Two for the Money (30 page)

It was restful, drifting around the pool, the easy movement of the water lulling him. There was no one to bother him, as it was eleven-thirty now, and at eleven the pool was closed to Tropical guests. The gas torches that surrounded the pool flickered and danced on the water’s surface, and Nolan watched and enjoyed the reflecting flames when he wasn’t looking at the sky.

He needed this interlude, needed it to drain away what tension he had left from the preceding hours of rant and rush. The news of the robbery at Planner’s had led to a frantic afternoon and evening, beginning with an hour of heated, involved conversation with Felix and ending with the preparations for having Joey Metrano down for a chat. But now that Nolan’s theory about Charlie had been proved correct, there was no need for everybody to run around like a bunch of idiots in heat. What there was a need for was rest for Nolan, time for him to relax, sort things out, calm himself before setting out for his money.

He hadn’t thought about Planner being dead. Now that he was feeling good again, he wouldn’t allow such thoughts to push forward in his mind and spoil his mood. He wasn’t good at sorrow anyway, and it didn’t occur to him to feel in any way guilty about the old man’s death. Nolan figured Planner knew the rules and risks of the game. Besides, most of Nolan’s friends didn’t get to be as old as Planner had.

Sherry’s head bobbed up out of the water beside him and
she arose wet and grinning, the water splashing up and around and on her as if it was having as good a time as she was. “Hey, this is fun!” she sputtered, treading water. “I ought to go swimming more often!”

Nolan shook his head. This was probably the first time she’d been swimming this summer, though she’d spent most of every day at the pool. Sunning. Just now Nolan had convinced her to go to the pool with him and she’d found nothing else to do there but swim.

Nolan said, “How you doing, Felicia Colletta, child of the underworld?”

Sherry giggled, paddling hands and feet to stay above water. She said, “I just hope you keep me in mind come Academy Award time.”

“Don’t know about that,” Nolan told her, “but if I ever cast a stag film, you’re the first one I’ll call.”

She made a face and slapped at the water to get him wet, then decided that wasn’t enough and overturned the raft and dumped him, arms flailing, into the deep. “Don’t be afraid of the water,” he heard her say, “it won’t bite!” Which struck him as a very hypocritical thing for this queen of suntan lotions to say.

The pool was heated, so the water was luxuriously warm, like a lazy bath, and Nolan stayed down under for a while, waiting for her to come looking for him. She did, and he grabbed for her, and she slipped away from him, swimming down toward the shallow section, underwater all the way, stroking like a frog. He caught up with her just as she was getting on her feet at the far end of the pool, and he pinched her ass just as her head cleared the water. She was still squealing as he got to his feet laughing and saw Felix standing there, back far enough to keep from getting wet, but standing there just the same, looking vaguely annoyed.

“Hello, Felix,” Nolan said.

“What are you doing?” Felix said.

“Right now I’m getting out of the swimming pool,” he said, and did, giving Sherry his hand and helping her out, too.

Felix said, “I hope you’re enjoying yourself.”

“I am,” Nolan said.

Nolan went to the lounge chair where he’d left his towel and dried off. There was a small round metal table next to the chair, a canopied table with a pitcher of martinis and ice on it. Nolan poured three glasses from the pitcher and gave one to Sherry and one to Felix and kept the third.

“Thank you,” Felix said. His tone was almost friendly now; evidently he was dropping the reproving manner, having gotten nowhere with it. He sipped the drink and said, “What sort of martini is this?”

“Vodka,” Nolan said.

“Oh,” Felix nodded, and took a seat beside Nolan’s lounge chair, checking it first for moisture.

“How’s Joey doing?” Nolan asked.

Sherry had finished her drink already and was diving back into the pool.

Felix said, “Pretty girl. We should do something for her for helping out.”

“I’ll do something for her,” Nolan said. “What about Joey?”

“Well, he’s not pleased that you’ve taken his clothes away from him.”

“It’s one way to keep him in his room.”

“And he doesn’t like my sending Greer in to watch him all the time, either.”

“That’s another way.” Nolan was beginning to get quietly pissed off at this smug little lawyer.

