Killing Quarry

by Max Allan Collins

  She touched my hand. “Let’s go upstairs. This register isn’t open yet. I’ll remind you what you have going.”

  Was her ego really insulted, or was she just trying to hang onto her access to the register?

  “Honey,” I said, no acid at all, “I really am going to be gone on business. Just look after things. We’ll have a good time when I get back.”

  “You know, Jack,” she said, eyes big, “I really do like you. I usually don’t like the men I’m with.”

  “You’re sweet,” I somehow managed to say.

  Lu was still asleep when I got back. I nestled next to her and, when I woke, the windows were full of night and Lu was up, getting into yet another jumpsuit. A black one this time, suitable for the commando mission we’d be mounting.

  I got into a black sweatshirt and black jeans and black sneakers. A fleece-lined black leather jacket—not motorcycle style, but with a custom pocket like the bomber jacket—would complete the ensemble.

  Well, almost.

  I dropped the noise-suppressed nine mil in the custom jacket pocket, a .38 snubnose in the other pocket, and had Lu duct-tape a switchblade along my spine above the belt line.

  “Road trip?” Lu asked with a smile.

  “Road trip,” I said.

  NINE

  I found myself on Highway 12 again, rural landscape alternating with urban spread till the latter took over. Traffic was neither light nor heavy, as we’d started out around ten PM, making the trip to Wilmette in the predicted hour and fifteen. Reaching Indian Hills Estates, however—north of Lake Street and west of Illinois Road—took another twenty minutes.

  We were in my temporary ride, the Impala, which seemed less attention-getting then Lu’s Camaro; nonetheless, she drove, having been to the Envoy’s home before. We said little on the way. We didn’t have the radio on, not even Easy Listening. When you’re getting ready to invade a home, particularly one with a couple of armed guards on the loose, getting mentally prepared is a must.

  We glided between the stone markers of what had once been farmland but was now a subdivision, a couple hundred acres of big honking houses, winding roads, yawning front yards and wooded areas. Right now all the trees were still winter bare, but for the occasional stubborn snow clinging to branches. Spring would thicken up these barriers, make them nice and green and plush; but this time of year we had minimal cover.

  “Money,” I said, taking it all in as we rolled through the neighborhood.

  “Money,” she said with a nod. She was in the ponytail again, and it bounced.

  The houses perched on endless lots, with no set style—Colonials, Tudors, Arts and Craft, even ranch-styles. Some homes had been here a good while, others showing signs of recent construction. Apparently some smaller homes, dating way back, were going down to make room for big new ones.

  The Vanhorn place seemed here to stay, however, an English Manor-style shades-of-tan brick-and-stone affair with dark brown shutters, a two-car garage, two peaked roofs each with a chimney, and a yard no larger than Versailles.

  We parked on the next street over in front of a chain-link fenced-off lot with a sign that said DEMOLITION/NEW CONSTRUCTION SITE. No one likely to complain about us leaving the Impala here. Across the street was a Colonial with a FOR SALE sign and no signs of life. That was also good.

  The houses were far enough apart to make it unlikely that anyone would notice us strolling across and into the trees. We were soon moving through the park-like area of the adjoining back yards of the mansions, demarcated only by low-riding shrubbery. Lu led the way and I walked backward, right behind her. Our tight-gloved right hands held our noise-suppressed automatics along our sides as we quick-stepped across. The night was cold but not windy.

  Vanhorn’s back yard was landscaped only at its edges, the expansive rest of it open, its winter-brown grass painted ivory in the cloud-filtered moonlight, almost blending in with a gray stone patio with outdoor fireplace, wrought-iron furniture and enough room for the Marine Corps Band to rehearse. The back door would let us into a finished basement, specifically a recreation room visible through windows and the windowed back door, whose Yale deadbolt I opened in a couple minutes with two picks.

  Lu had been right about the lack of an electronic security system—or least one that set off a noisy alarm. And I figured she was right that a silent alarm that brought the cops was unlikely. The two security guards on duty were the only threat that faced us.

  No sign of them yet.

