Max Collins - Hard Cash

“Sure.”

“What’s in the other box?”

“Another Santa Claus costume. That’s a total of two. One small, the other’s large.”

“And that’s what Nolan wanted me to pick up for him?”

“Shit, yes. Didn’t he tell you?”

“I’m afraid he doesn’t tell me much of anything.”

“Yeah, that’s Nolan, all right Listen... you need any help getting into that, honey, just give Connie a call, you hear?” She winked and chewed her gum seductively and left him there with a hard on and a Santa Claus suit.

It fit fine. He looked at himself in the cubicle’s shadowy mirror, and damned if the world’s shortest, most clean-shaven Santa Claus wasn’t staring him in the face. He asked Connie about the lack of a beard, after getting back into his street clothes.

“Oh, the beards are in the other box, with the large suit,” she said. “The caps are in there too.”

“Caps?”

“Caps. You better try yours on.” She opened the other suit box and got out a floppy red cap with white ball on the end. “The beards are adjustable, around the ears, but the caps could be trouble... there, see? You got too much hair for a small. I’ll go back and get a medium.”

She did, and insisted that Jon try that one on too, and he did, and she tweaked his cheek and said, “Gonna bring me anything for Christmas, Santa?”

He grinned, trying to keep the red from crawling up his neck. “We’ll see,” he said.

“I wonder what the heck Nolan wants with Santa Claus suits,” she said, shaking her head. “Somehow he don’t seem the Santa type. Unless he’s gonna empty stockings instead of fill ’em.”

Jon nodded his agreement and watched her put the cap back in the box and tie some string around it.

“Don’t forget to tell Nolan I said hi,” she said. “And maybe I’ll see you when you bring the suits back after Christmas, huh, honey?”

It took him almost an hour to get back to Iowa City. The overcast day had everybody cautious and using their headlights, and he got caught behind some old ladies going forty-five. So did a lot of other cars; the traffic was heavy, and passing was difficult — no, impossible — and he followed the old girls to the Interstate, after which he was back to Iowa City in short order. He parked the Chevy II behind the antique shop and went in the side door, which was unlocked.

That wasn’t right; surely he’d locked the door when he left. Yes, he remembered locking it.

Too early for Nolan to back from Indianapolis. Wasn’t it?

He shut the door. Softly. Silently.

Listened.

Heard nothing.

Quietly he moved behind the long, saloon-style counter behind which his uncle had sat day after day puffing his foul-smelling cigars. He set his packages on the counter. In a drawer, below the cash register, was one of his uncle’s .32 automatics. Jon got it out Softly. Silently.

He explored the downstairs. Nothing in the main room, with its antiques and showcases and counter and all. Nothing in his own room, except half the comic books in the world.

But what about the other back room? The one that had included Planner’s workshop area, as well as where many very valuable antiques were crated away for future sale, and where the big old safe was...

The safe’s door was open.

Otherwise, the room was as empty as the rest of the downstairs.

But someone had been in here, opened the safe and, of course, found nothing in it. There hadn’t been anything of value kept in the safe since Nolan and Jon’s money had been stolen from it months before, the time Planner himself was killed defending that money. Killed in this very room. Jon had, in fact, scrubbed his uncle’s blood from the floorboards of this room...

He felt a chill, and for a moment was very scared, and then it passed. Whoever it was had been here and gone. He walked out into the other room and put the gun back in its drawer.

He was halfway up the stairs, his arms full of the packages with the hunting jackets and Santa Claus suits, when he heard the noise.

Talking.

Someone was talking up there on the second floor. And it sure as hell wasn’t Nolan.

And the talking was coming this way. Toward the stairs. They were going to come down the stairs!

He couldn’t be soft or silent about it now. He had no choice but to clomp down the stairs and head toward that drawer with the gun in it, but they were closer to him than he had imagined, on his damn heels before he was even out of the stairwell. And the packages were flying and he was face down on the floor, one of the men on his back and the other standing in front of him. Jon couldn’t see anything of whoever it was except shoes. Black shoes and white socks. The shoes were old-fashioned, lacing halfway up the ankle. Clodhoppers, shoes a farmer might work in; the socks were loose and dirty.

That’s all Jon saw of the two men, as he later deduced the number of his assailants to be: the shoes and socks of one of them, and nothing of the other, because the other was on Jon’s back, holding him down.

Nobody said a word; certainly not Jon, whose lips and teeth were mashed into the wooden floor.

And then one of the black shoes flew at Jon’s temple, and Jon went away for a while.

He woke up on the couch upstairs.

There was coldness on the side of his head.

“Oh... fuck...” he heard himself saying. He sat up. The coldness, an ice pack, slid off the side of his head.

Nolan handed Jon a cold beer. Jon grabbed at it, guzzling at the can like the Frankenstein monster taking his first drink.

“Aren’t you even going to ask me how my day in Indianapolis went?” Nolan said.

Jon just looked at Nolan. Then laughed. “Hey. You got me an ice pack. For my kicked-in head. You’re some kind of nurse, Nolan. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

“If you want a doctor, I can get Ainsworth over here. That’s a hell of a lump you got. Concussion maybe.”

“No doctor. I’m okay.”

“You mean you think you’re okay.”

“I don’t think anything. I think all my think got kicked all over the floor downstairs.”

“Somebody was into the safe.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I think they were looking around upstairs, too.”

“Nothing valuable taken?”

“Nothing valuable to take. Except some of the antiques, which they didn’t touch. And a couple thousand in the wall safe, which they didn’t find. So you got here before they left, and they kicked you in the head? See who it was?”

“I know exactly who kicked me in the head. We can have the cops put out an APB, my description is so exact.”

“Who, then?”

“A black farmer shoe with a dirty white sock and a foot in it.”

“Terrific. Another beer?”

“No. This one’ll do me. I’ll just lay back down here. What the hell time is it?”

“Oh, around eleven I guess.”

“When did you get back?”

“Not long ago. I hauled you upstairs and got you an ice pack and you woke up.”

“I’m not sure about that last part. Jesus. Now I know what they mean when they say ain’t that a kick in the head.”

“Listen. Breen was murdered.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s why you went to Indianapolis.”

“I mean Breen was murdered, and then you were kicked in the head and our place was gone through. Nothing’s gone, but it was gone through, all right.”

“You think there’s a connection? Between Breen and today?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“Me? You’re asking me, Nolan? For an opinion? Christ, I’m not ready for that. You better just kick me in the head. That I can handle. That I’ve had experience with.”

“This heist. Maybe we should scratch it.”

“Yeah, sure, only we aren’t calling the shots. Rigley is. Or Rigley’s girl friend is.”