Earlier, Nolan had assured Joey that the Family would hear nothing of their conversation, and Joey had talked easier that way, but after Nolan was finished with him, Felix and the two bodyguards had shouldered into the room to find things out for themselves. Nolan hadn’t stayed around to watch, as redundant violence irritated him, but it wasn’t his show anymore, so he’d let it pass.

“Other than that,” Felix was saying, “Joey Metrano’s turned into a humble, quiet little guy. He’s full of apologies
and bowing and scraping. He knows that his life is hanging by the slenderest of threads now that he’s admitted helping Charlie hoax the Family.” Felix said the word “Charlie” as though he were spitting out a seed. “He’ll be taken back to the city tomorrow morning and kept under close watch. I don’t need to go over what Joey told us, do I? He probably told you much the same. Says all he was doing was keeping some of his cousin’s money in a bank account, and knows he’s one of several doing that for Charlie, though he insists he doesn’t know who any of the others are. Claims he had nothing to do with helping Charlie pull off the phony death, other than knowledge of the fact, and says he doesn’t know who did. Well, what do you think, Nolan? Is he lying or not? You think there’s any chance he knows where Charlie is?”

“No,” Nolan said. Charlie was too smart to tell Joey much, and it figured he wouldn’t let his different co-conspirators know each other either. Less you know, less you can tell under duress. “I figure Joey’s telling the truth. I questioned him pretty thorough.”

Felix said, “I questioned him rather thoroughly myself, or I should say Greer and Angello did. So I have to agree with you. It would seem Joey’s told us everything he knows.”

Nolan said, “No wonder he’s a humble, quiet little guy. It’s been a bitch of a night for him.”

Felix leaned close, like a quarterback giving the signals. “We better come to some kind of mutual understanding, Nolan, about how we’re going about handling this affair. I can’t be sure how many people were involved in helping Charlie put over his little charade, but I think it should be obvious to you that there is going to be some, shall we say, extensive inter-Family housecleaning.”

“Give me two days.”

“What can you do in two days?”

“Try me.”

“What are you asking?”

“Leave me alone for two days. Give me that long before you start weeding out your bad stock.”

“Where will you start?”

“I have some people in mind to see.”

“What sort of people?”

“Family people. Some people who seem likely bedfellows for Charlie.”

“Such as?”

Nolan told him.

Felix nodded. “They’re well insulated, you know. Not that easy to get at.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“You’ll be needing some information from me, addresses, telephone numbers, that sort of thing.”

“Yes.”

Felix thought for a moment. Then he said, “Is there a phone I could use?”

Nolan pointed across the pool, where there was a snack bar, closed now, of course, but with a phone on the counter. Felix got up and walked over to the counter and used the phone. Nolan watched Sherry swim. She was graceful.

Ten minutes later Felix was back. “Two days,” he said.

“Thanks,” Nolan said.

“You know, I still don’t understand how you guessed Charlie.” Felix laughed, “I mean a dead man, my God. I would have assumed it was someone from
your
field.”

They’d been over that this afternoon and Nolan didn’t want to go into it again.

“Call it a hunch,” Nolan said.

It was, of course, much more than a hunch. Nolan knew it was possible that a pro thief had pulled the job, some heistman down on his luck who needed ready cash and knew Planner’s safe in the backroom usually had a good piece of change in it. But it was unlikely as hell. Maybe in sheer desperation, but otherwise Nolan couldn’t see a professional hitting Planner: you don’t hit one of your own. The old guy had virtually no enemies in the trade, and was a valued friend of everyone who knew him and made use of him.

And right there was another reason: Planner had too
many friends to risk stealing from him. Whoever pulled this had ripped off not only Planner, but maybe a dozen professionals who’d entrusted emergency money to Planner’s safekeeping. What it came down to was this: let it leak you were the one who wasted Planner, a hundred guys would drop the hammer on you.

An amateur, then?

No. Someone outside the trade was even more unlikely. Why would some amateur pick an antique shop to knock over, and a shabby one at that? If he did, how would he know about that safe, way back in the second of two storerooms? No, an amateur would probably just empty the cash register and run.

