Mourn The Living

1

The manager of the Motor-Inn looked across his desk at Nolan and said, “I hope your stay in our city is a pleasant one, Mr. Webb.”

Nolan nodded and waited for his room key.

The manager smiled, and the smile was like a twitch in the middle of his florid face. “Will you be staying in Dallas long, Mr. Webb?”

Nolan didn’t like questions any better than he liked smiles that looked like twitches. He dug into his pocket and came up with a twenty, traded it for his room key and shut the manager off like a TV. Then he lifted his suitcase, hefted the two clothes-bags over his arm and walked out of the motel office.

Once outside in the dry late afternoon air, he glanced down at the number on the key: 16. Good. That would be on the far side of the building, away from the highway and damn truck noise.

In his room he hung the clothes-bags in the closet and found a rack for his suitcase. He laid open the suitcase and took out a bottle of Jim Beam, unopened, a long-barreled .38 Smith & Wesson, unloaded, and a box of shells, half-empty. He ripped the virginal white seal from the mouth of the Jim Beam and carried it by the throat into the can, leaving the .38 and box of shells on the nightstand by the bed as he went by.

He tore the white wrapper off one of the bathroom drinking glasses and poured it half-full with whiskey, then turned on the faucet and added an afterthought of water.

He walked over to the bed, sat down and emptied the glass while filling the .38 with shells. He laid the loaded revolver back on the nightstand and rubbed the heels of his palms over his eyes. He was beat, washed-out; but he didn’t feel particularly on edge, which was a good sign.

Maybe he was getting used to the idea of having a quarter-million-dollar price tag on his head. Or as used to it as anybody could get. After all, it had been a matter of years now, since the Family put out that open contract on him, with its promise of a 250 G payoff to anybody who could make the hit.

A quarter of a million was some kind of record, he supposed. Valachi had only rated a 100 thou. But then all Valachi had done was talk: the Family complaint against Nolan represented a complex blend of personal rage and monetary loss. And Nolan wasn’t sitting in prison, his damage done — he was at large, his head packed with inside knowledge — not to mention he was looting key operations as only an insider could loot them.

Nolan’s smile was almost non-existent as he reached for the phone on the nightstand. Before coming to Dallas for a short breather, Nolan had hit the Family’s Cleveland branch for thirty-five thousand. Now he had to get the money safely banked in the Dallas account of “Earl Webb.” He dialed the number of his local contact, a lawyer named M. J. Lange who for ten percent would gladly handle the cash for his client.

“Let me go back over it, Mr. Webb,” Lange’s voice said. “Tomorrow in the mail I’ll get a key. The key will open locker 33 at the Greyhound Bus terminal, and in the locker will be a blue athletic bag. In the bag’s the capital.”

“That’s about it,” Nolan said. “Set?”

“Yes, Mr. Webb. One thing more...”

Nolan juggled the receiver on his shoulder as he lit up a cigarette. “What’s that?”

“Sid Tisor’s been after me to get in touch with you. He’s phoned me long distance every night for a week and a half, and he sounds desperate. Wants you to call him. Says it’s life or death.”

“M. J., you know I don’t want to screw around with anybody directly hooked to the Family.”

“Well, I thought it best I pass it on to you. From what I hear, Tisor’s made a clean break. Retired four or five months ago.

“Don’t give me that crap. Nobody breaks clean from the Family. Sid is Charlie’s damn brother-in-law. How do you retire from that?”

“As I said, I’m just passing it on to you. He told me he did you a favor once.”

Nolan ground out the freshly lit cigarette in disgust. “Did he leave a number? Goddamn him.”

The lawyer fed Nolan the number.

“Didn’t he leave an area code?”

“Oh yes,” Lange said, “here it is. 309.”

“Okay, M. J. Take care of that little blue bag, now.”

“Of course, Mr. Webb.”

Nolan slammed down the receiver.

Great, he thought. 309 was an Illinois area code. Close to the heat. That was all he needed.

Nolan glanced down at the bed and considered diving in. He hadn’t slept well on the trip — he could never sleep well on a bus — and he needed the rest.

Then he dialed 1, area code 309, and Tisor’s number.

Soon he heard, “Hello, Sid Tisor speaking.”

“Hi, Sid.”

“Nolan? Is that Nolan?”

“Yeah.”

“How, uh, how about a favor for an old friend?”

“Maybe.”

“I hear you been chipping away at the Family.”

“Any complaints?”

“None. Didn’t you hear I retired? As a matter of fact, the favor I want to ask of you could net you maybe forty thousand of the Family’s money.”

“What the hell are you thinking, Sid? When the Family lets a man retire, they trust him to keep his nose out of their business.”

“Don’t worry about them. They got faith in me.”

“They got faith in nothing and nobody. How do you know they don’t have your phone tapped?”

“They don’t... why would they?”

“Life or death. Whose, Sid, mine?”

“Nolan, I got good reason to risk this.”

“You had better.”

“You remember Irene?”

Nolan said he did. Irene was Sid’s daughter. Sid’s wife Rosie had died in childbirth with Irene, and Sid had raised the child by himself. When Nolan had last seen Irene she’d been fourteen. Since then Tisor had sent her off to college somewhere. She’d be around twenty now.

“She’s dead, Nolan.”

“Oh.”

“I think maybe she was murdered.”

