure. And now he was looking into the very pretty, very blue eyes of Steve McCracken’s sister, Diane.

“Yes?” she said.

She was wearing a white floor-length terry robe, and her platinum hair was tousled; she’d obviously been sleeping, her face a little puffy, her eyes half-lidded, but she was still a good-looking young woman. Not alert at the moment, but good-looking.

“Diane?” Nolan said, palming the credit card, slipping it into his suitcoat pocket.

She had opened the door all the way initially, but now, her grogginess receding, her lack of recognition apparent, she stepped back inside and closed the door to a crack and peeked out at Nolan, giving him a properly wary look, saying “Yes?” like, who the hell are you and what the hell do you want?

“I’m Nolan. Remember me?”

The wary look remained, but seemed to soften.

“Chicago,” he said. “A long time ago.”

The door opened wider, just a shade.

He smiled. “Make believe the mustache isn’t there.”

And she smiled, too, suddenly.

“Nolan?” she said.

“Nolan.”

“Good God, Nolan... it is you, isn’t it? I haven’t seen you since I was a kid, haven’t even thought of you in years. Nolan.” She hugged him. She had a musky, bedroom smell about her, which jarred him, as his memories of her were of a child, and a homely one at that.

“Come in, come in,” she was saying.

He did.

It was a nice enough apartment, as the new assembly-line types go: pastel-yellow plaster-pebbled walls; fluffy dark-blue carpeting; kitchenette off to the left. There was a light blue couch upholstered in velvetlike material, and matching armchairs, only bright yellow, across the way. Over the couch was a big abstract painting (squares of dark blue and squares of light yellow) picked to complement the colors in the room, he supposed, but succeeding only in overkill. He didn’t know why exactly, but the room seemed kind of chilly. Maybe it was the emotionless, meaningless abstract painting. Maybe it was nothing. He didn’t know.

“Excuse the way I look.” she said, sitting on the couch, nodding for him to join her. “But I stayed home from work today. Not really sick, just felt a little punk, little tired. Nothing contagious, I’m sure, so you don’t have to worry.”

Nolan didn’t have to be told she’d stayed home from work: he’d known she would — or rather should — be at work, and had hoped to avoid an old-home-week confrontation with McCracken’s sister by simply searching her apartment when she wasn’t there. But here she was, in the way of his reason for being here, which was to locate her brother’s address or phone number or some other damn thing that might lead Nolan to him.

“What brings you to Des Moines, Nolan? God, I can’t get over it. All these years.”

“I was in town on business,” Nolan said, “and it occurred to me I should look you up and say how sorry I am about you losing your folks. We were good friends, your father and mother and I. I was real close with your dad especially, as you know.”

She didn’t say anything right away. Her face tightened. Her eyes got kind of glazed. She seemed to tense up all over. Then she said, “It’s been over a year since he died. He and mother. They were getting back together, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” Nolan said. “I didn’t even know they’d broken up.” Which was untrue, but might prompt an interesting response.

“They were divorced ten years ago, shortly after we moved to Des Moines, in fact. I never really knew the reason why. It didn’t make sense to me as a kid and it doesn’t now. Mom had been unhappy in Chicago, didn’t like what Daddy was doing there, with that nightclub and everything, and she seemed so happy when he said we’d be going to Des Moines, that he’d be getting out of the nightclub business and was going to manage a motel in Des Moines. But then we got here and a few months later, poof. Funny, isn’t it? They both loved each other. They saw each other all the time, were welcome in each other’s homes. But for some reason Mother refused to remarry and live with him again.”

“And your mother never said why?”

“No. And I don’t know why she relented toward the end there, either.”

“They were sure in love when I knew them.”

“You were out of touch a long time, Nolan. How come?”

“Didn’t your father ever tell you?”

“No.”

“I had a falling-out with the people who employed your father and me.”

Years ago, in Chicago, Jack McCracken had run a club across from Nolan’s on Rush Street; both clubs belonged to the Family. Nolan and McCracken were best of friends but had parted company out of necessity when Nolan made his abrupt, violent departure from the Family circle. It would have been dangerous to the point of stupidity for Nolan to associate with anyone linked with the Family, and vice versa, so he hadn’t talked to McCracken for more than a decade and a half, hadn’t even heard of his old friend’s death until last night, when Felix told him.

“But you didn’t have a falling out with Daddy, did you? Just the people you two worked for.”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t understand, Nolan. Just became you didn’t get along with your employers, yours and Daddy’s, doesn’t mean the two of you couldn’t still be friends.”

That answered a big question. Unless she was playing it cute, Diane had no idea her father had worked for the Family in Chicago, and that his later employers, the DiPretas, were also mob-related.

“We just ended up in different parts of the country, Diane. Drifted apart. Happens to friends all the time. You know how it is. I didn’t hear about your parents dying till just recently or I’d have got in touch with you sooner. So what have you been up to, for fifteen years? Your braces are off, you aren’t flat-chested anymore. What else?”

She sighed and grinned crookedly. “I’m still a little flat-chested, now that you mention it. Say, what time is it?”

“It’s after one.”

“Have you had lunch yet?”

“No.”

“So far today I haven’t felt like eating, but seeing you after so long kind of perks me up. I got some good lasagna left over from dinner last night. If I heat it up, will you help me finish it off?”

He wished he could have avoided all this. She was pleasant company, sure, but he didn’t want to sit around chatting all afternoon. He had to find Steve McCracken and soon: Frank DiPreta clearly had theories about the assassin which included McCracken as a possibility; and what with the tossing of a grenade this morning and the sniping of Vince early this afternoon, things were happening too fast to be wasting time in idle chatter.

But he did like her. And she could, most probably, lead him to her brother.

So for forty minutes they talked and ate and got along well. She fed him salad and lasagna, he fed her a terse, imaginary tale of working on the West Coast as a salesman, then finally ended on a note of partial truth, saying how he’d recently been trying to get back into the nightclub business, and was in Des Moines working on that. Then she went on to an equally terse account of going to college for a couple of years at Drake, getting married, having a child, getting divorced. She told it all with very little enthusiasm, and when she spoke of her ex-husband, Jerry, it was as if she were encased in a sheet of ice. Only when she talked about her six-year-old daughter Joni did she come to life again.

