Killing Quarry

by Max Allan Collins

  But my man didn’t keep going north. He took a turn and then so did this whole goddamn mess. His turn took him through very familiar lanes lined with trees, many of them evergreen and holding onto the snow, and then he pulled into the parking lot of a rambling two-story establishment, open in off-season to serve the sparse population of locals.

  Wilma’s Welcome Inn was a combination gas station, restaurant, grocery store and lodge, which was even shabbier now that it was run by the late Wilma’s husband Charley. Nothing terribly significant about this oddball establishment, except perhaps for one thing.

  You could see my A-frame from there.

  THREE

  The family man named Simmons from Ridgeview Lane in Naperville, Illinois, was clearly on my Paradise Lake turf now. What that meant wasn’t exactly clear, as the Buffalo Springfield song said, but pretty damn clear nonetheless, and while Wilma’s Welcome Inn had a good reputation for killer comfort food, I doubted this prick drove all the way to Wisconsin for the chili. He’d already eaten, after all.

  A few parking places—several filled by locals—hugged the face of the building, but this time of year the front entry and the dining room were shuttered. Alongside the Inn, at the right, wooden steps led up to a little landing, bordering a drive back to an expansive parking lot sloping to some trees that did not block an excellent view of my cottage on the lake. Not a single car in that rear lot, either, to obstruct.

  Another interesting fun fact: I owned Wilma’s Welcome Inn. Curiouser and curiouser, as Lewis Carroll said. Or was it Walt Disney?

  Back around when I’d first started utilizing the Broker’s list for fun and profit, a guy who I’d worked with in the early Broker days, called Turner, just happened to show up on my turf like this. In that instance, it proved to be a coincidence, but I’d had to treat it like it probably wasn’t and some of the ramifications were…unfortunate.

  Starting with Wilma of Welcome Inn fame. She was a big fat gal, one of those Mama Cass-type women who didn’t have to work hard to fill out a muumuu. But she was pretty and funny and really did make the best damn chili in Wisconsin. People in the off-season sometimes actually did drive up here for the comfort food. Beer-batter walleye, too, and barbecue ribs.

  Probably not Simmons, though.

  Anyway, Wilma. We would kid each other, and flirt, and I’d say tasteless things, like, “If you wanna go upstairs, honey, that’s cool—but we’ll have to hump twice, for me to break even.”

  And she and her chins would jiggle with laughter, and the funny thing was I did kind of dig her. But she wound up getting killed, in the Turner fuck-up. So did Turner.

  Her common-law hubby was a grizzled bald bartender named Charley who looked like a shaved Shar Pei, and he and Wilma’s teenage niece wound up owning the place. When the girl got to legal age, she sold out to me and so did Charley, who was better at drawing beers than keeping books. The Welcome Inn gave me some income when I needed it and had its money-laundering benefits as well.

  I had little to do with the place at first, but I sometimes worked in the filling station’s modest garage—I’d tinkered with cars since high school—and had gradually made the ancient building less ramshackle, without losing its charm. Or mine either, for that matter. So, over the years, some remodeling got done.

  I pulled in at Wilma’s and took the last parking spot of the handful in the small front lot. Right next to Simmons. I sat there for a while with the motor running, both the car’s and my own, studying that station wagon like it still had its driver in it. He might come right back out, if he’d just stopped for directions, and I would deal with him right here. Nobody around.

  Because, let’s face it, I knew what he was here for.

  I was the mark.

  All my list shenanigans had finally caught up with me, it would seem, and at this point why and who and how was not my prime concern. Survival was.

  My two most basic beliefs may appear contradictory: that life and death are meaningless, and survival is everything. That’s a circle I’ve never spent much time squaring, but if I strike you as deeply philosophical, you really haven’t been paying attention.

  So I sat there with my bomber jacket zipper down and my Browning in my lap, attaching the noise suppressor that had been in my right-hand jacket pocket. If Simmons returned to his station wagon, having gotten his directions—which wouldn’t take long, since my A-frame was in spitting distance—I’d be ready. Ready enough, anyway.

