Mourn The Living

Books
by
Max Allan Collins

Nolan Novels

FLY PAPER

HARD CASH

SCRATCH FEVER

HUSH MONEY

MOURN THE LIVING

SPREE

 Quarry Novels

QUARRY

QUARRY’S LIST

QUARRY’S DEAL

QUARRY’S CUT

QUARRY’S VOTE

from
Perfect Crime Books

MOURN THE LIVING. Copyright © 2012, 1999 by Max Allan Collins. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored by any means without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Dominick Abel Literary Agency Inc., 146 West 82
^nd
Street 1A, New York, NY 10024.

Perfect Crime Books
TM
 is a registered Trademark.

Cover by Christopher Mills.

This book is a work of fiction. The characters and institutions are products of the Author’s imagination and do not refer to actual persons or institutions.

Perfect Crime Books Trade Paperback Edition

May 2012

Kindle Edition June 2012

To the memory of Richard Yates—

who read this book and told me I was a writer

Introduction

THIS NOVEL
was written around 1967 or ’68, and is—in a sense—the first book in the Nolan series. But the first Nolan novel to be published was
Bait Money
(1973); and, as of this writing, five more books about the character have appeared over the years—most recently
Spree
(1987).

While Nolan has been inactive since, readers frequently inquire about his future; this novel, obviously, refers to his past, but perhaps those same readers will be pleased to encounter this “new” Nolan tale. From time to time, Hollywood has expressed interest in my thief and most recently an Italian company made serious cinematic noises; and I’m currently considering making my own independent film based on one of the novels. So I’m pleased to have this opportunity to bring Nolan’s first adventure, at long last, into book form.

Written during my undergrad years,
Mourn the Living
was set aside when an editor suggested that he would like to see either certain rewrites (with which I did not agree) or the author’s next book. I followed the latter course, figuring that
Mourn
would be published later on; but the subsequent series initiated by
Bait Money
differed from this first novel—among other things, Nolan aged ten years and acquired a youthful protégé, Jon. Also, times had changed so rapidly that the novel’s hippie-era time frame, so topical when I’d written it a few years before, seemed hopelessly dated.

It may sound unlikely, but I had forgotten about the book—at least in terms of it being a commercial property—until Wayne Dundee interviewed me for his fine small-press magazine
Hardboiled
. In the course of the interview, I mentioned the existence of
Mourn the Living
to Nolan fan Wayne, who expressed an interest in serializing it in
Hardboiled
.

So, twenty years after the fact, I found myself doing the necessary line-editing on the first Nolan novel. Too much time had elapsed for me to undertake any major rewriting. While the novel was recognizably mine, I realized I was a different writer, several decades down the road; and, like any good editor, I attempted to respect the wishes and intent of the young writer who wrote it.

I hope readers will enjoy meeting the younger Nolan, sans Jon, in his first recorded adventure. As for the time period of the book being dated, I am pleased that enough years have gone by for me to present it, unashamedly, as a period piece.

My thanks to Wayne Dundee, for nudging me and giving
Mourn
an audience at last; to Ed Gorman, who brought out the first edition, in hardcover for Five Star in 1999; and to my wife Barb, who patiently transferred the moldy, water- damaged manuscript onto computer disc for my editing.

Max Allan Collins

Prologue

THE NOLAN PROBLEM
bothered Frank Rich, but there was a brighter side to the unpleasant coin: he’d been able to bring his mistress into his home for the first time.

Rich shifted nervously in bed, the sheet wet with his uneasiness, causing his brown-tressed bed partner to groan in displeasure at his restless turning, tossing.

“Am I bugging you, Nance, hon?”

She pulled the covers up and over her head and answered his question by peeping one runny mascaraed eye above them, rolling it round as though she were a comic in blackface. Then she gave him another groan and turned over on her stomach, apparently wishing she’d never traded those second-rate clubs she used to sing in for the bed of an insomniac.

“Sorry, hon,” Rich soothed, patting the blankets where they sheathed her well-formed backside.

“Get to sleep, Frankie,” she growled, “okay?”

“Sure, hon, sure.”

Damn her, he thought. An empty-head like her didn’t understand, couldn’t understand a thing like Nolan.

Nolan.

Rich shifted again, feeling weak-gutted and foolish that the mere name of a punk like Nolan could run a chill across his spine. He had just closed his eyes and blanked his mind for the
n
th time when a knock at the bedroom door shot him out of bed like he’d been jabbed with a needle.

