Nolan leaned into the car and said, “So we’re out of the motel and into the back seat. You really think that’s an improvement, Felix?”
“Nolan, please,” Felix said, his annoyance from the inconvenience Nolan had caused him showing around the edges of his voice. “Can’t you set aside your perverse sense of humor for the moment so we can get on to business at hand?”
Felix was right.
Nolan got in, shut the door, settled back to listen.
Felix cleared his throat, folded his hands like a minister counseling one of his congregation. “I’m here to make a proposition, Nolan. I’m going to have to be vague at first, and I hope you’ll bear with me. The Family is facing a, well, sensitive situation, and I can’t go into detail until I feel reasonably sure you’ll be along for the ride.”
Vague is right, Nolan thought, but he didn’t say anything.
“Once we get into the... problem at hand, I think you’ll understand my caution. Before I do, may I ask a question? May I ask what your financial situation is currently?”
Nolan hesitated. Could it be Felix knew about the Detroit heist, and that this meeting was a pronouncement to the effect that Nolan was once again in the bad graces of the Chicago Family? No, Nolan thought, that couldn’t be it; otherwise, what was that bullshit about wanting Nolan “along for the ride”?
“You know my situation, Felix,” he said.
“Yes, I do,” Felix said. “If you’ll excuse my bluntness, it can be stated this simply: You’re broke.”
Good, Nolan thought. They don’t know about Detroit; this has nothing to do with that.
“If not ‘broke’ exactly,” Felix continued, “your savings from these few months at the Tropical can’t be much to write home about, eh, Nolan?” And he laughed at his little joke.
Nolan didn’t; he just nodded.
“You’ve shown a great capability at the Tropical, Nolan. Which was of course no surprise to anyone in the Family. As you know, before, when you were more financially solvent, the Family was anxious to have your participation in a more important, more rewarding operation. But then you had some money troubles and — well, I don’t have to go into that, do I? Nolan... are you familiar with the Hacienda outside of Joliet?”
“Sure.”
The Hacienda was a resort purporting to be a slice of “old Mexico,” with such rustic old Mexican features as two golf courses, three swimming pools, and a dinner theater with name performers. The decor had a rich, Spanish look to it, and the most expensive of the resort’s four expensive restaurants was a glorified taco stand where patrons were served Americanized Mexican dinners at lobster prices, and nobody seemed to mind. Nobody seemed to mind, either, that you could’ve gone to Mexico itself on a three week vacation for the cost of a week at the Hacienda. And Nolan, who had been there before, knew why: the Hacienda was just the sort of elaborate, glossy hokum the rich widows and the honeymooners and the rest of the tourist trade eat up. It was a fantastic piece of work, and he’d have done anything to have a shot at running it.
“How would you like to rim the Hacienda, Nolan?”
“Now who’s got a perverse sense of humor, Felix?”
“The present manager is being moved into a similar operation at Lake Geneva. The opening at the Hacienda is there to be filled. By you, if you say the word.”
Felix had a “Let’s Make a Deal” tone in his voice: Which door will you take, Nolan, one, two, or three?
“What do you want me to say, Felix? The Tropical bores my ass off. You know that. Of course I want something bigger. Of course I want the Hacienda.”
“You’d have to buy in, naturally.”
“Well, no problem. You can have my watch as down payment.”
“One hundred thousand dollars would buy you a considerable block of stock, with options to buy more. Your salary would start at sixty thousand a year and climb. How does that sound to you?”
It sounded fine, but Nolan was starting to wonder if Felix did know about the Detroit haul. One hundred thousand bucks was, after all, Nolan’s split, prior to the loss of thirty grand or so he’d take fencing the hot money.
“You see, Nolan, the Family has... an assignment, you could call it, for you that wouldn’t take much of your time and effort. But it’s an assignment that you are uniquely qualified to carry out. And it’s an assignment that would pay one hundred thousand dollars.”
Nolan thought for a moment, shrugged. “My mother’s already dead. Who else is there I could kill for you?”
And Felix laughed, nervousness cracking his voice in a way that told Nolan he was perhaps not far wrong.
Three: Friday Morning
8
Carl Reed’s study was an afterthought, a cubbyhole that in the architect’s original house plan was a storage room, just an oversize closet, really. But in the ten years Carl and his family had been living in their ranch-style home on the outskirts of West Lake, Iowa (a village just west of Lake Ahquabi, just south of Des Moines), the cubicle-size study had provided an invaluable sanctuary from evenings disrupted by the sounds of two teenagers growing up. Of course there was only one teen-ager around the house these days. Len was twenty-one now and taking prelaw at the U of I, while Len’s wife (a pretty little brunette girl from Des Moines who was a year older than him, with her B.A. degree behind her) taught second grade and took the burden off Dad as far as paying the kid’s bills was concerned. Which was nice for a change. Carl’s daughter Amy was seventeen, a high-school senior, a cheerleader and student council member and, with her 3.9 grade average, a potential class salutatorian. She was also a potential political radical, or so she liked to say; anyway, she was to the left of her liberal dad. Amy would be living at home next year (commuting to Drake in Des Moines) where her old man, thank the Lord, could still keep an eye on her. You’d think growing up in a little flyspeck town in the middle of Middle America would serve to isolate or at least protect a child somewhat; but apparently it didn’t. Perhaps that was because Des Moines was so close by. Whatever the reason, the kids around here were as wild and disrespectful as anywhere else, and maybe that was the way it should be: Carl wasn’t sure. But he was sure that growing up in a vacuum wasn’t good for a child, as he’d once thought it might be, and was glad his daughter had a mind, even if it didn’t necessarily mirror his own.
And that was typical of the sort of decisions Carl made in his little study: quiet, perhaps not particularly important decisions. They were the leisurely reflections of a man who grabs leisurely reflection where he can, in the midst of a life full of the wearing of various hats: politician, banker, father, husband and lover (both of those hats being worn in the presence of his wife Margaret who seemed as lovely to him today as twenty-seven years ago when they’d met on the Drake campus after the war, and thank God for Margaret’s sustaining beauty, because Carl just didn’t have the time to fool around).
There was a couch in the study, and a desk with chair and not much else. There were books and an occasional keepsake (such as the dime store loving cup inscribed “World’s Greatest Golfer” from his kids a couple of Christmases ago) in the ceiling-to-floor bookcase behind the desk. The other walls were cluttered with framed letters (the one from Robert Kennedy, particularly, he treasured) and photographs of him with various state and national political leaders (shaking hands with then-Governor Harold Hughes on the steps of the Capitol building). Sometimes he wondered whether his private sanctuary being decorated with the mementoes of his political life was a sign of idealistic dedication to public service or just overblown feelings of self-importance. Not that those two traits were necessarily contradictory. It was possible, he supposed, for a man to be both an idealist and a pompous ass. He just hoped he didn’t fit the description himself.