Spree

1

Angie McFee was wary of the Comforts, certainly, but dying violently never crossed her mind. She’d dated Lyle, after all. Well, “dated” wasn’t the word, really. She’d slept with him a few times. Sex with Lyle was energetic and fun, like your average aerobics workout. Unfortunately, conversation with Lyle was equally aerobic.

Before she drove out to the Comforts’ on this cool October evening, she got her little silver Mazda gassed up and washed. The car wasn’t quite dry, and beads of water glistened on the hood in the moonlight as she pulled off the main drag onto an asphalt road, perhaps twenty miles outside Jefferson City, Missouri. She was a petite pretty brunette of twenty-seven years, watching the moon on the hood of her car, a car the Comforts had helped buy.

It had been a shock when Lyle first suggested she meet his “pa.” Christ, it had been a shock to hear anybody in this day and age refer to their father as “Pa,” particularly without a trace of irony. It had similarly been a shock to see Lyle’s brow furrowing in something akin to thought, that thought manifesting itself in this suggestion that she meet his “pa.”

And Pa had been a shock, too. A tall, leathery farmer in coveralls and a plaid shirt with a shock (another shock!) of white hair and pale blue eyes with laugh crinkles. He had a pretty smile, Pa did, the only resemblance between him and Lyle, other than their basic lanky frame. Brown-eyed Lyle, whom she’d met in a trendy little singles bar, looked like a fashion page out of Playboy, he wore a creamy Miami Vice silk sport coat over a grayish-blue T-shirt, gray jeans, Italian shoes with no socks, a tanning spa tan, and a twenty-five-dollar haircut, when Jefferson City remained a six-dollar-haircut town. It was all so right for the fashion moment that it was a little wrong, but he had a great smile and curly brown hair and a fantastic bod and no sores on his lip. And so to bed.

Only Lyle also had a farmer drawl and a remedial reading vocabulary and a certain vacancy behind his eyes, all of which took a while to catch on to, because he was the strong silent type, the sort of brooder you assume is hiding deep thoughts behind all those pregnant pauses, when in fact those pregnant pauses prove never to give birth to anything at all, and within that pretty cranium there was, Angie had no doubt, a low and constant hum.

She had tried, on their third night together — each previous night being a month or so apart, no steady thing developing between them, just her own occasional need for some really terrific sex in the midst of her thus far fruitless search to find a better husband than the first one — to make some human connection with Lyle. She’d told him about her father’s store.

“It’s really pitiful,” she said, smoking nervously, sitting up in bed, pillow at her back, sheet pulled up but barely covering her small, pert breasts. At least she liked to think of them as pert. “Dad had this great little place, little hole-in-the-wall, where he sold nothing but meat.”

“Meat,” Lyle said, nodding. Lyle didn’t smoke.

“He’s a terrific butcher, Dad is, but a lousy businessman. When he had that hole-in-the-wall, strictly a butcher shop, with choice cuts and all, he was doing fine. Mom was keeping the books. It was great. Then he got ambitious.”

“Meat,” Lyle said.

“He thought he could do better in a bigger store — you know, a small supermarket. He thought people would come in for the great meat and buy their other food as well, save a trip, even if our prices were a little more expensive than the big discount supermarkets. Going in he knew that — knew he couldn’t compete with the prices that the big boys were able to give, because of, you know, volume.”

“Volume?” Lyle said. He narrowed his eyes, apparently wondering what noise levels had to do with the grocery business.

“Anyway, Dad’s dying with that white elephant...”

Lyle touched her arm. “I’m sorry,” he said. It was clear he had taken the word “dying” literally, and that “white elephant” was some rare disease.

“No, I just mean he’s losing his shirt,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t take that literally, too. “Our savings are gone, Mom’s too sick to work, he’s mortgaged up the wazoo. And there I am, with my business degree, stuck in the middle of a family business that can barely afford to pay me half of what I could get elsewhere.” She sighed. “But, what the hell. You got to be loyal to your family, right?”

“Right,” Lyle said, nodding again.

“So I’m keeping the books. Working in the store — sometimes behind one of the registers, which is demeaning, let me tell you. I’m glad my little boy can’t see me.”

“You have a boy?”

“Yeah, he lives with my ex. Steve’s remarried and I’m a lousy mother. I don’t think I ever want another. I mean, I love my son, but kids do get in the way.”

“Kids,” Lyle said, smiling, nodding.

“How old are you, Lyle?”

“Twenty-three.”

“Where do you work?”

“Like you. Family business.”

“Yeah, I know — you’ve said that a couple of times. But what do you do exactly?”

And that was when Lyle’s brow had furrowed suddenly, shockingly, in apparent thought.

“You keep the books?” he said.

“Yes...”

“At a grocery store?”

“Yeah, that’s right. So what?”

“You should talk to Pa.”

Pa, as it turned out, was Coleman Comfort, but, as he’d said, pale blue eyes twinkling like a slightly demented Walter Brennan, “My kith and kin all call me Cole.”

Cole Comfort’s farm, where all of their meetings had been held over the past year and a half, was off a back gravel road, on a cinder path. The two-story farmhouse seemed ramshackle somehow, despite being freshly aluminum-sided. Maybe it was the weedily overgrown yard, in which the remnants of various vehicles rusted in the process of becoming one with the universe, or the dense looming woods behind the house, where owls’ eyes and nameless critter howls seemed to invite you in but not out. Or maybe the sagging barn and decaying silo, which created suspicion as to what the house itself was like under its aluminum face-lift. Whatever the case, the Comfort place was hardly comforting and no place Angie wanted to visit.

And yet she had, once a month, for many months.

That first time, even though she had long since full well realized how thick Lyle was, the sight of the farm (and there was farmland adjacent, it just wasn’t worked by the Comforts) had made her suck in a quick breath of disbelief. “There’s money in it,” Lyle had said, “big money.” But how could there be big money here, in this Dogpatch dump? This looked like food stamp territory.

“Food stamps,” Cole Comfort had said, pouring her some Old Grand-Dad, straight up, in a fast-food restaurant giveaway glass with the Road Runner on it. They sat in the living room, where reigned a giant-screen TV on which, at the moment, Billy Joel’s face was the size of a card table. The pores in his nose were like poker chips.

Lyle was watching MTV. Cole, it seemed, hated MTV, so Lyle was listening through headphones. Giant images of singers silently shouting, dancers moving to invisible beats, were an oppressive flickering presence. Other images fought MTV for attention: six, count them, six black velvet paintings of John Wayne, paintings of various sizes but all in rough rustic frames with Wayne in western regalia, beat out the mere three jumpsuited Elvis Presleys, all of them riding walls paneled in a dark brown photographic wood grain. Against one wall, with snakes of cable crawling out of it toward the big-screen TV, was an open cabinet on wheels, in which stacks of stereo and video equipment perched, red lights dancing and sound meter needles wiggling. The furniture, all of it expensive, varied in style — from Early American to modern — but the chairs and several couches were consistent in one thing: they were covered with clear vinyl. The carpet was a green shag, like grass from outer space.

She drank the glass of Old Grand-Dad like it was soda pop and Cole grinned his pretty white grin and poured her some more.

“F-food stamps?” she managed to ask.

“Food stamps. You work in a grocery store. A little mom-and-pop affair, like in the good old days. None of this corporate horseshit.”

“Actually McFee’s is a fairly big store,” she said. “But, yes, it’s not affiliated with any major chain. That’s the problem. They can undersell us.”

“Volume,” Cole nodded. “I stopped in the place — your daddy has a right fine meat counter.”

She couldn’t quite tell if the phrase “right fine” was an affectation or if this guy really was the hick of all hicks. Despite the tacky decor around him, Cole Comfort did not seem stupid, or even naive. Maybe bad taste and stupidity didn’t necessarily go hand in hand.

“The meat is what brings in what customers we do have,” she told him. “Daddy should never have expanded.”

Cole nodded, sagely this time; lines of experience pulled at the corners of his mouth. “It’s the bane of American business. Expansion. Nobody’s satisfied with a small success. They gotta expand till they go bust.”

Bane of American business? Where was this guy coming from?

“We’re in a position to help you, little lady,” Cole said.

Little lady yet.

“How?”

“We deal in food stamps, my family does. Lyle and Cindy Lou and me.”

She had not yet met Cindy Lou, but already an image was forming somewhere between Daisy Mae and Lolita.

“What do you mean, exactly? Your family deals in food stamps?”

“The black market, girl. Wise up. Black market food stamps. We stay strict away from counterfeit.” He waved his hands like an umpire saying, OUT! “The real thing or nothin’ at all.”

“Well... uh, where do you get them?”

“How we get them ain’t your concern.”

“I don’t exactly understand what is my concern in all this...” Perhaps she shouldn’t have gulped that Old Grand-Dad.

“You’re the perfect conduit, the very conduit we been lookin’ for.”

Against her better judgment, she drank again from the Road Runner glass. Just a sip this time. To arm her against a man who said both “ain’t” and “conduit.”

“You can buy them from us at a thirty percent discount,” he said. “Seventy cents on the dollar.”

Now she got it. “And when I send them in...”

“The government gives you a dollar. That’s thirty cents you clear, each. And you don’t pay us till you get yours.”

She knew that wasn’t as small potatoes as it at first sounded; even with their limited business, their higher prices, McFee’s had several hundred dollars a month come in, in food stamps. Other stores their size — stores with chain-style discount prices — would do a land-office business in food stamps; at least ten times what her father’s store did.

Cole was patting her arm. “You could help your pa. He wouldn’t even have to know. You could feather your own nest, too. The governmental never suspect a thing. We’ll help you figger what you can get away with, a store your size.”

“I wouldn’t be your only... conduit, then?”

“No,” Comfort said, his smile cracking his leathery face, “we got one or two others. But a good conduit is hard to find.”

Sew that on a sampler.

“Where do you get the stamps, anyway?”

“Nobody suffers,” Cole said. “They can get ’em replaced, if you’re worried about poor people.”

“I just want to know how it works. I know you said it wasn’t my concern, but really it is. If I’m going to be involved in something... criminal... I want to know the extent of it.”

Cole shrugged. Then his face darkened. “I hate that nigger shit!”

He was glaring past her. She glanced in that direction, at the big-screen TV, where Tina Turner was prancing, singing, in pantomime. Cole reached for a TV Guide next to him on the couch and hurled it at Lyle; the corner of it hit Lyle in the head. The son winced but did not even glance back, and certainly didn’t change the channel. He was apparently used to this form of criticism on his father’s part.

“Anyway,” Cole said, his distaste lingering in his sour expression, “we know when the stamps go out — third of the month — and that on the fifth they’re in mailboxes. Lyle and Cindy Lou just go out and about like good little mailmen, rain nor hail nor sleet, only in reverse. Taking letters out of mailboxes, not putting in.”

“It’s that easy?” she said. Repressing, and that petty?

“Yup,” he said. “It ain’t so small-time, either,” he added, as if reading her thoughts. “There can be as much as two hundred bucks’ worth in one envelope. Also, some people sell ’em to us direct. We pay a quarter on the dollar.”

“People sell their own food stamps?”

“People got things they want to buy and not eat. Sure. And we got some bars that we do business with.”

“Bars? You can’t buy liquor and cigarettes with food stamps...”

“Of course not — not ’bove board.”

“Oh,” she said. It was easy enough for Angie to figure how that could work: a bartender letting a customer use a dollar food stamp for thirty cents or so worth of booze or smokes.

“It’s a safe way to make a little extra bread, honey,” Cole said, in his fatherly way. “You won’t get caught. You almost can’t get caught. What are you doing, except moving some paper around? It ain’t even embezzling, really.”

“It is criminal,” she said.

“Much in life is,” Cole granted.

She said she wanted to think about it, and, after a particularly slow week in her father’s store, she called Cole Comfort and said yes. She never dated Lyle again. Once a month she drove to the farmhouse and got a supply of food stamps, bringing them cash in return. The Comforts always wanted cash.

And her dad, her sweet dad, tough ex-marine that he was, was so blessedly naive. He really thought business was up.

It crushed her to have to pull the rug out.

But it was time. She’d had a call from the Department of Social Services; an investigation into food stamp abuse was under way. An appointment to “interview” her had been set up. She didn’t know what this meant exactly, but she did know it was time to get out.

She’d socked a few thousand away, and bought a few toys outright (the Mazda, for one) and got her father on his feet, even if it was only temporarily. She didn’t know where she was going, but she did know she’d been in Jefferson City long enough. With her nest egg and her college degree and her looks, she could go anywhere, if she could just weather the Department of Social Services storm.

For right now, however, she was at the Comforts’, for one last time.

She was greeted at the door by Cindy Lou, a cute curvy strawberry-blond freckle-faced sixteen-year-old in a calico halter top and short jeans and bare feet with red-painted toenails. Somewhere between Daisy Mae and Lolita.

“Daddy’s upstairs figuring the books,” Cindy Lou said, ushering her into where John Wayne and Elvis, as always, ruled. “He’ll be down in a jif.”

And he was, in his usual Hee Haw apparel and his almost seductive smile. He said to Cindy Lou, “Take the pickup and get ’er gassed.”

She clasped her hands together in front of breasts that Angie would have died for. “Can I, Daddy?”

He reached in his pocket and withdrew a twenty and, grinning shit-eatingly, said, “What’s it look like?”

She snatched it out of his hands, and he patted her round little butt in a less than paternal way as she departed. Angie wondered for a moment whether Cindy Lou was old enough to have a license, before dismissing it as a foolish question.

He bade her sit on the couch again, which she did, where he poured her Old Grand-Dad and she carefully, tactfully, explained her position. Lyle was watching MTV, in headphones. Rick James was on the screen, silently screaming, but this time Cole didn’t hurl a TV Guide. Maybe he was getting more tolerant.

Or maybe he was just preoccupied.

She withdrew from her purse an envelope of cash, which he riffled through, smiling absently; he usually gave her a thick packet of food stamps at this point. He was preoccupied tonight.

“This investigation,” Cole said, tucking the money away in a deep coverall pocket, “what have you heard, exactly?”

“Nothing,” she said, shrugging expansively.

“They ain’t even talked to you yet.”

“Just on the phone. It’s only an appointment.”

“Are you worried?”

“Sure I am. But I don’t see how they can prove anything.”

“Damn,” Cole said. His smile was as rueful as it was pretty. “This has been one sweet little scam — but I’m afraid its days are numbered.”

“This investigation is that serious, you think?”

“Hard to say. I can tell you this — they started registering the mail with the food stamps in it. Anything over ninety bucks gets registered. Recipient has to sign.”

“So your kids can’t go raiding mailboxes anymore.”

“Not like they could. It’s just too damn bad.”