He shouldn’t have jumped, he knew he shouldn’t have, he knew it would be Reese. Reese, the man he had stationed downstairs in the library, Reese coming up to make his hourly report.

“Yes, Reese,” he said, his voice surface-cool. “How’s it going?”

“Dull, Mr. Rich. No sign of nothin’.” Reese was big, like a medium-sized barn, and he was much tougher than his smooth pink facial complexion and much smarter than his baby blue, lamb-dropping eyes. Rich had confidence in Reese’s knowing when and when not to make use of the object which caused the slight bulge beneath the big man’s left shoulder.

“That’s fine, Reese, we want it dull, don’t we?”

“You sure you want me to keep comin’ up on the hour like this?”

“Yes, Reese, it’s best you do. This way I know you’re still down there, alive and well.”

Reese glanced over toward the double bed where Nance was sitting up, the pinkness of her making a pleasing contrast against the sheer blue nightie. She was looking pretty and looking pretty disgusted.

Reese said, “You ah, you’re sure I might not be breakin’ in on somethin’ . . . personal?”

Rich forced a smile. He liked Reese, but the man thought too much. “No chance of that. Just go on back downstairs, Reese, and keep an eye open for anything out of the ordinary.”

“Yes, Mr. Rich.”

Rich closed the door on Reese and went back to the bed. He stood before it momentarily, then turned away, starting toward the door.

From the bed Nancy looked up, her sleep-filled eyes prying themselves open. She said, “Where you going, sugar?”

“To the can, hon, don’t worry about me, just get some sleep.”

“Brother . . . this Nolan must be a pretty damn tough character to shake you up this way.”

Rich’s face reddened, his hands clenched into fists. “Why the
hell
don’t you just
shut your mouth
and go to
sleep
?”

Then, explosion past, the blood ran from his face and the fists became hands again. He smiled shyly, like a kid who’s just said his first bad word, and said, “I’m sorry.”

Nancy said nothing.

Rich’s face hung. “I’m sorry, hon, really I am. I wanted these few days here at the house to be a nice change for you from all the . . . well, you know, secrecy. I realize how tired you must be of sneaking around all the time. When this Nolan thing came up, I finally had a legit sounding excuse to get the wife out of town for a while. You got to admit it was a good excuse.”

“Only it’s not an excuse,” she pouted. “First you tell your fat old hag that it’s too dangerous for her to stick around, then you invite
me
over. I guess that shows how much concern you have about my welfare.”

“Hon!” Rich was exasperated. “Don’t get upset just because I’m acting a little jumpy! There’s no chance at all of this Nolan showing up around here. He’ll try for the casino, or maybe one of the offices. Not here.”

“Sure. That’s why you been having Reese share our evenings.”

Rich started to answer her, then decided against it. He turned away and went to the door and left the room.

In the bathroom Rich stripped down and appraised himself in the full-length mirror on the back of the door.

He thought he had a damn fine build for a man past fifty: strong legs, trim waist, solid chest. There were some wrinkles, sure, and a little sag here and there, but a lot of men years younger, he felt confident, would trade him bodies gladly. Still had a touch of tan left, too, from that two-week summit conference with the Boys in Miami last summer.

Only his face didn’t jibe with the rest of his youthful image, and of that he was well aware.

His face hadn’t looked so bad to him three days before, when the Nolan threat had as yet to rise up. But now, now he looked at it and found things he hadn’t noticed before. Like deathly pale skin, puckered with dry wrinkles, scattered with an occasional liver spot. And his hair, which only a few days before had seemed to him a distinguished premature gray, now looked a stark white, setting off the new oldness of his face.

Ridiculous!

In three days?

He wouldn’t even think about it.

But Rich rubbed his hand over his chin (the stubble of his beard wasn’t starting to grow in gray, now, was it?) and he knew that Nolan posed the kind of threat that could age a man, as they said, overnight.

Rich stepped into the shower stall, turned the faucet on both hot and cold, mixing the spray to an even lukewarm, and thought about the years he’d spent working his way up the ladder in the Boys’ organization to get into this nice home in Cleveland, Ohio. Six and a half years he’d spent in Chicago, directly under the tight rein of the brothers Franco. Charlie and Sam Franco, along with Lou Goldstein, were the Boys, the three men who controlled the Chicago syndicate.

