“Maybe you could give him some tips.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Guess.”
“Hey, yeah, well and blow it out your ass, Quarry, if you want my opinion. So you going to tell me how it looks to you, or just sit there?”
“It looks okay.”
“I think so, too. How’s tomorrow afternoon sound?”
“Bad. They pull up stakes morning after next. Tomorrow being the last day might make it atypical. Since you went to the trouble of getting his pattern down, we ought to use it.”
“I suppose. Fuck it, anyway.”
“What’s the problem?”
“I had a date tonight. This evening, I mean.”
“A date.”
“Yeah, I was going to get it on between shows with Zamorita.”
“Zamorita.”
“I been humping her. Zamorita. Actually, her name is Hilda something. She’s the woman who turns into a gorilla.”
“You have that effect on all the girls?”
“Funny. I mean, she’s the one with the stage act. She gets in this cage and they dim the lights and do some electrical stuff and she turns into a gorilla. Anyway that’s what it looks like. Actually it’s just a big hoax.”
“Oh, Turner, do you have to spoil everything?”
“You’re a funny guy, Quarry. Funnier than my old man when he takes out his teeth. Anyway, I guess I’ll just have to take a rain check on the bitch. Damn, is she going to be disappointed.”
“I can imagine. Ten o’clock, then?”
“Ten o’clock. I’ll be there.”
“Where exactly?”
He pointed over to a spot near the mark’s tent, between the exhibit with the giant rats and the House of Mirrors. The Winnebago camper was parked behind there, just fifty feet away, among many other such vehicles belonging to the carny people; in the background loomed the truck trailers, the rides, when disassembled, were transported in.
“Okay,” I said. “See you later.”
“See you later.”
I went on some rides, had my weight and age guessed and threw a few balls at a game tent, but not the mark’s. I ended up in Fun World, a king-size arcade in a long, narrow tent. The pinballs and shooting machines held my attention for several hours, and when I finally came out, at nine-thirty, night had replaced dusk; the rides, with their bright neons of every imaginable color, were tracing garish designs against the darkness, like ungodly jewelry or a hand-painted tie.
And at nine-forty, after going to the rental Ford for my silenced nine-millimeter and a light jacket, I had wandered over by the mark’s stall, where he was closing down. The rest of the carnival stayed open till one, but not this clown. He always closed up early, sometimes as early as ten o’clock. Tonight was a new record.
Which was a little disturbing. It’s always disturbing when a mark varies his pattern, even just a little. But even more disturbing when I looked over where Turner was supposed to be and he wasn’t. Well, it was early. He’d be along soon.
By nine fifty-five the mark’s tent was shut down.
Still no Turner.
And the guy was heading back toward his Winnebago.
I hesitated.
Shit.
Turner would be here momentarily.
I went ahead and followed the guy to the camper. It was dark back there, and deserted, except for the mark and me. I took the silenced gun from out of my belt, where the light jacket had covered it, and went in right behind the guy, shutting the camper door behind us, flicking on the light and showing him the nine-millimeter.
And it should have been over just that fast. I should have squeezed the trigger, sent him on his way and me on mine.
But I was still pretty new at the game. I hadn’t learned the desirability of doing it fast, not yet. In fact I was just in the process of learning.
Because in the split second I wasted, the fat little Jew or Italian or whatever the fuck he was reached over to the little built-in stove and got hold of a frying pan and laid it across the side of my face, and I fired but the silenced gun thudded a shot into the cushion of a chair, and there was grease in the pan, not hot thank God, but grease, and some of it got in my eyes and the little fucker had pushed me aside and was scrambling past me, out the door, before I could get my eyes working and my gun hand around to make up for my mistake.
I put the gun back in my belt. I had to: from the doorway of the camper I could see the mark heading into the carnival, that Hawaiian shirt flashing into the crowd, and I had to pursue him. And that could hardly be done with the nine-millimeter hanging out. I zipped the jacket up a third of the way and went after him.
One good thing, though: he’d angled toward the space of open ground between the giant rat exhibit and the House of Mirrors. Right into Turner’s arms.
Only as I reached that point myself I saw the guy going into the House of Mirrors, nodding at the ticket-taker who knew him as a fellow carny and waved him by without a ticket.
And Turner was nowhere to be seen.
So I bought a ticket to the House of Mirrors.
It wasn’t very busy right now, but I wouldn’t be alone in there with him. I didn’t know what compelled him to enter that place, but chances were he didn’t know, either. It’s easy to be critical of the behavior of people in tense situations: not everybody functions well under stress.
Or maybe he’d seen some movies with arty funhouse shootout scenes, and figured I’d be distracted by all those reflections of myself and he could maybe somehow lose me in there. Which was a possibility. Maybe it would have been smarter to just wait for him to come out.
But he might also know his way around in there; maybe he was a pretty good friend of the guy who ran the house, and knew where an office was or a back exit or something. Or maybe he figured he knew the place well enough to hide somewhere and jump me as I came by.
Who could tell what he thought.
