Max Collins - Mourn The Living

Nolan tried the Globe again, couldn’t get Davis, then got up from bed and, phone book under his arm, left the room, grabbing his tan suitcoat from the chair. He went out to the Lincoln, climbed in and roared toward Chelsey.

As he drove through the shaded residential streets, Nolan felt Chelsey was more a postcard than a city. He had heard there was a slum in Chelsey, but that he would have to see to believe.

In seven minutes he reached the downtown area. It was a typical small-town business district, built around a square, with all the businesses enclosing a quaint crumbling courthouse which stood in the center collecting dust. There were people bundled warmly against the cold Illinois wind, rushing up and down the sidewalks, visibly pained to move that quickly. Birds and bird-dung clung to the courthouse and Nolan wondered why the hell they didn’t fly south or something. At first Nolan didn’t see any old men in front of the courthouse, as he expected there to be, but after he parked his car and walked half-way around the square, he saw them at last. They were sitting in the shade of a large leafy tree, bench-bound, tobacco-mouthed, as motionless as the twin Civil War cannons in front of them.

He checked Dillon’s Tap, found it empty except for a blowsy redhead talking to the bartender. No Davis, no other reporters to ask about Davis.

He didn’t find Davis or colleagues in the Eastgate Tavern, where two on-duty policemen were drinking beer. He didn’t want to talk to them.

Nolan went back to his rented Lincoln and headed toward the Chelsey University campus, which lay beyond the downtown district. The downtown continued on three streets north of the square, made up primarily of collegiate shops and bookstores; then the campus lay just after that, on a bluff overlooking the Chelsey River.

The river was little more than a wide stream, with several footbridges and four traffic bridges crossing it. The rest of Chelsey and the C.U. campus, football stadium included, were on the other side of the river. Nolan drove over the Front Street bridge and saw a large unlit neon saying Big 7. He pulled into the parking lot and went in.

The place was dark and smoke hung over it like a gray cloud. Nolan couldn’t tell whether or not, as the motel manager had said, it was a fairly nice restaurant, simply because he couldn’t see it very well. All he could see clearly were football action shots trying in vain to break the monotony of the room’s pine-paneled walls. Then he spotted two men in wrinkled suits, one blue and one grey, standing at the bar arguing over a long dead play out of a long dead Rose Bowl game.

“Excuse me,” Nolan said.

The two guys stopped mid-play and gave Nolan twin what-the-hell-do-you-want sneers.

Nolan said, “Where can I find Hal Davis?”

The two guys looked at each other in acknowledgment of Nolan being a stranger to both of them. Then one of the guys, a chunky ex-high school tackle perhaps, said, “Maybe Hal Davis likes privacy. Maybe he don’t care to be found.”

“If you know where he is, I’d appreciate it you tell me.”

The guy looked at Nolan, looked at Nolan’s eyes.

“He’s over at the corner table. Facin’ the wall.”

Nolan nodded.

The two men returned to the play and Nolan headed for the corner table, where a sandy-haired man of around fifty sat nursing a glass of bourbon.

“Mr. Davis?”

He glanced up. His eyes were blood-shot and heavily bagged and the hands around the glass were shaky. He wasn’t drunk, but he wished he was. His lips barely moved as he said, “I don’t know you, mister.”

“My name’s Webb. Care if I sit?”

“I don’t care period.”

Nolan sat. He looked at Davis, caught the man’s eyes and held them. “You look like a man who got pushed and didn’t like it.”

Davis shook Nolan’s gaze and stared into his glass of bourbon. “I said I don’t know you, Webb. I think maybe I don’t want to know you.”

Nolan shrugged. “I’m telling people I’m a magazine writer, Mr. Davis. But that’s not who I am or why I came to Chelsey.”

“Why, then? You come to drop out and turn on?”

“I’m a private investigator,” Nolan told him. “From Philadelphia. I been hired by a client... who’ll remain nameless of course... to contact a Mr. George Franco.”

Davis said, “You know something, Webb? You don’t look like a private investigator to me. You look like a hood. You got something under your left armpit besides hair, your fancy suit isn’t cut so well that I can’t tell that. What’s it you’re after in Chelsey? You got a contract on Franco?”

“No. What if I did?”

“I wouldn’t give a damn.”

“You getting shoved around by the Boys, Mr. Davis?”

“The boys? What boys are those?”

So, Nolan thought, maybe Davis doesn’t know about the Chelsey hook-up with the Chicago outfit; maybe he’s just a small-town newsman getting pressured by “local hoods.”

Nolan said, “Let me put it this way... are George Franco and his associates telling you what to say in the Globe ?”

“You mean what not to say, don’t you? Sure, they’re tellin’ me, and they got some pretty goddamn persuasive ways of telling, too.”

“I want Franco’s address.”

Davis downed the dregs of the bourbon. He smiled; one of his front teeth was chipped in half. “I’ll get it capped one of these days,” he said, gesturing to it with the emptied shot glass. “For a while I’m leavin’ it like this, so I can look in the mirror when I get up mornings and think about what a chicken-shit I am.”

Nolan said, “Franco’s address.”

Davis shook his head. “It’s not an address. It doesn’t exist, not officially, anyway. It’s a fancy penthouse deal, only it’s above a drug store. Berry Drug, right down on the square, across from the courthouse and cannons. There’s a fire escape in back that’ll lead you to a bedroom window.”

“Any bars on it?”

“Nope. Just a regular glass window. They don’t bother protecting fat George that much. Thinks his place is a real secret.”

“Is it?”

“It was.” He grinned his air-conditioned grin. “But it looks like the secret’s out, doesn’t it?”

Nolan dropped a twenty on the table and left.

He drove back across the bridge and parked his car several blocks away from Berry Drug. He went into a hardware store and bought a glass-cutter, then walked to the courthouse lawn. He sat on one of the benches by an old man who smelled like a urinal and watched the drug store for about an hour. A black-haired whore in a short black shift came out, then a thin man in a powder-blue suit went in and came back out in less than ten minutes.

After a while Nolan strolled around behind the drug store and climbed the fire escape and used the glass-cutter on the window. It was broad daylight, but the ’scape was at an angle and Nolan figured a daytime attack would be less expected.

He slipped into the plush red-carpeted flat, and crept over to the bed, where an extremely fat man in a silk dressing gown lay on his stomach, half-asleep and talking to himself.

Nolan got out his .38 and, after a brief exchange of conversation, introduced himself to George Franco. “My name’s Nolan.” It was four fifteen p.m.

Back in Peoria Sid Tisor was wondering if Nolan had reached Chelsey yet.

Nolan strolled over to the bar, laid his gun on the counter and helped himself to a shot of Jim Beam. He glanced over at George, who was sitting on the edge of the bed, his plump fists clenching the bedspread. George’s forehead was beaded with sweat; his mouth hung loosely above two double chins.

Nolan asked George if he wanted a drink.