Killing Quarry

by Max Allan Collins

  I nodded slightly, eyes narrowed, getting it, yet managing not to laugh at this shit. So he wanted out of the killing business, and his way of doing that was to become a magnate of murder, with an expansive stable of professional killers and an ongoing relationship with organized crime. The better to make a nice life for the little woman and his boy.

  Beautiful.

  I leaned forward, just a shade, and my eyes locked onto his. “You may have something there. But we have to find a way for me to trust you. And for you to trust me. Any ideas?”

  “Absolutely,” he said, and I slapped the nine mil from his hand and the gun flew past the shag carpet and into the kitchenette where it skittered on the tile. This I heard, not saw, as I was diving for him, taking him back over the section of couch onto the floor.

  He hit hard with me on top of him, but he reacted fast, getting a hand under my chin and shoving me off and back, where I clanged into the metal fireplace, feeling the heat. I crumpled in on myself and he hit me in the jaw, dropping me to the shag. He looked toward the kitchenette, apparently having seen where the nine mil went, and was on his way there, hunkered like a tackle looking for a quarterback to cripple, but I kicked him in the ass with the flat of my running shoe, shoving him back down to the floor again. Him on his belly, like a flopping fish on deck, gave me a less than ideal path to his balls, but his legs were apart enough that I could send the toe of a shoe between and under his ass cheeks.

  His howl meant I’d judged right, and then while he was busy screaming, I went past him to retrieve my nine mil, which was resting by the cabinets under the sink.

  But then he was on me, even as he whimpered from the gonad goal I’d kicked, and hugged me from behind, around the waist, like he was going to fuck me whether I wanted him to or not. He had my arms pinned and I hadn’t made it to the nine mil, so we were locked in a kind of awkward dance there in the small area.

  Suddenly he let me go and his hands came up and fingers gripped my either ear and he slammed my head into the kitchenette counter. That left me reeling, all but unconscious, and he had the nine mil again and dragged me into the living room and threw me on the floor.

  I looked up at him. And down the barrel of the silenced nine mil.

  He was breathing hard, but then so was I.

  He came down on top of me, shoving a knee in my stomach—apparently he was in no mood to get kicked in the balls again—and I turned my head to one side and puked up some of my breakfast.

  Again, I could only think of a rapist as he held me down, kind of sitting on me, knee in my belly, gun snout in my face. He was as out of breath as I was. “Where…where’s…the…fucking… list?”

  “Not…here.”

  “Don’t…fucking…lie…to me.…”

  “Tear…the place…up. Go for it.”

  “Where is…is it, then?”

  “Bank. Safe deposit…box.”

  “Then there’s…a key. We’ll get…get the key…and go…go to the bank.”

  “Never…never mind.”

  “What?”

  “The list…is here.”

  He grinned, said “Good,” then the cough of a silenced handgun made me think, momentarily, he’d accidentally shot me.

  But that wasn’t it.

  His eyes were wide—not at all hooded—and a gaping hole in his forehead spewed brains, bone and blood on my already puke-flecked face, while a projectile whizzed over my scalp, practically parting my hair.

  Somebody came over and yanked the dead weight off of me. I sat up, blinking. Somebody ran water. Somebody brought me a towel. I cleaned my face off. Looked up at who had saved me.

  A beautiful woman in a forest-green jumpsuit loomed, too slender for her voluptuous breasts, her almost Asian eyes dark and staring.

  “Hello, Jack,” she said.

  “Hello, Lu,” I said.

  SIX

  Glenna Cole was the name she used at first.

  Ivy was what the Broker called her.

  Lucille was how she introduced herself when we met.

  Lu?

  That was what I called her.

  Ten years ago or so, when I came into possession of the Broker’s list, ready to make my first attempt to follow a professional killer to an intended victim, I selected from that list the name Glenna Cole/Ivy. I’m not sure I could tell you why I zeroed in on one of the handful of women on the Broker’s team.

  But I did.

