Fly Paper by Max Allan Collins Read Free Book Online

here. You got a gun? I don’t carry one, goddamn it, or I might’ve stayed there and shot it out with the fuckheads. But you better get a gun and go out there and move that goddamn car of mine, the windshield’s shot to shit, and if nothing else, you don’t want some cop spotting it and asking questions.”
    “Okay,” Jon said.
    “ Do you have a gun, kid?”
    “I got a couple.”
    “Maybe I ought to back you up. Maybe you ought to help me out of this bed, and I’ll stand at the window or something and back you up . . .”
    “Look. Lean back and shut up. For a guy just got shot, you’re sure lively. If you don’t talk yourself to death, you’ll do it to me.”
    “Say,” Breen said. “You do know Nolan, don’t you?”
    Jon grinned, told the guy to shut up and rest, and left him.
    Back upstairs, Jon stuck one of his uncle’s .32 automatics in his waistband, threw on a wind- breaker, and went down to move the car. First he drove his own car, an old Chevy II he’d had for some time, out of the garage in the rear and re-placed it with Breen’s Mustang. Then he shut the garage door and pulled the nose of the Chevy II up just close to touching. The door had no windows, and the way the garage was built into the shop’s back end, it had windows on the left side only, and those were opaque and grilled, with no way for anyone to see whether or not the Mustang was in there, short of breaking in. Not that breaking in didn’t sound like something the Comforts were easily capable of.
    He was just inside the door when light came shooting through one of the side windows in the shop, the lights from the front beams of a car pulling in. The Comforts had come calling. He took the windbreaker off and stuck the .32 in his belt behind his back, leaving right hand on hip for easy access.
    The knock came soon enough, and Jon sucked in wind. He told himself to be calm, damn it, calm, and wondered if once, just once, he could pull off something without Nolan holding his hand. There was a night latch on the door, which Jon left bolted, cracking open the door to stare into a gray-eyed, wrinkled old face that had to belong to Sam Comfort. It was the sort of face that looked kind, superficially, but actually was full of the smile-lines that come from a sadistic sense of humor. Sixty-some years ago, you would’ve found this man a child, pulling the wings off butterflies.
    “Who the hell are you?” Sam Comfort asked.
    Jon was getting tired of that question. On top of his case of nerves, it was especially irritating, and he moved his right hand further back on his hip, closer to the .32, rubbing the sweat off his palm as he did. He said, “It’s after midnight, mister. We’re closed.”
    Comfort’s boozy breath was overpowering, but the gray eyes were not unclear; he was the type of man who could drink you under the table and not feel it himself.
    He said, “I’m not a customer.”
    ‘That makes us even,” Jon said, “because I’m not selling anything.”
    “I’m an old friend of Planner’s.”
    “I don’t care what you are,” Jon said, and started to close the door.
    Thick, strong fingers curled around the door’s edge and held it open. “I said I’m a friend of Planner’s. Tell him an old friend’s here to see him.”
    “Let go of the door.”
    Comfort did, tentatively.
    Jon said, “My uncle—Planner—is dead.”
    “Oh, I’m sorry. Sorry. I hadn’t heard. How did it happen, boy?”
    “Heart attack.” Which was what the death certificate had said, anyway, and an expensive damn piece of paper that was, too.
    “And you’re his nephew, then? Taking over the business, are you?”
    “No. I got no interest in antiques, and I’m going to sell all the stock at once, soon as a good buyer turns up, and will you please get out of here and let me get some sleep?”
    The gray eyes narrowed, then eased up. “Well, I’m sorry to see you so hostile to an old friend of your uncle’s, and I’m sorry to hear the