Макс Коллинз - Spree

He had thought he’d left this behind him. He had thought those days, with Nolan, were over. He liked Nolan. He respected him, and supposed he felt something like affection for the guy, though you’d have to take Jon’s toenails out with pliers to get him to admit it.

But those days with Nolan seemed a nightmare to him now. A vivid nightmare, easily recalled, but nothing he wanted to dream again. He had seen people die, violently; he had done violence himself. He had felt no exhilaration during the handful of heists Nolan had taken him on — only nausea and cold, clammy fear.

Already, he had the butterflies; like he always had before a performance. The trouble was, the resemblance between rock ’n’ roll and heisting ended there: once on stage, music all around him, the butterflies flew; on a heist, impending violence around him, the butterflies grew.

How did he ever get mixed up with a guy like Nolan? He had his criminal uncle to thank for that; thanks, Unc. RIP. Merry Christmas.

He turned left at Santa’s Kingdom and walked down a wide short corridor where, near the front entrance and separated by another Our Merry Best stop sign and a fenced-in patch of cotton snow with electronic big-eyed smiling-face rosy-cheeked puppets riding a sleigh, was the First National Bank branch, on the right, and at left, Nolan’s. The restaurant wasn’t open yet, but Nolan was waiting there for Jon. When Jon raised his fist to knock, in fact, Nolan’s face appeared in the glass door and he opened it up.

Jon stepped inside, glanced around the place. This room (one of two, not counting the kitchen) seemed to be largely a bar, and there was a nice parquet dance floor, room for a band to play, if some tables were moved out. The walls were busy with nostalgic bric-a-brac and lots of yuppie-ish hanging and potted plants; it wasn’t much like Jon pictured a place called Nolan’s would look. Sherry’s touch, he supposed.

“Nice place,” Jon said.

“It’s a living,” Nolan said. He was wearing a pale blue dress shirt and black slacks; no tie or jacket. He pointed to a nearby table, and they sat.

“You want a beer or something?” Nolan asked.

“No.”

“Did you take a look around?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think?”

Jon gestured with two cupped hands, as if grabbing the balls of a giant. “I think this is nuts. Heisting a goddamn shopping center? It’s looney! Why not Fort Knox, other than Goldfinger already tried it. And, shit, man, Comfort’s crazy. As a fucking bedbug.”

Nolan moved his head to one side, slightly; that was his shrug. “You’re right and you’re wrong. Right about Comfort. Wrong about the mall heist.”

Jon looked at Nolan carefully; the lighting was dim, and Nolan seemed even harder to see than usual. “You’re kidding, right?”

“I don’t kid, kid.”

Jon smirked. “Really? I seem to recall a few thousand sarcastic remarks directed in my general vicinity.”

“Sacking this place can be done,” Nolan said. “It’s nagged at me ever since I took space here, how easy it would be.”

“Nolan, this place is fucking huge. And now this alternate-universe Jed Clampett wants to pull a couple of trucks up to the back door and go shopping? A couple days from now? And you think that’s a good idea?”

Nolan folded his hands on the table and looked at them. “It doesn’t matter what I think; it’s Comfort’s party. But the job is workable. It’s also nothing I want any part of. It endangers the life I got going here.”

Jon sat forward. “You mean, you figure an investigation after the robbery might be serious enough that somebody could uncover your checkered past?”

“Investigation is hardly the word. And neither is robbery. There are fifty shops in Brady Eighty. Two of them are jewelry stores. Plus three major department stores — Petersen’s, J. C. Penney and I. Magnin. There’s also a bank.”

Jon shrugged. “Sure there’s a bank, but there’s no way to get in the vault. They’re sure to have a big mother with a time lock. Right?”

“Right. But they got two night deposit safes, and an instant-cash machine. That’s three safes — modest-size ones. You know what they got in in ’em?

“No idea.”

“I’d say, twenty grand in the instant-cash machine. And as for the night deposits, you were out in that mall. You saw the kind of business they’re doing.”

“It’s crowded, all right.”

“It’s December. The month that makes the rest of the year possible, for businesses. There could easily be fifty grand in night deposit money — not less than twenty-five.”

Jon shrugged again. “So there’s serious money, in this. But there’s also a ten-man string. Assuming Comfort won’t pay the two of us, that still leaves eight, which is a lot of ways to split the take.”

Nolan got up. He paced slowly beside the table. That bothered Jon; Nolan wasn’t the pacing type.

“I don’t want to go into it in detail right now,” Nolan said, still pacing, “but I figure this for a half-mil haul, conservatively, after goods are fenced.”

This time Jon didn’t shrug. “So if this goes down, it’s going to be major. Major media coverage; serious cop action.”

“Yes. My being the inside man on the heist could well come out. So could my ‘checkered past.’”

Jon was nodding. “The bank robbery will bring in the feds; state and local police will enter the other robberies; the department stores will have insurance investigators on the case...”

Nolan stopped pacing, looked around him. “I could lose everything.”

“Is this place what’s important to you?” Jon said, disgustedly. “What about Sherry?”

Nolan looked at the floor. “I said I could lose everything.”

Jon sighed. “I’m sorry. I know she’s what’s important in this.”

“She’s more important to Comfort than she is to us.”

“How so?”

“She’s what’s keeping him alive.” Nolan checked his watch. “Come on. I’m having coffee with a guy at two-thirty. I want you to meet him.”

They turned right at Santa’s Kingdom toward the Walgreen’s, half of which was drugstore, the other half cafe, whose outer wall was lined with booths looking out on the mall. Jon followed Nolan into the café, where they joined a ruddy-cheeked balding blond man of about twenty-five, who wore an expensive-looking gray suit and a red-and-green-striped tie; the gray coat was supposed to say executive, and the tie was supposed to say Christmas, or so Jon assumed. The guy wanted it both ways: authority figure and nice, regular guy.

“Nolan,” he said, putting down the coffee cup he was sipping from, half rising, extending a hand to shake. “Good to see you.”

“How are you, Stan? Stan, this is Jon Ross. He’s an old friend of mine.”

Stan half rose, grinning, extended a hand to Jon and they shook; too firm a grip, Jon thought, an overcompensating grip.

“ Old friend?” Stan said. “He’s as young as I am.”

“We’re none of us getting any younger, Stan,” Nolan said, smiling faintly. “Jon’s the nephew of a friend of mine. Late friend. Neither of us have much family, so we like to spend Christmas together.”

“Right,” Jon said, smiling blandly at the guy, thinking, gee, Nolan, what a crock of shit.

Nolan gestured toward Stan and said, “Stan Jenson is our new mall manager.”

“Well, six months new,” Stan said, embarrassed, as if Nolan had been praising him effusively, as if “mall manager” were a designation on a par with “ambassador” or “astronaut.”

“He’s the guy who thought up that ‘Our Merry Best’ slogan,” Nolan said to Jon, deadpan.

“Really,” Jon said.

“No big deal,” Stan said, waving it off, as if Jon had said “Wow.”