Spree (7 page)

As for the other boys, he couldn’t complain. Willis would be out of Fort Madison in about a year; the boy had been doing just fine with that chop-shop operation in Dubuque—he just had a thing or two to learn about greasing the law, is all. You can’t run a business without certain expenses, and payoffs was one of them. But, hell. Those two years inside would be just the education Willis would need to get himself back on track.

Lyle, well, he was doing good, considering. Considering he’d inherited both Thedy Sue’s good looks and her meager brainpower.

Thedy, bless her soul, was the prettiest thing Cole ever saw. He’d married her during the war; he was selling tires and such on the black market in Atlanta and she was a backwoods girl come to the big city. She was waitressing but Cole knew she’d fall into hooking if some knight in shining armor didn’t come along, which was Cole Comfort all over. He gave her some nylons and they were married soon after.

Thedy Sue was all Georgia peaches and cream, creamy skin, breasts like peaches, a strawberry blonde with freckles and wide blue empty eyes. Thick as a plank she was, but she kept her looks over the years; never ran to fat. She learned to cook and she had a sweet disposition. What did it matter if she thought two plus two was twenty-two, and signed her name with an X? What counted was she fucked like a monkey, and only with her lawful wedded husband.

She died giving birth to Cindy Lou. Sometimes Cole blamed himself for that; maybe they should’ve gone to a hospital. Hell, it was a fluke, the baby coming out feet-first and all that blood and all. Who could’ve predicted it? Cole had never met a doctor who wasn’t a crook, anyway.

And Cindy Lou, she was the spitting image of her mother. She was her beautiful mother back again, only with something of a brain. It was all he could do to keep his hands off the child. But he did. Or at least had so far. He was weighing it in his mind: who better to educate her to the ways of the world than her pa? Who better to usher her into womanhood than her loving father?

Still, some vestige of his Bible-beating upbringing, back in the Georgia sticks, clung to him. Kept him from certain “forbidden” things. He knew it was bunk; he knew there was no God. He’d looked at the world and he knew it was as pointlessly random and thoughtlessly cruel as a child setting fire to a beetle. He’d looked at the sky and seen stars but sensed nobody up there. No grand design. No meaning to this life, at all, except the meaning you make for yourself, in your life’s work, in your family. Then, dying day would come, and it would all be dust. Sweet Thedy Sue, who never harmed a fly, was dust now, wasn’t she? It was stupid to think of her as being in “Heaven”—she’d have left her body behind, and cooking wouldn’t be called for up there, and a good nature like hers’d be a dime a dozen in celestial circles. What use could
any
God have for a dope like her?

Heaven was hogwash, but his ma’s teachings sometimes came out of the recesses of his brain to haunt him. But right there with it was the memory of Pa, who put the beating into Bible-beating—literally; he used the Good Book as a weapon, slamming it against the three boys’ bare bottoms, hurling it at them from across a room. His older brother Sam, younger brother Daniel, and Cole himself received his boozing pa’s discipline equally: no favorites. Even now the thought of it sent a hand to Cole’s forehead; the memory of the corner of that big heavy Bible cutting into his temple was still there. So was the scar.

People would come calling and remark at how dog-eared the family Bible was. You Comforts must put it to good use. And Ma would smile modestly and Pa would just sort of snort.

Cole hated the thought of his long-dead pa; he had sworn he’d raise his brood better. He had sworn he’d be a loving father, and he kept his vow. For example, he loved Lyle, and only a truly loving father could love such a dipshit.

What you could say for Lyle was this: he did as he was told. He, and Cindy Lou for that matter (but she was less reliable, by far), had pitched in on the food stamp business. Lyle even came up with an idea, a good idea, although it was an accident.

“You’ll be like a postman,” Cole had said, explaining how Lyle would go to mailboxes and remove food stamp envelopes.

“Will I wear a uniform like a postman?” Lyle asked, with his mother’s wide empty eyes.

Cole could hardly believe his ears. “Goddamn, boy, if that ain’t a hell of an idea!”

“It is?”

It was. Cole had both Lyle and Cindy Lou wear postal employee uniforms when they were out collecting mail; that way, no one would question them going up to mailboxes, moving from this mailbox to that one, in broad daylight.

Acquiring the uniforms had been easy; in two separate communities, Lyle followed first a postman, and then a female postal worker, home. He burgled both houses, taking a lot of things among which were the uniforms. Enough things were stolen to make the missing uniforms get lost in the police-report shuffle; it occurred to no one that the uniforms were the purpose of the exercise. Cole had suggested to Lyle that he rape the woman, to further confuse the issue, but Lyle didn’t want to do that. You had to give the kid that much: he may have been a dim bulb, but he had standards.

And this afternoon, Sunday, Lyle had shown signs of intelligence. Initiative, even.

Cole had been sprawled out on the couch, watching a Chicago Bears football game on the big-screen television, sipping a Stroh’s, when Lyle came slowly down the steps, bare feet slapping the wood. The boy was in his T-shirt and shorts. He’d just gotten up. His curly brown hair was sticking up here and there.

“Morning, Pa,” Lyle said, standing at the foot of the stairs. Stretching.

“Afternoon, son. You slept in.”

Lyle yawned; sighed. “Guess so. Got in kinda late.”

“I heard you get in. How did it go?”

“Mr. Corliss was no trouble.”

“Didn’t think he’d be. Look at that nigger! Can he
hit
!”

“He was hard to drag.”

“What?”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to innerupp your game.”

