Blood Money полностью

He crouched and dialed the number from memory. It took a few seconds for the direct-dialing long-distance wheels to turn, and then he said, “Could I speak to Harry, please... Mr. Sturms in Iowa City is calling... I’ll hold... Hello, Harry, it’s good to hear your voice... No, everything was fine with the last shipment, no problem, everything’s terrific... No, it’s something else... I have a guy here says he’s a friend of yours, wants some help from me... I’ll put him on.”

Walter took the phone and said, “This is Walter.”

“Walter?” The connection was good; Walter’s Uncle Harry was coming through fine. “Walter, something didn’t go wrong today, did it?”

“I’m afraid so. Dad’s been hurt.”

“Oh, Christ. How bad is it?”

“Just his thigh, took one in the thigh. But he’s unconscious, and you know his high blood pressure trouble. You can’t die from a thigh wound, can you?”

“Depends on what gets hit. How bad’s he bleeding?”

“Bad at first, but we stopped it. I don’t think some major artery got hit or anything, if that’s what you mean.”

“Listen, you tell Sturms get a doctor for you, and get your father patched up and hit the road. Did things go okay otherwise?”

Walter hadn’t even thought about that. He hadn’t even thought about the old guy at the antique shop his father had shot.

“It could’ve gone smoother,” Walter said.

“What about the money?”

“We got it.”

“Good. Well, then, have Sturms get a doctor for you straight away and...”

“Sturms won’t do it till he gets the word from you that I’m worth helping.”

“Put the cocksucker on.”

Walter said, “He says put the cocksucker on.”

Sturms flinched and took the phone. Walter could hear his uncle yelling, but couldn’t make out the exact words. Sturms said, “You bet, Harry... Right away... Goodbye, sir.”

He hung up.

“Look,” Sturms said, “sorry I hassled you. Let’s forget it and start over.”

“Never mind trying to get in good with me,” Walter said. “Get your ass on that phone and get a doctor for my father.”

Sturms nodded.

The brunette bounced back in and gave Walter a Pabst in a bottle. She gave her husband one, too, but he was busy on the phone and just set the bottle down. She smiled at Walter and said, “Do you really think I’m talented?”

“Easy now, Planner,” Jon soothed, “easy now, this isn’t going to hurt a bit.” He lowered Planner’s blanket-wrapped body into the empty wooden crate. He’d felt lucky to find the crate, which was six feet long and a bit wider than necessary, but it sufficed. It had held an antique chest of drawers Planner had stored away. Jon had liberated the crate for this present purpose, the probably valuable antique shoved into a storeroom corner.

“There now,” Jon said softly, whispering, “there now, unc, that’ll be fine, won’t it?” The blanket-wrapped body was comfortably settled in a soft bed of excelsior lining the crate’s bottom. Jon replaced the lid on the crate and said, “Goodbye, Planner.”

Maybe he was an asshole, talking to Planner like that. But he just couldn’t think of his uncle’s body as some cold chunk of meat, even though he knew that was what it was. The body was Planner, for God’s sake, and looked as much like Planner as it had when there hadn’t been bullet holes in it, and the only way Jon could deal with the situation was to keep talking to Planner. It seemed natural to keep talking to Planner.

And when he’d lifted the body, it had seemed light and heavy all at once. Could this featherlight bundle of flesh have walked and breathed? Could this granite-heavy load of bulk be the body of a frail old man? He held the body like a baby in his arms, and he felt as though he were parodying that famous statue at the Vatican, the one that got defaced, and he gave out a nervous little laugh that wasn’t really a laugh at all, and said, “Aw, shit, Planner, you can’t be dead.”

But he was, of course, and there was work to be done. Work for the living. Nolan had said so.

After throwing up, Jon had grabbed for the phone and dialed Nolan direct. It took a while to get through, what with the switchboard operator at that motel or whatever it was trying to track Nolan down. It’d seemed an hour before Nolan came on, and Jon’s bladder was about to burst.

“Jon?” Nolan had said. “Calm down, Jon, what’s wrong?”

And Jon had told Nolan about Planner, about Planner being dead.

“Jesus, kid. Stay calm,” Nolan had said, his voice as soft, as sure of itself as ever. “Don’t go hysterical on me.”

Don’t go hysterical on me. Nolan had told him that once before, after the bank job, when everything had exploded into blood and death, and Jon had been able to hang on, because Nolan was there. He’d been able to make it because Nolan was a rock and Nolan was there, and now Nolan’s voice was coming over that hunk of plastic, disembodied but here just the same, reassuring him, calming him, enabling him to survive, for the moment anyway.

“Go on,” Nolan was saying.

“He’s dead, and the money...”