Meanwhile I was mulling, as I imagine she was, exactly what we should talk about here in public. Not much chance of anything being overheard, with just Charley and those locals around, although Brenda had stuck her head in, arriving for work. She frowned at me, as if I were her husband she’d caught running around, and disappeared, presumably getting back behind the register a wall away.
Lu and I both decided, without discussing it, that our conversation should be limited to the lives we led away from homicidal work pursuits. Our “real” lives. Or was that fake ones?
She paused with a spoonful of chili waiting midair for her attention. “How did you end up here, Jack?”
“I’ve been in that A-frame for years,” I said. “Going on fifteen.”
“No kidding.”
I nodded. Swallowed chili—I didn’t let the kitchen vary from Wilma’s recipe by a grain of spice. “I was given a generous advance by a businessman who took me on.”
“I may know him,” she said innocently. Another delicate bite of chili. “He was a broker, wasn’t he?”
There it was, out in the open. Or anyway, out in the open behind the bushes. She had come in on her partner about to kill me and had chosen to kill him instead—why, I didn’t know, other than my native charm.
“That’s right,” I said. “Oh, I forgot. You worked with him, too. The Broker.”
She didn’t miss a beat. “But what got you into the hotel and restaurant business?”
I shrugged, broke a couple of crackers in my chili. “Just drifted into it. This inn was just a place near where I lived, and I took a lot of meals here and got friendly with the people. There really was a Wilma, once.”
“Not just a name starting with ‘w’ to go with Welcome Inn?”
“Not at all. Big gal, kind of sexy in her way. I liked the hell out of Wilma.”
“What became of her?”
“She passed away.” Well, really, she got shoved down those stairs out there, by somebody I killed later. “And I ended up buying the place.”
Very softly she said, “Good money laundry, I bet.”
“It is. Makes real dough in season, though. Paradise Lake hasn’t been commercialized like Twin Lakes and Geneva. Wilma’s is one of a handful of places in town near the lake itself that’s zoned for dining and lodging.”
“Aren’t you the little businessman.”
“What about you, Lu? It is still ‘Lu,’ isn’t it?”
The wide mouth twitched in a smile. “It always will be, to you.”
We each had a little more chili, then I asked her, “What’s your story? What have you been up to? What’s your life like these days?”
She smiled, sighed, shrugged. “I’ve been in St. Paul for the last seven years or so. I have an antique shop. Specialize in ’30s, ’40s, ’50s modern. Good-size operation. We have auctions, I do appraisals.”
“I bet it requires occasional travel.”
Another twitch of a smile. “It does. Do you travel much?”
“Less than I used to. Significant other?”
She spooned her chili, as if looking for a diamond hidden in there. Then: “Had a few of those. Hard to manage, with my… travel. My interests. Compartmentalizing is hard.”
“Yeah it is.”
“Sometimes I think.…”
“What do you think, sometimes?”
She looked up. “Sometimes I think I need to find somebody who can relate to some of the…odder things that have occupied my time, and interests.”
“I hear that.”
She leaned in, just a little. “You remember what I told you about my husband?”
“He ran a nightclub somewhere, didn’t he?”
She nodded. “Detroit. I tended bar for him. He liked having a good-looking young woman doing that. The men liked it.”
“I’m sure they did.”
“Do you remember how he…passed away?”
“I do.”
I actually didn’t, not the details anyway. All I knew was he’d been embezzling from his mobbed-up silent partners, and those silent partners got vocal about it. Him being dead was the gist.
“How about you, Jack?”
“How about what?”
“Do you have a significant other? Other than that twat who stuck her head in and gave us a dirty look?”
I shook my head. “That’s Brenda. She’s just an employee I have occasional inappropriate relations with. We have a kind of chemistry. Kind that blows up in a lab.”
That got a sultry chuckle out of her.
“Should be dark out, by now,” Lu said. “Shall we take care of business?”