Most important, nobody—nobody outside of Nolan, Jon and Planner—knew an eight-hundred-thousand-buck haul from a bank job was nestled in that safe. Very few people knew for sure Nolan had pulled that particular job, and no one would likely figure he’d leave the money with Planner.

Except maybe Charlie.

Charlie might’ve figured it.

Charlie not only knew that Nolan had pulled the bank heist, he also knew Nolan had been wounded after the robbery and wounded badly, because it was Charlie and his people who shot Nolan, in that fucking double cross Charlie pulled. He would’ve known Nolan would have to hole up close by. He would’ve known Nolan hadn’t had the time or health to get properly rid of the money; he could’ve figured that the money had stayed right there where Nolan was holing up. Charlie could’ve used his vast Family resources to investigate Nolan’s working habits, his associates, especially in the immediate area, to determine precisely where Nolan was hiding, sooner or later coming up with Planner.

When the Family started negotiating with Nolan, a Nolan who was still just getting on his feet, Charlie’s inside sources (the same people within the Family who helped Charlie “die”) could’ve relayed word to him that Nolan was resisting transfer of the money. And Nolan had told Felix
and others who pressed moving the money to a Family bank, “I’m not sweating the money’s safety. It’s been okay where it is this long and a while longer won’t make a difference.” Perhaps these words of Nolan’s (foolish words, he knew now) had gotten back to Charlie.

But Charlie was dead.

Sure.

That auto-wreck business had smelled to Nolan from word go, but he’d wanted Charlie to be dead so bad he’d accepted it. Even then he’d questioned Felix, who had told him that this pretense of an accident was a necessity, that Charlie was simply too high in the Family to die anything but a “natural” death.

Sure.

That was where the hunch part did come in. Deep down in Nolan’s gut, Charlie didn’t
feel
dead. Nolan had ignored the tingle in his gut, chalking it up to all that time the feud with Charlie had lasted, figuring there was bound to be mental residue left after all the emotional and physical violence Charlie had caused him over the years. But now with Planner dead and the money, all that money stolen, Nolan was listening to everything his gut had to say.

So how could Felix be expected to understand? This was a complex chain of logic intertwined with instinct and was something an attorney in a tailored suit could never comprehend.

“When are you going to get started?” Felix was asking.

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Not tonight?”

“Tomorrow morning. Tonight I’m going to get some sleep.”

“Whatever you think is best, I suppose. Nolan?”

“What?”

“Why is it you haven’t told me just where the hell in Iowa the scene was of this afternoon’s fiasco?”

“Because you already checked with the switchboard to see where the long distance call was from.”

“Oh. Well. Don’t you think it would be wise to get to Iowa City as soon as possible and start investigating?”

“Felix.”

“What?”

“I asked for two days and you said I could have them.”

“Right, but that doesn’t mean . . .”

“Felix.”

“What?”

“How can I put this? Felix. You’re full of shit.”

Felix drew a breath. “Am I really?”

“Yeah. You are. You’re a lawyer, Felix. Don’t tell me how to handle the sort of thing you know nothing about, okay? I get married and want a divorce, I’ll come to you.”

“You’re tense, Nolan,” Felix said tensely. “I’m going to forget you’ve said this.”

“I don’t give a damn what you do. You’re just a goddamn lawyer.”

“Just a goddamn lawyer . . .”

“Okay, so you represent the Family. That powerful organization that clutches the city of Chicago by its very balls. That powerful organization that let one balding old hood named Charlie turn it into the world’s biggest asshole. But don’t feel bad. Look what that guy Nader did to General Motors.”

Felix smiled and wagged his head. “By God, you’re right. Pour me another vodka martini.”

“Sure, Felix.” Nolan did.

Felix took the martini and nibbled it, then said, “Why don’t you take one of my men with you? Take Angello if you don’t like Greer.”

“Felix . . .”

“Now this is one thing I’m going to have to insist on. This is not the lawyer talking now, this is from upstairs, as they say. The Family has a big interest in this affair. You have to understand. It’s more than just money now that Charlie’s turned up.”

“Suppose you’re right,” Nolan said. “Give me Greer then.
He’ll need to take a car for himself, by the way.”

“Why?”

“Why don’t I just explain that to Greer.”

“Well, all right, whatever it takes to make your investigation a success.”