“No.” I figured I better keep the same story going. “Guest at the Inn left something in his room. Hoped to catch him. Our girl Carrie at the grocery said she recommended this place to him for breakfast.”
“Nice of her. The little colored girl, right?”
“Right.” She wasn’t that little, but right.
Hazel shrugged. “I never had any trouble with her.”
Nobody had, but people said things like that around here.
A bell dinged and she went to the window, then brought me my omelet. She seemed like maybe she’d keep lingering, so I smiled and nodded and carted my eggs and Diet Coke off to a corner table to think. No, to ruminate. That’s the word.
So Simmons had asked “the colored girl” where to get breakfast, got directions here, then hadn’t used them. Either that, or he didn’t like the looks of the place and drove on by.
But Marv’s looked clean enough from outside, and from within—if he’d stopped and stuck his head in—seemed no better nor worse than your usual eccentric local eatery. And the food smells were pleasant enough.
Whatever. He hadn’t stopped here.
But had he driven on past?
Had I scoped this out all wrong? Maybe we were talking about that rare specimen, the genuine, sure-enough, honest-to-God coincidence. Maybe Simmons was on his way to a job upstate that had nothing to do with me. Maybe he had just happened to stop at Wilma’s Welcome Inn to spend the night somewhere quiet and out-of-the-way.
Was it possible I wasn’t the target at all?
Simmons was certainly not acting like the backup half of a hit team. You don’t do one day’s surveillance and then split. Of course, Simmons might be working the active side, and had stayed a night at the Inn at the direction of the passive partner, to get a room with a view on the scene of the coming crime. That made some sense.…
Not much, though. What I would have done—following a procedure I knew others in the trade plied—was check in with my partner and go over the intel he’d gathered. Do some final planning. Coordinate with my partner. Determine whether the passive half could split or needed to stick around and provide literal backup.
Possibly that was what Simmons was doing right now.
Making contact with his stakeout guy to put the finishing touches on my finish.
I finished the Diet Coke but left half the omelet behind, paid Hazel at the register and headed to Paradise Lake, not sure what my next move should be. Also not sure what Simmons and his nameless partner’s next moves might be.
Still in the Impala, I drove back to my A-frame. No car was parked along the lane, and the gravel apron in front of the deck revealed no guests, either. I sat for a moment in the car, my thoughts doing their best not to go too fast or too far. What were my options?
It was doubtful Simmons would be waiting inside. Either he had not come to my turf with me in mind, and had driven on to his real job, as opposed to the one I’d imagined for him; or he would wait till nightfall. Middle of the night, most likely. If I was the target, that meant somebody knew who and what I was, and you don’t confront a professional killer head on. You sneak up, you surprise, or…
…shoot him from a distance.
With all those empty cabins and cottages hugging the lake, a sniper finding a suitable position for some artistry with a high-powered rifle would be a fucking snap.
Should I run from the car to the house, to make a running target? But that would tip my assassins to my knowledge of their existence and the job they’d come to do.
Bad move.
Of course, not as bad as just making myself a casual easy shot by sauntering up the steps to the deck and in the door. The best I could do was split the difference—move quickly but not suspiciously.
And I would make the best target when I paused to use my key. If I were in those woods across the way with a sniper-scope rifle, that’s when I’d do it, and the fucker in my sights would not have a chance in hell.
So I changed things up.
I got out of the Impala, quick but not frantic, and did not go up the steps to the deck. Instead, acting like there was something I had to do—which was true: stay alive—I cut back alongside the A-frame to the rear door and used my house key, already in my left hand, quickly and efficiently.
And went in.
For what seemed like the thousandth time, I moved carefully through my A-frame with the silenced nine mil in hand and checked everywhere. Yes, even under the beds.
The place was clear.
Last night, keeping the drapes shut made sense. This time of day it didn’t. I wanted to see what was coming. Who was coming. So I drew open the drapes, revealing my picture postcard view of the lake, sun shimmering gold on the water, sky blue with cotton ball clouds, with only the dark trees, dead-looking ones mingling with evergreens, to remind me of reality.