  We both had mini-flashlights in our pockets, but neither of us had them out as we stepped inside, where track lighting had been left on, on this lower level, at a dim but serviceable setting.

  The ample rec room was decked out with a treadmill and other exercise equipment, a green-felt poker table, black-leather couch and comfy chairs, a big projection TV, and off-white walls arrayed with framed Chicago Bears and Cubs memorabilia.

  Batwing doors opened into a spacious, appliance-filled laundry room where stairs led up into a vast kitchen also decked out with the latest appliances, and enough seating at an island for that Marine band on break. Though the house was Depression-era, this kitchen and the rooms beyond were all renovated into bland modernity, though the furnishings within the white-trimmed walls (pale shades of ash, peach, lime, mauve) were lush dark wood and overstuffed dark-brown leather.

  Still no sign of the security guys. They hadn’t been outside. When we’d peeked into the two-car garage, off the kitchen, two vehicles were parked there, a Mercedes and a tricked-out Jeep. So somebody was home. But the first floor seemed spookily quiet—just the hum of kitchen appliances and the ticking, and occasional chiming, of clocks.

  Our flashlights never came out of our pockets. Lights were on here and there, table lamps, dimmed track lighting. Easy enough to get around in, but with an eerie feel. It was like walking through a haunted house and then realizing you were the ghost.

  We had prearranged that Lu would go upstairs and check things out, and bring Vanhorn down at gunpoint if he was already in bed. Meanwhile I checked on a room toward the back of the place, where the security guards hung out.

  Lu’s sketch had indicated a couple of single beds, a couch, a card table and a TV. Her memory proved accurate enough, but a surprise was still waiting for me, and I hadn’t spotted it at first, as it was off to my left as I came in.

  A guy was in there—all in black, not unlike the way I was dressed. Sturdy-looking individual with short hair befitting the ex-military man he almost certainly was. Muscular and mean-looking, he’d have made a formidable opponent.

  If he wasn’t dead.

  He lay on his back, and his eyes were open and staring, and it seemed like the hole in his forehead was doing the same. Resting on a pillow of gore he’d produced, he had a peaceful expression, like he hadn’t even had time to say, “Oh, shit!” Or even think it.

  I heard something behind me, spun, and it was Lu.

  “Good way to get killed,” I whispered.

  She was frowning down at the dead man. “Did you do this?”

  “Not that I recall.” I knelt, checked him out. “Rigor. Been dead a while.”

  That made it unlikely the killer, or killers, were still around. Rigor took at least four hours to set in.

  She kept her voice down anyway. “Vanhorn’s not upstairs. Nobody is. Let’s check out the den.”

  That was on the first floor, too, off the living room, with which it shared the only wood paneling in the place, and I’m not talking about the stuff in your uncle’s den where he hangs his beer neons—I mean the rich, dark-brown burnished wood of wealth that goes well with overstuffed leather furnishings.

  We lingered in the living room, not to enjoy the stone fireplace, in which a fire would have been nice on a cold night, nor to admire the Oriental carpet that must have been worth a small fortune. I hoped the carpet wouldn’t be ruined by that dead man sprawled on it, with his brains spilled out in clumps caught in now-congealed blood like inappropriate
vegetables in your grandmother’s Jell-O-mold delight.

  This was another ex-soldier badass, now not nearly the threat he would once have been. In black, like his dead cohort and me (and Lu for that matter), he too was in a state of rigor mortis. Both watchdogs had died some time ago, but not long ago enough for the rigor to give way.

  Lu whispered, though neither of us was sure why. “What do you make of this?”

  “Somebody killed them.”

  That made her smile. Gotta love a girl with a sense of humor.

  She said, “I have a hunch our host won’t have much to say for himself.”

  “Me, too. He’s either lammed or gone to the Happy Hunting Ground with his two braves.”

  She had no argument with that assessment.

  The living room had been substantial. The den, however, was small for this cathedral of capitalism. It was a book room with no built-in bookshelves, its windowless walls lined with more leather-cushioned furnishings and decorated with those framed photos of Chicago political figures that Lu had reported. Also, hanging perfectly straight, were some pics taken of professional golfers and celebrities at Vanhorn’s country club, posing with him.