Eventually they were back sitting on the couch and he got around to it: “Listen, Diane, how’s your brother, anyway? I’d like to see him while I’m in town.”

She paled.

She touched a lower lip that had begun trembling and said, “Uh, Stevie... well, uh Stevie, he’s just fine.”

“What’s wrong, Diane?”

“Wrong?”

“Yes. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing at all.”

And she broke down.

He went to her and gathered her in his arms. Let her cry into his shoulder. He let her cry for several minutes without asking any more questions.

And he didn’t need to. She began telling him what he wanted to know on her own.

“Nolan, I don’t know how the hell it happened you showed up today, after all those years, but thank God you did. I need somebody right now. I need Daddy, is who I need, but he’s dead — goddamnit, he’s dead. And Stevie’s acting crazy. I... I wasn’t sick today, you know, not really. I was emotionally... I don’t know, overwrought, or disturbed, or something. Depressed, upset, scared, you name it. Last night Stevie came for dinner, and he just acted so crazy. He’s been a little strange since he got home from service a few weeks ago. He got an apartment but then told me not to come over. I mean I know where he lives, but he said a condition of the landlord’s was no visitors. I just don’t believe that — it’s silly, crazy — but Stevie was coming over here often enough that I didn’t mind, didn’t ever question what he’d told me about the landlord’s silly rule. He did give me a phone number — it came with the apartment — but then last night he came over and said not to call him any more unless it was an absolute emergency. He’d get in touch with me now and then, he said, but not to call him and not to give his phone number or address to anybody under any circumstances. He made me promise that. And then he said he wouldn’t be able to see us for a while, Joni and me. Wouldn’t be coming over any more. He said there was a good reason but that he couldn’t tell me. He would still be in town, still be around, but he couldn’t see us. I... I almost got hysterical. I sent Joni downstairs to her friend Sally’s, and I pleaded with Stevie, begged him to tell me what was going on. I even got to where I was screaming at him after a while. Then I got mad, furious with him, and that didn’t do any good either. And he left. He just left, Nolan, and said he’d call now and then. I... I just don’t know what to think.”

She was confused and rightfully so, Nolan thought. Her brother’s “wartime” precautions (and they were half-assed, insufficient precautions, at that) meant nothing to her.

“Nolan, do you think maybe you could talk to Stevie? Do you think maybe you could find out what’s going on?”

“Yes.” He stroked her hair. It was incredibly blonde. “But right now just take it easy, Diane. Take it nice and easy.”

“Nolan.”

“What.”

They were whispering. She was in his arms, and they were whispering.

“Nolan, I was in love with you when I was thirteen.”

“I know you were. But you had braces, remember?”

“And I was flat-chested, too.” She took his hand and put it under her robe. “Do you think there’s been any improvement?”

“I think so.”

“I haven’t made love in a long time. I haven’t been able to. After my parents died, I... I was dead inside too. That’s... part of why the divorce happened.”

“I see.”

“That feels good. Keep doing that.”

“I intend to.”

“Nolan.”

“Hmmm?”

“Could you make love to me?”

“I could.”

“You’d have to make it gentle. I’m... I’m not sure what I’m doing. I mean I’m kind of mixed up.”

“I could be gentle.”

“Why don’t you kiss me and see what happens?”

He did.

“Yes,” she said. “I think it would be good.”

“I do too.”

“Where?”

It was dim there in the living room. The day outside was overcast, and once he’d gone over and drawn the curtains the room was very dark.

“Here on the couch?” he asked.

“Here on the couch’ll be fine.”

She slipped the terry robe down over her shoulders. Underneath she wore sheer beige panties and lots of pale, pale flesh; even her nipples were pale, which added to the platinum blonde hair bouncing around her shoulders and peeking through her sheer panties, gave her an almost ghostly beauty. Nolan stood and undressed and looked down at the girl, studied her delicate, softly curved body, watched her slip out of the panties and open herself to him, like a flower, and for just a moment he felt like a child molester.

But only for a moment.

14

Nolan got in easy enough. He simply told the landlady, Mrs. Parker, that he was Steven’s favorite uncle, and that he wanted to surprise the boy, and she smiled and led him downstairs, through the laundry room, to the doorway of the basement apartment.

“There’s no lock on the door,” she whispered. “You can go on in.” She was a plump, middle-aged woman with prematurely white hair and a motherly attitude that irritated Nolan. He didn’t like being mothered by a broad so close to his own age.

He thanked her, but did not “go on in” just yet. Instead he waited several long awkward moments for Mrs. Parker to leave, which she finally did, and the smile of thanks frozen on his face like the expression on a figure in a wax museum melted away. He didn’t think the landlady would’ve understood why Steven’s favorite uncle might find it necessary to enter his nephew’s chambers with .38 in hand.

But it turned out the .38 wasn’t necessary after all.

McCracken wasn’t home.

Nolan returned the gun to the underarm holster but left his coat unbuttoned. He looked around the room. It didn’t take long.

The large basement room McCracken lived in was sparsely furnished: just a big, basically empty room, which made sense. A soldier lived here. Or anyway somebody who fancied himself a soldier, Nolan thought, fancied himself engaged in a personal, private war. This wasn’t an apartment; it was a barracks, a billet.

It didn’t take long to find the soldier’s arsenal, either. Nolan eased open the doors of a tall wardrobe, and there in the bottom of the cabinet were the weapons of the McCracken assault team: Weatherby with scope, 357 Mag Colt, 9-millimeter Browning and a Thompson sub, no less. There was ammo, of course, and about half a dozen grenades.

He went over and sat on the couch, put his feet on the coffee table. He folded his arms so he could sit and wait without getting the .38 out but still have fast access to the gun. He figured McCracken might freak at the sight of the drawn revolver, might pull a gun himself and the shooting would begin before talking had a chance to. Steve had seemed stable as a kid, but a lot of years had gone by since then; sometimes a seemingly normal child developed into a psychopath. Maybe Steve McCracken wasn’t a psychopath, but he’d sure been showing violent tendencies these past twenty-four hours or so.