  Maybe I figured a female would be easier to handle, to control, to overpower, physically. The emotional side never occurred to me. How foolish are the young.

  Or I might have been challenging myself to see if I had it in me to dispatch a woman with the same dispassion I routinely brought to my other assignments. I’d never killed a woman before, except in self-defense a few times.

  Anyway, for whatever reason, Glenna Cole was the name I settled on, which led me to a “swinging singles” apartment complex in Florida. Maybe that was another factor in my choice of Broker’s “Ivy”—the opportunity to exchange the Midwest cold for some fun and sun. A vacation with pay, right?

  Stupid.

  Right.

  Ivy, of course, was a name typical of the cute, droll monikers the Broker bestowed upon those of us on his roster—referencing poison ivy, probably. Or it could have referred to Lu’s tenacity, her ability to cling to her marks.

  Or maybe he was alluding to her seductive qualities, indicating she used her charms as a means to get close to a target. But if that were the case, I never knew about it.

  In Florida, I’d kept my distance, having ingratiated myself with another bikini-resplendent resident of the Beach Shore Apartments, inhabited mostly by youngish divorcees flush with alimony—stewardesses and waitresses who got lucky with rich old fucks.

  This led to the males being the sex objects at the redundantly named Beach Shore, specimens usually five or ten years younger than the females. I had so much sex with Nancy Who’s-It, my dick got red and I wondered if I’d caught something.

  Glenna Cole probably had five years on my twenty-five at the time. But otherwise she hadn’t at all fit the pattern of the sun bunnies of the Beach Shore. Her hair was dark blonde and shoulder-brushing, fairly standard here. Her face was a narrow oval, her nose thin and long, her eyes large and almond-shaped, an Asian cast.

  That mouth of hers, under that slightly beaky nose, seemed too wide, and her gums showed when she smiled. She was taller than my five ten by at least an inch. Her legs were on the skinny side and she lacked the narrow waist of the classic hourglass beauty. Her breasts were large enough to overwhelm her tall, slender frame.

  And yet.

  She had easily been the most strikingly beautiful female among the many bikini babes at the Beach Shore. Those Asian eyes were dark blue, flecked gold. That bosom rode full and high and proud. And she carried herself with a confidence that was the glue putting all the disparate elements together, which added up to one lovely goddamn woman.

  Down at the Beach Shore, I had never spoken to her. Never locked eyes with her. I was on surveillance, after all. I was in full beard, trimmed enough to not look like a hobo but still conceal the planes of my face; that, and constant Ray-Bans, did the trick. Plus, I was hiding in the anonymity of one tanned healthy body after another tanned healthy body, female and male, a sexual buffet at this swinger’s paradise.

  At all times I did my best to keep the pool between Glenna Cole and me, but once or twice she climbed out of the water dripping, right in front of me, her flimsy top slipping down to tease with dark circles of areola. Her unique features and bosomy height made quite the droplet-pearled sight, which of course I pretended not to see.

  But I saw, all right. And there was something about her that wasn’t purely physical.

  Something that made a man want to fuck her, sure, but more than that want to know her, in more than the Biblical sense. Before long I was regretting choosing her name from the Broker’s list. There were any number of things I would have liked
to do with her, and to her, but killing her wasn’t one of them.

  And I almost certainly would have to.

  This new enterprise I was attempting required eliminating the threat to my client, once I determined who that client might be, of course. That meant two kills, the passive and active players both; three, if I could discover who took out the contract. Back in the Broker days, all I had to do on a job was wipe out a single measly human.

  Beard shaved off, I followed Glenna Cole AKA Ivy out of the sun and across the country into the cold and a cornfield casino in the Heartland, where she had arranged a job as a waitress in close proximity to her target. I got to know her, first as a customer and then as a fellow employee, and we hit it off. We dated. Mated. Just two people who casually connected.

  Or so I assumed, unless maybe she had seen past the now absent facial hair and sunglasses and recalled me from the Beach Shore. In that event, I was the one in danger.

