Business tonight at Nolan’s was slow, but business overall was good. This was a Thursday, always the quiet before the weekend storm, and the owner/manager of the nightclub/restaurant had no complaints…other than boredom, perhaps. He preferred it hopping, because that meant time went fast and profits piled up. For a man who seemed so calm and self-composed—enough so that he could make other people nervous—Nolan had a restlessness that required action.
Or anyway activity. At fifty-five he was not unhappy to be free of the twenty years he’d spent running from mob guys and helming high-end robberies, pursuits that had overlapped in sometimes harrowing ways. This set-up was what he had trained for in Chicago, in the early days before he alienated a top wise guy, whose brother he killed, which was a big part of the alienation.
Now Nolan was back to square one, but in a good way. The money he’d accumulated in the heisting years had bought him this nice slice of the American Dream. The place had been an ersatz TGI Fridays when he opened it, all barnwood booths and nostalgic tin signs and old movie posters; but he had remodeled over the winter.
Now Nolan’s, despite its mall location, was a classic supper club, high-end dark wood paneling and endless polished bar, black-and-white-checked marble floor, white-linen tables, framed photos of movie stars and recording artists from his era, and in the men’s room framed pin-up prints by Vargas and Petty. Fridays and Saturdays, a portable maple dance floor was set up in the side room, where a local combo played and their vocalist, a pretty black girl from Rock Island, sang the Great American Songbook.
Sherry had hated the idea at first, until she saw the crowds stream in, thanks to a great write-up in the Quad City Times. Her only complaint about the clientele had been a whispered, “They’re so old,” but he had told his twenty-three-year-old hostess (and live-in lover), “Not any older than me. Some are even younger.”
“Might be a fad,” she’d said.
He shrugged. “Then we’ll ride it out and do something else.”
Sherry, slender, pert-breasted, blue-eyed, Bardot-lipped, her shoulder-brushing light brown hair frosted blonde, had soon traded in her funky Madonna-ish threads for classic cocktail dresses. He even caught her humming songs written long before she was born. Educating the girl was the least he could do, considering what she did for him.
Leaning an elbow against the bar, not taking up one of the stools, Nolan made a distinctive host—rangy with dark, well-barbered widow’s-peaked hair, gray at the temples, cheekbones on loan from an Apache, eyes narrow and permanently suspicious. His chevron mustache, carefully trimmed and free of gray, added more than a hint of Western gunfighter.
He wore a milk-chocolate Armani suit with wide shoulders and pleated pants and a dark-chocolate collarless shirt, and black Ferragamo wingtips. As a man tight with a dollar, he did not like to think how much this (and other togs in a recently refurbished wardrobe) had set him back, but Sherry had insisted.
“You invested in making this place classy,” she said. “Now it’s your turn.”
She reminded him it was all deductible and, further, that how he presented himself as the Nolan of Nolan’s was crucial.
The kitchen closed at nine, fifteen minutes from now. At her hostess station, in her perfectly coiffed hair and low-cut black lace cocktail dress, Sherry looked like the world’s most beautiful female preacher standing at her pulpit. He could tell she was working at keeping that pleasant expression going, fighting boredom, checking her watch every couple of minutes—her hostess duties ended when the kitchen’s did.
She glanced at him, made a funny face, and he curled a finger at her. Her eyebrows went up, making the big blue eyes bigger. He used his entire hand now, summoning her like a plane coming in for a landing.
The black lace dress was tight enough to make the trip take longer than might seem possible as she came over and planted herself before him.
“Thirteen minutes to go,” she said.
She was standing closer than decorum might advise. Bobby Darin was singing “The Good Life” on the sound system, softly, but you could make out every word.
“The waitresses can handle any strays,” Nolan said. “Fred can tally up the registers and lock up.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Looking for a little quality time with my girl. Is that a crime?”
They traded lazy little smiles.
She said, “You must think I’m an easy lay.”
“Here’s hoping.”
They lived on the Illinois side of the Quad Cities, in Moline, up the hill off 16th Street in a trendy housing development, a drive that took half an hour from the mall restaurant, depending on traffic. The two didn’t speak on the way, not a word. He had something on his mind and she could obviously sense that, though some of her glances said she wasn’t sure whether she was in for a literal kiss or a figurative slap.
He left the car radio tuned to her favorite station—the fare running to Bangles, Madonna, Heart, and Starship—and neither complained nor switched to Easy Listening. He’d never admitted it to her, but really he was fine with what she liked, having grown up when rock ’n’ roll got going. Besides, he got enough of Tony Bennett and Peggy Lee and the various Rat Pack boys at work.