In a way, Nolan couldn’t blame the boy. McCracken was a soldier trained in an unpopular, perhaps meaningless war. Why should it surprise anybody if the boy should put that training to personal, practical use? From Steve McCracken’s point of view, Nolan realized, his reasoning behind the destruction of the DiPreta family seemed valid as hell. After being a part of the military jacking itself off in Vietnam, why shouldn’t the boy seek a crusade for a change? A holy goddamn war?

McCracken was inside and had the door locked behind him and still hadn’t seen Nolan.

“How you been, Steve?” Nolan said.

Steve turned around fast, got into a crouch that spoke of training in at least one of the Eastern martial arts.

Bit Nolan was well-versed in the major American martial art and calmly withdrew the primary instrument of that art from his shoulder holster. He showed the gun to Steve McCracken, said, “Sit down, Steve. On the floor. Over there on the floor just this side of the middle of the room.”

And the boy did as he was told. “Who the hell are you?” he said, sitting Indian-style. His voice was deep, but it sounded young, like a voice that had just changed.

“I guess I don’t look the same,” Nolan said. “Your sister didn’t recognize me at first, either. I think it’s the mustache.”

“Mustache my ass, I’ve never seen you before in my life. And what’s this about my sister...?”

“I wouldn’t have recognized you, either. You’ve grown.”

Grown was right: Steve McCracken was more than a foot taller than the last time Nolan had seen him. Of course, then Steve was ten or twelve years old. Now he was in his mid-to-late-twenties and a massively built kid, whose whitish blonde hair and skimpy mustache made him look more like a muscle-bound California surf bum than a one-man army.

“If you’re here to shoot me,” Steve said, “get on with it.”

“Christ, you’re a melodramatic little prick. I guess it figures. You used to love those damn cowboy movies you and your dad used to drag me to. Randolph Scott. Christ, how you loved Randolph Scott.”

“Who... who are you?”

“I’m the guy who used to sit between you and your dad, when we went to Comiskey Park to watch the Sox on Sunday afternoons.”

“Nolan?”

Nolan nodded.

“I haven’t seen you since I was a kid,” Steve said. He seemed confused.

“You’re still a kid. And a screwed-up kid at that, and since your dad isn’t around anymore, I guess I’m all that’s left to get you straight again.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean somebody’s got to put a stop to what you’re doing before you get your ass shot off.”

“You go to hell.”

Nolan grinned. “Good. I like that. It’ll save time if we can skip the pretense and get right down to it. You been killing and generally terrorizing members of the DiPreta family. It’s crazy and it’s got to stop.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Will you listen to me? Will you hear me out?”

‘Why should I?”

“Because I got a gun on you.”

“Well, that is a good reason.”

“I know it is. But I’d like it better if we could forget the goddamn guns for a minute and go over and sit at that table and have some beer and just talk. What do you say?”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

Nolan rose from the couch. Steve got up off the floor, headed for the refrigerator. Nolan put the .38 away. Steve got the beers. Nolan approached the table. Steve handed him one beer, kept the other. They sat.

“Let me ask you a question, Nolan.”

“All right. I may not answer, but all right.”

“What makes you think you can trust me? How do you know I won’t hit you in the eye with a can of beer or something?”

“You might,” Nolan conceded, nodding. “You might even take my gun away from me. I don’t think you’re that good, really, but it’s possible.”

“Suppose I did. Suppose I took your gun away from you. What’s to prevent me from using it on you?”

“Your own inflated damn idea of yourself.”

“My what?”

“You’re a man with a cause. You make up your own rules, but you stick to them. This morning, for instance. You wouldn’t really toss a live grenade into a room full of mostly innocent bystanders. Oh, you don’t mind throwing a firecracker and scaring folks a little — that’s part of unnerving the shit out of Frank and causing more general chaos in the DiPreta ranks. But you don’t kill anybody but DiPretas, and maybe DiPreta people, and since you don’t know whether or not I’m a DiPreta man yet, I figure I’m safe for the moment.”

“That’s a pretty thin supposition, Nolan.”

“Not when you add it to my being an old friend of your father’s. After all, you’re in this because of your father, and you’re not about to go killing off his friends unless you’re sure they got it coming.”

“I get the feeling you’re making fun of me.”

“Well, I do think you’re something of an ass, if that’s what you mean. But I don’t mean to make light of this situation. I spent the afternoon with your sister, Steve. I like her. I understand she’s got a nice little daughter.”

“What’s your point?”

“I was hoping you’d have seen it by now. Look, how do you think I found you? Your phone is unlisted, isn’t even in your name, is it?”

“No, it isn’t. How did you find me?”

“Diane gave me the address.”

“But I told her not to give it out under any—”

“And yet here I am. I sweet-talked it out of her, but there are other, less pleasant ways of getting information out of people.”

“They wouldn’t dare—”

“They wouldn’t? You mean the DiPretas wouldn’t? Why? Because it’s not nice? You shoot Joey DiPreta with a Weatherby four-sixty Mag, tear the fucking guts right out of the man, and you expect the DiPretas to play by some unspoken set of knightly rules? You’re an ass.”

Steve looked down at the table. “They don’t have any idea it’s me, anyway.”

“They don’t? I heard Frank DiPreta, just a few hours ago, say he had a good idea who was responsible for Joey’s death. And I also know for a fact the Chicago family has a line on you, has had for months.”

“How is that possible, for God’s sake?”

“It’s possible because the rest of the world is not as stupid as you are. Everything you’ve done points not only to a Vietnam vet but a Vietnam vet with a hard-on for revenge besides — military-style sniping, the use of a weapon designed not only to kill but to mutilate the victim, the grenade hoax, the half-ass psychological warfare of that ace-of-spades bit... Christ, was that self-indulgent! And top it all off with an obvious inside knowledge of the DiPreta lifestyle. The kind of knowledge provided by those tapes you have, for example. The ones your father gave you.”

Steve whitened. With his white-blond hair, he was the palest human Nolan had ever seen.

