Макс Коллинз - Spree

And Jon went out to the van, and Nolan to his silver Trans Am. Nolan wishing he had it in him to kill Comfort’s daughter, knowing he didn’t.

Jon had started the stakeout midmorning. As late as the meet last night (this morning, technically) had broken up, he didn’t figure Comfort would be going anyplace at the crack of dawn. Nolan hadn’t argued with Jon’s logic on that point, and over a breakfast of scrambled eggs and sausage, which Nolan prepared, Jon asked Nolan what the game plan was if Sherry’s whereabouts could be ascertained.

“We go in with guns and take her back,” Nolan said.

That didn’t seem like much of a plan to Jon, but on the other hand, until the exact circumstances of how and where she was being held were known to them, coming up with anything more elaborate was a waste of time.

Jon shrugged. “Well, how hard can it be, with only that lunkhead Lyle guarding her?”

“Hard,” Nolan said. “Lyle may be a lunkhead, but he’s also a Comfort. That makes him a dangerous lunkhead.”

Jon was, as usual, impressed by Nolan’s businesslike attitude, even in the face of something as emotionally wrenching as the kidnaping of a woman Nolan may well have loved. There had been a moment, last night, in the back room at the restaurant just before the meet, when Nolan betrayed some emotion bubbling under that stoic surface; and Jon sensed the rage behind Nolan’s occasional quiet remarks about what he would do to Comfort if Sherry were harmed. But mostly Nolan seemed to be sublimating his emotions and anger into working on those two conflicting goals — planning/organizing the heist, and getting Sherry back.

Now it was Thursday afternoon, a little after two, and a light snow was dusting the Holiday Inn parking lot, powdering the immediate world, making it look better and not so real. Jon sat in the parked light blue van in his ski mask and navy coat, his Thermos of hot chocolate between his legs. No paperback today. His full attention was on Comfort’s red pickup truck. The Leeches were apparently staying at the Holiday Inn, as well, as Jon had spotted their yellow, racing-striped Camaro parked alongside a room on the west side of the motel. If the Leeches and/or Comfort left in the Camaro, they would have to drive through the parking lot past where Jon sat in his van. So he had it covered.

Butterflies were aflight in his stomach, however; time was running out: the mall heist was set to go down in a matter of hours — a little over eight hours. Before that time, if things went well, he and Nolan would rescue Sherry, very possibly in a blaze of gunfire and dying Comforts. And that was if things went well. He’d been in situations where he liked the options better.

He thought about Sherry. He hadn’t let himself do that, much. He liked her — he was attracted to her, no question, but it was an attraction he’d never do anything about. A stunning-looking woman, and no dummy. He’d never seen anyone handle Nolan better. She didn’t exactly have him wrapped around her little finger, but close. Surprisingly close.

What sort of hell was she going through? He’d been there himself — he’d been held hostage before, and knew firsthand of the helplessness, the hopelessness, the all-pervasive fear it engendered. And her captors were Cole and Lyle Comfort — he shivered at the thought, and the cold day.

Presumably Comfort would keep her alive and well till tonight’s heist, at least, to keep Nolan playing. Comfort’s own reputation was so rotten it had obviously forced him to call on people who’d worked with Nolan — Fisher, Winch, Dooley — pros who would put their misgivings about working with Comfort aside when they heard Nolan was aboard. (The Leeches were another matter.) This put Nolan’s importance beyond providing inside information and planning; Comfort had — no doubt reluctantly, but of necessity — made Nolan the linchpin of the heist.

Without Nolan, the mall haul simply would not go down. If Nolan failed to show, Fisher, Winch and Dooley would walk.

What Comfort didn’t know, of course, was that those three already knew the real score; Fisher, like Winch and Dooley before him, had last night promised to follow Nolan’s lead, even down to aborting the job (in favor of Nolan kicking in a fifteen-grand payoff — business was business).

At just after four o’clock, Jon decided to take a chance. He pulled off the ski mask and replaced it with a gray beret and wrapped the black muffler around his neck up higher, so that it covered the bottom of his face, like a stagecoach robber. He tucked a square flat brown-paper-wrapped package under his left arm, locked up the van and walked across the snowy parking lot and into the Holiday Inn. His gloveless right hand was on the snub-nose .38 in the deep pocket of his coat.

Cindy Lou had mentioned, yesterday, that her father and the Leeches had spent a good deal of time together, in the lounge, which was off the restaurant, and Jon peeked in. It was just a bar and some booths and a few small tables and a middle-aged mustached pianist playing “Just the Way You Are.” A couple sat at the bar, and some businessmen sat in one of the booths. But in another of the booths the Leeches and Cole Comfort were sitting, countless bottles of beer before them. They were going over one of Nolan’s photocopied maps of the mall. Right in front of God and the pianist and everybody.

Jesus Christ, Jon thought, ducking out before he was seen. Finding them confabbing there meant he’d hit pay dirt; but he couldn’t get excited about it because he was too struck by the notion that he just might possibly be pulling a job with these morons in a few hours.

He walked the halls till he found 714 — the numbering system seemed to apply to wings, not floors — and knocked on the door. He knocked with his left hand, brown-paper package still tucked under his arm, his right hand still clutching the revolver, which remained in his pocket but pointed toward the door, because if Lyle Comfort answered it, Jon just might have to shoot the fucker.

No answer to his knock.

He sighed. He was trembling. He simply was not cut out for this life. What was he doing, hanging around with a guy like Nolan. What the fuck was he doing with a revolver in his pocket.

He knocked again.

The door cracked open and Cindy Lou’s faintly freckled face peered out, and broke into a lovely smile, the small, childlike teeth whiter than outside. She was lovely, but seemed a little haggard. Was it the light of day, and lack of makeup — or had she had a rough night?

In any event, she was dripping wet, except for her reddish-blond hair, which was pulled back from her face. She was wearing a white towel.

“Hi, Cindy Lou.”

Her smile disappeared, and the door chain was still between them. “You shouldn’t oughta come here,” she said, big blue eyes going smaller as she tightened her expression.

“I brought your record.”

The eyes got as large as they were blue again, and she smiled; but then the smile faded, and her eyes became merely huge. “ Daddy’s around. It’s dangerous.”

“I think I spotted him in the lounge. He seemed settled in.”

Her brow crinkled. “How would you know which was my daddy?”

“Let me in, Cindy Lou. I got to talk to you.”

Her face tightened further, in thought; under those remarkable eyes she had dark circles. Then the chain was drawn aside, and she opened the door; he stepped inside and chained the door behind him. He handed her the brown package and she opened it greedily, saying “All right! ” as the towel dropped to the floor.

Her body, in the light of day, looked just fine. Very pale flesh, very pink, very erect nipples, peachlike breasts, her strawberry-blond pubic hair trimmed into a heart shape, something he hadn’t seen in the near-light of the back of the van last night. His dick said boy, howdy, and he told it, down boy.