She shrugged. Smiled. “It was fun while it lasted.”

“Sure was,” he said, and hit her on the side of the head with the Old Grand-Dad bottle. She heard the glass break against her jaw, felt her skin tear, a flash of pain, then darkness.

She came out of it, once, for a moment, hearing: “A girl, Pa? I don’t want to kill no girl. I was with her before.”

That was when, for the first time, dying violently occurred to her.

2

In Nolan’s life, right now, comfort was very important.

He’d lived hard, for fifty-some years, and it seemed to him about time to take it easy. This was the payoff, wasn’t it? What he’d worked for, for so very long: the good life.

Not that he wasn’t still working. He liked to work. His restaurant-cum-nightclub, Nolan’s, nestled in a nicely prosperous shopping mall, was doing a tidy business and he put in, oh, probably a fifty-hour week. He did all the buying himself, and kept his own books, did all the hiring and firing as well as playing host most evenings. No, he didn’t greet his patrons at the door — he had a hostess for that — but he did circulate easily around the dining room, asking people if they were enjoying their meals; and in the bar he’d move from stool to stool, table to table, chatting with the regulars.

Right now he was at home, though, in the open-beamed living room of his big ranch-style house, home on a Friday night (a rarity), a gaunt-faced, rangy man stretched out in a recliner, stroking his mustache idly, watching the reason for staying home on a Friday: a boxing match on HBO, a black guy and a Puerto Rican bashing each other’s brains out on a twenty-seven-inch Japanese TV screen. Nolan’s idea of world unity.

The room around him was cream-color walls and modern furnishings and soft browns. What he wore matched the room, though he hadn’t intended or even noticed it: a cream-color pullover sweater and brown corduroy trousers and brown socks and no shoes, vein-roped hands folded over a slight paunch.

The paunch bothered him, but not much. He’d been a lean man so long that in his mind he still was. Eating the food at his own restaurant had done it to him, and he’d taken up golf to halfheartedly work the budding Buddha belly off. Toward that end, he rarely rode in the cart, walking, trying to make it feel like a real sport.

He was enough of a natural athlete to break one hundred the first month he played, which frustrated the rest of his regular foursome, who, like him, were in the Chamber of Commerce, with stores in or near the Brady Eighty mall. Harris owned a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts outlet, a twenty-four-hour operation, and frequently handed Nolan a free dozen, which didn’t help his weight, either. Levine owned the Toys ‘R’ Us franchise in Brady Eighty. DeReuss, the wealthiest and quietest, was a Dutchman who owned a jewelry store in the mall. After eighteen holes, the foursome would go to the country club bar and drink and talk sports and women. Nolan liked the three men. He felt, at long last, as if he’d joined the real world. The legit world.

He sometimes wondered, in rare reflective moments, for instance between rounds tonight, what his friend DeReuss who owned the jewelry store would say if he knew Nolan had, in his time, heisted many similar such stores, albeit never in a mall. He didn’t know where his three golfing chums had got their financing; but Nolan had done it the good old-fashioned American way: he’d gone out and taken it.

For nearly twenty years, prior to this current respectability, Nolan had been a professional thief.

Jewelry stores — along with banks, armored cars and mail trucks — were his pickings, though not easy. He prided himself on the care he took; he was no cheap stick-up artist, but a pro — big jobs, one or two a year, painstakingly planned to the finest detail, smoothly carried out by players carefully cast by Nolan himself. Nobody got hurt, especially civilians; nobody went to jail, especially Nolan. He ran the show. He always had.

Well, not always. He’d started with the Family, the Chicago Family that is, but not in a criminal capacity. And certainly not in the heist game; in his experience, Family guys themselves rarely got into honest stealing, though they frequently bankrolled it. Unions and vice were where the Family was comfortable doing their stealing, and Nolan wanted none of either.

He hadn’t meant to go to work for the Family at all; he didn’t know that the Rush Street club where he was hired as a bouncer was Outfit-owned until he saw the manager paying off one of Tony Accardo’s cousins.

That same manager was stupid enough to short the Family on its piece of the proverbial action, and left in a nervous hurry one night. Nolan never knew whether the little man had made it to safety or the bottom of Lake Michigan, and he didn’t much care which. All he knew was it opened up a slot for him — soon he was managing the club himself, and still doing his own bouncing, making a name with the made guys, who eventually tried to get Nolan to join the Sicilian Elks himself, only he passed. They resented that, and tried to pressure Nolan into bumping off a guy he knew pretty well, and Nolan balked, and somebody else killed the guy, which somehow led to Nolan shooting (through the head) the brother of a Family underboss. Messy.

That had sent him scurrying into the underground world of armed robbery, which — with the exception of the aforementioned occasional bankrolling, a money source Nolan never sought — rarely touched Family circles. In that left- handed world he’d made his mark, and a lot of money. And, eventually, time cooled his Family problems — he had outlived the bastards, basically, and was now on more or less friendly terms with the current regime. He’d even operated a couple of clubs for them.

But he wanted to have something of his own. He didn’t like having Family ties; it wasn’t his idea of going straight, and straight was where he had always hoped to go, deep in the crooked years.

So here, finally, in the Quad Cities, a cluster of cities and towns on the Iowa/Illinois border, which is to say the Mississippi River, he had settled down and bought his restaurant and gone there: straight.

Funny. It all seemed so long ago — half a dozen guys standing around looking at maps and blueprints and photographs spread out on a motel-room bed or somebody’s kitchen table. Cigarette and cigar smoke forming a cloud. Beer and questions and arguing and bragging. Some really great guys — like Wagner and Breen and Planner. And once in a while a real asshole — like any one of that crazy Comfort clan. Well, Sam Comfort and his boys were all dead now, and their vendetta against him was just as dead. Nothing to worry about.

The black boxer won, and Nolan was yawning through some situation comedy, of the cable variety — stale pointless jokes and naked female breasts, not pointless — when the phone rang. He used the remote control to turn down the TV sound and walked to the kitchen where the phone was on the wall.

“Nolan,” he said.

“Hi. Is the fight over, or am I interrupting?”

It was Sherry. The hostess at his restaurant. She lived with him, a beautiful twenty-two-year-old California blonde from Ohio, young enough to be his daughter. But she wasn’t.

“The fight’s over. You’re not interrupting anything. How’s business?”

“I love you, too. Business is fine. You wouldn’t want to come down and work a few hours, would you?”

“Need me?”

“I always need you. But at the moment I’m thinking of the bartender.”

“Crowded,” he said, smiling.

“There’s money in your voice,” she said. “You really love the stuff, don’t you?”

“What else is there?”

“Me.”

“You’re in the top two.”

“You really know how to sweet-talk a girl. Get down here, will you? The regulars are asking for you.”

“It’s nice to be loved.”

“So I hear,” she said, hanging up, but there was no real bitterness in her voice. It was just a game they played.

She knew he loved her, or at least he assumed as much. That is, assuming he loved her. He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure what love was, exactly, except something in movies and on TV, and on his TV right now, sound down, were some girls soaping themselves in the shower, which wasn’t love exactly, but was close enough.

He showered, too, alone, and shaved and splashed on Old Spice, an old habit, and put on a blue suit and a dark blue tie and a pale blue shirt, all of them quite expensive. He bought them locally, at the mall, where he got a discount; and he only wore such clothes to his restaurant, enabling him to deduct them.

Nolan loved money so much, he hated to spend it. He knew it was ridiculous — he wasn’t going to live forever, and these were the years where he was supposed to be enjoying himself, and, damnit, he was. He’d bought this fucking house (he only thought of it as a “fucking house” when he remembered what it cost him) and had expensive toys, like his silver Trans Am and several Sony TVs and stereo equipment and the sunken tub with whirlpool and like that. But he knew each one of the toys had taken Sherry’s nudging to get bought.

He smiled, thinking of her, slipping into a London Fog raincoat, twenty percent discount from the Big and Tall Men’s shop at the mall. He’d met her at the Tropical, a club he ran for the Family a few summers back. She was a waitress and he’d fired her for spilling scalding hot coffee in a customer’s lap. Then she sat on his, and they wound up spending the summer together. When she wasn’t in a bikini, poolside, she was in his bed and wasn’t in a bikini.

He pulled the silver sporty machine out of the garage, closing the overhead door behind him with a push of a button, wondering if some smart crook would come through the neighborhood trying various frequencies on some homemade open-sesame doohickey till he got it right and got in. More power to him, Nolan thought, and besides, my alarm will nail the bastard.

He glided down the hill — it was a cold clear November night — and turned left, toward Moline, coasting along a stretch that alternated between parks and commercial and residential, a Quad Cities pattern. He was still thinking about Sherry. Still smiling.

What had started, that one summer, as two people using each other — a cute lazy cunt who wanted to stay on the payroll and was willing to do it by screwing the boss, lecherous dirty old man of fifty that he was — had turned into something else. Something more.

They liked each other. The sex was good, and the summer was over too soon. He had asked her to stay on, and she almost had, but her mother had a stroke and she had to go home, so they parted company, reluctantly, and he promised her she’d hear from him again. A year ago or so, when he bought Nolan’s (which had been the name of the place even before he bought it, and she often accused him of buying it so he wouldn’t have to spend money on a new sign), he had thought of her and invited her to work for him and, if she liked, stay with him. Despite her scalding-coffee-in-the-customer’s-nuts past, he made her hostess. And she’d done very well at it. She was beautiful, of course, but she had that midwestern gift of making immediate friends out of strangers. She, more than anyone or anything else at Nolan’s, was responsible for the heavy return business, the regulars who haunted the place.

He crossed the free bridge at Moline. The river was choppy tonight; the amber lights of the cities on its either shore winked on the water. Did he love her? He supposed so. He liked her, and that somehow seemed more important.

He stayed on Highway 74 and curved around onto Kimberly, a wide street whose valleys and hills were thick with commerce; he glanced at the little shopping clusters, wondering how they were doing. He knew Brady Eighty was hurting everybody else — but it might be temporary. New kid on the block always got more attention — for a while.

He turned right on Brady Street, a four-lane one-way clear to the Interstate now, and enjoyed the almost Vegas-like glow of fast-food franchises and other prospering businesses. The Quad Cities economy wasn’t good — the farm implement industry, a major component of the area’s economy, was withering away, and other local industries were suffering as well. But Brady Street glowed in neon health: pizza and tacos and hamburgers; used cars, stereos and videotape rental. People always have money for the important things.

Like drinking, he thought, with a wry private smile, turning toward his club. At this point on Brady, the businesses began to give each other some breathing room, and the food wasn’t so fast — although Flaky Jake’s, for all its yuppie pretension, was still a hamburger joint, and Chi-Chi’s peddled tacos, even if they did slop guacamole and sour cream on them. This was motel country, too: Ramada, Best Western, Holiday Inn. At the left as he passed, in a valley of its own, lay the sleeping behemoth — North Park — the massive, sprawling shopping mall whose parking lot was an ocean of cement that even after closing was swimming with cars — movies and restaurants kept it so. North Park was Brady Eighty’s biggest (in every sense) competitor, and conventional wisdom had said a new mall nearby couldn’t hope to compete with its scores of shops, including four major department stores.

But Brady Eighty wasn’t exactly a new mall. It was a refurbished one. The Brady Street Shopping Center, an open-air plaza with two rows of shops facing each other, had opened back in the early sixties, one of the first in the Cities. Over the years it had fallen on hard times, and was almost a ghost town when a Chicago-based group, led by a smart operator named Simmons, bought everybody out but a few willing-to-stay stalwarts and remodeled the place into an enclosed mall. The Brady Street location — Highway 61, just a whisper away from Interstate 80 — made it the first shopping area you saw when you got off the Interstate; provided the easiest shopping-center access for half a dozen small towns outside of Davenport; and had a varied selection of shops, within a smaller, easier-to-deal-with area than North Park’s miles of mall. “Brady for the ’80s,” the slogan went, and Nolan wondered idly what would happen to the catch phrase now that the nineties were breathing down the decade’s neck.

Nolan pulled into the dimly lit, pleasantly crowded parking lot, admiring the glow of the green neon Nolan’s sign on the side of the mall wall, at the right of the front entry. The words “Brady Eighty” in silver-outlined-black art deco letters were along the long window over the bank of doors. And speaking of banks, First National’s outlet was opposite Nolan’s, at left, with a drive- up window. It amused Nolan to be doing business across from a bank.

He couldn’t find a parking place up close, so he pulled around back. The parking lot in back wasn’t full, even on a Friday, partly because people didn’t seem to know it existed yet, and partly because the rear double doors were locked up after the mall closed. His was the only business open after hours, and had its own after- hours entry/exit accordingly, under that glowing green “Nolan’s” neon.

As he got out of the Trans Am, the wind whipped out at him, cutting through the raincoat, whistling through the skeletal trees behind him, beyond the parking lot. He realized how, in a way, this thriving little mall was situated in a rather desolate spot. Woods and farms and highways were its neighbors; you had to drive half a mile to run into commercial and residential again. Stuck out in the boonies, they were — making a small fortune.

He used a key to get in the double doors, and his footsteps echoed pleasantly down a hallway between Petersen’s, a big department store at left, and the Twin Cinemas, which hadn’t opened yet. This new addition — taking over the area of a water-bed store and an antique boutique, the only businesses at Brady Eighty to fail since its opening two years ago — was the only space not up and running. No other mall in the Cities could say the same — even North Park had its share of shuttered stalls.

He walked down the deserted mall, its walkway area quite wide, having been a plaza back in the unenclosed, pre-mall “shopping center” days, and well-dressed manikins in store windows stared at him, threatening to come to life. One of them did, only it was just the security guard, Scott, a pasty-faced kid of twenty-five who carried a phallic billy club on his belt, and no gun. Nolan liked the kid well enough, but he kept telling the mall manager to put two guards on, and make one of them an older guy, a retired cop. Nolan, like any good thief, knew what the possibilities were. Imagine, if somebody got in here one night and just started helping themselves.

He turned the corner and walked down to the Nolan’s mall entrance, which also was kept locked after hours, to keep his customers from strolling the mall. He unlocked the door and went in; music assaulted him, some vaguely British-sounding youth mumbling about love against synthetic strings and hollow percussion. Fridays and Saturdays, after ten, a deejay came in and the little dance floor, over at the left, was crowded with approval. Nolan shrugged. Whatever sells.

He felt the same about the look of the place — barnwood and booths with lots of nostalgic bric-a-brac on the walls, tin advertising signs, framed forties movie posters, the occasional historic front page; and lots of plants, hanging and otherwise. Sherry had done it, the decorating. Better she do it here than at home.

