Hush Money

by Collins, Max Allan

  “That’s all of them,” he said. “Tapes, pictures, transcriptions, etcetera. All of it.”

  “Are these the only copies?”

  “No. I made another set. They’re in a locker at the bus station. I left the key with a lawyer with instructions that should anything happen to me, he was to give the key to this man.” And he dug in his back pocket for his billfold, got out a piece of paper, handed it to Nolan.

  “Carl H. Reed,” Nolan said. “Isn’t he the guy who was on the golf course with Joey DiPreta?”

  “Yes. He’s planning an investigation of the DiPretas. They tried to bribe him and it didn’t take.”

  Nolan nodded. “He’s the new highway commissioner. Just took office. One of the honest ones?”

  “Apparently. He sure wants those tapes.”

  “Give them to him if you want, Steve. But you’re on your own if you do.”

  “I know. I kind of wish I could help the guy out, though. But I guess that’s not possible.”

  “Guess not. Can you get hold of that lawyer and get the key from him? Right away?”

  “I don’t know, Nolan. It must be after six- thirty.”

  “It’s quarter to seven, but call him anyway. Maybe he stays late and screws his secretary.”

  Steve went to the phone, tried the lawyer’s office, had no luck. He tried him at home, got him there, and the lawyer said he was going out for the evening but could meet Steve at the office at eight if it absolutely could not wait and if it absolutely would not take more than a minute or two.

  “Fine,” Nolan said. “You can leave tonight, then.”

  “I . . . guess so,” Steve said. He seemed sort of punchy. “Nolan, I’m confused. It’s all coming down on me so fast.”

  “Frank DiPreta is what’s coming down on you fast. You got no time to be confused. You maybe got time to pack.”

  “Hey, what about the guns?”

  “Better drive out in the country and ditch them. Probably should take the Weatherby and Thompson apart and dump them in pieces, different places. It’s dark out, find some back roads, shouldn’t be a problem. You got time to do it before you meet that lawyer if you shake it. What about those grenades? Any of them live?”

  “Some of them.”

  “Well, disarm the fucking things before you go littering the countryside with ’em.”

  Steve nodded and went after some newspapers in the laundry room to spread on the floor and catch the powder he’d be emptying out of the grenades.

  Nolan sat on the couch. He felt good. He felt proud of himself. He’d just done the impossible—taken a decent kid turned close-to-psychopathic murderer and turned him back into a decent kid again. Anyone else the Family might have sent would have botched it for sure, would have come down hard on the $100,000 payoff offer, when it was the psychological kid-glove treatment leading up to the offer that had made the sale. It was something only Nolan could have done, a bomb only Nolan could have defused. He was a goddamn combination diplomat, social worker, and magician, and was proud of himself.

  The phone rang.

  Steve came in with newspapers and started spreading them down, saying, “There’s that damn scatterbrain Di bothering me after all I went through telling her not to. Get it for me, will you, Nolan?”

  Nolan picked up the receiver.

  And a voice that wasn’t Diane’s but a voice Nolan did recognize said, “If you want to see your sister and her little girl again, soldier boy, you’re going to have to come see me first.” The voice, which belonged to Frank DiPreta, repeated an East Side address twice, and the line clicked dead.

  Nolan put the receiver back.

  “What was that all about?” Steve said, getting the grenades out of the wardrobe. “That was Diane, wasn’t it?”

  “No,” Nolan said. “Nothing. Just a crank.”

  “What, an obscene phone call, you mean?”

  “Yeah. That’s it exactly.”

  15

  BASKING IN a soft-focus halo of light, golden dome glowing, the Capitol building sat aloof, looking out over the East Side like a fat, wealthy, disinterested spectator out slumming for the evening. Down the street a few blocks was a rundown three-story building whose condemned sign was no surprise. The only surprising thing, really, was that none of the other buildings in this sleazy neighborhood had been similarly judged. Some of the East Side’s sleaziness was of a gaudy and garish sort: singles bars and porno movie houses and strip-joint nightclubs, entire blocks covered in cheap glitter like a quarter Christmas card; but this section was sleaziness at its dreary, poorly lit worst, with only the neons of the scattering of cheap bars to remind you this was a street and not a back alley. The buildings here ran mostly to third-rate secondhand stores; this building was no exception, though its storefront was empty now, showcase windows and all others broken out and boarded up. It stood next to a cinder parking lot, where another such building had been, apparently, ’til being torn down or burned down or otherwise eliminated, and now this building, the support of its neighbor gone, was going swayback, had cracked down its side several places and was in danger of falling on its ass like the winos tottering along the sidewalk out front.