  But as things worked out, it seemed she really hadn’t tipped to having seen me before, although I had made a crucial mistake by assuming she was working the active half of the assignment. She was in fact in passive mode, surveilling the mark, and this misstep on my part almost got the client killed.

  Live and learn.

  One positive result, though, had been my ability to approach the hit team’s target and convince him of the danger he was in, and that I wasn’t some crank or con man or just plain lunatic. As my first attempt at making the Broker’s list work for me, it had gone well. I was on to something.

  And, as it happened, I was able to bring the job to a resolution without having to kill the woman with the Asian eyes and large breasts. A happy outcome. Like they say, win-win.

  What I had not expected was that I’d bond with Lu in a way that would feel real. That I’d come quickly to like her. Feel real affection for her. And that she would at least seem to feel the same about me.

  How that all played out has been recounted elsewhere, but I can give you this much.

  Once her partner was killed under apparently accidental circumstances—and after the party who took out the murder contract had himself been removed (by me, of course)—Lu had nothing left to do but move on. We had never discussed who we really were in all this. I sensed she suspected I was responsible for both the contract, and her partner, going belly up. But, if so, that remained unspoken of.

  We left on good if ambiguous terms, though there had been nothing ambiguous about the hot and heavy hump that had been our frantic goodbye.

  After that, I asked her to come along with me, not even knowing what exactly I was asking, possibly thinking that together we might have a chance at some other way of life.

  But her response had been, “Maybe next time,” and she’d gone.

  In almost ten years, no “next time” had come.

  Now, unexpectedly, it had.

  * * *

  “Let’s get you up,” Lu said, and she had her gun in one hand—a Glock nine mil with a noise suppressor longer than its barrel—and held my left arm at the elbow with the other. Her hair was blonder now, and ponytailed back.

  But I would have known her anywhere, let alone in my living room with a silenced Glock.

  She had already dragged me out from under what used to be Bruce Simmons, who was face down on my shag carpet, a little red bindi-like hole on the wrong side of his head.

  Steadying myself, with her help, I said, “I’m lucky that bullet didn’t hit me in the face.”

  She gave me half a smile. “Would’ve bounced off like Superman. Lost its velocity making the trip. Hiding somewhere in the shag now—I’ll find it later. You want to sit down?”

  I nodded.

  Lu sat next to me on a couch sectional, as far away from the corpse on the floor as we could manage without leaving the room. The Glock she tossed on another section nearby. This was a part of the couch where you could lean back, and I did.

  “We have a mess to clean up,” she said.

  We weren’t talking about how she had happened to save my ass—my life—or why she was here. I already knew she must have been the late Simmons’ partner. That she was his surveillance half and likely had been on the other end of the binoculars across the way in a certain cabin last night.

  And she knew that I knew. Some things between a man and a woman don’t need saying. As for why she shot him and not me, I figured we’d get around to that. I wasn’t incredibly focused yet.

  “Limited mess,” I said with a shrug. “Dead men don’t bleed. Maybe you noticed that before.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Be that as it may, we still have a dead body to deal with. At least he didn’t shit himself.”

  “Small favors.”

  The fingers of her right hand moved tentatively into my scalp. “You have blood and brains in your hair. Why don’t you take a shower?”

  “Why don’t I?”

  I got up and she took my arm and I said, “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re shaking.”

  “Fuck I am. I’m fine. Just got a little knocked around, is all, and then splattered.”

  “Worse ways to get splattered,” she observed.

  “Definitely.”

  She walked me to the bathroom anyway. As I was stripping down, she asked if I had anything to wrap her partner up in.

  “Sure,” I said, and told her where the supplies were in one of the rooms under the loft overhang. “Plastic sheeting—drop cloth. Should be a roll of duct tape on a shelf.”

  She nodded and went off.