It was just that he had a subject he didn’t want to broach in the car. If she read that wrong, that was up to her. He’d straighten her out soon enough.
They’d been together, off and on, for about four years. When they started, she’d been on the planet for less than two decades while he had been breathing for a half a century. Even now, the age difference lifted eyebrows, but had been nobody’s business until maybe the last year or so. He was getting respectable. He belonged to two country clubs. He was a member of the Chamber of Commerce.
A golfing buddy had said, kidding on the square, “That girl you live with is young enough to be your daughter.”
“Right,” Nolan said. “But you know what the best part is?”
“No, what?”
“She isn’t.”
Sherry had been his employee when they met, a kid who’d just graduated junior college working a summer job in the restaurant of the Tropical Motel, which Nolan had run for the Chicago Outfit for a while after he and they made peace. He let others with experience in the hospitality industry handle the heavy lifting on the motel side—nightclubs and restaurants were his strong suit.
He was well aware that waitressing was hard, underrated work, but right off the bat this girl Sherry had a handle on the key elements, from math skills to customer service, from speed to efficiency. Still, her best quality—people skills—proved her greatest weakness. She would chat up customers and get distracted and food would slide from trays and drinks would get spilled. The latter wasn’t always accidental.
With her curvy coed’s body wrapped up in a short-skirted green uniform, Sherry’s pleasantness would unwittingly encourage men to get fresh and, more than once, she had poured hot coffee into the lap of a would-be Romeo. Nolan had almost fired her twice.
That culminated in the head waitress coming to his office at the rear of the restaurant to say she’d just handled a third such infraction on Sherry’s part.
“How upset is the patron, Doris?” he asked her.
The forty-something bottle blonde, with heavy makeup and a world of experience, said, “He was screaming. Maybe a lot of that was the coffee in his crotch. I said there’d be no charge for his meal and he stormed back to his room to clean himself up.”
“Ah. A guest with the motel.”
“Yes. His friends are still here. They just put their orders in. His included. I imagine he’ll be back for his free meal.”
Nolan nodded. “Send the girl back here.”
She did.
Soon he was saying to the crying waitress, “This is the third goddamn lap you’ve spilled hot coffee into. How is that even possible?”
She had tearfully explained: “They were all dirty old men.”
“No shortage of those. Sometimes you have to cut these creeps some slack.”
“This one said I had a nice ass.”
The customer is always right, Nolan thought, but said, “Sometimes you have to look the other way. Some of our guests are rough around the edges.”
They had patrons from Chicago who made the trip to the Tropical near DeKalb to get away, have a swim, play a little golf, boink their girlfriends or even sometimes their wives, and also to talk business in private. The FBI wasn’t wise to the Tropical, so the rooms weren’t watched or wired. Nolan made sure of that.
“How out of line,” Nolan asked her, “did this guest get?”
“I told you,” she said, chin quivering. “He said I had a nice ass.” She swallowed. “And he had his hand on it at the time.”
“Just patted it or…?”
“Grabbed it. I asked him to let go and he didn’t and I pulled away and…poured his coffee.”
That sounded like self-defense.
“Point out the table,” Nolan said, rising, “where his friends are sitting.”
She followed him to the office door and hid behind him, peeking around.
“There he is,” she whispered. “Just sitting down.”
Returning from his room with a change of wardrobe below the belt. Not that guys like that ever changed below the belt.
Nolan knew him from an earlier visit to the Tropical—a low-level Outfit guy named Joe Something, joining three other bent-nose boys at a center table. They were in pastel shirts and plaid shorts and hairy legs and black socks.
“Okay,” he said. “Get back out on the floor. You’re needed.”
“Yes, sir.”
Nolan released her into the wild, waited a minute or so, then headed over to the four men at their table. The Tropical’s restaurant was nothing fancy, just a step up from a truck-stop diner, with only some half-ass plastic parrot art and fake Hawaiian-type flowers and plants to spice up the walls. Not his dream job, but at least he was back in solid with the Outfit.
“Gentlemen,” Nolan said, leaning in, smiling, but no one smiled back; these were the kind of expressions you saw at the track when a horse hadn’t come in. “Joe, there’s a call for you in my office.”
Nolan and Joe chatted amiably as they walked to the rear of the dining area, and inside the office, with the door closed, Nolan slipped an arm around Joe, who looked a little like a sinister version of that fat cop on Car 54 Where Are You?.
Joe, noting the phone on its hook, looked confused. “What call?”
