Spree (28 page)

Picking the locks at Brady Eighty was, thus far at least, about as hard as buttering a roll.

For example, the Haus of Leather was open for business right now.

ANDY FIELDHAUS
, half asleep and completely naked on the vinyl couch in his back room, on his side next to and facing a half-asleep and completely naked young woman named Heather, who was also on her side, on that same vinyl couch (as fate would have it), thought he heard something.

He sat up, quickly, and nearly pushed Heather, who was on the outside, off onto the cold concrete floor; he caught her before she did, and even slapped a hand across her suddenly wide-open mouth, below her suddenly wide-open eyes, before she could say anything.

Into her shell-like ear he whispered: “I heard something.”

Then, making exaggerated facial gyrations, he pointed toward the store out there, beyond the back room, where they had been legitimately working on the books since about nine-thirty, only around eleven having gotten extracurricular, thereafter enjoying the drowsy afterglow of a particularly fine fornication when Andy heard something.

They could see each other, but just barely; a single thick rose-scented candle in a small glass bowl glowed on the desk. Anytime they were in the back room and stopped doing the books and got down to funny business, Heather always lighted that one candle and otherwise doused the lights.

Now she was mouthing the word: “What?”

He whispered in her ear again; there was a rose scent in her hair, too, from shampoo. He said, “It could be Caroline.”

Blood drained out of Heather’s face; even in the candlelight you could see it. She was deathly afraid of Andy’s wife. She had heard the story about the carving knife; hell, she had seen the scar on his shoulder enough times.

He got up off the couch, carefully, oh so quietly, or trying to do so anyway: the vinyl was much noisier than leather would have been. He tiptoed to his trousers, draped over his chair at his desk, and reached his hands into each of the pockets and removed the jingle-jangley stuff—coins, keys and such—and placed them as quietly as humanly possible on the desk, where the candle glowed. It would have been a romantic moment if it hadn’t been scary as hell.

Caroline had a key to the place; she had the only other key. He put on his pants.

Then something very frightening happened: he heard the doors to his shop slide open out there.

JERRY LEECH
was ready for a break. He told his brother Ricky so. Ricky wiped some grease off his forehead with a heavily gloved hand and agreed they had hauled enough TVs and refrigerators and heavy shit for a while, and they left the Petersen’s loading dock, where the truck there was already a fourth or so full, and pushed open the double doors leading out into the darkened department store and ran into their brother Ferdy, as well as Fisher and Winch, each of whom was wheeling a hand truck bearing stacked microwave ovens and VCRs, winding through ladies’ lingerie.

“We’re gonna get some lighter shit,” Jerry told them.

Winch shrugged and rolled his heavily loaded hand truck on by.

Fisher, pausing with his load of electronics, said, “We’ve got another couple trips’ worth of these. We better stay at it.”

Ferdy looked disappointed, like he wanted to go with his brothers, but Ferdy was the baby of the brothers—youngest by about three minutes—and often caved into the leadership of others. And this time he followed Fisher’s lead.

“Wussy,” Ricky said, once they were out in the mall.

“Yeah,” Jerry said, though he was not sure whether Ricky was referring to their brother or to Fisher. “Nolan said the leather shop was ripe. Let’s hit that.”

“Why the fuck not,” Ricky said.

As they passed the Walgreen’s, Ricky said, “Think of them drugs in there. Fuckin’ Comfort’s a wussy.”

“Yeah,” Jerry said, although he didn’t agree. He didn’t know why Comfort had anything against drugs, but he did know Comfort was somebody he didn’t intend to cross. That was one rough old hard-ass son of a bitch.

Jerry was also a little afraid of Nolan, truth be told. That guy had been around. He knew his stuff and had eyes that made you real uncomfortable. Jerry wasn’t sure crossing Nolan, like Comfort planned, was such a good idea. He also liked some of these other guys pretty well. Even that faggot Dooley seemed like a regular guy. It didn’t seem right, somehow, to kill them all.

But Comfort said Nolan couldn’t be trusted, that he was a murdering cocksucker who killed old Cole’s brother and nephews. And since the other guys—Fisher, Dooley, and that kid with the curly hair—had worked with Nolan before, and wouldn’t go along with offing him, they’d have to go, too. As Cole rightly pointed out, jobs with this many guys on it lots of times come undone because somebody talks; doing this Comfort’s way meant less guys left alive to eventually talk if the cops got lucky. And besides, it meant fewer ways to split the take.

They got to the leather shop just as Dooley was opening it. He didn’t look like no fucking fag. Well, he’d be in hell soon. And queers burned in hell, where Jerry come from.

Ricky pointed to some fat furry white coats and said, “Nolan said get these fox furs.” He fingered a tag. “They’re a grand each, Jeez-us!”

“Nolan knows his stuff,” Jerry said, with an admiring shrug of his head, wheeling the first of several racks of furs out into the mall.

