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Authors: Max Allan Collins

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BOOK: Scratch Fever
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“Nothing. I don’t know. You know what I told you about? About me and Nolan, I mean.”

“You told me a lot about you and Nolan.”

“I shouldn’t have.”

“Well, you did.”

“Well, I shouldn’t have. You know what I’m talking about.”

“I think I do. The robberies.”

“The robberies and what went with it.”

She screwed the cap back on the whiskey bottle, then hopped down off the amplifier flight case. “The guns and stuff,” she said.

Jon laughed. “Yeah. The guns and stuff. Right. Well, I saw somebody from one of the things Nolan and I were into. One of the robberies.”

“Somebody you robbed, you mean? Somebody who could recognize you?”

“Somebody that could recognize me, all right. Not somebody we robbed. Not hardly.”

“Scratch fever . . . Cat scratch . . .”

“Somebody that was in it with you,” she said. “Right.”

“So?”

“So it was somebody that was supposed to have died in a car crash, a year ago.”

“Jesus. What’s that mean?”

“It means . . . I don’t know what it means.”

“Maybe your friend would. Nolan.”

“Maybe.”

“You thinking about calling him?”

“Yeah. I am.”

“You better do it on the break. Those assholes are almost finished ‘making pussies purr.


Out in the other room, on stage, the trio was doing its big finish, which amounted to lots of sliding up and down on the bass neck for Les, some horrible high squealing lead up on the neck of the Gibson Explorer for Roc, and a frantic series of trips around the drum kit for Mick.

“Let me have a sip of that,” Jon said, nodding at her whiskey bottle.

“You never touch this shit,” Toni said, unscrewing the cap again.

“I know,” Jon said, taking the bottle, swigging it. “But Nolan does.”

Soon they were back on stage doing a song called “Die Young, Stay Pretty.”

 

 

2

 

 

IT WAS
that kid, it was that goddamn kid!

Dammit!

What the hell was he doing here, playing in a rock band, for Christ’s sake? His curly hair was shorter, but otherwise he hadn’t changed; it was him, all right. Standing behind a portable organ, singing some unintelligible lyrics into a microphone, his voice booming out of the PA system.

The ironic thing was that it was this band—the Nodes—that had brought her here. She had heard the group was breaking up after this engagement, which meant they wouldn’t have anything booked for the following week, which meant hopefully she could convince them to stay together long enough to play Tuesday through Saturday at her club, the Paddlewheel. She’d had a cancellation and needed a band, and this group, the Nodes, while not precisely the sort of group she usually booked in, had a reputation in the Midwest. So she’d come to hear them, and to talk to the leader.

Whose name, it turned out, was Jon.

“Yeah,” Bob Hale said, as they sat at the bar on one side of the dance floor, yelling to be heard above the band, “it’s that kid on the end, playing the organ.”

She had looked at the kid, and he immediately seemed familiar to her.

“Nice enough kid,” Bob was saying. He was a big, florid man in his forties, with reddish-brown hair and a childlike manner that gave him a certain immature charm. “You wouldn’t know it to look at the squirt, but he’s strong. Judas Priest, you should see him carry those amplifiers around, like they was pillows. The girls seem to go for him.”

“Do they.”

“Sure do.” Bob grinned at her; he had big teeth. “Get you a drink, honey?”

“What did you say his name was?”

“Jon. I don’t know what his last name is.”

“Jon.”

“Yeah. They’re booked out of Des Moines. Or they were. Like I said, this is supposed to be their last night. But maybe I could talk to ’em for you and convince ’em that . . .”

She didn’t hear anything else Bob said after that; she was walking away. Before that kid on stage got a good look at her.

Not that it mattered, at this point; she’d seen the flash of recognition—or
something
—on his face. He shouldn’t have been able to recognize her, not at that distance; not with the blonde-streaked hair, the glasses, the business-like suit and sweater she’d worn. But the feeling in her stomach said he
had
recognized her. Goddammit.
Goddammit!

Now she was out in the bar that connected the restaurant and club, which, like the rest of the Barn, was rustic—lots of rough barnwood decorated with an occasional horse-collar mirror and bogus wanted posters with Bob Hale’s name and face on them. There were booths with baskets of peanuts and popcorn on either side of the dimly lit room, enclosed on three sides and affording enough privacy for people to sit and neck if they liked. Several couples were doing that now, and there were a few people sitting up at the bar, but otherwise the action at the Barn was clearly in where the Nodes were playing, rather obnoxiously, she thought. Which made her smile, and the smile felt like cement cracking.
If they play loud shit like that
, she thought,
I wouldn’t have hired them anyway.

