Max Collins - Fly Paper

Nolan had no criticism of that. It was a harmless enough indulgence. Besides, he remembered Jon showing him a copy of a comic book, two years ago when he first met the kid; the comic had cost Jon two hundred bucks, which had seemed insane to Nolan, but just recently he had seen an article about an eighteen-year-old kid who’d paid eighteen hundred dollars for that same comic. Nolan asked Jon about it at the time, and Jon had said, rather bitterly, “That stupid clod... with him shelling out all that dough, and with all the news coverage he got, shit, prices’ll inflate like crazy again. That comic wasn’t worth any eighteen hundred bucks. Why, it wasn’t worth a penny more than a grand.”

Considering the interest Jon had made on his two-hundred-buck investment, Nolan was impressed, and no longer ridiculed his young friend’s hobby. In fact, he counted himself a sucker, because he too had owned that comic book (bought it off the stands, when he was a kid) and after reading it had thrown his dime investment in the trash.

“How’d it go, Nolan?”

“We have wheels. No problem.”

“Good. Rest of the stuff, too?”

“Rest of the stuff, too.”

“What about the farmhouse?”

“Drove out there, had a look around. No, nobody saw me. I drew up a layout of the farm and all. We can go over it later, up in the room.”

“Fine.”

“Nervous?”

“Yes.”

“Thought the funny-books would distract you.”

“Me too. No soap. Tried to pick up a woman in the bar to see if that would distract me. But it fizzled too.”

Nolan glanced at Jon’s Wonder Warthog T-shirt, and wondered if — but no, that was ridiculous.

“Look, kid, there’s one thing I want you to do for me.”

“What’s that?”

“Go buy some hose.”

“Sure. Go buy some hose? Like rubber hose?”

“Like nylon hose. The kind women stick their legs in.”

“Stockings? What the hell for, Nolan?”

“I thought we’d pose as Avon ladies.”

“Oh. You mean masks. We’ll pull ’em over our heads, you mean.”

“Just buy them.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t want to go in buying hose. What’re you, crazy?”

“Too embarrassing?” Jon smiled.

“Hell yes. Why don’t you want to?”

“Too embarrassing,” Jon admitted.

“Right, and I’m in charge, you’re my flunky, and when I say buy hose, goddammit, you buy hose.”

“Well, they’ll probably take me for some kind of pervert or something.”

“Probably.” Nolan grinned. He was in a good mood.

“What are you so happy about?”

“It’s going to be clockwork, kid. We’re going to fill our pockets with Sam Comfort’s ill-gotten gains, and he won’t be the wiser.”

Now Jon was grinning too. “You make me feel better. I don’t think I’m nervous, anymore. I don’t even mind buying the hose. If the salesgirl asks me what I want nylons for, I’ll just tell her I want ’em ’cause they’ll go so good with my black lace garter belt.”

“That’s the spirit, kid. Here, I’ll even pay for your damn Coke.”

It was Friday evening, eight-fifteen. The country was calm and quiet tonight, the traffic along this gravel back road seemingly nonexistent. Across the way was a two-story gray frame farmhouse, beginning to sag, whose paint was peeling like an over-baked sunbather. It was a slovenly, ramshackle structure, a shack got out of hand; it sat in a big yard overgrown with big weeds, its location remote even for the country, the lights of neighboring farmhouses barely within view. The place was, in effect, isolated from civilization, which suited the people who lived there. And it suited Nolan and Jon’s purpose, as well.

Jon had been studying the hovel the Comfort clan called home. He shook his head. “Dogpatch,” he muttered.

“What?” Nolan said.

They were sitting in the dark blue, year-old Ford Nolan had leased from Bernie that afternoon. The motor was off, lights too; the car was parked in a cornfield across the road from the Comfort homestead. They were a good half-block down from the house, the nose of the car approaching but not edging onto the dirt access inlet that bridged ditch and gravel road. They had entered a similar access inlet to cross the corner of the field, having cut their lights as they drove down the road that eventually would have intersected the one running past the Comfort house. They’d rumbled slowly across the recently harvested ground, like some prehistoric beast lumbering after its prey at snail’s pace. The only sound had been that of corn husks cracking under the wheels, but the stillness of the night and the insecurity of the situation had magnified that husk-cracking in Jon’s perception, unsettling him. The moon seemed to Jon a huge searchlight illuminating the field, making him feel naked, exposed, unsettling him further. But nothing had happened, and now they sat in the car, in the cornfield, getting ready. They were dressed for their work, in black: Nolan in knit slacks and turtleneck sweater; Jon in jeans and sweatshirt (the latter worn inside-out because the other side bore a fluorescent Batman insignia). The clothes were heavy, warm, which was good, as the night was a cool, almost cold one. Both wore guns in holsters on their hips, police-style: .38 Colt revolvers with four-inch barrels, butts facing out. Between them on the seat were two olive-drab canisters, looking much like beer cans, but with military markings in place of brand names, and levers connecting to pin mechanisms. Also on the seat was a package of nylon stockings, unopened.

Jon let his Dogpatch remark lie; he’d just been thinking aloud, and though Nolan had been very tolerant lately about Jon’s comics hobby, now was no time to put that tolerance to a test by going into the resemblance the Comfort place held to something Al Capp might have drawn.

Nolan said, “You want me to go over it once more?”

“No,” Jon said.

“Okay.” Nolan was sitting back in the seat, loose, apparently relaxed, but Jon thought he sensed an uncharacteristic tightness in the man’s voice, perhaps brought on by concern over Jon’s relative inexperience in matters of potential violence.

They’d been over the plan several times, first at the hotel, in their room, and again on the way here, in the car. Nolan would come up behind the Comfort farmhouse, through the pasture in back; the ground was open, open as hell, but there were trees along the property line, and also a barn, and those would provide whatever cover Nolan needed. Jon would allow Nolan five minutes, during which time Nolan would jimmy the basement window open, crawl inside, deposit his calling card, and crawl out After those five minutes were up, Jon would initiate phase two of the plan, in that weed-encroached front yard.

Jon felt sure everything would go without a hitch, but he wished he could also be sure Nolan felt the same way. Jon’s own confidence was undercut somewhat by the lack of confidence he suspected in Nolan, an attitude that stemmed back to that discussion they’d had about firearms, back at the hotel.

“I don’t exactly understand,” Jon had said, “how we’re going to subdue these dudes — I mean, what do we do, brain ’em with the butts of our guns, or what?”

“For Chrissake, kid,” Nolan had answered, eyes narrowed even more than usual, “never go swinging a gun butt around. You got the barrel pointing at you, and you can end up with a hole in your chest big as the one in your damn head. Why do you think I prefer a long-barreled gun?”

“Better aim, you said.”

“Yeah, that. And this too — with a long barreled gun you can put a guy to sleep without firing a shot.”

“So, what then? We brain ’em with the gun barrels?”