Spree by Max Allan Collins Read Free Book Online Page B

“Jon—you can find someplace to crash. You’ll put things back together soon enough.”
    “Christ, I got a deadline to meet with my comic book! I just lost two days in Cedar Rapids being civil to rude little fan boys who would’ve much rather met the guy who draws the X-Men! I have work to do, and you’re telling me I don’t have anyplace to sleep tonight.”
    “Tonight you do. He wants you out tomorrow noon.”
    “Oh, wonderful. Wonderful. It’s nice to have a little lee-way .”
    “You’ll put it back together. Jon, it’s not like we . . . well, we’re just friends. We’re not lovers.”
    “I guess we aren’t,” he said. He sat down again. “But I’m awful used to you.”
    “Maybe that isn’t such a good thing. This’ll be good for you.”
    “What’ll I do? Where will I crash? Where the hell’s my short-term future, anyway? Never mind the long term.”
    She shrugged. “Why don’t you go visit your pal Nolan. In the Quad Cities. Stay with him awhile. It might be relaxing.”
    It might at that, Jon thought.
    “In the meantime,” she said, wickedly, pulling off her Springsteen sweatshirt, exposing the full firm breasts he would soon be missing very much, “why don’t you fuck me good-bye?”
    “What are friends for?” Jon shrugged, pulling off his Space Pirates shirt, quite sure that of the ways he was getting screwed this afternoon, this would be the most pleasant.
     
     
    5
     
     
    FAMILY MEANT everything to Coleman Comfort. Family and money. Not that you could separate the two: Cole’s loyalty to his kin was measured by money, by how good a provider he could be. As a wise man once said, there was no better yardstick of love than money.
    Not that he bore the burden on his shoulders alone. He had taught his sons that you had to work in order to find your way in this world. The oldest, Clarence, had gone into construction and was making a fine living for himself and his wife and four kids, till the accident with the crane. Since Clarence’s death, Cole had seen to it that his daughter-in-law got a check every month, or he had till she remarried, to some jerk who owned a motel. He wasn’t bitter about that or anything: he didn’t expect a fine young woman like Wanda to stay single. It was just that the family responsibility had shifted to the jerk.
    As for the other boys, he couldn’t complain. Willis would be out of Fort Madison in about a year; the boy had been doing just fine with that chop-shop operation in Dubuque—he just had a thing or two to learn about greasing the law, is all. You can’t run a business without certain expenses, and payoffs was one of them. But, hell. Those two years inside would be just the education Willis would need to get himself back on track.
    Lyle, well, he was doing good, considering. Considering he’d inherited both Thedy Sue’s good looks and her meager brainpower.
    Thedy, bless her soul, was the prettiest thing Cole ever saw. He’d married her during the war; he was selling tires and such on the black market in Atlanta and she was a backwoods girl come to the big city. She was waitressing but Cole knew she’d fall into hooking if some knight in shining armor didn’t come along, which was Cole Comfort all over. He gave her some nylons and they were married soon after.
    Thedy Sue was all Georgia peaches and cream, creamy skin, breasts like peaches, a strawberry blonde with freckles and wide blue empty eyes. Thick as a plank she was, but she kept her looks over the years; never ran to fat. She learned to cook and she had a sweet disposition. What did it matter if she thought two plus two was twenty-two, and signed her name with an X? What counted was she fucked like a monkey, and only with her lawful wedded husband.
    She died giving birth to Cindy Lou. Sometimes Cole blamed himself for that; maybe they should’ve gone to a hospital. Hell, it was a fluke, the baby coming out feet-first and all that blood and all. Who could’ve predicted it? Cole