They didn’t walk back up the wooded slope; they walked up the slickly icy street and cut to the right, up Nolan’s drive.
“Are we going to call the police?” Jon said.
Nolan just looked at him.
Jon squinted at him. “Why, do you think this might be something from the past?”
“Maybe.”
“What do we do now?”
“Wait. They’ll call.”
The phone on the kitchen wall rang at 9:37.
“Nolan,” Nolan said.
“Lose something?”
The voice was male, rather soothing; an older man. With a faint, very faint southern accent. Nolan felt sick to his stomach; it was an alarm bell of sorts.
“Yes,” he said.
“Do you know who you’re speaking to?”
“No,” he said.
A warm chuckle. “You will soon enough. Is there some... neutral place we can meet? To discuss terms?”
Nolan thought for a moment. Then he said, “Downtown Rock Island, the Terminal Tap. Next to the bus station.”
“That sounds nice and public. Bring your little friend.”
“My little friend.”
“That curly-headed kid. He’s part of the deal.”
“I can’t speak for him.”
“You better. Twenty minutes?”
The line went dead.
Jon was sitting nearby, perched on the edge of the kitchen table. “Nolan...”
“Sherry is in very deep shit.”
“What’s going on?”
“That was Coleman Comfort.”
Jon’s brow knit a sweater and his mouth dropped to the floor but he said nothing.
“Sam Comfort’s brother,” Nolan explained.
“I didn’t even know Sam Comfort had a brother!”
“Now you do. Cole makes Sam look like Sister Mary Teresa.”
“Oh, Jesus...” Jon’s head was lowered and he was running a hand through his hair.
“He wants you to come to the meet.”
Jon looked up and his eyes were round with fear, panic. “Me?”
“You don’t have to.”
Jon twitched a half smile. “Sure I do.” Then, trying to build Nolan’s confidence back up in him, said casually, “I don’t get invited to enough parties to afford turning down any invitations.”
“Right.”
They took Nolan’s silver Trans Am and on the way he filled Jon in on Coleman Comfort.
“I did one job with him and Sam both,” he said, as they rolled by a peaceful snowy park. “A long time ago. I always felt they would’ve crossed me if they weren’t a little afraid of me.”
“But you never had any real trouble with him,” Jon said, meaning Cole Comfort.
“None before now. But Jon — remember: he thinks we killed his brother.”
Bitterly, Jon said, “Even though we didn’t.”
“He also thinks we killed his two nephews, and he’s a little more justified on that score.”
“Shit, that’s right.” Jon shook his head.
Nolan knew that the kid had done his best to put this part of his life behind him, to forget about the darkness there.
“God help us,” Jon said, “we did kill one of them.”
“Not ‘we,’” Nolan said. “I killed him.”
“Same difference.”
“In Cole Comfort’s mind, yes.”
Jon sighed. Weight of the world.
“Anyway, that’s what this is about,” Nolan said. “Revenge. Sherry may be dead already.”
Jon looked over with some panic back in his face. “But he’s set up a meet in a public place...”
“That may be to throw us off. He’s crazy. He may pull a shotgun from under the table and start blasting.”
“Oh, wonderful. And us unarmed.”
“No,” Nolan said. “There’s a .38 in the glove box. Get it.”
Jon opened the glove box and rustled around; under several maps and behind sunglasses and a flashlight he found a .38, a snub nose.
“Short barrel,” Jon said, checking to see if it was loaded, which it was. “Not your style.”
“Good enough for the car,” Nolan shrugged.
“What about you?”
He took his right hand away from the wheel and patted his gray leather topcoat, where his left arm met his shoulder.
“Is it going to come down to that?” Jon asked. “Shooting it out with some crazy old fucker in a bar?”
“Maybe,” Nolan said.
“And you think she may be dead already.”
“Yes.”
The Terminal Tap was a dump — a narrow dingy dark hole where stale, smoky air mingled with loud country western music; half of the usual neon signs and plastic beer signs were burnt out. So was most of the clientele, which seemed largely blue-collar, probably out-of-work blue-collar mostly, considering the Quad Cities economy. Comfort wasn’t there yet, at least not at a booth or table or at the bar. Nolan checked both the men’s and women’s cans, his gun in his overcoat pocket, and a woman fluffing her bouffant glared at him in the mirror and said, “Do you mind?”
Then Nolan and Jon took a back booth. A pockmarked barmaid of thirty-seven or so in a checked blouse and too much makeup and badly permed mousy brown hair took time out from chewing her gum to take their order. Nolan said, “Anything draw,” and Jon nodded the same.
“Okay,” she said, but Nolan grasped her arm. He held up a ten-dollar bill for her to see.
“What’s that for?” she asked. She had brown eyes. Pretty eyes under a shitload of makeup.
“This booth next to us, and this table,” Nolan said. “They’re empty.”
“Yeah,” she said, “right. So?”
“So keep it that way,” he said, and pressed the bill into her hand.
“Sure,” she shrugged, smiled briefly at Nolan. It wasn’t busy. She’d have no trouble keeping them clear.
The beers arrived in five minutes, and in ten so did Coleman Comfort.
He was a tall, lean, white-haired man with a craggy but almost handsome face. He was wearing a western-style denim jacket with yellow pile lining and an off-white Stetson-type hat with a rattlesnake band; he stood just inside the door, pulling off heavy gloves, stamping the snow off his cowboy boots, unsnapping the denim jacket, revealing a blue plaid shirt, looking for Nolan.
Nolan leaned out of the booth and crooked a finger.
Comfort grinned like a wolf and came to them, slowly, holding his fur-lined leather gloves in one hand, slapping them into the palm of the other.
Comfort stood next to their booth and gloated. His blue eyes crinkled at the corners as he said, “Nolan. Been a long time.”
The jukebox, which was in the corner just across from them, blared a Gatlin Brothers song.
“Sit down,” Nolan said, and motioned for Jon to slide over and make room. That put Jon and the snub nose to Comfort’s right, and Nolan and his long-barreled .38, which was in his left hand, under the table, directly across from Comfort.
“You might’ve ordered me a beer,” Comfort said, eyes narrowed, affecting a mock sad expression, like a friend just a little disappointed in another.
“Don’t fuck around,” Nolan said.
The smile returned, and it was colder than outside. “I’ll do what I please. It’s my goddamn show.”
The pockmarked barmaid came over and Comfort ordered a shot of whiskey. Old Grand-Dad, he insisted.
“Your little girl is just fine,” Comfort said, slapping the gloves nervously against the cigarette-scarred, graffiti-carved wooden tabletop between them. He was still wearing the rattlesnake-banded hat. “Tucked away in a quiet spot, safe and sound. I’m not going to hurt her.”
“Good. What do you want?”
He leaned back against the booth and gestured with a thick, gnarled hand. “You know, when my boy Lyle spotted you — he stopped by your fancy joint, you know, not so long ago — and told me he seen you, well, first thing I thought about was getting even.”