Max Collins: Hard Cash

So they left, and waited and watched for Nolan to come back to the shop. Across the street was an old school, which was evidently set to be torn down, but no work was going on, maybe because of the cold, snowy weather; at any rate, it was empty, no one around to stop them from going in and finding a first-floor window to look out of and watch the antique shop across the way. Both father and son pulled up desks designed for grade school children and sat, their skinny frames fitting easily enough.

It wasn’t till late in the evening, around ten, that Nolan came back, and by that time Terry’s father had fallen asleep, and Terry didn’t wake him. Terry wanted to stall his father long enough to find out whether or not a heist was in the offing, and he let his father spend the night in the cold, empty grade school in a third-grader’s desk. In the morning, when old Sam was waking up (and almost immediately began cursing his son for falling asleep on the job), Nolan and the short curly-haired kid drove out from around back of the antique shop, from the garage, in an old and somewhat battered Chevy II. And the Comforts went scrambling out of their third-grade desks, out of the condemned school and into their car, parked in an alley behind and, keeping a discreet distance, followed the Chevy II out of town. Soon the Chevy II disappeared off onto a back country road, and following them became impossible.

They drove back to Iowa City, to their deserted school and the desks by the window. The old man was trembling with near rage, and Terry, who’d been hit by his father on more than one occasion, was afraid a family fight was about to begin. But as weak as the old man was, Terry doubted that would amount to much.

“Pop, don’t you see?” Terry said. “There is a heist coming up. They’re preparing for it. Driving the back roads, figuring out getaway routes. Don’t you see it?”

But the old man didn’t see.

And so they again broke into the antique shop. To wait. For Nolan and the kid to come back together. Sam Comfort was going to settle his score as bloodily as it had begun. And God only knew what the old man would do, what gruesome goddamn lengths he’d go to to avenge the killing of his favorite son. It was like that black guy Terry had known in prison, who’d come in on his wife humping somebody else — people do things that are a little weird when they get taken advantage of.

They had found this attic. The apartmentlike upper floor had a low ceiling, and they could jump down into the kitchen easily from the attic perch. It was the old man’s idea, and for a change Terry liked it: Nolan was just too competent to deal with flat out; better to let him come home and think everything’s cool, tuck himself in bed for a nice night’s sleep, and then boom. Nolan was not the type of guy you could allow any slack. You had to have him cold, and even then better watch yourself.

They waited up there. Flat on their bellies. The lidlike door that opened above the kitchen cracked open a shade, so they could hear Nolan and the lad coming in — hear what they were doing, keep track of them, wait for just the right moment to spring the trap. Furthermore, the attic had a second hatchway over the garage, so if a hasty retreat was necessary, no problem. It was ideal.

It was also stuffy and cramped and hell to spend four or five minutes in, let alone hours. Terry was to the point of giving up on his idea of waiting for Nolan to pull off a heist before killing him; to forget about the money and just get on with it, just let his old man get his revenge rocks off. After all, Terry’d only been out a few days. He was horny. He wanted to be the one who did the screwing for a change, and he didn’t want any damn boy, either. He wanted to get drunk, and he thought he might smoke a little shit, too, a little tokin’ of respect for his late doper brother. Christ, after all those months inside, was this any way to spend his time? Flat on his belly in an attic that had less room to move in than his cell?

Noise downstairs.

Old Sam gripped Terry’s forearm.

Terry patted his father’s hand soothingly.

Between them was the shotgun.

“I’m sorry, Nolan.” Young voice. The lad. Nolan’s buddy.

“It’s okay. You almost killed us, but it’s okay.”

“That’s never happened to me before. Falling asleep at the wheel, I mean, Jesus.”

“Maybe it’s a good sign.”

“How do you figure?”

“Shows you’re relaxed, if nothing else. I doubt Rigley and the girl get that much sleep between now and Monday. No, I take that back — the girl’ll sleep fine. She’ll sleep better than any of us.”

“Listen, Nolan, I’m tired, and I know you are too. I mean, you slept all the way back yourself...”

“Except when you almost ran into the semi. That woke me up.”

“Yeah, except then. Anyway, I wonder if you’d mind going over a few things with me. I feel like there’s a few things you’re going to want me to know that Rigley doesn’t have to. After all, all he has to do is stand there.”

“Couldn’t it wait till morning?”

“I’ll sleep better if we go over it now.”

“I didn’t notice you having any trouble sleeping when you were behind the wheel.”

“I’m wide awake now.”

“Okay. I tell you what. I’ll take it from the top, and you stop me any time you got a question.”

After Nolan had gone over the heist in detail with the kid, the Comforts allowed time for everybody downstairs to go to sleep, then sneaked out through the garage.

Most of the downtown Port City buildings were brick and had a decaying look to them. The bank, on the corner, was an exception. It was white stone, two stories of nicely chiseled Grecian architecture dominated by three pillars carved out of its face. Above the pillars the word bank was cut in the stone and the date 1870; the bank’s electric sign, nearby, didn’t date back that far. The sign was attached to the corner of the building and hovered out over the sidewalk; it said first national bank of port city above a field of black, on which white dots grouped to form the time and then regrouped to form the temperature. Right now the sign said the time was 1:27. The time was 7:26. And the sign said the temperature was 98 degrees. The temperature was 20 degrees. The sign was broken.

Jon was nervous. Yesterday, Sunday, had been busy, and he hadn’t had time to be nervous; he’d been moving all the time, almost all night, too. But now he was sitting, and he felt himself trembling, like an alcoholic who needed that first drink.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and almost jumped.

“Easy,” Nolan said. “Easy.”

Nolan’s hand. A reassuring hand. Jon looked at Nolan, who smiled from behind his white whiskers and said softly, “ho ho ho.”

“Yeah?” Jon said. “And I hear your wife puts out for the elves. Stick that up your chimney.”

And they looked at each other in their Santa Claus suits and laughed, a little, and Jon was less nervous. A little.

Rigley was behind Nolan, crouching. The man didn’t seem at all nervous, but somehow he didn’t seem calm, either. He hadn’t said a word since they’d stopped by his house to pick him up a few minutes before.

They were in a red panel truck that was parked in front of the Salvation Army store just down the block from and on the same side of the one-way street as the bank. On the sides and rear of the panel truck it said “TOYS FOR TIKES, Davenport, Iowa” in white letters. Toys for Tikes was an organization of area businessmen whose panel trucks (identical to this one) were a common Christmas-season sight in these parts. The trucks went around to various businesses that served as drop points for the broken and/or discarded toys that Toys for Tikes collected, refurbished, and distributed to needy children. Sometimes, close to Christmas, when there were more deliveries than pickups to be made, the drivers dressed as Santa Claus.