“That the reason you got ahold of me?”

“That’s the reason.”

“Where you living now?”

“Peoria — the boonies.”

“The Family ever send anybody around to check on you?”

“Not once.”

“It’s a big risk for me, setting foot in Illinois.”

“I know it is, Nolan.”

“I haven’t been in Illinois since the shit hit the fan.”

“I know.”

Neither one of them said anything for a while. Then Tisor said, “Will you come?”

“Yeah.”

Nolan slipped the phone onto the hook and said, “Goddamn you, Sid.”

It might be an okay score, but Sid always tended to exaggerate, and that forty G’s he had promised might turn out closer to four C’s. And Illinois wasn’t the safest place in the world for you when every greaseball out of Chicago knew your face and knew it was worth a quarter million.

Nolan said, “Shit,” and lit up another cigarette.

He didn’t really give a fuck about Sid or his dead kid, but Nolan owed Sid, from the old days.

And Nolan paid his debts.

2

It took four buses to get to Peoria.

Nolan took rear seats on each of them and always tried to avoid attracting attention, and he was successful, but only with the men: from women he drew stares like flies around something dead.

There was nothing particularly striking about his clothing, just a blue banlon shirt and lightweight tan pants suited to the Texas weather, and a blue plaid woolen parka he was carrying to meet the already cooling Illinois climate. But when he stood, he stood six feet that seemed taller, a lean, hard man with muscular bronzed arms that a young woman who sat by him on the third bus had brushed against a few more times than the law of probability could allow. His thick desert-dry brown hair had begun to gray, and his angular, mustached face was deeply lined, making him look every one of his forty years. Behind black-framed, black-lensed sunglasses were gray eyes that kept a cold, close watch on everything.

On the final bus a lady of about sixty sat next to him and tried to small-talk him, but Nolan didn’t small-talk easily. She seemed relieved when they at last reached Hannibal, which was her stop. She looked exhausted from an hour of making conversation with herself.

As she rose from her seat, she gave him the matronly smile of a professional grandmother and said, “Hannibal’s a fascinating place, you know. Mark Twain was born here.”

Nolan made an attempt at being pleasant, since she was getting off. “He wrote books, didn’t he?”

She shook her head and waddled off the bus, boarding almost immediately a touring bus bound for Tom Sawyer Cave.

Nolan fell asleep for a while and woke up as the bus was passing a sign which should have read “Hello! Welcome to Illinois!” but somebody had removed the O in hello.

He closed his eyes and leaned back and rolled his past around in his mind for a few minutes.

Nolan had begun as a bouncer in a night club on Rush Street in Chicago. In a few years he climbed to manager. He was, of course, working for the Family; and the Family was grooming Nolan for bigger and better things.

At the head of the Family were “the Boys”: Charlie Franco, Sam Franco and Lou Goldstein. Charlie and Sam were president and vice, while Lou held down the treasurer post. Their “outfit” was a multi-million dollar enterprise dealing in gambling, prostitution, unionizing and narcotics, among other consumer services, tied in with but largely independent of the New York mob families.

Nolan reached behind him and got his cigarettes out of the pocket of his parka. He lit one up and glanced out the bus window. He saw some crows picking at a scarecrow in a field and he thought of Sam Franco.

Sam Franco had been largely responsible for Nolan’s promising future in the organization. Nolan hated the man on sight, which was natural since even Sam’s brother Charlie referred to Sam as “the skinny little bastard” more often than not. But Sam was one of the Boys, so Nolan didn’t advertise his feelings. And Sam, who tended to like young men more than young women, kept his admiration for Nolan platonic, because Nolan wasn’t the type of man you made passes at, even if you were one of the Boys.

So for the next year and a half things ran smoothly. Nolan moved up in the organization, thanks to Sam, and Nolan kept on hating Sam’s guts in silence, and everybody got along fine until Nolan met the girl.

The Illinois cornfields, already patched with snow, flashed in the bus window by Nolan’s seat. He stared out the window and tried not to think about her. He didn’t like thinking about her.

She was a nice girl, a very nice girl in spite of the fact that Nolan convinced her to spend the night with him during the first week of their acquaintance. She spent the night with him for two months. She had reddish blond hair, the high-cheekboned beauty of a model, an excellent body and was extremely quiet. All in all, she was everything Nolan wanted in a woman.

But she was something else, too, something Nolan didn’t want: she was a cop.

Sam Franco called Nolan in for a special meeting the day after it became known that the girl was jane law. Sam informed Nolan that the girl would have to be removed. Nolan informed Sam that he had already told her to pack her things. What he did not tell Sam was that he too was packing his things, and would take off with her as soon as this blew over.

Sam said, “You’re going to have to ice her.”

“I can’t do that, Mr. Franco.”

“I’ll tell you what you can and can’t do! Now, this is your fucking mess, clean it up!”

“No.”

“Ice the bitch, Nolan. That’s my final word.”

But Nolan’s final word had been no, and he meant no. He didn’t kill the girl.

Someone else did.

Nolan found her the next day, in his apartment, floating face up in his tub. The tub was overflowing with water turned pink from blood.

She’d been beaten first, to near-death, then drowned. Little of her beauty in life had been retained in death.

