Two for the Money Read online

  Praise for the Books of MAX ALLAN COLLINS!

  “Strong and compelling reading.”

  — Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

  “Collins has an outwardly artless style that conceals a great deal of art.”

  — The New York Times Book Review

  “Collins breaks out a really good one, knocking over the hard-boiled competition (Parker and Leonard for sure, maybe even Puzo) with a one-two punch: a feisty storyline told bittersweet and wry... Never done better.”

  — Kirkus Reviews, starred review

  “Collins has a gift for creating low-life believable characters... a sharply focused action story that keeps the reader guessing till the slam-bang ending.”

  — Atlanta Journal Constitution

  “The Nolan series by Max Collins is fast-paced and exciting. Plunk down some hard cash for this one today.”

  — Prevue

  “Powerful and highly enjoyable reading, fast moving and very, very tough.”

  — Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “Intelligent, witty, and exciting.”

  — Booklist

  “Ingenious.”

  — Publishers Weekly

  SOME OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKS YOU WILL ENJOY:

  MONEY SHOT by Christa Faust

  ZERO COOL by John Lange

  SHOOTING STAR/SPIDERWEB by Robert Bloch

  THE MURDERER VINE by Shepard Rifkin

  SOMEBODY OWES ME MONEY

  by Donald E. Westlake

  NO HOUSE LIMIT by Steve Fisher

  BABY MOLL by John Farris

  THE MAX by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

  THE FIRST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins

  GUN WORK by David J. Schow

  FIFTY-TO-ONE by Charles Ardai

  KILLING CASTRO by Lawrence Block

  THE DEAD MAN’S BROTHER by Roger Zelazny

  THE CUTIE by Donald E. Westlake

  HOUSE DICK by E. Howard Hunt

  CASINO MOON by Peter Blauner

  FAKE I.D. by Jason Starr

  PASSPORT TO PERIL by Robert B. Parker

  STOP THIS MAN! by Peter Rabe

  LOSERS LIVE LONGER by Russell Atwood

  HONEY IN HIS MOUTH by Lester Dent

  QUARRY IN THE MIDDLE by Max Allan Collins

  THE CORPSE WORE PASTIES by Jonny Porkpie

  TWO for the MONEY

  by Max Allan Collins

  A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK

  (HCC-005)

  First Hard Case Crime edition: November 2004

  Published by

  Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street

  London

  SE1 OUP

  in collaboration with Winterfall LLC

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should know that it is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Copyright © 1973, 1981, 2004 by Max Allan Collins

  Cover painting copyright © 2004 by Mark Texeira

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Print edition ISBN 978-0-85768-317-5

  E-book ISBN 978-1-78116-100-5

  Design direction by Max Phillips

  www.maxphillips.net

  The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime Books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Visit us on the web at www.HardCaseCrime.com

  To Barb

  For aiding and abetting

  Contents

  Book One: Bait Money

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Book Two: Blood Money

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Afterword

  BOOK ONE

  Bait Money

  EXCERPT FROM THE PORT CITY SAVINGS AND TRUST SECURITY PROGRAM:

  In compliance with the Bank Protection Act of 1968, the following programs were installed by this bank:

  . . . (4) Each teller station will have ‘bait’ money in the amount of $1,000.00 in denominations of tens and twenties. Federal reserve notes will be used. A permanent record will be maintained by the Auditor on all ‘bait’ money which will show bank of issue serial numbers and series years of which are recorded.

  Prologue

  A woman was usually a night to a week in Nolan’s life, yet this one had lasted a month and five days. But then, before it was different—before he’d never had so bad a need for one.

  He sat up in bed, aware that the pain in his side was lessening, and scanned the room. He took in its drabness, and a slight smile came to his lips. Christ, had he really been staring at these four suffocating walls for over a month now? He closed his eyes, seeking not rest but relief from pink stucco walls and second-hand store furniture.

  “Hi,” she said. She was in the doorway, bundled in a heavy coat, a sack of groceries filling her arms.

  He nodded hello.

  “I’ll just put these away,” she said.

  He kept nodding, said, “Okay,” and watched her smile and leave the doorway.

  He leaned back and reached out his arms while stretching his body. The pain didn’t increase at all from the movement; the place in his side where the bullet had gone in seemed completely healed over. Quite a difference from even a week before, when his body had been one big ache, one long, slow, muscle-bone-gristle ache.

  He got out of bed and caught, turned away from his reflection in the bureau mirror. He climbed into a pair of boxer shorts, shaking his head and muttering.

  That damn face of his, high cheekbones, narrow eyes, widow’s-peaked hair, that damn easily recognizable face, which both beard past and mustache present failed to disguise. At least the lean weeks had affected his body somewhat to the better. He felt drained, sure, but that roll of softness the years had put around his waist had disappeared.

