Quarry's cut q-4

by Max Allan Collins

  Castile or someone had turned on the heat, but it was still a little chilly. I told Janet that everybody seemed to have guessed that she and I had a natural rapport, and so she consented to share a couch with me, and we snuggled together, there, in a cooperative effort to battle the cold and watch some television.

  Castile came in, after a while, sat in a soft chair near the couch, asking if we minded the intrusion: the movie we were watching was His Girl Friday, one of his all-time favorites. Howard Hawks directed it, he said. I was tempted to go looking for Richie to tell him.

  But everyone besides Janet, Castile and me had disappeared to private cubbyholes in the big lodge.

  And after we had watched a second movie, a James Cagney gangster opus called Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, which was not directed by Howard Hawks (I asked Castile), Janet said she was getting sleepy and was going to head on up to her room. I gave her a look that told her I’d be up later. She gave me a look that told me she understood my look, and went on up.

  “I didn’t know you were a movie buff,” Castile said.

  The room was dark, except for the TV screen, which right now was between movies, and a long commercial about getting your car repainted was playing.

  “I’m not,” I said. “But I stay up watching them all night sometimes. The box can be hypnotic.”

  “It can at that.”

  “I wonder if we could skip the next movie, though. I’d really like to take a few minutes and talk to you.”

  “More interview material? Can’t that wait till tomorrow. We’ll probably be snowed in all day, plenty of time for that then. There’s another Cagney coming on in a few minutes…”

  “This is something else. Something completely different than an article for Oui magazine. It’s something important.”

  “Well. Go ahead, then.”

  “The telephone isn’t out because of the storm.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “I cut the wire.”

  “You cut the wire?”

  “I cut the wire.”

  “What are you…”

  “I’m just trying to make a point.”

  “Which is?”

  “How easy it was I got in here. How quick you’ve been to buy my story.”

  “You’re not a writer.”

  “No.”

  “Who are you, then? You’re not a cop of any kind.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m somebody can help you. That’s what I’m here for, really. To help you.”

  “That’s funny. You don’t look humanitarian.”

  “I’m not. I’d make a profit on this deal, hopefully.”

  “This is the most convoluted approach to blackmail I ever heard of

  …”

  “It’s not blackmail, and it’s not a confidence game or anything like that, either. I’m here to offer you a service.”

  “And that service is?”

  “A kind of bodyguard, I guess. What would you say… and I know this may sound sort of crazy, but bear with me… what would you say if I told you someone was going to kill you? Not try to kill you.. but kill you. A professional job, bought and paid for. What would you say?”

  “Is that what you are? You’re here to kill me?”

  His reaction threw me a little: he was taking it so cool… apparently he didn’t believe me, thought I was a nutcase.

  I tried to straighten him out.

  I said, “If I were here to kill you, you’d be dead now.”

  “I see.”

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “Your question…?”

  “What would you say if I told you someone was coming here to kill you? Probably tonight?”

  And then he surprised me.

  He said, “I’d say I believe you.”

  21

  “I guess we both have some explaining to do,” he said. His smile was natural, for a change; and he looked older, now, less like Andy Hardy and more like the nearly forty his wife said he was.

  “Why don’t you start,” I suggested.

  “I thought you might say that. Suppose I tell you some of it. And then you can tell me who you really are, and how you’ve come to be here.”

  “Fair enough.”

  He leaned back in the chair, looked toward the television. The second Cagney movie had begun, a western of some sort, from the 1950s, with Cagney looking heavy and somewhat long-in-the-tooth, and the sound was still on, and it made it a little difficult to hear what Castile was saying. But it was worth the effort.

  “Six months ago I received a phone call,” he said. “Three o’clock in the morning, give or take a few minutes. As it happens I was up, working on one of my films, using a Movieola to check on some editing problems… a Movieola is a… well, never mind what it is. That’s not important. What’s important is the phone call.”

  He paused. Swallowed. Went on.

  “It was a man’s voice, on the other end. Very average sounding. Perhaps a little on the high-pitched order. And there was a tremor in the voice, but it wasn’t nervousness… it was something else. Something else.

  “He said, ‘I’m sorry to wake you.’

  “I said, ‘You didn’t. I was up already. Who is this?’

  “He said, ‘I’m nobody you know. And we’ll never meet.’

  “I didn’t know what to make of that. I said, ‘I’m hanging up…’

  “He said, ‘Don’t. I have something to say that you’ll find… noteworthy.’

  “I said, ‘What is it, then?’ Impatient.

  “He said, ‘I killed you this afternoon.’

  “And I said, ‘What?’ And then I said I was hanging up again.

  “‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘It’s true… I killed you. I arranged to have you killed, I should say. Took a contract out, just like the movies, just like TV. Hitmen. All of that.’

  “I was frightened now. There was something in the voice that was.. real. It wasn’t a crank call. It was real. ‘Who is this?’ I said.

  “And he laughed at me. I asked again, ‘Who is this?’

  “‘My name is Meyers. You’ll see my name in the papers, tomorrow, perhaps.’

