Hard Cash (10 page)

“Now, I don’t want anyone to misunderstand my motives,” Nolan said, “but I think it would be best all around, for all concerned, if we called it off.”

“What?” Rigley said. Almost shouted. “Call it off? Call off the robbery? Why, for Christ’s sake?”

Nolan shrugged. “The only way I can explain it is by saying I’ve reached fifty years of age and never spent a day of it in jail, even though for the better part of the last twenty I was robbing banks like yours, Rigley. And do you know how I managed that? Managed to stay alive and not behind bars? By being careful. By having certain rules. By demanding certain conditions . . . ideal conditions . . . for any heist I was part of.”

“What in hell could be more ideal than this?” Rigley demanded. “What in hell more could you ask in a bank robbery than the help of the president of the bank? I mean, I’ve heard of inside tracks, but this is ridiculous.”

“You’re right,” Nolan said, nodding. “But I’m not talking about the job itself.”

The girl, who had the painfully skeptical expression of a doctor listening to a patient explain how he caught clap off a toilet seat, leaned forward and said, “Then just what
are
you talking about?”

And Nolan told them about the break-in Friday. He told them of two men (neither of whom Jon got a look at) who came in, rummaged through the entire antique shop, including opening a safe, apparently but not necessarily looking for money, and were interrupted by Jon, whom they promptly conked on the head before getting the hell out.

Before Rigley and the girl could begin expressing their obvious disbelief, Jon leaned forward, parted his hair, and showed them the bump. Then he sat back and said, “And that ain’t special effects, boys and girls. I’m too much of a coward to let myself be conked on the head just to back up a phony story.”

“All right,” the girl said, taking over (as Rigley seemed too confused at the moment to actually talk), “suppose it’s true. What exactly does any of that have to do with anything? Two people break into your shop and try to rob you. So what?”

“First let me tell you about something else,” Nolan said. “Something that happened to a friend of mine. A guy who set up a robbery Jon and I were on not long ago, and who worked with me on a lot of things over the years. Real pro. Thursday night he was murdered. For the contents of a cash register, amounting to maybe fifty bucks. He ran a bar, you see, and after closing, somebody came in and blew my friend’s head all over the wall.”

Nolan paused for dramatic effect, but the girl was not impressed. She said, “I still see no relationship to what we’re doing here.”

“Maybe there isn’t any relationship. I’d go so far as to say there probably isn’t. But I don’t like coincidences. A thief, a friend of mine, is killed for nickels and dimes. Call it cute, or ironic, or anything you want. Only the next day, two guys break into where I live, and Jon interrupts them before much damage is done, but anyway they’re apparently trying to rob us. Again, ironic, cute, robber gets robbed. Big laugh. But suppose something’s going on. Some old friends or enemies of mine are in the neighborhood with something in mind.”

“Isn’t that rather far-fetched?” Rigley said, finally regaining his faculty of speech.

“Isn’t it rather far-fetched that within twenty-four hours, a few hundred miles apart, two professional thieves who did a lot of work together are the object of two robberies themselves? One of them killed, head blown off by a shotgun like the one you were waving around the other night, sweetheart.”

“Wait one fucking minute, now,” the girl said. “You aren’t accusing us of having anything to do with . . .”

“I didn’t say that. Thursday night, we were together, so the shotgun thing is a true coincidence. I grant you that. But from my point of view, why not? Why couldn’t you have hired some people to dig up further blackmail material on Jon and me? That would at least explain the break-in at our place.”

“I think it’s all a bunch of bullshit,” the girl said.

“We had nothing to do with it,” Rigley said. “Any of it.”

“Okay. So who did?”

“You’re making mountains out of molehills,” Rigley said. “You’re desperate to find an excuse to get out of this situation, and so are trying to scare us out, confuse and frighten us into letting you off the hook.”