All the thinking had got me tired. That and the no sleep last night. I figured I’d need to spend the day in here, the evening too, waiting. Waiting for company.
So I prepped by piling some furniture in front of the back door, kitchenette chairs, tables and such. Blocked paths that would trip up an invader, should he come through a window, or at least make him reveal himself by noise. Even spread some bubble-pack on the floor under bedroom windows.
Not that I would fall asleep. By God, I would stay awake. I’d started the caffeine regimen with that Diet Coke at breakfast. I brought a whole six-pack back from the fridge.
I got a fire going, which prompted me to get out of the bomber jacket, and I moved the sectional couch pieces around so I could have my feet up and the gun in my lap as I lay back against the comfy cushion. I had an extra ammo magazine for the nine mil on the cushion next to me. I’d removed the silencer, which made the weapon too bulky for combat situations.
Didn’t dare put music on or the TV or read a book. I needed to stay alert. No distractions. Just the shimmer of lake and blue of sky, with enough light coming in to help keep me from nodding off. It took me back to the sniper days in country, where I might sit watch for hours on end, waiting for somebody to kill. Sometimes a specific somebody.
I was ready.
“Wake up,” a voice said.
Simmons.
Training my silenced nine mil on me.
FIVE
I sat up.
Not a sudden movement. Very slow and careful, and some part of my brain was wondering if this could be a dream, which is to say nightmare, but it wasn’t.
This was all too real.
Bruce Simmons was seated on a backless section of the sectional facing me, his somewhat pointed features lending him a satanic cast, as did a widow’s peak I hadn’t noticed before on the product-heavy dark hair, longer than mine. His position was edge of his seat, leaning just a little forward. I was slumped, which was why I needed to straighten some.
Falling asleep was unprofessional, if human, and I can credit myself only for snapping awake immediately, going instantly alert, the way you are if you hear somebody trying to break into your house or hotel room.
Of course I hadn’t heard him actually breaking in, had I? So I didn’t have much to brag about. And I had no idea how he’d got himself inside, maneuvering around my bubble-pack and furniture blockades, and didn’t really care. That was beside the point now, wasn’t it?
On the other hand, I’d been deep enough asleep that my guest had risked setting the stage some. The drapes on the double doors onto the deck and the lake were now closed. The square of cushioned sectional he was perched on was backed away from me enough to avoid a kick at his gun-in-hand or anything else for that matter.
And, as I said, he was aiming my own nine-millimeter automatic at me. The extra ammo clip he had confiscated and tucked away somewhere. He was out of his topcoat and wearing a black track suit with white stripes down the sleeves and legs. If he was here to force me into dressing like that, he’d have to shoot me.
I’d fallen asleep in the clothes I’d worn since yesterday and through the night, jeans
and a long-sleeve navy t-shirt. I’d like to tell you I had a throwing knife or small revolver tucked at the small of my back, but I didn’t.
The only thing I had going for me was that I was alive. That he hadn’t killed me while I slept, which is what I deserved; but I’d only been awake maybe two seconds before I realized he was here for more than fulfilling a contract.
“Wondering why you’re still alive?” he asked. He had a baritone voice that would have gone well with a gig as a late-night jazz-spinning disc jockey. Soothing, almost, except for the part where he was a hired killer holding my own gun on me.
“I am,” I admitted. “Pleasantly so.”
“Thing is, I know who you are.” Smug. Proud of himself.
“If you didn’t,” I said, “this would be random, and you don’t look nuts to me. And I’m not just trying to get on your good side.”
His mouth twitched a smile. His dark eyes were hooded, which added to the vaguely sinister effect of the sharp if handsome features. Reminded me of the old movie actor Zachary Scott. Same oily smoothness.
“When I say I know who you are,” he said, “I mean I know who you are…Quarry.”
