Max Collins: Mourn The Living

He liked Nolan, who in spite of an apparent coldness seemed less an animal to Tisor than the rest of the gangsters playing businessman games. And in one of his rare moments of courage, Sid had taken a big chance hiding out Nolan when Nolan killed Tisor’s no-good brother-in-law, that swishy bastard Sam Franco.

Now Tisor was all alone. He’d been alone for two years now, since he’d sent his little girl Irene off to college at Chelsey University. Before Irene was born, there had been Rosie, his wife; and when he lost Rosie, there was Diane, till she found somebody younger and richer. And always Irene, a wild but sweet kid, ever devoted to her old man. Tisor shook his head and sipped at the bitter coffee. Now there was nobody. Except Tisor himself, a lonely old man too afraid to take his own life.

Nolan said, “I have the same problem.”

Tisor shook himself out of reverie. “What’s that?”

“The past. I think about it, too. It’s no good thinking about it.”

Tisor smiled. That was the most personal remark Nolan had ever made to him.

Nolan poured himself another cup of the steaming black coffee and said, “What happened to Irene?”

Tisor’s head lowered. “Suicide, they say.”

“They don’t know.”

“Not for certain. You see... she was on LSD.”

“Oh.”

“She was on top of a building, fell off. The cops say she took a nose dive...”

“Yeah. Since she was tripping, they figure maybe she thought she could fly.”

Tisor’s eyes pleaded with Nolan. “Look into it for me, Nolan. Find out did she jump, did she fall, did she get pushed. But find out.”

“What about the local law?”

“Hell,” Tisor said. “The Chelsey cops couldn’t find their dick in the dark.”

“That where she went to school? Chelsey?”

“That’s right, Nolan. Chelsey University at Chelsey, Illinois.”

“Damn, Sid, I didn’t want to come to Illinois for even a day, but here I am. Now you want me to hop over to Chelsey and play bloodhound for you.”

“Listen to me, Nolan, hear it out...”

“Chelsey’s only eighty miles from Chicago, Sid.”

Tisor got guts for once. “Goddamn you, Nolan! Since when are you afraid of the Boys? Do you want to pay a debt you owe, or do you want to welsh on it?”

Nolan knew what Tisor said was the truth; he wasn’t afraid of the Boys — he just had better things to do than make like a gumshoe. But it was a debt he owed, and it needed paying.

He said, “Go on, Sid. Tell me about it.”

Tisor’s eyes turned hard and he leaned toward Nolan. “My Irene was a wild one, Nolan. She could’ve taken that LSD trip on her own. And if so, maybe she did try a Superman off that building. But there were some things going on in Chelsey that might have got her killed.”

“Like what?”

“She was home one weekend this summer and told me about this operation the Boys got going in Chelsey.”

“What did she know about the Boys?”

“Well, before she went to college I broke it to her about my connection with them, explained it all. She took it pretty good, but it must’ve been a shock since I was always such a Puritan-type father. You know, not mean to her or anything, just old-fashioned.”

“Yeah. Tell me what she saw going on in Chelsey.” Nolan could see it would be a struggle getting the facts from Tisor; the guy would just keep reminiscing about the dead girl if Nolan let him.

“The Boys’ operation, yeah. Well, they’re selling everything from booze to pills to marijuana to LSD. All aimed at the college crowd.”

“Irene a customer?”

“She never said, one way or another. I really can’t imagine her taking drugs, but then, I’m her father, what do I know? Anyway, she knew about the Boys’ operation and their market. You see, there’s this hippie colony in Chelsey she’s got friends in. They number over five hundred and all live in the kind of slum section of town. It’s got some publicity, maybe you read about it.”

“I didn’t. But Illinois seems too far east for a hippie colony.”

“Why?”

Nolan lit a smoke. “Too cold. Communal living’s swell, free love and all that. Till you freeze your ass off.”

Tisor smiled, nodded. “You got a point. But these kids aren’t what you’d call real hippies, if there is such a thing. Not California-style, anyway. They’re rich kids, most of ’em, living off their parents’ dough. They don’t look so good in their beads and wilted flowers, and they don’t smell so good, either. But they got money. Money for food, for heat...”

“For LSD,” Nolan put in.

“And for LSD,” Tisor agreed.

“Irene, was she one of the ‘hippies’?”

“Borderline. She hung out with them, but she was putting seventy-five a month in an off-campus apartment she shared with a working girl named Vicki Trask. The Trask girl was laying out seventy-five a month, too.”

“Hippies don’t live in hundred-fifty buck apartments. Not ‘real’ ones.”

“Well, Irene and her roommate weren’t deep-dyed Chelsey hippies. But, like I said, even the most sincere ones are just leeches sucking money off their parents. Chelsey is a rich-kid school, you know.”

“You think the Boys got a good thing going for them, then? Got any ideas what they’re getting for one trip?”

An LSD trip took 100 micrograms of d-lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate and cost pennies to make. “I think they’re getting around eight or ten bucks a trip,” said Tisor.

Nolan scratched his as yet unshaven chin. “They’re not making much off that. Granted, there isn’t much money wrapped up in producing LSD. Any two-bit chemist with the materials and a vacuum pump can whip up a batch. But even a confirmed tripper only takes a trip or two a week.”

“It’s a big campus, Nolan. Almost ten thousand students.”

“Still, you can’t figure more than four hundred trips a week. That’s less than four grand coming in.”

“That isn’t so bad, Nolan.”

“Yeah, but that’s their big seller, isn’t it, LSD?”

“They’re selling booze, too, to the frat crowd. Most any kid on campus might use pep pills now and then. Big market for pot.”

“They selling any hard stuff?”

“Heroin, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Hell, no. Nolan. The Commission of families in New York’s got control over stuff like that. You know that. Anybody caught with a dope set-up is going to get their ass kicked hard unless the Commission’s okayed it.”

Nolan shook his head. “I don’t understand this. LSD. Nickels and dimes. Why are the Boys fooling around with it?”

“Nolan, they got other things going for ’em in Chelsey! They got gambling, they got a massage parlor, a strip joint or two...”

“Don’t bull me, Sid. Take the college out of Chelsey and there’s only seven thousand people left. The Family doesn’t mess with small-time operations unless there’s a reason. I know they can’t be pulling in even five thousand a week, before expenses.”

“Nolan, I...”

“You’re not telling the whole story, Sid.”

Tisor looked at the floor. He didn’t want to meet Nolan’s eyes, if he could help it. “George Franco’s running the Chelsey operation.”

Nolan’s laugh was short, harsh. No wonder the set-up was small-time! An LSD ring, what a joke. You could save all the money you’d make off a racket like that and go to Riverview Park once a year.

“Sid,” Nolan said, “you and I both know what George Franco is.”

George Franco was the younger brother of Charlie Franco and the late Sam Franco, and also of Tisor’s late wife, Rosie. George: the obese, incompetent younger brother who couldn’t cut it and got sent places where he wouldn’t cause trouble. A glutton, a coward, and simple-minded to boot.