Hard Cash by Max Allan Collins Read Free Book Online Page B

thought you might want somebody to talk to who knew the score.”
    She laughed. Not much of a laugh, but a laugh. “Nobody at the funeral knew what he was, you know. Except for Fred, who knows vaguely. But nobody else. It was mostly his regular customers from the bar. None of you people. Not that I expected any of you. I know it’s a thing you people have, not poking into each other’s private lives. It’s a sensible thing, seeing each other only when you’re working. It’s a cold business. Necessarily cold, I guess.”
    “I came.”
    “You did come, Nolan. Damn it if you didn’t. But you didn’t come to the funeral. Why?”
    “I don’t go to funerals.”
    “Neither did he. Till today. Tell me something, Nolan. Do you ever think of me?”
    He sipped his coffee. “Every winter. When it first snows. I think of you then.”
    She smiled again, faintly this time, and said, “The back seat of a car. Like a couple teenagers.”
    “Well, we were younger.”
    “Yeah, but not that young. Snowing to beat hell, and we’re out in the country, God knows where, in the damn car parked with the engine going and the heater going, and I’m in that fuzzy coat and you’re dropping your drawers. Christ. Maybe we were that young at that.”
    “You got some more coffee for me?”
    “Sure.”
    She poured coffee, sat back down, and said, “I don’t blame you for skipping the funeral, Nolan. I don’t blame any of those other people who worked with him, either, for not coming. I mean, how the hell are they supposed to know he’s even dead, right? You people don’t keep in such close touch, I mean. If you hadn’t happened to call, even you wouldn’t be here, right? So his bar customers are there. Nobody else, except for his first fucking wife, the bitch who sucked him dry for alimony and child fucking support—she has the balls to be there. With his two kids, who that bitch has already ruined. Jesus.”
    “Hey. Take it easy. Who the hell did you think would be there?”
    She slammed her fist on the table, and the coffee cups jumped. “Where were those fucking bookies? They’re there when it’s time for Breen to pay up. They’re there with a hot tip for the sucker. They’re there extending credit at shylock rates. But when Breen’s planted in the fucking ground, oh, no. They aren’t there then, even though they fucking put him there!”
    So that was why she hadn’t cried: she was too angry. She was too pissed off about her husband’s death to mourn him yet.
    “Is that what happened?” Nolan asked. “Do you think it was somebody he owed money to who killed him?”
    “Well, the cops say it’s robbery. He probably had, what, fifty bucks in the till, and the cops say his head was blown off for that. Can you buy that, Nolan? Fifty bucks got his head blown off? Not me, no, I don’t buy it, I don’t buy it at all.”
    “Mary, people been killed for a lot less.”
    “I know, but people like my husband? A guy like him, a professional thief who always dealt in the thousands of dollars, getting wasted by some cheap punk for a few bucks? I mean, it’s too cute, too . . . you know, ironic, too ... it’s bullshit, is what it is.”
    “Maybe. Wasn’t there someone with him when he was killed?”
    Her jaws clenched. She rubbed her cheek, as if she was sanding wood. “Yeah there was someone with him. There was a bitch with him. But what about this morning, at his funeral, Nolan, where were they then, his bitches, his young goddamn cunts? Where were they? They’d lay him, yeah, but not to rest. Shit”
    “Mary.”
    “Will you tell me something? Will you tell me something, Nolan? Am I some ugly old woman? Am I a wife you cheat around on?”
    “Settle down. You’re not old, and you’re not ugly. But Breen did cheat around on you. You know that. I know it. I also know seven years ago, before you and Breen were married, when you and Breen were just going together, when you were just a barmaid of his yourself, that one