Mourn The Living

by Collins, Max Allan

  Then, exhausted, his bony frame slick with perspiration, he lay down on the black leather couch and tried to nap. And couldn’t. His heart was beating quickly from the exercise and he took deep breaths to slow it but his nerves kept it going fast and hard.

  He walked to his desk, opened the drawer and removed a glossy photo.

  Elliot looked at the photo, at the hard, lined face and the cold eyes and the emotionless mouth.

  The man in the photo was named Nolan.

  And Elliot, in a cold, shaky sweat, darted his eyes from the wall-safe to the phone, wondering if he dare call Charlie Franco and tell him about the man who called himself Webb.

  Three

  1

  AT TWO TILL SEVEN Nolan reached the address of Vicki Trask’s apartment and found himself facing a door sandwiched between the chrome-trimmed showroom windows of Chelsey Ford Sales. Just down the street was Berry Drug, the upper story of which was occupied by George Franco. As Nolan glanced in one of the windows at a red Mustang he caught the reflection of a dark green Impala creeping along the street behind him, a familiar Neanderthal figure at its wheel. Nolan lifted his hand easily toward the .38 tucked beneath the left armpit of his sportscoat and looked in the reflecting glass to see what Tulip was going to do.

  Tulip drove on.

  Nolan straightened the collar of his pale yellow shirt, wondered absently if he should have worn a tie. He pressed the bell and placed his hand over the knob, waiting for the lock to let go. A buzz signaled its release and he pushed the door open.

  She stood a full steep flight of stairs above him, displaying long, sleek legs below a blue mini skirt and she called out, “Come on up, Mr. Webb, come on up.”

  Nolan nodded and climbed the stairs. At the top he took the hand she held out to him and stepped into the loft apartment.

  “Hello, Mr. Webb,” she said warmly, “come in, please.”

  Her face was lovely, framed by long to-the-shoulder brown hair. She smiled invitingly and motioned him to a seat.

  “Thanks,” he said, refusing her gesture to take his sportscoat; she wouldn’t be prepared to meet his .38.

  “Drink?” she asked.

  “Thanks no.”

  “Abstainer?”

  “Just early.”

  “How about a beer?”

  He nodded and she swept toward the bar, which was part of the kitchenette at the rear of the room. Nolan was sitting in an uncomfortable-looking comfortable modular chair; he glanced around the apartment. It was a single room, very spacious, the walls sporting impressionistic paintings, possibly originals. Overlooking the large room was a balcony divided in half between bedroom and artist’s studio.

  “How do you like it?”

  “It’s fine. You paint?”

  “How’d you ever guess?” she laughed. “Yes, that’s my work defiling the walls.”

  “Looks okay to me.”

  She came back with two chilled cans of malt liquor and stood in front of him, openly watching him. He took advantage of her sizing him up and did the same to her. She was a beautiful girl, the shoulder-length brown hair complemented by large, child-like brown eyes. Her body, well displayed in the blue mini and a short-sleeved clinging white knit sweater, was lean but shapely, with high, ample breasts that didn’t quite go with her otherwise Twiggy-slender body. Her features were of an artistic, sensitive cast with a delicate, finely shaped nose and a soft-red blossom of a mouth.

  Suddenly Nolan realized she was waiting for him to say something and the moment became slightly awkward.

  He cleared his throat. “This really is a nice apartment.”

  “Thank you,” she said, seating herself. “It’s rather large for one person, and kind of spooky now that Irene is gone.”

  “I wonder if we could talk about Irene, if it doesn’t bother you.”

  “No, that’s all right . . . directly to business, I see, Mr. Webb?” She laughed gently. “Not much for small talk, are you?”

  “No. Call me Earl, will you?”

  “Of course, Earl.” She looked at her hands, thinking to herself for a moment, then said, “I don’t suppose small talk would fit your personality, would it? I mean, since I already feel as though I know you.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Irene spoke of you often.”