“No call. I just want a word. I have no desire to embarrass you in public.”
“Why would you embarrass me in public?”
“Because you embarrassed a staff member of mine. In public.”
A thick upper lip peeled back over cigarette-stained teeth. “You do know who I work for?”
“I know exactly who you work for.”
“That’s good,” Joe said gruffly.
“Which is why I wanted a private word. We’re happy here at the Tropical to provide a place where my Chicago friends can get away for a day or two. To relax. Eat well. Catch some sun and swim. Or even do business in privacy.”
He shrugged big shoulders. “Place is nothin’ fancy, but it’s okay.”
“Right. Well, thing is—we’re also a family place. People from nearby towns come here. Sycamore, DeKalb, Geneva. So you could do me a favor.”
“Name it.”
“Tell the boys to keep their hands off the waitresses. These are not hookers, they’re college girls and locals.”
Joe slipped out from under Nolan’s arm and his face got red as he shook a fist at his host. “Who the fuck do you think you are, talkin’ to me like that?”
“I think I’m the guy,” Nolan said cheerfully, “who shot Big Charlie’s brother and got away with it.”
Then he put his hand in Joe’s face and pushed him, startling him. The fat boy staggered back, blinking, and then Nolan started slapping him. Three slaps that rang in the room.
Astonished, Joe stood there, panting.
“Questions?” Nolan asked.
Joe shook his head.
“I’ll get the check for your entire party. Rooms, too. Enjoy your stay.”
Nolan opened the office door for the guy and gestured for him to go out, which he did, huffing and puffing as he went.
Sherry, serving some customers on the floor and managing not to empty her tray on any of them, watched with big blue eyes as Nolan wandered into the well-populated restaurant with its plastic flora and fauna and stood with folded arms as the fat patron and his three thuggish friends got up, all four glaring back at Nolan, but saying nothing as they hauled ass out.
Sherry smiled at him.
Nolan nodded at her.
Back in his office, Nolan made a call to his contact with the Outfit, a lawyer named Felix who had a single, albeit important, client. He reported the incident.
“I’ll take care of it,” Felix said. “We can’t have our people shitting where they eat.”
“You can’t have them shitting where my customers eat. You want me out of here, say the word.”
“No. You were within bounds.”
“I don’t have to kill anybody?”
“No. Not unless they do something foolish before I can get the word out, then…by all means, do whatever. They’re low-level. Not Family.”
“Got it. Thanks.”
Goodbyes were said, phones hung up.
Toward the end of the afternoon, a knock came on Nolan’s door. He opened his right-hand desk drawer, where a .38 long-barreled revolver kept itself available, and reached his hand in, settling it around the gun’s grip, saying, “Yeah.”
Sherry, looking remarkably fresh for end of shift, asked from the doorway. “May I come in, Mr. Logan?”
That was the name he’d been using lately.
“Please.” He took his hand off the weapon.
She shut the door and came over to the desk, where no chair was provided since Nolan preferred not to talk to people that long.
“I wanted to thank you,” she said, standing there, “for throwing those men out.”
“You’re welcome.”
“That man who put his hand on my bottom…” Suddenly she couldn’t bring herself to say “ass.” He thought that was cute. “…his cheeks were red. And I don’t think it was because he was mad or embarrassed. There were little tiny…blood droplets.”
“Slap somebody hard enough, that can happen.”
She smiled; she clasped her hands before her, like a kid about to dig into Christmas. “You stuck up for me. I spill coffee in a customer’s lap, and you stick up for me.”
She hustled around and spilled herself into his lap.
Of course, he’d had to remove her from the wait staff, but the Tropical’s restaurant could use a hostess evenings, when the menu got smaller and pricier, and with her people skills, she was perfect. Also, he gave her a big raise. Of course, she gave him plenty of big raises over the rest of a glorious summer.
The girl’s plan had been to go back to college in the fall, but her father had a stroke and died, and things got derailed. Her mother’s health hadn’t been good, either—the woman passed a year ago. When Nolan acquired the restaurant at Brady Eighty Mall in Davenport, he’d called Sherry, who’d filled him in on all that, and told her he had a position to offer her.
“Would that be,” she said, “the Missionary Position?”
They had talked to each that way all the time that summer at the Tropical, and the remark erased the months since they’d last cohabited.
“No,” Nolan said, “it’s a hostess position. The other would be optional.”
“A perk?”
“Yes. Many such perks will be on offer.”
“Cool. Where and when do you want me?”
That question sparked more nonsense, but eventually he filled her in on addresses and other details.
