Mourn The Living (5 page)

“Where do you get your information?”

“George is my brother-in-law, remember?”

“Does he know Irene’s related?”

“He might have met her when she was a kid, but he doesn’t know I have . . .
had
a girl who went to Chelsey. At least as far as I know he doesn’t. That dumb asshole doesn’t know much of anything.”

“I’ll grant you that, Sid.”

“Look, George talked to me on the phone last week, social call, you know? I pumped him a little. They’re pulling in at least six grand a week.”

“Sid, it’s my life you’re trading bubblegum cards against.”

“Don’t forget you owe me, Nolan, remember that! And there’s going to be close to forty thousand in it for you, I swear.”

“At six grand a week, how do you figure? The Boys send in a bagman every Wednesday and take the last week’s earnings back to Chicago. That’s s.o.p. with the Family. I know these set-ups, Sid.”

“But they don’t come in weekly! Chelsey is so close to Chicago they don’t bother sending a man every week.”

“How often do they pick it up?”

“Every six weeks. But I don’t know where they keep it till then.”

“How about the local bank?”

“Nope, I checked it. They must keep it on ice somewhere.”

“So there ought to be around forty thousand in this for me, Sid, that right?”

“I think so, Nolan. Maybe more.”

Nolan thought for a moment. Then: “What makes you think this operation in Chelsey has anything to do with your daughter’s death?”

“Damn it, Nolan, I figure if they didn’t do anything outside of sell that cube of LSD she’s supposed to have swallowed, then they killed her, didn’t they? Besides, because she was my kid she knew things about the Boys and the connection they had to Chelsey. If she let any of that slip to the wrong person, it could have got her killed. And . . .” Tisor’s eyes were filmed over and he looked down at his hands, folded tightly in his lap.

“And what?”

“Nolan, I have to know why she died. I have to know.”

“It’s enough she’s dead, Sid.”

“No, it isn’t! She was the only thing I had to show for my entire life, she was the only thing I had left to care about! I’m not like you, Nolan . . . I can’t let go of something that important with a shrug.”

There were a few moments of silence, while Tisor regained a modicum of control. Nolan sat and seemed to be studying the thin ropes of smoke coiling off his cigarette.

“If I find out Irene was murdered,” Nolan said, his voice a low, soft monotone, “and I find the one who did it, what am I supposed to do?”

“That’s up to you, Nolan.”

“You expect me to kill somebody?”

“I know you, Nolan. I expect if anyone needs killing, you’ll take care of it.”

“I’m not making any promises, you understand.”

“I understand, Nolan.”

“All right, then. Get some paper and write down every speck of information you got on Irene and Chelsey. The college, her friends, the Boys’ operation, George, everything you know about it. And put in a recent snap of Irene.”

“Right.” Tisor got a notebook and a pen and Nolan smoked two cigarettes while Tisor filled up three pages for him. Tisor gave Nolan the notebook, then went to a drawer to find a picture of his daughter.

“Here she is,” he said, holding a smudged Polaroid shot.

“That’s old, Sid—nothing newer? This is what she looked like when I knew her.”

“She got prettier in the last couple years since you saw her. I had her nose fixed, did you know that?”

“No.” She’d been a dark-haired girl, beautiful but for a nose that could have opened bottles, and it was nice that Sid had got it bobbed for her, but Nolan hardly saw it worth talking about when she was dead.

Tisor’s eyes were cloudy. “They . . . they told me on the phone that . . . she . . . she fell ten stories . . . it was awful. They sent her body back on a train for the . . . funeral. I had to have them keep the casket closed. . . .”

“Don’t waste your tears on the dead, Sid,” Nolan told him. “You got to mourn somebody, mourn the living—they got it tougher.”

“You . . . you don’t understand how it is . . .”

Hell, Nolan thought, dust doesn’t give a damn. But he said, “Sure, Sid, sure.”

“Let me tell you about her, Nolan . . .”

“I got to be going now, Sid.”

“Yeah . . . yeah, that’s right. I can’t tell you how much I . . .
I appreciate this . . . Nolan, thanks.”

“Sure.” He headed for the door. “See you around.”

“Yeah . . . uh . . . so long, Nolan . . . you going by bus?”

Nolan looked at him and said, “You ask too many questions, Sid,” and closed the door.

Tisor watched through the picture window and saw Nolan board a city bus routed for downtown Peoria.

There Nolan found a Hertz office and rented a midnight- blue Lincoln in Tisor’s name. He drove it back to his motel, packed and cleaned up, then checked out.

He could make Chelsey by noon if he kicked it.

6

GEORGE FRANCO
was a satisfied man.

He was not happy, but there was satisfaction, a certain contentment in his life.

He realized this as he lay on the soft double bed in his penthouse apartment, watching his woman get dressed. She was a leggy whore, with good firm breasts, and she was taking her time about fastening the garter snaps as she replaced her black hose. Her tousled black hair fell to her shoulders, and her once-pretty face wore a tight red line for a mouth. George liked the look of her hard, well-built body, but he didn’t like her equally hard face which spoke of something other than love.