The emotional outlet Nolan knew best was violence, and he spent the next twenty minutes demolishing the apartment. He reduced all the furniture to rubble and smashed his fists through its plasterboard walls. When he had calmed down enough to think, he went down to the lobby of the apartment building to use the pay phone, since he had torn his own phone from the wall.

“This is Nolan, Mr. Franco.”

“Yes, Nolan.” Franco’s voice exuded fatherly patience.

“Mr. Franco,” he said, his voice even, his hand white around the receiver, “you were right about the girl. I want to thank you for... letting me avoid the dirty work.”

“That’s quite all right, Nolan,” said Sam. “Come on over and we’ll talk business.”

Nolan went to Sam’s penthouse office on Lake Shore Drive where he found Sam at his desk, enjoying the view of Lake Michigan out the picture window.

“Nice view,” Nolan said.

Sam turned in his swivel chair, said, “Oh hello, Nolan. Yes, it is a nice view, particularly in May, when...” Sam had begun to get up.

“Don’t get up, Mr. Franco,” Nolan said, and Mr. Franco sat back down, two bullets from Nolan’s .38 in his chest.

The first man through the door caught a bullet in the stomach, the next one through got his in the head. The odds were good that Nolan had gotten the girl’s killer because the two men he had shot were Sam’s personal bodyguards and had taken care of most of Sam’s unpleasant chores.

Nolan waited for everyone to die, watching the doorway to see if anyone else wanted to join the party. When no one did, Nolan turned to the wall-safe opposite Sam’s desk. His mouth etched a faint line of a smile as he twisted the dial to the proper combination: a few weeks before he’d been in the office for a conference and had watched carefully as Sam opened the safe. As Nolan had been storing away the combination for possible future use, Sam had boasted its being too complicated for anyone but a Franco to master.

Nolan emptied the safe’s contents into a briefcase and walked out into the outer office, where Sam’s secretary was crouching in the corner, waiting for death. Hauling her up by the arm, Nolan used her as a shield to get safely out of the building and into a cab, the .38 in her back making her a willing if not eager accomplice.

The police noted that the incident marked Chicago’s fourth, fifth and sixth gangland slayings of the month, and promptly added them onto the city’s impressive list. The Boys kept Nolan’s name out of it (the secretary Nolan had used as an escort ended up describing him as short, fat, balding and Puerto Rican) because of the pains Nolan could cause them if he ever chose to reveal his knowledge of their organization’s inner workings to the authorities. The Boys’ benevolence, however, ended there.

Charlie and Lou, shocked to see bloodshed come so close to their personal lives, placed the quarter million on Nolan’s head before Sam’s body had even cooled.

Nolan had taken his twenty-thousand dollar bankroll, compliments of Sam’s wall-safe, and headed for a friend’s place, where he holed up two weeks, waiting for the heat to lift off Chicago. The friend who hid him out was named Sid Tisor.

Nolan looked out the bus window and watched the sun go down. He closed his eyes and waited for Peoria.

3

Tisor was waiting for Nolan at the bus station, asleep behind the wheel of his Pontiac, a blue year-old Tempest. Nolan peeped in at him. Tisor was a small man, completely bald, with unwrinkled pink skin and a kind face. His appearance hardly suited his role of ex-gangster. Nolan opened the car door, tossed his suitcases in the back, hung up his clothes-bags and slid in next to Tisor. He placed his .38 to Tisor’s temple and nudged him awake.

“Nolan... what the hell...” Though the .38 barrel was cold against Tisor’s skin, he began to sweat.

“Sid, we been friends a long time. Maybe too long. I’m worth a quarter million dead and you’re still on good terms with the Boys. If you’re part of a set-up to get rid of me, tell me now and you got your life and no hard feelings. If I find out later you’re fingering me, I think you know what you’ll get.”

Tisor swallowed hard. He’d never heard Nolan give a speech like that before — he’d never heard more than a clipped sentence or two from Nolan at a time. Never in the ten years he’d known the man.

Tisor said, “I’m with you, Nolan. I don’t have any love for Lou or Charlie or any of the bastards.”

Nolan’s mouth formed a tight thin line, which was as close to smiling as he got. “Okay, Sid,” he said, and put the gun away.

Tisor turned the key in the ignition — it took a couple tries as the weather had turned bitter cold a few days before — and got the Tempest moving. He wasn’t mad at Nolan for the stunt with the .38; he’d almost expected it.

Nolan said, “I haven’t had much sleep, Sid. Take me to a motel, nothing fancy, but I want the sheets clean.”

Tisor said, “You’re welcome at my place. I got two extra beds.”

“No. I’ll stay at a motel.”

Tisor didn’t argue with Nolan. He drove him to the Suncrest Motel. He let Nolan out at the office and waited for three minutes while Nolan got himself set with a room. Nolan came back with key 8, which put him in a little brown cabin close to the end. There were ten cabins, stretched out in a neat row. Nolan walked to his and waved at Tisor to follow him.

Nolan started unpacking his clothes as soon as he got inside the cabin. Tisor said, “You want me to leave now?”

“Wait a minute. We’ll grab some food at the diner across the road. But no talk about your problem till I’ve had a night’s sleep.”

Tisor again didn’t argue with Nolan. He was used to putting up with the ways of the man. He knew Nolan’s mind was his own and it was no use trying to change him. He would just go along with him and everything would work out all right.

