But if you wind up giving money to a middleman like the Broker, you’ve got coin all right. You’re rich or close to it. And specialty murders, like accidents or frame-ups, are on the menu. Not my specialty, though. In that rarefied climate, I was neither fine dining nor fast food—more like an old-fashioned steak house. Nothing fancy. Just a bullet in a steer’s brain. And, in the case of a “suicide,” a baked potato with all the trimmings on the side.
Now I know I referred to this as “the murder business,” but it isn’t really. That’s just words. Me? I was no more a murderer than a gun or a bullet is. Firearms and ammunition and yours truly, we’re just about the mechanics of the matter.
You see, murder is personal, like when I kicked the jack out and crushed my wife’s lover under that little sportscar. Killing, however, is a fait accompli, as the French said when they left Vietnam.
So if you’re thinking I was some kind of contract-killing Robin Hood, exorcizing my guilt and remorse by warning the potential victims of other contract killers, well, think again. I was a businessman charging for a service. Like a lube job or fries with that. As for informing the victim that death was coming for him, that was complimentary.
Like the drug dealers say, first one’s free.…
But taking out the contract killers—preventing the immediate threat to somebody’s ability to breathe—that’ll cost you. And it costs you more if I can determine—and remove—who took the contract out on you.
I had been doing that for almost ten years—quite successfully—when I picked a name off the Broker’s list and set out for Naperville to try to save another life.
I’m just that kind of guy.
TWO
Winter was almost over, but it was still cold.
Spring wouldn’t show up for a while yet and the skeletal trees with their bony branches seemed to scream autumn till you noticed the occasional clumps of snow stubbornly clinging. The ground had some snow, too, plopped here and there like oversize bird droppings.
Going from the Lake Geneva vicinity, barely inside Wisconsin’s border, to Naperville in the greater Chicago area made for one of my easier trips to a name and location plucked from the Broker’s list. We’re talking maybe an hour and forty minutes, depending on traffic, after white-patchy farmland turned into urban sprawl.
The dark-blue, mildly battered Chevy Impala, a decade old, had decent heat, a radio-cassette player and surprising pick-up. This was hardly competition for my Batman-black Firebird at home, but I’d felt lucky to pick it up for under a grand in Muskego, where I would sell it back on my return. The used car lot, where I’d done business before, even let me store the Firebird in back at a pittance of a weekly rate.
I never used my own car on a job.
The wind rattled the windows and nuts and bolts that weren’t exactly new-car-lot fresh, but my fleece-lined bomber jacket did right by me, and I left my leather driving gloves on. The latter were nicely snug for use with my nine-millimeter Browning, which was on the seat next to me, under a spread-open Playboy. I took Highway 12 all the way, some of it four-lane, some two-lane, but a direct route. I had some homemade cassettes along—Beach Boys; Beatles, for memories; Bangles and Blondie, to convince myself I wasn’t an old man yet.
Naperville, thirty miles or so outside of Chicago, was booming, like so many other suburbs in an area whose populations had swelled up when the East-West Tollway went in. Right now I was on Ogden Avenue, clogged in traffic in a commercial garden blossoming with AllState, Kwik-Kopy and Burger King signs. I pulled in for a sub sandwich at the Original Italian U-Boat (slogan: Accept No Sub-stitutes!) and asked for directions to Ridgeview Lane.
Which proved to be a typical suburban Pleasant Valley Sunday kind of street, two quiet blocks in a subdivision called Steeple Run. We’re talking plenty of trees currently growing nothing but snowy daubs on otherwise bare branches, and butch-haircut lawns of brown and green and white, no color dominating. Not that this was a cookie-cutter area—each house was distinctive, in its non-distinctive way, a ranch-style here, a split-level there, plenty of two-stories.
But a sleepy, prosperous neighborhood like this did me no favors.
This was a street—a narrow two-lane street at that—where everybody knew their neighbors. By name. Kids included. Hell, they probably knew each other’s car—fuck, license plate. Somebody right now could be calling the Steeple Run Homeowners Association rep or even the Naperville police to sound the alarm that some unknown party was driving a 1970s-era relic through the area.
