8

The voice in the receiver said, “Tillis?”

“He’s on the stool. Message?”

The receiver went silent for several moments, then the voice, which was a rough-edged baritone, returned. “Nolan?”

“Hello, Charlie.”

“What happened to Tillis?”

“I told you. On the crapper.”

“The years haven’t changed you much for the better, have they, Nolan?”

He laughed. “And you, Charlie?” Nolan paused briefly, then added, “Come on up. Bring Werner if you want. Any more men you got along, leave downstairs.”

“You heeled, Nolan?”

“You mean is the wound better?”

“You know what I mean. You’re the one said no guns, remember?”

“Well, hell, Charlie, Tillis was such a pansy, I just used my hands on him.”

“For a man who wanted ground rules, you don’t stick by them too goddamn close, do you?”

Nolan smiled into the mouthpiece. “It’s your rules I play, Charlie,” he said, and hung up.

The open area by the elevators was empty, so Nolan had no qualms about waiting there with the .38 in hand. The gun was in his palm facing inward, and if any of the Concort’s other patrons wandered by before Charlie and Werner came up, chances were good they wouldn’t notice anything.

The elevator doors parted like the Red Sea, and Charlie stepped out, Werner on his heels as though bearing a bridal train.

Charlie wasn’t a large man, and he didn’t look much like what a mob guy named Charlie should look like. His hair was short-cropped like Werner’s, only stark powder white, and he had a deep Miami tan identical to Werner’s. Resemblance between the two ended there, outside of the Brooks Brothers cut of their dark suits. The five-foot-nine Werner seemed to tower over the diminutive Charlie, even though he was standing behind him and trying not to. In spite of his size, or lack of it, Charlie was not a man Nolan planned to underrate. Nolan knew the little man was an old school tough, not remotely akin to Werner’s businessman breed, and Charlie’s use of acutely unsubtle muscle like Tillis was proof that he hadn’t changed. Charlie was no parody of a hood, however; he had acquired, over the years, the look of a calm, polished executive—in advertising, perhaps, or insurance. But Nolan knew, too, that cement overshoes and one-way rides and machine gun executions would never be out of style as far as Charlie was concerned.

Nolan tilted his palm upward and let the two men get a look at the gun in it, then motioned them toward his suite. No one said anything until the door to the suite was shut behind them.

“Strip off the overcoats,” Nolan said, “and then the suit-coats. And do it the nice, easy way you know I want you to.”

The two obeyed Nolan’s commands and let themselves be subjected to a fast but thorough frisk.

When he was through, Nolan said, “Well, can you beat that, you’re both clean.”

“Some people keep their word,” Werner said, petulant.

Charlie’s six-foot voice was heard in person by Nolan for the first time in sixteen years. He said, “Shut up, Werner.”

“Let him talk, Charlie,” Nolan said. “He isn’t happy with me, so let him blow the steam off now and have it done.”

“You’ve really put me on the spot, Nolan, do you know that?” Werner’s face had a slight flush, his country club cool gone. “I urge Charlie to fly in for negotiations, and he’s nice enough to accept your terms, and you show up waving a gun around in the air. Can’t you understand this is business, and you can’t handle business matters that way in this day and . . .”

“Jesus, Werner,” Charlie said, “will you just shut up and let Nolan and me handle our differences ourselves?”

Werner clamped his lips together, and the slight flush was replaced by a slight pout.

“Okay,” Charlie said, “you wanted to talk, Nolan? Okay. Then let’s get started.”

Nolan nodded. “Here on out, ground rules apply. This afternoon I checked out another room we’ll use to do our talking. I’ll leave my gun down here, locked in the closet, do the same with the one I took from Tillis. Then we go upstairs to the other room and talk.”

Charlie lowered his head in acceptance.

“You got another room?” Werner said. “What the hell’s wrong with this one? Why wasn’t I informed of this?”

Nolan didn’t answer him, and Werner’s pout evolved into a scowl, but disappeared when Nolan dumped his .38 and Tillis’s silenced Luger into the closet, locking it with his room key.

Nolan opened the door for them. “Let’s go, gentlemen.”