The diner was boxcar style, and the two men took a postage-stamp table by a window. The place was cheap but clean, which was all it took to please Nolan. Tisor ordered coffee, Nolan breakfast.

“You were smart to get scrambled eggs,” Tisor said. “Breakfast’s always the best thing a diner serves.”

“Right.”

Damn you, Nolan, Tisor thought. Why is conversation such a task for you, you goddamn hunk of stone?

“You care if I ask you what you been doing the last six years or so?”

Nolan lit a cigarette. “Go ahead.”

Tisor leaned over the table and whispered. “What’s this I been hearing about you robbing the Boys blind? I hear they can’t wipe their ass without Nolan’s stole the toilet paper.”

Nolan decided he might as well tell Tisor everything, so he’d have it out of the way — Tisor would hound him till he got it all, anyway.

“It started,” Nolan said, “with them chasing me. They sent guns wherever I went. Mexico, Canada, Hawaii. Didn’t matter.”

“You ran.”

“Sure I did. At first.”

“At first?”

“Running gets tiresome, Sid. The first month I ran. After that I took my time. I knew the Boys, knew how they thought. Knew their operations. So when my original bankroll of twenty G’s ran out, I went back for more. Looted any of the Boys’ operations that were handy.”

Their food came and they shut up till the waitress laid the plates down and left.

“How do you work it?”

“Huh?” Nolan said. He was eating.

“When you loot ’em. How do you work it?”

“Quick hit, planned a day or so in advance. Just me. Once in a while outside help, on a full-scale operation. Lots of pros working free-lance these days. Not even the Family controls professional thieves. Not many pros are afraid to help me, not with the money that’s in it.”

Tisor didn’t bother Nolan any more. Now that Nolan had his food and was eating, he wouldn’t like to be bothered.

Tisor sipped his coffee and thought about his cold, old friend. What balls the guy had! Nolan had some stones bucking odds like that. And the hell of it was, if he kept moving, Nolan just might be hard enough a character to beat the Boys at their own game.

When both had finished, they got up from the table, Nolan paid the check and Tisor tipped the waitress a quarter. The two men walked out into the raw night air and waited for an opening to jaywalk back across the highway to the motel.

Tisor stood with his hands in his jacket pockets, watching his breath smoke in the chill, while Nolan got his key out and opened the door to the cabin. Nolan did not invite Tisor in.

He said, “See you tomorrow, Sid.”

“Okay, Nolan... Nolan?”

“Yeah?”

“You mind if I ask you something else? Just one more thing, then I won’t ask you any more questions.”

Nolan shrugged.

“How much you made off the Boys so far?”

Nolan grinned the flat, humorless grin. “Don’t know for sure. It’s spread around, in banks. Maybe half a million. Maybe a little less.”

Tisor laughed. “Shee-it! How long you gonna keep this up?”

Nolan stepped inside the cabin. He said, “You said one more question, Sid, and you’ve had it. Goodnight.” He closed the door.

Tisor turned and headed for the Tempest. He got it started on the third try and wheeled out of the parking lot.

He knew damn well how long Nolan would play his little game with Charlie Franco.

Till one of them was dead.

4

When Tisor got out of bed the next morning and went downstairs to make coffee, he found Nolan waiting for him in the living room. Nolan was sitting on the couch, dressed in a yellow short-sleeved button-down shirt and brown slacks. He was smoking a cigarette and looking at the centerfold in Sid’s latest Playboy, a photo of a nude girl smoking a cigar.

“Hi, Nolan.” Tisor tried to conceal his surprise.

Nolan said, “Good morning,” and tossed Tisor’s Playboy down on the table. “Nice tits, but what can you do with a picture?”

Tisor said, “When you’re my age, looking’s sometimes all there is.”

Nolan grunted.

“Want some coffee?”

“I started some when I got here. Ought to be done.”

“I’ll get it.” Tisor trudged into the kitchen, the tile floor cold to his bare feet. He never ceased to be amazed by Nolan. He wanted to ask Nolan how he got in — Tisor had the night before locked the house up tight — but he knew Nolan had no patience with curiosity.

Nolan had risen at 6:30, after eight hours of sleep, and had taken a cab to Tisor’s place. He’d sat down across the street on a bus stop bench to watch, hiding behind a newspaper. He saw that no one, outside of himself, was keeping an eye on Tisor’s house. And it didn’t look like anybody besides Tisor was staying there, either. Sid looked clean, but over a single doubt Nolan would have frisked his own mother, had she been alive. Nolan sat staring at Sid’s white two-story frame house, one of those boxes they churned out every hour on the hour in the fifties, and didn’t get up from the bench till Sid’s morning paper was delivered at 7:30. By 7:34 he had entered the house, through a basement window, and by 8:05 he’d searched every room, including the one Sid was sleeping in. Then, satisfied that Sid was clean, he had plopped down on the couch and started looking at the pictures in the November Playboy. At eight-thirty Sid came down in his green terry-cloth robe, looking like a corpse that had been goosed back to life.

Tisor brought Nolan a cup of coffee, black, and set a cup for himself on the table by Nolan. “Be back in a minute,” Tisor said, and Nolan was on his second cup by the time Tisor came back down the stairs, dressed in a Hawaiian-print sport-shirt and baggy gray slacks. Tisor sat down in a chair across from Nolan and sipped his cup of coffee, which was too strong for him though he tried not to let on, since Nolan had made it. Nolan nearly let a grin out: he got a kick out of Tisor, who had been the most unlikely big-time “gangster” he had ever known.