What did he want, applause? Or maybe for me to start shaking? I’d already done enough shaking for this prick, waiting outside his room at Wilma’s and he hadn’t even been in it. Fuck this guy.
“Is that right,” I said politely, “Mr. Simmons?”
The eyes weren’t hooded now.
“How do you know who I am?” he demanded, some edge in the disc-jockey baritone.
My turn for smug. “Is that really what you want to talk about? How we know who we are?”
He sat back just a little, but no couch was behind him to lean on. “You worked for the Broker. I did, too, a long time ago. That must be how you know me.”
“Must be how you know me. What next? And, uh, by the way—I didn’t work for the Broker.” I tapped my chest. “He worked for me. He was my agent.”
Simmons nodded in irritation, said, “Of course. I work through the Envoy.”
I had to laugh. “Christ, not a very imaginative bunch in this business, are they?”
He seemed vaguely offended. “There are a number of agents, brokers, in our game. They each have kind of…code name. Designating regions.” He gestured a little with the hand with my gun in it, not threatening, really—just gesturing. “Didn’t you know that?”
I shrugged, not putting much into it, not wanting to get shot. “Not really. I figured as much, but, no.”
I obviously knew the assassins on Broker’s roll call all had one-word aliases, and figured that was to keep real names or traceable fake ones off phone calls and other communications. That the same was true of other middlemen in the killing game came as no surprise.
And, of course, I knew what Simmons’ own wry little Broker-invented “code name” was—Brace. Something or somebody you could lean on. But it was also a synonym for “crutch,” wasn’t it?
I would keep that knowledge to myself, however—no need to show off, or show my hand.
I asked, “When somebody killed the Broker, did they divvy up his merry little band of butchers? Or did somebody take over as, what…regional manager?”
He was getting pissed off, which was fine by me, because that’s part of what I was going for—unsettling him.
“I’m asking the fucking questions, Quarry!…Another broker took over, yes. But some…talent…went elsewhere. That’s part of how you got away with it for so long.”
“Got away with what?”
“Whatever it is you’ve been doing. There are theories.”
I raised my eyebrows. “What does the ‘Envoy’ think? Do you two talk in his secret lair? Use the Cone of Silence, maybe?”
His eyebrows, on the other hand, furrowed. “Do you want to die, Quarry?”
“Not particularly. Not today. What is it you think I’ve done? Theories about what?”
He shifted a little on the cushion. We were around the campfire now.
“Since the Broker’s murder, almost ten years ago,” Simmons said, “something odd has been happening. Took a while to make itself clear—for a pattern to emerge out of you doing whatever it is you’re doing. But it finally did, and you might have got away with it, if you had only pursued this…” He shrugged. “…project of yours for a few years. Or perhaps only indulged yourself once a year.”
“Oh, I indulge myself practically every day. I subscribe to Hustler magazine. I even have the occasional hot fudge sundae.”
He let that slide. “We’re not exactly sure how you’ve gone about it, or even why, or whether it’s a moneymaking enterprise or just some kind of.… We’ve speculated you are trying to atone for what you did, in your years working for the Broker.”
I started to laugh, genuinely laugh. “Stop. You’re killing me. Atone? Jesus!”
Simmons was working hard at staying calm. At not taking the bait. I would rate his results as just fair.
He said, “Took more than a couple of years for anybody to notice. But the talent roster kept getting thinned—people like us, Quarry, out in the field on a job, started dying mysteriously. Violently. And contracts got cancelled, after…when the clients themselves got cancelled. Also violently.”
I risked another little shrug. “I suppose once the client is out of the picture, so is the contract. Point becomes moot. What does that have to do with me?”
He was studying me but not getting anywhere. “All of the teams whose efforts have been disrupted—all of those killed out in the field under those violent, mysterious circumstances—once worked for the Broker. This strange, slow epidemic, which has raged on for damn near a decade, has not touched the other regions in any major way. But it got noticed, Quarry. Whatever it is you did, that you’re doing, it got noticed. You shouldn’t have been greedy.”