The house in question was painfully cheerful, like maybe the Partridge Family lived here—two modern canary-yellow stories trimmed blue with a peaked two-car attached garage. In the driveway was a Cadillac DeVille, recent vintage, pale yellow with a white Cabriolet-style vinyl half-roof. Color-coordinated, yet. If his next Caddy was green, would the house get a paint job?
Surveillance difficulties abounded. Houses here were fairly close together, the lawns shallow along the narrow concrete ribbon of Ridgeview Lane. Driveways were for parking, curbs strictly decorative. Park your wheels on one side of the street and you’d be in the opposite homeowner’s face.
At the same time, sidewalks and for that matter front yards were free of toys or skates or bikes or any other signs of life except for the nice new (or at least new-ish) cars in the drives of two-car garages. The only other indications of inhabitants were the garbage cans set out for tomorrow’s pick-up.
Maybe I could get a job as a garbage man—that would allow me to unobtrusively stake out the house on Ridgeview Lane for as much as a once-a-week minute. No, better than a minute! I could probably get five or even ten minutes out of my efforts, if I could master the motor skills needed to empty cans in back of the truck while keeping my eye on this particular house.…
Or, with my background in the service of my country, possibly I could land a gig at the post office as a mail carrier and secretly keep watch on the neighborhood six days a week, an hour or so a day. This assumed I could pass the civil service exam, and didn’t shoot any dogs trying to bite me. Hey! What about a paper route?
At this point, by the way, I was on my third slow pass through the two blocks of Ridgeview Lane, and about at the end of what I dared do around here for now.
Yet, childish sarcasm aside, one possibility did wink dangerously at my desperate needs, like jailbait behind the Naperville Mall corndog counter. A house across the way—not directly across the way, but two houses down—had a big FOR SALE sign in the lawn.
I almost didn’t bother. I almost bailed anyway. Already I was getting disheartened about what I’d been doing these past ten or so years, and if you factored in the five or six years with the Broker, and the two tours in Nam (sometimes we don’t use the “the”), I mean, who needed this?
Didn’t I have money in the bank? In a number of banks actually? I’d scored well this past decade, while living modestly; and I’d had a number of unexpected windfalls over the years. Now and then you stumble into money when you take down evil pricks. Really, why not seriously consider retirement?
Maybe to a house on Ridgeview Lane.
Which gave me a couple of reasons to check out that house across the way, two doors down, where I pulled into the empty drive and moved the nine millimeter from under the Playboy and into my waistband, under the zipped bomber jacket.
Then I got out and went over to stand on the edge of the drive, hands on hips, gawking at the house in prospective buyer mode. The slant of the lawn and glint of the sun didn’t allow for an easy look in the windows. Best play it safe. Sort of safe.
I walked up to the faux-rustic two-story and rang the bell. I could hear it sound faintly within. My hunch was no one was home—no car in the drive, no sign of activity. But somebody might answer, and if they did, I would inquire about seeing the house.
Presumably whoever answered, depending on how hungry they were to sell, would give me an impromptu walk-through, or remind me that the realtor’s name and phone number we
re on the yard sign.
Anyway, none of that mattered, because three tries on the bell went unanswered. By now someone—possibly any number of someones, including the person I was there to stake out (and possibly family members of his) could well be watching. Wouldn’t they be, in this kind of neighborhood?
So I did not try the door. That would be rude. Might seem suspicious. Could even be gauche, if I knew what that meant exactly.
What I did instead was more in keeping with what any innocent person interested in possibly buying the house might do—I got on my toes and peeked in a few windows. And the news was good.
No furniture.
So maybe I was still in business after all. Having no homeowner to deal with meant I had options. For example, I could go to the realtor with fake I.D. (which of course I carried) and begin negotiations to buy, doing my best not to put much, or any, money down. Just do what it took to tie a ribbon around the property.