Nolan smiled. A friendly smile. It hurt him to do it; he hated Rigley and the bitch, and being civil to them would give him an ulcer if he had to keep it up much longer. But he smiled. He said, “I’m not trying to get off any hook. It’s a good heist. It really is. It’ll be easy, fast money for Jon and me. We’ve done it before, so why not again? But don’t you see the reason the two of us are around to rob your bank a second time is that we’re careful, we only work under certain conditions, and that it’s foolish to pull a heist when there’s possibly something going on that could fuck up that heist? Don’t you see that?”

“No.”

“No.”

“Okay. I tell you what. We’ll postpone it. Postpone it a month. Give me time to see what’s going on, if anything. That’s all I ask.”

“No!” Rigley shouted. He slammed his hands on the table, and everybody’s drinks spilled, the pitcher, everything. “No! No, goddammit, you’re just playing with us, I’m
not
postponing
anything
, no!”

And Rigley got up and ran behind the bar and got a bottle off the shelf and shakily poured himself a shot and downed it and then another and . . .

The girl, quietly, leaned over and touched Nolan’s hand. Her touch was warm, and for the first time she extended a trace of sexual promise to Nolan. She said, “Please. Understand. This is hard for George. He’s been a respectable member of the establishment for too many years for this to be easy for him. Do you have any idea how long it took him to gather the courage to approach you at that restaurant? He’s been watching you for months. Planning this, building himself up, gearing himself to be capable of an act that he is barely capable of even now. Asking him to postpone the robbery would be suicidal not only for George, but for all the rest of us, for any of us involved with the robbery. George is an intelligent and capable man in his chosen profession, just as you are in yours. But where crime is concerned, George is an amateur. We have to go ahead with the robbery, and as soon as possible.”

Nolan nodded. “All right. Go settle him down and bring him back here. And get a cloth and clean off this damn table, will you?”

She went to Rigley, and Jon said, “That’s why you wanted me to be nice, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Nolan said. “It’s bad enough working with amateurs, let alone uptight amateurs. If we’re going through with this, our asses depend on George Rigley coming through for us. So we got to make sure he’s comfortable, got to have him confident in us, got to put him at ease.”

“What about the girl? She’s an amateur too, isn’t she?”

“Her? An amateur? Kid, she could give us lessons.”

And then the girl was wiping off the table and Rigley was settling down in the chair, nervous but better.

“There’s one thing I have to ask,” Nolan said, “before we go any further.”

“What is it?” the girl said.

“It’s you,” he told her. Then he turned to Rigley and said, “Your robbery plan includes her. Her role is pretty minor, but she does have a role, or she wouldn’t be here right now, would she? Yet you aren’t asking for a share for her. Three-way split, you say. Why? I’d say she deserves half a share at least.”

“I . . . I can’t believe what you’re saying,” Rigley said. “You’re complaining because you’ll be getting more money than you have coming to you? Nobody in his right mind would make a complaint like that.”

“Nobody in his right mind would give money away,” Nolan said. “Especially not a bank president. Why are you?”

The girl said, “May I explain? It was meant primarily as an incentive for you. To assure you this arrangement is based not on coercion, but more a business proposition. And George only needs a relatively small amount . . .
around one hundred thousand . . . to cover what he, uh . . .”

“Embezzled,” Rigley said. “That’s the word—embezzled. You see, I’m losing my job, Logan. My embezzlement would never have been found out, as long as I was president. But I’m losing my job, and as soon as a new man gets in my chair, my handiwork will be discovered. All I want is to replace what I took—and lost, on the stock market—so that I can leave the bank with my reputation intact. In fact, I already have another position lined up: president of a bank in a little town in New Mexico, and Julie will be going with me.”

The girl cut in, saying, “But that’s getting into areas that are of no concern to you, isn’t it? Does it answer your question?”

“It does,” Nolan said. He thought for a moment, then said, “All right. Why don’t you people have something to drink, whip up a fresh pitcher of booze if you like, Rigley, and everybody relax. Go sit in front of the fire or something I want to study this folder of material for a while and see how it fits in with what I have in mind.”

The girl touched Nolan’s hand again. “How soon do you think we can get on with it? The robbery, I mean.”

