What sort of hell was she going through? He’d been there himself — he’d been held hostage before, and knew firsthand of the helplessness, the hopelessness, the all-pervasive fear it engendered. And her captors were Cole and Lyle Comfort — he shivered at the thought, and the cold day.
Presumably Comfort would keep her alive and well till tonight’s heist, at least, to keep Nolan playing. Comfort’s own reputation was so rotten it had obviously forced him to call on people who’d worked with Nolan — Fisher, Winch, Dooley — pros who would put their misgivings about working with Comfort aside when they heard Nolan was aboard. (The Leeches were another matter.) This put Nolan’s importance beyond providing inside information and planning; Comfort had — no doubt reluctantly, but of necessity — made Nolan the linchpin of the heist.
Without Nolan, the mall haul simply would not go down. If Nolan failed to show, Fisher, Winch and Dooley would walk.
What Comfort didn’t know, of course, was that those three already knew the real score; Fisher, like Winch and Dooley before him, had last night promised to follow Nolan’s lead, even down to aborting the job (in favor of Nolan kicking in a fifteen-grand payoff — business was business).
At just after four o’clock, Jon decided to take a chance. He pulled off the ski mask and replaced it with a gray beret and wrapped the black muffler around his neck up higher, so that it covered the bottom of his face, like a stagecoach robber. He tucked a square flat brown-paper-wrapped package under his left arm, locked up the van and walked across the snowy parking lot and into the Holiday Inn. His gloveless right hand was on the snub-nose .38 in the deep pocket of his coat.
Cindy Lou had mentioned, yesterday, that her father and the Leeches had spent a good deal of time together, in the lounge, which was off the restaurant, and Jon peeked in. It was just a bar and some booths and a few small tables and a middle-aged mustached pianist playing “Just the Way You Are.” A couple sat at the bar, and some businessmen sat in one of the booths. But in another of the booths the Leeches and Cole Comfort were sitting, countless bottles of beer before them. They were going over one of Nolan’s photocopied maps of the mall. Right in front of God and the pianist and everybody.
Jesus Christ, Jon thought, ducking out before he was seen. Finding them confabbing there meant he’d hit pay dirt; but he couldn’t get excited about it because he was too struck by the notion that he just might possibly be pulling a job with these morons in a few hours.
He walked the halls till he found 714 — the numbering system seemed to apply to wings, not floors — and knocked on the door. He knocked with his left hand, brown-paper package still tucked under his arm, his right hand still clutching the revolver, which remained in his pocket but pointed toward the door, because if Lyle Comfort answered it, Jon just might have to shoot the fucker.
No answer to his knock.
He sighed. He was trembling. He simply was not cut out for this life. What was he doing, hanging around with a guy like Nolan. What the fuck was he doing with a revolver in his pocket.
He knocked again.
The door cracked open and Cindy Lou’s faintly freckled face peered out, and broke into a lovely smile, the small, childlike teeth whiter than outside. She was lovely, but seemed a little haggard. Was it the light of day, and lack of makeup — or had she had a rough night?
In any event, she was dripping wet, except for her reddish-blond hair, which was pulled back from her face. She was wearing a white towel.
“Hi, Cindy Lou.”
Her smile disappeared, and the door chain was still between them. “You shouldn’t oughta come here,” she said, big blue eyes going smaller as she tightened her expression.
“I brought your record.”
The eyes got as large as they were blue again, and she smiled; but then the smile faded, and her eyes became merely huge. “Daddy’s around. It’s dangerous.”
“I think I spotted him in the lounge. He seemed settled in.”
Her brow crinkled. “How would you know which was my daddy?”
“Let me in, Cindy Lou. I got to talk to you.”
Her face tightened further, in thought; under those remarkable eyes she had dark circles. Then the chain was drawn aside, and she opened the door; he stepped inside and chained the door behind him. He handed her the brown package and she opened it greedily, saying “All right!” as the towel dropped to the floor.
Her body, in the light of day, looked just fine. Very pale flesh, very pink, very erect nipples, peachlike breasts, her strawberry-blond pubic hair trimmed into a heart shape, something he hadn’t seen in the near-light of the back of the van last night. His dick said boy, howdy, and he told it, down boy.
And she just stood there, not caring a whit about her nudity, jiggling, bouncing as she grinned and looked at the cover of the Nodes album, front and back.
“I remember some of these songs,” she said, “from hearing you play!”
“Maybe you better get dressed,” he said.
She stood there with her weight on one hip, a hand on one hip, holding the album in her other hand like it was a tray and she was an amused but bored carhop at a topless drive-in.
“Or maybe not,” he said, and took her in his arms and kissed her; she immediately began taking his coat off, even as she was putting her darting tongue in his mouth, and the coat dropped to the floor like the dead weight it was, the gun-in-pocket clunking. Her hands worked on his zipper and she went down on her knees in front of him.
Jon stood there, shaking his head, wondering how he lost control of the situation so fast, and he was in her mouth, but only for a second when he pulled away and said, “No.”
Still on her knees she looked up at him with utter confusion. “No?” she repeated, as if she didn’t understand the meaning of the word.
Certainly in this context, the word seemed out of place, but Jon forced himself back in his pants and said to her, “Get dressed. We got to talk, and I can’t talk to you when you’re like that.”
She smirked humorlessly and got up and picked up her towel and dried herself off a little, and he watched her, every cell of his body aching with regret, as a beautiful naked teenage female, as yet a stranger to cellulite, put on panties and jeans and a loose-fitting red sweater with a scoop neck that showed just enough cleavage to make him simultaneously wish he were dead and could live forever.
She stood there, weight on one hip again, both hands on her hips this time, smirking, but good-naturedly now, challenging him to find something to talk about that was more important than her giving him the best goddamned blowjob the state of Missouri had to offer, in Iowa yet.
He put his coat back on, put his hand on the .38 grip within the pocket, and looked around the room. The signs of Cole Comfort living here were few; his clothes were apparently either in the dresser and closet or still in suitcases. There was a half-empty bottle of Old Grand-Dad on the dresser. Her clothes were also put away, and her personal items must have been in the bathroom, because there was no particular sign of Cindy Lou, either, except her denim jacket slung over a chair, and on a table a Hit Parader magazine with heavy-metal groups on the cover, a publication he didn’t figure was on Cole Comfort’s subscription list.
The side wall of the room was orange-vinyl-curtained sliding doors, leading out to the pool area. Jon reached behind there and unlocked one of the sliding doors; the swimming pool (like Nolan’s) was covered with plastic and a fresh layer of white powder, shimmering in the daylight like a vast coke-covered mirror.