  The desk was a massive mahogany cube, the slab-like top of which indicated a man who wanted everything in its place—folders, papers, pen holder, reference books. A neat freak, this guy. Kind of ironic that he had wound up on the floor near his perfect work area, in a tailored suit and a red-and-blue striped silk tie, in a rumpled sprawl of brains and blood, his mouth open, tongue lolling, eyes wide with as much expression as billiard balls.

  “I’m gonna take a leap,” I said, “and say this fucker is dead.”

  “What the hell, Jack? You’re sure you didn’t do this?”

  “No, I sneaked out while you thought I was sleeping, drove over here using the drawings you made of this place, and wiped everybody out like the goddamn plague. Why don’t you tell me what you think happened here? Who you think did this?”

  “No fucking clue,” she said. She was shaking her head. Said, “No fucking clue” again and sat on a couch under framed photos of the bald man on the floor back when he was alive, with Bob Hope and Arnold Palmer smiling next to him, each with an arm around his shoulders.

  I paced. This little home office, overwhelmed by the king-size desk, was just large enough for that. “Could this have nothing to do with me?”

  She shrugged. “I suppose. A guy like the Envoy would have enemies.”

  I stopped. “Don’t call him the Envoy. It’s stupid. He’s not the Joker and he’s not the Penguin. He’s a mobbed-up prick named Vanhorn. A dead mobbed-up prick named Vanhorn. And he was waiting to get a phone call from your pal Simmons about me being dead.”

  “So?”

  “So?” I stopped in front of her where she sat, as she looked up blandly at me. “Are you kidding? What’s been happening lately in the life of Charles Vanhorn, respectable Chicagoland citizen?”

  “What?”

  “Jesus, Lu, just that he found out some asshole called Quarry has spent the last ten years killing people whose agent he’s been, an annoying asshole who has taken real money out of his pocket, and the pockets of other middlemen in murder like him. For ten years!”

  She stood. Her tone was firm. No nonsense. “We should go. It’s a house with three murdered criminals in it, Jack. Get ahold of yourself. We should go.”

  “Not just yet. You sit back down. I can handle this.”

  Her eyes got big. “Handle what?”

  “I don’t know exactly.”

  I went over and started looking through things on that fussily neat desktop, standing on the visitor side, facing the dead man’s empty black leather-cushioned swivel chair, as if it were supervising me. Though my gloves fit snug, it was kind of awkward. A notepad was perfectly positioned in front of his telephone. The note paper on top had something written on it.

  Neatly, almost prissily inscribed, one above the other, were four names. But then, scrawled at an angle alongside, a note: “Attend sem.”

  I asked Lu, “Any of these names ring any bells? George Callen?”

  She shook her head.

  “Henry Poole?”

  She shook her head.

  “Alex Kraft?”

  She shook her head.

  “Joseph Field?”

  She shook her head.

  “Might mean something,” I said, shrugged, and pocketed the slip of paper. “Might not. Might be guys he goes golfing with.”

  “Not this time of year,” she said, crossing her legs as she sat there, bored in my presence and that of the stiff on the floor. “Unless he was heading south, or somewhere warm, anyway.”

  “He may have gone someplace real warm.”

  I poked around some more and came up with an address book. A fairly sparse listing of contacts gave up phone numbers and addresses. These may well have been golfing pals, and others in respectable Wilmette circles. Some numbers lacked area codes, indicating locals. A few had area codes elsewhere in Illinois.

  The final page, however, had four disparate area codes attached to four names, phone numbers only, no addresses. Only four names at all on the page. You probably already know what they were: George Callen, Henry Poole, Alex Kraft, Joseph Field.

  “Now,” I said, looking down at the notebook, “isn’t that interesting?”

  Suddenly Lu was up and off the couch and looking over my shoulder. She was tall enough to do that. I glanced back at her and the almond-shaped eyes were slivers.

  She asked, “The other brokers?”

