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“No.” Which was true. Jon had not been a party to Breen and Nolan’s conversation.

“He said he had to be careful old man Comfort didn’t see who was robbing him! Can you imagine?”

Jon said, “What’s wrong with that? Comfort and Nolan know each other, and so of course Nolan doesn’t want him to know who’s pulling the job.”

“Don’t you see it? He’s puttin’ on the kid gloves when he ought be bare-knuckle punchin’. This kind of thing, when you heist another heister, you got to kill the guy. You don’t leave people like that alive after ripping ’em off. Not people like Sam Comfort, you don’t. Or he’ll come around and cut off your dick and feed it to you.”

Jon swallowed at that not particularly appetizing thought. “So what?” he said, straining to sound flip. “That .just means Nolan is right—you got to keep Comfort from knowing who it is, otherwise you got a lot of . . . you know, bloodshed on your hands.”

Breen sat up in bed, groaning just a little from his gunshot wounds. “Now, I’ll admit,” he said through tight lips, “I’ll admit that Nolan’s always been one to avoid killing when he could, but not in a case like this. You got to lance a boil like the Comforts. It’s safer all around, just to go in and blow those bastards’ heads off and call it a night.”

“Big talk, Breen. And you don’t even carry a gun.”

“Right,
I
don’t, but Nolan
does
. I wouldn’t go for killing the Comforts or anybody, but I wouldn’t think of ripping them off, either, not for revenge or nothing. I’m lucky to be out of it with my ass. I’m a coward. Ask Nolan. I ran out on him that time in Chicago, when those syndicate boys shot him up. And that’s another reason this thing puzzles me. Nolan says he’s going to give me a share of the take, like he’s going after the Comforts as a favor to me. What for? He owes me nothing. I’m lucky he doesn’t kick my fuckin’ butt in for running the hell out on him that time. So what is it with him? Why’s he jumpin’ on this like it’s his golden opportunity? Why’s he a goddamn humanitarian where the Comforts are concerned?”

And at this stage Jon had realized what lay behind Breen’s point of view. After the robbery, the Comforts might naturally figure that Breen had had a hand in it, to get back at them for their double-cross and get his due from the parking meter heisting. So of course Breen wanted the Comforts dead; of course he was uneasy about Nolan sparing the lives of that miserable family. Breen himself was the one most likely to (gulp) get his dick cut off and fed to him.

But what Breen said did bother Jon. Was Nolan taking undue risks, to spare Jon? Was Nolan avoiding violence with the Comforts to keep things from getting too rough for Jon? Was Breen right—with people like the Comforts, were you better off just killing them? That final concept was one Jon didn’t really think he could stomach. Did Nolan know that, too, Jon wondered?

After spending another hundred bucks, Jon left the Hucksters’ Hall and went upstairs to the room he and Nolan would share. It was a dreary cubicle, despite the hotel’s lavish lobby, dining area, and bar, and was robbery even at convention rates. He undressed, had a cold shower, and got dressed again and went down to the bar, to have a drink and fog his mind if not clear it.

It was an off-time right now: the bar was part of a big nightclub setup, with stage and arena of tables over to the right, and the room was almost as big as the ballroom where the comic dealing was going on, only this was as empty of people as Hucksters’ Hall was full. Up at the bar was a pretty woman with short brown pixie hair. She was wearing slacks and a sweater over a blouse—casual clothes but very stylish, in dark, soft colors: blues, browns. She was thin as a model, but full-breasted. Jon supposed she was in her early thirties, close to Karen’s age.

Why did he have to think of Karen at a moment like this? Now, along with all those other bad vibes running through him—fear and depression and edginess—now he felt
guilty
, too. Because he was thinking of going up and sitting next to that woman at the bar, pinning his hopes on the improbable possibility of his picking her up, thinking that maybe a little sex game (even if conversation was as far as it got) would drain off his tension. But, no—just thinking of it made things worse; now he felt guilty for possibly betraying Karen.

Fortunately he was able to brush the guilt quickly from his mind. He just thought about this morning, when he’d called Karen to tell her as tactfully as possible that he would be attending the comics convention, and she’d gone into a fury, a goddamn rage about him missing her birthday for a stupid bunch of comic books. She’d given him no chance to explain (and he couldn’t have—Karen knew of Nolan and disapproved of Nolan-sponsored activities even more than she did comic books), and she’d really been quite unreasonable.

So, conscience clear, he sat down next to the pretty brunette and smiled and built a strategy. And when the bartender came around, Jon ordered a Scotch on the rocks for himself (he hated Scotch, but it sounded rugged), and as he turned to her to ask what she’d have, damn if the bartender didn’t card him!

His outline for seduction erased itself on his mental blackboard and, as he looked at the beautiful, dark-haired, full-breasted woman in her early thirties sitting next to him, with her finely chiseled features and a smile turning from invitation to condescension, Jon decided not even to bother digging his I.D. out of his wallet, just forgot the Scotch and the woman and got the hell out of there.

He went back up to the cubicle, had another cold shower, and got dressed again and went down and spent another hundred on comic books. It killed the time till he was supposed to meet Nolan in the coffee shop downstairs.