He went behind the bar and asked Chet, an older man he’d hired away from a place downtown, how the evening was going. Chet said A-OK, but had to shout. Nolan occasionally worked behind the bar, but only in a crunch; if Chet needed him, he’d say so. Nolan found a stool and looked at his crowd. Weekends were singles- dominated — meat market time. Some Big Chill-variety married couples, but mostly singles; he had a smaller, older crowd during the week. His friends from the Chamber of Commerce and country club would come by, spend some time, some money. He liked it here during the week.

He liked it here now, too, only in a different way. He liked the way the cash register rang on weekends; it played his favorite song. So, what the hell — these marks could listen to their favorite song, too, even if it was by some adenoidal Brit twit.

Sherry came over; she was wearing a red jumpsuit with Joan Crawford shoulders and a wide patent-leather belt. The outfit was Kamali, she said; that was a brand name, apparently.

Square shoulders or not, she looked terrific. Sculpted blond hair around a heart-shaped face with big blue eyes and long, real lashes and soft, puffy lips that pouted prettily even when she smiled.

Like she was now.

“You came,” she said.

“In my pants,” he said. “It must’ve been the sight of you that did it.”

She cocked her head to one side and shook it gently, smiled the same way. “No. It was the sight of all these customers.”

Nolan shrugged, almost smiled.

“You love being a prosperous businessman, don’t you?” she said.

“It ain’t half bad,” he said.

She stood very near to him, where he sat on a barstool.

“You love playing it straight, too, don’t you? You get a kick out of playing at being honest.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

“When somebody comes in that door, I’ll be there to greet them. I’ve come a long way from the Tropical.”

“I still don’t want you pouring any coffee.”

She touched his knee. “Haven’t you noticed? I’ve gotten better with my hands as I’ve gotten older.”

“You can get a five-yard penalty for holding, you know.”

She removed her hand, and her pouty smile turned wry. “That’s you, all right, Nolan. The referee of my life.”

“Maybe so, but I’m always interested in a forward pass. Somebody.”

“Huh?”

“Just came in. Do your duty.”

She went over to the door, where a handsome well-dressed brown-haired kid in his early twenties seemed glad to see her. Then he realized she was just the hostess, and when she realized he wasn’t here to dine, she merely pointed him to the bar area and dance floor, where he slipped into the crowd, just another would-be John Travolta. Or whoever this year’s hunk was.

Nolan said, “I think he liked you.”

“Dumb as a post. You could see it in his eyes. Well, anyway, I was saying. You’re an honest man, now. Why don’t you make me an honest woman?”

“Are you proposing?”

“No, just kidding. On the square. You know, we’ve been honeymooning since I was in puberty. You might want to consider something more serious.”

She smiled a tight little, crinkle-cornered smile, that wasn’t pouty at all, and left him alone at the bar to think about this. Which he never had before. Sherry was the first woman he ever lived with, for any length of time; he’d figured that in itself was a commitment, the biggest he’d ever made to a woman, anyway.

But, hell — he was a businessman, now. A straight, prosperous businessman — who happened to be living with a girl less than half his age. How did it look? The Chamber had its share of bluenoses, after all. Maybe marriage was the appropriate thing.

Nolan asked Chet for a Scotch, a single, and smiled to himself. I am going soft, Nolan thought. Seriously considering marriage. Worrying about how things look, what people would say. What would Jon say?

Across the room, at a small table, where he sat alone, feeling the glow of the eyes of appreciative single women upon him, Lyle Comfort squinted at the man at the bar and, slowly but certainly, like fire from the efforts of a stubborn Boy Scout rubbing rocks together, a thought formed.

Lyle Comfort, who just two hours ago was burying someone he’d killed in a wooded area across the river, recognized Nolan.

Quietly, he got up and left.

3

Lyle Comfort didn’t like killing people. But he did what he was told. That was his best quality: he was a good boy. He did what his pa said.

Tonight he had killed his sixth person in three weeks; that was two killings a week, though it hadn’t worked out that way exactly.

The first was the hardest. The girl. Angie. He’d killed her when she was still unconscious, so it wasn’t cruel. He’d shot her in the heart with a revolver, the Colt Woodsman Pa gave him for his last birthday. He couldn’t bear to shoot her in the head; it might mess her face up. He had buried her in the woods, a couple miles from the house, nice and deep. Hers wasn’t the only body buried out there.

But she was the first girl he ever killed. First woman. It was a good thing he didn’t believe in God anymore, or he’d go to hell, sure. But Pa said God was something fools believed in to keep from going crazy thinking about dying. And he also said that dying was something that caught up with everybody, so exactly when somebody died was no big thing. It wasn’t like it wasn’t going to happen anyway.

That made sense to Lyle, and made it easier to do the things he sometimes had to do, for Pa. The other thing Pa said that helped was: “Business is business. Money makes the world go ’round, and a man’s family’ll starve if he don’t do what’s necessary to bring in the bucks.”

So Lyle, obedient son that he was, did what was necessary to help Pa bring in the bucks.

Tonight was easy, compared to Angie. He went to the back door of the bar in Rock Island and found it open; a storeroom filled with boxes and stuff also included a little office area, where a fat man in a white short-sleeved shirt and baggy brown pants sat at a desk with a bunch of money in his hands like green playing cards. The fat man was making little piles of money out of a big one. He was balding and had a couple warts on his face. He was sweating — big wet circles under his arms. It was cold outside, but warm in here, several baseboard heaters going, and besides, a big man like that just plain sweats. He made Lyle kind of sick. There were some really awful people in the world.

“Lyle,” the fat man said, quietly surprised. His name was Leo. It seemed to Lyle a good name for a fat man to have. Leo, whose last name was Corliss, smiled; his smile was yellow. Leo was a jolly fat man, but it was an ugly sort of jolly that made Lyle’s stomach queasy.

“Hello, Mr. Corliss.” Lyle walked over to the fat man, who sat at the desk in a puddle of light from a gooseneck lamp, and shook hands with him. The fat man’s palm was wet, like his underarms. Country western music from a live band was shaking the joint, out in the bar; Lyle could hear happy boozy voices cut above the racket. And to Lyle it was a racket: he didn’t know how anybody could like such terrible music, although truth be told, his pa was one of them. Lyle liked the new music from England; it was smooth and had a good beat.

“What brings you here, Lyle?” the fat man said; his face was sweat-beaded, the whites of his eyes seemed yellow. Had Lyle been at all perceptive, he’d have seen the concern in the fat man’s seemingly cheerful expression. But Lyle, of course, saw only the cheerfulness.

“Pa sent me,” Lyle said. “We got to talk about some new arrangements with our business.”

“Well, pull up a box and sit down. Glad to talk, anytime. But, uh, Lyle — ain’t it a little unusual, your daddy sending you to do business?”

“Unusual?”

“You’re a nice-looking boy, Lyle.” The fat man touched the sleeve of Lyle’s brown leather jacket; Lyle didn’t like that. “But I never knew you to have a head for business.”

“Pa didn’t send me to do the talking. He sent me to do the fetching.”

“Oh? He’s with you?”

“He’s at the motel.”

“What motel is that, Lyle?”

“Riverview.”

“Hell, that’s past Andalusia. Why so far?”

“Pa takes precautions.”

The fat man shifted in his chair, a big wooden captain’s chair that creaked like a rusty shutter, at least when the fat man moved in it, it did.

“Your daddy’s a smart man,” Leo Corliss allowed. “He’s as good at steering clear of the law as any man I know.”

“Right. I’ll drive you.”

The fat man swallowed.

Then, pushing on the desk, he rose; it was kind of amazing — like a torn-down building suddenly put itself back together. “I’ll just tell my bartender I’m stepping out...”

“No,” Lyle said. “Pa said you should just slip out back.”

“Why’s he so nervous?” the fat man said, licking some sweat off his upper lip.

“My pa takes precautions.”

The fat man’s mouth twitched; it was irritation, but Lyle didn’t know that. “Yeah, sure, right. Okay. Just let me get my coat. It’s cold out.”

The coat, a tentlike green parka, was on a hook on the wall by some boxes of liquor. Lyle let him get it. Then they walked into the alley and Lyle opened the door of his cherry-red Camaro and the fat man squeezed inside.

“I got the seat all the way back,” Lyle apologized, getting in.

“It’s okay,” the fat man said, uncomfortable. “Let’s make this quick, okay, Lyle?”

“Okay.”

Lyle pulled out from behind the alley past the fat man’s dark little bar on this dark little street, then drove down Fourth Avenue and caught 92 near the toll bridge. He played a Billy Idol tape very loud. The fat man sat and sweated and looked out the window at nothing. Lyle asked him if he wanted the heat in the car lowered and he said no. They were on Highway 92, headed to Andalusia, a hamlet on the Mississippi, when Leo Corliss finally asked him to turn the music down. Lyle did.

“Could you tell me what this is about, Lyle?”

“The food stamp business.”

“Well, of course it’s about the food stamp business.” The fat man seemed irritated; even Lyle could tell. “That’s the business your daddy and me are in.”

Leo Corliss’ Ace Hole was one of four bars that fed food stamps to the Comforts — the only one in the Quad Cities, however. The other three bar owners were, naturally, dead now, here and there around Illinois and Missouri. They had all had policies toward food stamps similar to Leo’s. The fat man accepted a dollar food stamp as twenty-five cents toward drinks and cigarettes; he then resold the stamps to the Comforts for fifty cents. Nickels and dimes, but it added up. It added up.

“Has anybody come around?” Lyle said.

“Come around. What do you mean, come around?”

“Asking questions.”

“Cops, you means?”

“Or anybody like a cop.”

“No. Nobody. You expecting somebody to?”

The Mississippi River was at their right; it was a windy night, rocking the car, and the river looked rough. Moonlight danced on its surface, frantically, as if to Lyle’s Billy Idol tape. At their left was a wooded bluff.

“Yes,” Lyle said.

“There’s the motel,” Leo said, as they coasted by, a little old-fashioned motor court with half a dozen rooms and a sign saying, “Water Beds — Adult Movies.”

“He don’t want to talk there,” Lyle said.

“Well, where’s he meeting us, then?”

“Up a ways.”

They didn’t have the road to themselves — a car would occasionally weave around them, on its way from one bar to another. There were a lot of bars on this road, but the stretch outside Andalusia was free of bars, past a certain point, and rather deserted at the moment. Lyle, who’d been keeping it at an easy fifty, pulled over.

“Why are you stopping?”

With his left hand Lyle reached beside the seat and under and got out the .38, his birthday Colt Woodsman (just like Pa’s) with its natural-wood stock. Lyle was always a little surprised by how heavy it felt. He never quite got over how different real guns felt from his childhood toys.

“Lyle...”

Lyle transferred the gun to his right hand. “Mr. Corliss, get out slow.”

Corliss did; Lyle too.

The Camaro was parked on the side of the road near the river; a little picnic area was nearby — several wooden tables. Wind whistled and whipped the two men. The fat man, in his impossibly large parka, a puffy pale green thing that made him look even fatter, snugged its hood over his ears, zipped the coat and stuffed his hands in its pockets.

“I don’t see your daddy,” the fat man said. Lyle felt the fat man hadn’t yet figured out what was going on; but of course he had, miles and miles ago.

“He’s waiting over there,” Lyle said, and pointed to the wooded area across from them; the bluff had given way to an area that seemed almost scooped out of the ground, thick with brush and trees.

“That’s a funny place to wait,” the fat man said, and something in his pocket exploded.

The bullet whizzed past Lyle but didn’t touch either him or his cherry-red Camaro. Lyle’s reflexes were the fastest thing about him, and he fired the .38 at the fat man, hitting him in the shoulder, on the same side as the torn smoking parka pocket. The sound of Lyle’s gun was a crack in the night, which echoed briefly before the howl of the wind — and the howl of the fat man — took its place.

Leo Corliss fell to his knees; the ground didn’t shake, and Lyle wondered why. The fat man’s pumpkin head was lowered. His eyes were squeezed tight and he clutched his shot-up shoulder, getting blood on his hand and smearing it on the parka.

“You have a gun in your pocket,” Lyle said, figuring it out.

“You are one fucking rocket scientist, aren’t you? You autistic son of a bitch...”

Lyle didn’t know what being artistic had to do with anything, but he walked over there and pulled the hot weapon, a little .22, a baby gun for such a fat hand, out of the shredded parka pocket, and tossed it, tossed it hard. It splashed into the river; it reminded Lyle of a bar of soap plunking in a tub of water.

“Get up, Mr. Corliss.”

Lyle helped him, pulling on the side of the good shoulder.

When the fat man got on his feet, he pushed Lyle and Lyle went down on the grass, on his butt, kind of hard. The fat man was waddling in the moonlight, trying to run, heading for the Camaro. Lyle shot the gun in the air.

The fat man stopped.

Then he turned and he spread his hands, one of them bloody, from his shoulder. “Why, Lyle? Why?”

“Pa’s getting out of the food stamp business.”

The man’s eyes were round and yellow. “So you’re going to kill me?”

“When Pa gets out of something, he gets out all the way. He don’t leave no trail.”

“What, killing people leaves no trail? Are you crazy as well as stupid?”

“I’m not stupid, Mr. Corliss,” Lyle said. Thinking, he added, “Or crazy neither.”

“You don’t want to kill me, do you?”

“No, sir. Not particularly.”

“I have money. You saw that money, back at my bar. I can give you that. I can give you more.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You can get out from under your daddy’s thumb. A good-looking boy like you should be out in the world, making a life for himself. Not, not living at home with your old man.”

“Pa’s good to me.”

“I’m sure he is, but you got to be your own man, Lyle. Now, put that away, and let’s get in the car.”

“You’d bleed on my ’polstery.”

“No, no I wouldn’t do a thing like that. We’ll, we’ll use my coat, we’ll tear my shirt, we’ll stop up the wound. Take me back where I can get some medical help and I’ll make you a very rich kid.”

“No. I do what my daddy tells me.”

“This is crazy! How many people does your daddy expect you to kill?”

“You’re the last. You’re six.”

The fat man’s mouth was open; he couldn’t seem to think of anything to say to that.

Finally he did: “Over fucking food stamps?”

“My pa takes precautions. Step across the road, Mr. Corliss.”

The wind sounded like a sick animal, crying down a canyon.

The fat man looked determined all of a sudden. Proud, sort of. “No. You do it right here.”

Lyle walked over to him and pointed the gun at him and said, “Turn around then, Mr. Corliss.”

“Fuck you.”

“Turn around.”

Slowly, he did. He was trembling. His jowls were like fleshy Jell-O.

Lyle pistol-whipped him and he went down with a whump. Lyle waited for a moment, listening for cars, didn’t hear any, and dragged the fat man across the road, by the feet, like the carcass of some dead animal, which essentially it was. A slimy trail of blood was left behind, but Lyle figured that wouldn’t last. Traffic and weather would take care of it. That was about as smart as Lyle got, incidentally.

