Макс Коллинз - Hush Money

“I may do that. Eventually.”

“Eventually? And until then?”

“I’ll use the... blueprint... to serve my own methods of dealing with the DiPretas.”

“You mean... killing them.”

“Yes.”

“My Lord, man. That makes you no better than they are.”

“Mr. Reed, war is amoral. There is no morality in war, just winners and losers.”

“War? Is that what you imagine yourself to be doing? Waging war? Launching a one-man campaign, one-man war against the DiPretas? How old are you? You’re just a boy, aren’t you. Twenty-five? Thirty? Were you in Vietnam? Is that it?”

“I was in Vietnam, yes, but that’s not ‘it.’ Please don’t use that as an easy answer, Mr. Reed.”

“Turn your information, your data — turn it over to me at once. This course of action you’re charting is not only dangerous, it’s — forgive me — but it’s psychopathic. Good intentions or not, you’re charting the course of a madman.”

“Mr. Reed, I thank you for your concern.”

“Listen to me, I beg you... You can’t go on trying to... wage this crazy war or whatever it is you picture yourself doing.”

“I don’t expect your approval, sir.”

“What do you expect of me then?”

“Your silence.”

“What makes you think I won’t go to the police and tell them about this conversation tomorrow? Or call them right now, for that matter?”

“Because of your suspicions about Detective Cummins. Which are correct. He is on the DiPreta payroll. To the tune of five hundred dollars a month.”

A sick feeling was crawling into Carl’s stomach.

“I’ll make arrangements so that if anything should happen to me... if I am a casualty in my own war... then the body of data I mentioned will be turned over to you. Good night, Mr. Reed.”

“Please! What can I say to change your mind!”

“Nothing.”

When Carl entered the bedroom, his wife was asleep. He went out to the liquor cabinet, refilled his glass of Scotch, and went back to the study.

Frank DiPreta buttered his hot Danish roll. Even before Frank had begun stroking the butter on, the pastry was dripping calories, sugary frosting melting down into cherry-filled crevices. But Frank had been born thin and would die the same; nothing in the world put weight on him. He bit into the sweet circular slab and chewed, in a bored, fuel-consuming way that could make a fat man weep.

He was sitting in the back booth of the Traveler’s Inn coffee shop. Alone. Elsewhere in the shop, strangers were sharing booths and relatively cheerfully, too, but not Frank. His was in a rounded, corner booth that could have seated six, and this was the busiest time of morning — it was seven-thirty now, the peak of the seven-to-nine rush — but Frank seemed blissfully unaware that the rest of the rectangular shop was a sardine can crammed with people as hungry for room to breathe as food. The regulars knew better than to say anything, however, and most of the non-regulars were too busy just trying to get some food and get it down to bother complaining. Complaints, of course, came on occasion, and to take care of that a sign was placed in front of the back booth: this section closed, sorry. This was all part of a routine that dated back to the day the motel and its coffee shop first opened, eleven or so years ago.

The coffee shop was aqua blue: the booths, the counter and stools, the mosaic tile floor, the wallpaper, the waitresses’ uniforms; even the windows that ran along the side wall by the booths were tinted aqua blue. It was like eating in a fish tank. Nobody seemed to mind; nobody seemed to notice. The food was not particularly reasonably priced, but it was good and attracted an almost exclusively white-collar clientele; and then there were the guests at the motel who mistakenly wandered in for a leisurely breakfast and became a part of this morning madhouse instead. It was this latter group who most often expressed displeasure about the man in the big back booth who was sitting all by himself, eating a buttery Danish roll. And Frank ate three or four of the Danish every morning, and he took his time.

It would have been hard to guess, looking at this calm, self-absorbed man, that very recently he had suffered a great personal loss; the death of his brother Joey did not show through the mask that was Frank DiPreta’s face. His eyes were not red. His appetite was certainly unhampered; he was now engaged in the consumption of his second Danish and looking forward to his third. He was not wearing black; in fact, the tie he wore with his tailored powder-blue suit was colorful: red and white speckles on a blue background, like an American flag exploding. There was no apparent tension in him either — no tapping foot, no drumming fingers. No, the only way to know the condition of this man, to understand the extent of grief he felt and his desire for revenge and the depth of that desire, would be to look into his mind; and no one could look into the mind of Frank DiPreta. Frank DiPreta was a private man, with private thoughts, needs. Even his late wife, Rosie, had never been really close to him and had known it. His daughter, Francine, thought she was close to him, but she wasn’t really.

Cummins came in at seven-thirty. Fifteen minutes late. He was a tall man with a skinny man’s frame and a fat man’s belly. He was dark-haired, dark-complexioned, wore a rumpled brown suit and looked like a cop, which is what he was. As he joined Frank in the back booth, a waitress put Cummins’s usual breakfast down in front of him. The Friday morning meeting between Cummins and Frank was a ritual, and the necessity of placing an order had long since passed. Cummins mumbled an apology about his tardiness, then dug into the double order of waffles and ham.

“You’re late,” Frank said. With people in the booth behind him, Frank naturally kept his voice down. But his words were anything but soft-spoken.

“I’m sorry, Frank.”

“You’re sorry.”

“Look, I almost didn’t come.”

“You what ?”

“I sort of forgot.”

“You forgot Friday, Cummins? I never knew you to forget Friday before.”

“I just didn’t think you’d be here, because of — I thought you’d be making funeral arrangements and things.”

“I made those last night. Tomorrow is the funeral. Today is business as usual.”

Cummins looked up from his waffles and ham. “Well, that’s fine. I think that’s the way it should be. You got to order your priorities, you know?”

“I know,” Frank said. He handed the envelope under the table to Cummins who took it and stuffed it casually inside his suitcoat.

“You going to want anything special on this thing, Frank?”

“Not really. Keep me informed. You’re on the case?”

“Yeah.”

“So there should be no problem, right?”

“Right.”

“Only thing special I want from you is I want this guy personally.”

“You want him how?”

“I want him. When you find him, I want him.”

“Frank, uh, if you mean what I think you mean...”

The booth was large enough, and the racket in the room loud enough, for Frank to say anything he wanted without fear of being overheard. But just the same he leaned across the table and whispered harshly, “You know what I mean, Cummins. These last few years not much has been asked of you. We’re goddamn businessmen now, thanks to Vince, and maybe he’s got the right idea. But this time we’re doing it the old way. This one time you’re going to earn your goddamn money.”

And Cummins said, in a whisper that was little more than a moving of the lips, “You’re going to kill him.”

“I’m not going to fuck him. Fuck him up, yes. Hell, you may not ever find the son of a bitch’s body. I might lay some goddamn state highway over him and let the trucks and cars make their tire tracks on his goddamn grave.”