Or, better, I could come in after dark and slip into the place and play squatter. With luck, the water would be on, which meant drinking water and toilet privileges. Maybe some of the appliances had been left in the house. I already had some stuff in the trunk of the Impala for just such a contingency—a little portable TV, space heater, an inflatable camping mattress, pillow from home, portable radio, plastic ice chest.
I would find a grocery store to buy bags of ice, sandwich makings, and six-packs of Diet Coke. I don’t drink beer on the job. Don’t drink it much ever, actually. Very clean-cut type. Add no facial hair to your mental image.
This camping-out approach I had used in the Broker days when the passive role came my way. And in recent years, I’d occasionally gone this route, too. This was not the first time I’d consigned myself to a mid-range rung of suburban Hell.
Walking around outside the house, I found a cement patio with a covered barbecue grill and not much else. Edging up to snow-touched shrubbery, I checked more windows, but also looked for access, in terms of both the house itself (basement windows—nice) and behind the place, which was heavily wooded.
Good.
I could sneak in that way easy enough, after dark. With luck, I could get inside, check the place out, determining the best window onto the street with a view on the house across the way, two doors down.
Then I’d look the garage over, probably find it empty, and locate the garage door opener, likely just inside the door connecting to the house. Sometime deep into the night, I could move my car into the garage, empty the trunk of my accessories, and play Campfire Girl in a stranger’s domain. I had everything but marshmallows and a stick.
I would also have to make arrangements for quickly disassembling my surveillance perch, and find somewhere close to stow the gear (again, quickly), should a car or two pull up for a realtor showing of the house to prospective buyers. That was a routine I’d been through many times, back in Broker days, and about as fun as a surprise inspection in a barracks.
But nobody said life was going to be easy.
“Can I help you?”
The voice was male, friendly and mildly threatening.
He was in the back yard of the house next door—to my left as I faced the rear of my would-be squatter’s paradise. A big guy, fleshy, in a gray overcoat and matching face. Kind of a junior-high football coach type. Probably the assistant coach, who worked with the line.
I grinned and strode over to him, extended a hand. “Jack Matthews,” I said.
“Carl Burgis,” he said, half-smiling, the other half of his face skeptical. He had light-color thinning hair and a wide oval of a face. Maybe forty. Lots of lines, but then he was partly frowning, so.…
“I’m not generally a window peeker,” I said with a laugh, hands in my bomber jacket pockets, rocking on my Reeboks. “I just saw the ‘for sale’ sign, stopped, and knocked and…nobody home.” I shrugged. “So I thought I’d take a look-see.”
“No harm done,” he said, like maybe there had been. Under the topcoat was a t-shirt. He’d seen me out a window and threw the coat on and came out to check on me.
With a nod toward the rustic two-story, I said, “You don’t happen to know how much they’re asking?”
He grunted a laugh. First sign he was warming. “Too much.”
“How much is too much?”
“Hundred and fifty K. Been sitting for months. They moved to California. Maybe they like having two house payments. I sure wouldn’t.”
“Me neither! What do houses go for around here, generally?”
“Round a hundred. I paid eighty, but that was five years ago. What do you for a living, son?”
Tiny bit skeptical still, but pretty warm now.
I said, “I’m a teacher, but so is my wife, so we have two incomes. I think we could make it here.”
“I’m a teacher myself,” he said, grinning. “And so is my wife. I’m a coach. Football.”
Am I good?
Hands on his hips now. “Where are you teaching, son?”
“You familiar with St. Charles?”
“Yeah, of course. Nice little town. Don’t really know anybody up that way, though. Not in our conference.”
I was glad of that, because that meant I didn’t have to pull any other names of Illinois towns out of my ass.
“Well,” I said, “St. Charles is where I’m teaching. English. Assistant swimming coach, too.”
“Very good.”
We chatted a while, about how long my commute would be—half an hour to forty-five minutes—and other small talk. His wife was a history teacher. And so on. That he’d seen me was a bit of a problem, but not enough to make me change my plans. He was a nice guy. I hoped I wouldn’t have to kill him.