But she was his woman, hired or not, and he was lucky to have her and knew it. Especially when you were a repulsive glob of fat, as George resignedly recognized himself to be.

She was dressed now, as dressed as possible considering the black sheath hit mid-thigh. She did her imitation of a smile for him and said, “Tomorrow, same time, Georgie?”

“Yeah, Francie. Tomorrow. Sure was good today.”

The whore smiled some more and said, “Yeah, sure was,” because that was her job. Her fingers rippled a little wave at her employer and she left.

George sat up on the bed, poured the last shot out of the bottle of Scotch he and the woman had emptied during the day—the courthouse clock across the way was bonging four—and he drank it down. He held his liquor well, he knew he did; it was the one thing he could do well. Then he settled back with a good cigar and thought about his life.

Satisfied, content. Not happy, but you can’t have everything.

After all, he had fifty cent cigars when he wanted them, and a fifty dollar woman when he wanted her. He lived in a five hundred buck a month secret penthouse (over a drugstore) with five rooms and two color TV’s and two cans and two big double beds and three bars and lots of soft red carpet. His bars were well-stocked with all the liquor he could possibly drink; and he had all the food he could eat, as prepared by his personal chef, who came in twice a day. The chef lived down the street in an apartment shared with George’s maid.

There were disadvantages, George realized that. People still didn’t like him. They never had, they never would. It was a kind of reverse magnetism he possessed. His woman, for example. You can only buy a woman from the neck down, he told himself over and over again, but you can never buy the head, except for the mouth of course. And his men, the ones who were supposed to protect him, they didn’t like him. And his chef didn’t like him—the chef could
stand
George, and seemed to
kind of
like him, but that was only because George was a good eater and, as such, a pleasure to cook for.

Hell, he thought, not even his brothers had liked him.

Not to mention his father.

But Momma (
requiescat in pace
) had liked him.

The best move he had ever made was being born of that sweet woman. Being born of the woman had made him the son of Carlo Franco (
requiescat in pace
), a big man in Chicago “business.” And the brother of Charlie Franco and Rosie Franco (
requiescat in pace
) and Sam Franco (
requiescat in pace
), who didn’t like him but provided for him. Especially after Poppa died and Charlie and Sam took the reins of the “business.”

Charlie and Sam looked out for their younger brother very well, in spite of their lack of brotherly love for him. Back in ’58 they had put him on the board of directors of the business—made him one of “The Boys.” But when George fumbled away over a half million dollars in his treasurer capacity, in a virtuoso display of incompetence, he was replaced by Lou Goldstein.

George cursed Goldstein as regularly as he ate. That goddamn Jew! What would Poppa (
requiescat in pace
) think about a Jew being one of the Family, for Christ’s sake!

But even George knew that Goldstein could keep good books. And Goldstein was a veteran of the “business” with a talent for seeing to it that other people kept good books. George, on the other hand, had trouble carrying a number over to the tens column.

George rose from the bed and headed for the bar a few steps away; he needed a fresh bottle of Scotch. Another disadvantage of wealth, George decided, was it made you waddle when you walked. Especially when you tipped the scales, as George did, at an even two hundred and eighty. When he walked on the plush red carpet, he left tracks that took their time raising into place again.

As he stood at the bar pouring a shot of Scotch, he heard a knock at the door. He glanced at his watch and said, “It’s open, Elliot,” and downed the Scotch. Time for Elliot.

A man entered the room, a man as thin as George was heavy. He wore a powder blue suit, tailored, with a blue- striped tie. His face was bony and pockmarked, and his large black horn-rimmed glasses made his head seem small. Behind the lenses of the glasses were watery blue eyes. His teeth were very white.

“How are things going for us, Elliot?”

Elliot was George’s financial secretary—the strong prime minister to George’s weak queen. Elliot said, “Things are fine, Mr. Franco.”

George poured another shot, said, “You want anything?”

“Ginger ale would be fine.”

George poured a glass, dropped a few ice cubes into it and left it on the bar for Elliot to retrieve. He headed for the bed, where he sat among the unmade sheets, wondering why Elliot never drank hard stuff, wondering why he never smoked, or never seemed to have any interest in women. Maybe he was queer, who could tell about the guy?

Elliot went after the ginger ale, then found a chair.

George, sitting on the bed, said, “How’s the college kid trade? They still buyin’ what we’re sellin’?”

“Business is good, Mr. Franco.”

“How about the feds? You said last time there was a rumor about feds.”

There had been a rumble that federal men were going to look into the Chelsey situation because of some unfavorable publicity concerning local college kids and LSD. There had been a girl who had jumped from a building while on a trip. There had been four trippers, it had been reported, who were in the hospital after having eaten magic sugar cubes and then deciding to stare at the sun. A day of sun-gazing, supposedly, resulted in all four going blind.