Authors: Max Allan Collins
“Yeah, I know. You’re a tough guy. You told me that, too.”
“Please,” he said. “You’re twisting the knife.”
“Okay, okay. Logan?”
“What?”
“Are you?”
“Are I what?”
“A tough guy?”
“Sure. I eat babies.”
“I hope that’s another joke.”
“Well, it is. Sort of.”
“I been wanting to ask you something for a long time.”
“Ask.”
“Where’d you get all the funny scars?”
“Don’t ask.”
She accepted that graciously, taking a swallow of milk and smiling at him with a milk mustache. “See you later, Logan. I’ll be sunning.”
“At the pool.”
“Right.”
They said good-bye to each other.
When Nolan knocked at Felix’s door, somebody else answered. It was a balding, babyface guy in a light green coat with a dark green tie. There was a dull hardness to the guy’s matching light green eyes, and he was packing a gun under his left arm, though the coat was cut to hide it. The guy looked familiar but Nolan couldn’t place him.
“Come in, come in,” Felix’s silky voice said, from somewhere behind the gunman.
Nolan came in and found Felix sitting on the edge of the big double bed, at its foot. Felix was wearing a lemon sports coat and lemonade tie. His trousers were tan. His face wasn’t gray this time, but brown, as brown as Sherry’s. Felix had evidently been to Miami recently. His graying hair was styled, covering one fourth of his ears, and he looked overall very with it. Beside him on the bed was an ashtray and a pack of Gauloises Disque Bleu and the ashtray had half a dozen of the cigarettes stubbed out in it. Though Felix wasn’t smoking at the moment, chainsmoking probably explained the flaw in Felix’s well-groomed looks: his teeth were as yellow as his sports coat.
To Felix’s left, sitting on a straightback chair, was another bodyguard, a tall guy with a round face that didn’t quite go with the rest of him. The tall gunman was wearing a pink coat and red tie, which made him look like a fag or something. Felix’s idea of class, probably.
“Shut the door and sit down, Greer,” Felix told the babyface. Greer did as he was told. “Nolan, my friend, make yourself comfortable. Angello, give Mr. Nolan your chair.”
Angello did so.
“And thank you, Nolan,” Felix continued, “for being kind enough to send over some refreshment. Very thoughtful. Would you like something to cool yourself off, Nolan?”
Nolan said, “The Point Special’s mine,” to Angello.
Felix said, “Heineken, Angello.”
“And,” Nolan said, “crack open a couple Schlitz for you and what’s-his-name, Angello.”
Angello looked to Felix for approval. He got it.
“Thanks,” Angello said to Nolan. He had a gruff voice that didn’t fit the red coat and tie, as his head didn’t fit his body.
Nolan waited till everybody had beers and then figured all the bullshit preliminaries were over and said, “What’s the word, Felix?”
Felix smiled, turned to Angello and said, “Bring me a glass,” and Angello brought him a bathroom glass still wrapped in paper. Felix waited for Angello to tear off the wrapping and hand him the glass. Then Felix poured the golden liquid out of the green bottle and sipped it and said, “Have you heard from your friend in Iowa?”
“I’m having trouble getting through to him.”
“Trouble?”
“I’ve tried twice. Nothing to worry about. He may try to call me. I told the switchboard girl to route the call to me here in this room if he does.”
“Do you think there could be a problem on his end?”
“No. It’s nothing. You got to understand he’s an eccentric old guy with a mind of his own. He feels like stepping out for
a while, he steps out for a while.”
“I see. I hope everything is all right.”
“Everything’s cool. The money’s safe where it is, like it has been for almost a year now. Nothing’s going to happen.”
“I wish I could share your confidence,” Felix said, wagging his head gravely. “I won’t feel safe until the money is in that bank of ours.”
“Me, too, but no sweat. I can’t see how anybody could know where the cash is. Do you know where it is?”
“No,” Felix said.
“Maybe you’re telling the truth,” Nolan said, “I don’t know.” He took a gulp of his beer, giving Felix a chance to say something, then went on. “You know enough to find out, that’s for sure. You know about the bank job, and I went so far as to tell you the money’s stashed in Iowa someplace. Send some boys snooping to find out about me, you could figure where the stuff is, easy enough. Charlie could’ve figured it out, if he wasn’t dead.”
Felix smiled meaninglessly, like a sphinx.