Pulling him through the grass and into the brush and trees was harder than across the mostly smooth highway. Lyle was only sixty yards or so into the woods when he dumped the body. He was out of breath, even though he stayed in shape. Mr. Corliss was real heavy. He thought about pistol-whipping him again, but figured the fat man would stay unconscious long enough for Lyle to go back and get what he needed.

He was right. The fat man was still out when Lyle came back and put on the yellow rubber dish-washing gloves and cut Corliss’ throat with the hunting knife. Lyle was proud of himself. He didn’t get blood anywhere but the ground and the gloves. He’d also brought the shovel, from the Camaro’s trunk, with him. It was hard digging in this cold ground, which had a lot of roots in it. And the hole had to be plenty big, for Mr. Corliss to fit in.

But the fat man did fit. Barely. Lyle kicked him, hard, really having to shove with his foot, to make him tumble into the grave. It was only four feet deep, but he just couldn’t dig any deeper. He poured some quicklime over the bulging body. That would help keep animals away, Pa said. Then he filled the grave in. Patted it down. Found some leaves and things and covered it over. It looked pretty natural when he got done. Lyle smiled to himself. Maybe I am artistic, he thought.

Lyle washed up at the Riverview — he really was staying at that particular motel, not having the imagination to lie about it, although his pa was not along (saying so had been Pa’s idea) — and changed his clothes. Just for the hell of it, he decided to drive through the Cities, before catching the Interstate. The night was young — maybe some night spot would catch his eye. Just before he reached the Interstate, one did. Nolan’s.

4

The next day, Sunday, in the afternoon, in Des Moines, Iowa, Nolan’s frequent accomplice Jon — who, like Nolan, had gone straight — stepped in shit.

The shit, dog shit to be exact, a pile of it on the sidewalk just outside the New Wax record shop on University Avenue near Drake University campus, was just the beginning. And Jon, who had sensed storm clouds gathering in his life for weeks now, knew the dog shit for the omen it was. He rubbed the sole of his right tennie onto the curb and went in the door next to the record shop, over which he and Toni shared an apartment.

He and Toni were friends; they slept in separate beds, in separate rooms, though on occasion they made love. Once or twice a week. They met through rock ’n’ roll — playing in a band together — and had been lovers at first, settled into being friends and, now, lived together. But it wasn’t love. Jon wasn’t sure what it was, but it wasn’t love.

Jon was returning after two less than exciting days in Cedar Rapids, where he’d been a guest at a comics convention, that is, an organized gathering of comic-book fans. As a kid, Jon had been a comic-book fan himself — Batman, Superman and Spider-Man had been his best friends in a childhood that had buffeted him from one relative to another while his “chanteuse” mother traveled, playing the Holiday/Ramada Inn circuit — and, as long as he could remember, he’d wanted to be a cartoonist when he grew up. Now he was grown up, more or less, and was the creator of an offbeat comic book, Space Pirates, a science-fiction spoof, not a blockbuster bestseller, but a cult item that was making him a modest living. An honest living — unlike those brief, volatile days when he and Nolan had... well, that was behind him.

He was short but had a bodybuilder’s build, which made sense, because he worked out three times weekly at a health spa, and had lifted weights and such since high school, where he’d been a wrestling champ. His hair was short and blond, a curly skullcap, and he had a wisp of a mustache. On this crisp winter day, he wore chinos and a long blue navy-color coat with a big collar, a military-looking coat which he had, in fact, purchased at an army-navy surplus store. Under the coat he wore a short-sleeved T-shirt, despite the time of year; on it was one of his own drawings, as the T-shirt was quite literally the first merchandising spin-off from Space Pirates’ cultish success: Captain Bob, the klutzy hero of his book, posed with a clunky ray gun in one hand and a bosomy alien broad in the other. He wore no gloves (Jon didn’t — neither did Captain Bob, for that matter).

It was only one floor up, the only apartment up there, and the door was unlocked, which made Jon grimace. His drawing board was set up in the living room, near the stereo and nineteen-inch Sony TV. It was a spacious flat, drywall walls painted a pale green and decorated with huge posters, promo stuff from the record shop, where Toni worked during the week, when they weren’t out on the road with a band, which they hadn’t been for several months now. Gigantic Elvis Costello and Blondie and Devo and Oingo Boingo and Kate Bush faces stared from the walls. Blondie was old history, now, but Toni’s vague resemblance to Debbie Harry kept the defunct group hanging on, at least on the apartment walls.

Toni had been the lead singer of a group called Dagwood, several years ago, a mock-Blondie group formed out of the remnants of Smooch, a mock-Kiss group; like the various imitation Beatles bands — a number of which were still around — such groups could turn a steady buck on the Midwest club circuit. For six months Toni had done nothing in life but imitate Debbie Harry; even now she still admired the singer, and her own style remained heavily influenced thereby.

Jon knew that Toni had the talent to go far. She had looks and brains and drive, too. She was twenty-three, a year younger than Jon, and was in her bedroom packing her suitcase. That was the other thing she needed, to go far: a suitcase.

She was packing stage clothes — sexy lacy gypsy-looking things she ordered from Betsey Johnson’s in New York City. Right now she was in jeans and a Bruce Springsteen sweatshirt, a small woman with zoftig curves and dark spiky Pat Benatar hair.

“I was going to complain about you leaving the door unlocked again,” Jon said, the words sounding empty to him.

“You still think your wicked past may catch up with you someday,” she said, not looking at him.

Jon sat on the bed. “It might. I made enemies.”

She looked up from her packing and gave him a condescending smile. “Don’t go all macho and mysterious on me, or I may just faint. Or puke.”

“What are you mad about?”

“Who said anything about being mad? Look out.” She was moving past him, toward the closet, where she was getting more of her stage clothing, Cyndi Lauper-type apparel, but sexier.

“You seem to be packing.”

“You are one observant little man, aren’t you?”

“Any special reason?”

“I’m leaving. Going.”

“Where?”

“Minneapolis.”

“And do what? Go down on Prince?”

She gave him a cold look. “I got a new gig lined up.”

“What about our new band?”

They’d been rehearsing for about a month with a drummer and a guitar player, both of them college kids from Drake. Toni sang, of course, Jon played keyboards, switching off between an old Vox Continental organ and a Roland synthesizer.

“The new band just isn’t happening, Jon. Those kids aren’t ready to do anything but play weekends. They’re in fucking college, for Godsake!”

“It’s sounding good.”

“Jon, we’re too old to be some top-forty band playing frat parties and bars. I got to get out there and make it, really make it, before my tits start to sag.”

Jon touched her arm. “I’d be glad to lift ’em for you.”

She removed his hand like a bug that had lit. “Don’t start. To you this is just a hobby. To me it’s a career.”

Jon stood, some anger bubbling up through his hurt feelings. “Hobby! I’ve given this thing three years of my life, working in bands with you, driving all over the goddamn country in that lumber wagon of a van, sleeping in roach motels, fencing with moronic club owners. Jesus! What do you want from me?”

She looked at him with something approaching regret. Sighed. Said, “Sit down.”

He frowned at her.

“Sit down,” she said, and she sat on the edge of the bed, pushing the suitcase back out of the way.

He sat, too.

“Jon, this isn’t your dream. Music. It’s always been second place to you. You’ve got your comic book, now. That’s your dream. You’ve realized it.”

“Toni...” He didn’t know what to say, exactly. He supposed she was right, in a way. Music wasn’t the passion of his life: cartooning was. Playing in rock bands was something he’d gotten into in junior high, for the hell of it. He’d only gotten back into music a few years ago, when his efforts to make it in the comics weren’t paying off.

But now he had Space Pirates — a monthly comic book of his own. He wrote it and drew it. Penciled, inked, lettered it. It was a small-press book, for the so-called direct-sales market — which meant his book didn’t get on newsstands, rather went only to the specialty shops catering to the hard-core comic-book fans — and what it was bringing in would, at first anyway, only amount to around eighteen grand a year. Which meant he needed another source of income, and playing in a band with Toni, weekends, could provide that.

“We made a deal, you and I,” Toni said. “We said we’d try to make it together. Really make it. But I don’t think you’re willing, anymore. I think you want to stay in one place and play weekends. You’re holding me back, Jon. You aren’t ready to go back on the road full-time. You can’t, and draw your comic book.”

“Damnit, I tried,” he said, meaning he’d tried to make it in rock with her. “What about the goddamn record?”

With their previous band, the Nodes — which had gone through several incarnations — they had put together an album of original material, thirteen songs written by Jon and/or Toni. This was about a year ago, before Space Pirates, before the Nodes broke up, when they were playing a circuit throughout the Midwest and South, driving a hundred thousand miles or so a year. Like a lot of bands, they had put the album out themselves, when none of the major record companies responded to their tape; and had sold the album at their various performances. Midnight Records in New York, a record store that specialized in offbeat small-label product, had even distributed it to other specialty record shops, and overseas. It had gotten some airplay, on college stations primarily, across the country.

But nothing substantial had come of it, and the frustration of that had led to the group disbanding. Toni and Jon had been putting the pieces back together, these last six months, during which time Jon had placed Space Pirates with a small publisher and was spending more and more time at his drawing board and less and less at his synthesizer keyboard.

“I financed that fucking album,” Jon said, pointing to himself, as if there were some confusion as to who he was talking about.

“I know you did,” she said.

The money he’d spent came from that last job with Nolan; money didn’t come harder earned than that.

“You got some major exposure because of me, Toni. You got some very nice reviews — that guy in The Village Voice said you were ‘distinctive and powerful.’”

She smiled at that; a sad smile. “The exact words of the review,” she said. “You remembered.”

“Yeah. I remember what he said about my songwriting, too, but let’s not get into that.”

Below them the record store’s stereo was booming; they were open Sundays. Springsteen.

“Springsteen,” Jon said.

“Springsteen,” Toni smiled.

“I hate Springsteen,” Jon said.

“What?”

“I never told you before. Kept it to myself.”

“You don’t like the Boss?”

“Never have. New Jersey and cars and off-pitch singing. Who needs it? I know it’s like hating motherhood and apple pie, but there it is.”

“Goddamn,” she said. “Even your musical taste is bad.”

“Sorry you feel that way,” he said. “You’re my favorite female singer.”

“Shut up, Jon,” she said. Sad.

The floor beneath their feet pulsed with Springsteen.

“Tell me about the gig,” he said.

She shrugged. “You weren’t so far wrong. It does have to do with Prince.”

“You’re shitting me.”

Another shrug. “It’s his management company. They heard our record. They like my singing. They came looking for me, tracked me down.”

“I didn’t see any short black guys in purple capes hanging around.”

“Jon, short jokes don’t become you.”

“Hey, Prince is all right with me. I like anybody I can look down to. So. It’s the big time.”

She smiled, nervously. “I don’t know about that. They’re putting me with a band. We’ll be doing some traveling. It’s kind of like playing the minors when they’re grooming you for the majors. Maybe something will come of it.”

He patted her knee. “I’m sure something will. Why were you mad at me, when I came in? Why didn’t you tell me, instead of just starting to pack?”

“You know how I’ve felt about the new band...”

“Sure. I’ve heard the ‘you’re holding me back, Jon’ speech a few hundred times. But I still don’t understand why you were mad at me. I’m the one who should be pissed; I’m the one getting walked out on.”

“But you’re the one who caused it! Jon, you betrayed me.”

“Betrayed...”

She shook her head; the spiky dark hair shimmered. “Ah, hell, that’s too strong a word, but we were supposed to be in this together. It’s your fault we got stalled in Des Moines. It’s your fault a comic book seduced you away from me and music, and your fault that I have to take off without you. Shit, if I thought you wanted it, I would’ve fought to take you with me...”

“They didn’t want me, did they?”

She swallowed. “Jon, I figured you wouldn’t want to come along, anyway. You couldn’t do it without giving up your comic book, and...”

“You’re right. I like doing what I’m doing. Besides, I know it’s you they want. Just you. And I don’t blame ’em. I read the reviews of the album. As a performer/songwriter, I make a great cartoonist.”

“I... I handled this all wrong.”

“There’s no easy way. This place won’t seem the same without you.”

“Jon, uh — you forget. This is my apartment.”

“Yeah?”

“And I rented it from Rick, downstairs, right?” Rick was who Toni worked for in the record store, the manager, the owner of the building.

“Right.”

“And you remember when you and Rick got in that argument?”

“You mean, when we got drunk that time and I told him he liked funk because of ‘liberal guilt’ and he belted me and I belted him back and chipped his tooth? Yeah. I remember that.”

“Good. Then you’ll understand when I tell you that when I told Rick I was leaving, he refused to turn the lease over to you.”

“What?”

“He really hates you.”

“You could’ve sublet to me!”

“I didn’t think of that.”

“Great. How long do I have to get out?”

“Monday.”

“What Monday?”

She winced. “Tomorrow.”

“You mean, you’re evicting me? You’re fucking evicting me?”

“Well... Rick is.”

“Jesus! When... how...”

“Prince’s people called me Friday. I talked to Rick yesterday afternoon.”

He stood; started to pace, the Boss pulsing beneath his feet; he wished he were walking on Rick’s face — he wished he were walking on Springsteen’s face, for that matter.

“I leave for two days,” he said, ranting, raving, “and come back, and my life’s shot to shit!”

Toni seemed genuinely concerned, now. “Jon — you can find someplace to crash. You’ll put things back together soon enough.”

“Christ, I got a deadline to meet with my comic book! I just lost two days in Cedar Rapids being civil to rude little fan boys who would’ve much rather met the guy who draws the X-Men! I have work to do, and you’re telling me I don’t have anyplace to sleep tonight.”

“Tonight you do. He wants you out tomorrow noon.”

“Oh, wonderful. Wonderful. It’s nice to have a little lee-way.”

“You’ll put it back together. Jon, it’s not like we... well, we’re just friends. We’re not lovers.”

“I guess we aren’t,” he said. He sat down again. “But I’m awful used to you.”

“Maybe that isn’t such a good thing. This’ll be good for you.”

“What’ll I do? Where will I crash? Where the hell’s my short-term future, anyway? Never mind the long term.”

She shrugged. “Why don’t you go visit your pal Nolan. In the Quad Cities. Stay with him awhile. It might be relaxing.”

It might at that, Jon thought.

“In the meantime,” she said, wickedly, pulling off her Springsteen sweatshirt, exposing the full firm breasts he would soon be missing very much, “why don’t you fuck me good-bye?”

“What are friends for?” Jon shrugged, pulling off his Space Pirates shirt, quite sure that of the ways he was getting screwed this afternoon, this would be the most pleasant.

