Max Allan Collins
Blood Money
This is for my parents,
Mr. and Mrs. Max A. Collins, Sr.,
whose investment in me makes this
the most expensive book they ever bought.
One
1
The two men with guns sat in the car and waited. The man on the rider’s side was young, about twenty-five, and apprehensive. The man behind the wheel was about fifty-five and his face was firmly set, as though he were very determined to do something. They were both wearing Hawaiian print sportshirts and solid color shorts. In the front seat between them was a large cardboard box full of old newspapers. Under the newspapers were the guns, two Smith and Wesson nine-millimeter automatics with silencers.
The young man was thin and had a pale complexion with some fading acne under his ears along his neck; his right arm, which was elbow bent out the window, was getting red from the sun. His dark eyes were set close together and gave him a look of naive sincerity; his eyebrows met over the bridge of his nose. His hair was brown, long but not over his ears. Beads of sweat ran down his forehead. He was slapping his left hand against his left knee in some nervous inner rhythm and didn’t realize it.
The older man was thin and had a dark complexion; his skin was lined and leathered from too much sun over too many years, and his lower cheeks and neck were pockmarked. He had been handsome once. He, too, had dark eyes sitting close to each other, giving him a naturally intense look. His hair was powder white, cropped short. Though the day was hot and humid, he was bone dry. He sat motionless, staring at the building across the street.
The young man said, “How you feeling, Dad?”
“I’m feeling fine,” the older man said. His voice was low. “I’m feeling fine. How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” the younger man said. “Fine.”
Their car, a dark blue Oldsmobile of recent vintage, was parked in the open cement area beside a Dairy Queen restaurant in Iowa City, Iowa. The car had Wisconsin license plates and air-conditioning, which the older man had rejected using while they waited, a wait that had been going on now for just over an hour. A few minutes ago they had eaten hamburgers and French fries and root beer. The food had not settled well in the young man’s stomach and the root beer had gone through him at once, first teasing, then torturing his bladder, but the young man felt he shouldn’t mention his condition to his father. The older man had eaten an extra hamburger and felt, as he’d said, fine.
It took several more minutes for the older man to notice his son’s discomfort. He was too busy concentrating on the antique shop across the road. The shop was a two-story white clapboard structure, resembling a house more than a business establishment, and in fact marked the point where the business district trailed off into residential, the downtown and University of Iowa campus being some four blocks of filling stations and junk-food restaurants away. Directly across from the Dairy Queen was a Shell station, and next to that was the antique shop; directly across from the antique shop was a grade school, an old empty brown-brick hulk, deserted for the summer, separated from the Dairy Queen by a graveled alley. And down the street were homes, modest, aging, but well kept up, strewn along this quiet street lined with lushly green shade trees. The older man nodded to himself; yes, this was a street you could retire on, like this man Planner had.
“Dad?”
“Hmmm?”
“How’s it going, Dad? How you feeling?”
“Fine,” he said, still not noticing how ill at ease his son was acting.
He continued to watch the antique shop, studying it. The lower level of the building was divided in half by a recessed door set between two window displays showing assorted junk on either side: old metal advertising signs (“Coca Cola,” “Chase and Sanborn,” “Call for Philip Morris!”) and china and kids’ metal toys and tea kettles and phonograph records and mason jars and crap, just plain crap, how anyone could pay money for crap like that the older man couldn’t fathom. The windows were many-paned, sectioned off with metal, like stained glass, and in the midst of each display hung a sign saying, “Antiques — Edwin Planner, proprietor.” With pleasure, the older man had been noting the lack of business the antique shop was doing; it had been two o’clock when they first arrived, and now, at three-fifteen, not a soul had gone in or out.
But if this man Planner felt badly about his nonexistent customer flow, he certainly didn’t show it. The older man had watched carefully as the shop’s proprietor peeked outside, glancing up at the hot sun in the cloudless sky and smiling. Planner was a lanky old guy, balding, wearing baggy pants and a red tee-shirt, puffing a cigar. Twice Planner had done this, and the third time he peeked out and smiled, the older man had smiled, too, and glanced at his son to share the good cheer, and then he noticed his son’s discomfort.
The boy’s legs were crossed tight, like a woman afraid someone was after her privates, and he was shaking his foot. His face was bloodless pale and he was gritting his teeth. The older man sighed.
“Go get me an ice cream cone,” the older man said.
His son said, “What?”
“Go get me an ice cream cone.” The older man gave his son a dollar.
“Uh, how many dips?”
“Two.”
“Okay, Dad. Dad?”
“Hmm?”
“Uh, what flavor?”
“Doesn’t make a damn to me. Strawberry.”
“I think all they got’s chocolate and vanilla.”
“Vanilla.”
“Vanilla, okay.”
“And Walter?”
“Yes, Dad?”
“Go to the can, too, why don’t you, before you piss all over the front seat.”
Walter let loose a shaky grin, then saw his father wasn’t joking, and retracted it. He got out of the car and walked around to the back of the Dairy Queen building to the restrooms. The men’s was clean, very clean, as white and wholesome as ice cream itself. He felt guilty when in his extreme need and nervousness he overshot the stool and before he flushed it, he got down on the floor with toilet paper and wiped up his mess. After he was finished doing that, he felt silly, felt he was acting irrationally, and he put the seat down and sat and held his face in his hands. Shit, he thought, I got to get my head together. Christ, he thought, don’t let me make an asshole out of myself in front of him.
He went to the sink and washed his hands, then brought the cold water up and splashed it against his face. After the heat of the day, this cold water was heaven. He splashed more cold water on his face, more, more, and it felt good, then suddenly it didn’t feel good, it felt lousy, and he went to the stool and frantically slapped the lid up and emptied his stomach.
Back in the car, the older man was watching a young guy walk around from behind the two-story structure. Must be a rear entrance back there, he thought, and this must be that kid they told me about. Planner’s nephew. He watched the boy walk past the Shell station and head toward the Iowa City business district. The boy was short, maybe five-six or-seven, but he was strongly built, his arms muscular. His hair was curly brown and long, stopping just this side of an Afro, and the older man wondered if there was any chance in hell the boy was on his way downtown for a haircut. He was wearing worn, patched jeans and a white tee-shirt with some cartoonish thing on the front. About Walter’s age, the older man thought, maybe a little younger.
“Here’s your cone, Dad.”
The older man turned his head and nodded to his son and took the cone. Walter came around the front of the car and got in and sat, feeling queasy as he watched his father eat the ice cream. Walter said, “Did I see a kid come out of the shop?”