“She knew about it because her father helped you. Her father wasn’t a very brave man, she told me, but he had helped you. She remembered it. It made an impression.”
“How did she know?”
“Her father told her.”
That was like Sid. Nolan nodded and said, “All right.”
“All right what?”
“All right I believe you.”
There was another awkward moment, then she managed, “Well?”
“Well what?”
“What are you going to do?”
He picked up the can of malt liquor and finished it. “Decide whether or not to kill you.”
She sat back and let the air out of her as if someone had struck her in the stomach. She said, “Oh,” and shut up and sat, worry crawling over her face.
“Don’t sweat it,” Nolan said, with a faint trace of a smile. “I’m deciding against it.”
She sighed. Then, reprieve in hand, she attacked. “That’s very big of you, you bastard!”
Nolan grinned at her flatly. “See? I do have a sense of humor.”
She shook her head, not understanding him at all. Her eyes followed him as he rose and went to the door, opening it. She got up and joined him. She looked up at him with luminous brown eyes.
“Just my natural curiosity,” she said, tilting her head, “but why?”
“Why what?”
“Why in hell did you decide thumbs up for this skinny broad? I thought hard guys like you always threw the likes of me to the lions.”
Nolan hung onto the flat grin and shrugged. “I need you, for one thing.”
“How about another?”
“Well, you’re not the ‘type’ of person who ought to end up a casualty in the kind of war games I play. Anyway, I hate like hell to kill women.”
“That’s pretty goddamn chivalrous of you.” She smiled, a mild in-shock smile. “Does that mean you plan to keep me out of your life?”
“Hardly. Later on I’m going to ask you if I can move in with you for a day to two.”
That stopped her for a moment, then she got out a small, “Why?”
“I need a new place. There are some people who want to kill me and the motel I’m staying at now is getting to be a local landmark.”
She touched his shoulder. “You’re welcome to share this mausoleum with me for a while, Mr. Nolan.”
“Webb, remember?”
“All right. Earl? Earl it is. Is that all you want? A place to stay, I mean?”
“There’s more. I need information on Irene, of course.”
“Of course. Is that all?”
“We’ll see,” he said. “You need a coat?”
“Yes, just a second.” She came back with a bright pink trenchcoat and he helped her into it. She plopped a Bonnie Parker beret on her head and said, “You know the way to the Third Eye?”
He gave her half a grin. “You eat a mushroom or something, don’t you?”
“Maybe I should lead the way,” she said.
She led.
2
The third eye was a red two-story brick building along the Chelsey River, surrounded by a cement parking lot and assorted packs of young people, early teens to mid-twenties, milling about in cigarette-smoke clouds.
Nolan drove around front, in search of a parking place. He took a look at the brick building and said to Vicki Trask, who sat close by, “That looks about as psychedelic as an American Legion Hall.”
She nodded and said, “Or a little red school-house.”
At a remote corner of the parking lot, Nolan eased the Lincoln into a place it shouldn’t have fit and said, “What the hell’s the occasion?”
“You mean the crowd?”
“Yeah. It always like this?” He turned off the ignition, leaned back and fired a cigarette. As an afterthought he offered one to Vicki and she took it, speaking as she lit it from the match Nolan extended to her.
“It’s always crowded on nights when they have dances. The Eye runs four a week, and this is the biggest night of the four.”
“Why?”
“Tonight’s the night they let in the teeny-boppers. You’ll see as many high school age here as you will college, and one out of four of the hard-looking little broads you spot will be junior high.”
“Why’re the young ones restricted to one dance a week?”
“Because they run a bar — Beer Garden, they call it — on the other three nights. Serve beer and mixed drinks. And they serve anybody with enough money to buy.”
“Drinking age in Illinois is twenty-one.”
“Sure, but nobody cares. However, they don’t serve booze on the night they open the dance to high school and junior high age. Chelsey’s city fathers, pitiful guardians of virtue though they may be, even they would bitch about the Eye serving booze to that crowd.”
Nolan nodded and drew on the cigarette. He looked out the car window and stared blankly at the river. He watched the water reflect the street lights that ringed the entire area. The suggestion of a smile traced his lips.
“What are you thinking, Earl?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on... don’t tell me you couldn’t use a friend. You’re not that different from everybody else. Spill some emotion.”
Nolan shifted his eyes from the river to the glowing tip of his cigarette. “Emotion is usually a messy thing to spill.”
She edged closer, putting a warm hand against his cheek. “I’m lonely, too, Nolan.”
His jaw tightened. “It’s Webb.”
She shook her head, turned away. “Okay, okay. Be an asshole.”
He opened the car door and she slid out his side. He paused for a moment and looked out at the river again. It had reminded him of a private place of his, a cabin he maintained along a lake in Wisconsin, near a resort town. It was one of several places he kept up under the Earl Webb name, for the times between, the times of retreat from the game he played with the Boys. Even Nolan had need for moments of solitude, peace. He hadn’t meant to hurt Vicki Trask, but he didn’t know her well enough yet to share any secrets.
They walked along the riverfront, casually making their way toward the building a block away. They walked where the river water brushed up easily against the cement, lapping whitely at their feet. In spite of himself, Nolan found his hand squeezing hers and he smiled; she was lighting up warmly in response when Tulip stepped out from between two parked cars.
A scream caught in Vicki’s throat as she watched the apeish figure rise up and raise his arm to strike Nolan with the butt of a revolver.
Nolan dropped to the cement, the gun butt swishing by, cutting the air, and shot a foot into Tulip’s stomach. Tulip bounced backward and smashed against a red Chrysler, then slid to the pavement and lay still. Nolan picked the gun from Tulip’s fingers and hefted it — a .38 Smith & Wesson. Tulip made a move to get up and Nolan kicked him in the head. Tulip leaned back against the Chrysler and closed his eyes.
Nolan shook his head, said, “When they’re that stupid, they just don’t learn,” and tossed the gun out into the river.
They walked on toward the Eye, Nolan behaving as if nothing had happened. When they were half a block away from the entrance, she managed to breathlessly say, “Did... did you kill him?”
“Tulip?”
“Is that his name? Tulip?”
“Yes, that’s his name, and no, I didn’t kill him. I don’t think.”
She looked at him in fear and confusion and perhaps admiration and followed him toward the Eye.
There was a medium-sized neon sign over the door. It bore no lettering, just an abstract neon face with an extra eye in the center of its forehead. From the look of the brick, Nolan judged the building wasn’t over a year old. The kids milling about the entrance were ill-kempt, long-haired and smoked with an enthusiasm that would have curdled the blood of the American Cancer Society. Nolan saw no open use of marijuana, but he couldn’t rule it out — most all the kids were acting somewhat out of touch with reality.