  Nolan’s hand tightened around the glass. How could Irene Tisor have known the non-existent Earl Webb? “I never met Irene.”

  “Of course you have.” She laughed again. “I’m afraid I’m teasing, aren’t I?”

  “I’m not much on humor, either.”

  “I don’t know about that . . . Mr. Nolan.”

  Nolan didn’t answer.

  He reached over and gripped her hand and looked into her eyes and locked them with his. Fear took her face.

  “I . . . I suppose . . . suppose you want me to explain.”

  “Yes.”

  She tried to smile, stay friendly, but his hard icy grip and the grey stone of his eyes froze her.

  Her voice timid, forced, she said, “Irene and I, you see, were . . . extremely close . . . like sisters . . .”

  She stopped to see if that explained anything, but all she got from Nolan was, “So?”

  “Well, Mr. Nolan, she . . . she carried your picture in her billfold, all the time.”

  Nolan hadn’t seen Irene Tisor for years, had hardly known her even then. There was no reason for her to carry him around with her. “Keep going, Vicki.”

  “She idolized you, Mr. Nolan.”

  “It’s Webb and why should she idolize me?”

  “She said she knew you when she was growing up. That you were a . . . gangster . . . but that you had gotten out. By defying your bosses.”

  “Suppose that’s true. Suppose I did know her when she was a kid. Who was Irene Tisor that a ‘gangster’ would know her?”

  “Her father . . . her father was one himself.”

  Nolan released her hand. “Okay, Vicki. Let’s suppose some more. Let’s suppose I did know Irene Tisor when she was growing up and her father was what you say he was. But let’s also suppose I hadn’t seen her for years and this part about me quitting the outfit didn’t happen till eight months ago.”

  “She knew about it because her father helped you. Her father wasn’t a very brave man, she told me, but he had helped you. She remembered it. It made an impression.”

  “How did she know?”

  “Her father told her.”

  That was like Sid. Nolan nodded and said, “All right.”

  “All right what?”

  “All right I believe you.”

  There was another awkward moment, then she managed, “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  He picked up the can of malt liquor and finished it. “Decide whether or not to kill you.”

  She sat back and let the air out of her as if someone had struck her in the stomach. She said, “Oh,” and shut up and sat, worry crawling over her face.

  “Don’t sweat it,” Nolan said, with a faint trace of a smile. “I’m deciding against it.”

  She sighed. Then, reprieve in hand, she attacked. “That’s very big of you, you bastard!”

  Nolan grinned at her flatly. “See? I do have a sense of humor.”

  She shook her head, not understanding him at all. Her eyes followed him as he rose and went to the door, opening it. She got up and joined him. She looked up at him with luminous brown eyes.

  “Just my natural curiosity,” she said, tilting her head, “but why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why in hell did you decide thumbs up for this skinny broad? I thought hard guys like you always threw the likes of me to the lions.”

  Nolan hung onto the flat grin and shrugged. “I need you, for one thing.”

  “How about another?”

  “Well, you’re not the ‘type’ of person who ought to end up a casualty in the kind of war games I play. Anyway, I hate like
hell to kill women.”

  “That’s pretty goddamn chivalrous of you.” She smiled, a mild in-shock smile. “Does that mean you plan to keep me out of your life?”

  “Hardly. Later on I’m going to ask you if I can move in with you for a day to two.”

  That stopped her for a moment, then she got out a small, “Why?”

  “I need a new place. There are some people who want to kill me and the motel I’m staying at now is getting to be a local landmark.”

  She touched his shoulder. “You’re welcome to share this mausoleum with me for a while, Mr. Nolan.”

  “Webb, remember?”

  “All right. Earl? Earl it is. Is that all you want? A place to stay, I mean?”

  “There’s more. I need information on Irene, of course.”

  “Of course. Is that all?”

  “We’ll see,” he said. “You need a coat?”

  “Yes, just a second.” She came back with a bright pink trenchcoat and he helped her into it. She plopped a Bonnie Parker beret on her head and said, “You know the way to the Third Eye?”