Charlie said, “What about Tillis?”

“He really is in the can, alive and well; I tied him up in there. He’ll be okay. Don’t be hard on the boy, Charlie. He isn’t really a pushover.”

“He won’t be so easy next time,” Charlie said.

“There won’t be a next time, remember, men?” Werner reminded them. “These are peace talks we’re having.”

“Just shut up,” Charlie said. “This world doesn’t need any more goddamn diplomats than it’s already got.”

“We agree on something, anyway,” Nolan said, and gestured toward the elevators.

The trio again remained silent until they were shut inside the smaller of Nolan’s two Concort rooms.

“You haven’t exactly trusted me to the goddamn heights, have you, Nolan?” Charlie’s mouth wore a sour smile.

Nolan pointed toward the bed. “Sit down, both of you.” He pulled a chair over and sat facing them, his arm resting on the nightstand by the bed. “You didn’t expect me to trust you, Charlie, and I didn’t expect you to trust me, so let’s forget all that now and get started, okay?”

Charlie again nodded assent.

Nolan got out his cigarettes, offered them around. Charlie refused, getting out a metal case of his own, and Werner also turned him down, mumbling that he’d quit. Nolan fired Charlie’s cigarette and his own, then went on. “You know, Charlie, it would’ve been easy for me to kill you downstairs in the suite. Even had Tillis handy to build a frame around.”

“Why so generous, Nolan?”

“Killing you’s not the answer. Not at this point, anyway. Your boy Tillis had some influence on me, too, I suppose.”

“Tillis? How so?”

“When I asked him if he was sent to kill me or just to check me out, he said the latter, and I believe him. I read Tillis as an open kind of guy, the kind who can’t lie worth a damn.”

Charlie nodded.

“If I figured you sent Tillis to kill me, you’d be dead by now . . . but I can’t blame you for taking precautions when I did the same thing.”

“And if Tillis had been sent to kill you,” Charlie said, working an ominously bland tone into his voice, “he would’ve gotten it done.”

Nolan smiled and said, “A strong possibility. He’s a good man. Anyway, I think maybe you really are willing to talk, Charlie, and can see I am, too . . . so okay, so let’s play peacemaker.”

Werner said, “Now we’re finally getting on the right track.”

Charlie said, “Shut up.”

“You know about my cover name, Charlie,” Nolan continued. “Without it, there’s a lot of money I can’t get to. A decade-and-a-half of money.”

“That’s right, Nolan. Because all I got to do is let somebody know about that cover of yours . . . say, for instance, the FBI . . . and you’ll be busted in every sense of the word . . . busted as in broke, busted as in iron bars.”

“You got the cards,” Nolan agreed.

“I hear you want to quit heisting. Want to shuck your evil ways and get back in the club business.”

“You hear correct. Since your boys queered that job of mine back in Cicero, there isn’t a decent heist man left who’ll work with me. And I’m getting old, Charlie, and so are you. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of pretending I’m a kid.”

Charlie sat up. “I’m getting old, Nolan, you’re right on that count. And I’ve mellowed . . . I wouldn’t be here tonight if I hadn’t mellowed . . . but I can’t let this thing between us die easy.” He smiled; his teeth were white as a shiny sink. “Sixteen years of hate doesn’t just turn to mist and drift off because we’ve had five minutes or so of goddamn chit-chat. There’s one hell of a lot more to this than that, Nolan, and a certain grudging respect we maybe got for each other, just for living this long, doesn’t change things for either of us.”

Nolan drew on the cigarette and gave the smoke a go at his lungs. “What do you want, Charlie?”

“I don’t want to kill you, Nolan, not really. My poor dead brother’s been gone a long time now, and like the anti-capital punishment boys would say, your death won’t bring him back. It’s been said revenge is a fire that burns in a man, but all fires cool with time . . . besides, even I got to admit you had cause to shoot the damn fool like you did . . . and the money you took? A drop in the bucket.” Charlie leaned forward, his eyes intense. “But do I hate you, Nolan? Do I hate you as I sit across from you like this, while the two of us chatter like a couple goddamn schoolgirls? Yes. I do, Nolan. Yes.”

