He lunged through the archway and into the kitchen, and Nolan was sitting at the kitchen table, eating some breakfast cereal.
“Don’t shoot, kid,” Nolan said, holding up his hands, one of them with a spoon in it, dripping milk down on the table.
“Nolan!”
“Quiet,” he said. He put down his hands. “You want to wake up Breen? He’s down sleeping like a baby in your bed, and I don’t want that talkative son of a bitch waking up and making me explain things all night.”
“Nolan,” Jon said, incredulous. He sat down at the table with him, set the .32 next to the box of breakfast cereal. “Where’d you come from?”
“Caught a bus at St. Louis. Where’s the god-damn sugar? These fucking Grape Nuts are supposed to be naturally sweet, but they taste like wood shavings to me. Get me the damn sugar.”
Jon got him the sugar, rejoined him at the table.
“Well, Jesus, Nolan.”
“Jesus what?”
“What happened? What happened?”
“I caught a bus at St. Louis, I told you.” He ate some cereal and grinned at Jon as he chewed.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Nolan, quit being so goddamn cute. I can’t stand it. Tell me what happened!”
“Say, have you been listening to the news, kid?”
“No, I fell asleep, damn it.”
“I’d like to know what they’re saying on the news. I’d like to know what they’re saying about our money, which ought to’ve been found by now. Turn on that radio on the counter. The news’ll be on in five minutes.”
“I’ll turn it on in five minutes. How’d you get in here, Nolan? The doors were locked and you don’t have a key.”
“I don’t need a key to get in a house. So you were sleeping, huh, kid? Your concern for me’s overwhelming.”
“Yeah, well, Nolan, I’m sorry I fell asleep, but could you please tell me what happened?”
“Not much to tell. I stayed in the can. Nobody caught on I was in there, least of all the skyjacker. I waited till all the hostages were off the plane, waited for that stupid kid to make his move to jump, and then I took that calculator away from him. Didn’t want him blowing me up, whether by accident or not, and that wasn’t unlikely with him jumping with a damn detonator in his hand. So I took it away.”
“Then you decided he did have a bomb on the plane?”
“Yes,” Nolan said, and he ran through the same chain of logic, proving the bomb’s existence, as had Jon. Which would have given Jon a certain sense of satisfaction, if he hadn’t been so confused about so much else.
“But I don’t get it, Nolan. Why’d you even bother staying on the plane? Certainly not just to take the calculator away from the guy, to save the airlines their plane. You’re not the knight-in-white-armor type.”
“I had my reasons.” And he grinned again, chomping cereal. “I got a surprise for you, kid.”
“Surprise? What do you mean, surprise?”
“Well, just before the plane got to St. Louis, I knocked on the cockpit door and told Hazel and the pilot and everybody what I’d done. That I’d taken that thing away from the skyjacker, before he jumped. And I was a hero. They were so grateful they could shit. When we landed and were getting off the plane, I asked Hazel if she would go get that briefcase of funny-books out of that closet across from the john, because if I left that behind, my young nephew — that’s you — would never forgive me. She obliged, and before the FBI or anybody could ask me a thing, the hero of the hour, briefcase tucked under his arm, excused himself to go to the can and instead went out and caught a cab and went straight to the bus station. After all the time I’d spent boxed up in that crapper in the plane, you’d think it would occur to those jokers I’d already had ample opportunity to relieve myself. But it didn’t.”
“Now let me get this straight,” Jon said, not understanding at all. “You mean you went to the trouble of asking for that briefcase, just to be nice to me? That doesn’t sound like you, Nolan. No offense, but you’re not the most thoughtful man I ever met. I mean, it’s a nice surprise, but...”
“That’s not the surprise,” Nolan said. He reached down and brought the briefcase up from the floor beside him; he put it on the table.
“Hey,” Jon said, “that’s not my briefcase.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“It looks something like it, but that’s not it”
“Open it. Go ahead.”
Jon snapped the case open.
“Jesus,” he said.
The case was full of money.
Crammed with packets of money; packets of $20 bills, in bank wrappers. Thousands and thousands of green dollars.
“The skyjacker’s money,” Jon said. Awe struck. “You switched on him!”
“Yeah,” Nolan said. “Easy as pie. He went forward to boss the pilot around, and I just sneaked out of the can, switched his briefcase with yours, and sneaked back again.”
“Damn, you switched on him! You switched on him. Nolan, you’re a genius. And an even trade, at that. We hardly lost a cent on the deal.”
“I wouldn’t say that, kid. Every serial number on every bill in that briefcase was recorded by the feds before they let it go, you can bet on it. We’ll have to peddle it to a fence, at a loss.”
“But we’ll still come out okay, won’t we?”
“We’ll come out okay.”
“What about our money? The money in your suitcase? Who gets that?”
“I’m not really sure. It’s confiscated, of course, so I suppose the government ends up with it. Don’t they always?”
“Nolan... how in hell could you know the money would come in a briefcase so similar to mine?”
“I didn’t. That was dumb luck. The way I had it figured was I’d have to switch the contents of the two briefcases, and that would’ve been tougher. But possible. Maybe I would’ve had to tangle with the skyjacker sooner that way, and that could’ve been risky.”
“What happened to the skyjacker, then? Did he make his jump or what?”
“Well, we had a little scuffle. I hit him pretty hard and he fell out of the plane. His chute opened, late, but it opened. I told the pilot later that the kid waited till we were almost to St. Louis before jumping, which I said to throw them off, since it’s to our benefit if he gets away, with everybody assuming he has the money. I suppose he’s alive.”
“I kind of hope so.”
“Yeah, me too, but only because it helps us if he is. Otherwise, after what he put us through, he could break his goddamn neck and be okay with me.”
“He’s just another kind of thief, Nolan. Like you. And me.”
“No. There’s a difference. He’s an amateur. I... we... are professionals.”
Jon smiled. “I don’t think I’m much of a pro, but thanks anyway, Nolan. There’s only one thing I regret...”
“What’s that? You still brooding about killing old Sam Comfort? Don’t. You couldn’t have shot a more deserving soul.”
“Oh, not that. That does bother me, don’t think it doesn’t. But that wasn’t what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
Jon leaned forward and spread his hands. “Well, it’s great you got the money, and I don’t want you to take this wrong, but if you’d have just told me what you had in mind, I could’ve emptied the briefcase and taken my comic books with me. Do you have any idea what those things are worth? How hard they are to find? Do you know that...”
Nolan put some more sugar on his cereal
Epilogue: Crash-landing
17
Carol found him in the high grass off to the side of the highway, behind a billboard advertising a bank savings plan. She was relieved she’d had so little trouble finding him; he’d told her, over the C.B., that he’d overshot their target area just a little, but that he could still make it to Highway 67, and when he had, he’d told her of the billboard and she’d found it — and him — with ease.