Макс Коллинз - Spree

“An offer I can’t refuse.”

“That’s right. Not if you want to see that little piece of tail again.”

“Don’t even think about hurting her.”

Comfort took off the Stetson-like hat and scratched his head, fingers lost in the thick pure white hair. Then he put the hat back on and said, “Oh, I don’t think it’s gonna have to come to that. I think you’d have wanted to go in with me on this job in any event — but, just in case, because of the bad blood, I took the girl for inducement sake.”

“Get to the point.”

“Like I said — revenge crossed my mind. I won’t lie to you and say otherwise. But then I thought, Cole — stealing well is the best revenge. Ain’t that the truth?”

“Point being?”

Cole Comfort’s smile was a crease in his leathery face; his eyes twinkled, like a psycho Santa Claus. “I spent some time, recently, at that fancy mall of yours.”

“It’s not mine.”

“Sure it is — you got your restaurant there. You know all about that place, and what you don’t know, you can find out. I watched you. You got friends. You’re a regular pillar of the community, ain’t you, Nolan? They love you — butchers, bakers, candlestick makers. Bankers, too.”

“So what?”

“I have a dream,” he said, and it wasn’t Martin Luther King’s. “I think maybe everybody who ever was in a shopping mall has had this dream — namely, what would it be like to have the place to yourself some night? To just go shopping from store to store, taking what you want, and best of all — not paying for anything.”

“That’s an interesting dream. But maybe it’s time you woke up, Cole.”

He smiled big. “Dreams come true, sometimes. You’re going to help me make mine come true. You’re going to help me go shopping at Brady Eighty. We’re going to loot the entire goddamn place.”

Jon said, “You can’t be serious.”

But Nolan knew he was.

Cole Comfort, waving a hand in the air, grandiosely, said, “We’re going to bring trucks in, semis, right into loading docks. We’re going to steal every appliance and electronic plaything in the place. We’ll hit the bank; the jewelry stores. We’re going to empty everything but the pet store, and if one of us wants a goddamn dog, well, we’ll take that, too.”

“It can’t be done,” Nolan said.

“Sure it can,” Cole said. He painted an air picture with a sweep of a gnarled hand. “Think of it — an all-night shopping spree — and we leave without paying the bill.”

Silence; silence but for the Oak Ridge Boys, blaring.

“Let the girl go and I’m in.”

“No. First we loot the mall. Then you get the girl.”

Nolan looked at Jon. Jon rolled his eyes.

Nolan said, “When did you plan on taking this shopping spree?”

“Thursday night.”

“What Thursday night?”

“Next Thursday night.”

Jon said, “You’re nuts. You’re fucking nuts.”

Comfort smiled at Jon, a nasty smile. “Children should be seen and not heard,” he told him.

“How do you plan on going about this?”

“Oh, I got some ideas, but most of it, you’re going to figure out, Nolan. You got the inside track, after all. You’re going to run the show, like always.”

“I’m the director,” Nolan said, “and you’re the producer.”

Comfort grinned like a good ole boy. “That’s right. Now, I’ve spent two weeks doing my own homework, and putting things in motion. We’ll have three semis and ten men, ourselves included. Everybody’ll be in town by Tuesday night. We’ll have a great big get-together and you can tell us just how we can get this turkey shot.”

“It’s not enough time.”

“It’ll just have to be. Besides, sooner the job goes down, the sooner you get your piece of tail back.”

“Don’t call her that.”

“I’ll call her what I like.”

“You do what you think is best, Cole.”

“You’re in, then?”

“I’m in.”

“And the kid?”

“Ask him yourself.”

Comfort looked at Jon and Jon said, “I’m in.”

Comfort put both hands on the table and pushed out of the booth, smiling. He tipped his snake-banded hat to them. “Thank you, gentlemen. You’ll be hearing from me.”

“Cole.”

“Yes?”

“If the girl is returned with so much as her hair mussed, I’ll shoot you in the head.”

“Will you, now?”

Nolan just looked at him.

Comfort’s smile disappeared, and then so did he, out into the cold night.

The mall was decorated for Christmas. At every entrance, including the one in back where Jon came in, a wreath-ringed red placard greeted customers, like a yuletide stop sign; it sat on a treelike post growing from a Styrofoam-snow base, saying, in a white Dickensian cursive, Our Merry Best — Brady for the ’80s . Considering the lettering style, Jon thought, maybe that was the 1880s. Muzak dreamed of a White Christmas from unseen speakers above, as if God were Mantovani. Red and green banners hung from the ceiling, rows of them extending the width of the aisle, every six feet or so, swaying ever so slightly, looking more like grotesquely oversize military ribbons than anything having to do with Christmas. Or so thought Jon, anyway, who was in a very bah-humbug mood.

It was Monday afternoon, a few minutes after two. He had just come from the post office in downtown Davenport, where he express-mailed a package containing the original art for Space Pirates , issue #5, to his publisher in California. Normally that would have put him in a relaxed state of mind — knowing he had another issue behind him, thinking that a month sounded like plenty of time, a luxurious amount of time, to write and draw another twenty-two pages of outer-space comic-book whimsy. It wasn’t, of course, but he liked to spend a day or two pretending it was, getting a leisurely start on the scripting of the next issue, picking up speed so that by week’s end he’d be ready to start drawing.

This week wouldn’t quite work that way.

For one thing, he was in no frame of mind to think up funny stuff — and for another, his time wouldn’t be his own for a while, not till Friday, and chances were Friday wouldn’t find his frame of mind any more conducive to thinking up funny stuff than it was today.

This week was spoken for; his time was taken up.

He had a mall to help heist.

This mall he was strolling through right now, Casual Corner, Radio Shack, Mrs. Field’s Cookies, Kroch & Brentano’s, Barb’s Hallmark, weaving through the swarm of seasonal shoppers, in and out and around the mock rustic carts perched periodically in the middle of the wide mall aisle, cute carts filled with Christmas knick- knacks, quilted Christmas stockings and little wooden reindeer and lots and lots of candles, seasonal shops on wheels overseen by teenage girls dressed as elves. In the central area of the mall, where the ceiling rose an extra half story to a mirrored height, tiny twinkling white Christmas tree lights, arranged in circular chandeliers, hovered like plastic ghosts; a white picket fence decorated with gay red bows surrounded Santa’s cotton-covered slope, in the midst of which steps rose to the Christmas occasion. The fat man in red and white sat on a red and white throne with an eight-year-old girl in his lap; you can be arrested for that in some states, Jon thought. Teenage girl elves atop the slope were charging four bucks per Polaroid with Santa. Maybe stealing was in season.

Ho ho ho.

Christmas was Jon’s favorite holiday, favorite time of year, for that matter; usually the commercialism didn’t get him down, it was just part of the Christmas package — only this year he felt cynical and angry, because Nolan’s Sherry was in the hands of that crazy murderous son of bitch Comfort. Maybe she was dead already.