“The possibility of you having copies of those tapes occurred to the people in Chicago long ago. You’ve been in their sniperscope ever since, friend. Not under actual surveillance maybe, but they were aware you were out of the service, aware you were back in Des Moines.”

“Jesus,” Steve said.

“And when Joey DiPreta was killed by a sniper, who do you suppose was the first suspect that came to everybody’s mind?”

Steve was staring at the table again. His color still wasn’t back completely. He looked young to Nolan, very young, his face smooth, almost unused. Finally he said quietly, “I thought they might figure it out, yes, but not so soon.” Then he picked up the can of beer, swigged at it, slammed it back down and said, “But what the hell. I knew the odds sucked when I got into this.”

“What about your sister, Steve? Did she know the odds would suck?”

“She doesn’t know anything about it. You know that. This... this has nothing to do with her, other than it’s her parents, too, whose score I’m settling.”

“Score you’re settling. I see. Do me a favor, Steve, will you? Tell me about the score you’re settling.”

“Why? You know as well as I do.”

“I just got a feeling your version and mine might be a little different. Let’s hear yours.”

Steve shrugged. Sipped at the can of beer. Looked at Nolan. Shrugged again. Said, “I came home on leave a couple of years ago. Dad and I were always close, even though I was living with Mom, and he would confide in me more than anybody in the world, I suppose. I’d known for a long time about his... Mafia connections, I guess you’d call them. I knew that was the real reason for the trouble between Mom and him — that she wanted him to get out, to break all his ties with those people, and when we came to Des Moines, that was what she thought he was doing. But then she found out about the DiPretas, that they owned the motel Dad was managing and were no different from the bosses Dad had had in Chicago, and that was the end for her. She divorced him after that. Dad was crazy about her, but he liked the life, the money. I think you know that Dad gambled — that was a problem even in Chicago. And without the sort of money he could make with the DiPretas and people like them, he couldn’t support his habit, like a damn junkie or something. Then when I came home on that leave, couple years ago, he told me he was through gambling, that he hadn’t gambled in a year and wanted out of his position with the DiPretas. But he was scared, Nolan. He was scared for his life. He knew too much. It sounds cornball — he even kind of laughed as he said it — but it was true. He just knew too much and they’d kill him before they let him out. I thought he was exaggerating at the time and encouraged him to go ahead and quit. Screw the DiPretas, I said. He wanted to know if I thought Mom would take him back if he cut his ties with the DiPretas, and I said sure she would. And she did. They were going to get back together. He wrote me about it. In fact they both wrote me, Mom and Dad both. Two happiest letters I ever got from them.”

Steve hesitated. His eyes were clouded over. He took a moment and finished his beer, got up for another one, came back and resumed his story.

“Dad had to find a way out. That’s where the tapes you mentioned come in. Dad installed listening devices in some of the rooms at the motel, and so on. Then he offered the tapes to the DiPretas in exchange for some money and a chance for a clean start, fresh start. They didn’t believe that was all he wanted. They thought he was going to try and milk them, so they tried to get the tapes from him, without holding up their end of the bargain. Dad sent one set of the tapes to me for safe-keeping. He left another set with Mom. The DiPretas must’ve known about Mom and Dad being on friendly terms again, because somebody broke into her house, when she wasn’t supposed to be home, to search for the tapes. But Mom came home early and... and got killed for it. The next day Dad hanged himself at the motel.”

And Steve covered his face with one hand and wept silently.

Nolan waited for the boy to regain control. Then he said, “It’s a touching story, Steve. But it’s just a story.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“You put most of it together yourself, didn’t you? From the pieces of the story you knew.”

“No! I talked to Dad when I came home on leave that time, and he sent a letter with the tapes, and—”

“I guess maybe it’s just a matter of interpretation and ordering of events. You say your father was afraid for his life. I believe that. But he wouldn’t have cause to be afraid until after he’d begun recording tapes and collecting the various other dirt he was using to blackmail the DiPretas.”

“Blackmailing...”

“Your father didn’t want out, Steve. He was happy where he was. The DiPretas were considering firing him because his gambling habit was out of control.”

“That’s a goddamn he!”

“It isn’t. I listened to your version, now listen to mine. Your father bugged certain rooms in the motel, used the information he gathered to try and blackmail the DiPretas and the Chicago family as well. Part of it was to blackmail his way out of certain gambling debts he owed his bosses. Part of it was to hopefully retain his position, not leave it.”

“No!”

“By giving your mother those tapes to keep for him, he was putting her in mortal danger. He hanged himself because he felt responsible for your mother’s death, Steve.”

And Steve lurched across the table and swung at Nolan.

Nolan swung back.

Steve sat on the floor and leaned against the refrigerator and touched the trickle of blood running out of his mouth where Nolan had hit him.

Nolan had remained seated through all of it but half rose for a moment to say, “Get off the floor and listen to me, goddamnit. There are more things you don’t know, and need to.”

“I’ll listen, Nolan,” Steve said, getting back up, sitting back at the table. “I’ll be glad to listen. I won’t believe a word of your shit, but I’ll listen.”

“Christ, man, don’t you want to hear about the DiPretas? Don’t you want to hear about the object of your crusade? The DiPretas are not Mafia people, as you put it. Oh, they have connections to the Chicago family, they sure do. And they do have a family background that includes a good deal of mob activity, prior to the last fifteen years or so. But more than anything they are businessmen. Crooked businessmen, yes, with connections to what you call the Mafia. But if you want to kill all the businessmen in America who fall into that category, you got a busy season ahead of you.”

“That’s bullshit! Vince and Frank DiPreta are gangsters, they’re—”

“Vince used to be a gangster, of sorts. Vince the Burner, he was called, but even then he treated arson like a business. Lately Vince’s been the conservative DiPreta, wanting to shy away from illegal business interests and associations. Frank? Frank likes to carry guns around. Frank likes to play mobster, but he isn’t one, not really. Not in the sense you’re thinking of. Income tax evasion and stock swindles and graft, sure. Should be plenty of that on those tapes of yours. But cement overshoes and Tommy guns and dope-running? Come on. The DiPretas are restaurateurs, motel and finance company owners, discount-store proprietors, highway and building contractors. Shady ones. But nothing more. Your first victim? Joey DiPreta never did anything more vicious than swing a golf club at a ball. Like all the DiPretas, he liked to play the Mafioso role, to a degree, anyway. It was his heritage. But he was no gangster.”

