Макс Коллинз - Hush Money

“Frank,” Nolan said. “Let them go. They aren’t part of this, a couple of innocent girls. Let them go.”

“What are you doing here?” Frank said, for the moment more puzzled than angry at seeing Nolan. Not that the silenced .45 in his hand wasn’t leveled at Nolan with all due intensity. A .45 is a big gun anyway, but this one, with its oversize silencer, looked so big it seemed unreal, like a ray gun in one of Jon’s comic books.

“You were right this morning, Frank,” Nolan said. “The Family did send me. To check the lay of the land. To... to negotiate a peace.”

“I’m going to blow you away, Nolan. He’s here with you, isn’t he? Where? Outside the door? Downstairs waiting for your signal? You’re in this with him. You were there with the soldier boy when Vince got it, weren’t you? You set Vince up, you son of a bitch. You won’t do the same to me. I’m going to blow the goddamn guts out of you, Nolan, and then I’m going to do the same to the soldier boy, just like he did Joey, only it’s going to take me longer to get around to it. First he’s going to have to suffer awhile, like I been suffering.”

“It’s too late, Frank. McCracken’s gone. He left the city half an hour ago. He doesn’t even know you’ve got his sister and her daughter.”

“Don’t feed me that bullshit. It hasn’t been half an hour ago I talked to him.”

“I answered the phone. I was there at his place. I’d just sent him away, put him in his car and sent him away.”

“This is bullshit. I don’t believe any of it.”

“It’s true.”

“No!”

“Let them go, Frank. It’s over.”

Frank leaned down and grabbed the little girl, Joni, by her thin white arm, heaved her up off the floor. She hung rag-doll limp, not making a sound, having found out earlier, evidently, that this man would hurt her if she did. There was as much confusion as terror in the child’s face; she simply did not understand what was going on. She looked at the huge gun-thing the strange man was shoving at her and did not understand.

“Frank...”

“I’m going to kill this kid, Nolan. He’s downstairs, isn’t he? Go get him, or so help me I kill this kid right now.”

“A little girl, Frank. Five, six years old? You’d kill her?”

“She’s one of his people, isn’t she? He’s murdered my whole goddamn family out from under me. There’s none of us left. I’m the only goddamn DiPreta left, and I’m going to do the fuckin’ same to his people. I don’t give a goddamn who they are or how old they are or what they got between their legs. He’s got to suffer like I suffer.”

But Frank wasn’t the only DiPreta left, and Nolan knew it. It was time to play the trump card.

“Jon!” Nolan called. “Come on up!”

“What’s going on?” Frank demanded. “So help me, Nolan...”

And suddenly, Francine DiPreta was standing in the doorway. Her look of confusion mirrored that of the small child across the length of the room, who was presently dangling from Frank DiPreta’s grasp like a damaged puppet. When Francine recognized this man as her father, the confusion did not lift but if anything increased. She said, “Daddy?”

Frank DiPreta tilted his head sideways, trying to figure out himself what was happening. His face turned rubbery. He lowered the child to the floor, gently; looked at the gun in his hand and held it behind him, trying to hide it, perhaps as much from himself as from his daughter, who approached him now.

“Daddy... what’s going on here?”

“Baby,” he said.

“Daddy, is that a gun?”

“Honey,” he said.

“What are you doing with that gun? What’s this little girl doing here? And is this... her mother? Tied up? What are you doing to these people, Daddy?”

He said nothing. He lowered his head. The gun clunked to the floor behind him.

“Is it true, then?” she said. “What they say about you? About us? The DiPretas? Are we... the Mafia, Daddy? Is that who you are? Is that who I am?”

Nolan and Jon watched all of this from the other end of the room. DiPreta’s daughter and Diane and the child, with their blonde hair and pretty features, could have been sisters.

“Daddy,” she said, “you’re going to let these people go now, aren’t you?”

He put his hands on his knees. His mouth was open. He lowered himself to the floor and sat there.

“I’m going to let these people go, Daddy, and then we’re going home.”

Francine DiPreta untied Diane, who had been coming around for several minutes now, and carefully removed the strip of tape from the woman’s mouth. She asked Diane, “Are you all right?”

Diane, groggy, could only nod and then, realizing she was free, clutched her daughter to her, got to her feet shakily and somehow joined Nolan and Jon at the other end of the room.

Nolan said to Jon, “Help me get them down to the car.”

Jon, who still had no idea what the hell was going on but knew better than to ask, did as he was told.

At the other end of the room, Francine DiPreta was on her knees, holding her father in her arms, comforting him, rocking him.

Nolan sat on the couch and waited while Diane put her daughter to bed. He could hear the little girl asking questions, which her mother dodged with soothing nonanswers. That went on for ten minutes, and then Diane came out into the living room, still wearing the dirty once-white robe; she looked haggard as hell, her hair awry, her face a pale mask, but somehow she remained attractive through it all. She sat next to Nolan.

“Is she asleep?” he asked.

“Yes, thank God. Don’t ask me how. I guess her exhaustion overcame everything else. But she did have a lot of questions.”

“So I gathered.”

“I didn’t have many answers, though.”

“I gathered that too.”

“How about you? You got any answers, Nolan? Can you tell me what this was all about tonight? Is Stevie really a... murderer?”

“Steve’s a soldier, Diane. He’s been trained as a soldier. Killing is part of that. Sometimes soldiers have trouble readjusting to civilian life, that’s all. Steve will be all right.”

“You mean he... he did kill the two DiPreta brothers? I... I don’t believe it. And I... I don’t believe you’re sitting there and talking about his... his killing people as if it’s some kind of stage he’s going through, a little readjustment thing he has to work out now that he’s back home again.”

“Diane, you’re tired. You’re upset. Get some sleep.”

“I won’t be getting any sleep at all tonight, Nolan, unless you tell me just what the hell is going on, goddamnit!” She caught herself shouting and lowered her voice immediately, glancing back over her shoulder toward her daughter’s room. “You’ve got to tell me, Nolan, tell me all of it, or I’ll go out of my mind wondering, worrying.”

“All right,” Nolan said, and he told her — all of it, or as much of it as was necessary, anyway. She stopped him now and again with questions, and he answered them as truthfully as possible. But he kept this version consistent with what he’d told Frank DiPreta. He told Diane her brother had already left, that Steve would be well on his way out of Des Moines by now.

“Will he... he call me or anything? Will I hear from him at all?”

“Not for a while, probably. But maybe sooner than we thought at first. After what happened tonight, Frank DiPreta may not be the same man. I can’t say in what way Frank’ll be different... maybe he’ll be a reformed, nonviolent type from here on out, maybe he’ll end up in a padded cell, I don’t know. But he is going to be different, and that’ll affect how long Steve has to stay in hiding.”