Max Collins - Hard Cash

She smiled. “And my ass has nothing to do with it.”

“Well. Maybe just a little. Take care of that ass, okay, till I get back and can take over?”

“Sure. And watch your own while you’re at it. Next week, did you say?”

“Probably. I’ll probably give you a call.”

And he was gone.

She went back into the house, into the kitchen, and drank the last of the pot of coffee she’d made.

She wondered if Nolan would really find her husband’s murderer, and if he did and took care of whoever it was, would she feel any better about it?

Now she felt very little. Anger, there was anger. Some sorrow. But more than anything there was confusion. Her husband had been blown to hell by a shotgun. In the company of one of his barmaid bitches. Naked, the two of them.

She wondered if there was any significance to the bitch’s body being in the back room, while her husband had been in the outer bar. To open the cash register, she supposed; it would have been locked after closing, and he would have had to reopen it for the thieves. She wondered if she should have mentioned any of that to Nolan. And that one other strange thing: the bottle her husband had had in his hand. He’d evidently grabbed for that bottle off the shelf just as he’d died, or as he’d realized he was about to die. What kind of crazy reflex action was that? To grab a bottle of Southern Comfort off the shelf?

Friday, while Nolan drove into Indianapolis to see Breen’s wife, Jon drove to Cedar Rapids in his Chevy II to buy a pair of hunting jackets. He didn’t know why he was buying the jackets, exactly, just that Nolan had told him to.

He was also supposed to stop at a place called Blosser’s Costume Shop and Theatrical Supply to pick up a package for Nolan.

And of course it was like Nolan to give Jon a task or two to carry out without explaining the task or two’s significance. Jon was used to it. But he still questioned Nolan about such seemingly absurd assignments, getting nothing in particular back from the man for his trouble.

“Hunting jackets?” he’d asked. “What for?”

“One for you,” Nolan said. “One for me.”

“Okay, one for me, one for you, sure. But for what purpose, Nolan? I mean, hunting jackets? And why go all the hell the way to Cedar Rapids to get them?”

“Just do it. Yours is not to reason why.”

“I don’t believe you sometimes, Nolan.”

“And buy one of them at one store, and the other at another.”

“Why?”

“Because I want the jackets bought at separate stores.”

“Jesus. Okay. All right. I’ll do it. But what’s the costume thing about? Will you tell me that?”

“Ask for the manager. Blosser, the manager-owner. He’s a friend of mine. He knows about me. You can talk freely. He has a package for me. Oh, he may have you try something on. In fact, maybe you ought to insist on trying one of them on.”

“One of what on?”

“One of what’s in the package.”

“What is in the package?”

“Let me do the thinking.”

“Wait a minute, let me see if I got this straight. I buy the hunting jackets and pick up the packages, you do the thinking. Is that the way it goes?”

“That’s it exactly.”

“Well, I just hadn’t had it explained to me properly before. Once it’s explained to me, then I understand. But would you tell me one thing?”

“What?”

“Why do I still bother asking you questions?”

“Kid, that’s one question I wish I could answer for you.”

And so he had driven to Cedar Rapids, had bought one hunting jacket (a green plaid) in his own size, at a sporting goods store downtown, and another (a red plaid) in Nolan’s size, at a sporting goods store in an outlying shopping center, paying cash in both instances, as Nolan had also instructed.

He realized the hunting jackets had something to do with the robbery. That was self-evident. What galled him was that he couldn’t figure out what, and he knew Nolan wouldn’t tell him till the last moment.

The costume shop was on the way out of town, in a rather run-down section that was commercial along the main strip that ran through the area, but back behind which was a neighborhood that could be called lower middle class if you were in a charitable mood. It was a one-story, faded brick building sandwiched between a bait shop and a used book store that was, damn it, closed. Jon peeked in the windows of the old book store and saw thousands of used paperbacks in ceiling-high bookcases, and what looked like some old comic books and for sure some Big Little Books in locked showcases similar to those in Planner’s shop. He ran across such shops every now and then, and they were invariably closed. He sighed, shrugged, and went on into the costume shop.

The interior was spare but not seedy, with a counter and a waiting room area, similar to a laundry. An attractive if hard-looking woman of thirty or so was behind the counter, with coal-black hair, a beauty mark to the left of a red-painted mouth, and braless bouncing breasts under a satinlike yellow blouse. She looked as though she was preparing to audition for a local production of Carmen .

“Hi, honey,” she said casually, and Jon looked around to make sure she was talking to him.

She was, so he said hi himself, and did his best to return her suggestive smile. Maybe the woman did look sort of cheap and whorish, but she was also sexy-looking, in a second-rate men’s magazine way.

“What can I do you for?” she said. She was chewing gum. Not blatantly, though — not a cow chewing cud — but playing with it in her mouth, playing with it with her tongue.

“Uh, I’d like to see Mr. Blosser.”

“Not here.”

“Oh. You expect him soon?”

“Nope. Won’t be back today.”

“Well, uh, I was supposed to pick up a package for a friend of his. A Mr. Nolan?”

“Oh, sure. Your name must be Jon.”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“I’m Connie. The boss’s daughter, in case you was wondering.”

“Oh. Yeah, well, I’m pleased to meet you, Connie.”

“I’m sure. How is Nolan these days?”

“Fine. Fine. I didn’t know you knew Nolan.”

She grinned. She really was a good-looking woman, cheap or hard or not. “I know him. You ask him if I know him or not.” She laughed and her breasts jiggled.

Jon swallowed. “Okay, I’ll tell him you said hello.”

She reached under the counter and flopped two large white string-tied suit-type boxes up in front of her. “Here. This one is yours. It’s a small. You better try it on.” She motioned him behind the counter, and he followed her through a narrow hallway to some dressing cubicles in the rear of the store. She handed him the box marked “Small” and left, pulling the cubicle’s curtain shut on him.

He opened the box.

There was something red in it.

Red and partly white. Trimmed in white.

The red was a cheap but plush-looking velvetlike material; the white was fluffy stuff — cotton, he guessed. There was also red gloves of the same material, trimmed in the same white fluff.

It looked like a Santa Claus costume.

He took it out of the box.

It was a Santa Claus costume.

He put it back in the box and went back out front, quickly, leaving the costume behind.

“That was quick,” the woman said. “Fit okay, does it?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know... I didn’t try it on.”

“How come?”

“Well, there has to be some mistake.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, it’s a... would you come with me a minute?”

He took her back to the dressing cubicle and showed her.

“Yeah,” she said. “A Santa Claus costume. So?”

“This is what is supposed to be in this box?”