Steve had the stunned look of a man struck solidly in the stomach. He said, “Then... then who sent the man who killed my mother?”

“Chicago. The Family wasn’t satisfied the DiPretas could handle the situation, and they sent a man in, and that’s who killed your mother. The DiPretas were incensed and have since been considering severing their ties with the Family.”

“Nolan, Jesus, stop, Nolan. Is this true? Is what you’ve been saying true?”

“Every word.”

“Then I’ve been...”

“Killing the wrong people.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“I don’t blame you. If I were you, I wouldn’t want to believe it either. It would make everything I’d done without meaning.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“How do you know I’m not? Haven’t I at least established the possibility you’re tilting at goddamn windmills? And the wrong windmills, at that.”

“I got to have time to think, Nolan. I got to have time to think this through.”

“There isn’t any time to think. Frank DiPreta’s closing in on you, friend, you and your sister both.”

“What happened to the song and dance about how harmless Frank DiPreta is?”

“I didn’t say he’s harmless. I said he’s a crooked businessman who likes to think of himself as some mob tough guy. And another thing: he’s got this funny quirk. He doesn’t like it when members of his family get murdered. He wants revenge. Is that hard for you to understand, Steve?”

“I... I see what you mean.”

“I hope to hell you do.”

“But there is something I don’t see.”

“What?”

“I don’t see where you figure into this, Nolan. I don’t see you as a DiPreta man, and I don’t see you being lined up with those Chicago people, either. I mean, I heard the story from Dad about how you bucked the Family, walked out on them when they wanted you to do their killing for them.”

Nolan spread his palms. “Well, there’s been a shake-up in Chicago, Steve. Most of the people I had my problems with are dead. The same is true of the ones who sent the guy into Des Moines who killed your mother. I won’t say it’s a whole new ball game, but I will say the line-up’s changed considerably.”

“You work for the Family, then?”

“In the same sense your father did... the very same, in fact: I run a motel for them, too. I was asked to come here and talk to you, to act as an intermediary, because I was ‘uniquely qualified’ for the role, they said. I got unique qualifications because for one thing I got a reputation for refusing to be involved in Family bloodletting. But mainly I was asked because I was a friend of your father’s. And yours, too.”

Steve looked at Nolan for a moment. A long moment. Then he held out his can of beer in the toasting gesture and said, “Comiskey Park.”

“Comiskey Park,” Nolan said, and touched his beer can to Steve’s and they drank.

“What happens now?” Steve said.

“A lot of things could happen. More people could die, for instance. Or... the killing could stop.”

“Suppose I think that’s a good idea. Suppose I’m ready for a cease fire, Dr. Kissinger. What then?”

And Nolan told Steve about the Family’s offer, the one Felix had outlined to Nolan the night before in the back of the Lincoln Continental outside the antique shop.

The Family’s offer was this: Steve was to leave town immediately and drop out of sight as completely as possible, not telling even his sister he was going and not contacting her after he was relocated, either. For traveling and living expenses the Family would give Steve $100,000, to be deposited in the bank of his choice. All he had to do was contact Nolan after relocation, and Nolan would see to it the money was routed to Steve. The Family would provide Steve a new identity, with Social Security number, personal background history, the works. Several years of cooling off would be necessary. While the official police investigation would most likely be relatively brief, Frank DiPreta’s interest in the matter would continue indefinitely. The Family would keep an eye on Frank and make sure Steve’s sister and her little girl were not bothered. Eventually Steve should be able to reunite, at least occasionally, clandestinely, with Diane and Joni. But for a while — a good while — precaution would be the rule. In return, the Family wanted one thing.

“The tapes,” Steve said.

“The tapes,” Nolan said.

Steve sat and stared, his face a blank.

“Well?” Nolan said.

Steve stopped staring. Took a sip of his beer. “Okay, Nolan. You want the tapes? You can have ’em. You can have ’em right now.” He got up, turned to the refrigerator and opened it. He pulled out a drawer in the bottom of the refrigerator crammed with packages wrapped in white meat-market-type paper. Steve yanked the whole damn drawer out and tossed it on the table.

“That’s all of them,” he said. “Tapes, pictures, transcriptions, etcetera. All of it.”

“Are these the only copies?”

“No. I made another set. They’re in a locker at the bus station. I left the key with a lawyer with instructions that should anything happen to me, he was to give the key to this man.” And he dug in his back pocket for his billfold, got out a piece of paper, handed it to Nolan.

“Carl H. Reed,” Nolan said. “Isn’t he the guy who was on the golf course with Joey DiPreta?”

“Yes. He’s planning an investigation of the DiPretas. They tried to bribe him and it didn’t take.”

Nolan nodded. “He’s the new highway commissioner. Just took office. One of the honest ones?”

“Apparently. He sure wants those tapes.”

“Give them to him if you want, Steve. But you’re on your own if you do.”

“I know. I kind of wish I could help the guy out, though. But I guess that’s not possible.”

“Guess not. Can you get hold of that lawyer and get the key from him? Right away?”

“I don’t know, Nolan. It must be after six-thirty.”

“It’s quarter to seven, but call him anyway. Maybe he stays late and screws his secretary.”

Steve went to the phone, tried the lawyer’s office, had no luck. He tried him at home, got him there, and the lawyer said he was going out for the evening but could meet Steve at the office at eight if it absolutely could not wait and if it absolutely would not take more than a minute or two.

“Fine,” Nolan said. “You can leave tonight, then.”

“I... guess so,” Steve said. He seemed sort of punchy. “Nolan, I’m confused. It’s all coming down on me so fast.”

“Frank DiPreta is what’s coming down on you fast. You got no time to be confused. You maybe got time to pack.”

“Hey, what about the guns?”

“Better drive out in the country and ditch them. Probably should take the Weatherby and Thompson apart and dump them in pieces, different places. It’s dark out, find some back roads, shouldn’t be a problem. You got time to do it before you meet that lawyer if you shake it. What about those grenades? Any of them live?”

