Читаем Blood Money полностью

“I usually charge for appraising,” Planner said. He wondered how he could be so petty; why didn’t he just tell them come on in and take a look at their damn china. But he was irritated, irritated Nolan hadn’t called yet, and couldn’t help himself taking it out on these nice folks.

“How much?”

The older man seemed to be getting a shade irritated himself, Planner thought, and with just cause, he supposed.

“Oh, a dollar,” Planner said. “But what the hell... come on in and I’ll tell you what I think of the stuff. Never mind the buck.”

“Thank you,” the older man said.

The younger one said nothing. He looked kind of pale. He wasn’t the healthiest-looking kid Planner had ever seen.

“I’ll get the box,” the older man said, and he went to the car and got a big cardboard box out of the front seat.

What’s wrong with that kid? Planner wondered. Letting his father carry that box. What was wrong with him?

Planner held the screen door open for the older man and the boy followed close on the man’s heels. Planner shut the screen and locked the side door. He didn’t like anyone coming in the side door, and besides, he had to keep it shut to keep the air-conditioning circulating.

Right away, the young man walked up to the front of the store and started browsing. Almost immediately he found the display case of political buttons and looked in at them. In spite of himself, Planner felt proud; no one could resist his buttons.

At the rear of the store, the older man was setting the large box on the counter, which ran from the front of the store clear back. The counter had once been used as the bar in a saloon back in Iowa City’s pioneer days, and was one of the more valuable antiques in the store, though it was roughed up and scarred and chipped from daily use for a century or so. Planner let out a sigh. The sigh was one part boredom, the other part anticipation. Well, he thought, might as well see what this fella has in the box; maybe it’ll take my mind off waiting for Nolan to call.

The older man was lifting some newspapers out of the box and laying them on the counter. He said to Planner, “Come take a look at this, I think you’ll find it interesting,” and Planner walked over to him and joined him at the end of the counter. The man reached both arms into the box and came back up holding an automatic in either hand. The automatics were good-size guns, not.45’s, but good size. Nine millimeters, probably. Worst of all, Planner thought, they had silencers on them. That was bad. Very bad. It meant these guys were most likely pros of some kind. Somehow he knew. Somehow Planner knew these men knew about his safe full of money. It’s all your fault, Nolan, he thought.

The older man nodded to the younger man, who was still in the front of the store. The younger man locked the front door; it was a Yale lock and was no trouble. He turned the sign around on the door so that the side reading “Closed” faced out, while the “Open” faced in. He hadn’t really been interested in buttons at all. He walked back and joined the older man and Planner. The older man gave the boy one of the silenced automatics. The boy held it tight and with some effort, as though the gun were very heavy. As though it were an anvil he was holding.

The older man watched the boy for a moment to make sure he was all right. Then he said, “Let’s go in your back room and talk. I don’t want nobody looking in the windows and seeing us talking. They might get suspicious, seeing we got a couple of goddamn guns.”

Planner didn’t like the older man. He appeared to be cool, calm, and collected, but there was a manic edge to his voice. He wasn’t crazy about the nervous kid, either. He wished he was in Tahiti.

Also, he wasn’t crazy about taking them into the backroom. There were two rooms directly behind where they were standing, and in the farthest one back was the safe. Planner would have liked to have been behind the counter, up by the cash register. He kept a Colt.32 automatic under the counter by the cash register. It wasn’t a big gun, because he didn’t want a lot of bullets flying and messing up his store, in case of a robbery; a.32 was big enough to do whatever was needed. But right now he wished it was a.357 magnum, so he could blow these fuckers into a million bloody pieces. He didn’t like either one of them at all.

“Move it,” the older man said. He shoved Planner’s shoulder with the heel of his hand.

Planner said, “All right,” and led them into the first of the backrooms. He pulled the string on the overhead hanging bulb. The room was full of boxed and crated antiques Planner was saving for some hazy future use.

“Where’s the safe?” the older man said.

Planner smiled. He’d been right! He’d been right. They knew. They did know.

The older man slapped Planner across the face with the silenced gun. The blood was salty in his mouth. The older man said, “Where’s the goddamn safe?”

“This way,” Planner said.