Walt ignored the sarcasm and said, “I’ll go over and get them for you.”
Jon watched him leave, the door shut and lock behind him. He sat on the bed and wondered if there would be any good books in the box. You never knew when you were going to luck onto a find. If that cousin was older than Walter, why those comics could be early fifties or before, and that meant there could be some good shit in...
Jesus Christ Almighty!
Goddamn comic book fever! He slammed a fist into his thigh. It was a blindness that came over him; all collectors feel it, he supposed, but he felt it deep. No logic to it, or reason. Just the fever.
“Okay,” he said aloud, after a moment.
He was okay. The fever was in check. He was sane again.
He formed his plan. He would sit on the edge of the bed, wait for his buddy Walter to stroll in with the box in his hands, and as the guy was putting the box down on the bed, Jon would kick him in the side of the head. That would do the trick.
Get ready, he told himself.
He got ready.
The door opened and in Walter came, arms full of an aging cardboard box, falling apart at the sides.
“Here they are,” Walter said, coming over to the bed with the box.
Jon braced himself, his leg was tensed and ready to kick, and he noticed the comic on top of the stack in the box.
An EC.
“Vault of Horror” number 18.
What a beautiful cover! A couple kissing by a wishing well, out of which was crawling an oozing, decomposing ghoul. What an artist that Johnny Craig was. Jon didn’t have that issue; it was an early one, kind of hard to find.
He grabbed hold of the box and settled it in his lap and started flipping through titles. They weren’t all EC’s, but many of them were; there was an early one, “Crypt of Terror” 17, worth probably sixty bucks, and some rare science-fiction titles like “Weird Fantasy” and “Weird Science.” Jesus, here was a “White Indian” with Frazetta art! What a find! The box was a treasure chest. This was fantastic.
“Enjoy yourself,” Walter said.
And was out the door.
Nolan got out of the car. He moved slowly, but he was alert, and his movements were both deliberate and fluid. You would never guess he’d just driven well over two hundred miles in under three hours. He stood and looked in the window of the shop; a hanging wooden sign, with the words “Karen’s Candle Corner” spelled out in red melted wax, dominated a display case of candles and knicknacks, while in the background faces on posters seemed to stare out of the dim shop like disinterested observers.
He watched in the reflection of the window as the black Chevy pulled in behind his tan Ford, and wondered if anyone in the world besides cops and hoods still drove black Chevys.
Greer got out of the car, made a real effort to shut the door silently but it made a noise that echoed in the empty street. It was three o’clock in the morning (a bank time-and-temperature sign spelled it out just down the street) and downtown Iowa City could have been a deserted backlot at some bankrupt Hollywood studio. The sky overhead was a washed-out gray and the streetlamps provided pale, artificial light.
Nolan watched Greer approach in the reflection. The dark little man yawned, stretched his arms, scratched his belly. Greer had discarded the Felix-dictated sporty ensemble and now had on an ordinary, rumpled brown suit, such as a fertilizer salesman might wear. A common sense outfit, Nolan thought, encouraged; maybe Greer wasn’t such a hopeless schmuck after all.
As for Nolan, he was wearing the same clothes he’d worn all day: yellow turtleneck, gray sports jacket, black slacks. The only wardrobe change he’d made before leaving the Tropical was taking his jacket off long enough to sling on his worn leather shoulder rig. Like Nolan, the holster was old but dependable, and he felt good having a Smith and Wesson.38 with four-inch barrel snuggled under his arm.