Cole sat up; something was troubling the boy. He patted the place next to him on the couch. Turned the sound down with the remote control. “Sit down, son. I don’t mean not to give credit where credit is due. I been taking you for granted.”

Lyle smiled, shyly. “Aw, Pa . . .”

Cole slipped an arm around the boy’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you. You took care of all of ’em. It wasn’t no picnic, I know that. It’s messy work. It’s work only a real man can do. I’m right proud.”

“Pa, I saw somebody.”

Cole squinted. “You mean somebody saw you . . .?”

Lyle shook his head no, emphatically. “No, no. Nobody saw me with Mr. Corliss. That road’s real deserted. It’s hard dragging a fat man like that, though. The ground was cold, too. Lots of roots in the earth. Hard digging a hole.”

The boy’s mind did wander, even if it didn’t have far to go. “Well, I’m sure you were up to the job, son. Now what do you mean, you saw somebody?”

“Do you remember a man named Nolan?”

A red-hot poker seared through Cole Comfort’s brain. His hands turned into fists and through teeth clenched tighter than Kirk Douglas overacting he said, “Do I remember a man named Nolan?” He stood. He looked at his knuckle-headed son through a red haze. “He only killed your uncle. He only killed your two cousins. Are you telling me you saw
Nolan
?”

Lyle shrugged. “I think so. I only seen him that one time.”

Cole and his brother Sam had been in on an armored car job with Nolan, in Ohio; this was five years ago, anyway, and Lyle hadn’t been old enough to play. But they’d met once, for one of the planning sessions, in a house where the Comforts were staying, Sam and his sons Billy and Terry, and Cole and his boys and girl. So Lyle had seen Nolan. And he’d certainly heard Cole talk about him often enough.

“Was it him?”

“Pa, don’t! You’re hurting me!”

Cole hadn’t realized he was gripping the boy’s arms; but he was: his hands were squeezing the boy’s biceps red, then white.

“I’m sorry,” Cole said, but didn’t let go and didn’t lessen his grip. “Was it him?”

“He seemed older.”

The stupidity of that remark brought Cole back to his senses, more or less, and he let loose of the boy and rubbed his own face with one hand, as if trying to wash away the frustration of having raised such a thick child, and said, “You saw him five or more years ago, Lyle. Of course he looked older.”

“He was fatter. Just his tummy.”

“Middle-aged men can get a spread, boy. You’ll learn about it, should you ever reach middle age. What else?”

“He has a thing on his lip.”

“A thing on his lip? What, a cold sore?”

“No, a whachamacallit. A mustache.”

Cole let some air out; Thedy Sue, your son’s dimmer than you. “He wasn’t wearing a mustache when you saw him, five or so years ago. But he’s been known to wear one.”

“So you think it could’ve been him?”

“I think it could’ve been him. Where was this?”

“Davenport. Near Interstate 80. A bar. Well, it was a restaurant, too. Pretty big place. Kinda fancy. Not snooty, but nice. Good place to pick up women.”

“Go on.”

“I think he might be the owner or manager or something. The woman who met me at the door—uh, what would she be called?”

“The hostess.”

“Yeah. Right. She was talking to him a lot. And he was talking to the bartender, back behind the bar. Customers don’t do that.”

That pleased Cole; that was more or less a perception, and perceptions were rare where Lyle was concerned.

“What was this place called?”

“Nolan’s.”

Suddenly Cole wished he were a religious man; then he’d have a Bible handy he could hurl at the boy.

“And you’re wondering if this might have been Nolan?” Cole said through his teeth. “A guy managing a place called Nolan’s?”

Lyle shook his head. “Pa, I been through Davenport before. That place has been called Nolan’s for a long time. I don’t think it was named after your Nolan.”

“
Our
Nolan,” Cole corrected. He put a tight hand on Lyle’s shoulder. “He’s
our
Nolan, son. He’ll be all ours, soon.”

“You better make sure it’s him. I don’t want to go killing people unless there’s cause.”

Standards. The boy had standards. There was hope for him yet.

Cole stood up; he shut off the giant-screen TV with the remote control and began to pace.

“Lyle, you must understand . . . this Nolan is a bad man. You know how I feel about the son of a bitch, but I never told you, exactly, what he did. Do you want to know what he did?”

“Sure, Pa.”

“Several years ago him and another man . . . a young man, about your age . . . went to your uncle Samuel’s farmhouse in Michigan; they went there to rip him off. Now, one rule you got to learn, son, you don’t steal from other guys in the business; it just ain’t done—or if you do, leave scorched earth, not survivors.”

Lyle nodded at the logic of that.

“See, Nolan worked with Sam before, and me, and we never did him dirt, never pulled a cross, nothing. He had no grudge against us. A friend of his did, though, and the fucker used that as a half-ass excuse to rip Sam off. He and this kid, Jon something, tossed some smoke grenades in the house and made it look like there was a fire.”

“Gee,” Lyle said.

“Your uncle didn’t believe in banks any more’n I do,” Cole said. The Comforts had robbed a few too many financial institutions to trust in them. “Sam kept all his money at home, cash, same as us, in a strongbox. And this he grabbed, when he thought his place was on fire, and run outside, right into the waiting arms of this cocksucker Nolan. Billy, your cousin, your young cousin, got wise to the smoke screen and was about to sneak up and put a pitchfork in this little prick Jon, when Nolan shot him. Shot him! Killed him! Your cousin Billy! What kind of man
is
he?”