5

Family meant everything to Coleman Comfort. Family and money. Not that you could separate the two: Cole’s loyalty to his kin was measured by money, by how good a provider he could be. As a wise man once said, there was no better yardstick of love than money.

Not that he bore the burden on his shoulders alone. He had taught his sons that you had to work in order to find your way in this world. The oldest, Clarence, had gone into construction and was making a fine living for himself and his wife and four kids, till the accident with the crane. Since Clarence’s death, Cole had seen to it that his daughter-in-law got a check every month, or he had till she remarried, to some jerk who owned a motel. He wasn’t bitter about that or anything: he didn’t expect a fine young woman like Wanda to stay single. It was just that the family responsibility had shifted to the jerk.

As for the other boys, he couldn’t complain. Willis would be out of Fort Madison in about a year; the boy had been doing just fine with that chop-shop operation in Dubuque — he just had a thing or two to learn about greasing the law, is all. You can’t run a business without certain expenses, and payoffs was one of them. But, hell. Those two years inside would be just the education Willis would need to get himself back on track.

Lyle, well, he was doing good, considering. Considering he’d inherited both Thedy Sue’s good looks and her meager brainpower.

Thedy, bless her soul, was the prettiest thing Cole ever saw. He’d married her during the war; he was selling tires and such on the black market in Atlanta and she was a backwoods girl come to the big city. She was waitressing but Cole knew she’d fall into hooking if some knight in shining armor didn’t come along, which was Cole Comfort all over. He gave her some nylons and they were married soon after.

Thedy Sue was all Georgia peaches and cream, creamy skin, breasts like peaches, a strawberry blonde with freckles and wide blue empty eyes. Thick as a plank she was, but she kept her looks over the years; never ran to fat. She learned to cook and she had a sweet disposition. What did it matter if she thought two plus two was twenty-two, and signed her name with an X? What counted was she fucked like a monkey, and only with her lawful wedded husband.

She died giving birth to Cindy Lou. Sometimes Cole blamed himself for that; maybe they should’ve gone to a hospital. Hell, it was a fluke, the baby coming out feet-first and all that blood and all. Who could’ve predicted it? Cole had never met a doctor who wasn’t a crook, anyway.

And Cindy Lou, she was the spitting image of her mother. She was her beautiful mother back again, only with something of a brain. It was all he could do to keep his hands off the child. But he did. Or at least had so far. He was weighing it in his mind: who better to educate her to the ways of the world than her pa? Who better to usher her into womanhood than her loving father?

Still, some vestige of his Bible-beating upbringing, back in the Georgia sticks, clung to him. Kept him from certain “forbidden” things. He knew it was bunk; he knew there was no God. He’d looked at the world and he knew it was as pointlessly random and thoughtlessly cruel as a child setting fire to a beetle. He’d looked at the sky and seen stars but sensed nobody up there. No grand design. No meaning to this life, at all, except the meaning you make for yourself, in your life’s work, in your family. Then, dying day would come, and it would all be dust. Sweet Thedy Sue, who never harmed a fly, was dust now, wasn’t she? It was stupid to think of her as being in “Heaven” — she’d have left her body behind, and cooking wouldn’t be called for up there, and a good nature like hers’d be a dime a dozen in celestial circles. What use could any God have for a dope like her?

Heaven was hogwash, but his ma’s teachings sometimes came out of the recesses of his brain to haunt him. But right there with it was the memory of Pa, who put the beating into Bible-beating — literally; he used the Good Book as a weapon, slamming it against the three boys’ bare bottoms, hurling it at them from across a room. His older brother Sam, younger brother Daniel, and Cole himself received his boozing pa’s discipline equally: no favorites. Even now the thought of it sent a hand to Cole’s forehead; the memory of the corner of that big heavy Bible cutting into his temple was still there. So was the scar.

People would come calling and remark at how dog-eared the family Bible was. You Comforts must put it to good use. And Ma would smile modestly and Pa would just sort of snort.

Cole hated the thought of his long-dead pa; he had sworn he’d raise his brood better. He had sworn he’d be a loving father, and he kept his vow. For example, he loved Lyle, and only a truly loving father could love such a dipshit.

What you could say for Lyle was this: he did as he was told. He, and Cindy Lou for that matter (but she was less reliable, by far), had pitched in on the food stamp business. Lyle even came up with an idea, a good idea, although it was an accident.

“You’ll be like a postman,” Cole had said, explaining how Lyle would go to mailboxes and remove food stamp envelopes.

“Will I wear a uniform like a postman?” Lyle asked, with his mother’s wide empty eyes.

Cole could hardly believe his ears. “Goddamn, boy, if that ain’t a hell of an idea!”

“It is?”

It was. Cole had both Lyle and Cindy Lou wear postal employee uniforms when they were out collecting mail; that way, no one would question them going up to mailboxes, moving from this mailbox to that one, in broad daylight.

Acquiring the uniforms had been easy; in two separate communities, Lyle followed first a postman, and then a female postal worker, home. He burgled both houses, taking a lot of things among which were the uniforms. Enough things were stolen to make the missing uniforms get lost in the police-report shuffle; it occurred to no one that the uniforms were the purpose of the exercise. Cole had suggested to Lyle that he rape the woman, to further confuse the issue, but Lyle didn’t want to do that. You had to give the kid that much: he may have been a dim bulb, but he had standards.

And this afternoon, Sunday, Lyle had shown signs of intelligence. Initiative, even.

Cole had been sprawled out on the couch, watching a Chicago Bears football game on the big-screen television, sipping a Stroh’s, when Lyle came slowly down the steps, bare feet slapping the wood. The boy was in his T-shirt and shorts. He’d just gotten up. His curly brown hair was sticking up here and there.

“Morning, Pa,” Lyle said, standing at the foot of the stairs. Stretching.

“Afternoon, son. You slept in.”

Lyle yawned; sighed. “Guess so. Got in kinda late.”

“I heard you get in. How did it go?”

“Mr. Corliss was no trouble.”

“Didn’t think he’d be. Look at that nigger! Can he hit!”

“He was hard to drag.”

“What?”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to innerupp your game.”

Cole sat up; something was troubling the boy. He patted the place next to him on the couch. Turned the sound down with the remote control. “Sit down, son. I don’t mean not to give credit where credit is due. I been taking you for granted.”

Lyle smiled, shyly. “Aw, Pa...”

Cole slipped an arm around the boy’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you. You took care of all of ’em. It wasn’t no picnic, I know that. It’s messy work. It’s work only a real man can do. I’m right proud.”

“Pa, I saw somebody.”

Cole squinted. “You mean somebody saw you...?”

Lyle shook his head no, emphatically. “No, no. Nobody saw me with Mr. Corliss. That road’s real deserted. It’s hard dragging a fat man like that, though. The ground was cold, too. Lots of roots in the earth. Hard digging a hole.”

The boy’s mind did wander, even if it didn’t have far to go. “Well, I’m sure you were up to the job, son. Now what do you mean, you saw somebody?”

“Do you remember a man named Nolan?”

A red-hot poker seared through Cole Comfort’s brain. His hands turned into fists and through teeth clenched tighter than Kirk Douglas overacting he said, “Do I remember a man named Nolan?” He stood. He looked at his knuckle-headed son through a red haze. “He only killed your uncle. He only killed your two cousins. Are you telling me you saw Nolan?”

Lyle shrugged. “I think so. I only seen him that one time.”

Cole and his brother Sam had been in on an armored car job with Nolan, in Ohio; this was five years ago, anyway, and Lyle hadn’t been old enough to play. But they’d met once, for one of the planning sessions, in a house where the Comforts were staying, Sam and his sons Billy and Terry, and Cole and his boys and girl. So Lyle had seen Nolan. And he’d certainly heard Cole talk about him often enough.

“Was it him?”

“Pa, don’t! You’re hurting me!”

Cole hadn’t realized he was gripping the boy’s arms; but he was: his hands were squeezing the boy’s biceps red, then white.

“I’m sorry,” Cole said, but didn’t let go and didn’t lessen his grip. “Was it him?”

“He seemed older.”

The stupidity of that remark brought Cole back to his senses, more or less, and he let loose of the boy and rubbed his own face with one hand, as if trying to wash away the frustration of having raised such a thick child, and said, “You saw him five or more years ago, Lyle. Of course he looked older.”

“He was fatter. Just his tummy.”

“Middle-aged men can get a spread, boy. You’ll learn about it, should you ever reach middle age. What else?”

“He has a thing on his lip.”

“A thing on his lip? What, a cold sore?”

“No, a whachamacallit. A mustache.”

Cole let some air out; Thedy Sue, your son’s dimmer than you. “He wasn’t wearing a mustache when you saw him, five or so years ago. But he’s been known to wear one.”

“So you think it could’ve been him?”

“I think it could’ve been him. Where was this?”

“Davenport. Near Interstate 80. A bar. Well, it was a restaurant, too. Pretty big place. Kinda fancy. Not snooty, but nice. Good place to pick up women.”

“Go on.”

“I think he might be the owner or manager or something. The woman who met me at the door — uh, what would she be called?”

“The hostess.”

“Yeah. Right. She was talking to him a lot. And he was talking to the bartender, back behind the bar. Customers don’t do that.”

That pleased Cole; that was more or less a perception, and perceptions were rare where Lyle was concerned.

“What was this place called?”

“Nolan’s.”

Suddenly Cole wished he were a religious man; then he’d have a Bible handy he could hurl at the boy.

“And you’re wondering if this might have been Nolan?” Cole said through his teeth. “A guy managing a place called Nolan’s?”

Lyle shook his head. “Pa, I been through Davenport before. That place has been called Nolan’s for a long time. I don’t think it was named after your Nolan.”

“Our Nolan,” Cole corrected. He put a tight hand on Lyle’s shoulder. “He’s our Nolan, son. He’ll be all ours, soon.”

“You better make sure it’s him. I don’t want to go killing people unless there’s cause.”

Standards. The boy had standards. There was hope for him yet.

Cole stood up; he shut off the giant-screen TV with the remote control and began to pace.

“Lyle, you must understand... this Nolan is a bad man. You know how I feel about the son of a bitch, but I never told you, exactly, what he did. Do you want to know what he did?”

“Sure, Pa.”

“Several years ago him and another man... a young man, about your age... went to your uncle Samuel’s farmhouse in Michigan; they went there to rip him off. Now, one rule you got to learn, son, you don’t steal from other guys in the business; it just ain’t done — or if you do, leave scorched earth, not survivors.”

Lyle nodded at the logic of that.

“See, Nolan worked with Sam before, and me, and we never did him dirt, never pulled a cross, nothing. He had no grudge against us. A friend of his did, though, and the fucker used that as a half-ass excuse to rip Sam off. He and this kid, Jon something, tossed some smoke grenades in the house and made it look like there was a fire.”

“Gee,” Lyle said.

“Your uncle didn’t believe in banks any more’n I do,” Cole said. The Comforts had robbed a few too many financial institutions to trust in them. “Sam kept all his money at home, cash, same as us, in a strongbox. And this he grabbed, when he thought his place was on fire, and run outside, right into the waiting arms of this cocksucker Nolan. Billy, your cousin, your young cousin, got wise to the smoke screen and was about to sneak up and put a pitchfork in this little prick Jon, when Nolan shot him. Shot him! Killed him! Your cousin Billy! What kind of man is he?”

Lyle shook his head in disbelief.

“Your uncle was fighting back, fighting for his life, when this kid, this Jon, fucking shot him. So Nolan and the kid left your uncle to bleed to death, but Sam was a tough old cookie, and he fooled ’em. He lived. And when his son Terry — your cousin Terry — got out of jail on that statutory rape charge a few months later, they went looking for Nolan, and Jon. And you know what become of your uncle and cousin?”

“They were killed,” Lyle said.

Cole nodded frantically, sneered. “Shotgunned and framed for a bank heist that Nolan and this kid pulled! To this day the cops think your uncle and cousin robbed that bank, when those sons of bitches not only killed your kin but walked away with the take.”

“Something has to be done,” Lyle said.

Cole walked over and put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “You’re absolutely right, boy. And we’re just the ones to do it.”

“Shouldn’t we get the money back, too?”

“The money?” Cole said. Sitting again.

“From the bank robbery. He looks sort of rich.”

“Rich? Nolan?”

“That restaurant. I think maybe he owns it.”

“You may have a point.” Cole wasn’t used to this, Lyle thinking. “Hmmm. Tell me more about his restaurant.”

“Well,” Lyle said, brow furrowed, the strain of thought starting to show, “it’s in a shopping place...”

“Shopping place?”

“You know — a mall? Right up at the front.”

“A mall,” Cole said. Smiling. “A shopping mall...”

A chirpy female voice cut in: “Are we going shopping?”

It was Cindy Lou, barefoot on the stairs, in a pink baby doll, not sheer but you could see her little nipples trying to poke through; she’d slept in, too. Her strawberry blond hair, Thedy Sue’s hair, was tousled sexily.

“Are we?” she repeated, leaning against the banister. “Going shopping?”

“I think maybe we are,” smiled her pa.

6

Sunday night, at 11:37 (give or take a second), Nolan sat up in bed, two pillows propped behind him, the lamp next to the bed on; he was reading Las Vegas travel brochures, looking for a bargain. There were three travel agents in the Chamber of Commerce, so he’d get a discount either way. But he wanted the best package.

He hadn’t been to Vegas in years, and it would be an interesting trip; he probably wouldn’t recognize the Strip — he heard the casinos were side by side there, now, jammed together, no breathing room. He had mixed emotions about that — he’d always liked having some space between casinos, liked the sprawl of that, glittery sin leisurely strung out along a desert road. But he had no argument with success, or the change it brought. Progress was progress; money was money.

The best package seemed to include the Flamingo, which almost made him smile. All roads led to the Family. He’d met Bugsy Siegel once; he’d come in the Rush Street Club with Campagna. Hell of a nice guy, Siegel was; charming. Campagna, on the other hand, Little New York himself, while nice enough, seemed menacing in that quiet way that meant the worst. Nolan had known, just looking at them, that neither of these guys was anybody to cross.

He’d also been to the Flamingo in the fifties several times, ’51 the first time; but that was several years after the Family cashed Bugsy’s chips in. The Fabulous Flamingo, Bugsy’s dream, his pink palace which gave birth to the modern Vegas Strip, was in the red, in the early days, and word was he was skimming to sink dough back in the joint, cheating his Family friends/investors, like Accardo and Ricca and, out East, Lansky. So they killed him.

It would be fun to go back to the Flamingo, with all its memories. And it seemed to be the best buy, too.