“Soon. Sooner than any of you, including Jon, will like, I think.”

Rigley said, “How . . . how soon do you mean?”

“Well, tonight’s Saturday. You need some time to absorb what I’ll be laying out for you tonight, and also some time to hopefully get some rest, though I doubt any of you’ll get much of that. Anyway, Monday morning.”

“Which Monday morning?” the girl asked, eyes wide.

“Monday morning,” Nolan said. “You know. The day after tomorrow.”

12

THE FIRST NIGHT
Terry Comfort
spent in prison, he was raped in the shower by a short, muscular, middle-aged bald black man. Terry was serving a year for statutory rape. He didn’t think of what the black man did to him as poetic justice. He didn’t know anything about poetic justice. He just knew he’d been screwed, a couple of ways.

He was tall, slender, in his mid-twenties; his thin sliver of a face was pale from months inside, and his sandy-color hair was shorter than he would have liked, but it wasn’t bad, considering he’d only been out a few days. They let them wear their hair longer inside these days, and things were generally better in there than Terry had heard from his father and others who’d been in. The food wasn’t bad; the work wasn’t hard; there was TV, and magazines and movies. But they still raped you. Especially if you were skinny and fair-haired and had the light blue eyes and delicate nose and full mouth Terry did.

He got to where he could stand it. Not like it, but stand it. He let the bald black man lay claim to him, since it worked out better for Terry that way; the black man wasn’t queer, really, just naturally horny, and once a week was enough for him, and once a week Terry could stand. At first, he swore the day would come when he’d kill the black man; but then he came to almost like the poor old bastard, who’d been in since he was Terry’s age, having been sent up for killing his wife. Who could blame the guy for that? He’d found his wife in bed with some other nigger and killed them both. Anyone would have done the same. Unwritten law. Of course, it had probably gone hard for him in court because of his using a hatchet to do it and disposing of the pieces down various sewer gutters, but then, a guy will do things that are a little weird when he gets taken advantage of.

Most of the people inside were like the black man and didn’t deserve to be there. Terry himself, for instance, sent up for statutory rape—what a bullshit charge! Who ever heard of a girl thirteen having tits thirty-eight? She’d said yes, hadn’t she? And went down on him and got to teaching him things he’d never even thought were possible, and then started talking that marry-me shit. Jesus Christ, one wham-bam and the little whore’s talking marriage, and he’s telling her to fuck herself for a change, and the next day the law comes around.

After all the robberies he and the old man and brother Billy had pulled together the last six or seven years, with people getting hurt and sometimes killed along the way, for Terry to get nailed for humping a thirteen-year-old, well, it was pathetic. It was more than pathetic; it was downright embarrassing.

But he was out now, sentence shortened for good behavior, and he was ready to get back to the business of making some money with his old man. And to find some more nice young pussy ripe for plucking. He had lost time to make up for on both accounts.

Right now was Saturday night, or more like Sunday morning, going on two o’clock Sunday morning. He was in an attic, a dusty, cramped attic you couldn’t stand up in without banging your head against rafters. He was on his stomach. Next to him was his father. Old Sam Comfort.

Sam Comfort was in his early sixties, had short, unruly white hair, needed a shave, and had the same deceptively kindly features as his son, only Sam’s eyes were a smoke-gray color and his face was wider, with jowls. He was shorter than his son—a little. And he was as skinny as his son, though until fairly recently he’d sported a considerable pot belly. He’d been sick.

They had been in the cramped attic for a long time. Since early evening, when it first got dark. The attic was above the second-floor living quarters over an antique shop in Iowa City. The antique shop was where the two men who had killed Sam Comfort’s other son, Billy, were living. They would not be living for long, however, if old Sam had his way.

That was probably what the old man was thinking about right now, Terry thought, studying those smoky eyes that were hard to read anyway but impossible to scrutinize in the darkness of the attic, which was relieved only by the slight filtering-in of street light through the attic’s single, small window. Still, Terry could pretty well tell what his father was thinking, most of the time. But he could never be sure. You could live with Sam Comfort your whole life and never be able to predict for sure what he’d do next.

