“Heal yourself,” Nolan said. “Karen, get him a towel or something. Greer, get that bag of his, look in it.”
Greer went after the bag, fished around inside, held up a small low-caliber automatic, the sort a woman might carry in her purse.
“Toss it here,” Nolan said.
Greer did, and Nolan caught it in his left hand, without looking. He dropped the little gun into his sports coat pocket.
The doctor’s self-diagnosis proved incorrect; a simple nosebleed was all it was, and after it subsided, Nolan tied Ainsworth back up to the chair and dragged him into the kitchen, where Karen found herself a carving knife and sat watch over him.
Nolan and Greer positioned themselves the same way as before, except this time Nolan had his.38 in hand, and when the knock came at the door, Karen did as she’d been told and held the knife to her charge’s throat and Ainsworth yelled from the kitchen, “Come on in, it’s open!”
He may have been important in Iowa City, but Sturms wouldn’t have been shit elsewhere. His arm, extended awkwardly, came in first. He had the silenced automatic clutched tight in a whitening hand, his gun arm held straight out in front of him, elbow locked, like a man groping through the dark, trying not to bump into furniture. All but smiling, Nolan grabbed Sturms by the wrist and shook gun from hand and held the four-inch barrel of the.38 against the man’s temple.
“I’ll do whatever you say,” Sturms said.
Nolan bit into the cheeseburger.
Angelo said, “Why be pissed at me? It’s not my idea.”
Of course not. It was Felix’s idea. But that didn’t make it any more palatable. Nolan chewed the bite of cheeseburger, dragged a French fry through ketchup.
Angelo sat across from him in the booth, wearing a light blue sports jacket and dark blue shirt and light blue tie, also Felix’s idea. The thin gunman with the fat face sat and stuffed himself with a big plate of pancakes, saying, “My wife’d kill me if she found out I gone off my diet.” It was nearly dawn, and breakfast had seemed in order to Angelo, though Nolan had gone for cheeseburger-in-the-basket. They were in a truck-stop restaurant on the tollway, not far from Milwaukee.
Angelo said, “Anyway, here are the addresses Felix sent for you. He said you’d be needing them.”
Nolan put down the sandwich and took the piece of paper. He looked over the names, addresses, and phone numbers and thought, well, at least Felix did a good thorough job of it. He folded the paper and slipped it in his sports coat pocket and said thanks to Angelo.
“You’re welcome. And look, I’m as sorry as you are I got to tag the hell along.”
“You’re not tagging along.”
“An order is an order, Nolan.”
“An order is a bunch of words.”
“And those words got meaning, and this order means I got to stick to you like batshit, Nolan, like it or not.”
“Angelo, it’s a shame you lost all that weight.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s good to have some weight on you when you’re trying to get over a bad injury.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Nolan shrugged.
Angelo’s round face showed irritation, his big bump of a nose twitching like an animated lump of clay. “Hey, you make me tired, all that tough-guy stuff. How do you keep it up, all day long, the tough-guy stuff? Don’t you know some of us go home to the wife and kids, and live, you know, pretty normal lives, and all this tough-guy stuff just doesn’t make it, it isn’t real life, you know?”
Nolan leaned close to the chubby face and pointed with a French fry. “You want to hear about real life? I’ll tell you about it. Real life is you in a ditch with your arms broken if you think you’re coming with me.”
Angelo grinned suddenly, scooped a tall bite of pancakes into his mouth and chewed while he said, “You don’t frighten me. I don’t pee my pants when you say boo, Nolan. I’m not a fucking kid like Greer. You shook him up with all that taking his gun away nonsense, back with Felix at the Tropical yesterday, but your show, it doesn’t move me. That’s what it is, you know, a show, a act, and I know it, so drop it already. Your type, Nolan, your type talks a hell of a show but you die like everybody else.”
“I’m alive,” Nolan said.
“Today. How’d you do with Greer, anyway? You slap the kid around and make yourself feel like a champ, or what? Jeez.”
“We got along okay,” Nolan said, softly, not knowing quite how to react to this guy. “I’d trade you in for him gladly.”
“I bet you would. Rather have somebody you can push around, right?”
No, Nolan thought; that wasn’t it, not quite. Maybe Angelo wasn’t scared of Nolan, but the reverse was equally true. But Nolan did prefer dealing with someone more predictable. He didn’t know what to make of this chubby-faced thin man, who talked about the wife and kids and hinted at guns and death out on the edges of his conversation.