I held out an open palm. “Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say this Envoy character has valid suspicions, although you must admit they’re vague. What you do for a living—what I used to do for a living—it’s dangerous work. A man can get killed.”
“He can,” Simmons agreed.
“But I would be willing to assure you and, through you, assure your Envoy that I am happily settled here with a good, prosperous little business…I have a restaurant lodge I run, not far from here—maybe you noticed it? I have no desire to give that business up or my quiet life here, and will guarantee you and your business associate that I am not interested in doing anything else. Certainly nothing involving my previous…career. I won’t be hard to find. You can come back and plug me at your convenience. Isn’t that fair?”
Now he smiled. A sudden calm came over him and his smile became a narrow, reptilian thing.
“You misunderstand me, Quarry. Mind if I smoke?”
He could fucking burn, as far as I was concerned.
“Not at all,” I said. “Use the fireplace as an ashtray.”
“Thanks.” He’d worked up some ambidextrous skills, too, in his time; he got out a deck of Marlboros from a track suit pocket—must have liked to have a smoke while he jogged—and a lighter, too. Got a cigarette going.
I never smoked. That shit can kill you.
“Oh, the Envoy sent me to take you out, all right,” Simmons said cheerfully. We were just two guys in the same line of work swapping war stories now. “But I have my own agenda.”
“That right?”
He nodded. “I’ve been doing this work a long time. Since I got back from Vietnam. You served, right?”
“Yes.”
“Marine, wasn’t it?”
“Semper fi, Mac.”
“Sorry. I was regular army.” He let smoke out of his lungs to pollute my living room. “I’ve been at this over a dozen years.”
“Long time.”
“Too damn long. Few years ago I met a nice woman and something inside of me…rekindled.”
Maybe it was the smoking.
He went on: “Something human woke up in me. I
met a girl in a bar. Not a girl, no—a young woman. Smart, funny, nice, beautiful.”
“Congratulations.”
“We have a kid. Little boy. Looks like me, they say.”
I hadn’t noticed.
“Anyway, I don’t want to be out playing with guns like this anymore.” He gestured with my nine mil in hand again. “I’ve had it with that shit.”
“So go straight.”
He made a face. “And do fucking what? You think I got a college degree over in the Nam? I own a little business, but I can’t live the way I want from it. And I don’t want to get killed in the line of duty, either, particularly since that duty is just wasting some cheating wife or crooked business partner or mob guy when they want somebody from outside to do their dirty work.”
“Tell me about it.”
This time he offered up the one-shoulder shrug. “So I need something lucrative. And you can help me on that score.”
“I can?”
“You can. I am even willing to cut you in for a healthy taste. Twenty-five percent just for sitting here in your nice cottage on this nice lake.”
On my nice ass. Right. That would happen.
“Twenty-five percent,” I asked, “of what?”
“I figure you have names. Addresses. Information. All these brokers around the country have that shit. The Broker certainly had it. I figure that’s what you’ve been using, the Broker’s list.”
Uh-oh, like some long-dead lady on the I Love Lucy laugh track always said.
Simmons went on: “I don’t know exactly how you’re using the list, and I don’t care. But I know how I would use it.”
He didn’t go into that, though.
Finally I said, “Let’s say I know what you’re talking about. Just hypothetically.”
“Let’s,” he said.
“How—exactly—would you use this list?”
“Is that your concern?”
“If I get twenty-five percent it is.” Of course he had no intention of doing that, but I had to play along.
He mulled it some, or pretended to. Then he sat forward and almost whispered, as if we were in public and not in my living room.
“Okay, Quarry—I’ll really give you an opportunity. Ground-floor kinda deal. See, I know where the Envoy keeps his information. Very old-fashioned fella, the Envoy. Wall safe at home. His list of names, merged with the names you have, would be very lucrative.”
Killing Quarry Page 5