  I took a long hot shower. Washed my hair, really washed it. Blood like that cakes and brains are worse. I was in the cubicle long enough, surrounded by steam, to wonder if I had imagined the last hour or so. Maybe I’d been dreaming. Maybe I was still asleep.

  But when I turned off the water and stepped out to towel off, hot water replaced with cold air, I realized I was awake, all right.

  In the master bedroom I got into fresh clothes, including another long-sleeve t-shirt and jeans and back into the Reeboks. When I joined her in the living room, my beautiful guest in the forest-green jumpsuit had wrapped the dead fucker up in plastic and sealed the deal with duct tape, really cocooned the guy. She was wearing little white gloves, like this was 1958 and she was Audrey Hepburn. On the other hand, she was in Reeboks, too.

  Lu looked down at her handiwork, pleased.

  “Nice job,” I said.

  “Thanks.” The Asian eyes had their way with me. “May I make a suggestion?”

  “Why not?”

  She gestured at the plastic package. “We shouldn’t dump him till after dark. Even though it’s pretty dead around here. You have any ideas?”

  I nodded. “Plenty of gravel pits in the area.”

  “Filled with water?”

  I nodded again. “And still frozen over.”

  She frowned. “That a problem?”

  “Don’t think so. That package should break the ice and submerge just fine. Is his station wagon around somewhere?”

  Her head bobbed. “Halfway down your lane.”

  “What did you come in?”

  A shrug. “Just a car I bought for the job.”

  Nothing had been said yet about how I was the job.

  “Used Camaro,” she added. “Lot of miles, a few dings, but still a nice ride. Let’s put him in the station wagon. After dark, I mean.”

  I’d been right that a woodie like that could come in handy.

  She edged over to me and smiled, one old friend to another. Put a hand on my shoulder. “Jack, you look beat. Uh, you are Jack here, right?”

  “Yeah, I’m Jack. I told you I’m fine.”

  She flipped a hand toward the floor. “Look, I can babysit the mummy here while you catch some z’s. I’ll wake you when it’s dark enough out.”

  “No. I don’t want to sleep till this is dealt with.”

  “Till the body’s dumped.”

  “Right. I know just the right gravel pit. There’s a downhill slope t
o a drop-off. I can jump out and it’ll just keep going. Right through the ice and gone.”

  “Cool. Kind of in your back yard, though.”

  I shrugged. “Mob bodies get dumped around here all the time. Won’t come back on me.”

  “Good.” She looked me over sympathetically. “Can’t sleep, huh?”

  “Won’t sleep.”

  She frowned in thought. “Could you eat?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  Now that I’d washed my hair I could.

  “How’s the food at that place you own?”

  She’d been the surveillance half of the team, all right.

  I said, “Limited menu but damn good. You like chili?”

  “Who doesn’t, in this weather?”

  “Let’s walk it.”

  We did. We did not hold hands or anything. A near decade had passed, after all, and our relationship had been a short one. Plus, she may well have figured out I was behind that contract going south in Des Moines, all those years ago. And that I had been the one responsible for her partner, the active half of the team, meeting a “shocking fate,” as the Register put it.

  Walking close enough for our shoulders to brush now and then, our breaths smoking with the cold, we exchanged a few vaguely embarrassed grins. Before long we were seated in a booth in the corner of the bar of the Inn, waiting for our chili to arrive. Charley was behind the bar, giving me the “who’s the babe?” fish-eye.

  Lu was sipping a Bloody Mary and I was working on a Diet Coke. Suddenly things felt a little awkward.

  Her chin crinkled with a smile.

  “So,” she said. “What’s new?”

  SEVEN

  Late afternoon at Wilma’s Welcome Inn, in the bar, was not exactly hopping. A couple of locals who worked in Geneva but lived in Paradise Lake were chatting and drinking, with Charley wiping down the counter and cleaning glasses, pretending to work since the boss was around.

  Lu and I ate our chili with the conversation limited at first to how good it was. Her inquiry about what was new got this response from me: “Not much.”