Max Collins: Mourn The Living

Once outside in the dry late afternoon air, he glanced down at the number on the key: 16. Good. That would be on the far side of the building, away from the highway and damn truck noise.

In his room he hung the clothes-bags in the closet and found a rack for his suitcase. He laid open the suitcase and took out a bottle of Jim Beam, unopened, a long-barreled .38 Smith & Wesson, unloaded, and a box of shells, half-empty. He ripped the virginal white seal from the mouth of the Jim Beam and carried it by the throat into the can, leaving the .38 and box of shells on the nightstand by the bed as he went by.

He tore the white wrapper off one of the bathroom drinking glasses and poured it half-full with whiskey, then turned on the faucet and added an afterthought of water.

He walked over to the bed, sat down and emptied the glass while filling the .38 with shells. He laid the loaded revolver back on the nightstand and rubbed the heels of his palms over his eyes. He was beat, washed-out; but he didn’t feel particularly on edge, which was a good sign.

Maybe he was getting used to the idea of having a quarter-million-dollar price tag on his head. Or as used to it as anybody could get. After all, it had been a matter of years now, since the Family put out that open contract on him, with its promise of a 250 G payoff to anybody who could make the hit.

A quarter of a million was some kind of record, he supposed. Valachi had only rated a 100 thou. But then all Valachi had done was talk: the Family complaint against Nolan represented a complex blend of personal rage and monetary loss. And Nolan wasn’t sitting in prison, his damage done — he was at large, his head packed with inside knowledge — not to mention he was looting key operations as only an insider could loot them.

Nolan’s smile was almost non-existent as he reached for the phone on the nightstand. Before coming to Dallas for a short breather, Nolan had hit the Family’s Cleveland branch for thirty-five thousand. Now he had to get the money safely banked in the Dallas account of “Earl Webb.” He dialed the number of his local contact, a lawyer named M. J. Lange who for ten percent would gladly handle the cash for his client.

“Let me go back over it, Mr. Webb,” Lange’s voice said. “Tomorrow in the mail I’ll get a key. The key will open locker 33 at the Greyhound Bus terminal, and in the locker will be a blue athletic bag. In the bag’s the capital.”

“That’s about it,” Nolan said. “Set?”

“Yes, Mr. Webb. One thing more...”

Nolan juggled the receiver on his shoulder as he lit up a cigarette. “What’s that?”

“Sid Tisor’s been after me to get in touch with you. He’s phoned me long distance every night for a week and a half, and he sounds desperate. Wants you to call him. Says it’s life or death.”

“M. J., you know I don’t want to screw around with anybody directly hooked to the Family.”

“Well, I thought it best I pass it on to you. From what I hear, Tisor’s made a clean break. Retired four or five months ago.

“Don’t give me that crap. Nobody breaks clean from the Family. Sid is Charlie’s damn brother -in-law. How do you retire from that?”

“As I said, I’m just passing it on to you. He told me he did you a favor once.”

Nolan ground out the freshly lit cigarette in disgust. “Did he leave a number? Goddamn him.”

The lawyer fed Nolan the number.

“Didn’t he leave an area code?”

“Oh yes,” Lange said, “here it is. 309.”

“Okay, M. J. Take care of that little blue bag, now.”

“Of course, Mr. Webb.”

Nolan slammed down the receiver.

Great, he thought. 309 was an Illinois area code. Close to the heat. That was all he needed.

Nolan glanced down at the bed and considered diving in. He hadn’t slept well on the trip — he could never sleep well on a bus — and he needed the rest.

Then he dialed 1, area code 309, and Tisor’s number.

Soon he heard, “Hello, Sid Tisor speaking.”

“Hi, Sid.”

“Nolan? Is that Nolan?”

“Yeah.”

“How, uh, how about a favor for an old friend?”

“Maybe.”

“I hear you been chipping away at the Family.”

“Any complaints?”

“None. Didn’t you hear I retired? As a matter of fact, the favor I want to ask of you could net you maybe forty thousand of the Family’s money.”

“What the hell are you thinking, Sid? When the Family lets a man retire, they trust him to keep his nose out of their business.”

“Don’t worry about them. They got faith in me.”

“They got faith in nothing and nobody. How do you know they don’t have your phone tapped?”

“They don’t... why would they?”

“Life or death. Whose, Sid, mine?”

“Nolan, I got good reason to risk this.”

“You had better.”

“You remember Irene?”

Nolan said he did. Irene was Sid’s daughter. Sid’s wife Rosie had died in childbirth with Irene, and Sid had raised the child by himself. When Nolan had last seen Irene she’d been fourteen. Since then Tisor had sent her off to college somewhere. She’d be around twenty now.

“She’s dead, Nolan.”

“Oh.”

“I think maybe she was murdered.”

“That the reason you got ahold of me?”

“That’s the reason.”

“Where you living now?”

“Peoria — the boonies.”

“The Family ever send anybody around to check on you?”

“Not once.”

“It’s a big risk for me, setting foot in Illinois.”

“I know it is, Nolan.”

“I haven’t been in Illinois since the shit hit the fan.”

“I know.”

Neither one of them said anything for a while. Then Tisor said, “Will you come?”

“Yeah.”

Nolan slipped the phone onto the hook and said, “Goddamn you, Sid.”

It might be an okay score, but Sid always tended to exaggerate, and that forty G’s he had promised might turn out closer to four C’s. And Illinois wasn’t the safest place in the world for you when every greaseball out of Chicago knew your face and knew it was worth a quarter million.

Nolan said, “Shit,” and lit up another cigarette.

He didn’t really give a fuck about Sid or his dead kid, but Nolan owed Sid, from the old days.

And Nolan paid his debts.

It took four buses to get to Peoria.

Nolan took rear seats on each of them and always tried to avoid attracting attention, and he was successful, but only with the men: from women he drew stares like flies around something dead.

There was nothing particularly striking about his clothing, just a blue banlon shirt and lightweight tan pants suited to the Texas weather, and a blue plaid woolen parka he was carrying to meet the already cooling Illinois climate. But when he stood, he stood six feet that seemed taller, a lean, hard man with muscular bronzed arms that a young woman who sat by him on the third bus had brushed against a few more times than the law of probability could allow. His thick desert-dry brown hair had begun to gray, and his angular, mustached face was deeply lined, making him look every one of his forty years. Behind black-framed, black-lensed sunglasses were gray eyes that kept a cold, close watch on everything.

On the final bus a lady of about sixty sat next to him and tried to small-talk him, but Nolan didn’t small-talk easily. She seemed relieved when they at last reached Hannibal, which was her stop. She looked exhausted from an hour of making conversation with herself.

As she rose from her seat, she gave him the matronly smile of a professional grandmother and said, “Hannibal’s a fascinating place, you know. Mark Twain was born here.”

Nolan made an attempt at being pleasant, since she was getting off. “He wrote books, didn’t he?”