The Vegas trip was Sherry’s idea; she’d never been there and it sounded exciting to her. She deserved a vacation, so he figured why not — you only live once. What she was having trouble understanding was Nolan’s attitude about gambling: he didn’t. Not in Vegas, not in any casino, with the exception of poker, if he was in the right mood. Any other game was out of the question. Nolan never thought about it, but his life was lived by a strict set of rules, and one of the strictest was: You never play against the house.

Nolan put the travel brochures on the nightstand and turned off the lamp; he sat in the dark, naked under the covers, hands folded on his plump belly, which looked plumper than it was, contrasted with the rest of his lean, scarred, muscular frame.

He was waiting for Sherry. This was the ritual, on the nights they made love, which was perhaps every other night, except in her period, of course.

She would say, “I’ll meet you in the bedroom in five minutes.” He would say fine, and would slip downstairs to shower in the can, off the guest bedroom. She would be upstairs, readying herself. Bath; diaphragm; makeup; perfume. The perfume was this hundred-and-fifty-buck-an-ounce shit from Beverly Hills, which even with his fifteen percent discount from Petersen’s was a crock. His Christmas gift to her last year. It did smell good.

Within the specified five minutes, Nolan would be between the sheets; nothing but him and his Old Spice, powder and after-shave both. Another ten to fifteen minutes would pass, during which he would either read or think. He didn’t mind the wait; he liked time to himself, and with all the hours he was putting in at Nolan’s, ten minutes here, fifteen minutes there, meant something. He found these lulls relaxing. Calming.

Just about when he’d given up, she’d appear in the doorway, her slim, curving form a silhouette against the hall light behind her. Sometimes she’d switch on the overhead bedroom light and be naked for him. Most women are beautiful in the dark; Sherry was beautiful with the lights on. Her legs were long, sleek — not muscular, not fleshy — sleek. Supple. Her waist was impossibly narrow. Her breasts were full, nipples very pink against her creamy white flesh, translucent flesh gently marbled blue, life flowing through her. The hair between her legs was darker blond than the hair on her head, but just as well tended; she trimmed the bush, brushed it — he’d seen her do this, from time to time; this is for you, she’d say, smiling wickedly. Driving him crazy.

The only imperfection was an appendix scar, and this, too, he liked: it made her human. Her breath was very bad in the morning, like anybody else; and without her makeup she was better than plain but less than pretty. He liked that too. He liked the fantasy of his bedroom but he also liked the reality of daily life with her, a smart, funny cookie who was getting good at helping him run his business.

Tonight she didn’t switch on the light, as she stood in the bedroom doorway; tonight she was in a red and black corset affair, breasts almost spilling out the top, mesh black stockings that rose to midthigh; beneath the corset, silhouetted, was her pubic fringe. The sheet between his legs rose to salute her.

She came over and flipped the covers back and, sitting on the edge of the bed, leaned over and put him in her mouth; he closed his eyes and began to believe in a life after death.

Then she climbed on top of him and rode him till they both came; it took a while, a nice while. She tumbled off to one side and Nolan reached over to the bed stand and got them both some tissues.

“I love to fuck you,” she said.

“I hate it,” he said.

She kissed him and snuggled close. “Sometimes I just have to do that — take charge of you.”

“A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”

She kissed his shoulder. “I get tired of you dominating me all the time. Sometimes I just have to strike back.”

“Feel free to get back at me this way anytime.”

“I wonder if it would be any less fun?”

“What?”

“Making love. After we were married.” That again.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never been married.”

“Me either. Have you been giving it some thought?”

He had been.

“Not really,” he said.

“I think maybe we should. Get married.”

“Oh?”

“For your standing in the community, if nothing else. You’re a respectable businessman. Living with a young woman.”

“In sin,” he added.

“In sin,” she smiled.

“I could adopt you.”

“Incest is against the law.”

“Well we can’t have that, can we. Breaking the law.”

“That’s right — you’re reformed.” Sherry was well acquainted with Nolan’s criminal past.

“I’m a different man, now,” he said.

“Do you really think so?”

“Sure. I like crossing the street with the light. It’s a whole new thing.”

“You never miss it? The excitement?”

Sometimes.

“Never,” he said.

“I bet you had a lot of women.”

“Yes, but you were my first virgin.”

“Very funny.”

“When did you lose your virginity?”

“Junior high.”

“Some young stud.”

“No. One of my teachers.”

“Dirty old man, then. Should’ve been shot.”

“Not really. He seemed old, at the time, but I think he must’ve been about twenty-three. He was married, but unhappy. He got a divorce, later. Wonder what became of him?”

“Doesn’t seem like a memory you’re troubled

“I’m not. He was cute. He screwed me on his desk. A bunch of times.”

“I don’t think I want to hear this.”

“Are you jealous?”

“Are you lying?”

Getting screwed on a teacher’s desk sounded like a Penthouse magazine letter to Nolan.

“No,” she said. “I’ve always liked boys.”

“It sounds to me like you’ve always liked men.”

“Yeah. I always went with the older guys. In junior high, it was high school guys, once I broke up with the teach. In high school, I went with college boys. And I always put out.”

“Are you bragging?”

“No. I just want you to know something — you’re the first man I’ve ever been with who’s made an honest woman out of me.”

“I haven’t married you yet.”

“I don’t mean it like that. I never lasted with anybody more than a few months; then I’d get bored. It took you to settle me down, Nolan. I haven’t wanted anybody but you, since the day we met.”

For a second there, Nolan expected violins; but there weren’t any. That was a relief.

“What are you going to tell me next?” he said. “That the time we were apart, you were faithful to me, too?”

“Of course not. But I’ve stayed faithful to you, since the day I moved into this house. And I’ll stay faithful to you till the day you boot me out.”

“That day won’t come, doll.”

She smiled on one side of her face; she liked being called “doll.” She told him, once, she liked those old-timey sounding terms of endearment. Doll. Baby. Sweetheart. Nolan didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Have you been faithful to me?” she asked.

Yes he had.

“What you don’t know won’t hurt you,” he said, and kissed her forehead.

“You don’t have to marry me,” she said.

“You’re not pregnant, then?” He blew air out, as if relieved.

“You’re a riot, Nolan. I just mean, I’ll stay here, whatever the case. Till...”

“Till I boot you out. Right. Well, we’ll think about this marriage thing. There’s things to consider, you know.”

“Such as?”

“Our respective ages. I’m better than twice yours.”

“I don’t care.”

“What if we had children?”

“What if we did?”

“I don’t like the idea of going to my kid’s graduation in a wheelchair.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Not silly; realistic. In ten years you’ll be in your thirties and I’ll be in my sixties.”

“I don’t care.”

“In about fifteen years, you’ll come through that doorway in a Frederick’s nightie and nothing will happen under these covers.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’d be like raising the dead.”

She slipped her hand down between his legs. “I’ve been known to perform miracles.”

She was in the process of performing one when the doorbell rang. Her head jerked out of his lap and she said, “Damn.”

“Maybe they’ll go away,” he said, and guided her head back down.

But the mood was broken, and the bell was ringing.

“Goddamn,” she said, getting out of bed.

“I’ll get it,” Nolan said. “You get back in bed.”

He put his brown silk dressing robe on, ten percent discount from Mosenfelder’s, and walked down the hallway. He stopped halfway, and went back into the bedroom, where Sherry was standing cinching the belt on a white knee-length terry-cloth robe.

“What?” she said.

The doorbell was still ringing.

“Sunday night,” he said. “It’s almost twelve-thirty.”

“So?”

“Who comes calling Sunday night at twelve-thirty?” He pulled open a drawer on the nightstand by the bed and got out his long-barreled .38.

“Nolan...”

“It’s probably nothing,” he said, and, gun in hand, walked back down the hall.

The doorbell rang again, and this time Nolan cracked the door and looked out, 38 tight in his hand, flat against the door, out of sight from whoever was standing out there.

Whoever was standing out there turned out to be a short, curly-headed mustached kid in a long navy woolen coat with a wide turned-up collar.

Jon.

Jon with a mustache, Nolan thought, stroking his; I’ll be damned.

He was standing there with two suitcases on the cement next to him, looking very tired, very bleary-eyed, looking like a truck driver who had just pulled an all-night run and forgot his No-Doz. Even the wispy excuse for a mustache seemed droopy.

Nolan unlatched the door and swung it open.

“What the fuck,” he said.

“Hello to you, too, Nolan,” Jon said, smiling a little. “Is that a gun, or are you just glad to see me?”

“Just a second,” he said. Nolan leaned over to the nearby doorless doorway to the kitchen and laid the .38 gently on the counter, next to a toaster.

Back in the front doorway, he said to the kid, “What are you doing here?”

“Freezing my nuts off on your front landing. Can I come in?”

“Why not.”

He helped the kid with his bags.

“My drawing board and some other stuff’s in the van,” Jon said, as Nolan shut the door behind him. “It can wait till tomorrow.”

“What is this, kid?”

“I got kicked out of my apartment. I didn’t have anyplace to go. I was hoping I could chill out here for a few days.”

“What does ‘chill out’ mean?”

Jon was all but asleep on his feet. “I want to stay here, awhile, Nolan. Get my act together.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“That depends on your definition. Is somebody trying to kill me? Not that I know of; the Comforts are dead, remember? And the cops never got a make on us, that I know of. I have a normal life now. The kind of life where people don’t shoot at you, but your girlfriend walks out and your landlord evicts you and you don’t even have a band to play in anymore and...”

Nolan guided him by the arm to a soft modular chair in the nearby, big, open living room. “You’re dead, aren’t you, kid?”

“More or less. It’s a pretty long drive, and I had a pretty long day before I started it. Hey, uh, I tried to call; no answer. I figured you were working.”

Nolan, standing near the chair the kid sat in, shrugged. “I took Sherry to a movie this afternoon,” he said. “I don’t put the answer machine on, on Sundays. It’s my day off.”

Jon yawned, grinned. “Christ, you’re leading a normal life, too, aren’t you? Your day off. You went to a movie. I can’t picture that. What did you see?”

“Something with a woman named Street.”

“Street?”

“I think that was it. She had a big nose.”

“Oh, Streep. Was it good?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I slept.”

“Now that restores my faith in you.”

“Your girlfriend walked out. Who, Toni?”

Toni and Nolan had met, briefly, a year ago or so.

“Yeah,” Jon said. He explained about the big break Toni had gotten, with Prince’s people.

“That shorty faggy black guy?” Nolan asked.

“That’s him.”

“You can sell people anything,” Nolan said, struck by the wonder of it.

Jon was blinking, trying to stay awake. “You mentioned Sherry. You’re still with Sherry.”

“Still with Sherry.”

“I never met her,” Jon said.

“You have now,” Sherry said; she was standing at the end of the hallway in her short terry robe.

“Pleased to meet you,” Jon said, eyes momentarily a little wide. Even with her hair messed up, as it was now from their lovemaking, Sherry was a handsome woman.

Sherry walked over and offered Jon her hand; Jon stood, shook the hand, smiled at her, apologized for barging in.

“I’m beat,” he said. “I just need to crash somewhere.”

“There’s a bedroom downstairs,” she said.

“I know,” Jon said. “Two of them, actually.” He’d roomed there awhile, when Nolan first moved in, before Sherry was called on the scene.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Sherry said, arms folded.

“I find that hard to believe,” Jon said. “What did Nolan tell you about me? No. Never mind. I need a good night’s sleep before I can deal with that.”

“I’ll get your bags,” Nolan said.

“No, no,” Jon said.

“I’ll get your bags,” he repeated; he had them in his hands, now.

“No use arguing with Nolan,” Jon told Sherry.

Jon followed Nolan down the open stairs off the living room into the big open rec room, where a competition-size pool table and a wet bar dominated, and down the hall to the right, to the guest bedroom.

“I appreciate this, Nolan,” Jon said, flopping on the bed. The sparsely furnished room had three light blue plaster walls and one wall that was strictly closet with wood sliding doors.

“No problem,” Nolan said.

“I, uh... may need to stay a week.”

“No problem.”

“You really are a good friend, Nolan, underneath it all.”

Nolan said nothing. Then he turned to go.

Jon said, “Thanks, Nolan. G’night.”

“Night, kid.”

Nolan stepped out into the hall; then he peeked his head back in and said, “Kid?”

“Yeah?”

“Lose the mustache.”

7

Two weeks later, on a colder Sunday night, snow on the ground, Sherry was feeling pissed.

She had been invaded. It was as simple as that. This Jon person shows up, out of the blue, and simply moves in. Just like that. Like he fucking owned the place.

The screwy thing was, he and Nolan weren’t even particularly nice to each other. They rarely spoke. They went their own way. On no occasion in the two weeks since he’d been there had Jon ever eaten a meal with them — with the exception of Thanksgiving, last week. She’d made a turkey and all the fixings, a rarity, since she seldom cooked; she and Nolan ate at restaurants, sometimes their own, on weeknights, after the dining room closed; but more often one of the many other restaurants in the Cities: Nolan’s accountant had confirmed that if he ate his meals at rival restaurants, he could deduct the meals, on a basis of “checking out the competition.” So when Sherry made the grand gesture of actually cooking a meal at home — particularly something as elaborate as a turkey dinner — she would like to have the sullen son of a bitch all to herself, at least.

But, nooooooo — this “kid” (as Nolan called him — though he seemed to be in his mid-twenties) had to join them. Jon was polite enough, and praised the meal, more overtly than Nolan (but that was no big deal — her man was as stingy with his praise as he was with his money) but what little table talk there was was confined to the football game the two of them had just watched, that and the football game they would watch next, into the evening! Men. It was hard enough living with one — now she was living with two!

She and Jon had barely spoken as the days turned into weeks; he seemed to be avoiding her — and when he couldn’t avoid her, when he came face-to-face with her, he’d give her a twitch of a smile and avoid her eyes, avoid looking at her, as if he couldn’t bear to, as if she were something horrible to look upon.

It was early Sunday evening, and she was driving back to the house after a long afternoon of solitary shopping, at Brady Eighty’s chief rival, North Park. She had shopped there primarily to figuratively thumb her nose at Nolan. It drove him crazy when she shopped anywhere but Brady Eighty, because of the discounts she could get at their “home” mall. Normally, she lived and let live where his tight streak was concerned; after all, he provided a good home for her, and paid her a salary, a generous one, for her hostessing at Nolan’s. So she had her own money.

But she relished the pained look that would register on that Lee Van Cleef mug of his, when he saw the sacks from North Park stores.

“They don’t have a Limited at Brady Eighty,” she’d explain innocently, shrugging.

And he’d shake his head, eyes wide.

Childish of her, she supposed, as she tooled her midnight-blue Nissan 300 ZX across the bridge at Moline; the river tonight was smooth, shimmering with ivory, reflecting the three-quarter moon that rode the sky like a gray-smudged broken dinner plate. The fuel-injected toy she drove had been Nolan’s gift to her last Christmas. She felt a fool, and an ungrateful one at that, for considering him a Scrooge.

