Max Collins - Mourn The Living

Nolan drove around front, in search of a parking place. He took a look at the brick building and said to Vicki Trask, who sat close by, “That looks about as psychedelic as an American Legion Hall.”

She nodded and said, “Or a little red school-house.”

At a remote corner of the parking lot, Nolan eased the Lincoln into a place it shouldn’t have fit and said, “What the hell’s the occasion?”

“You mean the crowd?”

“Yeah. It always like this?” He turned off the ignition, leaned back and fired a cigarette. As an afterthought he offered one to Vicki and she took it, speaking as she lit it from the match Nolan extended to her.

“It’s always crowded on nights when they have dances. The Eye runs four a week, and this is the biggest night of the four.”

“Why?”

“Tonight’s the night they let in the teeny-boppers. You’ll see as many high school age here as you will college, and one out of four of the hard-looking little broads you spot will be junior high.”

“Why’re the young ones restricted to one dance a week?”

“Because they run a bar — Beer Garden, they call it — on the other three nights. Serve beer and mixed drinks. And they serve anybody with enough money to buy.”

“Drinking age in Illinois is twenty-one.”

“Sure, but nobody cares. However, they don’t serve booze on the night they open the dance to high school and junior high age. Chelsey’s city fathers, pitiful guardians of virtue though they may be, even they would bitch about the Eye serving booze to that crowd.”

Nolan nodded and drew on the cigarette. He looked out the car window and stared blankly at the river. He watched the water reflect the street lights that ringed the entire area. The suggestion of a smile traced his lips.

“What are you thinking, Earl?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on... don’t tell me you couldn’t use a friend. You’re not that different from everybody else. Spill some emotion.”

Nolan shifted his eyes from the river to the glowing tip of his cigarette. “Emotion is usually a messy thing to spill.”

She edged closer, putting a warm hand against his cheek. “I’m lonely, too, Nolan.”

His jaw tightened. “It’s Webb.”

She shook her head, turned away. “Okay, okay. Be an asshole.”

He opened the car door and she slid out his side. He paused for a moment and looked out at the river again. It had reminded him of a private place of his, a cabin he maintained along a lake in Wisconsin, near a resort town. It was one of several places he kept up under the Earl Webb name, for the times between, the times of retreat from the game he played with the Boys. Even Nolan had need for moments of solitude, peace. He hadn’t meant to hurt Vicki Trask, but he didn’t know her well enough yet to share any secrets.

They walked along the riverfront, casually making their way toward the building a block away. They walked where the river water brushed up easily against the cement, lapping whitely at their feet. In spite of himself, Nolan found his hand squeezing hers and he smiled; she was lighting up warmly in response when Tulip stepped out from between two parked cars.

A scream caught in Vicki’s throat as she watched the apeish figure rise up and raise his arm to strike Nolan with the butt of a revolver.

Nolan dropped to the cement, the gun butt swishing by, cutting the air, and shot a foot into Tulip’s stomach. Tulip bounced backward and smashed against a red Chrysler, then slid to the pavement and lay still. Nolan picked the gun from Tulip’s fingers and hefted it — a .38 Smith & Wesson. Tulip made a move to get up and Nolan kicked him in the head. Tulip leaned back against the Chrysler and closed his eyes.

Nolan shook his head, said, “When they’re that stupid, they just don’t learn,” and tossed the gun out into the river.

They walked on toward the Eye, Nolan behaving as if nothing had happened. When they were half a block away from the entrance, she managed to breathlessly say, “Did... did you kill him?”

“Tulip?”

“Is that his name? Tulip?”

“Yes, that’s his name, and no, I didn’t kill him. I don’t think.”

She looked at him in fear and confusion and perhaps admiration and followed him toward the Eye.

There was a medium-sized neon sign over the door. It bore no lettering, just an abstract neon face with an extra eye in the center of its forehead. From the look of the brick, Nolan judged the building wasn’t over a year old. The kids milling about the entrance were ill-kempt, long-haired and smoked with an enthusiasm that would have curdled the blood of the American Cancer Society. Nolan saw no open use of marijuana, but he couldn’t rule it out — most all the kids were acting somewhat out of touch with reality.

Inside the door they pushed through a narrow hallway that was crowded with young girls, most of them thirteen-year-olds with thirty-year-old faces. One, who could have been twelve, extended her non-existent breasts to Nolan in offering, giving him a smirky pouty come-on look. Nolan gave her a gentle nudge and moved past with Vicki through the corridor.

At the end of the hall they came to a card table where a guy sat taking money. He looked like an ex-pug, was around thirty-five and had needed a shave two days before. Nolan looked at him carefully and paid the two-fifty per couple admission. Nolan smiled at the ex-pug, a phony smile Vicki hadn’t seen him use before, and moved on. Nolan followed Vicki as she went by a set of closed, windowless double doors, then trailed her down a flight of steps.

“Where the doors lead?”

“To the dance floor and Beer Garden.”

“Oh.”

She led him through two swinging doors into a shoddy room, cluttered with a dozen wooden tables.

“This it?” Nolan asked.

“Don’t let it fool you,” she told him, leading him to a small table by the wall, “the food’s not bad at all.”

Nolan looked around. The room was poorly lit and the walls concrete, painted black. The naked black concrete was partially dressed by pop-art paintings, Warhol and Lichtenstein prints and a few framed glossies, autographed, of big-time rock groups like the Jefferson Airplane and Vanilla Fudge. The tables were plain wood, black-painted and without cloths, and each was lit with a thick white candle stuck down into a central hole. The far end of the room, the bar, was better lighted, and the doors into the kitchen on either side of it let out some light once in a while. Other than that the room was a black sea of glowing red cigarette tips.

Nolan lit a fresh cigarette for both of them and they joined the sea of floating red spots.

“You notice the guy taking money as we came in upstairs?”

She nodded. “The one who looked like a prize-fighter?”

“That’s the one.”

“What about him?”

“I used to know him.”

“What? When did you know him?”

“A few years back. In Chicago.” He looked at her meaningfully.

“You mean you knew him when you worked for... ah...”

“Yeah.”

“Did he recognize you?”

“Hell no,” Nolan said. “He doesn’t recognize himself in a mirror. Punchy. Surprises the hell out of me he makes change.”

“What’s he doing here?”

Nolan stared out into the darkness and said, “You tell me.”

“How?”

“Start with the man who runs this place.”

“The manager, you mean?”

“Not the manager. The owner.”

“As a matter of fact... I have heard the owner’s name. I’ve heard Broome mention it. It’s Francis, or something like that.”

“Franco?”

“Yes, I think that’s it.”

Nolan withheld a smile. “Fat George.”

“I believe his first name is George, at that.”