7

NOLAN STEPPED
onto the elevator and was all alone, except for a girl with sharply pointed ears and skin tinted a dark green. She was wearing a silver sarong that made her look as though she’d been wrapped in aluminum foil, like a sandwich. She was young, probably sixteen, a chunky but not unattractive girl—considering she was green and had pointed ears.

It was Nolan’s sincere hope that she would not be going all fifteen floors down to the lobby, as he was. He’d just come from the hotel room, where he’d found evidence that Jon was developing a cleanliness fetish—the boy apparently had had at least a couple of showers already, as all the towels were used up and the floor was wet. All of which was only in keeping with this nuthouse hotel, this asylum populated by kids so weird, they made Jon seem normal.

Like, for instance, this green, pointy-eared girl with whom he shared the elevator. Nolan hoped she’d get off soon so he wouldn’t have to say anything to her. Strangers were always a pain to talk to, let alone green ones. She would ask him if he wondered why she was made up this way, and he would say no, but it would be too late: they would be talking, and this was a particularly slow elevator that could make a fifteen-floor ride seem a lifetime. Besides, he figured he already knew why she was dressed this way: there was going to be a full moon tonight, and she was just getting an early start.

“I bet you’re wondering why I’m dressed like this,” she said, in a squeaky voice.

Nolan said nothing, but he did manage a smile. Sort of.

“Normally I wouldn’t be wearing this.”

“Oh?”

“At least, not till tomorrow night. There’s a convention going on, you know, comic books and ‘Star Trek’ and things, and the costume ball isn’t till tomorrow night.”

“Oh.”

“This is just for the press conference. Some of us were asked to dress up now for the press conference. Some newspaper and TV people are here, doing interviews and stuff about the con. If you watch the six o’clock news, you just may see me.”

The elevator was now at ballroom level, just a floor above the lobby. The doors slid open and, crowded in front of the ballroom entrance, were maybe a hundred and fifty people, mostly kids five years either side of Jon in age, some in strange get-ups, and cameramen and reporters and newsmen shuffling around, jockeying various equipment and holding mikes up to some people standing under klieg lights a shade brighter than the aurora borealis.

Nolan stepped to the rear of the elevator; he did not want to be on the six o’clock news.

The green girl shouted, “Scotty!” and ran out of the elevator and into the crowd, toward a red-cheeked, roughly handsome dark-haired guy who looked familiar to Nolan; some television actor, he guessed. He caught the actor’s eye and smiled sympathetically and the actor shook his head, as if to say, “I wish I was going down to the bar like you, my friend.” The poor actor was swamped by girls and reporters, and Nolan wondered how anybody could ever stand going into a business as hair-raising as that.

The doors slid shut and Nolan got out at the lobby. He quickly went into the bar and had a Scotch, as much for that put-upon actor as himself.

Sitting on the stool next to him was a very pretty girl with short brown hair, wearing a chic pants outfit. Nolan gave her a look that asked if he could buy her one, and she gave him back a look that said he could.

“Gin and tonic,” she said, in a voice designed to order gin and tonics.

Nolan glanced at his watch. He was running early. He hadn’t really expected his buddy Bernie to be able to supply him with everything he needed, and so quickly. It was a good hour-and-a-half till he was supposed to meet Jon in the coffee shop, and he decided to kill some time.

He examined the girl’s delicate but distinct features (her eyes were a hazel-green color you don’t run into that often) and asked, “Model?”

She shook her head. “Flight attendant.”

“Stewardess, you mean.”

She gave him a firm little smile. “Flight attendant,” she said.

“Don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry what?”

“I don’t believe what I read in paperbacks.”

She laughed, and the bartender brought her the gin and tonic. She looked at him, examining him in much the same way he had her. “Gangster?”

“Right the first time.”

“Don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry what?”

“I don’t believe what I read in paperbacks, either.”

They both laughed, and in her room on the tenth floor, forty-five minutes later, she kissed his cheek and played with the salt-and-pepper hair on his chest and said, “No, really, what are you?”

“I told you downstairs. Gangster, like you guessed.”

“Come on.”

“Very specialized gangster, though.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. All I do is see to it nobody gives Sinatra a bad time.”

She laughed again, and the covers fell down around her waist, and he got a long look at her breasts. They were full, very, too full for her otherwise slender body, but he didn’t mind. The nipples were small, which made the breasts look even bigger. They were coral color, her nipples, and he liked them. He leaned over and nibbled one.

“Hey!” she said. “You’re a horny S.O.B., aren’t you? Don’t be a glutton.”

“Lady,” he said, between nibbles, “I’ll take all the servings I can get. I don’t often eat at restaurants this nice.”

“Quit it,” she giggled, in a tone that said go ahead.

Ahead was where he went, and they had a good time, their second. Nolan believed in going twice whenever possible, because the second time can be done slow and lovingly, without the urgency that makes the first round so good but so frantic. She had an ass as nice as her breasts, not skinny like the rest of her; something soft and fleshy and fun to fill his hands with.

She was doing him a lot of good: his bridges with Sherry were getting burned a bit faster than he had anticipated, and that was a relief. He realized his separation from Sherry had been a little heavy on his mind, and though he hated to admit it, even to himself, he missed the girl, damn it; and he didn’t like going into a heist with that sort of emotional preoccupation working on him.