Nolan knew when not to say anything.

Charlie went on, his face a soft red. “Why? Reasons, Nolan. Reasons you never once had occur to you in these sixteen years past.”

Charlie seemed to catch himself getting close to some self-appointed mark, and he stopped for a heartbeat and leaned back, trying to disguise his trembling. Nolan realized suddenly that the man had been working, working hard for restraint, to maintain a calm outer shell during these minutes of “friendly” conversation.

Nolan said, “What reasons, Charlie?”

Charlie forgot self-control and lurched forward, veins throbbing over his collar, letting loose words held in for too many years. “You made a clown out of me, Nolan!” He cupped his knees with his hands, and bones and veins on them stood out vividly. “You killed my brother, you stole my money, and then you got away with it! Everybody in the Family knew about it. Everybody knew a goddamn nobody in the organization, a goddamn club manager, had made a goddamn clown out of me! No, I don’t have reason to hate you, Nolan, you didn’t do anything but destroy my life! Because of what you did, I never rose an inch with the Family; sixteen years after your grandstand stunt I’m still stuck in the same goddamn spot I was in then. If you hadn’t screwed things up for me, Nolan, Jesus, I might have made top man, I might be top man in the Family today!”

Werner said, “It’s not like you were demoted or anything, Charlie.”

“Shut up!”

Nolan stabbed his cigarette out in the ashtray resting beside the lamp on the nightstand. He repeated what he’d asked before. “What do you want, Charlie?”

Charlie’s eyes slitted, and two small, penetrating coals glinted out at Nolan. Charlie had self-control back, and he had it in spades. He said, “I want you to sweat, Nolan. I want you to sweat blood.”

“Talk sense, Charlie. You know I don’t have your feel for the melodramatic.”

The little man sat up, composing himself as though he were a family patriarch preparing to carve a holiday turkey. “All right, Nolan. We won’t waste time with a lot of needless talk. I’ll make it simple and spell it out for you. This is what I want, all I want . . . one hundred thousand dollars. That’s all, Nolan. One hundred thousand dollars.”

Silence held the room for a full minute.

Nolan sat back in the chair and got a fresh cigarette going and weighed Charlie’s words. Werner sat leaning forward, mouth half open, trying to comprehend what was going on. Charlie sat straight, hands folded.

Finally Nolan cut through the silence.

“Okay, Charlie,” he said, “it’s a lot of money, but I won’t bitch about it. We can call it interest on the twenty thousand I took from you sixteen years ago. All I need is your word you won’t leak the Earl Webb name, and you can have your hundred thousand.”

Charlie’s features grew tight, seeming to converge toward the center of his face. “You miss my point . . . I don’t want any of that money. That would be too easy. You got to go out and get new money for me.”

“What?”

“You heard me, Nolan. Go out and get it for me. Earn it. Steal it. Counterfeit it if you can do a good enough job. But you got to be able to show me where you got it. I want to pick up the newspaper and see such-and-such jewelry store got hit, or so-and-so rich bastard was robbed. Don’t even think about using any of the Earl Webb money to pay me off.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because I don’t want you to. Because it would be too goddamn fucking easy.”

“I can’t pull a job, not now.”

“Sure you can, Nolan. You’re a pro.”

“After what you did to me in Cicero, there isn’t a decent man in the business who’ll be willing to work with me.”

“That’s a problem you’ll just have to iron out.”

“This is insane. I’ve quit, Charlie, can’t you understand that? I’m an old man and I’m not even fifty yet.”

“You can quit. After this one. After this one last job.”

“Yeah. And every guy I ever knew who tried pulling off one last big one with retirement in his head got it blown off trying.”

“That’d break my fucking heart.”

“What the hell’s the difference? One hundred grand out of a Webb account is just as good as any one hundred grand I could come up with through a job!”

“Calm down, Nolan,” Charlie said, his tone condescending. “I never saw you so upset before. What’s happened to you?”

“Okay,” Nolan said. “You want me to sweat blood for you. All right. I’ll sweat it for you.”