“But nobody else could,” Nolan said. “Unless you leaked what you know about me. Or unless you talked as loose as I am now in front of bodyguard clowns like these two.” Nolan caught out of the corner of his eye Greer narrowing his. “Nobody in my field knows I’m the one who pulled that particular job, and if they did, they sure wouldn’t figure I’d leave the money sit where I did. For this long especially.”
“What you’re saying,” Felix said, taking a genteel sip from his glass of beer, “is this hiding place is so stupid it’s smart.”
Nolan shrugged, took another gulp of beer. They’d been over all of this before, a lot of times. Nolan had resisted handing the money over to the Family immediately because he didn’t trust them, he wanted to fully understand their intentions before making any final steps. Now, after these months at the Tropical, he felt assured that the offer Felix had made in that other room in the motel at the LaSalle-Peru exit on Interstate 80 was legitimate. Of course, even by
Family standards the amount of money involved was a sizable one, but it didn’t seem logical that they’d try to get at it through so elaborate a double cross. And why
should
they double-cross him? Nolan was convinced that the Chicago Family was grateful to him, glad to be rid of Charlie. After all, they had entrusted Nolan with the reins of the Tropical, an expensive bauble for even the Family to be tossing casually around, and had been paying him well for this “trial run.” But still he’d waited until recently to tell Felix he was ready to transfer the money, and it was only yesterday that he’d mentioned to the lawyer that Iowa was where he had to go to get it.
Felix said, “What I had in mind was this . . . you will leave here this evening, around eight or nine, and arrive in Iowa, wherever in Iowa it is, sometime after midnight, depending on how far you’re going. We have a car for you with a specially rigged trunk compartment, so that you can get stopped by the police, for God knows what reason, and still get by even a fairly thorough search. You will deliver the money to our bank in Riverside an hour and a half before opening . . . that’s seven-thirty, Daylight Savings Time . . . and the bank president, a Mr. Shepler, will be waiting for you.”
“Fine. What’s the name of the bank in Riverside and how do I get there?”
“Just leave that to Greer.”
“To who?”
“Greer,” he said, nodding toward the babyface gunman.
“Why should I leave it to him, Felix?”
“He’ll be accompanying you, Nolan. You wouldn’t want all that money to go unguarded.”
Nolan sighed. He took two long swallows from the Point Special, set the half-empty can on the floor beside his chair and got up. Felix was starting to get on his nerves. Felix was starting to be a pompous ass. Nolan paced for a moment, till the urge to tell Felix those things went away. Then he said, “I don’t like muscle, Felix.”
“Nolan . . .”
“What do I need muscle for? I can take care of myself.”
“It’s a big responsibility for one man.”
“I’ll pick up somebody else when I get there.”
“Who?”
“Never mind who. The other guy who has a say in where this money is going, that’s who.”
“A partner of yours? Is he capable?”
“All my partners are capable,” he said, but that wasn’t quite true. It was Jon he was talking about, and Jon was just a kid, hardly a seasoned veteran. But Jon was who he wanted, not some mindless strongarm. And he didn’t want any Family accompaniment at all.
Nolan sat back down and finished his beer in one long swig. He was getting surly and he knew it. He supposed he ought to stay nice and businesslike around Felix, but the pompous little prick was getting to him. Nolan put the empty can on the floor. He said, “Greer? Is that your name?”
Greer nodded, sitting forward in his chair. Greer sensed Nolan’s hostility and unbuttoned his green sportcoat.
“You good for anything, Greer?” Nolan asked.
Nolan watched the hood bristle, then he said, “Greer, get me a Schlitz.”
Greer got up slowly, a pained look on the babyface, and went over to the cooler of ice and beer and got one.
Nolan said, “Well, Felix, I suppose if you insist he go along . . .”
Greer handed Nolan the beer and Nolan reached inside Greer’s coat and took the .38 from out of the underarm holster and pushed the snub-nose up under Greer’s Andy Gump chin.
“You son of a bitch,” Greer hissed.
“Shut up,” Nolan said, pushing him backward, toward the straightback chair. Greer crouched and got a fierce expression on his face, as if he was thinking of doing something. Nolan gave him a look and the hood sat down. Over on the other side of the room Angello was smiling.
Nolan said, “Felix, is that who you want to go along and protect me?”
Greer waved his hands and said, “I wasn’t expecting . . .”
“You weren’t expecting,” Nolan said. “I suppose if somebody wants to hit us en route, they’ll announce it.”
Greer said, “You fucking son of a bitch . . .”
Felix said, “Greer.”
And Greer got quiet.