Tisor was Charlie Franco’s brother-in-law — his wife’s maiden name was Rose Ann Franco — and had lived off Rosie’s relatives since the day they were married. He had been fairly respectable before that, a CPA keeping books for several small firms and embezzling just a trifle; but his wife had insisted he take part in her brother’s “business.” It was quite painless for Tisor, who had switched to bookkeeper for the Family — he was an efficient, overpaid little wheel. And it was just like the world of business, all numbers in columns, and the closest he ever got to violence was the occasional Mickey Spillane novel he read.

He liked Nolan, who in spite of an apparent coldness seemed less an animal to Tisor than the rest of the gangsters playing businessman games. And in one of his rare moments of courage, Sid had taken a big chance hiding out Nolan when Nolan killed Tisor’s no-good brother-in-law, that swishy bastard Sam Franco.

Now Tisor was all alone. He’d been alone for two years now, since he’d sent his little girl Irene off to college at Chelsey University. Before Irene was born, there had been Rosie, his wife; and when he lost Rosie, there was Diane, till she found somebody younger and richer. And always Irene, a wild but sweet kid, ever devoted to her old man. Tisor shook his head and sipped at the bitter coffee. Now there was nobody. Except Tisor himself, a lonely old man too afraid to take his own life.

Nolan said, “I have the same problem.”

Tisor shook himself out of reverie. “What’s that?”

“The past. I think about it, too. It’s no good thinking about it.”

Tisor smiled. That was the most personal remark Nolan had ever made to him.

Nolan poured himself another cup of the steaming black coffee and said, “What happened to Irene?”

Tisor’s head lowered. “Suicide, they say.”

“They don’t know.”

“Not for certain. You see... she was on LSD.”

“Oh.”

“She was on top of a building, fell off. The cops say she took a nose dive...”

“Yeah. Since she was tripping, they figure maybe she thought she could fly.”

Tisor’s eyes pleaded with Nolan. “Look into it for me, Nolan. Find out did she jump, did she fall, did she get pushed. But find out.”

“What about the local law?”

“Hell,” Tisor said. “The Chelsey cops couldn’t find their dick in the dark.”

“That where she went to school? Chelsey?”

“That’s right, Nolan. Chelsey University at Chelsey, Illinois.”

“Damn, Sid, I didn’t want to come to Illinois for even a day, but here I am. Now you want me to hop over to Chelsey and play bloodhound for you.”

“Listen to me, Nolan, hear it out...”

“Chelsey’s only eighty miles from Chicago, Sid.”

Tisor got guts for once. “Goddamn you, Nolan! Since when are you afraid of the Boys? Do you want to pay a debt you owe, or do you want to welsh on it?”

Nolan knew what Tisor said was the truth; he wasn’t afraid of the Boys — he just had better things to do than make like a gumshoe. But it was a debt he owed, and it needed paying.

He said, “Go on, Sid. Tell me about it.”

5

Tisor’s eyes turned hard and he leaned toward Nolan. “My Irene was a wild one, Nolan. She could’ve taken that LSD trip on her own. And if so, maybe she did try a Superman off that building. But there were some things going on in Chelsey that might have got her killed.”

“Like what?”

“She was home one weekend this summer and told me about this operation the Boys got going in Chelsey.”

“What did she know about the Boys?”

“Well, before she went to college I broke it to her about my connection with them, explained it all. She took it pretty good, but it must’ve been a shock since I was always such a Puritan-type father. You know, not mean to her or anything, just old-fashioned.”

“Yeah. Tell me what she saw going on in Chelsey.” Nolan could see it would be a struggle getting the facts from Tisor; the guy would just keep reminiscing about the dead girl if Nolan let him.

“The Boys’ operation, yeah. Well, they’re selling everything from booze to pills to marijuana to LSD. All aimed at the college crowd.”

“Irene a customer?”

“She never said, one way or another. I really can’t imagine her taking drugs, but then, I’m her father, what do I know? Anyway, she knew about the Boys’ operation and their market. You see, there’s this hippie colony in Chelsey she’s got friends in. They number over five hundred and all live in the kind of slum section of town. It’s got some publicity, maybe you read about it.”

“I didn’t. But Illinois seems too far east for a hippie colony.”

“Why?”

Nolan lit a smoke. “Too cold. Communal living’s swell, free love and all that. Till you freeze your ass off.”

Tisor smiled, nodded. “You got a point. But these kids aren’t what you’d call real hippies, if there is such a thing. Not California-style, anyway. They’re rich kids, most of ’em, living off their parents’ dough. They don’t look so good in their beads and wilted flowers, and they don’t smell so good, either. But they got money. Money for food, for heat...”

“For LSD,” Nolan put in.

“And for LSD,” Tisor agreed.

“Irene, was she one of the ‘hippies’?”

“Borderline. She hung out with them, but she was putting seventy-five a month in an off-campus apartment she shared with a working girl named Vicki Trask. The Trask girl was laying out seventy-five a month, too.”

“Hippies don’t live in hundred-fifty buck apartments. Not ‘real’ ones.”

“Well, Irene and her roommate weren’t deep-dyed Chelsey hippies. But, like I said, even the most sincere ones are just leeches sucking money off their parents. Chelsey is a rich-kid school, you know.”

