Макс Коллинз - Hush Money

That answered a big question. Unless she was playing it cute, Diane had no idea her father had worked for the Family in Chicago, and that his later employers, the DiPretas, were also mob-related.

“We just ended up in different parts of the country, Diane. Drifted apart. Happens to friends all the time. You know how it is. I didn’t hear about your parents dying till just recently or I’d have got in touch with you sooner. So what have you been up to, for fifteen years? Your braces are off, you aren’t flat-chested anymore. What else?”

She sighed and grinned crookedly. “I’m still a little flat-chested, now that you mention it. Say, what time is it?”

“It’s after one.”

“Have you had lunch yet?”

“No.”

“So far today I haven’t felt like eating, but seeing you after so long kind of perks me up. I got some good lasagna left over from dinner last night. If I heat it up, will you help me finish it off?”

He wished he could have avoided all this. She was pleasant company, sure, but he didn’t want to sit around chatting all afternoon. He had to find Steve McCracken and soon: Frank DiPreta clearly had theories about the assassin which included McCracken as a possibility; and what with the tossing of a grenade this morning and the sniping of Vince early this afternoon, things were happening too fast to be wasting time in idle chatter.

But he did like her. And she could, most probably, lead him to her brother.

So for forty minutes they talked and ate and got along well. She fed him salad and lasagna, he fed her a terse, imaginary tale of working on the West Coast as a salesman, then finally ended on a note of partial truth, saying how he’d recently been trying to get back into the nightclub business, and was in Des Moines working on that. Then she went on to an equally terse account of going to college for a couple of years at Drake, getting married, having a child, getting divorced. She told it all with very little enthusiasm, and when she spoke of her ex-husband, Jerry, it was as if she were encased in a sheet of ice. Only when she talked about her six-year-old daughter Joni did she come to life again.

Eventually they were back sitting on the couch and he got around to it: “Listen, Diane, how’s your brother, anyway? I’d like to see him while I’m in town.”

She paled.

She touched a lower lip that had begun trembling and said, “Uh, Stevie... well, uh Stevie, he’s just fine.”

“What’s wrong, Diane?”

“Wrong?”

“Yes. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing at all.”

And she broke down.

He went to her and gathered her in his arms. Let her cry into his shoulder. He let her cry for several minutes without asking any more questions.

And he didn’t need to. She began telling him what he wanted to know on her own.

“Nolan, I don’t know how the hell it happened you showed up today, after all those years, but thank God you did. I need somebody right now. I need Daddy, is who I need, but he’s dead — goddamnit, he’s dead. And Stevie’s acting crazy. I... I wasn’t sick today, you know, not really. I was emotionally... I don’t know, overwrought, or disturbed, or something. Depressed, upset, scared, you name it. Last night Stevie came for dinner, and he just acted so crazy. He’s been a little strange since he got home from service a few weeks ago. He got an apartment but then told me not to come over. I mean I know where he lives, but he said a condition of the landlord’s was no visitors. I just don’t believe that — it’s silly, crazy — but Stevie was coming over here often enough that I didn’t mind, didn’t ever question what he’d told me about the landlord’s silly rule. He did give me a phone number — it came with the apartment — but then last night he came over and said not to call him any more unless it was an absolute emergency. He’d get in touch with me now and then, he said, but not to call him and not to give his phone number or address to anybody under any circumstances. He made me promise that. And then he said he wouldn’t be able to see us for a while, Joni and me. Wouldn’t be coming over any more. He said there was a good reason but that he couldn’t tell me. He would still be in town, still be around, but he couldn’t see us. I... I almost got hysterical. I sent Joni downstairs to her friend Sally’s, and I pleaded with Stevie, begged him to tell me what was going on. I even got to where I was screaming at him after a while. Then I got mad, furious with him, and that didn’t do any good either. And he left. He just left, Nolan, and said he’d call now and then. I... I just don’t know what to think.”

She was confused and rightfully so, Nolan thought. Her brother’s “wartime” precautions (and they were half-assed, insufficient precautions, at that) meant nothing to her.

“Nolan, do you think maybe you could talk to Stevie? Do you think maybe you could find out what’s going on?”

“Yes.” He stroked her hair. It was incredibly blonde. “But right now just take it easy, Diane. Take it nice and easy.”

“Nolan.”

“What.”

They were whispering. She was in his arms, and they were whispering.

“Nolan, I was in love with you when I was thirteen.”

“I know you were. But you had braces, remember?”

“And I was flat-chested, too.” She took his hand and put it under her robe. “Do you think there’s been any improvement?”

“I think so.”

“I haven’t made love in a long time. I haven’t been able to. After my parents died, I... I was dead inside too. That’s... part of why the divorce happened.”

“I see.”

“That feels good. Keep doing that.”

“I intend to.”

“Nolan.”

“Hmmm?”

“Could you make love to me?”

“I could.”

“You’d have to make it gentle. I’m... I’m not sure what I’m doing. I mean I’m kind of mixed up.”

“I could be gentle.”

“Why don’t you kiss me and see what happens?”

He did.

“Yes,” she said. “I think it would be good.”

“I do too.”

“Where?”

It was dim there in the living room. The day outside was overcast, and once he’d gone over and drawn the curtains the room was very dark.

“Here on the couch?” he asked.

“Here on the couch’ll be fine.”

She slipped the terry robe down over her shoulders. Underneath she wore sheer beige panties and lots of pale, pale flesh; even her nipples were pale, which added to the platinum blonde hair bouncing around her shoulders and peeking through her sheer panties, gave her an almost ghostly beauty. Nolan stood and undressed and looked down at the girl, studied her delicate, softly curved body, watched her slip out of the panties and open herself to him, like a flower, and for just a moment he felt like a child molester.

But only for a moment.

Nolan got in easy enough. He simply told the landlady, Mrs. Parker, that he was Steven’s favorite uncle, and that he wanted to surprise the boy, and she smiled and led him downstairs, through the laundry room, to the doorway of the basement apartment.

“There’s no lock on the door,” she whispered. “You can go on in.” She was a plump, middle-aged woman with prematurely white hair and a motherly attitude that irritated Nolan. He didn’t like being mothered by a broad so close to his own age.

He thanked her, but did not “go on in” just yet. Instead he waited several long awkward moments for Mrs. Parker to leave, which she finally did, and the smile of thanks frozen on his face like the expression on a figure in a wax museum melted away. He didn’t think the landlady would’ve understood why Steven’s favorite uncle might find it necessary to enter his nephew’s chambers with .38 in hand.