  He gave her half a grin. “You eat a mushroom or something, don’t you?”

  “Maybe I should lead the way,” she said.

  She led.

  2

  THE THIRD EYE was a red two-story brick building along the Chelsey River, surrounded by a cement parking lot and assorted packs of young people, early teens to mid-twenties, milling about in cigarette-smoke clouds.

  Nolan drove around front, in search of a parking place. He took a look at the brick building and said to Vicki Trask, who sat close by, “That looks about as psychedelic as an American Legion Hall.”

  She nodded and said, “Or a little red school-house.”

  At a remote corner of the parking lot, Nolan eased the Lincoln into a place it shouldn’t have fit and said, “What the hell’s the occasion?”

  “You mean the crowd?”

  “Yeah. It always like this?” He turned off the ignition, leaned back and fired a cigarette. As an afterthought he offered one to Vicki and she took it, speaking as she lit it from the match Nolan extended to her.

  “It’s always crowded on nights when they have dances. The Eye runs four a week, and this is the biggest night of the four.”

  “Why?”

  “Tonight’s the night they let in the teeny-boppers. You’ll see as many high school age here as you will college, and one out of four of the hard-looking little broads you spot will be junior high.”

  “Why’re the young ones restricted to one dance a week?”

  “Because they run a bar—Beer Garden, they call it—on the other three nights. Serve beer and mixed drinks. And they serve anybody with enough money to buy.”

  “Drinking age in Illinois is twenty-one.”

  “Sure, but nobody cares. However, they don’t serve booze on the night they open the dance to high school and junior high age. Chelsey’s city fathers, pitiful guardians of virtue though they may be, even they would bitch about the Eye serving booze to that crowd.”

  Nolan nodded and drew on the cigarette. He looked out the car window and stared blankly at the river. He watched the water reflect the street lights that ringed the entire area. The suggestion of a smile traced his lips.

  “What are you thinking, Earl?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on . . . don’t tell me you couldn’t use a friend. You’re not that different from everybody else. Spill some emotion.”

  Nolan shifted his eyes from the river to the glowing tip of his cigarette. “Emotion is usually a messy thing to spill.”

  She edged closer, putting a warm hand against his cheek. “I’m lonely, too, Nolan.”

  His jaw tightened. “It’s Webb.”

  She shook her head, turned away. “Okay, okay. Be an asshole.”

  He opened the car door and she slid out his side. He paused for a moment and looked out at the river again. It had reminded him of a private place of his, a cabin he maintained along a lake in Wisconsin, near a resort town. It was one of several places he kept up under the Earl Webb name, for the times between, the times of retreat from the game he played with the Boys. Even Nolan had need for moments of solitude, peace. He hadn’t meant to hurt Vicki Trask, but he didn’t know her well enough yet to share any secrets.

  They walked along the riverfront, casually making their way toward the building a block away. They walked where the river water brushed up easily against the cement, lapping whitely at their feet. In spite of himself, Nolan found his hand squeezing hers and he smiled; she was lighting up warmly in response when Tulip stepped out from between two parked cars.

  A scream caught in Vicki’s throat as she watched the apeish figure rise up and raise his arm to strike Nolan with the butt of a revolver.

  Nolan dropped to the cement, the gun butt swishing by, cutting the air, and shot a foot into Tulip’s stomach. Tulip bounced backward and smashed against a red Chrysler, then slid to the pavement and lay still. Nolan picked the gun from Tulip’s fingers and hefted it—a .38 Smith & Wesson. Tulip made a move to get up and Nolan kicked him in the head. Tulip leaned back against the Chrysler and closed his eyes.

  Nolan shook his head, said, “When they’re that stupid, they just don’t learn,” and tossed the gun out into the river.

  They walked on toward the Eye, Nolan behaving as if nothing had happened. When they were half a block away from the entrance, she managed to breathlessly say, “Did . . . did you kill him?”

