Max Collins: Fly Paper

Sam and Billy rented a house on the outskirts of Iowa City, because it was midway along their Interstate 80 route, but Breen didn’t choose to join them. The old man was a boozer and the kid blew grass all the time, and Breen preferred his own company. He chose to stay in Cedar Rapids, where he found an apartment and, before long, a young cocktail waitress to shack up with.

Working with the Comforts had been a royal pain. Not only had the work been hard and tedious, hitting a different city six nights a week for a solid month, but the Comforts had personalities that put a burr up Breen’s ass. Billy was an introspective, cynical type, and his old man was an egotistical, egocentric loudmouth, and Breen was glad that most of the time he spent with them was on the job, where keeping quiet was a necessity. Listening to Billy’s occasional sarcasm and Sam’s constant bullshit was trouble enough on the ride down from Iowa City; at least when the team worked Cedar Rapids, he didn’t have to ride in the car with them.

But he had to hand it to old Sam. He’d underestimated the crafty old coot. Sam had the operation down pat, slicker than shit. The Comforts had worked the parking meter scan for a straight year now, alternating between six routes Sam worked out, never staying in one area longer than a month, keeping the local authorities confused. Sam had an account in a bank in each area he hit, but not in any city on the route (he had an account in Iowa City, for example) and used a fictitious name and fictitious business, of course, to keep the bank free of suspicion regarding the heavy amount of coin involved. In Iowa City, Sam posed as the owner of a pinball rental outfit, so the tellers were used to seeing him haul in sacks of coin for deposit. This was canny: others might have fenced the coin at a loss; not old Sam.

Also, Sam had told Breen that he closed out a route after hitting an area a certain number of times; this was the third go-round for the Iowa Interstate 80 route, and it would not be used again, not for several years, anyway. He would develop a new route in untapped territory and add it to his list. And he would be closing out his account at the local bank. This time, the month of meter lootings had tallied $47,000; he had another $110,000 in the Iowa City bank from the other two times he’d hit the area.

Tonight was the payoff. Breen would receive just under twelve thou for his month of hardass work. The $47,000 would be split four ways, with Sam taking a double cut because the package had been put together by the old man. That was fair, Breen thought, and though $12,000 was hardly the best he’d ever done in a heist, it would be enough to get him out of the woods with his bookie and his alimony-hungry ex-wife. Now, if he could just stay away from the damn nags.

He approached the farmhouse, a ramshackle clapboard the Comforts had picked up for cheap rent, not unlike the equally run-down farmhouse outside Detroit, where the Comforts actually lived, a sprawling shack filled with luxurious possessions bought with the spoils of Comfort heisting. Bunch of slobs, Breen thought, glad tonight would be the end of ’em.

“Come on in, Breen,” Sam said, standing in the doorway, framed in light. “Come get your cut.” The white-haired, pot-bellied old sot was wearing a green cotton sportcoat with patched elbows over a T-shirt showing the brown suspender straps holding up the baggy brown pants; the old man needed a shave and stood there scratching his ass in the doorway. Fucking slob, Breen thought. Somewhere in the house, the kid would be sitting in his underwear sucking up weed. Nice family.

Breen approached Sam, bracing himself for the blast of whiskey breath, heading up the slanted cement walk toward the house and saying, “After tonight, I’m out, Sam. I’ve had it; this meter bit is not my bag. You’re going to have to add somebody different to the string after tonight.”

“Fine with me,” Sam said, jovial. “Terry’ll be out of stir next month, and we were going to ask you out anyway.” They were about ten feet apart. Sam’s hand moved out from behind him, where he’d seemed to be scratching his ass, and something glittered in the light coming from inside the house.

Gun metal.

Breen rolled to the left, tumbling on the grass, but old Sam’s shot caught him anyway. More gun-fire broke the solitude of the Iowa country evening, explosions as terrifying to Breen as nuclear war. Breen was almost back to his car when another slug caught him in the leg. No matter. He scrambled behind the wheel anyway, ignoring the gunfire behind, ignoring the pain. The back windshield shattered into a sudden spiderweb with a hole punched in its middle, and he felt one of the back tires sag flat.

But he made it out of there. He drove the half-mile into Iowa City, not even looking behind him to see if the Comforts were following. He knew he could lose them; he’d been in Iowa City before and could wind through streets and confuse them. He did that, though he had no idea if they were back there or not. He was getting delirious. He looked down at himself and he was all bloody.

Then he remembered Planner.

That was why he’d been to Iowa City before. To see Planner, that old guy at the antique shop who put together most of Nolan’s packages. He could go there for help. He could go see Planner.

He got there, somehow, and stumbled up to the side of the shop and slammed his fist against the door, slammed his fist against the wood again and again, hard as hell, as much to stay awake and keep some sensation going in his body as to rouse somebody inside.

Finally somebody answered. A wild-haired hippie kid, and Breen’s hopes sunk in his chest. He mumbled something, like who the hell was this kid, and dropped to the floor just inside the door.

This was one of those rare times when all the Charles Atlas muscle-building came in handy. Jon was carrying the bleeding man like an absurdly oversize babe in arms. The guy was heavier than Jon and a shade taller too, and so made quite a load. Jon hauled the fleshy freight to his room in the rear of the shop, hoping that following his impulse to help the guy wasn’t some gross error in judgment. Anytime something like this came up, Jon wished he had Nolan around to check with, to consult.

But Nolan isn’t here , Jon thought, so screw wishful thinking.

As he carried the man, Jon looked him over carefully, trying to get past that first impression of a guy covered with blood. The man was in his early forties, Jon estimated; he had short dark hair, and wore a light blue sportshirt, bloodstained on the lower right side, and summery white slacks, also stained with blood down the left lower leg. The blood on his face apparently had gotten there when a hand had touched one or both of the wounds, and speckles and smears of blood were spread variously around his clothing in spots other than those immediately around the wounds. Jon eased him onto the bed, went upstairs, and came back down with some bandage makings, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a basin of water, and several washcloths.

The wounds weren’t bad, really. Not near as bad as he’d at first thought, from the shock of the blood-soaked clothes; it was the light colors that made the red stand out so, the light blue shirt and white pants, and the guy must’ve run after he was shot, scattering blood around on his clothes. Jon was relieved to find the leg just nicked, and the side wound showed evidence of the bullet going through clean, nothing important having been hit. Or that was Jon’s guess, anyway; if the slug had caught an artery there’d be blood gushing everywhere, but the bleeding here wasn’t severe at all. Jon washed the wounds clean and applied bandages that were tight, but not tourniquet-tight.