Max Collins: Hard Cash

Nolan nodded. “All right. Go settle him down and bring him back here. And get a cloth and clean off this damn table, will you?”

She went to Rigley, and Jon said, “That’s why you wanted me to be nice, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Nolan said. “It’s bad enough working with amateurs, let alone uptight amateurs. If we’re going through with this, our asses depend on George Rigley coming through for us. So we got to make sure he’s comfortable, got to have him confident in us, got to put him at ease.”

“What about the girl? She’s an amateur too, isn’t she?”

“Her? An amateur? Kid, she could give us lessons.”

And then the girl was wiping off the table and Rigley was settling down in the chair, nervous but better.

“There’s one thing I have to ask,” Nolan said, “before we go any further.”

“What is it?” the girl said.

“It’s you,” he told her. Then he turned to Rigley and said, “Your robbery plan includes her. Her role is pretty minor, but she does have a role, or she wouldn’t be here right now, would she? Yet you aren’t asking for a share for her. Three-way split, you say. Why? I’d say she deserves half a share at least.”

“I... I can’t believe what you’re saying,” Rigley said. “You’re complaining because you’ll be getting more money than you have coming to you? Nobody in his right mind would make a complaint like that.”

“Nobody in his right mind would give money away,” Nolan said. “Especially not a bank president. Why are you?”

The girl said, “May I explain? It was meant primarily as an incentive for you. To assure you this arrangement is based not on coercion, but more a business proposition. And George only needs a relatively small amount... around one hundred thousand... to cover what he, uh...”

“Embezzled,” Rigley said. “That’s the word — embezzled. You see, I’m losing my job, Logan. My embezzlement would never have been found out, as long as I was president. But I’m losing my job, and as soon as a new man gets in my chair, my handiwork will be discovered. All I want is to replace what I took — and lost, on the stock market — so that I can leave the bank with my reputation intact. In fact, I already have another position lined up: president of a bank in a little town in New Mexico, and Julie will be going with me.”

The girl cut in, saying, “But that’s getting into areas that are of no concern to you, isn’t it? Does it answer your question?”

“It does,” Nolan said. He thought for a moment, then said, “All right. Why don’t you people have something to drink, whip up a fresh pitcher of booze if you like, Rigley, and everybody relax. Go sit in front of the fire or something I want to study this folder of material for a while and see how it fits in with what I have in mind.”

The girl touched Nolan’s hand again. “How soon do you think we can get on with it? The robbery, I mean.”

“Soon. Sooner than any of you, including Jon, will like, I think.”

Rigley said, “How... how soon do you mean?”

“Well, tonight’s Saturday. You need some time to absorb what I’ll be laying out for you tonight, and also some time to hopefully get some rest, though I doubt any of you’ll get much of that. Anyway, Monday morning.”

“Which Monday morning?” the girl asked, eyes wide.

“Monday morning,” Nolan said. “You know. The day after tomorrow.”

The first night Terry Comfort spent in prison, he was raped in the shower by a short, muscular, middle-aged bald black man. Terry was serving a year for statutory rape. He didn’t think of what the black man did to him as poetic justice. He didn’t know anything about poetic justice. He just knew he’d been screwed, a couple of ways.

He was tall, slender, in his mid-twenties; his thin sliver of a face was pale from months inside, and his sandy-color hair was shorter than he would have liked, but it wasn’t bad, considering he’d only been out a few days. They let them wear their hair longer inside these days, and things were generally better in there than Terry had heard from his father and others who’d been in. The food wasn’t bad; the work wasn’t hard; there was TV, and magazines and movies. But they still raped you. Especially if you were skinny and fair-haired and had the light blue eyes and delicate nose and full mouth Terry did.

He got to where he could stand it. Not like it, but stand it. He let the bald black man lay claim to him, since it worked out better for Terry that way; the black man wasn’t queer, really, just naturally horny, and once a week was enough for him, and once a week Terry could stand. At first, he swore the day would come when he’d kill the black man; but then he came to almost like the poor old bastard, who’d been in since he was Terry’s age, having been sent up for killing his wife. Who could blame the guy for that? He’d found his wife in bed with some other nigger and killed them both. Anyone would have done the same. Unwritten law. Of course, it had probably gone hard for him in court because of his using a hatchet to do it and disposing of the pieces down various sewer gutters, but then, a guy will do things that are a little weird when he gets taken advantage of.

Most of the people inside were like the black man and didn’t deserve to be there. Terry himself, for instance, sent up for statutory rape — what a bullshit charge! Who ever heard of a girl thirteen having tits thirty-eight? She’d said yes, hadn’t she? And went down on him and got to teaching him things he’d never even thought were possible, and then started talking that marry-me shit. Jesus Christ, one wham-bam and the little whore’s talking marriage, and he’s telling her to fuck herself for a change, and the next day the law comes around.

After all the robberies he and the old man and brother Billy had pulled together the last six or seven years, with people getting hurt and sometimes killed along the way, for Terry to get nailed for humping a thirteen-year-old, well, it was pathetic. It was more than pathetic; it was downright embarrassing.

But he was out now, sentence shortened for good behavior, and he was ready to get back to the business of making some money with his old man. And to find some more nice young pussy ripe for plucking. He had lost time to make up for on both accounts.

Right now was Saturday night, or more like Sunday morning, going on two o’clock Sunday morning. He was in an attic, a dusty, cramped attic you couldn’t stand up in without banging your head against rafters. He was on his stomach. Next to him was his father. Old Sam Comfort.

Sam Comfort was in his early sixties, had short, unruly white hair, needed a shave, and had the same deceptively kindly features as his son, only Sam’s eyes were a smoke-gray color and his face was wider, with jowls. He was shorter than his son — a little. And he was as skinny as his son, though until fairly recently he’d sported a considerable pot belly. He’d been sick.

They had been in the cramped attic for a long time. Since early evening, when it first got dark. The attic was above the second-floor living quarters over an antique shop in Iowa City. The antique shop was where the two men who had killed Sam Comfort’s other son, Billy, were living. They would not be living for long, however, if old Sam had his way.

That was probably what the old man was thinking about right now, Terry thought, studying those smoky eyes that were hard to read anyway but impossible to scrutinize in the darkness of the attic, which was relieved only by the slight filtering-in of street light through the attic’s single, small window. Still, Terry could pretty well tell what his father was thinking, most of the time. But he could never be sure. You could live with Sam Comfort your whole life and never be able to predict for sure what he’d do next.