She was sitting in a booth. The man she’d come with, Harold, looked over from the bar, where he was nursing a Scotch and water.

Harold was a big man, even though he stood only five-eight. He had the shoulders and thick arms, big hands, of a football player specifically a guard, which was the position he’d played in high school and college, before he dropped out. His face, however, was surprisingly sensitive: heavy-lidded gray eyes behind black-rimmed glasses; a bulbous, flat-bridged nose that had never been broken; a full-lipped, sensual mouth, kept wet by nervous licking.

He came over to her. He was wearing a tan suit with a dark tie; his hair, a sandy brown, was thinning on top and cut short on the sides. He looked like a high school football coach who quit to sell insurance; but what he was was her business partner, co-manager of the Paddlewheel, their club in Gulf Port.

“What’s wrong?” Harold said. He had a soft, hoarse voice.

“Sit down,” she said.

Harold had left his Scotch and water behind; he sat across from her, hands folded. He licked his lips. He had that look she hated: the look as if he were about to cry.

“I should’ve gone to fucking Brazil,” she said. She was sitting shelling peanuts but not eating them.

“I see.”

“Give me one good reason why I should ever have gone back to you.”

“Okay. I love you.”

“Shut up.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Nothing I can’t handle.”

“I see.”

“Do you?”

“I think so.”

“Tell me, then.”

“You saw somebody. Somebody who knew you, before.”

“How could you know that?” She never failed to be surprised by the big jerk’s perceptiveness.

“It was bound to happen,” he said with a shrug, hands still folded, “sooner or later. We’re not that far from where you lived before.”

She tore the shell off a peanut, rubbed the skin off the nut within. Added it to the little pile she was making.

“You should leave,” he was saying. “Have you spoken to this person?”

“No.”

“Then you should leave. Leave while he or she still is wondering whether it was you or not It’s that simple.”

She threw a shell at him. “It’s
not
that simple. God, you make me sick sometimes.”

“Who is it? Who recognized you?”

“A kid in the band.”

“A kid in the band?”

“A kid in the band. Remember the guy Logan I told you about?”

Logan was the name she knew Nolan by.

“Of course I remember.”

That kid in there, the organ player, that’s Jon.”

“Logan’s partner.”

“That’s right.”

“Who was in on the Port City thing.”

“Right.”

“I see.”

“Quit saying that!”

“All right. What do you want me to do?”

“Go in there and see which kid I mean. Go in and get a look at him. He’s the short kid with curly hair and a good build.”

“Okay.”

“Then come back and sit in this booth and watch the door.” The double doors between the bar and dance area were just a few feet away. “If he comes out and tries to use that pay phone during the band’s break, stop him.”

“How?”

“Just do it. But don’t come on like a strongarm. Say you’re expecting a call or something.”

“All right. Then what?”

“Then nothing. Just keep an eye on him, when he isn’t on stage. The band only has one more break. They’re playing their third set now, which means they have one more set to play.”

“After that, what happens?”

“We’ll deal with that when the time comes.”

“How?”

“However we have to.”

He reached for the ashtray and with one thick hand brushed the pile of peanuts and shells she’d been making into it. Then he reached out and touched her hand. Held it.

“I don’t kill people, Julie,” he said softly. Eyes and lips wet.

“I know you don’t.”

“I’ll do anything for you but that”

“I know you will.”

“Anything.”

“I know.”

“But if it comes to . . . if it comes to that, I don’t even want to know about it.”

She smiled at him sweetly, squeezed his hand, thinking,
Fucking hypocrite! You don’t care if somebody else does the killing, though, do you? Just so you don’t have to do it; just so you don’t have to know about it.

She let go of his hand. “Give me some change. I have a long-distance call to make.”

He half-stood in the booth, dug for some change, and gave it to her.

“Who are you calling?”

She got out of the booth. “You just stay put.”

He licked his lips and nodded, then reached for the basket of peanuts.

She went over to the pay phone and dialed a number in Illinois direct.

BOOK: Scratch Fever
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