Free Fly Paper by Max Allan Collins

dick cut off and fed to him.
    But what Breen said did bother Jon. Was Nolan taking undue risks, to spare Jon? Was Nolan avoiding violence with the Comforts to keep things from getting too rough for Jon? Was Breen right—with people like the Comforts, were you better off just killing them? That final concept was one Jon didn’t really think he could stomach. Did Nolan know that, too, Jon wondered?
    After spending another hundred bucks, Jon left the Hucksters’ Hall and went upstairs to the room he and Nolan would share. It was a dreary cubicle, despite the hotel’s lavish lobby, dining area, and bar, and was robbery even at convention rates. He undressed, had a cold shower, and got dressed again and went down to the bar, to have a drink and fog his mind if not clear it.
    It was an off-time right now: the bar was part of a big nightclub setup, with stage and arena of tables over to the right, and the room was almost as big as the ballroom where the comic dealing was going on, only this was as empty of people as Hucksters’ Hall was full. Up at the bar was a pretty woman with short brown pixie hair. She was wearing slacks and a sweater over a blouse—casual clothes but very stylish, in dark, soft colors: blues, browns. She was thin as a model, but full-breasted. Jon supposed she was in her early thirties, close to Karen’s age.
    Why did he have to think of Karen at a moment like this? Now, along with all those other bad vibes running through him—fear and depression and edginess—now he felt guilty , too. Because he was thinking of going up and sitting next to that woman at the bar, pinning his hopes on the improbable possibility of his picking her up, thinking that maybe a little sex game (even if conversation was as far as it got) would drain off his tension. But, no—just thinking of it made things worse; now he felt guilty for possibly betraying Karen.
    Fortunately he was able to brush the guilt quickly from his mind. He just thought about this morning, when he’d called Karen to tell her as tactfully as possible that he would be attending the comics convention, and she’d gone into a fury, a goddamn rage about him missing her birthday for a stupid bunch of comic books. She’d given him no chance to explain (and he couldn’t have—Karen knew of Nolan and disapproved of Nolan-sponsored activities even more than she did comic books), and she’d really been quite unreasonable.
    So, conscience clear, he sat down next to the pretty brunette and smiled and built a strategy. And when the bartender came around, Jon ordered a Scotch on the rocks for himself (he hated Scotch, but it sounded rugged), and as he turned to her to ask what she’d have, damn if the bartender didn’t card him!
    His outline for seduction erased itself on his mental blackboard and, as he looked at the beautiful, dark-haired, full-breasted woman in her early thirties sitting next to him, with her finely chiseled features and a smile turning from invitation to condescension, Jon decided not even to bother digging his I.D. out of his wallet, just forgot the Scotch and the woman and got the hell out of there.
    He went back up to the cubicle, had another cold shower, and got dressed again and went down and spent another hundred on comic books. It killed the time till he was supposed to meet Nolan in the coffee shop downstairs.
     
     
    7
     
     
    NOLAN STEPPED onto the elevator and was all alone, except for a girl with sharply pointed ears and skin tinted a dark green. She was wearing a silver sarong that made her look as though she’d been wrapped in aluminum foil, like a sandwich. She was young, probably sixteen, a chunky but not unattractive girl—considering she was green and had pointed ears.
    It was Nolan’s sincere hope that she would not be going all fifteen floors down to the lobby, as he was. He’d just come from the hotel room, where he’d found evidence that Jon was developing a cleanliness fetish—the boy apparently had had at