“Some of them.”

“Well, disarm the fucking things before you go littering the countryside with ’em.”

Steve nodded and went after some newspapers in the laundry room to spread on the floor and catch the powder he’d be emptying out of the grenades.

Nolan sat on the couch. He felt good. He felt proud of himself. He’d just done the impossible — taken a decent kid turned close-to-psychopathic murderer and turned him back into a decent kid again. Anyone else the Family might have sent would have botched it for sure, would have come down hard on the $100,000 payoff offer, when it was the psychological kid-glove treatment leading up to the offer that had made the sale. It was something only Nolan could have done, a bomb only Nolan could have defused. He was a goddamn combination diplomat, social worker, and magician, and was proud of himself.

The phone rang.

Steve came in with newspapers and started spreading them down, saying, “There’s that damn scatterbrain Di bothering me after all I went through telling her not to. Get it for me, will you, Nolan?”

Nolan picked up the receiver.

And a voice that wasn’t Diane’s but a voice Nolan did recognize said, “If you want to see your sister and her little girl again, soldier boy, you’re going to have to come see me first.” The voice, which belonged to Frank DiPreta, repeated an East Side address twice, and the line clicked dead.

Nolan put the receiver back.

“What was that all about?” Steve said, getting the grenades out of the wardrobe. “That was Diane, wasn’t it?”

“No,” Nolan said. “Nothing. Just a crank.”

“What, an obscene phone call, you mean?”

“Yeah. That’s it exactly.”

15

Basking in a soft-focus halo of light, golden dome glowing, the Capitol building sat aloof, looking out over the East Side like a fat, wealthy, disinterested spectator out slumming for the evening. Down the street a few blocks was a rundown three-story building whose condemned sign was no surprise. The only surprising thing, really, was that none of the other buildings in this sleazy neighborhood had been similarly judged. Some of the East Side’s sleaziness was of a gaudy and garish sort: singles bars and porno movie houses and strip-joint nightclubs, entire blocks covered in cheap glitter like a quarter Christmas card; but this section was sleaziness at its dreary, poorly lit worst, with only the neons of the scattering of cheap bars to remind you this was a street and not a back alley. The buildings here ran mostly to third-rate secondhand stores; this building was no exception, though its storefront was empty now, showcase windows and all others broken out and boarded up. It stood next to a cinder parking lot, where another such building had been, apparently, ’til being torn down or burned down or otherwise eliminated, and now this building, the support of its neighbor gone, was going swayback, had cracked down its side several places and was in danger of falling on its ass like the winos tottering along the sidewalk out front.

Nolan leaned against the leaning building, waiting in the cinder lot for Jon to get there. Less than twenty minutes had passed since he’d accidentally intercepted Frank DiPreta’s phone call at McCracken’s. If he hadn’t been so pissed off by the turn of events he might have blessed his luck being the one to receive that call. His painstakingly careful handling of the boy this afternoon wouldn’t have counted for much had Steve been the one to answer the phone and get Frank’s unpleasant message. Nolan’s description of the DiPretas as businessmen, not gangsters, would have looked like a big fat fucking shuck to the boy, in the face of Frank grabbing Diane and her little girl and holding them under threat of death, and Steve would have reescalated his war immediately. The cease-fire would have ended. Nolan would have failed.

But Steve was safely away from the scene, thankfully, out in the country somewhere, dumping the disassembled guns and disarmed grenades. (The boy had asked Nolan if he could hang onto the two handguns, since neither had been used in his “war,” and Nolan had said okay.) Nolan had realized that if he tried to leave directly after that phone call, he’d raise Steve’s suspicions; so for fifteen agonizingly slow minutes Nolan sat and watched Steve empty the grenades, take apart the Weatherby and Thompson, and when Steve finally left to get rid of the weapons, Nolan (tapes and documents in tow) followed the boy out the door, saying he’d meet him back at the basement apartment at nine-thirty.

Nolan had taken time to stop at a pay phone and make two calls: first, to Jon, at the motel; and second, to Felix, long distance, collect, to inform him of the successful bargaining for the tapes but telling him nothing more. Then he’d driven to the address Frank had given him, and now here he was, standing by the Cadillac in a cinder lot on the East Side of Des Moines, waiting for Jon.

A white Mustang pulled in. The blonde girl, Francine, was behind the wheel. Jon hopped out of the car.

“What’s this all about?” he wanted to know.

“I don’t have time for explanations,” Nolan said. “Just listen and do exactly as I say.”

Two minutes later Nolan was behind the building, in the alley; earlier he’d tried all the doors and this one in back was the only nonboarded-up, unlocked entrance. A garage door was adjacent, and Nolan reflected that this dimly lit block and deserted building, whose garage had made simple the moving of hostages inconspicuously inside, could not have been more perfect for Frank’s purposes. There was an element of warped but careful planning here that bothered Nolan. Frank was out for blood, yes, out to milk the situation for all the sadistic satisfaction it was worth; otherwise he would have gone straight to McCracken’s apartment and killed the boy outright, since having managed to get the phone number out of Diane the address itself would be no trick. But DiPreta was not berserk, was rather in complete control, having devised a methodical scenario for the destruction of the murderer of his brothers. Like Steve McCracken, Frank DiPreta was a man who would go to elaborate lengths to settle a score.

He went in. Pitch-black. He felt the wall for a light switch, found one, flicked it. Nothing. He fumbled until he found the railing and then began his way up the stairs, his night vision coming to him gradually and making things a little easier. The railing was shaky, and Nolan tried not to depend on it, as it might be rigged to give way at some point. Nolan was more than aware that he was walking into a trap, and just because he wasn’t the man the trap was set for didn’t matter much. It was like walking through a minefield: a mine doesn’t ask what side you’re on, it just goes off when you step on it.

At the top of the second-floor landing was a door. He tried it. Locked. He knocked, got no answer. He went on, climbing slowly to the third, final landing, where an identical door waited for him. Identical except for one thing: it was not locked. It was, in fact, ajar.