“You think the Boys got a good thing going for them, then? Got any ideas what they’re getting for one trip?”

An LSD trip took 100 micrograms of d-lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate and cost pennies to make. “I think they’re getting around eight or ten bucks a trip,” said Tisor.

Nolan scratched his as yet unshaven chin. “They’re not making much off that. Granted, there isn’t much money wrapped up in producing LSD. Any two-bit chemist with the materials and a vacuum pump can whip up a batch. But even a confirmed tripper only takes a trip or two a week.”

“It’s a big campus, Nolan. Almost ten thousand students.”

“Still, you can’t figure more than four hundred trips a week. That’s less than four grand coming in.”

“That isn’t so bad, Nolan.”

“Yeah, but that’s their big seller, isn’t it, LSD?”

“They’re selling booze, too, to the frat crowd. Most any kid on campus might use pep pills now and then. Big market for pot.”

“They selling any hard stuff?”

“Heroin, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Hell, no. Nolan. The Commission of families in New York’s got control over stuff like that. You know that. Anybody caught with a dope set-up is going to get their ass kicked hard unless the Commission’s okayed it.”

Nolan shook his head. “I don’t understand this. LSD. Nickels and dimes. Why are the Boys fooling around with it?”

“Nolan, they got other things going for ’em in Chelsey! They got gambling, they got a massage parlor, a strip joint or two...”

“Don’t bull me, Sid. Take the college out of Chelsey and there’s only seven thousand people left. The Family doesn’t mess with small-time operations unless there’s a reason. I know they can’t be pulling in even five thousand a week, before expenses.”

“Nolan, I...”

“You’re not telling the whole story, Sid.”

Tisor looked at the floor. He didn’t want to meet Nolan’s eyes, if he could help it. “George Franco’s running the Chelsey operation.”

Nolan’s laugh was short, harsh. No wonder the set-up was small-time! An LSD ring, what a joke. You could save all the money you’d make off a racket like that and go to Riverview Park once a year.

“Sid,” Nolan said, “you and I both know what George Franco is.”

George Franco was the younger brother of Charlie Franco and the late Sam Franco, and also of Tisor’s late wife, Rosie. George: the obese, incompetent younger brother who couldn’t cut it and got sent places where he wouldn’t cause trouble. A glutton, a coward, and simple-minded to boot.

“Okay,” Sid admitted, “it’s no big set-up. It’s a small operation that Charlie gave George to give him something to do.”

Nolan got up from the couch. “Be seeing you, Sid.”

“Wait, Nolan, will you wait just a minute!”

“Having George Franco on hand makes this too close to home where the Boys are concerned, and at the same time makes any possible score small potatoes. Be seeing you.”

“Listen to me, will you just listen? It’s better than you think. George doesn’t have full charge, he’s more or less a figurehead. There’s a financial secretary, of sorts, who really runs the show. I don’t know the guy’s name, but he’s no dummy.”

“Where do you get your information?”

“George is my brother-in-law, remember?”

“Does he know Irene’s related?”

“He might have met her when she was a kid, but he doesn’t know I have... had a girl who went to Chelsey. At least as far as I know he doesn’t. That dumb asshole doesn’t know much of anything.”

“I’ll grant you that, Sid.”

“Look, George talked to me on the phone last week, social call, you know? I pumped him a little. They’re pulling in at least six grand a week.”

“Sid, it’s my life you’re trading bubblegum cards against.”

“Don’t forget you owe me, Nolan, remember that! And there’s going to be close to forty thousand in it for you, I swear.”

“At six grand a week, how do you figure? The Boys send in a bagman every Wednesday and take the last week’s earnings back to Chicago. That’s s.o.p. with the Family. I know these set-ups, Sid.”

“But they don’t come in weekly! Chelsey is so close to Chicago they don’t bother sending a man every week.”

“How often do they pick it up?”

“Every six weeks. But I don’t know where they keep it till then.”

“How about the local bank?”

“Nope, I checked it. They must keep it on ice somewhere.”

“So there ought to be around forty thousand in this for me, Sid, that right?”

“I think so, Nolan. Maybe more.”

Nolan thought for a moment. Then: “What makes you think this operation in Chelsey has anything to do with your daughter’s death?”

“Damn it, Nolan, I figure if they didn’t do anything outside of sell that cube of LSD she’s supposed to have swallowed, then they killed her, didn’t they? Besides, because she was my kid she knew things about the Boys and the connection they had to Chelsey. If she let any of that slip to the wrong person, it could have got her killed. And...” Tisor’s eyes were filmed over and he looked down at his hands, folded tightly in his lap.

“And what?”

“Nolan, I have to know why she died. I have to know.”

“It’s enough she’s dead, Sid.”

“No, it isn’t! She was the only thing I had to show for my entire life, she was the only thing I had left to care about! I’m not like you, Nolan... I can’t let go of something that important with a shrug.”

There were a few moments of silence, while Tisor regained a modicum of control. Nolan sat and seemed to be studying the thin ropes of smoke coiling off his cigarette.

“If I find out Irene was murdered,” Nolan said, his voice a low, soft monotone, “and I find the one who did it, what am I supposed to do?”

“That’s up to you, Nolan.”

“You expect me to kill somebody?”

