“Never thought I’d live to... hear you... say that, Nolan.”
“Where is it, Charlie? What did you do with my money?”
“I won, Nolan. I beat you.”
“You want me to help your boy, don’t you? Well, where’s the money, what’d you do with it?”
“You promise... promise you’ll... help Walter?”
“I’ll do whatever you want, just what did you do with my money!”
“You’ll keep your word... if I tell you what I did with it?”
“Yes, dammit! Don’t die on me, you son of a bitch!”
“All right,” Charlie said, and he told Nolan what he’d done with the money.
The look of dismayed surprise on Nolan’s face tickled Charlie’s ass and Charlie let out one big, raucous belly laugh and held his bleeding belly and died that way.
8
Nolan got to his feet unsteadily. He felt as if he, too, had been ripped into by Angelo’s grease gun. He stepped out of the elevator and wandered into the kitchen, took a seat at the formica-top table, sat and stared at the cluster of empty Schlitz cans in front of him, pressed his hands against his temples.
Greer said, “What’s going on?”
Nolan pointed toward the vestibule and Greer went over and saw Charlie and came back.
“That’s a nasty gash on your forehead,” Greer said.
Nolan said, “Get me a beer, will you? Should be some in that refrigerator.”
Greer brought Nolan a Schlitz, got one for himself and sat with Nolan at the table.
“You okay, Nolan?”
“I don’t know yet.” He gulped down the beer. He belched. “That was nice shooting in there. I take back what I said about snub-nose.38s.”
Greer grinned. “How do you know I was aiming at Ange?”
Nolan managed to return the grin, said, “Where’d you come from, anyway? I didn’t expect you to show up like the fucking marines.”
“Came straight from Iowa City. Felix called me and said to get my butt up to this place.”
It hadn’t taken Felix long to track down Eagle’s Roost. “How’d you beat Felix’s boys up here?”
“I didn’t. Not the first wave anyway. Two Family guys, friends of mine, are lying back in those pine trees with their guts shot out of them. Didn’t you hear gunfire?”
Nolan shook his head no. “Angelo was using a grease gun with a silencer. You make more noise breathing than it makes shooting.”
“What was he up to, anyway?”
“Covering his tracks. He was in with Charlie.”
“Shit. Wait’ll Felix finds out.”
“That’s what Angelo must’ve been thinking. He knew he was up shit crick when the Family got onto Charlie. I figure he killed Tillis and Harry because they were his fellow conspirators and could implicate him. Same goes for killing Charlie. He probably hoped to make it look like I was going around shooting the guys responsible for taking my money, and leave it looking like Charlie and me killed each other in a crossfire.”
“Maybe he was after the money, too.”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“What about the money?”
“Gone. All of it. Gone.”
“How, for Christ’s sake?”
Nolan told Greer what Charlie did with the money.
Greer shook his head, said, “Old bastard must’ve been crazy.”
“Yeah,” Nolan agreed. “Like the rest of us.”
Nolan told Greer to relay word to Felix about the money, told him he’d be at the Tropical waiting for Felix to come talk. There would be plans to cancel, new arrangements to be made.
Jon had the Olds hot-wired and ready to go in the boathouse garage, but it was unnecessary, because Nolan had found Charlie’s keys on the kitchen counter. Nolan and Jon laid Walter in the backseat; somewhere along the line the sock had been taken out of his mouth, but he wasn’t saying much anyway. Nolan didn’t answer any of Jon’s questions about what had happened or where the money was. Finally Jon asked if he could run upstairs and get something before they left, and Nolan said okay. When Jon came back with a box full of comic books, Nolan didn’t even say anything; he just opened the trunk for the boy and thought, well, at least somebody got something out of this.
They drove out of the garage, stopped to unlock the gate, where Nolan told Jon to get in the backseat with Walter and untie him.
Nolan started driving again and talked to Walter in the rearview mirror. “Your father is dead.”
Walter made a move to grab Nolan and Jon stopped him.
“Easy,” Nolan said. “I didn’t kill your old man, one of his own cohorts did. What I’m doing now is answering his dying request, God knows why, and hauling your ass away from that place before more Family people show up.”
“Where are you taking me?” Walter said.
“I’m going to drop you off at your sister’s apartment in Dekalb. She’ll be glad to see you, I think, if she isn’t off feeding the world’s hungry.”
They were passing through the subdivision of summer homes now. Nolan slowed the Olds and let a little boy and girl in swimming suits cross in front of him.
Walter said, “Won’t they be coming after me?”
“I don’t think so. You’re no threat to anybody. I’ll do some talking for you.”
“But I’m supposed to be dead — that body in the crash, it was identified as me, from clothes and a ring...”
“You’ll think of something.”
“I suppose... suppose I could just show up alive and act dumb, say I was dropping acid on the Coast for a year, something like that.”
Nolan nodded. “It’ll work out. Get yourself a job in an office.”
“Nolan,” Jon said.
“Yeah?”
“Are you going to say anything about the money, or aren’t you?”
“Forget about it.”
“What do you mean, forget about it?”
“It’s gone, kid. Up in smoke. Let it go.” He pulled off the subdivision drive onto the blacktop. He was thinking about Sherry, about climbing in the sack with Sherry and forgetting things for a while.
“Nolan,” Jon said, getting pissed, “what the hell happened to our money?”
Walter knew. Walter was smiling.
“Charlie burned it,” Nolan said.