Hard Cash by Max Allan Collins Page A

man.”
    “Even if he did run out on you once?”
    “Even then. I’d have done the same in his place.”
    “That’s what it’s about, isn’t it? Survival.”
    “You could put it that way.”
    “Nolan. Tell me.”
    “What?”
    “Why did he do it?”
    “Heisting, you mean? You know why. To support the gambling.”
    “Not the heisting. The women. Why . . . why wasn’t I enough?”
    “Why did he gamble? Why can some men quit smoking and others puff away, even after they’ve seen the X-rays? I don’t know. I don’t understand people. I can barely tolerate them, let alone understand them.”
    She sighed. “More coffee?”
    “No.”
    “I loved him, Nolan.”
    “Yeah. Well, you must have. To put up with his gambling and his women both. And not every woman can stand being married to somebody in my business.”
    “I thought you were out of the business.”
    “You’re never out.”
    “I guess not Listen, there’s . . . there’s something I want to talk to you about.”
    “Okay.”
    “I want to talk upstairs. There’s something of his I want to give you.”
    “Okay.”
    She led him upstairs.
    Into a darkened room.
    The shade was drawn, but some of the light from outside was seeping in; overcast day that it was, the seepage didn’t amount to much. But he could see the bed, the double bed, and he could see Mary, disrobing.
    She stood and held her arms out to him.
    She stood naked and said, without saying it, Am I so ugly? Wouldn’t I be enough for most men?
    She would have been plenty, for just about anybody. Sure, her thighs were a little fleshy, and there was a plumpness around her tummy, and she had an appendix scar. And her breasts didn’t look quite as firm as they once had. But big breasts never do, and they were nice and big, pink nipples against ivory flesh. He walked over and put a hand on one of the breasts, felt the nipple go erect. He put his other hand between her legs. He put his mouth over hers.
    There was carpet up here. Downstairs, bare floors. But up here, on Mary’s insistence, no doubt, was plush carpeting, tufted fuzzy white carpeting, and they did it on the floor, and when she came, she cried finally, and they crawled up on the bed and rested.
    Outside, it snowed.
     
     

 
     
     
     
     
    7
     
     
    SHE WALKED HIM out to the car. They had rested for several hours, and then she fixed him something to eat—nothing fancy, just a sandwich—and it was early evening all of a sudden, and he was saying he had to get back. Something doing in Iowa City tomorrow, he said, and she got his coat for him.
    She’d been surprised how good he looked. She hadn’t seen him for several years, since the last time he’d stopped at the bar to talk to her husband about some job. She’d heard from her husband of Nolan’s troubles, that he’d been shot damn near to death several times the last couple of years, and she’d expected that to show on him. No. Some gray hair at the temples, but Nolan stayed the same. Handsome, in that narrow-eyed, mustached, slightly evil way of his. His body remained lithe, muscular; scarred but beautiful. He’d felt so beautiful in her. . . .
    “You’ll be back then?” she said, leaning against the car, by the window. He was behind the wheel; the engine was going. The snow had let up.
    “I’m going to poke into your husband’s killing a little, yes,” he said. “But it’s not the movies. No revenge, Mary. I don’t believe in that. I’m doing it to protect my own ass.”
    She smiled. “And my ass has nothing to do with it.”
    “Well. Maybe just a little. Take care of that ass, okay, till I get back and can take over?”
    “Sure. And watch your own while you’re at it. Next week, did you say?”
    “Probably. I’ll probably give you a call.”
    And he was gone.
    She went back into the house, into the kitchen, and drank the last of the pot of coffee she’d made.
    She wondered if Nolan would really find her husband’s murderer, and if he did and took