“I know you, Nolan. I expect if anyone needs killing, you’ll take care of it.”

“I’m not making any promises, you understand.”

“I understand, Nolan.”

“All right, then. Get some paper and write down every speck of information you got on Irene and Chelsey. The college, her friends, the Boys’ operation, George, everything you know about it. And put in a recent snap of Irene.”

“Right.” Tisor got a notebook and a pen and Nolan smoked two cigarettes while Tisor filled up three pages for him. Tisor gave Nolan the notebook, then went to a drawer to find a picture of his daughter.

“Here she is,” he said, holding a smudged Polaroid shot.

“That’s old, Sid — nothing newer? This is what she looked like when I knew her.”

“She got prettier in the last couple years since you saw her. I had her nose fixed, did you know that?”

“No.” She’d been a dark-haired girl, beautiful but for a nose that could have opened bottles, and it was nice that Sid had got it bobbed for her, but Nolan hardly saw it worth talking about when she was dead.

Tisor’s eyes were cloudy. “They... they told me on the phone that... she... she fell ten stories... it was awful. They sent her body back on a train for the... funeral. I had to have them keep the casket closed...”

“Don’t waste your tears on the dead, Sid,” Nolan told him. “You got to mourn somebody, mourn the living — they got it tougher.”

“You... you don’t understand how it is...”

Hell, Nolan thought, dust doesn’t give a damn. But he said, “Sure, Sid, sure.”

“Let me tell you about her, Nolan...”

“I got to be going now, Sid.”

“Yeah... yeah, that’s right. I can’t tell you how much I... I appreciate this... Nolan, thanks.”

“Sure.” He headed for the door. “See you around.”

“Yeah... uh... so long, Nolan... you going by bus?”

Nolan looked at him and said, “You ask too many questions, Sid,” and closed the door.

Tisor watched through the picture window and saw Nolan board a city bus routed for downtown Peoria.

There Nolan found a Hertz office and rented a midnight- blue Lincoln in Tisor’s name. He drove it back to his motel, packed and cleaned up, then checked out.

He could make Chelsey by noon if he kicked it.

6

George Franco was a satisfied man.

He was not happy, but there was satisfaction, a certain contentment in his life.

He realized this as he lay on the soft double bed in his penthouse apartment, watching his woman get dressed. She was a leggy whore, with good firm breasts, and she was taking her time about fastening the garter snaps as she replaced her black hose. Her tousled black hair fell to her shoulders, and her once-pretty face wore a tight red line for a mouth. George liked the look of her hard, well-built body, but he didn’t like her equally hard face which spoke of something other than love.

But she was his woman, hired or not, and he was lucky to have her and knew it. Especially when you were a repulsive glob of fat, as George resignedly recognized himself to be.

She was dressed now, as dressed as possible considering the black sheath hit mid-thigh. She did her imitation of a smile for him and said, “Tomorrow, same time, Georgie?”

“Yeah, Francie. Tomorrow. Sure was good today.”

The whore smiled some more and said, “Yeah, sure was,” because that was her job. Her fingers rippled a little wave at her employer and she left.

George sat up on the bed, poured the last shot out of the bottle of Scotch he and the woman had emptied during the day — the courthouse clock across the way was bonging four — and he drank it down. He held his liquor well, he knew he did; it was the one thing he could do well. Then he settled back with a good cigar and thought about his life.

Satisfied, content. Not happy, but you can’t have everything.

After all, he had fifty cent cigars when he wanted them, and a fifty dollar woman when he wanted her. He lived in a five hundred buck a month secret penthouse (over a drugstore) with five rooms and two color TV’s and two cans and two big double beds and three bars and lots of soft red carpet. His bars were well-stocked with all the liquor he could possibly drink; and he had all the food he could eat, as prepared by his personal chef, who came in twice a day. The chef lived down the street in an apartment shared with George’s maid.

There were disadvantages, George realized that. People still didn’t like him. They never had, they never would. It was a kind of reverse magnetism he possessed. His woman, for example. You can only buy a woman from the neck down, he told himself over and over again, but you can never buy the head, except for the mouth of course. And his men, the ones who were supposed to protect him, they didn’t like him. And his chef didn’t like him — the chef could stand George, and seemed to kind of like him, but that was only because George was a good eater and, as such, a pleasure to cook for.

Hell, he thought, not even his brothers had liked him.

Not to mention his father.

But Momma (requiescat in pace) had liked him.

The best move he had ever made was being born of that sweet woman. Being born of the woman had made him the son of Carlo Franco (requiescat in pace), a big man in Chicago “business.” And the brother of Charlie Franco and Rosie Franco (requiescat in pace) and Sam Franco (requiescat in pace), who didn’t like him but provided for him. Especially after Poppa died and Charlie and Sam took the reins of the “business.”

Charlie and Sam looked out for their younger brother very well, in spite of their lack of brotherly love for him. Back in ’58 they had put him on the board of directors of the business — made him one of “The Boys.” But when George fumbled away over a half million dollars in his treasurer capacity, in a virtuoso display of incompetence, he was replaced by Lou Goldstein.

George cursed Goldstein as regularly as he ate. That goddamn Jew! What would Poppa (requiescat in pace) think about a Jew being one of the Family, for Christ’s sake!