  “‘I don’t know any Meyers,’ I said.

  “‘I’m nobody. But I’m big enough a nobody to get my name in the papers, when I kill myself.’

  “I didn’t say anything: I felt like somebody had hit me in the stomach. Hard.

  “‘You heard right,’ he said. ‘I’m going to kill myself, tonight. In just a little while. I’ll still be on the phone with you, when I do it.’

  “‘Please,’ I said. Not knowing what else to say.

  “‘You’ll be dead, too, soon. The men I hired will kill you, one of these days. But you won’t know when. Tomorrow maybe. A week from tomorrow. A year from Christmas. One of these days. You’ll be dead. They’ll kill you. And I’ll be dead. We’ll all be dead.’

  “‘Why?’ I asked. Out of breath, hardly getting it out. ‘Who am I to you? What have I done to you?’

  “And he said, ‘I’m cutting my wrists now…’ and I heard him make little sounds in his throat; sounds of pain but it was weird, because they were sounds of contentment, too, and he said, ‘I’m bleeding now. I’ll be dead soon. Like you.’”

  And Castile sat staring at the television, where Cagney was shouting at a ranch hand, the images on the screen making shadows on Castile’s face, putting emotion on a face that was otherwise a mask, at the moment, though his eyes flickered, moved, with something. Something.

  “What happened then?” I asked.

  “Then he hung up.”

  “I see. Was he in the papers, next day?”

  “Yes. Boston papers. He was a mob guy. Fairly high-up. In his fifties. Glorified bookkeeper. He’d cut his wrists, all right. Story even said he was found with the phone receiver in his hands… they assumed he’d changed his mind, at the last moment, tried to call for help.”

  “And he never said why? He never told you why he hire
d the contract?”

  “No. But I found out. I put some people on it. I have a few connections, myself. My father was involved with mob people, peripherally, and I have some friends in those circles. New Jersey and New York people, but they could find things out for me, about Boston. They found out why the contract was taken out. They also found out it would be impossible to stop what Meyers put in motion. Or damn near impossible.”

  “What was the reason, then?”

  “For the contract? I’d prefer not to go into that. Not until I’ve heard something from you.”

  It was my turn, and since he’d given me what was apparently the truth, I gave him the truth back… somewhat edited, of course.

  “I’m here,” I said, “because I followed a man named Turner here. He’s the back-up for the person who’s going to hit you. Try to hit you, at any rate. With my help, you might be able to avoid that.”

  Castile thought about that a second.

  Then he said, “Where’s this Turner now?”

  “Holed up in one of the farmhouses near here, I’d guess. The snowstorm caught him as much by surprise as it did us.”

  “And how’d you happen to be following this Turner?”

  “I used to be in the business.”

  “What business?”

  “Turner’s.”

  He thought about that, too, but longer than a second.

  Then he said, “I see.”

  “Yes, I think you do.”

  “But you aren’t in that business any longer.”

  “Not exactly. Now I’m in the business of offering my services to the prospective victims… the targets of people like Turner.”

  “So you followed Turner to this… job… and ascertained that I was the victim, the target, and now you’re making contact with me, to do what?”

  “To save your life. To stop Turner. And his partner. Usually I make an attempt to find out who took the contract out, as well, since the real threat is the person who sent the hitmen, not the hitmen themselves… in most cases, that is. In your case the guy who bought the hitmen is already known to you, and, better yet, is dead. So once the hitmen are taken out, you can rest easy.”

  “This is pretty bizarre.”

  “So are phone calls at three in the morning from guys who slit their wrists as they say they’re having you killed.”

  “But you believed that story.”

  “Yes. And you believe mine.”

  “Yes. Bizarre as it is, or possibly because it is so bizarre, I believe you. I do have some questions, though… first, what’s your fee?”

  “Eight thousand dollars.”

  “How did you arrive at that figure?”

  “It’s about what I’m guessing Turner and his partner were paid.”

  He nodded, as if to say, “Fair enough,” then said, “Do you have any idea who the partner is?”

  “Yes. I think the partner is in this lodge. Right now.”

  “What, in hiding…?”

  “In a manner of speaking. It’s one of your crew.”

  “What? But that’s…”

  “Possible. Very possible. Not your wife. Probably not Janet, either… though lady hitmen do exist, believe me. But more likely one of the boys… Frankie Waddsworth, Richie Hudson, or Harry.. ”

  “Not Waddsworth. I’ve worked with him before.”

  “That would make it less likely. But not impossible. Most people in the murder business have other jobs, for a cover, for extra income, or both. Waddsworth might have been assigned this because you’ve worked with him, and he’d make a good inside man. Did you go after him, for this film, or did he approach you?”

  “His agent approached me.”

  “There… you see. Waddsworth is a possibility.”

  “I’ve never worked with the others before… Hudson or Janet Stein or Harry…”

  “Did you approach them?”