  I was still operating off the notion that Simmons didn’t know what I looked like. Which was as safe an assumption as any in this unsafe game. A higher risk was that the bastard might—might—recognize me from the Skokie diner. But he sure hadn’t seemed to be scoping out that joint while he chowed down on corned beef.

  Of course, he maybe could have made my car. The Chevy Impala was a fairly invisible ride, but this was a pro and he might have tagged it, despite my efforts to never be driving the car directly behind him. Traffic had been light, once Chicago was history, and maybe the Impala and I had turned up too often, in his rear-view mirror.

  I hoped I wouldn’t have to kill him here. Right here. Talk about shitting where you eat. And a silenced weapon isn’t like Hollywood would have it. Think about having a bad raspy cough, how when you cover your mouth with a hand or a sleeve, it’s still a cough that people can hear. But nobody was around to hear anything, at the moment, and a life was at stake.

  My favorite one: mine.

  An eternity of maybe three minutes passed before I slipped the nine millimeter with the noise suppressor into the right-hand bomber jacket pocket, which was plenty deep, a custom job that was almost a built-in holster, reinforced fabric too. I got out, headed around to the side entrance, went up the steps and in, through a little foyer bordered by pamphlets on racks about what a fun time was to be had around here.

  The layout of Wilma’s, a result of my do-it-yourself remodeling, now had a longish counter with cash register at right where you could pay for your food and check in or out of a room. During the season, two employees worked back there, sharing the register but with one handling the restaurant and the other the hotel. The rambling two-story structure’s upper floor had the guest rooms. All but two room keys were hanging on the wall of little hooks, so the hotel side was not doing land-office off-season business.

  Behind the register was a good-looking brunette with nice tits and a sour attitude. Her mouth had a bruised look glistening with lipstick as red as a red Corvette, half threat, half promise.

  “Look what the cat drug in,” she said to her employer.

  Brenda had been glowing at the job interview, and we’d fucked pretty much right away—though not at the interview. What kind of boss do you take me for?

  But I gradually realized I was the one being screwed, because she pilfered the register—not overdoing, but she did, and I never called her on it. Despite that, she liked me even less than I liked her.

  She was the kind of woman who uses sex to get a job and then resents you over it—how’s that for a double standard! The once a month or so that we still fucked, however, was pretty hot. Hate sex has its place. As long as it’s consensual.

  “That guy,” I whispered to her, leaning on the counter, “where is he?”

  “Why don’t you speak up?” As usual she showed me a half-smirk, which was annoying and, yeah, kind of hot.

  “Because I am seeking confidentiality.”

  She snorted a laugh and folded her arms on the impressive shelf of her white-bloused bosom, her chin back. “I thought you were out of town.”

  “I don’t seem to be. Where’s the customer?”

  “He’s not a local.”

  “I know. Where is he?”

  She jerked a thumb at the wall behind her, which meant he was in the bar, which was also the restaurant this time of year. A closed dining room loomed behind me, beyond which was the convenience store/filling station, with its own register and employee. Brenda would only put up with so much.
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  I said, “He ask any questions?”

  “Yeah.”

  God, I could have strangled her.

  “What, Brenda, were the questions?”

  “Did we have any rooms. I said, what do you think?” Half-smirk again.

  “Did he take a room?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What room, Brenda?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Oh, well, maybe I think he’s here to kill me.”

  That got something like a real laugh out of her. She of course had no idea who or what I really was. If she’d known, she might lay off the register.

  “If I’d had that information,” she said, “I woulda comped him.”

  “Well…it’s a Chicago license plate. I was just wondering.”

  “Wondering what?”

  “Just. Wondering.”

  “Confidentiality. Wondering. You have depths I never dreamed of, Jack.”

  “I’m an enigma wrapped up in a riddle, Brenda.”