  “Maybe.” I ripped the page out, folded and pocketed it. “We’ll look up the area codes later. For now let’s keep at it.”

  We got behind the desk. She worked on going through the drawers and I went through mail in his IN AND OUT box. Nothing seemed significant, no bills or bank statements—mostly charities he was generously supporting to keep people from realizing he was a no good rat bastard who dealt in other’s people’s deaths.

  Then a color brochure jumped out at me.

  I knew the location at once—the pictures were of the Lake Geneva Golf and Ski Resort. And while the colorful shots were indeed of the lodge in its summer months, when golfing ruled, I knew a golfing trip to my back yard had not been why Charles Vanhorn—yes, the fucking Envoy—had kept this on his desk.

  Or was he just planning ahead, for a getaway weekend a few months from now?

  I tried to take that notion seriously. Tried to make this just an odd coincidence, when the invitation slipped out. Of heavier stock, with genuine engraving, it said:

  Charles Vanhorn

  is cordially invited

  to a Seminar

  by distinguished investment guru

  Seymour M. Goldman—

  “The Cayman Islands Plan”

  Lake Geneva Golf and Ski Resort,

  Lake Geneva, Wisconsin

  The date below was this weekend, coming up.

  I showed it to her and asked, “What do you make of that?”

  “That’s not far from you,” she said, frowning, “is it?”

  I admitted it. Then I said, “If these four names are Vanhorn’s fellow brokers…maybe I’m on the agenda of this seminar.”

  “You could be, I suppose,” she said, eyes tight with thought. “But if they are Vanhorn’s peers, they’re ripe for the kind of offshore banking opportunities this seminar is about. So maybe it’s just a…”

  “Coincidence? Right. Like the three dead assholes in this mausoleum are a coincidence.”

  “We need to get out of here, Jack.”

  “Maybe we should try to find a wall safe in here somewhere? Vanhorn’s list of hired guns is supposed to be in it.”

  She smiled. “Why, Jack? Do you have safe-cracking prowess?”

  “No. Do you?”

  “No. We need to get out of here, Jack!”

  We got out.

  Got out the way we came, and then we were heading back to Wisconsin, the traffic even lighte
r now. This time I drove. We didn’t talk for the first ten or fifteen minutes, each sorting out this lunacy in the privacy of our own minds.

  Finally I said, “Who wanted Vanhorn dead?”

  “Could be a lot of people.” She shrugged. “Business he was in, ties he had. Could have been anything or anybody from that world.”

  I shot a glance at her. “But it happened now, on the heels of him sending you and Simmons to cap my ass. What the hell, Lu? Would one of Vanhorn’s ‘peers,’ as you put it, want to take him out, to take over his business?”

  “Possible,” she said. “If he had told the others about you, and what you’ve been up to, that might make somebody want to consolidate and take over and do things right. I mean, you got away with offering your particular…service, shall we say… for a damn decade. Much of it at Vanhorn’s expense, since most of the Broker’s people went over to him.”

  “But all four of the seminar attendees took it in the teeth because of me, too, at one point or another. Not often enough to see a pattern maybe, but.…”

  The almond eyes got as wide as they could. “Right. But that gets you killed, not Vanhorn. Any ideas?”

  “Oh, well, sure. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to that seminar.”

  I was wrong about those eyes—they could get bigger.

  “You can’t be serious,” she said. “If they do know about you.…”

  I grinned and it probably looked a little crazy. “They may know about me, but they don’t know me. They don’t know what I look like.”

  “You can’t be sure of that.”

  “I’m sure enough. I have two choices, Lu. I pack up my marbles and go running off to God knows where, to what? Find a new game? Hide out for the rest of my life? Or I can take in the seminar. Come with me. Don’t you want to know where to stow your ill-gotten gains?”

  TEN

  When Lu, in my pajama top, stumbled into the A-frame living room from out of the bedroom down the hall, I was in the kitchenette making scrambled eggs and bacon. In my pajama bottoms and a t-shirt and bare feet. No chef’s hat.

  Her blondeness was nicely tousled and the Asian eyes were still sleepy. “And he cooks.”