  Nolan leaned against the leaning building, waiting in the cinder lot for Jon to get there. Less than twenty minutes had passed since he’d accidentally intercepted Frank DiPreta’s phone call at McCracken’s. If he hadn’t been so pissed off by the turn of events he might have blessed his luck being the one to receive that call. His painstakingly careful handling of the boy this afternoon wouldn’t have counted for much had Steve been the one to answer the phone and get Frank’s unpleasant message. Nolan’s description of the DiPretas as businessmen, not gangsters, would have looked like a big fat fucking shuck to the boy, in the face of Frank grabbing Diane and her little girl and holding them under threat of death, and Steve would have reescalated his war immediately. The cease-fire would have ended. Nolan would have failed.

  But Steve was safely away from the scene, thankfully, out in the country somewhere, dumping the disassembled guns and disarmed grenades. (The boy had asked Nolan if he could hang onto the two handguns, since neither had been used in his “war,” and Nolan had said okay.) Nolan had realized that if he tried to leave directly after that phone call, he’d raise Steve’s suspicions; so for fifteen agonizingly slow minutes Nolan sat and watched Steve empty the grenades, take apart the Weatherby and Thompson, and when Steve finally left to get rid of the weapons, Nolan (tapes and documents in tow) followed the boy out the door, saying he’d meet him back at the basement apartment at nine-thirty.

  Nolan had taken time to stop at a pay phone and make two calls: first, to Jon, at the motel; and second, to Felix, long distance, collect, to inform him of the successful bargaining for the tapes but telling him nothing more. Then he’d driven to the address Frank had given him, and now here he was, standing by the Cadillac in a cinder lot on the East Side of Des Moines, waiting for Jon.

  A white Mustang pulled in. The blonde girl, Francine, was behind the wheel. Jon hopped out of the car.

  “What’s this all about?” he wanted to know.

  “I don’t have time for explanations,” Nolan said. “Just listen and do exactly as I say.”

  Two minutes later Nolan was behind the building, in the alley; earlier he’d tried all the doors and this one in back was the only nonboarded-up, unlocked entrance. A garage door was adjacent, and Nolan reflected that this dimly lit block and deserted building, whose garage had made simple the moving of hostages inconspicuously inside, could not have been more perfect for Frank’s purposes. There was an element of warped but careful planning here that bothered Nolan. Frank was out for blood, yes, out to milk the situation for all the sadistic satisfaction it was worth; otherwise he would have gone straight to McCracken’s apartment and killed the boy outright, since having managed to get the phone number out of Diane the address itself would be no trick. But DiPreta was not berserk, was rather in complete control, having devised
a methodical scenario for the destruction of the murderer of his brothers. Like Steve McCracken, Frank DiPreta was a man who would go to elaborate lengths to settle a score.

  He went in. Pitch-black. He felt the wall for a light switch, found one, flicked it. Nothing. He fumbled until he found the railing and then began his way up the stairs, his night vision coming to him gradually and making things a little easier. The railing was shaky, and Nolan tried not to depend on it, as it might be rigged to give way at some point. Nolan was more than aware that he was walking into a trap, and just because he wasn’t the man the trap was set for didn’t matter much. It was like walking through a minefield: a mine doesn’t ask what side you’re on, it just goes off when you step on it.

  At the top of the second-floor landing was a door. He tried it. Locked. He knocked, got no answer. He went on, climbing slowly to the third, final landing, where an identical door waited for him. Identical except for one thing: it was not locked. It was, in fact, ajar.