With that my only misgiving, I walked around to the front where my car was parked in the drive. My hand was on the key in the ignition when someone came out of the house across the way. Down two doors.
The name he used here was Bruce Simmons. He was about my age, my size, similar build, but with dark hair longer than mine, kept neatly in place by what people insist on calling “product.” His eyes were dark, too, his face narrow but handsome, nose and chin pointed but not in an aggressive way. Tan, either sunning bed or vacation. He wore a gray topcoat but it only came to mid-thigh and under it was a black turtleneck. Maybe a gun, too. Maybe not.
But for sure he carried a good-size brown canvas travel bag.
This he stowed in the back seat, and as he did, a woman in her late twenties or early thirties came out—not dressed for the weather, just to say goodbye—with a cute little boy of maybe four tagging along at her side, tugging on her nearest sleeve.
She was a looker. Her hair was big and black and frizzy, and her nice slim body was in a denim pantsuit. Her face was pale and her mouth was wide and red with lipstick, white with teeth. The little kid, also with frizzy black hair, was wearing—hell, I don’t remember. Whatever little kids wear. He was cute. Leave it at that.
Anyway, Simmons had apparently forgotten his shaving kit, because she brought it out to him. He took it and smiled at her and they kissed. Nothing too elaborate—what would the Homeowner’s Association say? But it was warm and real. The kid was dancing, his eyes on daddy.
Who picked him up and gave him a kiss on the forehead and put him back down.
He got in the Caddy, tossing the shaving kit in the backseat with the canvas bag, and started the engine and waved at them over its throaty purr and backed out. They waved at him like he was the Titanic pulling away from the dock, and in a way, wasn’t he?
Because it was very likely I’d be killing him, and if you think I’m terrible for that—and I’m not saying I’m not—but if you’re feeling sorry for his little family, think about it. How many families had he ruined? For a living? How much better off would they be, without him but with whatever funds he’d stashed away for them?
She could do better. With him gone, nobody would come kidnap that little boy to get at daddy. Or rape and kill the looker mommy in denim in revenge for
something daddy did. Daddy was a killer. Don’t feel sorry for him. If you’re smart, you won’t feel sorry for me, either.
I didn’t wait long to pull out of the drive and fall in behind him. Didn’t stay that way long, though—plenty of traffic even at off times in that part of the world, to make it simple enough to keep a couple or three cars between me and him.
He headed north. It was the tail end of rush hour and he took the tollway to Skokie, where he gave money to a cigar-smoking loud-jacketed used car salesman, leaving the guy the Caddy in exchange for a fake-woody Mercury station wagon, half a decade old. Great minds think alike, although I had to admit I hadn’t thought about ever picking up a station wagon. For a big vehicle, they didn’t come less suspicious.
And if you had to move a body, wow. Good choice.
He ate at Skokie, too—a deli diner, a mom-and-pop joint called Jack’s. I ate there myself, the place big enough for me to maintain a distance (Simmons in a booth, me at the counter) but still keep an eye on him. We both had the Reuben. This was a Jewish enclave, Skokie, and they knew their way around corned beef.
My distant dining companion did not seem to be looking around, surreptitiously or otherwise. He was just a guy having a sandwich with fries (hand-cut, very good). And why should he? He had no reason for care, beyond switching cars. He wasn’t on the job, he was on his way to a job. Why would anybody be following him?
Which did make my task somewhat easier.
But when he cut over to Highway 12, still heading north, darkness settling in, I began to have misgivings. If he was on his way to my part of the world for a gig, I couldn’t have any part of it. Too damn risky. Already this thing had started feeling risky—once the traffic thinned, past the Chicago area, keeping distance between my car and his while not losing him was no easy fucking task.
Then we were in Wisconsin. The Lake Geneva area isn’t very far over the border, maybe twelve miles. As we headed that way, still on Highway 12, I knew I would have to bail unless he kept on going north, maybe to Fond Du Lac or Oshkosh or Green Bay. Maybe some popular Packer got a contract taken out on him by some sore loser Bears fan.
Killing Quarry Page 2