  “Tulip?”

  “Is that his name? Tulip?”

  “Yes, that’s his name, and no, I didn’t kill him. I don’t think.”

  She looked at him in fear and confusion and perhaps admiration and followed him toward the Eye.

  There was a medium-sized neon sign over the door. It bore no lettering, just an abstract neon face with an extra eye in the center of its forehead. From the look of the brick, Nolan judged the building wasn’t over a year old. The kids milling about the entrance were ill-kempt, long-haired and smoked with an enthusiasm that would have curdled the blood of the American Cancer Society. Nolan saw no open use of marijuana, but he couldn’t rule it out—most all the kids were acting somewhat out of touch with reality.

  Inside the door they pushed through a narrow hallway that was crowded with young girls, most of them thirteen-year-olds with thirty-year-old faces. One, who could have been twelve, extended her non-existent breasts to Nolan in offering, giving him a smirky pouty come-on look. Nolan gave her a gentle nudge and moved past with Vicki through the corridor.

  At the end of the hall they came to a card table where a guy sat taking money. He looked like an ex-pug, was around thirty-five and had needed a shave two days before. Nolan looked at him carefully and paid the two-fifty per couple admission. Nolan smiled at the ex-pug, a phony smile Vicki hadn’t seen him use before, and moved on. Nolan followed Vicki as she went by a set of closed, windowless double doors, then trailed her down a flight of steps.

  “Where the doors lead?”

  “To the dance floor and Beer Garden.”

  “Oh.”

  She led him through two swinging doors into a shoddy room, cluttered with a dozen wooden tables.

  “This it?” Nolan asked.

  “Don’t let it fool you,” she told him, leading him to a small table by the wall, “the food’s not bad at all.”

  Nolan looked around. The room was poorly lit and the walls concrete, painted black. The naked black concrete was partially dressed by pop-art paintings, Warhol and Lichtenstein prints and a few framed glossies, autographed, of big-time rock groups like the Jefferson Airplane and Vanilla Fudge. The tables were plain wood, black-painted and without cloths, and each was lit with a thick white candle stuck down into a central hole. The far end of the room, the bar, was better lighted, and the doors into the kitchen on either side of it let out some light once in a while. Other than that the room was a black sea of glowing red cigarette tips.

  Nolan lit a fre
sh cigarette for both of them and they joined the sea of floating red spots.

  “You notice the guy taking money as we came in upstairs?”

  She nodded. “The one who looked like a prize-fighter?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “What about him?”

  “I used to know him.”

  “What? When did you know him?”

  “A few years back. In Chicago.” He looked at her meaningfully.

  “You mean you knew him when you worked for . . . ah . . . ”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did he recognize you?”

  “Hell no,” Nolan said. “He doesn’t recognize himself in a mirror. Punchy. Surprises the hell out of me he makes change.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  Nolan stared out into the darkness and said, “You tell me.”

  “How?”

  “Start with the man who runs this place.”

  “The manager, you mean?”

  “Not the manager. The owner.”

  “As a matter of fact . . . I have heard the owner’s name. I’ve heard Broome mention it. It’s Francis, or something like that.”

  “Franco?”

  “Yes, I think that’s it.”

  Nolan withheld a smile. “Fat George.”

  “I believe his first name is George, at that.”

  A waitress came to the table, put down paper placemats and gave them water and silverware. She handed them menus and rolled back the paper on her order blank.

  Vicki asked for a steak sandwich, dinner salad and coffee, and Nolan followed suit. They ordered drinks for their wait, Vicki a Tom Collins, Nolan bourbon and water.

  Nolan sat, deep in thought, not noticing the silence maintained between them until the drinks arrived five minutes later.

  Vicki cupped her drink, looking down into it, and said, “Do you want me to talk about Irene now?”

  “That’d be fine.”

  “Well . . . she was wild, Earl, not real bad or anything, but a little wild . . . I guess you could blame that on her father.”