Spree (4 page)

“You love being a prosperous businessman, don’t you?” she said.

“It ain’t half bad,” he said.

She stood very near to him, where he sat on a barstool.

“You love playing it straight, too, don’t you? You get a kick out of playing at being honest.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

“When somebody comes in that door, I’ll be there to greet them. I’ve come a long way from the Tropical.”

“I still don’t want you pouring any coffee.”

She touched his knee. “Haven’t you noticed? I’ve gotten better with my hands as I’ve gotten older.”

“You can get a five-yard penalty for holding, you know.”

She removed her hand, and her pouty smile turned wry. “That’s you, all right, Nolan. The referee of my life.”

“Maybe so, but I’m always interested in a forward pass. Somebody.”

“Huh?”

“Just came in. Do your duty.”

She went over to the door, where a handsome well-dressed brown-haired kid in his early twenties seemed glad to see her. Then he realized she was just the hostess, and when she realized he wasn’t here to dine, she merely pointed him to the bar area and dance floor, where he slipped into the crowd, just another would-be John Travolta. Or whoever this year’s hunk was.

Nolan said, “I think he liked you.”

“Dumb as a post. You could see it in his eyes. Well, anyway, I was saying. You’re an honest man, now. Why don’t you make me an honest woman?”

“Are you proposing?”

“No, just kidding. On the square. You know, we’ve been honeymooning since I was in puberty. You might want to consider something more serious.”

She smiled a tight little, crinkle-cornered smile, that wasn’t pouty at all, and left him alone at the bar to think about this. Which he never had before. Sherry was the first woman he ever lived with, for any length of time; he’d figured that in itself was a commitment, the biggest he’d ever made to a woman, anyway.

But, hell—he was a businessman, now. A straight, prosperous businessman—who happened to be living with a girl less than half his age. How did it look? The Chamber had its share of bluenoses, after all. Maybe marriage was the appropriate thing.

Nolan asked Chet for a Scotch, a single, and smiled to himself.
I am going soft,
Nolan thought.
Seriously considering marriage. Worrying about how things look, what people would say. What would Jon say?

Across the room, at a small table, where he sat alone, feeling the glow of the eyes of appreciative single women upon him, Lyle Comfort squinted at the man at the bar and, slowly but certainly, like fire from the efforts of a stubborn Boy Scout rubbing rocks together, a thought formed.

Lyle Comfort, who just two hours ago was burying someone he’d killed in a wooded area across the river, recognized Nolan.

Quietly, he got up and left.

3

LYLE COMFORT
didn’t like killing people. But he did what he was told. That was his best quality: he was a good boy. He did what his pa said.

Tonight he had killed his sixth person in three weeks; that was two killings a week, though it hadn’t worked out that way exactly.

The first was the hardest. The girl. Angie. He’d killed her when she was still unconscious, so it wasn’t cruel. He’d shot her in the heart with a revolver, the Colt Woodsman Pa gave him for his last birthday. He couldn’t bear to shoot her in the head; it might mess her face up. He had buried her in the woods, a couple miles from the house, nice and deep. Hers wasn’t the only body buried out there.

But she was the first girl he ever killed. First woman. It was a good thing he didn’t believe in God anymore, or he’d go to hell, sure. But Pa said God was something fools believed in to keep from going crazy thinking about dying. And he also said that dying was something that caught up with everybody, so exactly when somebody died was no big thing. It wasn’t like it wasn’t going to happen anyway.

That made sense to Lyle, and made it easier to do the things he sometimes had to do, for Pa. The other thing Pa said that helped was: “Business is business. Money makes the world go ’round, and a man’s family’ll starve if he don’t do what’s necessary to bring in the bucks.”

So Lyle, obedient son that he was, did what was necessary to help Pa bring in the bucks.

Tonight was easy, compared to Angie. He went to the back door of the bar in Rock Island and found it open; a storeroom filled with boxes and stuff also included a little office area, where a fat man in a white short-sleeved shirt and baggy brown pants sat at a desk with a bunch of money in his hands like green playing cards. The fat man was making little piles of money out of a big one. He was balding and had a couple warts on his face. He was sweating—big wet circles under his arms. It was cold outside, but warm in here, several baseboard heaters going, and besides, a big man like that just plain sweats. He made Lyle kind of sick. There were some really awful people in the world.

“Lyle,” the fat man said, quietly surprised. His name was Leo. It seemed to Lyle a good name for a fat man to have. Leo, whose last name was Corliss, smiled; his smile was yellow. Leo was a jolly fat man, but it was an ugly sort of jolly that made Lyle’s stomach queasy.

“Hello, Mr. Corliss.” Lyle walked over to the fat man, who sat at the desk in a puddle of light from a gooseneck lamp, and shook hands with him. The fat man’s palm was wet, like his underarms. Country western music from a live band was shaking the joint, out in the bar; Lyle could hear happy boozy voices cut above the racket. And to Lyle it was a racket: he didn’t know how anybody could like such terrible music, although truth be told, his pa was one of them. Lyle liked the new music from England; it was smooth and had a good beat.