  No noise came from within, but Nolan could feel them in there; body heat, tension in the air, something. He didn’t know how, but Nolan knew. Frank was in there. So was Diane, and her daughter.

  He pushed the door open.

  It was a large room, the full floor of the building, a storage room or attic of sorts, empty now, except for three people down at the far end, by the boarded-up windows, where reddish glow pulsed in from the neons of the bars on the street below. Dust floated like smoke. Frank DiPreta, white shirt cut by the dark band of a shoulder holster, his coat wadded up and tossed on the floor, loomed over the other two people in the room, who had been wadded up and tossed there in much the same way, Nolan supposed. Diane was still in the white terry robe she’d been wearing when Nolan last saw her a few hours before, but the robe wasn’t really white any more, having been dirtied from her lying here on the filthy floor, hands tied behind her, legs tied at the ankles, white slash of tape across her lips. At first glance Nolan thought she was dead, but she was only unconscious, he guessed, doped or knocked out but not dead. The little girl, a small pathetic afterthought to this unfortunate tableau, huddled around her mother’s waist, not tied up, not even gagged, but frightened into silent submission, clinging to her mother’s robe in wide-eyed, uncomprehending fear, whimpering, face dirty, perhaps bruised. Nolan had never seen the child before and felt an uncustomary emotional surge. She was a delicate little reflection of her mother, the same white-blonde hair the whole family seemed to have, a pretty China doll of a child who deserved much better than the traumatic experience she was presently caught in the middle of. Nolan forced the emotional response out of himself, remembered, or tried to, anyway, that Frank DiPreta was a man driven to this point, that Frank was not an entirely rational person right now.

  “Frank,” Nolan said. “Let them go. They aren’t part of this, a couple of innocent girls. Let them go.”

  “What are you doing here?” Frank said, for the moment more puzzled than angry at seeing Nolan. Not that the silenced .45 in his hand wasn’t leveled at Nolan with all due intensity. A .45 is a big gun anyway, but this one, with its oversize silencer, looked so big it seemed unreal, like a ray gun in one of Jon’s comic books.

  “You were right this morning, Frank,” Nolan said. “The Family did send me. To check the lay of the land. To . . . to negotiate a peace.”

  “I’m going to blow you away, Nolan. He’s here with you, isn’t he? Where? Outside the door? Downstairs waiting for your signal? You’re in this with him. You were there with the soldier boy when Vince got it, weren’t you? You set Vince up, you son of a bitch. You won’t do the same to me. I’m going to blow the goddamn guts out of you, Nolan, and then I’m going to do the same to the soldier boy, just like he did Joey, only it’s going to take me longer to get around to it. First he’s going to have to suffer awhile, like I been suffering.”

  “It’s too late, Frank. McCracken’s gone. He left the city half an hour ago. He doesn’t even know you’ve got his sister and her daughter.”

  “Don’t feed me that bullshit. It hasn’t been half an hour ago I talked to him.”

  “I answered the phone. I was there at his place. I’d just sent him away, put him in his car and sent him away.”

  “This is bullshit. I don’t believe any of it.”

  “It’s true.”

  “No!”

  “Let them go, Frank. It’s over.”

  Frank leaned down and grabbed the little girl, Joni, by her thin white arm, heaved her up off the floor. She hung rag-doll limp, not making a sound, having found out earlier, evidently, that this man would hurt her if she did. There was as much confusion as terror in the child’s face; she simply did not understand what was going on. She looked at the huge gun-thing the strange man was shoving at her and did not understand.

  “Frank . . .”

  “I’m going to kill this kid, Nolan. He’s downstairs, isn’t he? Go get him, or so help me I kill this kid right now.”

  “A little girl, Frank. Five, six years old? You’d kill her?”

  “She’s one of his people, isn’t she? He’s murdered my whole goddamn family out from under me. There’s none of us left. I’m the only goddamn DiPreta left, and I’m going to do the fuckin’ same to his people. I don’t give a goddamn who they are or how old they are or what they got between their legs. He’s got to suffer like I suffer.”

  But Frank wasn’t the only DiPreta left, and Nolan knew it. It was time to play the trump card.