I nodded. “No rest for the wicked.”
It was dark, all right, nicely so, with the moon glowing behind another overcast sky just enough to provide some context without putting us in the spotlight. We walked by way of the lane to my place, and she stopped at the Mercury station wagon parked along there, using a key she must have got off her late partner’s body.
We got in the woodie, with her behind the wheel. She started the engine, then said, “That Chevy out front of your place? Just wheels to dump?”
“Just wheels to dump. My Firebird’s in Muskego, waiting for me to sell the Chevy back and collect it.”
We were rolling now, nice and easy. “Firebird, huh? Aren’t you the wild and crazy guy.”
“So they tell me. I’ll lead you to the pit.”
“Cool.”
She pulled in next to the Impala. Her ride, a light blue Camaro, maybe ten years old, was parked there, too. I put the seats down in back of the station wagon, and then we went in and collected the plastic-and-duct-taped bundle, with me taking the feet. We slid him into the back of the woodie and the rear door closing with a whump echoed across the lake, like a hunter had just scored a moose.
Soon I was in the Impala, alone with my thoughts, as my headlights cut through a hazy darkness and Lu trailed me in the Mercury wagon, not quite tailgating. My mind was starting to work again. Which meant paranoia was kicking in.
Understand that in my business—the various forms of the killing business I’d indulged in, going all the way back to Vietnam—paranoia is not a bad thing. Paranoia is what keeps you alive. It’s caution with an edge. And paranoia had me wondering if I dared take Lu and her word at face value.
We had not yet discussed why Lu—coming onto her presumably longtime partner, about to shoot the man she and he had come to kill—had instead killed that partner. That she had then soothed me, cleaned me up, and resumed a friendly relationship that, let’s face it, only lasted a few days in the first place, a lot of years ago.
What was this about?
What was she up to?
My winning personality and bedroom skills did not seem enough to encourage this old female friend of mine to kill for me. So far, I’d just been living the moments—the surprise of having Lu back in my life, the relief that she had chosen to save my ass, the procedure of dealing with a dead body that needed to disappear, even the social time spent together over chili.
No reflection.
Just moments. This moment into the next moment.
Now I was behind the Impala’s wheel, chasing my headlights. You might think I’d have felt comfortable, moving through my home turf; but my home turf was a heavily timbered area, a dense dark woods on a night with the moon blotted out by clouds, as I rode a concrete ribbon that I was sharing tonight with nobody but Lu.
That was an exaggeration. We encountered probably four cars on a journey that lasted half an hour and change. But it nonetheless seemed like a desolate, spooky, otherworldly world that I was moving through, as if I were already a ghost.
At the gravel pit, we exchanged cars, and when I started down the incline toward the drop-off, below which the ice-covered gravel pit waited, I wondered if I was about to be as dead as Simmons. I’d brought along my nine millimeter—it was again in my deep bomber jacket pocket—but what good would it do if she fired her Glock at me just as I rolled out
onto the ground from the moving vehicle?
Or she might run me down with the Impala, maybe send it and me over that cliff, jumping to safety herself.
Perhaps it’s telling that I didn’t consider turning the tables on her to let her take a trip over the edge and into the pit with her partner. Why didn’t I? Did I trust her? If so, why?
What the fuck, Quarry?
Then I was rolling out of the wagon and it was on its way, then gone, followed by the crunch of the ice giving out, and a gurgling sort of burp from the water below, swallowing it.
Suddenly she was right there, helping me up, both of us in the Impala’s headlight glare. She was in a black raincoat, which made a silhouette of her. I brushed the dirt and dust off myself, and answered her facial query—you all right?—with a nod.
She drove.
Neither of us said a word on the way back, not once in over half an hour. And then we were both back in the living room of my A-frame, sitting beside each other like kids outside the principal’s office, looking at the couple of splotches of blood on the shag carpet that were all that remained of Bruce Simmons.
“I need another shower,” I said.