Who cared why he had affection for Jon? He clearly had it, despite his surly treatment of the “kid.” And Jon clearly looked up to Nolan, despite his efforts to stand up to him and be equally surly.

She knew the story. She knew Jon had been the nephew of a man named Planner, an old guy who ran an antique shop in Iowa City, who on antique-buying jaunts would seek out, scope out and scheme out what Nolan referred to, euphemistically, as “institutional jobs.” Robberies was what they were, and when Nolan had been on the outs with those Chicago gangsters, Planner had helped him line up “one last job,” asking Nolan to take Jon along, his green, young nephew, whose criminal experience had been limited to a couple of gas station stickups with several wild friends. As a favor to Planner, and out of desperation, Nolan had undertaken the job — a bank robbery — with Jon and those two wild friends, one of them a young woman who worked at the bank in question. The “job” had gone well enough, but shortly thereafter, the Chicago gangsters descended on Nolan, who got shot up, bad.

Jon, however, had stuck around after the “job” and spirited the wounded Nolan away, to safety and a doctor.

Maybe it was that simple — Jon had saved Nolan’s life, once; maybe that was what linked them. She knew, too, that the old antique shop guy, Planner, had later been killed by the Chicago people, and that Nolan felt responsible, and seemed to have taken the “kid” under his wing, after that. They’d pulled a couple more jobs and faded into separate, straight lives: Nolan with Nolan’s, Jon with this rock ’n’ roll band he traveled with.

He was also a cartoonist, Jon was, and apparently his rock ’n’ roll band had split up and his creative energy was being channeled into comic books, at the moment. He had set up a corner of the rec room downstairs, by the sliding glass doors facing the swimming pool (covered over with plastic now), where he could work in “natural light,” he said. He had a drawing board where he worked on big sheets of heavy white paper, drawing in pencil, then going over it in ink. He was really quite good — the drawings were realistic but pleasantly goofy; it was something about outer space, sort of a skewed Star Trek. She had found one of the comic books lying around and she had read it and found it amusing. She would hate to admit that, but she did find it amusing.

He was no trouble. None at all. Quiet. Living his own life. He filled the little refrigerator behind the bar with little cans of orange juice, which seemed to be his only breakfast. She didn’t know where he took his other meals — he was in and out, driving Nolan’s Trans Am, while his own vehicle, an old light blue Ford van from his band days, was at a nearby service station for some work. What he was doing with his time away from the house, she had no idea. Mostly he spent long, long hours at the drawing board.

The problem wasn’t Jon. The problem was his presence. This Las Vegas trip was coming up in two weeks. She had counted on having a month with Nolan to work on him. To put her plan in motion. To put it simply, her plan was to get Nolan to marry her — “on the spur of the moment” — in Vegas. In one of those charmingly sleazy little wedding chapels she’d read about. She would orchestrate it so it was his idea. Nolan was the kind of man who only acted on his own ideas; she knew that well — she’d been giving him ideas to have ever since she met him.

But having that extra person in the house was throwing things off kilter. Their sex life was off — she was uncomfortable having sex while somebody else roamed the house. Even though Jon stayed downstairs, she found herself trying not to make noise, during lovemaking, not wanting Jon to hear. Why she cared, exactly, she didn’t know; but she did. It bothered Nolan too, whether he knew it or not — their little ritual was undone: he could no longer go downstairs to shower while she luxuriously bathed and readied herself for him. They had to share the bathroom, and sharing a bathroom is a sure way to kill the mystery.

She loved this man so. He was all she had in the world; both her folks were gone, and her life without him had been a mess: a failed attempt at college; working as a waitress at a Denny’s, for Christ’s sake. To every other guy she’d ever known she was just a piece of ass. Nolan treated her like a person, with a certain unspoken respect. And he treated her like a piece of ass, too, when the time was right, and she liked that as well.

She wanted his name. She wanted his child. She wanted the whole traditional nine yards.

God, he was good in bed. She loved that musclely, hairy, scarred body of his. She knew the map of him like the expert traveler she was — it excited her to think that knives and bullets and years had conspired to make the slightly surreal work of art that was his body. She even liked the potbelly; it showed he was human after all.

She was well aware that Nolan was a father figure to her. She’d always liked older men; she’d always had a crush on her own father, a steelworker, a tough, grizzled, silent man who had never once told her he loved her, but she knew he did. Like she knew Nolan loved her. Even if he hadn’t ever said it, goddamn him.

When her father died, six months ago, and she went home to the funeral, alone, having told Nolan not to come, she stood at the grave and said good-bye to her one father and went back to the ranch-style house in Moline to be with her other father.

Coming back from her father’s funeral, she’d decided: she was going to marry Nolan. It had been a long, slow, steady campaign; only recently had she openly tipped her hand. And he had reacted well. He would come through. All he needed was the right coaxing, the right stroking, the right nudging...

And now, two weeks till Vegas, there was a monkey wrench in the works, a short, blond monkey wrench named Jon.

Yesterday she’d finally talked to Jon about it. Saturday afternoon — Nolan’s didn’t open till five o’clock, and they didn’t go down there Saturdays till four-thirty — Nolan and his golfing buddies were upstairs watching some basketball game on the twenty-seven-inch Sony. She had slipped downstairs where Jon was hunched at his drawing board; the drapes on the wall of windows and sliding doors were drawn, letting in the light of an overcast day, the trees that surrounded their backyard, and its pool, were brown and gray and skeletal, touched with snow.

“How can you see?” she asked him.

He glanced up from his work at her, and immediately back at it; he was inking a penciled bug-eyed monster who was clutching a half-naked female space person in one clawed hand.

“Too busy to get up and turn on the light,” he said, stroking his upper lip, where his mustache had been, squinting at the page as he laid graceful strokes of ink on his penciled drawings.

She turned on the Tiffany-shaded hanging lamp over the pool table.

He smiled, without looking at her, and said, “Thanks.”

She went behind the bar and got herself a Coors Light from among his orange juice cans in the little refrigerator. She was wearing Calvin Kleins, very tight, and a yellow Giorgio T-shirt, and no bra. She looked like a million dollars and goddamn well knew she did. And this little twerp paid her about as much attention as if she were Ma Kettle.

She swigged the beer, mannishly, and crossed her arms on the considerable rack of her breasts. “Am I so tough to look at?” she asked.

He winced; whether it was from confusion or the distraction of being interrupted, she couldn’t tell.

He said, “You’re a knockout. And you know it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He sighed; smiled at her politely. “You’re a dish, okay? Now, I don’t mean to be rude, but if I don’t have this book done by Monday, I’m going to miss deadline. And since I’m paid on publication, my paycheck would in that case be a month late, and I can’t afford that. Excuse me.”

And he turned back to his work.

She swigged the beer again. “How long are you going to be staying?”

“What?”

“How long are you going to be staying?”

He got up from the drawing board and went to the sink behind the bar and ran the water and cleaned his brush. He said, “Do you mean, when am I going to be leaving?”

“Maybe I do.”

“Soon,” he said, passing by. He smiled tightly, politely, and sat at the drawing board and dipped the brush in a little black bottle of black ink. He began laying smooth strokes down, bringing the monster and the girl to life.

“You’ve been here two weeks,” she said.

“It’ll be two weeks tomorrow.”

She swigged her beer. “So what’s the story?”

Without looking at her, he said, “The story is I’m behind deadline. I don’t have time to go out and find a place to live right now. I have checked around some, with no luck. Monday, I’ll start making some serious rounds.”

“You’re going to live here in the Quad Cities?”

His eyes stayed on his work. “Just temporarily. I’d kind of like to move out to California, but I just can’t take the time to drive out there, with no place lined up to stay. I have a monthly comic book to produce.”

From behind them, a voice said, “As long as you’re in the Cities, you’ll stay here.”

Nolan.

He was wearing a white shirt, sleeves rolled up, first two buttons open, black-tinged-white hair curling up from his chest; and gray slacks, which fit him snugly. He walked by her without a word. He had such a nice ass. He went over and looked at what Jon was drawing.

“You get paid for that?” he asked.

“Not enough,” Jon said.

Nolan shrugged, then said to Jon, but looking sharply at Sherry, “Don’t waste your money on some hotel room or apartment. Till you’re ready to move on, you’ll stay here.”

“Nolan, I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself...”

“You’re practically a midget. You’ll stay here.”

Jon was shaking his head, smiling but frustrated. “I appreciate you bailing me out like this, Nolan, but fish and company stink in two days. It’s been almost two weeks, and I’m starting to reek.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Nolan said, and went upstairs.

Sherry felt her eyes welling with tears, but it was anger as much as hurt. She swigged the beer; slid open one glass door and stood and looked at the brown plastic covering the pool. She was very cold but she didn’t give a shit. Her nipples dotted the i’s of her yellow Giorgio’s T-shirt. She didn’t care.

“A little cold for a dip, isn’t it?” a voice behind her said.

Jon.

“Go away,” she said.

“Look. I’m sorry.”

“What do you have to be sorry about?”

“You have a right to be mad. I just moved in like I owned the place. You have a relationship going with Nolan. I’m messing that up. I’m sorry.”

“Nobody has a relationship with that man. It’s like having a relationship with a chair.”

Jon touched her arm; she looked at him. He was smiling.

“He’s a fucker,” he said, matter-of-factly. “But he’s our fucker.”

That made her smile, and she allowed Jon to take her by the arm back into the rec room, where she realized, suddenly, she was shivering.

“I’ll be out of here, early next week,” he said. “Soon as I find a place.”

“You don’t have to,” she said. “I’m just feeling bitchy. I get a little irritated, before my period. For three weeks, before.”

He grinned at that, glanced at her chest, glanced away.

Then she understood.

He sat at the drawing board and began to work. “I am moving,” he said. “Soon. That’s been my plan, that’s been my intention. Nolan can’t make me stay.”

She put a hand on his arm. “You’re attracted to me,” she said, rather breathlessly, like she’d just figured out the meaning of life.

He glanced at her, quickly, rolling his eyes. “No kidding.”

“I... I thought you hated me.”

“You could make a man out of Boy George.”

She pulled a barstool over and sat and smiled at him. “I get it, now. You’re afraid of me.”

He sighed. “I’m uncomfortable around you.”

“I make you feel uneasy. And a little guilty.”

“Quit it.”

She was grinning. She liked this. “Because you look at me and certain thoughts go through your mind. We’re about the same age, aren’t we?”

“Give or take a century.”

“And I’m Nolan’s woman.”

“That’s a little arch, isn’t it? Is that how you think of yourself?”

“Sure,” she said. “I love the guy. And you do, too.”

Jon looked at her and made a disgusted face.

“I understand why you’ve been avoiding me,” she said. She slid off the stool, leaving the now-empty can of beer on the bar. “Out of respect.”

“Respect?”

“I’m Nolan’s property.”

“Oh, please...”

“And the one thing in this world neither one of you would steal... is something from each other.”

He looked away from the drawing board; looked at her hard, with a slow, barely-there smile.

“No wonder he likes you,” Jon said. “You’re smart.”

“I got nice tits, too.”

“Yes, and I’d thank you to quit driving me crazy with them. I got work to do.”

She went over to him and held out her hand.

“Friends?” she said.

“Why not?” he said, and shook her hand.

But the handshake lingered, and they both felt the danger. And in a look they told each other that they would still keep their distance.

Now, pulling the blue 300 ZX into the drive, the smudged three-quarter moon painting the landscape ivory, Sherry was confused. Talking to Jon had done no good; she didn’t dislike him, now — but she’d traded her negative feelings for feeling attracted to him. Now she had another man in the house to distract and attract her, complicating the situation even more. She had work to do; she had to concentrate. She had a man to marry. A man she was currently pissed off at, by the way. Yes, she was good and pissed at Nolan — for standing up for Jon yesterday, and quietly putting her in her place.

And despite what Jon said, she had the nagging feeling he’d be underfoot for weeks yet. When was her life going to get back to goddamn normal?

She gathered her Limited sacks and stepped out of the car and somebody grabbed her, a hand slipped over her mouth, an arm looped around her stomach, yanked her into the bushes. Something wet smeared her face and she smelled chloroform.

Somebody was dragging her, through the bushes, over the rough, viny, snowy ground, down the incline; she heard a motor running, a car.

She heard a voice, an older man’s voice, very smooth, very soothing, very folksy, saying, “Nice work, son.”

And a younger voice, an immature voice, said, “Thanks, Pa.”

She saw the moon above, that broken-plate moon, go smudgier and gone.

8

Nolan, getting hungry, walked downstairs and found Jon at the drawing board; the drapes were drawn, but the sliding glass doors let in nothing but night.

“Did Sherry say anything to you about when she’d be getting back?”

Jon reached over and turned the sound down on his portable radio; he’d been listening to an oldies station — “Mack the Knife” continued brassily, but softly.

“She doesn’t say that much to me, Nolan.”

“Hmm.”

“Is she late? What time is it, anyway?”

“After seven. She went shopping. Stores close at five-thirty.”

“Could she have stopped for a bite to eat?”

“Maybe. We were supposed to eat together. But she is ticked at me.”

Jon shrugged, said, “Sorry,” and returned to his work.

Nolan was going up the steps when Jon said, “That’s funny.”

Nolan, one foot on the third step, other foot on the fourth step, said, “What is?”

“I was upstairs stealing a beer out of the kitchen about an hour ago. I thought sure I heard her pull in.”

Nolan thought about that. Then he shrugged, too, and went upstairs.

A little after eight he looked out the front entrance, which was actually a door along the side, as the garage took up the front end of the house; he had to stick his neck out to see the driveway. Which he did, and saw her red Jap sports car.

He also saw the white shopping sacks, scattered on the driveway, like rumpled oversize snowflakes.

He turned his head back into the house and called, “Jon!”

And rushed out into the cold night.

Streetlights and moonlight conspired to make the outside of Nolan’s house as bright as noon. He could see everything — except Sherry. She wasn’t in the car; the rider’s side was locked — the driver’s side wasn’t. He opened the door and reached under the dash and sprung the latch that popped the hood. He felt the engine. It wasn’t warm. This car had been sitting awhile.

He heard Jon’s footsteps crackling on the icy cement behind him; then Jon was next to him, coatless, hands dug in his jeans pockets, breath smoking, saying, “What is it?”

“I’m not sure.”

The drive had been shoveled and salted, but a light snow had fallen that afternoon and he could make out where something — or somebody — had been dragged through the dust of snow. He quickly followed the trail to the edge of the drive, to where the bushes started.

“Fuck,” he said.

