Hard Cash by Max Allan Collins

overcast, black night out there was high noon or something. Rigley was behind the bar, mixing up a pitcher of Manhattans. He was casually attired, for Rigley anyway: yellow and gray pattern turtleneck sweater and (Nolan saw as Rigley came around the bar to greet them) gray slacks that looked as if they’d never been worn before—in fact, they hardly looked as if they were being worn now.
    Pitcher of Manhattans in one hand, Rigley extended the other, giving Nolan a smile as white and perfect as it was insincere. Rigley’s executive cool was even phonier tonight than usual: the tiny ice cubes inside the pitcher were clinking around, keeping time with the banker’s trembling hand, and yes, the tic at the edge of his right eye was going again. Nolan had the urge to take the man by the shoulders and shake him and say, “Settle down, damn it!” But it passed.
    Rigley lifted the pitcher as if making a toast, and said, “Can I pour you one, Logan?”
    “That’d be fine,” Nolan said. “Jon’ll have one too.”
    “I don’t think I want . . .” Jon began, then caught Nolan’s look and said, “That’d be . . . nice. Thank you.”
    The girl was looking at Jon’s T-shirt, which had some underground comic character on it (a guy with a pointed head and five o’clock shadow in a clown suit, labeled “Zippy the Pinhead”) and she seemed almost on the verge of a smile. And suddenly she was speaking. Saying to Jon, “I like it. Your shirt. It’s really cute.”
    “Yeah, well, thanks,” Jon said.
    “I wouldn’t mind having one myself.”
    “Well,” Jon said, looking at her breasts with a cheerfully awestruck expression, “I’m not sure if they come in your size.”
    And the girl smiled. Even showed some teeth. She was proud of those big boobs of hers, and Jon had said just the thing to win her over. A more obvious off-color sort of remark might have soured her, especially had it come from Nolan; but Jon’s boyish, almost naive manner put it over perfectly. Nolan nodded his approval at the lad, who then proceeded to nearly undo the good he’d just done by blurting, “Couldn’t somebody turn on some lights? I’m going fuckin’ blind in here.”
    Rigley looked puzzled for half a second, then embarrassed, as evidently he was the one who’d thought dimming the lights would provide the appropriate atmosphere for crime and conspiracy.
    Nolan looked at Jon and Jon looked away, and Nolan said to the girl, “Maybe if you could turn on that light behind the bar, there,” and the girl did.
    The awkward moment passed, and Rigley went back to what he was doing, which was distributing Manhattans to each of the four seats at the table.
    Nolan told everybody to have a seat.
    He waited for everybody to get settled and was about to begin when Rigley got up quickly, saying, “Oh, I almost forgot,” and brought back a manila folder, identical to the one he’d shown Nolan Thursday night. The one chock-full of blackmail material. And there was almost another awkward moment, as Nolan felt himself getting mad all over again.
    This time, thankfully, the folder contained material of a more agreeable nature: the photographs of the interior and exterior of the bank that Nolan had requested of Rigley, as well as a listing of employees and a timetable of their work activities, plus a floor plan prepared for the occasion by Rigley, which indicated where each person worked and where each alarm button was located, and a wealth of other pertinent information. Rigley had done a good job, and Nolan told him so.
    “And I have to admit,” Nolan continued, “your basic plan for the robbery is a good one. Some refinements would be necessary, of course, and I’d need to go over these photographs and plans and such you brought me first, but otherwise I see no reason why your scenario wouldn’t be followed very close. Almost to the letter.”
    All of that was true—it was a good plan—but the point of all the compliments was to put Rigley