Rich soaped himself, adjusted the water just a bit warmer, and reflected on those six and a half years with the Boys, most of it spent working in various small casinos, and, toward the end, supervising the bookmakers. Then five more years he spent as Vito’s second-in-command in Pittsburgh. Finally, for the past three years, he’d had his own set-up here in Cleveland, though still tied to the Boys. His operation wasn’t a big one, but it was big enough to suit him: the apex of a career of hard, dedicated work in the none too safe business world of narcotics, gambling, prostitution, unionizing, and, well, other consumer services.

And now an obstacle: Nolan.

That damn renegade hood. Rich had hardly believed his ears when he’d heard that the Boys had set a price tag of a quarter mil on that punk’s head.

Of course, Rich only knew of Nolan, had never met him. When Nolan had started working for the Boys in the Chicago operation, managing clubs for them, Rich was already with Vito in Pittsburgh. But Rich knew Nolan about as well as one man can know another second-hand.

He knew that Nolan was an ex-employee of the Boys, and had submitted his resignation in bullets, taking care of Sam Franco and two bodyguards when he did. Knew that for the past few years Nolan had been traveling around looting and generally tearing hell out of the organization’s key operations.

Rich turned off the shower, slipped into a terry cloth robe to sop up the moisture.

He couldn’t, wouldn’t let the Nolan thing shake him. Nolan was only one man and, by reputation at least, a man who worked alone. He would hit some of Rich’s sources of revenue, maybe, but he wouldn’t think to hit Rich at home. Would he?

Three days before, when the rumor had filtered through his grapevine to him that Nolan was in Cleveland, Rich had moved what capital that was on hand and not in banks to his own wall-safe at home. For various reasons, reasons primarily concerned with matters of federal and state income tax, this money was not banked but kept on hand by the local operation till the Boys sent in a bagman from Chicago to pick it up once a month.

Now, forty thousand of this cash was downstairs in Rich’s wall-safe, and Reese or someone like him had been serving guard duty on it ever since its arrival.

Rich got back into his pajamas. He hadn’t thrown the case of nerves yet, but he felt a little better; he just didn’t like thinking about what the Boys would do to him if he let Nolan lay hands on their money. He was half-way down the hall to his bedroom when he heard the noise.

It wasn’t a very loud noise, just loud enough: a solid substantial
thump.

Rich scrambled into the bedroom and got his .32 out from a dresser drawer near his pillow. He didn’t bother Nancy; she was rolled over the other way, asleep.

He crept down the stairs and stood silently at the bottom for a while, facing the stately ivory-white double doors leading to the library, where waited the wall-safe and the forty thousand dollars.

“Reese?”

No answer.

“Reese?”

Rich opened the doors quickly, quietly, and entered holding the .32 in close to him, like an extra appendage. Trembling, he darted his eyes around the room.

There was no one in the library except Reese, who was stomach-down spread-eagled in the middle of the floor, like an X marking the spot. Rich went over to him, bent down. Reese wasn’t dead, but from the looks of the back of his head—freshly red and a shade caved in—he wouldn’t be waking up for a while.

Rich glanced over toward the wall where the picture of his fat wife Lily hung over the wall-safe. No sign of disturbance, outwardly at least.

Shaking badly now, Rich struggled out to the hall again and opened the front door. He wondered why his watchdog, a large German Shepherd, hadn’t let out the usual howl he bestowed on visitors, friendly or otherwise. Then he noticed, looking out across the forty yards of lawn between him and the gate, the outline of the dog in the moonlight. The dog was lying still, but not dead, he was breathing too hard for that. Drugged apparently, Rich decided, and at any rate, out as cold as Reese.

He made his way back into the house, into the library. He shut the double doors behind him, looked around the empty room and felt a wave of calm wash over him.

Nolan had been and gone!

Obviously!

Rich smiled and reconstructed it. Nolan had come and tried to make Reese open the safe, and Reese, of course, hadn’t known the combination. Then Nolan had heard the footsteps upstairs coming down, and, knowing that someone
would be on the way with a gun, Nolan had made a hasty retreat
! Rich breathed easily, allowed himself a smile.

Relaxed now, Rich headed for his wife’s portrait, pushed it aside and opened the safe.

All the money was there.

All forty thousand.

So, Rich thought, he’d been right: the bigtime punk named Nolan had failed.

And Rich laughed.

“Something funny?”

Rich whirled, swinging the .32-filled hand around to meet the sudden threat imposed by the strange cold voice from behind him. But a massive rock of a fist smashed into his face and Rich felt himself going down like a sack of grain, and as consciousness began to leave him, he felt his hand go fish-limp around the .32. The little revolver dropped harmlessly to the floor, and so did Rich.