  “Jon!” Nolan called. “Come on up!”

  “What’s going on?” Frank demanded. “So help me, Nolan . . .”

  And suddenly, Francine DiPreta was standing in the doorway. Her look of confusion mirrored that of the small child across the length of the room, who was presently dangling from Frank DiPreta’s grasp like a damaged puppet. When Francine recognized this man as her father, the confusion did not lift but if anything increased. She said, “Daddy?”

  Frank DiPreta tilted his head sideways, trying to figure out himself what was happening. His face turned rubbery. He lowered the child to the floor, gently; looked at the gun in his hand and held it behind him, trying to hide it, perhaps as much from himself as from his daughter, who approached him now.

  “Daddy . . . what’s going on here?”

  “Baby,” he said.

  “Daddy, is that a gun?”

  “Honey,” he said.

  “What are you doing with that gun? What’s this little girl doing here? And is this . . . her mother? Tied up? What are you doing to these people, Daddy?”

  He said nothing. He lowered his head. The gun clunked to the floor behind him.

  “Is it true, then?” she said. “What they say about you? About us? The DiPretas? Are we . . . the Mafia, Daddy? Is that who you are? Is that who I am?”

  Nolan and Jon watched all of this from the other end of the room. DiPreta’s daughter and Diane and the child, with their blonde hair and pretty features, could have been sisters.

  “Daddy,” she said, “you’re going to let these people go now, aren’t you?”

  He put his hands on his knees. His mouth was open. He lowered himself to the floor and sat there.

  “I’m going to let these people go, Daddy, and then we’re going home.”

  Francine DiPreta untied Diane, who had been coming around for several minutes now, and carefully removed the strip of tape from the woman’s mouth. She asked Diane, “Are you all right?”

  Diane, groggy, could only nod and then, realizing she was free, clutched her daughter to her, got to her feet shakily and somehow joined Nolan and Jon at the other end of the room.

  Nolan said to Jon, “Help me get them down to the car.”

  Jon, who still had no idea what the hell was going on but knew better than to ask, did as he was told.

  At the other end of the room, Francine DiPreta was on her knees, holding her father in her arms, comforting him, rocking him.

  16

  NOLAN SAT on the couch and waited wh
ile Diane put her daughter to bed. He could hear the little girl asking questions, which her mother dodged with soothing nonanswers. That went on for ten minutes, and then Diane came out into the living room, still wearing the dirty once-white robe; she looked haggard as hell, her hair awry, her face a pale mask, but somehow she remained attractive through it all. She sat next to Nolan.

  “Is she asleep?” he asked.

  “Yes, thank God. Don’t ask me how. I guess her exhaustion overcame everything else. But she did have a lot of questions.”

  “So I gathered.”

  “I didn’t have many answers, though.”

  “I gathered that too.”

  “How about you? You got any answers, Nolan? Can you tell me what this was all about tonight? Is Stevie really a . . . murderer?”

  “Steve’s a soldier, Diane. He’s been trained as a soldier. Killing is part of that. Sometimes soldiers have trouble readjusting to civilian life, that’s all. Steve will be all right.”

  “You mean he . . . he did kill the two DiPreta brothers? I . . . I don’t believe it. And I . . . I don’t believe you’re sitting there and talking about his . . . his killing people as if it’s some kind of stage he’s going through, a little readjustment thing he has to work out now that he’s back home again.”

  “Diane, you’re tired. You’re upset. Get some sleep.”

  “I won’t be getting any sleep at all tonight, Nolan, unless you tell me just what the hell is going on, goddamnit!” She caught herself shouting and lowered her voice immediately, glancing back over her shoulder toward her daughter’s room. “You’ve got to tell me, Nolan, tell me all of it, or I’ll go out of my mind wondering, worrying.”

  “All right,” Nolan said, and he told her—all of it, or as much of it as was necessary, anyway. She stopped him now and again with questions, and he answered them as truthfully as possible. But he kept this version consistent with what he’d told Frank DiPreta. He told Diane her brother had already left, that Steve would be well on his way out of Des Moines by now.