  She farted with her pretty lips. “Yeah you are.”

  I shrugged. “I’ve had some interest from people in Chicago about buying us out, is all. Thought that might be what this is about.”

  Her frown was interested. “Buy us out? What’s my piece of that?”

  “A good job recommendation. Look. Don’t say anything to him, Brenda. I was…”

  “Wondering, right.” Now she whispered, eyes narrowing, mouth curling up at each corner, taking a hand away from a breast to gesture at it. “Confidentially, I bet you’re wondering when you’re getting some of this sweet meat again.”

  “I’ll let you know.” Confidentially, this was the kind of girl who, when she was blowing you, you always wondered if she was about to bite it off.

  As I was heading out, I asked, “Has he been up to his room yet?”

  “No.”

  I looked at the wall of keys. “Which room? Twelve?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Psychic. He request that?”

  “Not specifically. Said he wanted to be on that side of the building, away from traffic.”

  “What traffic?”

  “Do I give a shit? He paid the thirty dollars.”

  The rooms were numbered 1 through 12, and I knew very well that number 12 had a view on the parking lot and the A-frame cottage beyond it. For about half a second I considered going up there to wait in the room for him, but all the consequences likely to follow were just too daunting.

  I was going out when she whispered again, in the nearest thing to a nice voice as she could muster for me. “I am a little horny, Jack.”

  “Good to know,” I said, and went out.

  What now?

  If Simmons had gone upstairs, before coming down for a drink, just to stow his things, I might’ve been able to look through that canvas travel bag of his and determine whether he was on active or passive duty. If the latter, he would have a notebook of some kind, probably binoculars, and other gear attuned to stakeout.

  And what a perfect stakeout set-up it would make. Put to shame my FOR SALE house two doors down and across the way on Ridgeview Lane back in Naperville. From Room 12 he’d have a window on my world with a restaurant, bar and gas station/convenience store downstairs. I couldn’t remember ever having it that good.

  But if all I found was hardware—guns, knives, ammo, noise suppressors, what have you—that meant he was on active, and he could just walk across the parking lot and do what he came for. Wouldn’t even have to move his car.

  So I moved mine.

  I drove home. No speed, nothing fancy. The two men here to kill me would expect their mark to live his life as usual, and I didn’t want to scare them off—I wanted to invite them in…to deal with them.

  And deal with them included getting whatever information I could out of the pair—and I assumed with a target like me to face down, the passive half would linger and play back-up, as was often the case anyway. I could kill one and still have another to play with.

  Two bites at the apple.

  A low-riding fence was between the Welcome Inn parking lot and my property, no connector. I went out the way I came in, the street in front of Wilma’s almost a half-mile from the turn-off of my graveled lane, which wound back around. The night was dark, overcast, the lake a shimmering gray expanse, the trees around it silhouettes huddling like the Indians we had displaced.

  I supposed there was a chance that someone was waiting for me at the cottage. So far I based everything I did on what I knew, which was the Broker’s passive-active approach. No law said some other contract boys might not have their own, very different way of doing things.

  So I steered with my left hand and had my riding-gloved other hand around the grip of the nine millimeter. With the noise suppressor, the weapon looked a little like a ray gun. Something modern from outer space. Only it wasn’t—people had been killing with these for a long, long time.

  After pulling into the crushed-rock apron and climbing out of the Impala, I went in the front way, up the few stairs to the deck, unlocking the double glass doors and slipping inside, into the big open living room. I had left my own packed bag in the trunk—might be needing to make a quick exit, after all, to someplace that was not here.

  Just in case, on entering I dropped to my knees and had the nine millimeter with its extended snout out and ready. The floor was covered in a vintage shag that my knees were grateful for, but nothing else happened. I got as still as I could and listened. Only the refrigerator had anything to say.

  I’d left the heat on, low but on; so it was comfy.

