“About that doctor,” Jon said.
“What about him?” Nolan said.
“What’ll I pay him with?”
“There should be eight thousand or so in the wall safe upstairs.”
“Oh, yeah, behind his framed Hoover buttons. Planner keeps — kept — the combination in the kitchen, in the silverware drawer.”
“Good. Pay Ainsworth, oh, four thousand. I know that sounds high, kid, but remember, as far as the doc knows, you could’ve murdered your uncle yourself and’re asking him to cover up. So he’ll be expecting a fat reward.”
“What then?”
“Sit tight. I’ll call you there at Planner’s when I get a chance. I have a notion of who maybe pulled this piece of shit.”
“You do? Who, for Christ’s sake?”
“Charlie.”
“That Mafia guy? That guy? He’s dead, how can...?”
“He’s supposed to be dead. We’ll see. I’ll be looking into it.”
“Okay. When can I expect your call?”
“Just stay there at the shop. Get those things done I told you and otherwise sit tight. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Jon.”
“Yes, Nolan?”
“You’re doing fine.”
And Nolan had hung up.
Now that Planner was wrapped in a blanket and lain to temporary rest, Jon began to get the place in shape. He went into the adjoining storeroom and got the box of sawdust, which was used to clean up various sorts of messes, mostly wet. He poured the sawdust first onto the pile of vomit, and his half-digested, stinking breakfast soaked the stuff up. He swept the gunk up, and it took several dustpan loads to do so, and dumped the rancid mess into a big empty heavy-cardboard barrel. He then did the same with the blood, pouring sawdust onto the trail of it and the pool where his uncle had been lying, and some of it had started to dry, getting dark, almost black. After he’d dumped the several dustpans of bloody sawdust, he got out a can of Ajax and a bucket of water and a scrub-brush and worked on the wooden floor till all visible traces of blood were gone. He thought, rather absurdly, that it was a good thing he hadn’t cleaned the storerooms yesterday, as today’s work would’ve been needless double duty. He ran across his uncle’s false teeth, his upper plate, and gagged, but his stomach was empty now, fortunately. He held the plate by two trembling fingers and went over to the crate and lifted the lid an inch or two and pushed the teeth inside.
Afterward he went upstairs and sat at the kitchen table and poured a water glass half full with vodka and the rest with Seven Up. He stirred the mixture with a spoon and threw it quickly down. He wasn’t a drinking man, so he soon found himself gagging again, but by the third glass he was doing fine.
God, what an awful experience, he thought. People died so easily in the movies and the comics. Real life was such a gruesome fucking mess. The movies never showed the poor slobs who had to clean up after the hero’s carnage; think of all the trouble Clint Eastwood was causing for people; think of what off-screen horror was happening to the survivors of a film like The Wild Bunch.
And even when death was portrayed as bloody and awful, it was nothing like this. Jon had had only one other close experience with violent death (not counting Nolan’s near bout with the grim reaper, thanks to that Syndicate guy, Charlie) and that had been after the Port City bank job year and a half ago. The robbery had gone flawlessly, but afterward some jealousy within ranks had caused an outburst of insane violence, and Nolan and Jon had ended up sole survivors. Witnessing the head getting blown off someone he’d been friend to had been the single most traumatic incident in his life, and he wondered now if he hadn’t countered that trauma by turning from his superheroes to horror comics, where the blood was bright red and sickly humorous, where he might try to learn to live with gore, get used to it, even laugh at it. He didn’t know.
He heard the sound of hard pounding and jumped off his chair. Where was it coming from? He got hold of himself and listened close and it was someone knocking at the back door, and it scared him shitless.
He got up and went to the window and drew back the curtain.
The doctor.
That was all. It was Ainsworth, the doctor, and he let out a sigh and went downstairs to let Ainsworth in.
Ainsworth was the standard country doctor image come to life. He was fifty-five, slightly chubby, and had a mustached, lined, wise and friendly old face. He was Iowa City’s longest practicing abortionist, aider-and-abetter of draft dodgers (for a price) and doer of sundry other medically shady deeds. Jon had gone to Ainsworth for help when Nolan was hurt because a while back Jon had paid two hundred bucks for a statement from the good doctor to the effect of his having epilepsy, in the form of severe migraine headaches, winning the boy his 4F from Uncle Sam. How was Jon to know his number in the draft lottery would turn out to be one of the least likely to be called? But life was a gamble.
“What’s the problem?” Ainsworth said, locking the door behind him. He was wearing a blue long-sleeve sweater, over a white Banlon, and yellow pants: golf clothes. Jon had caught him at the country club, where he’d learned to look in previous dealings with Ainsworth.
“My uncle’s been shot,” Jon said.
“What’s his condition?” the doctor asked.
“Dead,” Jon said.
“Oh. I see.”
“Why don’t you come upstairs and have some vodka and Seven Up and we’ll talk.”
They did.
“I fully understand your position,” he said. “Your uncle’s, shall we say, sideline, would make it desirable to prevent the police from taking an active interest in his death.”
“That’s it exactly.”
“Your uncle has a long history of heart trouble, and...”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Well, let’s say he will have a history of heart trouble, when I finish rewriting his records.”
“Oh.”
“And so, his death by coronary came as no surprise to me, I can assure you.”
“What else needs to be done?”
“Can you come by around seven? I’ll have the necessary papers and forms ready for you to sign.”
“Where? At your house?”
“Heavens, no. My office, of course. And I think I can have your uncle’s remains disposed of for you, as well. There’s a crematorium in West Liberty that does good work. They can pick your uncle up tomorrow afternoon, I’m sure.”
“Won’t they notice Planner had his ‘coronary’ in a rather peculiar way?” Jon asked, on his fourth glass of vodka and pop.
“Well, perhaps I’d best go downstairs now and bandage your uncle. That way anyone glancing in won’t see anything, even if the poor man gets stripped of his clothes... though that shouldn’t happen, as these West Liberty folks do good, discreet work, mind you.”
“Whatever you think.”
“And have you a nice suit of your uncle’s? You and I had probably best put one of his suits on him.”