COLE COMFORT
, who wasn’t doing any of the heavy loading, was wandering the mall, looking in the stores that Dooley had already opened, sizing things up. In his left hand he carried a large suitcase and he was pursuing his dream: he was shopping—filling the suitcase with small, expensive items; currently he was at the perfume counter of the I. Magnin, helping himself to Giorgio and Chanel and Calvin Klein’s Obsession, among other scents. He himself didn’t use toilet water.

But he had to agree with Nolan’s assessment of what to take and what not to take. Like the Radio Shack, for instance. They’d opened it up to get the walkie-talkies, one of which was in Cole’s right hand this very moment; but they were leaving behind all the TVs and computers and such. Because Radio Shack products would be damn near impossible to fence. Stick to brand-name stuff that
anybody
could carry, Nolan had said. Pretty smart, for a dead man.

And he was a dead man, Comfort thought.
A dead man who just ain’t got around to stopping breathing yet.

He checked his watch; ten after midnight. He wondered what was keeping Lyle. That girl would be dead and buried by now. That made him smile.

Not because he was glad to see a nice piece of tail like that turned to so much worm meat; no. But the thought of telling Nolan, before shooting him, that made Cole Comfort smile. He would use a sawed-off shotgun, which was currently in the cab of the Leech brothers’ truck parked behind the I. Magnin. He’d gut-shoot him, to make it last longer. Maybe he’d wait till Nolan’s guts were hanging out of him from both sides, shredded by buckshot, to tell him about the girl. No, best tell him first, in case he blacked out before Cole could give him the news.

The others—Fisher, Winch, Dooley—was just commonsense cleanup, and the Leeches would take care of most of it. With one exception.

The kid would be Lyle’s. He’d instructed Lyle to shoot Jon in the belly with the .38, a couple of times. That kid was just like Nolan: he killed Comfort kin. Dying slow was their ticket to the next world, only Cole knew there wasn’t one.

The Leeches, though, he would take no delight in. They had been helpful to him any number of times over the last ten years or so, but they weren’t the most intelligent men under the sun, and now that this mall haul, this crowning Comfort achievement, would provide him and Lyle and Cindy Lou with enough money to flat out retire, well—the Leeches would have served their purpose. Cole didn’t like leaving loose ends, or loose lips; those dumb-ass sons of bitches wouldn’t sink his ship. They’d drive their trucks to Burden in Omaha straight from here, in the morning, and by nightfall they’d be back in Sedalia. Where Cole and Lyle would be waiting.

He closed the suitcase up; it was filled with perfume and other such niceties. He slipped one last bottle of Giorgio in a coverall pocket. That would be for Cindy Lou. He would have to settle things with the child tomorrow, back at home; after he got back from Sedalia. A peace offering would be needed, first. And then he could teach her about the beauty of the love act.

And tomorrow night would be as memorable as tonight.

NOLAN WAS
heading toward the back room again when his bartender, standing at the end of, and just inside, the bar, reached a hand out and stopped him.

“You okay?” Chet asked; the older man sometimes treated Nolan paternally, which irked Nolan no end.

“I’m fine.”

“You been in the back more than out front.”

“I got gas. You want me to fart in here?”

Chet smiled. “And drive out what few customers we got tonight? No way.”

“Well,” Nolan said, “I’d stay out of the back room, if I were you. Unless you light a match.”

“What, and risk an explosion?”

And Chet returned to his handful of customers at the bar.

Nolan checked in with Jon.

“Anything?” he asked into the walkie-talkie.

“Nothing,” Jon said. “They aren’t even loading my truck yet.”

“Well, it’s too early for that, anyway. They started at one end and they’ll get that truck loaded, and then move toward the center of the mall and start loading yours.”

“When’ll that be?”

“Around one, one-thirty.”

Somebody started knocking on Nolan’s back door.

Jon said, “What was that?”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Nolan said.

He tossed the switched-off walkie-talkie on the desk and covered it with a newspaper. He got a long-barreled .38 from a desk drawer and held it in his left hand, behind him, as he cracked the door open.

Where he saw the flushed and very wide-eyed face of Andy Fieldhaus.

Nolan looked out at him and said, “Well, hello, Andy.”

Puffing, his breath visible in the cold air, Andy said, “Jesus Christ, Nolan, let us in.”

“Us?”

“Heather and me. Let us in!”

He closed the door for a moment, stuck the gun in his waistband, buttoned his jacket over it, let them in.

“Thank God for back doors,” Andy said, breath heaving.

They were barely dressed: Andy had his brown leather bomber jacket over his bare chest and wore his pants but carried his shoes and shirt and underthings and such in his hands. The buxom Heather was in a coat, clutched to her with one hand, her shoes in the other, and wadded up under one arm were the rest of her clothes. She was shivering, mostly from cold, but not entirely.

It was a bitter night to go barefoot.

Heather dropped her clothes to the floor and, her coat opening, she flashed Nolan, inadvertently; she had really big tits—also really erect nipples, from the cold, not Andy. She and Andy huddled together, hugging, shaking.

“What can I do for you?” Nolan asked. It was clear they’d gotten dressed—sort of dressed—in a hurry.