And the old man—who had always seemed eccentric, even to his sons—hadn’t been right in the head since Billy died.

Anyway, that was what Lou had told Terry, Lou being the Detroit pawnbroker who fenced what the Comforts stole. Lou was short, chubby, mustached, and dependable. He was the one who had found Terry’s father the night Billy was killed. The one who had come out to the house to talk to Sam Comfort and found the aftermath of a shooting and robbery and managed to get the old man to a doctor and into a private hospital that specialized in publicity-shy (and police-shy) patients.

It seemed a guy named Nolan, and some other, younger guy that hung around with him, had come to the Comfort homestead one night a few months back and tossed in some smoke grenades and made it look like the place was on fire; old Sam had of course grabbed his strongbox of cash—the old man didn’t believe in banks, having spent a good portion of his life span emptying them—and Nolan and this lad were waiting outside to relieve him of it. But brother Billy had caught on to the ruse, and was in the process of doing something about it when Nolan shot Billy in the chest, killing him, and Nolan’s young pal shot old Sam in the chest too, but higher, not fatally.

Only it had looked fatal to Nolan and the kid, who exchanged some bits of conversation (the kid calling Nolan by name) that the semiconscious Sam had heard before blacking out completely. Since the pair had worn stocking masks, this slip was a big help; but the really big help was Lou, who had come along a few minutes later and found the badly bleeding Sam Comfort, left to die by Nolan and company. And he would have died, too. Like Billy had died.

Terry and Billy hadn’t been close. Terry was three years older, and Billy had always been the favored one, the baby, and so had stayed kind of immature. Like, for instance, Billy was into dope—not just smoking it, either, but cocaine, speed, everything but heroin, Terry guessed. Billy had also been into that crazy music that went with the dope thing, instead of country-western, like any sensible person. The brothers hadn’t gotten along, and Terry was sorry his brother was dead, but he was probably more upset about that two hundred thousand bucks of theirs Nolan had stolen.

Terry’s father didn’t share that sentiment. Old Sam, for once in his life, didn’t seem to give a damn about money. He wanted to kill Nolan, and kill Nolan’s kid friend, too. “And that was al. That was all the still-weakened Sam Comfort had on his mind. Kill Nolan. Kill the kid. Kill them both.

Terry had spent the better part of the few days he’d been out trying to reason with his old man. “Killing ’em’s fine, Pop, I’m for that,” he’d say. “But what about the damn money? We gonna just kill the peckerheads and let some damn bank keep our two hundred thousand? That’s all the money we got in the world, Pop.”

And old Sam would say, in a voice soft with traces of the Georgia accent he’d never lost, though he’d only lived there as a child, “We still got the farm. We can work it, if we have to. Don’t give a shit about the goddamn money. We’re going to kill those bastards. Kill ’em slow.”

Work the farm? That was crazy. They’d never worked the farm in their lives. Besides, they just owned a few acres and leased them out to a neighboring farmer and used the farmhouse as their home base. The old man just wasn’t thinking.

Anyway, he wasn’t thinking where the money was concerned. Where revenge was concerned, he was doing fine. Old Sam had figured out that a guy named Breen, who owned a bar in Indianapolis, had been in on the job with Nolan. Not on the scene, probably, but fingered the job. Breen had been working with Billy and the old man, filling in for Terry while he was inside. Sam and Billy double-crossed Breen at a rented farmhouse just outside of Iowa City, Breen’s usefulness having run its course since Terry was getting out soon; but Breen had gotten away, shot-up, but alive. Evidently Breen had gotten to his friend Nolan for help and then told him about how the Comforts had all this money, and given him an inside-and-out description of the Comfort place (where Breen had been several times) and generally helped set the heist in motion. Sam’s deductions were based on Breen and Nolan having worked together a lot of times, and on the fact that Breen, who’d been in debt up to his ass with gamblers and had thrown in with the Comforts to take care of those snowballing debts, was back in Indianapolis, in his bar, with no apparent money problems.

