Макс Коллинз - Spree

She loved her life.

Tonight, she’d come on, as usual, right at ten, nodding to Pete, whose maintenance shift was just ending, and Scott, that cute security guard, who was going off duty. As usual, Pete had a pot of coffee waiting for her. She needed her caffeine; that’s one thing you needed in this job. That and a good attitude.

She sat in her swivel executive-style chair, which had been abandoned by one of the businesses out here and which Pete had salvaged and repaired, with her feet up on the workbench, trying to decide whether tonight would be a high-energy, five-hour night, followed by some relaxation (she had a historical romance paperback tucked in her purse, Love’s Savage Sword by Linda Benjamin); or a reflective, slow-and-steady worknight, where she could get lost in the circular motion of mop and rag, and contemplate her kids and her old man. She sipped her coffee, and thought: I think tonight I’ll whip through this place like a female Mr. Clean; maybe I can beat my record and come in under five hours — and finish reading my romance.

With that, she was deep asleep.

Nolan sat at his desk. White-haired, blue-eyed Coleman Comfort sat on a box of whiskey bottles nearby; he was wearing his coveralls with a plaid shirt underneath, looking folksy as a postcard from the Grand Ole Opry. He seemed to have developed a bit of a paunch; Nolan didn’t seem to be the only one age had put a spare tire on. One odd note was struck: his high-topped black tennis shoes, over which cream-colored longjohns rose into the coveralls. Nolan understood the shoes, though: he’d suggested to all of them, last night, that they wear something comfortable and suited for the long night of physical labor ahead. And Cole Comfort had obviously taken Nolan’s footwear advice to heart, and sole.

“I guess it’s time,” Cole said, smiling; he had such a nice smile.

Nolan glanced at his watch. Ten after ten. “I’d say the maintenance girl’s out, by now.” He had gone in just before Pete went off and chatted with the man, slipping Seconal in the pot of coffee. The last three nights Nolan had, just after ten, entered the mall the back way, walking past the maintenance shop’s double doors, which were invariably ajar; each night he noticed the night girl sitting having a cup of coffee before getting to work.

Three nights in a row suggested, but did not guarantee, a pattern.

“How do we know she’s out?” Comfort said, just a little irritably.

“We’ll know for sure soon enough. Before this goes any further, you’ve got a phone call to make.”

And Nolan pushed the phone on his desk toward Comfort. Comfort rose and went to the phone and pushed some buttons and, phone to his ear, stood and smiled at Nolan. It was a smile that seemed pleasant enough, but Nolan could see the smugness, the cruelty, that lurked behind Comfort’s good-ole-boy veneer.

“Hello, son,” Comfort said, his voice warm. “Time to put the girl on.”

He listened for a while, and handed the receiver to Nolan.

“Nolan?”

Her voice was breathy; there was fear in it, but also relief.

“Sherry,” he said.

“They’re using me to make you help them, aren’t they?” Her bitter tone of voice conveyed what she couldn’t add: And I hate it .

“You know about the mall heist?” he asked her.

“I’ve picked up on it. You could lose everything.”

“I’m not going to lose you.”

“The life you’ve made...”

“No. I did the planning. It’ll go down smooth. You’ll be returned to me and we’ll even get a piece of the action for our trouble.”

Nolan didn’t believe that, but he needed Comfort to believe he did, and it wouldn’t hurt Sherry’s state of mind to believe that, either.

“They haven’t hurt me. They keep saying once you’ve cooperated, I’ll be released.”

“We’ll be together in a few hours.”

That Nolan believed; or at least, he believed it to be a possibility. He and Jon already had something in motion.

“I love you, Nolan.”

“I love you, too.”

“That’s... nice to hear.”

Was she crying?

He said, “I’ll take you to Vegas when this is over and prove it.”

He told her to hang on, and then he hung up.

Comfort, who again was perched on the liquor boxes, hands on his knees, smiled paternally. “She didn’t complain about the treatment none, did she?”

“No.”

“You’re a lucky man. She’s a nice girl. A pretty girl.”

Nolan didn’t like to hear Comfort talk about her, but he didn’t say anything.

Comfort did: “When this is over, we’ll be even, Nolan. We can put all our differences behind us.”

“It’ll be history,” Nolan agreed.

“History,” Comfort repeated, smiling, standing, clapping, once. “So! Let’s go open the door and let our friends in, what do you say?”

Nolan remained seated. “Soon,” he said.

Comfort’s smile disappeared, and his mouth pulled itself in a tight line across his leathery face, but he just sat down. He’d put Nolan in charge; he had to live with it. For the moment.

Jon, wearing a Space Pirates sweatshirt, peeked in the maintenance room. The woman in the brown uniform was slumped in a swivel chair, feet up on a workbench; she was sawing logs. He had a large gym bag with him, from which he took a pair of handcuffs and some clothesline and a roll of wide-width adhesive tape. He left the woman in her chair, but slipped her feet from the bench onto the floor. He cuffed her hands behind the chair, and tied her feet to it, snug. He ran the adhesive over her eyes and around behind her hair, grimacing with the thought of how removal would hurt the poor woman. But it beat being dead, and Comfort might just as easily killed her, which was why Nolan kept this job for Jon and himself. Jon slapped another piece of adhesive over her mouth, which didn’t quite silence the snoring; her fairly large nose could saw its share of logs on its own.

In the bottom of the bag was a long-barreled .38 and an UZI submachine gun and a box of ammo for the revolver, and half a dozen clips for the machine gun. Jon zipped the bag and stowed it in a corner of the maintenance shed, behind a big shiny golf-cart-like thing, which seemed to be a floor buffer.

The guns were against Comfort’s rules. Despite what had been said at the meeting last night, Comfort had told Nolan privately that he and Jon were to go into this unarmed. Nolan hadn’t protested. He and Jon would go into it unarmed, all right; they just wouldn’t come out that way.

“We’re probably going to have to do some shooting,” Nolan said.

“Oh, Christ. Isn’t there ever an end to it?”

“There is if Comfort gets his way. He plans to kill us all.”

Jon swallowed thickly. “You and me and Sherry, you mean.”

“Possibly some of the others as well.”

“Why, for Christ’s sake?”

“Not for Christ’s sake. For the sake of revenge, in our case. In the others, for the sake of greed; for the sake of self-protection.”

Jon pulled at his own hair till it hurt. “Goddamn, I blew it, I really fucking blew it. We should have tried what you said — we should have grabbed Cindy Lou and tried a trade.”

“That’s hindsight; don’t torture yourself, kid. Besides, it might not have worked. We may have a better chance, tonight.”

“How?”

“It all hinges on Lyle showing up. And judging from his father going to the trouble of including him in our planning session last night, I think the boy will show. And once he has, that means one of two things.”

“Which are?”

“Sherry’s already dead.”

“Jesus.”

“Or she’s being baby-sat by your friend Cindy Lou.”