Nolan examined the gun. “I got no respect for a man who carries a snub-nose,” he said, tossing the gun back to Greer, hard. “You can’t aim the damn things, they shoot different every time. And all that damn fire coming out of the muzzle, and noisy, shit. What kind of bodyguard are you, anyway, carrying a snub-nose?”
“You’ve made your point,” Felix said. “You’ll go alone.”
“Fine,” Nolan said.
Felix was explaining to Nolan how to get to the Riverside bank, drawing a little map on note paper, when the phone rang. Felix told Angello to answer it and Angello did, then said, “It’s for somebody named Logan.”
“That’s my name here,” Nolan explained, and went to the phone.
“Nolan?” the phone said. “Nolan, Christ, Nolan, is it you?’
“Jon?” Nolan said. “Calm down, Jon, what’s wrong?”
“It’s Planner, Nolan . . .”
“What about him?”
“They killed him, Nolan, somebody killed him.”
“Jesus, kid. Stay calm. Don’t go hysterical on me. Jon?”
“Yes. I’m okay.”
“Now tell me about it.”
“He’s dead, Nolan. Planner’s dead.”
“You said that already. He’s dead. Go on.”
“He’s dead, and the money . . .”
“Yes?”
“It’s gone. All of it.”
Nolan drew a deep breath, let it out.
“Nolan? You okay?”
Suddenly he felt old again.
“Yeah, kid. Go on.”
Joey ordered lobster. He sipped his white wine as he watched the waitress sway away, a college girl in a yellow and orange Polynesian-print sarong. Nice ass on the kid, Joey thought, nice ass.
He was a fat, dark little man in a two hundred-and-fifty-dollar suit, a dollar for every pound he weighed. The suit was tan, its coat wide-lapeled, trousers flared. His shirt was rust color and his tie was white and wide and thickly knotted. His hair was black, brought forward to disguise a receding forehead, but skillfully so, by a barber who had shaped the hair well, leaving it long on the sides, partially covering Joey’s flat, splayed ears. Lamb-dropping eyes crowded the bridge of his narrow, hooking nose, and his teeth were white as porcelain. He wore a one-carat diamond pinkie ring on his left hand, and a two-carat diamond ring on the third finger of his right hand.
The wine was calming him down. This was his third glass and his stomach felt pleasantly warm. Not fluttering, as it had when he’d gotten Felix’s call, asking (demanding) in that soft Felix voice for Joey to come down to the Tropical for the evening. Joey’d been angry and afraid, but had shown neither emotion to Felix (hope to God!) and of course had said, yes, yes, sure. He was pissed off, but he said yes, Felix. He was pissless scared, but he said, what time should I be there, Felix?
He’d been angry because it was four o’clock in the damn afternoon when Felix called to say come spend the evening with me. It was what, sixty some miles to the Tropical from
the city, and all the rush-hour traffic to contend with on the expressway. And what kind of notice was that, anyway, four fucking o’clock in the afternoon, come down tonight, Jesus.
He’d been afraid because his life had taken on a constant undercurrent of fear since the fall of Charlie, and it took very little to bring that fear bobbing to the surface. He knew he shouldn’t feel that way, but there it was. He knew he was secure in his position. So what if he got his start with the Family because he was Charlie’s cousin, that didn’t mean there was anything to worry about now. He was too high, too big, too important, too valuable. It was unthinkable, Jesus.
After all, think of how much money he’d made for the Chicago Family these past years. How many millions had the housing project shuffle brought the Family coffers? He smiled, sipped the wine. And that was nothing next to the cigarette stamp dodge. When he was fronting that tobacco distributing company, the boys must’ve made fifteen million on the counterfeit tax stamp angle, and when it did fall through and went to court, the judge, being a Family judge, dismissed the case for lack of evidence.
And now, why, shit, he was a public figure. You can’t do nothing to a public figure. He was
Joey,
for Christ’s sake, not just any Joey, but
the
Joey, his name up in glittering lights for the whole goddamn town to see. The opening, last year, had been fabulous, greatest day of his life. All the big-name stars and the TV cameras and the reporters, it was something. One of the columnists had said, “Mannheim Road, the West Side’s answer to Rush Street, was the scene of Chicago’s biggest happening since the Fire: the opening of reputed gangland protege Joey Metrano’s $11-million-plus hostelry,
Joey Metrano’s Riviera
.” And that famous one, Kupcinet (Kup himself!) said, “Joey Metrano, called by some a ‘cheap braggart of a hoodlum,’ has brought Vegas to Chicagoland with his
Riviera.
”