So Terry and his old man had gone to the Indianapolis bar and found Breen humping some plump blonde bitch, who old Sam had shotgunned to make the point of how serious he was. Then he found out from Breen where Nolan was and shotgunned Breen, too.

And of course it had turned out Nolan was in Iowa City, and the old man had cussed himself for not figuring it. It only made sense that Breen, shot up and in Iowa City, would run to Planner’s antique shop, Planner being the old guy who had planned most of the jobs Breen and Nolan had pulled together.

That night, the night they’d double-crossed Breen and let the bleeding man get away from them, the old man and Billy Comfort had gone to the antique shop. The old man had thought of Planner immediately, but when he went there, to the shop, nobody was around except some damn kid about Billy’s age. Planner’s nephew, the kid said he was, and didn’t seem to know anything about the darker side of his uncle’s activities. Sam had chalked that one up as a blind alley, and it wasn’t till he held a shotgun in Breen’s face and heard about Nolan being in Iowa City that the old man linked the kid at the antique shop with the kid who’d been with Nolan that night at the farm, when the air was full of smoke and blood.

Yesterday, when no one was there, Terry and his father broke into the antique shop, to wait for Nolan and the kid and kill them. At least that was the elder Comfort’s concern. Terry convinced him they should make some attempt, anyway, at finding out if any of the money was in the antique shop. Old Sam said that was nonsense. Breen had told them Nolan was running a fancy restaurant/nightclub place, and all the money was probably sunk in that. But Terry had insisted there might be some money in the shop somewhere, as it wasn’t like a thief to keep all his money in a bank, and so they got into the safe, but there was nothing in it; they looked upstairs for a wall safe and couldn’t find one. Terry did find a little notebook, in a drawer in what was apparently Nolan’s room, with a rough sketch of what seemed to be the floor plan of a bank, and a list of “projected expenses” that included the entries “costumes, $100,” “jackets, approx. $60,” “van rental, $1,000,” and other equally confusing items. Terry showed the book to his father and said, “I think they’re planning something,” and his father said bullshit, the man’s retired, and Terry said, “A retired thief? Don’t kid me, Pop.”

He’d gone on to try to convince his father that if Nolan was getting a heist together, it’d be wise for Terry and his father to wait it out, wait till the heist was over and take the proceeds off Nolan’s hands before killing him. But revenge was still foremost in die old man’s mind, and he rejected the notion.

And then the kid had come home, and they knocked him out before he’d seen either of their faces, which was a lucky break. But then Sam wanted to kill the kid then and there, which was stupid, and Terry told his father so.

“You want to kill this kid and sit here waiting with a corpse God knows how long before Nolan shows up? How do we know Nolan is even in town? We got to deal with these two both at the same time, Pop, or else you kill one, and the other finds out and knows something’s up and comes looking for us instead of the other way around. Come on. We’ll leave now and they’ll just think somebody came in off the street and tried to rob them.”

So they left, and waited and watched for Nolan to come back to the shop. Across the street was an old school, which was evidently set to be torn down, but no work was going on, maybe because of the cold, snowy weather; at any rate, it was empty, no one around to stop them from going in and finding a first-floor window to look out of and watch the antique shop across the way. Both father and son pulled up desks designed for grade school children and sat, their skinny frames fitting easily enough.

It wasn’t till late in the evening, around ten, that Nolan came back, and by that time Terry’s father had fallen asleep, and Terry didn’t wake him. Terry wanted to stall his father long enough to find out whether or not a heist was in the offing, and he let his father spend the night in the cold, empty grade school in a third-grader’s desk. In the morning, when old Sam was waking up (and almost immediately began cursing his son for falling asleep on the job), Nolan and the short curly-haired kid drove out from around back of the antique shop, from the garage, in an old and somewhat battered Chevy II. And the Comforts went scrambling out of their third-grade desks, out of the condemned school and into their car, parked in an alley behind and, keeping a discreet distance, followed the Chevy II out of town. Soon the Chevy II disappeared off onto a back country road, and following them became impossible.