To Levine’s left was Harris, the owner/manager of the Dunkin’ Donuts near the mall, a heavyset guy with dark hair and a mustache and a doughy complexion; he wore a University of Iowa sweatshirt. Nice guy, but quiet. Not as quiet as Nolan, but quiet.
Andy was the most gregarious of the lot, but Levine was no wallflower, and enough beers into the evening and Harris would turn talkative, and even DeReuss would open up. Not Nolan, though. Andy never ever saw him drink enough to get really loose.
What made a guy like that tick? As Nolan dealt a hand of Black Maria — seven-card stud with high spade down splitting the pot with the poker-hand winner — Andy studied the man, wondering how anybody could be so goddamn straight. It was all business with this guy. He didn’t smoke. He barely drank. The only kink at all was this dish he lived with, Sherry, who wasn’t that much older than Heather, really; so the guy at least liked to get his ashes hauled. But if the subject turned to women, Nolan never had much to say; Andy kidded him now and then, called him pussy whipped and Nolan would just smile, barely, and that would be the end of it.
“So where’s Sherry?” Andy said, dealing five-card draw, jacks or better to open, progressive.
“Visiting a friend.” Nolan never looked at his cards till they’d all been dealt. That drove Andy a little crazy, too.
“She’s a pretty lady.”
“Yes she is,” Nolan said.
“You going to marry her, or what?”
DeReuss glanced up from his cards, sharply; evidently he found Andy’s question to Nolan rude. Tough shit.
“Maybe,” Nolan said, then turned to DeReuss. “Know where I can get a diamond?”
“I think so,” DeReuss said, with a faint dry smile. “Fifteen percent discount.”
“When the time comes, I know where you can get your toys at a twenty percent discount,” Levine grinned, adding, “I can open — bet a blue one.”
An hour later, while he was shuffling the cards, Nolan said, “I talked to our mall manager today.”
“That pinhead,” Andy said.
“He’s not so bad,” Levine said.
“He’s a child,” said DeReuss.
“I got on him about mall security again,” Nolan said. “I don’t suppose I could get any of you guys to line up with me.”
“You think it’s that big a problem?” DeReuss asked. His accent was faint, but there.
“Yeah. Our security sucks. We should do something about it. One unarmed inexperienced kid who goes home at ten.”
Harris said, “This cold weather, you’re not even getting the cops patrolling much.”
“How do you know?” Andy asked, somewhat irritably. This line of conversation bored him. “You’re not even in the mall.”
Nolan began dealing Black Maria.
Harris shrugged. “The cops always stop for coffee and doughnuts, my girls tell me. Once around midnight, and again around four. Then they make a run around the mall.”
“Every night?” Nolan asked.
Harris swigged some Coors. “Not at all, since this cold weather and snow; they haven’t eaten a doughnut in a month. They just don’t get out that far. There’s nothing else for them to patrol out so close to the Interstate, no housing developments, so few other businesses. I don’t like it. I’m easy prey for stickup guys, dope addict crazies; I like having the cops drop by for doughnuts.”
“Well, at the mall we’re tied into A-1,” Andy said, hoping to close out the subject. “They patrol.”
“No,” DeReuss said, shaking his head. “They did, for a time. But they wanted more money to continue it. The Mall Merchant Association voted it down.”
“A mistake,” Nolan said. “Ante up, gentlemen.”
An hour later, Nolan brought the dull subject up again; Andy couldn’t believe this guy.
“You have a lot to lose,” he said to DeReuss. “All your diamonds and such.”
DeReuss, who was shuffling, shrugged facially. “Our inventory is considerable, yes.”
“I can imagine.” He began dealing Black Maria. “How much?”
“Approaching three hundred in jewels and merchandise,” he said, adding, “Thousand,” to clarify three hundred what.
Jesus, Andy thought, and I thought I was in a lucrative line.
“The other jewelry store carries somewhat less,” DeReuss added, faintly regal.
Nolan smirked darkly. “And you’re protected, if you call it that, by an alarm on one easy-to-snip phone line.”
DeReuss looked at his hole cards. He smiled on one side of his face; whether it had to do with his cards or the subject at hand, Andy couldn’t tell. “I have my own security measures.”
“Oh?”
“Tear gas. Anyone opens my vault, he’ll cry all the way — and not to the bank.”
“Good idea,” Nolan said. “But I’d still appreciate your support at the next meeting.”
“What,” Andy said, “are you running for office?”
“I just think we need an armed guard on duty, twenty-four hours a day. Preferably two guards.”
God, this guy was a stick in the mud.
“Let’s play cards,” Andy said. “Fuck business.”
DeReuss said to Andy, “How’s your assistant manager working out? What’s her name?”
“Heather. Fine. I’ll open for a buck.”
DeReuss looked at his hole cards again, smiled privately. Did the Dutchman suspect about him and Heather? Andy hoped to hell not; he’d tried so hard to be careful. He wished he were with her. He was losing heavily tonight. Twenty bucks in the hole, only three hours into the game.
The game broke up around one-thirty. Nolan had cleaned up. On the last hand, which he dealt, a hand of Black Maria, he’d had the ace of spades in the hole and won the poker hand as well; it was a big pot, biggest of the night. He seemed embarrassed about it, as he was showing them out.
“For the big winner,” DeReuss said, smiling just a little, “you seem less than overjoyed.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Levine said to Nolan, grinning, ”’cause nobody I know loves the green stuff more than you.”
“Next time I’ll let you pay for your goddamn doughnuts,” Harris said, good-naturedly.
“Hey, you won,” Andy said, patting Nolan on
the shoulder. “Loosen up. Enjoy being so goddamn lucky.”
Nolan opened the door for them; he shrugged, smiled. “You’re my friends,” he said. “I hate taking your money.” And Andy and the rest went home.
11
Roger Winch felt uneasy about working with Cole Comfort again. The only time he’d worked with the guy was one money-desperate month, ten or eleven years ago, when Comfort pulled him and his partner Phil in on some supermarket heists.
Heists, hell — burglaries was more like it: Comfort and some lowlife trucker pals of his would pull up in back and load up all the beef from the meat freezer, while Roger and Phil were up front, Phil — having picked the locks to get them inside — now playing point man, watching for cops and such, while Roger blew the safe. Which was usually a snap, because virtually every one was a J. J. Taylor where he could do a simple spindle shot — knock off the dial with one swift hard blow of the sledge, and then tip her over on her back and use an eyedropper of grease, and hell, in five minutes he was in her.
Small-time jobs, those grocery “heists,” although they took thousands of bucks out of them, because Comfort knew when to time it — Thursday nights, when the stores allowed the money to pile up to cover cashing paychecks on Friday.