  “I put feelers out to try and find people, in the Chicago area, who could do the quality of work I need, and who were willing to do porno. It was Richie who contacted me, told me about his agency. Janet I just picked up recently, when our original soundman backed out. She was a friend of a friend of somebody at the Geneva Playboy Club.”

  “The soundman backing out could’ve been arranged. That makes even Janet a possibility. What about the actors who finished filming and left yesterday? Had you worked with them, before?”

  “Yes, and we drove them into Chicago, to O’Hare, last night… I saw them board a plane, to go back to New York. So it isn’t one of them… waiting behind, lurking in the snow or something. Jesus. This is crazy.”

  “Naturally. Let me ask you a question. Who would logically be the last to leave this place, once filming is done?”

  “Why, me, of course. I’m the director. I’m in charge.”

  “Well, then, that’s when it was supposed to happen. Just you alone here, with that last remaining person, who’d then do you in. Or it’s possible Turner would be the one to do you in. It’s possible, come to think of it, that Turner is the hitter, and the inside man is the back-up person, the stakeout guy. Very possible. Anyway, that’s when it would be done: when nobody else was here. Except you. And your wife, who might also get taken out.”

  “No!”

  “That’s the facts of life. But this snowstorm… it’s gummed up the works for Turner and company. As long as we’re snowbound here, nobody’s going to die. Not unless Turner and his partner are willing to snuff all of us, and that’s not likely… people in this line of work don’t kill unnecessarily. Only when they are paid to kill somebody is somebody in danger, and you’re the only one in this place that has a contract out on him.”

  “But you said my wife…”

  “Yeah, she’d probably get her lights put out, too, because she’d be in the way. But that would be a necessary killing, and anyway, with a husband and wife, it would be easy to rig something, easy to make it look like they took each other out.”

  “God! You make it sound so clinical… like a goddamn textbook.”

  “Maybe I ought to write one. So. Now it’s your turn.”

  “What?”

  “About the contract. About why the guy took the contract out on you.”

  And he told me.

  22

  “He thought I killed his daughter,” he said.

  “I see.”

  “No you don’t. He was wrong. You see… it’s hard to explain. Have you heard of snuff movies?”

  “Sure. That’s where somebody is actually killed on camera, right? Snuff flicks. While back there was a lot in the press about them.”

  “Right. Snuff movies, slasher movies, they called them. Most of it was media hype, and I’m glad to say it finally died… pardon the expression. The media finally decided the slasher movies were a hoax.. which to a large extent they were. There were some fake ones, but there were some real ones, too. Rumor has it the Manson clan made some, but none of the media people ever turned one up. But I did. Not the Manson snuff movies. But there were a few made in Mexico. Rumor said South America, but it was Mexico. There were four or five of ’em, I found. I bought ’em from a guy… I didn’t even buy them, exactly. I was just a middleman. Jesus. It’s hard to explain.”

  “You’re doing fine.”

  “Well, like I said before, I know some people in mob circles, some of my backing’s been from them. Like for example, the guy that owns this place, this lodge, he’s a mob-related guy. He’s backing the picture, and one thing he insisted on was we use his place for some of the filming… he’s going to get off on having a print of a porno film shot in this lodge, his lodge, and he can show it to his friends and his girl friends and everybody can get off on it. Anyway, I was doing a favor for some mob people, being a middleman on these slasher flicks. See the goddamn things don’t go into any kind of wide distribution or anything. They’re too fuckin’ hot for that. But these hardcore violence freaks, these S amp; M guys, they’ll pay incredible coin for something like that. One
print, going into a private collection and not likely to be seen by anybody but that one collector and maybe some of his pervert friends, is going to bring in maybe ten grand. Ten grand for a little reel of fuckin’ film! It boggles the mind. So I was a middleman for the things, and one of them somehow got seen by this guy Meyers. It was the film that was getting the most attention, of the five or six I handled. Going for something like twelve grand a shot. That was because all the other films had Mexican girls in it. This one had an American. You know how those films go, don’t you? They’re regular porno loops. Except different. The girl thinks she’s just there for the regular sex stuff, sucking, fucking, but then after the sex stuff, right at the climax, the guy, and maybe some other guys who come in the room, takes a razor or something and kills the girl. Really kills her. On film. It’s something. In some of ’em they dismember the girl. It’s something.”

  “Something,” I said.

  “Well this guy Meyers, he sees the one with the American girl in it, and he’s outraged and he uses his own mob connections to track down the source of the film, and I’m the source, and so he puts the contract out on me.”

  “The girl in the film?” I said.

  “Yeah,” Castile said, the images from the TV wavering across his face, “you’re right. Just my luck. Meyers’s daughter.”

  23

  We talked about a number of things after that. One of them was money: I told him how I wanted to be paid-one thousand now, the rest later-and he liked that, liked the idea of not having to pay any more than that up front, since it showed I had faith in my ability to keep my end of the bargain, to keep him alive so that I would eventually get the rest of the money. I explained that while the later payments should be cash, the first thousand needed to be a check (it’s necessary for me to report some income to the IRS each year) and went into other details about how the check was to be handled, which I won’t go into here.