The driveway was just to the right as Nolan pulled into his street. The sprawling Fifties-modern one-story was set against a wooded area, the yard in back dipping down to expose the finished basement. Deer would sometimes stroll right up to the glass doors and just look in like you were a zoo animal. Nolan loved that, though he didn’t know why—the wildness in him, his throwback nature to another time, was something he never noticed.
He had never owned a house before. Often he’d lived in digs provided by his mobbed-up bosses, and back in thieving days he had been in this apartment and that one. Some lodgings had been nice enough—a number had been condos—but having his own roof over his head made him feel he had finally arrived.
And now it was time to make another change, though not of domicile.
After he pulled his silver Trans Am into the garage, they went inside, separately. That was not unusual—for the same reasons that he kept his back to walls in a bar or restaurant, Nolan invariably entered his house by the rear entrance. It required walking all around the house to access the door of that finished basement. Still he did it.
For a while he’d convinced Sherry to do that, too, but finally she wouldn’t put up with it. Getting her shoes muddy walking around the house to get back there put an end to it. When they were already in the garage, with the connecting door right there—why not just go in? Even after the place had been invaded that time by those gay hitmen, she hadn’t learned the lesson. Even after Cole Fucking Comfort kidnapped her six months ago, she hadn’t learned.
Sometimes you couldn’t tell a woman anything.
She was in the kitchen leaning against the counter, still in her black lace cocktail dress, when he caught up with her.
She asked, “You want coffee?”
“No.”
“Decaf?”
“No.”
“Sandwich? Leftover pasta?”
They often had a bite to eat before bed. Working restaurant hours, going in at four (opening at five), they started their day with breakfast and had a very early supper before work, usually grabbing fast food or Denny’s. Sometimes the chef fixed them up at Nolan’s.
“No food,” he said. “I’m fine. Thanks.”
“Talkative all of a sudden.”
“I do want to talk.”
She frowned at him. “Is this an argument? Are we mad about something? Because I didn’t notice.”
“The four worst words in the English language, when you string them together.” She gestured to the table. “Why don’t I fix coffee for us? And we’ll get into whatever it is.”
“No. We’ll talk in bed. I’m going to shower.”
“Okay,” she said, her expression puzzled now.
He showered. Thoughts were going quickly, his head filled with words at odds with how little he’d shared with her so far. He soaped himself thoroughly, rinsed in water as hot as he could take it, then toweled off, using the hair drier as if he was stalling. Maybe he was. He splashed on Old Spice, a habit he’d never broken, and looked at his naked self in the mirror.
So many scars angling through the body hair. Bullet wounds. Knife wounds. He shook his head. Sherry had all that untouched perfect pink flesh going for her with only an appendectomy scar to prove she’d been on the planet fifteen minutes. He, on the other hand, looked fifty-five. No. Fifty-five miles of bad road.
He didn’t bother with his robe, stepping out into the adjacent master bedroom, bare-ass.
Sherry, in her sheer panties (no bra—not necessary), was stretched out on her side of the bed, nightstand lamp on, as she read a hardcover book, Misery by Stephen King. She was amused. By him, not King.
“Well,” she said, with half a smile. “Does your mother let you go out in public like that?”
“I didn’t ask permission,” he said with the other half of the smile.
She slipped off the bed and out of the panties, which she pitched carelessly somewhere, and moved quickly into the bathroom, where the sound of the shower’s needles soon followed.
He lay on his back on the bed, where she’d warmed it, and just thinking about her naked in there, all pearled with water, rubbing herself with soap, got him hard. He was that way when she emerged bundled into her green plush oversize robe, toweling off her hair.
“I am not so brazen as you, Mr. Nolan,” she said. Then she stopped toweling and noticed him standing at attention lying down and said, “What have you got there for me?”
“Hope it speaks for itself.”
“So do I.”
She tossed the towel. Opened her robe. The long sleek legs, the trimmed pubic thatch, that impossibly narrow waist, the B-cup breasts with erect nipples in their pink circles, all worked together to make his dick dance. He got to his feet. She came over, her hair damp in gypsy tendrils, dropped the robe into a puddle that she knelt on, and engulfed him in the caress of her full-lipped mouth.
He almost lost the war, but retreated in time, then got down there on the floor and buried his head between her legs and licked and nuzzled and made her moan and squirm. They took turns riding each other, on the puddled robe, then he bent her over the edge of the bed and did what every heterosexual man who had ever caught a glimpse of that ass wanted to do.
They staggered together into the bathroom, and she was looking at him in the big mirror when he said, “Will you marry me?”