“Good,” Charlie said, “good. We’ll set a deadline . . . say one month from tomorrow? Pay the money, and you got your cover back and the funds that go with it. If you can’t make payment by then, you’re going to have to do your future dealing with the Chicago P.D., the FBI, the Treasury boys . . .”

“I think I get the idea.”

“I thought maybe you would.”

“What’s my guarantee you won’t expose the cover after I pay off?”

“You know there isn’t any, outside of my word.”

“Then why should I do it, Charlie?”

“Well, Nolan, as you pointed out, we’re both getting on in years, myself even more so than you. I’m growing more sentimental in my old age and figure, why not settle this account with Nolan and have it over and done? But I can’t just say ‘Forget it.’ The Family knows I’ve sworn to even scores with you, so I can’t let it end with, ‘Be seeing you.’ Yet I’ve so much as been told not to kill you, so what am I to do? There’s such a thing as saving face.” Charlie let out a short laugh. “What I’m giving you is a chance. Sure, you can’t be positive I’m leveling with you, but this way you got a chance of getting that cover of yours back. Any other way you got zero.” He put his hands on his knees, but not so firmly as before. “That’s my offer. Pay up a month from tomorrow . . . if you’re ready sooner, just call Werner and tell him, and we’ll set up a drop for the money. And then you can have your goddamn cover name back and retire a happy bastard.”

Nolan reached over into the lamp, brought out the .38, and held its nose under Charlie’s.

Charlie turned as white as his teeth, and small beads of sweat began making their way down his brow.

“Give me a reason,” Nolan said, “why I shouldn’t blow your head off and be the hell done with all this.” He turned to Werner and said, “You can contribute, too, old friend.”

“The Family would find you, Nolan,” Werner said.

“Maybe. But then you’d be just as dead, wouldn’t you, Charlie?”

Charlie said, “Put it away, Nolan.”

“You haven’t given me a reason yet.”

“If I don’t show up in my Chicago office tomorrow morning, kiss Earl Webb good-bye. That’s a reason.”

“Should I trust you, Charlie?”

“I won’t renege on this, Nolan. Pay me and I swear the slate between us is clean.”

“Clean?”

“Clean. Now put the gun away.”

“No. I trust you, but not that much.” He paused, then said, “Take off your ties and belts, men. Slow motion, please.”

When they had, Nolan said, “Werner, take Charlie’s tie and tie his hands behind his back. Tight as you can without cutting off the circulation.”

Werner looked as though he thought Nolan was pushing what was left of their friendship a little too hard, but any argument he had ready died when the .38 barrel began to swing his way.

After Werner had tied Charlie, Nolan kept gun in hand as he secured Werner’s hands in back, then bent down and strapped the belts around their ankles.

Charlie said, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Nolan. Turning me down like this leaves you with nowhere to go.”

Nolan said, “I’m not turning you down, Charlie. It’s just I’m getting edgy in my old age. How do I know this summit meeting of ours hasn’t been just so much bull to set me up for an easy kill? I figure this’ll keep you boys away from the phone till I’m out of the hotel and gone.”

Werner let out some pent-up venom. “Damn you, Nolan! Don’t you know yet that we don’t handle things that way anymore? This was a business meeting until you started to . . .”

Charlie said, “Shut up.”

“Charlie,” Nolan said, “I’m going to play your game. I’ll dig up a job somewhere and you’ll get paid . . . but back out, or cross me in any way, and you’re going to die. A promise. You’ll just die.”

Charlie started to say something, but Nolan whipped open the nightstand drawer and grabbed the two wadded handkerchiefs and shoved one into Charlie’s open mouth. Werner started to say something, and since Charlie wasn’t in a condition to shut him up, Nolan did it for him with the other wad of cloth.

Nolan holstered the .38, plucked the Colt from behind the pillow, and shoved the gun in his belt. He looked over at Charlie and thought about what a melodramatic sonofabitch Charlie was. Then he remembered his words to Charlie before stuffing the gag in his mouth, and glanced over at the lamp where he’d hidden the .38, and he had to laugh.

A couple of melodramatic sons-of-bitches, he thought, and headed for the door.