Jon had been kneeling, looking at the discarded sacks, one of which contained a Ralph Lauren blouse, another a man’s pale blue Van Heusen dress shirt, another a box of Maud Frizon shoes. Now he joined Nolan.

“What?”

“I think she was dragged through here.” He pointed to the brush; a sort of path had been made, if you looked close: bushes were bent back, branches broken, snowy earth disturbed.

Nolan followed the path, pushing roughly, impatiently, through the foliage, twigs and branches snapping like little gunshots. Jon followed, sometimes taking a branch in the face, as it boomeranged back from Nolan’s forward push.

At the bottom of the incline was the curve of the road that went up into Nolan’s exclusive little housing development; of course that road went in the other direction as well, and the other direction was where Sherry had been taken.

And she had been taken.

“Oil,” Nolan said, pointing to a black puddle glistening on the icy pavement. “A car was parked here awhile. She should have noticed it when she drove by. They were waiting for her.”

“Waiting? Who? What are you talking about?”

Nolan bent and poked around in the snow at the edge of the curb. He found what seemed to be a frozen wad of white tissue or cloth; he picked it up, sniffed it.

“Jesus,” he said.

Jon said, “Will you please quit saying ‘fuck’ and ‘Jesus’ and tell me what the hell is going on?”

He held the thing under Jon’s nose. “Sniff,” he ordered.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Jon said. “Chloroform.”

“They snatched her,” Nolan said.

“Who snatched her?”

“If I knew that,” Nolan said, “I’d know who to kill.”

Cars were streaming by on the nearby cross street, Thirty-fourth, a main thoroughfare. The world was going on as usual.

“Why would anybody kidnap Sherry?” Jon asked, his face contorted with confusion.

“Ransom,” Nolan said. “Somebody thinks I’m rich.”

“What will you do?”

“Pay them off.”

“In what sense do you mean?”

“Every sense you can think of. Let’s go back up to the house. It’s cold out.”

They didn’t walk back up the wooded slope; they walked up the slickly icy street and cut to the right, up Nolan’s drive.

“Are we going to call the police?” Jon said.

Nolan just looked at him.

Jon squinted at him. “Why, do you think this might be something from the past?”

“Maybe.”

“What do we do now?”

“Wait. They’ll call.”

The phone on the kitchen wall rang at 9:37.

“Nolan,” Nolan said.

“Lose something?”

The voice was male, rather soothing; an older man. With a faint, very faint southern accent. Nolan felt sick to his stomach; it was an alarm bell of sorts.

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you know who you’re speaking to?”

“No,” he said.

A warm chuckle. “You will soon enough. Is there some... neutral place we can meet? To discuss terms?”

Nolan thought for a moment. Then he said, “Downtown Rock Island, the Terminal Tap. Next to the bus station.”

“That sounds nice and public. Bring your little friend.”

“My little friend.”

“That curly-headed kid. He’s part of the deal.”

“I can’t speak for him.”

“You better. Twenty minutes?”

The line went dead.

Jon was sitting nearby, perched on the edge of the kitchen table. “Nolan...”

“Sherry is in very deep shit.”

“What’s going on?”

“That was Coleman Comfort.”

Jon’s brow knit a sweater and his mouth dropped to the floor but he said nothing.

“Sam Comfort’s brother,” Nolan explained.

“I didn’t even know Sam Comfort had a brother!”

“Now you do. Cole makes Sam look like Sister Mary Teresa.”

“Oh, Jesus...” Jon’s head was lowered and he was running a hand through his hair.

“He wants you to come to the meet.”

Jon looked up and his eyes were round with fear, panic. “Me?”

“You don’t have to.”

Jon twitched a half smile. “Sure I do.” Then, trying to build Nolan’s confidence back up in him, said casually, “I don’t get invited to enough parties to afford turning down any invitations.”

“Right.”

They took Nolan’s silver Trans Am and on the way he filled Jon in on Coleman Comfort.

“I did one job with him and Sam both,” he said, as they rolled by a peaceful snowy park. “A long time ago. I always felt they would’ve crossed me if they weren’t a little afraid of me.”

“But you never had any real trouble with him,” Jon said, meaning Cole Comfort.

“None before now. But Jon — remember: he thinks we killed his brother.”

Bitterly, Jon said, “Even though we didn’t.”

“He also thinks we killed his two nephews, and he’s a little more justified on that score.”

“Shit, that’s right.” Jon shook his head.

Nolan knew that the kid had done his best to put this part of his life behind him, to forget about the darkness there.

“God help us,” Jon said, “we did kill one of them.”

“Not ‘we,’” Nolan said. “I killed him.”

“Same difference.”

“In Cole Comfort’s mind, yes.”

Jon sighed. Weight of the world.

“Anyway, that’s what this is about,” Nolan said. “Revenge. Sherry may be dead already.”

Jon looked over with some panic back in his face. “But he’s set up a meet in a public place...”

“That may be to throw us off. He’s crazy. He may pull a shotgun from under the table and start blasting.”

“Oh, wonderful. And us unarmed.”

“No,” Nolan said. “There’s a .38 in the glove box. Get it.”

Jon opened the glove box and rustled around; under several maps and behind sunglasses and a flashlight he found a .38, a snub nose.

“Short barrel,” Jon said, checking to see if it was loaded, which it was. “Not your style.”

“Good enough for the car,” Nolan shrugged.

“What about you?”

He took his right hand away from the wheel and patted his gray leather topcoat, where his left arm met his shoulder.

“Is it going to come down to that?” Jon asked. “Shooting it out with some crazy old fucker in a bar?”

“Maybe,” Nolan said.

“And you think she may be dead already.”

“Yes.”

The Terminal Tap was a dump — a narrow dingy dark hole where stale, smoky air mingled with loud country western music; half of the usual neon signs and plastic beer signs were burnt out. So was most of the clientele, which seemed largely blue-collar, probably out-of-work blue-collar mostly, considering the Quad Cities economy. Comfort wasn’t there yet, at least not at a booth or table or at the bar. Nolan checked both the men’s and women’s cans, his gun in his overcoat pocket, and a woman fluffing her bouffant glared at him in the mirror and said, “Do you mind?”

Then Nolan and Jon took a back booth. A pockmarked barmaid of thirty-seven or so in a checked blouse and too much makeup and badly permed mousy brown hair took time out from chewing her gum to take their order. Nolan said, “Anything draw,” and Jon nodded the same.

“Okay,” she said, but Nolan grasped her arm. He held up a ten-dollar bill for her to see.

“What’s that for?” she asked. She had brown eyes. Pretty eyes under a shitload of makeup.

“This booth next to us, and this table,” Nolan said. “They’re empty.”

“Yeah,” she said, “right. So?”

“So keep it that way,” he said, and pressed the bill into her hand.

“Sure,” she shrugged, smiled briefly at Nolan. It wasn’t busy. She’d have no trouble keeping them clear.

The beers arrived in five minutes, and in ten so did Coleman Comfort.

He was a tall, lean, white-haired man with a craggy but almost handsome face. He was wearing a western-style denim jacket with yellow pile lining and an off-white Stetson-type hat with a rattlesnake band; he stood just inside the door, pulling off heavy gloves, stamping the snow off his cowboy boots, unsnapping the denim jacket, revealing a blue plaid shirt, looking for Nolan.

Nolan leaned out of the booth and crooked a finger.

Comfort grinned like a wolf and came to them, slowly, holding his fur-lined leather gloves in one hand, slapping them into the palm of the other.

Comfort stood next to their booth and gloated. His blue eyes crinkled at the corners as he said, “Nolan. Been a long time.”

The jukebox, which was in the corner just across from them, blared a Gatlin Brothers song.

“Sit down,” Nolan said, and motioned for Jon to slide over and make room. That put Jon and the snub nose to Comfort’s right, and Nolan and his long-barreled .38, which was in his left hand, under the table, directly across from Comfort.

“You might’ve ordered me a beer,” Comfort said, eyes narrowed, affecting a mock sad expression, like a friend just a little disappointed in another.

“Don’t fuck around,” Nolan said.

The smile returned, and it was colder than outside. “I’ll do what I please. It’s my goddamn show.”

The pockmarked barmaid came over and Comfort ordered a shot of whiskey. Old Grand-Dad, he insisted.

“Your little girl is just fine,” Comfort said, slapping the gloves nervously against the cigarette-scarred, graffiti-carved wooden tabletop between them. He was still wearing the rattlesnake-banded hat. “Tucked away in a quiet spot, safe and sound. I’m not going to hurt her.”

“Good. What do you want?”

He leaned back against the booth and gestured with a thick, gnarled hand. “You know, when my boy Lyle spotted you — he stopped by your fancy joint, you know, not so long ago — and told me he seen you, well, first thing I thought about was getting even.”

So that was it. You couldn’t live the straight life without something from the past, something bent, turning up now and then. And this time, it was a Comfort.

Nolan said, “I didn’t kill your brother.”

The smile faded. “Don’t shit me, Nolan. You ain’t in any position to shit me.”

Nolan knew trying to reason with a Comfort was like lecturing a tree stump, but he tried anyway. “Your brother and his son Terry tried to hijack a job of ours; they got killed trying, but it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t Jon, who pulled the trigger. It was somebody else on that job, who’s dead, now. So you’re trying to settle a score that doesn’t need settling.”

“Let’s suppose you’re telling me the truth,” Cole Comfort said, his eyes slits. “Even so, it don’t justify you trying to heist Sam at his house that time; you killed Billy in the process, so don’t go talking about scores that don’t need settling.”

Billy Comfort. The redneck pothead who’d been poised to stick a pitchfork in Jon outside Sam Comfort’s rustic digs, when Nolan put two .38 slugs in him, killing him.

“Sam ripped off a partner of mine,” Nolan said, knowing he was fighting a futile battle, but trying anyway. “I was getting his money back for him.”

Comfort slammed a fist on the tabletop; the beers jumped, and Cole’s smile, his cool attitude, fell away to show the rage beneath. “Bullshit! It was no business of yours. You don’t steal from your own kind! It ain’t done. You don’t fuckin’ do it!”

The barmaid brought Cole his whiskey. He paid her, then gulped it down like medicine.

“A lot of people who worked with your brother, over the years,” Nolan said, “just flat out disappeared. The same is true of people who worked with you.”

Cole shook his head, his expression now stern. “I’m a businessman, don’t you forget it. I treat my business associates fair and square.”

The Statler Brothers were booming out of the jukebox.

“What do you want for the girl?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

Astounded by all this, Jon entered the conversation: “Then why in hell did you take her?”

“Inducement,” Comfort said, looking at Nolan, not Jon.

“Inducement,” Nolan said.

“You see, we’ve had some bad blood, you and me — all three of us, matter of fact. But that’s bad blood under the bridge, far as I’m concerned.”

“Really.”

He folded his hands. “I have a business proposition for you, Nolan.”

“An offer I can’t refuse.”

“That’s right. Not if you want to see that little piece of tail again.”

“Don’t even think about hurting her.”

Comfort took off the Stetson-like hat and scratched his head, fingers lost in the thick pure white hair. Then he put the hat back on and said, “Oh, I don’t think it’s gonna have to come to that. I think you’d have wanted to go in with me on this job in any event — but, just in case, because of the bad blood, I took the girl for inducement sake.”

“Get to the point.”

“Like I said — revenge crossed my mind. I won’t lie to you and say otherwise. But then I thought, Cole — stealing well is the best revenge. Ain’t that the truth?”

“Point being?”

Cole Comfort’s smile was a crease in his leathery face; his eyes twinkled, like a psycho Santa Claus. “I spent some time, recently, at that fancy mall of yours.”

“It’s not mine.”

“Sure it is — you got your restaurant there. You know all about that place, and what you don’t know, you can find out. I watched you. You got friends. You’re a regular pillar of the community, ain’t you, Nolan? They love you — butchers, bakers, candlestick makers. Bankers, too.”

“So what?”

“I have a dream,” he said, and it wasn’t Martin Luther King’s. “I think maybe everybody who ever was in a shopping mall has had this dream — namely, what would it be like to have the place to yourself some night? To just go shopping from store to store, taking what you want, and best of all — not paying for anything.”

“That’s an interesting dream. But maybe it’s time you woke up, Cole.”

He smiled big. “Dreams come true, sometimes. You’re going to help me make mine come true. You’re going to help me go shopping at Brady Eighty. We’re going to loot the entire goddamn place.”

Jon said, “You can’t be serious.”

But Nolan knew he was.

Cole Comfort, waving a hand in the air, grandiosely, said, “We’re going to bring trucks in, semis, right into loading docks. We’re going to steal every appliance and electronic plaything in the place. We’ll hit the bank; the jewelry stores. We’re going to empty everything but the pet store, and if one of us wants a goddamn dog, well, we’ll take that, too.”

“It can’t be done,” Nolan said.

“Sure it can,” Cole said. He painted an air picture with a sweep of a gnarled hand. “Think of it — an all-night shopping spree — and we leave without paying the bill.”

Silence; silence but for the Oak Ridge Boys, blaring.

“Let the girl go and I’m in.”

“No. First we loot the mall. Then you get the girl.”

Nolan looked at Jon. Jon rolled his eyes.

Nolan said, “When did you plan on taking this shopping spree?”

“Thursday night.”

“What Thursday night?”

“Next Thursday night.”

Jon said, “You’re nuts. You’re fucking nuts.”

Comfort smiled at Jon, a nasty smile. “Children should be seen and not heard,” he told him.

“How do you plan on going about this?”

“Oh, I got some ideas, but most of it, you’re going to figure out, Nolan. You got the inside track, after all. You’re going to run the show, like always.”

“I’m the director,” Nolan said, “and you’re the producer.”

Comfort grinned like a good ole boy. “That’s right. Now, I’ve spent two weeks doing my own homework, and putting things in motion. We’ll have three semis and ten men, ourselves included. Everybody’ll be in town by Tuesday night. We’ll have a great big get-together and you can tell us just how we can get this turkey shot.”

“It’s not enough time.”

“It’ll just have to be. Besides, sooner the job goes down, the sooner you get your piece of tail back.”

“Don’t call her that.”

“I’ll call her what I like.”

“You do what you think is best, Cole.”

“You’re in, then?”

“I’m in.”

“And the kid?”

“Ask him yourself.”

Comfort looked at Jon and Jon said, “I’m in.”

Comfort put both hands on the table and pushed out of the booth, smiling. He tipped his snake-banded hat to them. “Thank you, gentlemen. You’ll be hearing from me.”

“Cole.”

“Yes?”

“If the girl is returned with so much as her hair mussed, I’ll shoot you in the head.”

“Will you, now?”

Nolan just looked at him.

Comfort’s smile disappeared, and then so did he, out into the cold night.