No noise came from within, but Nolan could feel them in there; body heat, tension in the air, something. He didn’t know how, but Nolan knew. Frank was in there. So was Diane, and her daughter.

He pushed the door open.

It was a large room, the full floor of the building, a storage room or attic of sorts, empty now, except for three people down at the far end, by the boarded-up windows, where reddish glow pulsed in from the neons of the bars on the street below. Dust floated like smoke. Frank DiPreta, white shirt cut by the dark band of a shoulder holster, his coat wadded up and tossed on the floor, loomed over the other two people in the room, who had been wadded up and tossed there in much the same way, Nolan supposed. Diane was still in the white terry robe she’d been wearing when Nolan last saw her a few hours before, but the robe wasn’t really white any more, having been dirtied from her lying here on the filthy floor, hands tied behind her, legs tied at the ankles, white slash of tape across her lips. At first glance Nolan thought she was dead, but she was only unconscious, he guessed, doped or knocked out but not dead. The little girl, a small pathetic afterthought to this unfortunate tableau, huddled around her mother’s waist, not tied up, not even gagged, but frightened into silent submission, clinging to her mother’s robe in wide-eyed, uncomprehending fear, whimpering, face dirty, perhaps bruised. Nolan had never seen the child before and felt an uncustomary emotional surge. She was a delicate little reflection of her mother, the same white-blonde hair the whole family seemed to have, a pretty China doll of a child who deserved much better than the traumatic experience she was presently caught in the middle of. Nolan forced the emotional response out of himself, remembered, or tried to, anyway, that Frank DiPreta was a man driven to this point, that Frank was not an entirely rational person right now.

“Frank,” Nolan said. “Let them go. They aren’t part of this, a couple of innocent girls. Let them go.”

“What are you doing here?” Frank said, for the moment more puzzled than angry at seeing Nolan. Not that the silenced .45 in his hand wasn’t leveled at Nolan with all due intensity. A .45 is a big gun anyway, but this one, with its oversize silencer, looked so big it seemed unreal, like a ray gun in one of Jon’s comic books.

“You were right this morning, Frank,” Nolan said. “The Family did send me. To check the lay of the land. To... to negotiate a peace.”

“I’m going to blow you away, Nolan. He’s here with you, isn’t he? Where? Outside the door? Downstairs waiting for your signal? You’re in this with him. You were there with the soldier boy when Vince got it, weren’t you? You set Vince up, you son of a bitch. You won’t do the same to me. I’m going to blow the goddamn guts out of you, Nolan, and then I’m going to do the same to the soldier boy, just like he did Joey, only it’s going to take me longer to get around to it. First he’s going to have to suffer awhile, like I been suffering.”

“It’s too late, Frank. McCracken’s gone. He left the city half an hour ago. He doesn’t even know you’ve got his sister and her daughter.”

“Don’t feed me that bullshit. It hasn’t been half an hour ago I talked to him.”

“I answered the phone. I was there at his place. I’d just sent him away, put him in his car and sent him away.”

“This is bullshit. I don’t believe any of it.”

“It’s true.”

“No!”

“Let them go, Frank. It’s over.”

Frank leaned down and grabbed the little girl, Joni, by her thin white arm, heaved her up off the floor. She hung rag-doll limp, not making a sound, having found out earlier, evidently, that this man would hurt her if she did. There was as much confusion as terror in the child’s face; she simply did not understand what was going on. She looked at the huge gun-thing the strange man was shoving at her and did not understand.

“Frank...”

“I’m going to kill this kid, Nolan. He’s downstairs, isn’t he? Go get him, or so help me I kill this kid right now.”

“A little girl, Frank. Five, six years old? You’d kill her?”

“She’s one of his people, isn’t she? He’s murdered my whole goddamn family out from under me. There’s none of us left. I’m the only goddamn DiPreta left, and I’m going to do the fuckin’ same to his people. I don’t give a goddamn who they are or how old they are or what they got between their legs. He’s got to suffer like I suffer.”

But Frank wasn’t the only DiPreta left, and Nolan knew it. It was time to play the trump card.

“Jon!” Nolan called. “Come on up!”

“What’s going on?” Frank demanded. “So help me, Nolan...”

And suddenly, Francine DiPreta was standing in the doorway. Her look of confusion mirrored that of the small child across the length of the room, who was presently dangling from Frank DiPreta’s grasp like a damaged puppet. When Francine recognized this man as her father, the confusion did not lift but if anything increased. She said, “Daddy?”

Frank DiPreta tilted his head sideways, trying to figure out himself what was happening. His face turned rubbery. He lowered the child to the floor, gently; looked at the gun in his hand and held it behind him, trying to hide it, perhaps as much from himself as from his daughter, who approached him now.

“Daddy... what’s going on here?”

“Baby,” he said.

“Daddy, is that a gun?”

“Honey,” he said.

“What are you doing with that gun? What’s this little girl doing here? And is this... her mother? Tied up? What are you doing to these people, Daddy?”

He said nothing. He lowered his head. The gun clunked to the floor behind him.

“Is it true, then?” she said. “What they say about you? About us? The DiPretas? Are we... the Mafia, Daddy? Is that who you are? Is that who I am?”

Nolan and Jon watched all of this from the other end of the room. DiPreta’s daughter and Diane and the child, with their blonde hair and pretty features, could have been sisters.

“Daddy,” she said, “you’re going to let these people go now, aren’t you?”

He put his hands on his knees. His mouth was open. He lowered himself to the floor and sat there.

“I’m going to let these people go, Daddy, and then we’re going home.”

Francine DiPreta untied Diane, who had been coming around for several minutes now, and carefully removed the strip of tape from the woman’s mouth. She asked Diane, “Are you all right?”

Diane, groggy, could only nod and then, realizing she was free, clutched her daughter to her, got to her feet shakily and somehow joined Nolan and Jon at the other end of the room.

Nolan said to Jon, “Help me get them down to the car.”

Jon, who still had no idea what the hell was going on but knew better than to ask, did as he was told.

At the other end of the room, Francine DiPreta was on her knees, holding her father in her arms, comforting him, rocking him.