“You got dirty,” she allowed. “You do that and I’ll clean up the carpet.”
“You’ll find what you need under the sink,” I said, nodding toward the kitchenette.
I shuffled off and took another shower. This time I knew I wasn’t still asleep. Wasn’t dreaming. I scrubbed and soaped and leaned against the wall letting the needles have me. I came out in a bathrobe and almost bumped into her.
She gazed at me with those almond eyes and I could see that she was beat, too.
“My turn,” she said, and moved past me, and took over the bathroom, shutting the door on me. Then the spray was going in there.
Out in the A-frame, she’d done her housekeeping. The area on the shag carpet where the bloodstain and puke had been was moist but clean. The various barricades I’d put together with furniture were disassembled, returned to their places or close enough, and even the bubble-pack under windows was gone, stowed away in the supply room most likely.
“But can she cook?” I said to myself.
I got into some pajama bottoms and went into the guest room, where I regularly slept. I slipped under the sheets and covers, and they felt fine. I’d changed them a few days ago and my routine, going back to the Marines, was to make my bed every day. Hospital corners and all.
She’d had plenty of opportunities to take me out, so I didn’t worry about whether it was safe to fall asleep or not. As if I had any choice. A few years ago maybe what I’d been through these past, largely sleepless couple of days and nights wouldn’t have fazed me. But I was beat, all right. Dead. Not Simmons dead, but dead enough.
I shut the light off.
“Hey you,” she said.
She was framed in the doorway, lights on out there. Tall, leaning against the jamb. A silhouette again, her hair an unruly mane—must have washed it and given it a preliminary towel dry.
I clicked on the nightstand lamp, the glow of which was yellow—dim but just enough to read by, on nights I couldn’t get to sleep.
She had wrapped a towel around her, sarong-style. Dorothy Lamour on the lookout for Bing or Bob. Still in the doorway, she asked, “Interested? Bad timing? Been through a lot, I know. Maybe just sleep?”
Then she dropped the towel.
Fucking beautiful women and what they know they can do to you.
That lanky body with the pendulous breasts, the nipples erect in their dark sand-dollar circles, the lush thatch of dark pubic triangle. The years had only improved her, her legs not so skinny now, her body showing signs of working out. My vivid memory of whiteness left by her bikini when she sunned had been replaced by an all-over tan.
That lovely unusual high-cheekboned face, those almond eyes, the narrow nose, wide mouth, bore no makeup at all. By every stereotypical standard this was not a beautiful woman. But the combination of those features, and the intelligence in those gold-flecked blue orbs, set their own standard of beauty.
Who the hell cared if she could cook?
She came over to me and flipped the covers back. I was erect already.
“Sit,” she commanded.
I sat on the edge of the bed and then she was kneeling before me and her head was moving up and down in my lap, the velvety warmth enveloping all of me, not just what her mouth had taken in. Gliding up, gliding down. Her hair was still damp from the shower, its tendrils tickling my thighs as her head gently bobbed, building tempo until she had to stop if she didn’t want it to end.
And she didn’t.
She guided me onto my back and she climbed on and that sweet receptacle sucked me up into itself. She did all the work, or anyway most of it. Grinding but sweetly, building again, until this time I couldn’t hold back and she didn’t want me to. We clasped each other, shudderingly, and then she smiled down at me.
“Aren’t you glad,” she said, “you didn’t kill me, all those years ago?”
“Aren’t you glad,” I said, “you didn’t kill me tonight?”
* * *
The next morning, around nine, I heard somebody say, “Hey! You! Wake up!”
I got myself in a sitting position, blinked a few times, and there she was, sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed—another jumpsuit, but a lemon-color one today—with all her makeup done. She was probably around forty, and the years were showing some, but she knew not to hit the cosmetics too hard and looked just great.
“Question,” she said.
“Okay.”
“What kind of civilized human doesn’t keep any coffee in his house?”