But even George knew that Goldstein could keep good books. And Goldstein was a veteran of the “business” with a talent for seeing to it that other people kept good books. George, on the other hand, had trouble carrying a number over to the tens column.

George rose from the bed and headed for the bar a few steps away; he needed a fresh bottle of Scotch. Another disadvantage of wealth, George decided, was it made you waddle when you walked. Especially when you tipped the scales, as George did, at an even two hundred and eighty. When he walked on the plush red carpet, he left tracks that took their time raising into place again.

As he stood at the bar pouring a shot of Scotch, he heard a knock at the door. He glanced at his watch and said, “It’s open, Elliot,” and downed the Scotch. Time for Elliot.

A man entered the room, a man as thin as George was heavy. He wore a powder blue suit, tailored, with a blue- striped tie. His face was bony and pockmarked, and his large black horn-rimmed glasses made his head seem small. Behind the lenses of the glasses were watery blue eyes. His teeth were very white.

“How are things going for us, Elliot?”

Elliot was George’s financial secretary — the strong prime minister to George’s weak queen. Elliot said, “Things are fine, Mr. Franco.”

George poured another shot, said, “You want anything?”

“Ginger ale would be fine.”

George poured a glass, dropped a few ice cubes into it and left it on the bar for Elliot to retrieve. He headed for the bed, where he sat among the unmade sheets, wondering why Elliot never drank hard stuff, wondering why he never smoked, or never seemed to have any interest in women. Maybe he was queer, who could tell about the guy?

Elliot went after the ginger ale, then found a chair.

George, sitting on the bed, said, “How’s the college kid trade? They still buyin’ what we’re sellin’?”

“Business is good, Mr. Franco.”

“How about the feds? You said last time there was a rumor about feds.”

There had been a rumble that federal men were going to look into the Chelsey situation because of some unfavorable publicity concerning local college kids and LSD. There had been a girl who had jumped from a building while on a trip. There had been four trippers, it had been reported, who were in the hospital after having eaten magic sugar cubes and then deciding to stare at the sun. A day of sun-gazing, supposedly, resulted in all four going blind.

“It’s still just a rumor about the feds,” Elliot said. “Nobody paid much attention to the girl who went off the building, and the story about the sun-gazers going blind turned out to be a fake. Just one of those stories that got started.”

“That’s good to hear,” George said. “No trouble about the girl who fell off the building?”

“No, it’s blown over. Phil got the thing played down.”

Phil Saunders was Elliot’s cousin; he was also the police chief in Chelsey.

“What was that girl’s name?”

“Tisor,” Elliot said. “I think that’s it. Tisor.”

“Coincidence,” George said, gulping his Scotch. “My sister married a guy named Tisor. Used to work under Goldstein.”

“Is that so.” Elliot was tapping his foot, not nervous, just anxious to bid George goodbye. At least that was the way George interpreted it.

George leaned back on the bed and waved his arms with a flourish. “You’re doin’ a good job, Elliot, and I’m gonna put in the word for you with my brother Charlie.”

Elliot’s smug smile stung George. Skinny little shit! Smirking little bastard! I’m George Franco, and you’re nobody!

“Just keep up the good work,” George continued, murdering Elliot over and over again in his mind.

“I have your allowance, Mr. Franco.”

That damn condescending tone!

“Leave it on the bar, Elliot.”

Elliot nodded, got up from the chair and laid down his empty glass and an envelope on the bar. The envelope contained two hundred dollars, George’s allowance for the next week. There were bank accounts George could draw upon, and his expenses were taken care of by Elliot on Charlie Franco’s orders; but to simplify things for George, this spending money was allotted him. Pin money.

“See you, Mr. Franco.”

“Goodbye, Elliot.”

Elliot left silently.

George stared at the ceiling and pounded a fist into the soft bed. Then he sighed and rolled over on his stomach.

Yes, it was a good life for him. His only real job was to keep out of Elliot’s way. It was perfectly all right for him to pretend that he was Elliot’s superior, Elliot went along with it pretty good, but his direct orders from brother Charlie were to stay the hell out of Elliot’s operation.

Kissing ass didn’t bother him too much. Not when it stayed relatively painless, like this.

Not when he was safe, content.

After all, wasn’t he the smart one? Hadn’t his brother Sam (requiescat in pace) got himself all shot to hell by that crazy animal named Nolan? Wasn’t Charlie scared crapless all the time for fear death’ll strike him down like Sam, either through this Nolan clown or some other maniac connected to the family “business”?

George chuckled. He was the smart Franco. He stayed away from trouble in a little town in Illinois, getting fat on fine foods, getting drunk on good booze and screwing nice- looking broads. He got nowhere near the fireworks, yet he got all the benefits.

Look at poor Sam (requiescat in pace). Shot down like a common criminal! And to think that psychopath Nolan was still running around loose, gunning for brother Charlie.

“No sir,” George said aloud, “none of that crap for me.”

“None of what crap for you, George?”

George rolled over and looked up. He hadn’t seen the man enter, he hadn’t heard him either. He was a tall, mustached man, his brown hair graying at the temples, dressed in a tailored tan suit and holding a .38 Smith & Wesson in his hand.

“Who... who the hell’re you? You work for me? I never seen you before.”

“Think. You’ve seen my picture.”

“I... I don’t know you.”

The man sat on the edge of the bed, prodded George with the .38. “My name’s Nolan.”