Scratch Fever by Max Allan Collins

smiling, crying. “My feet are killing me.”
    “I better go after him.”
    “No! Stay with me.”
    There was an anguished cry from downstairs—a wail.
    “I’ll kill you!” Infante’s voice, muffled but distinct, came from below.
    “Maybe he’ll come up after me,” Nolan said.
    But the next sound from below was the glass doors sliding/slamming shut.
    Nolan ran to the picture windows. He saw Infante scurrying across the yard, off to the right, into the woods.
    “Stay put,” Nolan told Sherry.
    “Nolan . . .”
    “Stay put!”
    “Where would I go?” she yelled at him, angry for a moment.
    Nolan went out the front door, fanning the gun around in front of him. The full moon was keeping everything well lit; there was a pale, eerie wash on the world. But no sign of Infante.
    Then he heard an engine start, a car squeal away.
    He stood there a moment and let the cool air cool him down.
    Then he went back in. To Sherry.
    He examined her feet.
    “Sons of bitches,” he said.
    “They hurt. They really hurt.”
    “Second-degree burns. You’re lucky.”
    “Oh, yeah. Lucky.”
    “They’ve started to blister. Third degree would’ve been trouble. I’m going to get you some cold water to soak them in.”
    “Please.”
    He got a pan with ice and water in it and eased her to a sitting position, and she slid her feet in, making a few intake-of-breath sounds, but seeming to like it, once done.
    “I should get you to a hospital,” he said. “I should get you to an emergency room.”
    “How can you do that?” she said. “They’ll want to know how it happened. I don’t know what this is about, but I know you. And I know this isn’t something you’ll want the police or anybody in on.”
    He scratched his head and said, “Right. Burns on the feet are dangerous, though. You need a doctor.”
    “Sara’s boyfriend is a doctor.”
    “Sara? At the club?”
    “Right.”
    “Will he keep his mouth shut? Will he make a post-midnight house call?”
    “He’s a married doctor. He’ll do anything Sara asks him.”
    “Good. What’s Sara’s number?”
    “It’s in the back of the phonebook.”
    “I want you to stay with her for a few days.”
    “Where will you be?”
    “I don’t know yet. I don’t know what this is about, either.”
    He got up to go to the kitchen to call Sara.
    “Did you know those two men?” Sherry asked.
    He turned and looked at her. For all she’d been through, she looked terrific, sitting there in a short black nightie, soaking her feet.
    “Yeah,” he said. “A couple of guys who work for Hines.”
    “Hines. Isn’t he connected?”
    “Yeah, Hines is Family. That bothers me. I haven’t had any Family trouble for a long time.”
    “You going to talk to Hines?”
    “He’s out of town. And anyway, those two were Family, out of Chicago, before they got assigned to Hines. They could’ve got their orders from somebody other than Hines. With Hines out of town, that almost seems likely.”
    “You’ve got Family friends.”
    “There’s Felix, that lawyer I always dealt with. But if I call him, he’ll lie to me, if I’m on the shit list again. I don’t know. I think I’m going to have to go out and knock heads together and see what’s going on.”
    He went to the kitchen.
    “Nolan!” she called out
    He came back out and said. “What?”
    “I almost forgot. There’s a message for you on the answer machine. A long one.”
    “Oh?”
    “It’s from that friend of yours.”
    “Jon?”
    “Yes. It sounded like he was in trouble. Maybe this has something to do with that.”
    But before she had finished her sentence, Nolan was in the kitchen playing the message. He listened to it twice.
    He came back talking to himself, saying, “Julie, alive? If so, how is she connected to anybody Family? I don’t get it.” Then, to Sherry: “Did those guys hear that message? Did they get that out of you?”
    “No,” she said. “I kept thinking they’d want to know, if they’d known to