  “Hi,” she said, in the doorway again, now wearing only bra and panties.

  She had never been beautiful, he supposed. But she’d been better than plain, and nowhere near ugly. Now, after seven or maybe eight years of traumatic experiences— assorted divorces, abortions, affairs with married men—she was getting the kind of lines in her face that polite people say show character. Nolan saw the lines as too much age for too few years, giving her an air of having been taken advantage of emotionally, used once and thrown away like Kleenex.

  “You look tired,” he said.

  She nodded, undoing the scarf that tied her black hair behind her head, letting the shoulder-length mane fall free. “I’m tired, all right,” she said, “but not physically, you know, just mentally. I mean, the old mind really gets a workout waiting tables eight till five. It’s a goddamn challenge.”

  As she spoke, Nolan watched bitter lines deepen in her face and then lowered his eyes to her breasts as she released them from her bra. The breasts were large, and though beginning to sag, were still quite good. Her nipples were like rose-hued sand dollars.

  “How was your day, Nolan?”

  “Long. Dull.”
He went back over to the bed and lay down again.

  “How’s the side?” She came and stood by the bed and leaned over him, her breasts swaying like hanging fruit.

  “What?”

  “Your side, how’s it feeling?”

  “Better.”

  “Do anything today?”

  “Just slept.”

  “Oh? Now don’t hand me that line . . . you haven’t been sleeping more than nine hours out of every twenty-four since you been feeling better, and you had near that when I left for work this morning. So what’d you do today?”

  “I watched television.”

  “Sure you did. The soap operas.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Come on, Nolan.”

  “I read the paper.”

  “Do anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Took you all day to read the paper?”

  “Slow reader.”

  “All right, so be a bastard.”

  “That was an accident of birth.”

  “Smartass remarks don’t make you less a bastard, Nolan.”

  “Okay, okay. I suppose I ought to tell you, anyway.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “I made a couple long-distance calls.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, I’ll pay for them. I’m going to pay you back for everything you’ve done for . . .”

  “Shut up, Nolan.” She sat down on the bed, facing away from him and touching her face with her fingertips.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t owe me a damn thing, that’s all. Do you understand?” Her voice was drum tight. “I am a lot of things, and I’ve been a lot of things, and I will be a lot of things in days to come. But I was not, am not, and will not ever be a whore.” She was quiet for a few moments, then added, her voice hushed, “You don’t owe me anything, Nolan. And if you try to give me any money, I’ll tear your goddamn heart out.”

  He touched her shoulder.

  She turned and rubbed her hand over his chest, twining her fingers in its hair. She made an effort and got a smile going and said, “I won’t try to pry out of you what those phone calls were about—you don’t have to worry about that.”

  He nodded, smiled.

  “Did you do anything else today?”

  “No. Just did some thinking.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of. That’s why those stupid damn phone calls put me on edge so.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Now you’ve started thinking.”

  “Thanks a bunch.”

  “You know what I mean. You’ve started thinking, and before I know it, well . . .”

  “Well what?”

  “Well, you’ll be gone, damn it.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “You are leaving,” she said, “aren’t you?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You said you been thinking. Same difference.”

  “Sometime I’ll leave. Everybody leaves sometime or other.”

  “You’re half right. Everybody leaves me all the time.”

  “What is this, self-pity day?”

  “You’re goddamn right it is. Who else is going to pity me if I don’t? You?”

  “How old are you?”

  “What? Why are you forever asking me how old I am?”

  “Don’t make me ask again.”

  “All right, all right, I’m thirty-one.”

  “What else are you? Besides thirty-one.”

  “Free, white, and ten years too many?”

  “You’re intelligent. Not bad looking.”

  “Beautiful is what I am. A funhouse mirror with sex.”

  “Shut up. You’re a good-looking kid.”

  One side of her mouth smiled. “Maybe I should have pulled this self-pity routine before. I’ve never heard you talk so much—and compliments, too! Don’t stop now.”

  He allowed himself a grin and said, “I’ll grant you I don’t talk much, but now I am, so listen, I got something to say: sling hash if you want to, or don’t sling it.”

  She looked at him wide-eyed. “That’s it? That’s the big message?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Profound. Pretty fuckin’ profound, Nolan. ‘Sling hash or don’t sling it.’ Let me write that down.”

  He laughed and grabbed her arm. “Okay. You think about it. For now let’s shut up and get on with it.”

  Her lips took on a wry smile, and she latched her thumbs in her panties and tugged them off. “You got yourself a deal.”