“What brings you here, Lyle?” the fat man said; his face was sweat-beaded, the whites of his eyes seemed yellow. Had Lyle been at all perceptive, he’d have seen the concern in the fat man’s seemingly cheerful expression. But Lyle, of course, saw only the cheerfulness.

“Pa sent me,” Lyle said. “We got to talk about some new arrangements with our business.”

“Well, pull up a box and sit down. Glad to talk, anytime. But, uh, Lyle—ain’t it a little unusual, your daddy sending you to do business?”

“Unusual?”

“You’re a nice-looking boy, Lyle.” The fat man touched the sleeve of Lyle’s brown leather jacket; Lyle didn’t like that. “But I never knew you to have a head for business.”

“Pa didn’t send me to do the talking. He sent me to do the fetching.”

“Oh? He’s with you?”

“He’s at the motel.”

“What motel is that, Lyle?”

“Riverview.”

“Hell, that’s past Andalusia. Why so far?”

“Pa takes precautions.”

The fat man shifted in his chair, a big wooden captain’s chair that creaked like a rusty shutter, at least when the fat man moved in it, it did.

“Your daddy’s a smart man,” Leo Corliss allowed. “He’s as good at steering clear of the law as any man I know.”

“Right. I’ll drive you.”

The fat man swallowed.

Then, pushing on the desk, he rose; it was kind of amazing—like a torn-down building suddenly put itself back together. “I’ll just tell my bartender I’m stepping out . . .”

“No,” Lyle said. “Pa said you should just slip out back.”

“Why’s he so nervous?” the fat man said, licking some sweat off his upper lip.

“My pa takes precautions.”

The fat man’s mouth twitched; it was irritation, but Lyle didn’t know that. “Yeah, sure, right. Okay. Just let me get my coat. It’s cold out.”

The coat, a tentlike green parka, was on a hook on the wall by some boxes of liquor. Lyle let him get it. Then they walked into the alley and Lyle opened the door of his cherry-red Camaro and the fat man squeezed inside.

“I got the seat all the way back,” Lyle apologized, getting in.

“It’s okay,” the fat man said, uncomfortable. “Let’s make this quick, okay, Lyle?”

“Okay.”

Lyle pulled out from behind the alley past the fat man’s dark little bar on this dark little street, then drove down Fourth Avenue and caught 92 near the toll bridge. He played a Billy Idol tape very loud. The fat man sat and sweated and looked out the window at nothing. Lyle asked him if he wanted the heat in the car lowered and he said no. They were on Highway 92, headed to Andalusia, a hamlet on the Mississippi, when Leo Corliss finally asked him to turn the music down. Lyle did.

“Could you tell me what this is about, Lyle?”

“The food stamp business.”

“Well, of course it’s about the food stamp business.” The fat man seemed irritated; even Lyle could tell. “That’s the business your daddy and me are in.”

Leo Corliss’ Ace Hole was one of four bars that fed food stamps to the Comforts—the only one in the Quad Cities, however. The other three bar owners were, naturally, dead now, here and there around Illinois and Missouri. They had all had policies toward food stamps similar to Leo’s. The fat man accepted a dollar food stamp as twenty-five cents toward drinks and cigarettes; he then resold the stamps to the Comforts for fifty cents. Nickels and dimes, but it added up. It added up.

“Has anybody come around?” Lyle said.

“Come around. What do you mean, come around?”

“Asking questions.”

“Cops, you means?”

“Or anybody like a cop.”

“No. Nobody. You expecting somebody to?”

The Mississippi River was at their right; it was a windy night, rocking the car, and the river looked rough. Moonlight danced on its surface, frantically, as if to Lyle’s Billy Idol tape. At their left was a wooded bluff.

“Yes,” Lyle said.

“There’s the motel,” Leo said, as they coasted by, a little old-fashioned motor court with half a dozen rooms and a sign saying, “Water Beds—Adult Movies.”

“He don’t want to talk there,” Lyle said.

“Well, where’s he meeting us, then?”

“Up a ways.”

They didn’t have the road to themselves—a car would occasionally weave around them, on its way from one bar to another. There were a lot of bars on this road, but the stretch outside Andalusia was free of bars, past a certain point, and rather deserted at the moment. Lyle, who’d been keeping it at an easy fifty, pulled over.

“Why are you stopping?”

With his left hand Lyle reached beside the seat and under and got out the .38, his birthday Colt Woodsman (just like Pa’s) with its natural-wood stock. Lyle was always a little surprised by how heavy it felt. He never quite got over how different real guns felt from his childhood toys.

“Lyle . . .”

Lyle transferred the gun to his right hand. “Mr. Corliss, get out slow.”

Corliss did; Lyle too.

The Camaro was parked on the side of the road near the river; a little picnic area was nearby—several wooden tables. Wind whistled and whipped the two men. The fat man, in his impossibly large parka, a puffy pale green thing that made him look even fatter, snugged its hood over his ears, zipped the coat and stuffed his hands in its pockets.