16

Nolan sat on the couch and waited while Diane put her daughter to bed. He could hear the little girl asking questions, which her mother dodged with soothing nonanswers. That went on for ten minutes, and then Diane came out into the living room, still wearing the dirty once-white robe; she looked haggard as hell, her hair awry, her face a pale mask, but somehow she remained attractive through it all. She sat next to Nolan.

“Is she asleep?” he asked.

“Yes, thank God. Don’t ask me how. I guess her exhaustion overcame everything else. But she did have a lot of questions.”

“So I gathered.”

“I didn’t have many answers, though.”

“I gathered that too.”

“How about you? You got any answers, Nolan? Can you tell me what this was all about tonight? Is Stevie really a... murderer?”

“Steve’s a soldier, Diane. He’s been trained as a soldier. Killing is part of that. Sometimes soldiers have trouble readjusting to civilian life, that’s all. Steve will be all right.”

“You mean he... he did kill the two DiPreta brothers? I... I don’t believe it. And I... I don’t believe you’re sitting there and talking about his... his killing people as if it’s some kind of stage he’s going through, a little readjustment thing he has to work out now that he’s back home again.”

“Diane, you’re tired. You’re upset. Get some sleep.”

“I won’t be getting any sleep at all tonight, Nolan, unless you tell me just what the hell is going on, goddamnit!” She caught herself shouting and lowered her voice immediately, glancing back over her shoulder toward her daughter’s room. “You’ve got to tell me, Nolan, tell me all of it, or I’ll go out of my mind wondering, worrying.”

“All right,” Nolan said, and he told her — all of it, or as much of it as was necessary, anyway. She stopped him now and again with questions, and he answered them as truthfully as possible. But he kept this version consistent with what he’d told Frank DiPreta. He told Diane her brother had already left, that Steve would be well on his way out of Des Moines by now.

“Will he... he call me or anything? Will I hear from him at all?”

“Not for a while, probably. But maybe sooner than we thought at first. After what happened tonight, Frank DiPreta may not be the same man. I can’t say in what way Frank’ll be different... maybe he’ll be a reformed, nonviolent type from here on out, maybe he’ll end up in a padded cell, I don’t know. But he is going to be different, and that’ll affect how long Steve has to stay in hiding.”

“Nolan.”

“Yeah?”

“I... I don’t know how to react to all this. It’s just too... too much to digest at once, too overwhelming.”

“Give yourself some time.”

“You know, Nolan, my... my emotions have been all dammed up inside me for a real long time... you know, ever since the folks died. For better or worse, you’ve changed that, coming to Des Moines today, coming out of my past, a memory walking in the goddamn door. I guess I have something in common with that awful Frank DiPreta... It’s going to take a while to see what person I turn out to be, who I am now. I’ll be different, too, after today, and you’re the cause of it, or part of the cause, at least. And you know what the hell of it is?”

“No. What.”

“I don’t know whether to thank you for it or kick you in the ass.”

Nolan grinned. “I’ll bend over if you want.”

“No, that’s okay.”

“Come here a minute.”

“You’re... you’re going to kiss me good-bye now, aren’t you, Nolan?”

“I think so.”

“But that’s all.”

“Yeah. I think you’ve had enough emotional nonsense for one day. We can do more next time, if you want.”

“I think that’s a good idea. Nolan?”

“Yeah?”

“You can go ahead and kiss me now.”

Nolan got back in the car and Jon said, “That took long enough. We must be on an expense account or you wouldn’t let me sit out here with the car running all this time.”

“Well, it was kind of a sensitive thing, you know. People who get kidnapped require sensitive treatment.”

“You want me to drive?”

“Yeah, go ahead.”

Jon backed out of the parking stall, drove out of the apartment house lot and got back onto East 14th. He said, “How about when your old archenemy Charlie kidnapped me, not so long ago? I don’t recall you treating me sensitive.”

“You’re not six years old, either.”

“That mother’s not six years old. That mother’s older than I am. You give her sensitive treatment, too?”

“Damn right I did. Wouldn’t you?”

Jon guessed he would. “Where do I turn?”

“Not for a while yet. I’ll tell you when.”

They drove.

Pretty soon Nolan pointed and said, “Second side street down. Walnut.”

A Cadillac pulled out in front of them.

“Hey, Nolan, did you see who that was?”

“See who what was?”

“That guy in the Caddy. I’d swear it was that guy what’s-his-name.”

“You don’t say.”

“No, really, that guy Cotter, Nolan, don’t you remember?”

“Felix’s bodyguard, you mean?”

“Yeah, the guy I gave the bloody nose to.”

“Couldn’t be. Here, turn here. You’re going to miss it.”

Jon cornered fast and the big car lumbered onto Walnut. Nolan checked his watch: quarter to nine.

He’d said he’d be back by nine-thirty and had made it easy, despite the DiPreta diversion.

“Hey, what’s that?” Jon said, slowing. “Is that guy sick?”

A green Sunbird was parked in front of Steve’s apartment. The trunk lid was open, and a figure was slumped inside, sprawled, sort of.

“Stop the car,” Nolan said, and hopped out.

Nolan walked toward the Sunbird. The quiet residential street was unlit, with no one in sight but the figure bent over in half inside the trunk of the car.

He drew his .38.

And recognized the figure.

“Steve?” he said.

He ran the rest of the way.

When he touched Steve’s shoulder, he knew.

He gently lifted the body, looked at the dime-size hole in Steve’s temple, where the bullet had gone in. The boy’s eyes were open. There was an expression frozen onto the boy’s face, which seemed to Nolan an expression of disappointment.

Steve’s last thought, apparently, had been that Nolan betrayed him.

He lowered Steve back into the trunk, which was filled with luggage and other personal belongings. Steve had been loading up the trunk, evidently when it happened. Since there was no milling crowd, it was apparent a silenced gun had been used. Nolan noticed an envelope in Steve’s breast pocket, when he lowered the boy; he looked inside the envelope, pocketed it.

He put the .38 away. He knew who’d killed Steve, and why, and knew also that the killer was no longer around.

He walked back to the Cadillac.

Before he got in, he struck the side of the car with his fist, leaving a dent.