Max Collins - Scratch Fever

“How?”

“I’ll make Nolan an offer. He figures I owe him, from a past thing. And he won’t be thrilled I sent you and your partner after him. But he likes money. He can be bought. And he likes this kid.”

“So, you’ll settle up with him?”

“I’ll offer him money and give the kid back; all he has to do is just go away.”

“Will he buy that?”

“He’ll do what he has to to get the kid. And the money won’t hurt.”

“I take it he doesn’t know yet that you have this kid?”

Julie smiled. “We grabbed him before he had a chance to get a message out.”

“Where do I come in?”

“When I hand the kid over to him, you’ll kill them both. Any problem with that?”

“No. How’s it going to work, exactly?”

The door opened.

Harold was back with the Cokes. He passed the cans around, and everybody sipped at them. Julie took two slow drinks of hers, then put it on the dresser.

“I’ll be back in touch,” she said.

Harold looked a little confused.

She headed for the door, and Harold, looking back at Infante suspiciously, followed.

“Get some sleep,” she told Infante, and they were gone.

He sat on the bed. The gun nudged his belly again, and he took it out of his waistband and laid it on the bed, next to him, gently. Ten thousand dollars. He smiled.

He took his shower. Hot, steaming shower. He was starting to feel better. Every few minutes, though, he had a grief pang; he came out of the bathroom, towel wrapped around him, and saw the empty double bed and couldn’t hold back the tears.

He sat on the edge of the bed and cried, his body trembling. Now and then rage would flood through him and he’d say, “ Kill the fucker.”

He was doing this when another knock came at the door.

He rubbed his hand across his face.

So the woman was back. She ditched the hunk and was going to fill him in on the details. Fine.

He took the gun with him, just in case it wasn’t Julie, and went to the door and cracked it open, and it wasn’t Julie.

It was Nolan.

IT WAS well after four in the morning when Nolan let Bob Hale and his dog go back to sleep, and headed out for Sherry’s Datsun in the Barn parking lot. The girl, Toni, followed him. He opened the door on the driver’s side, and the girl grabbed his forearm.

“I’m going with you,” she said.

He didn’t say anything.

“I’m not going to argue with you. I’m going. And that’s the end of it.”

He didn’t say anything.

“You need me. I been to Gulf Port before — know my way around the bars. I know how to find Darlene. That’s the little cunt that tricked Jon into going out to the van for a quickie. She had to be in on it, or at least see what happened, see who grabbed him.”

He didn’t say anything.

“I can find her. I know she hangs around the bars in Gulf Port. Seems to me she might even live there; if not, across the river in Burlington. I can find her. And if you find her, you find Jon. So I’m going. You need me, and I’m not going to argue with you.”

“Get in,” Nolan said.

“What?”

“Get in. We’re wasting time standing here yakking.”

“I’m going?”

“Of course you’re going. I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He smiled at her, just a little. “Get in.”

She got in.

It was only ten minutes to Burlington, a city on rolling hills overlooking the Mississippi, an industrial town of thirty-some thousand, whose various facelifts did not conceal its age. A freeway, lined with shelves of ivy-covered shale, cut through the old river town, and after paying the thirty cents round-trip toll, they were rumbling over the steel bridge, to Illinois and Gulf Port.

The sign just beyond the bridge directed them to the left, but the road curved around to the right, finally depositing them in a pocket below the busy interstate, where Gulf Port rested like a wound that hadn’t healed properly.

On first impression, Gulf Port was nothing but bars. Bars with big parking lots full of cars and trucks. Even just driving by, it was clear just how rowdy these places were, drunks and loud music constantly tumbling out the doors. In the background, among trees that hid the river, he could make out the towers of a grain elevator, which seemed to be the only business of any consequence in Gulf Port that didn’t serve beer. He drove through the narrow, unpaved streets and found that this was little more than a trailer court, with an occasional sagging house thrown in for variety. No grocery store; no business section at all. He hadn’t even seen a gas station yet, though there probably was one among the bars.

“Shitty place to visit, and I wouldn’t want to live here,” the girl commented. It was the first thing she’d said since they left the Barn.

Nolan nodded. “Welfare ghetto, looks like.”

He drove back toward the bars.

“According to Hale,” he said, “these bars’ll be open till five. That doesn’t give you much time to spot this Darlene.”

“It should be enough. There’s a bar on the farthest end of town, about the nicest one. It’s called Upper’s. Turn here.”

He did.

“It’s down there. See the sign?”

He saw it: a standing metal sign that in blue neon said “UPPER’S” at the front of a large parking lot. He pulled in. The lot was eighty percent full. A few well- plastered customers, men in their twenties in jeans and western-style jackets, with the long hair that once would have branded them hippies but now probably meant young blue-collar worker, were pushing each other around and laughing, just outside the front door. The building itself was a low-slung brick building, brown, with a tile roof; a big place, despite being only one story. The front door was closed at the moment, but it didn’t entirely muffle the country-rock music within.

“She’ll be in there if she’s anywhere,” the girl said.

“If she isn’t?”

“If she isn’t, she’s in the sack with some low-life. That’s my guess, anyway.”

“Hooker?”

“I think a few beers is all she costs. But it’s possible she’s hooking.”

“How sure are you she lives here?”

“If she doesn’t, she lives back in Burlington. She and that dyke I told you about were at the Burlington gigs the Nodes played.”

“Okay. I want you to go in and see if she’s in there.”

“And?”

“And then we’re going to wait and follow her home.”

“Why don’t I just corner her in the ladies’ can or something?”

“Once we’ve talked to her, we’ll have to shut her up.”

The girl winced. “You don’t mean...”

“No, I don’t mean that. But we got to tie her up and gag her. Which if she’s hooking is probably part of her scene anyway.”

She smiled. “You’re funny.”

“A riot.”

“We’re going to get Jon, aren’t we? He’s going to be all right, right?”

“I don’t know. I’m not promising you anything.”

“He’ll be all right. I know he will.”

“Listen. Toni, isn’t it? You got to face something: he may be dead right now.”

She swallowed hard; her eyes looked wide and wet. Pretty little thing, Nolan thought.

“That’s the kind of people we’re dealing with,” he said. “I’m sorry it’s the case, but it is the case. Now. Go in there and see if that bitch is getting beers bought for her.”

She nodded, got out. She had a nice rear end on her, Nolan noted clinically.

He sat and waited. He was tired. He rolled the window down, and the cold air felt good. He’d trade his left nut for an hour’s sleep. But the stream of drunks and near-drunks coming in and out of the place, plus the country-rock music in the background, served to keep him from dropping off, and then the girl was back.