  I slipped off the jacket, tossed it, got some lights going and opened the drapes on the glass doors, exposing the postcard view that made my property valuable. The moon had slipped out from behind the cloud cover to throw some ivory on the shimmer, but the Indians were still crowding the shores, quietly pissed.

  How at once comforting and unsettling it was to be here. This place, purchased with the advance the Broker had given me when I signed on so long ago, had been my home for almost ten years. The cozy familiarity intermingled with the unsettling knowledge that a killer could see the place from his hotel room.

  I gave the cottage a cautious search. Two bedrooms were at the rear, a master bedroom (which I did not use, except for dressing, but which might prompt an intruder to make the wrong assumption), a guest room (which is where I regularly slept), and a bathroom with shower.

  Also toward the back was a loft with a ladder; up there I could watch TV and read—under it was the laundry room and another couple of rooms for storage and such. The big living room under the open-beamed A-frame ceiling was mostly filled by a sectional couch surrounding a black metal fireplace. Opposite was a kitchenette, behind the counter of which—post-search—I positioned myself with gun in hand.

  I squatted there, poised for action or to maybe take a shit; but I didn’t maintain that position long because it was wearing, and anyway this was a time of evening where I could curtail the lighting without making things look suspiciously not normal. In the loft, I put the TV on, volume down, just the tube glowing, football players knocking silently into each other.

  Back down the ladder, I switched a lamp on, here and there around the place, to provide enough light for me to know exactly where any intruder might be while keeping him mostly in the dark.

  I wandered a bit. Not to get used to moving around in the low light, which I could have done with my eyes closed. No, I would go to a rear window where I could keep tabs on the window that was Room 12, which right now had a light on. Of course, that didn’t mean a lot—you can leave a light on in your hotel room for no better reason than it’s not you paying the electric bill.

  A bit later, I got out my spare binoculars from a guest room nightstand, the best pair of binocs remaining in the trunk of the Impala. Then I knelt at the sliding front doors, where I pulled back one drape a bit to be able to take a look at the houses tucked in among those trees, lining the lake.


  This time of year, many—most—of those homes were vacant, shuttered for the winter. Most of the locals did not actually live on the water—those cabins (and I use cabin loosely, because many were good-size and some even lavish)—were for the tourist trade or vacation homes.

  I did spot something. Not any lights on, rather a flare of reflection, thanks to the security lights outside my cabin—yes, I had a few of those, but no alarm system. I was the alarm system.

  Anyway, that reflection might have been off somebody else’s binoculars. And I knew just which cabin that would be. Might need to make a visit, past midnight, if I hadn’t already had a visitor myself before then.

  Time crawled by. I was not compulsive about checking my watch—a good fifteen minutes between glances, maybe. The light at the window of Room 12 through the trees and across the parking lot stayed on.

  I glanced around at my largely darkness-shrouded surroundings. Would hate to have to leave this place. Not out of sentiment, but comfort. In a life of limited security, what I had here was pretty fucking comforting. My mind bounced between staying alert for every tiny sound and thinking about the nice, quiet life I led here. Only a few weeks a year took me away from this Fortress of Solitude, providing an influx of money and a jolt of activity.

  Nearby Lake Geneva gave me access to nice restaurants, a movie multiplex and a health club, where I could swim during the winter months. Swimming is more than just exercise to me—it’s a kind of zen activity, or probably would be if I for sure know what “zen” meant. I just know that swimming relaxes me—it’s think or swim, a bad joke but a reality, the occasional need I had to really think something through, and the frequent times I didn’t want to think at all.

  For a lot of years I was a member of the Playboy Club at Geneva, a very nice lodge where I could take in some really good Vegas-style entertainment and see if I could hump more Bunnies than Hefner. I’m sure I failed at the latter, though I bet I came closer than you might think. The place closed down a few years ago, but soon came back to life as the Lake Geneva Golf and Ski Resort, a name that oddly suggested doing both at once. No Bunny costumes for the waitresses now, but plenty of bunnies just the same.