Read Online Two for the Money by Max Allan Collins - Free Book Online

key.
    Nolan opened the door for them. “Let’s go, gentlemen.”
    Charlie said, “What about Tillis?”
    “He really is in the can, alive and well; I tied him up in there. He’ll be okay. Don’t be hard on the boy, Charlie. He isn’t really a pushover.”
    “He won’t be so easy next time,” Charlie said.
    “There won’t be a next time, remember, men?” Werner reminded them. “These are peace talks we’re having.”
    “Just shut up,” Charlie said. “This world doesn’t need any more goddamn diplomats than it’s already got.”
    “We agree on something, anyway,” Nolan said, and gestured toward the elevators.
    The trio again remained silent until they were shut inside the smaller of Nolan’s two Concort rooms.
    “You haven’t exactly trusted me to the goddamn heights, have you, Nolan?” Charlie’s mouth wore a sour smile.
    Nolan pointed toward the bed. “Sit down, both of you.” He pulled a chair over and sat facing them, his arm resting on the nightstand by the bed. “You didn’t expect me to trust you, Charlie, and I didn’t expect you to trust me, so let’s forget all that now and get started, okay?”
    Charlie again nodded assent.
    Nolan got out his cigarettes, offered them around. Charlie refused, getting out a metal case of his own, and Werner also turned him down, mumbling that he’d quit. Nolan fired Charlie’s cigarette and his own, then went on. “You know, Charlie, it would’ve been easy for me to kill you downstairs in the suite. Even had Tillis handy to build a frame around.”
    “Why so generous, Nolan?”
    “Killing you’s not the answer. Not at this point, anyway. Your boy Tillis had some influence on me, too, I suppose.”
    “Tillis? How so?”
    “When I asked him if he was sent to kill me or just to check me out, he said the latter, and I believe him. I read Tillis as an open kind of guy, the kind who can’t lie worth a damn.”
    Charlie nodded.
    “If I figured you sent Tillis to kill me, you’d be dead by now . . . but I can’t blame you for taking precautions when I did the same thing.”
    “And if Tillis had been sent to kill you,” Charlie said, working an ominously bland tone into his voice, “he would’ve gotten it done.”
    Nolan smiled and said, “A strong possibility. He’s a good man. Anyway, I think maybe you really are willing to talk, Charlie, and can see I am, too . . . so okay, so let’s play peacemaker.”
    Werner said, “Now we’re finally getting on the right track.”
    Charlie said, “Shut up.”
    “You know about my cover name, Charlie,” Nolan continued. “Without it, there’s a lot of money I can’t get to. A decade-and-a-half of money.”
    “That’s right, Nolan. Because all I got to do is let somebody know about that cover of yours . . . say, for instance, the FBI . . . and you’ll be busted in every sense of the word . . . busted as in broke, busted as in iron bars.”
    “You got the cards,” Nolan agreed.
    “I hear you want to quit heisting. Want to shuck your evil ways and get back in the club business.”
    “You hear correct. Since your boys queered that job of mine back in Cicero, there isn’t a decent heist man left who’ll work with me. And I’m getting old, Charlie, and so are you. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of pretending I’m a kid.”
    Charlie sat up. “I’m getting old, Nolan, you’re right on that count. And I’ve mellowed . . . I wouldn’t be here tonight if I hadn’t mellowed . . . but I can’t let this thing between usdie easy.” He smiled; his teeth were white as a shiny sink. “Sixteen years of hate doesn’t just turn to mist and drift off because we’ve had five minutes or so of goddamn chit-chat. There’s one hell of a lot more to this than that, Nolan, and a certain grudging respect we maybe got for each other, just for living this long, doesn’t change things for either of us.”
    Nolan drew on the cigarette and gave the smoke a go at his lungs. “What do you want,