At any rate, I found him, in an enclosed area of perhaps sixteen mirrors, none of them distorting, and nobody else was around at the moment, and if he thought hiding in the House of Mirrors would be to his advantage, he was wrong-unless he enjoyed watching all those images of himself getting shot through the sternum.
I found my way out with little trouble. Behind me I heard somebody finding him, and making a fuss, going into a screaming panic. That was too bad. Had everything gone as it should, the mark would have been found no sooner than morning, in all probability.
I found Turner in the trailer behind the Gorilla Girl’s tent.
I knocked and, finally, was answered by a pretty brunette of about twenty, though her face was an easy ten years harder.
“Tell Cheetah Tarzan’s here to see him,” I said.
“Go away,” she said, starting to push shut the door.
I pushed it open and found Turner naked in bed and pulled him out by the arm and threw him on the floor.
“What the hell…?” he said.
I kicked his balls up in him.
That kept him busy for a few minutes, during which time I told Zamorita to get him his clothes.
“I’ll fix you, fucker,” he said, after a while, still holding himself. “I’ll fix you.”
“Never mind that,” I said. “You better just get your pants on so we can both get the hell out of here.”
Now, five years later, going through Turner’s room at Wilma’s Welcome Inn, I wondered why I bothered going back for him at all.
4
From the window above the old-fashioned radiator in Turner’s room I could see my A-frame cottage clearly, despite the partial sheltering of trees. The radiator was hot and making hissing noises, complaining about its unexpected April workload; but at least it helped keep the frost off the window, which was a plus for Turner, as he was apparently using this window to watch me, to study my pattern. He no doubt used the same binoculars I was now using: I’d found them in his bottom dresser drawer, between a box of. 380 shells and the Brownin
g they were used in.
A gunsmith had done some improvising on the automatic, because the original barrel was gone and replaced with a new one that had a built-in silencer. I didn’t see the point, as the length of the new barrel was practically the same as the old one would’ve been with silencer attached. So nothing in particular had been gained, and something had been lost: the ability to detach the silencer, which is nice to be able to do at times, as they aren’t always necessary and do make the weapon more bulky. But to each his own.
The room was orderly, though Wilma did not provide maid service. That is, unless the sixteen-year-old niece Turner was humping was playing housekeeper, too. There was just the one big room, with a double bed with maple headboard against the left side wall, and a living room area opposite, with sagging couch and a chair or two and a beat-up coffee table with a scuffed metallic portable TV on it. The wallpaper was flowered and purple-faded-to-gray. Varnished light wood floors showed around the worn edges of the large round braided rug. There was no john (other than the floor’s communal one, down the hall) and a single, shallow closet he hadn’t hung anything in was behind the couch, in the corner. The dresser was over left of the window, near the bed; its drawers contained clothing and what I mentioned before. His shaving kit was on top of the dresser, which had a mirror. On the floor under the bed was a stack of skin magazines, of which Hustler was the most genteel.
I was surprised I could find nothing in writing, no record of my activities as noted by Turner. He might possibly be keeping that on his person, in a little notebook or something, but I didn’t think it likely: the kind of record a person working stakeout would keep isn’t easily kept in anything smaller than a secretarial-size pad, and Turner’s habit during the time he’d worked back-up for me had been to use a spiral notebook larger than that. Of course that was five years ago.
Which in itself had me thinking. It was a little late in the day for Turner to come looking for revenge. Five years ago I’d kicked him in the balls, and reported him fucking up to the Broker, but it hadn’t cost Turner anything: Broker had simply put him with another partner. I didn’t doubt Turner carried a grudge against me, but I did doubt it was big enough a one for him to come looking for me with a gun.
Besides, he was obviously on stakeout duty. Which meant he was part of a team, and not the trigger part, either. He was hired help and nothing more. My first instinct was to tie his presence here in with the bad blood between us: but I no longer felt that way. Turner was not working on his own initiative.
So I’d just have to talk to him and find out who hired him. Or at least find out who his new Broker was, so I could put a gun to that guy’s head and get the name of whoever it was took the contract out.
I put the binoculars in the dresser, but stuck the Browning in my belt. I turned out the lights and went over to the couch to wait for Turner to come.
I didn’t let myself think. There was a lot to think about, a lot in my life that was threatened by all of this, not the least of which was my life itself, but I didn’t think. I didn’t let myself. There are times when it’s smart to sort through the things that have been happening to you, and figure out what it is they all mean, and there are times to clear all the shit out of your head, empty your head of everything but now, so you are ready, not edgy, but on edge, perched like an animal waiting for its prey to make a move. So I sat on the uncomfortable, spring-bulging couch, waiting for Turner to come.
In two hours and some odd minutes, I heard his voice. It was still grating, had that same sandpaper quality. He was standing outside his door, talking to somebody. And that could be a problem.
The other person spoke, and it was a girl, a young woman’s voice. Possibly the sixteen-year-old niece Wilma was worried about.
A key was working in the door, in the lock, and I ducked into the closet, to the rear of the couch.
“Don’t worry, baby,” he was saying. I heard the door close. I heard a thud, which I guessed to be the sound of his hunting jacket being tossed on the couch. “She works till two in the morning It ain’t even midnight. We got plenty of time.”