“There’s tea. Diet Coke. If caffeine’s the point.”
She shook her head. No longer in a ponytail, the blondeness got itself nicely tousled. “Coffee is the point. Did you have a nice time last night?”
“You mean, dumping that body or getting my ashes hauled?”
“The latter.”
“Yeah. I had a nice time.”
“Then get up and buy a girl some breakfast.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Did you move in or something?”
She gestured toward her attire. “Suitcase was in the Camaro. I don’t care how cute a guy is, I don’t stay over without toothpaste and a change of clothes.”
“You are civilized.”
After yet another shower, and getting myself into a sweatshirt and jeans, I drove her in the Impala over to Marv’s. Today the funky diner-in-an-old-house was busier, but still all locals. Kind of people I didn’t know to talk to, just exchange nods with.
We found the same table in the corner I’d taken yesterday, nicely private. Hazel, the skinny waitress with a lot of miles on her, managed to drive herself over and take our order. I had the kitchen sink omelet again and Lu ordered the French toast with bacon, crisp. Hazel, who seemed tickled I was getting a little, had already delivered a fountain version of a Diet Coke to me, and Lu asked for coffee, black.
We didn’t talk much while we ate, but when the dishes had been cleared, and the place had emptied out pretty much, I had a refill on the Diet Coke and Lu was having a third cup of coffee, and I finally asked the big question.
“What the fuck,” I asked, quiet but firm, “is going on?”
She shrugged, sipped coffee, then jumped right in. “For the last few years, Bruce has been talking about it.”
“About what? And don’t you call him ‘Brace’?”
She shook her head. “No, and he didn’t call me ‘Ivy,’ either. We were a team a long time. You get to know a person.”
“Got along?”
“Far as it went. He was kind of an asshole.”
“In what way?”
Single shoulder shrug. “Oh, he’d talk about his little family and how much he loved his wife, how crazy he was about her, but then he’d tomcat around on the job. A kid away from home.”
“You didn’t like that.”
&nb
sp; “No. First of all, what the hell kind of immoral shit is that? Second of all, I like working with somebody whose mind stays on the job.”
I sipped Diet Coke. “Ever cause you any trouble?”
“Couple times,” she admitted. “Twice jobs almost blew up in our faces. Because his eye wasn’t on the ball. On balling, not the ball.”
“I hate that, too. That’s what got my partner killed.”
She nodded, smirked humorlessly. “Anyway, for a couple of years Bruce had been talking about this rumor that somebody was out there, messing up jobs. Knocking off entire teams, and taking clients down, too.”
“Not sure I follow.”
Her smile patronized me. “Jack. Please. If that’s where we’re headed, I’ll just kiss you on the cheek for old time’s sake and hit the road. You know exactly what I mean.”
“I do?”
“Sure you do. You’re the one who’s been doing it.”
What could I say to that?
She continued: “You got hold of the Broker’s roster, didn’t you? How did you put it to use? Follow somebody to a job, figure out who hired it, get paid to make the threat go away? Kind of genius really.”
I said nothing.
“I never said anything to Bruce or our middleman for that matter,” she went on, “but I figured you were the guy, this ghost who was fucking things up for everybody. Not out of, what…”
“Morality?”
She laughed lightly. “Not out of that. You, what—squeezed dough out of the mark? Using the list to wipe out the hit teams, I see how you might have managed that. But figuring out who hired the hits? And taking those bastards out, too? What are you, Magnum P.I.?”
I had some Diet Coke. Then said: “I would guess, if there were anything to this, it would be a matter of working backward. Looking at who had a bullseye on him, and figuring out who was likely to have hung it on.”
She shook her head, blondeness bouncing, her half-smile an admiring one. “You know how I figured out it was you, right, Jack? That was what you were doing in Des Moines! That was how my cute little partner ended up dead in a bathtub. That was why the plug got pulled on that contract. You’ve been doing this that long?”
Killing Quarry Page 7