  They made love, slow, grinding love, and it was as good for them as it had always been over the past month of Nolan’s recuperation. At the beginning, because his wound was serious, their lovemaking had been gentle, increasing in intensity as the weeks passed, each time different for them. Nolan was amazed that this one woman could seem to be so many different women. Never having bedded down longer than a week’s time with the same woman, he had assumed a woman’s sexual possibilities could be sufficiently explored in that time or less. It was a pleasant surprise to him to discover at this late date that he was wrong.

  After several hours of sleep, Nolan and the girl awoke to darkness and, checking his watch, Nolan said, “It’s nine, kid. What shall we do?”

  “Hungry?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you want?”

  “How about breakfast?”

  “At nine o’clock at night?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay.”

  She climbed out of bed, slipped on her bra and panties, got into a houserobe, and went out into the kitchen.

  Fifteen minutes later Nolan and the girl sat at the kitchen table, eating the evening breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast in silence. Nolan’s attention was on his plate of food, while the girl stared at him intently.

  She broke the silence with, “Why do you ask me what my age is all the time?”

  “Do I?”

  “You did tonight, and I bet it was the hundredth time, too. Why?”

  “To make a point.”

  “What point is that? Oh, I remember, don’t remind me, that quote of yours that’ll go down through the ages: ‘Sling hash or don’t sling it.’ž”

  He looked up from the plate. “That’s the one.”

  “There’s got to be more to it than that.”

  “Maybe there is. You never bothered asking how old I was, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t. But then, you told me at the start not to ask you a lot of personal questions. For my own sake, you said.”

  “That’s right. But you don’t have to ask, I’ll tell you. I’m forty-eight.”

  She was surprised. “I thought forty, maybe . . . but, hell, so what? I been had by older men, that’s for sure.”

  “You never met anybody older than me. I’m a dinosaur who can’t get it through his head he’s extinct.”

  “What are you . . .”

  “I’m forty-eight and I’m hiding out with a girl who spends her days slinging hash, and I’m living off her while I get recovered from a gunshot wound.”

  “You said not to ask questions, Nolan, so . . .”

  “I know. You’re not asking, I’m telling. You got time left. You got stuff left in you. I’m running out. Of time. Of stuff. I picked what I am, and I blew it. I got nothing left to do but make the best of the sucker choice I made a long time ago. Till it’s over.”

  “I don’t . . . don’t follow you, Nolan.”

  “You don’t have to. You got a life of shit here. Change it. Change yourself. You got time left to choose again. Me? My life’s shit because I picked wrong. Too bad. Too late.”

  “I think you’re feverish again.”

  “No, I’m not. Have you been listening to what I said?”

  “Of course, Nolan, of course . . .”

  “Sometime when you got nothing to do, think about it.” He wiped his m
outh with a napkin and got up from the table. “Let’s not talk anymore. I’m tired again.”

  They went back to bed, fell asleep quickly, then woke in a few hours and made love, hard, fast, violently. Then Nolan and the girl rolled apart and went back to sleep.

  At five the next morning the phone rang them awake, and Nolan went for it, spoke a few times and listened for a minute-and-a-half without answering, said, “Yes,” and hung up the phone. He went back to bed and pretended sleep, just as he knew the girl was pretending she hadn’t seen and heard what had just happened.

  At six-thirty the girl kissed Nolan on the cheek as she was preparing to leave the apartment for work. Nolan grabbed her, stroked her face, and smiled good-bye. Then he rolled back over in the bed and closed his eyes and she was gone. When she’d been away an hour, Nolan got out of bed, called the bus station to confirm his reservation, packed his bag, and left.

  One

  1

  The drizzle felt good on Nolan’s face. The night air was chill, though not enough to freeze the drizzle, and the light, icy sting of it on his skin kept him alert as he waited.

  He was sitting on a bench in the parklike strip of ground that separated the Mississippi River from the four-lane highway running along it. The highway connected the Siamese-twin cities of Davenport and Bettendorf, whose collective reflection on the river’s choppy surface vied for attention with that of Rock Island and Moline on the other side.

  Across the highway was where Werner lived.

  Werner’s home was a white, high-faced two-story structure, nearly a mansion, complete with row of six pillars. Already bathed in light by the heavily traveled and streetlamp-lined four-lane, the house was lit on right and left by two spotlights set on either side of its huge, sloping lawn, which banked down gradually to the highway’s edge. Even through the heavy mist, the whiteness of the overlit house made a stark contrast against the moonless night around it.

  Typical Werner logic, Nolan thought, picking a place like that one: status plus prestige equals respectability.

  Nolan had been waiting just less than an hour. His side of the road was darker, and the constant traffic flow and hazy weather seemed likely to obscure him from anybody who might be on watch over at Werner’s. He hadn’t seen any watchdogs yet, but he knew one would show sooner or later— a Werner-style watchdog, two-legged-with-gun variety.