“If she finds us together,” the girl said, her voice sounding very young, “she’ll kill us.”
“Aw the hell with her. You going to let some fat old windbag run your fife?”
“She’s my aunt.”
“She can’t give you this.”
There followed considerable, moaning and groaning, most of it from the girl. In the background the radiator hissed.
“Here. Let me help you out of that stuff.”
“No… I’ll… I’ll do it.”
I was sitting on the floor. It was cramped in there. I decided I might as well enjoy myself, so I looked through the keyhole while the girl undressed. My view was partially blocked by the couch, but I saw everything, as the girl moved around a little, placing her clothing piece by piece over on the dresser.
She was small, tan and big-breasted, with a simple, pretty face that had those same blue eyes as fat Wilma. She had shoulder-length dark brown hair and an equally dark brown pubic tangle that started as a trail at her navel and turned into a dense undergrowth soon after; it was a place you could get lost in for weeks. I hoped her overage boy friend wouldn’t be quite that long.
Turner took his clothes off, then. That I didn’t bother watching. I felt stupid, like a husband who didn’t have it right: the idiot didn’t realize it was the lover who hid in the closet, not the cuckold.
Then the bed was making noise and so were they. The radiator got its two cents in, too.
Me, I was slouched quietly down in the closet, back to the wall, gun in my lap.
Still waiting for Turner to come.
5
He and the girl stayed in the sack nearly two hours. I didn’t watch much of it, though the keyhole provided an unexpur- gated if small-screen view of the proceedings. Between rounds he would teach the girl things to do to him, and watching her crawl around on the bed and him doing them certainly beat watching reruns of “Celebrity Bowling.” But eventually, inevitably, he’d get on top of her and stay on top, which meant the view I had was largely of him, and I wasn’t particularly interested in looking up that asshole’s asshole.
So I sat there, patiently, my state of mind remarkably serene for a guy hiding in a closet, and why not. Turner was in a tighter box than I was, and I don’t mean that in the sense of a pun. He was in a very bad situation and didn’t know it, which was part of what made it so bad.
I admit he was having a better time than I was, but that was largely because he was a man who thought he had a gun in a nearby dresser drawer and didn’t know that gun was still nearby but now in the possession of somebody in a closet a few feet away, waiting to possibly put that gun to use. Ignorance is bliss, all right, but it’s also a good way to get blown away. And that’s no pun, either.
The only reason I was sitting this out, of course, was the girl. Turner alone I could handle, no problem-or anyway not much of one. Turner in the company of an innocent third party was something else again. Particularly when that innocent third party was Wilma’s niece, whose honor I was here on the pretense of defending, even though from my occasional glimpses through the keyhole I could see there wasn’t much left to defend.
Contrary to what you might think, assuming you’ve read some of the bullshit fiction books written on people like me, or seen some of the ridiculous movies or TV things done on us, a paid killer is not usually a person who will be careless about killing, who would go out casually, heedlessly mowing down anyone who crossed his path in the course of a job. The killing of one person, if it’s handled with some intelligence and care, generally causes little commotion, unless the town is exceptionally small, or the mark exceptionally well-known. A murder is likely to be buried in the back of the papers the day it happens, in a major city, and on the front page and on TV for a day or so in a secondary-size city, and in either case consigned to the unsolved file of the cops after a few weeks of fruitless inv
estigation.
But kill two people and the shit will hit the fan. Kill an innocent bystander, indiscriminately, without the planning that went into hitting the mark, and suddenly it’s on TV constantly and in the papers continuously and everybody’s hollering “Mass murder!” and the cops will have to go after it for however long it takes, because the media and the media-manipulated public will demand nothing less.
Even had I been on a job, out in the field somewhere, keeping all this in mind would have been necessary, important; here, at home, in my literal back yard, it was an overriding concern. Contact with Turner that involved Wilma’s niece would be unfortunate, even if the girl didn’t get killed.
So I sat, and I waited, and my back started hurting and the sweat started to roll down my face and everywhere else, because it was hot in there and stuffy, the air as stale as a political speech, and then I noticed them talking. Their voices were taking on a tone of normalcy, as opposed to the assorted sounds of sexual craziness that had been playing in the background during my confinement, like a pervert’s substitute for Muzak.
“It’s ten till two,” the girl was saying.
“Maybe you better go, then,” Turner said.
Who said chivalry was dead.
“I know, but… I don’t want to go. I want to stay with you. All night.”
“Nice if you could. But if you think you should go, you better.”
“I guess I better.”
“Here, I’ll help you get dressed.”
He had her dressed and out the door in three minutes; the poor little bitch had to ask for her goodnight kiss.
And then he stood in the middle of the room, right in my line of vision, stood naked, his sex shrunken like he’d just come out from swimming in very cold water, which wasn’t exactly the case, and he looked at the door the girl had just exited through and said, “Hee hee,” several times, and slapped his belly, as it wasn’t every day Turner got to diddle a sixteen year-old. He scratched his sides and yawned and left my line of vision long enough to switch off the lights and then a few seconds later I heard him crawl into bed.
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