Killing Quarry

by Max Allan Collins

  “Not wives, I’m guessing.”

  “Not wives.” He reflected for a moment. “All right. You can attend in Mr. Vanhorn’s place.”

  “Under his name? That doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

  “No! It wouldn’t be. But no one is attending under his own name. Everyone’s Brown or Jones or Smith or Johnson or…you follow.”

  “I do. Do you recall Mr. Vanhorn’s nom-de-plume?”

  “Not off the top of my head, I don’t. But I’m checking each of them in, personally, though not in the lobby. Guests have arranged to go directly to the chalet. It has a private parking lot and drive. Nice view of the golf course, with Mountain Top backdrop.”

  That was the hill people skiing here tried to talk themselves into thinking was a mountain.

  “So I’ll handle your check-in,” Dan said, “and all the details.”

  “All of a sudden,” I said, “I rate.”

  His expression was numb. “All of a sudden, Jack…you rate.”

  ELEVEN

  The chalet itself couldn’t have been more Alpine if a late-teens Heidi with a bursting peasant blouse had greeted us with a tray of brimming beer steins. The oversize log cabin, the upper two of its three floors sporting building-width railed wooden balconies, sat against pines still touched with snow. Beyond was farmland, barns and silos and such, but all that was largely hidden from view.

  Looming over the chalet, a 1,100-foot hill, complete with ski lifts, had its many trails demarcated by landscaping, fir and other trees; the currently snow-patchy, ridiculously named Mountain Top, wore pine borders at far left and far right, like sideburns ascending to an evergreen crown extending all the way across.

  Lu and I had taken the time to pick up my Firebird in Muskego and sell back my Impala to my used car guy there. We had decided neither the Camaro nor the Impala would look right in a lot filled with the kind of high-end rides the other attendees would likely roll up in.

  I’d also done some clothes shopping. This would not be a t-shirt and jeans affair. Best I could do was the Chess King at Parkland Mall. Probably too hip for the room, and not exactly Brooks Brothers, but I was the right age to get away with the pair of tapered dark suits I picked up—as well as several shiny medium-color shirts and solid-color skinny ties.

  Lu needed no help with her wardrobe, starting out in a hot pink jumpsuit with a sash at the waist, hair brushing her shoulders, around which was a neon pink ski coat. For now I was in my black leather jacket from home, and a black-and-white tropical print shirt, also from Chess King.

  Our overnight bags strap-slung over our shoulders, we left the Firebird in the small paved (and otherwise empty) lot fronting the chalet. This was almost exactly twenty-four hours after yesterday’s meeting with Dan, who greeted us at the lower level’s door. As the parking lot indicated, we were the first to arrive. A seven o’clock supper was on the docket, after which the seminar would begin with an introductory session.

  “Most of tomorrow,” Dan had told me, “will be taken up by a morning session, then individual meetings between our attendees and our guest lecturer.”

  “The investment ‘guru,’ ” I said.

  Dan nodded. “The rest of the weekend will be recreational.”

  “How so? No skiing, no golf, and you’re sequestering the guests here for the duration, right?”

  “We have entertainment tomorrow night.”

  “Oh?”

  “Buddy Greco and a trio.”

  I frowned. “A name artist? How many are attending this thing?”

  “Just five, like I said, including yourself. And not including the female guests.”

  “So ten people get Vegas entertainment? That must have cost a fortune.”

  “Not a big deal, Jack. Not when the participants are looking to squirrel away cash in the Caymans.”

  Once Lu and I stepped inside, we were immediately in the main room, which lacked the high ceiling of a lodge, instead with claustrophobic, low-riding open beams; wood was everywhere, a wheat-stained pine—ceilings, walls, floors, even heavily framing the fireplace. Floor-to-ceiling windows provided a view of the golf course whose still-frozen-over water hole made for a sort of lake view. The windows were to your back as you faced the fireplace, which was going, and over which redundantly hung a framed oil of this very chalet, against its Mountain Top backdrop.

  Despite the low ceiling, the room was spacious, and the obvious setting for the presentation the Cayman Islands guru would make. Two long low-slung dark blue sofas faced each other over a throw carpet with images of ducks and geese and pheasants flying on a light blue sky, fleeing invisible hunters. A smaller, lighter-blue couch, with its bigger brothers to its left and right, those tall windows to its back, looked across the hunting-scene carpet toward the fireplace.

  Dan—in another Gucci of Chicago suit I’d wager, a tan number this time with a yellow, collar-open shirt—carried a clipboard with him and had me initial a few places. Seemed I was registered as William Wilson, and Lu as Mrs. Wilson.

  Dan smiled and nodded at Lu, giving me a raised eyebrow glance that said, Nice going, buddy, and handed me a room key—305.

  “Elevator back with the conference rooms,” he said, gesturing vaguely, “but also stairs off the kitchen through there.”

  “There” was to the left as you faced the fireplace, a farmhouse-style dining area with intentionally clunky carved-wood chairs around two big round matching tables. I asked Dan, “When do you expect the others?”

  “Around dark,” he said. “No one attending the seminar is anxious to be seen. Yourself included, I’d imagine…Mr. Wilson.”

  He was right. Checking in here, and not at the desk of the main lodge, meant no one local would notice my presence. After all, I had dated some of the waitresses, and I still took an occasional lunch or dinner here. Dan also let me use the pool, in off-times—even let me keep a locker on site. So assorted staffers knew me as a semi-regular.

  And while I was no local celebrity, some folks did know me from Wilma’s. Best thing all around for William Wilson was to slip in and out of the chalet, like the rest of the high-class sneaks.

  We took the stairs off a modest modern kitchen encased in rustic wood—as Dan indicated, these retreats were primarily catered from the main lodge—and dominated by a long table. Though Lu and I were still lugging our shoulder-slung overnight bags, we took the stairs because I wanted to get the layout of the place down. With all that wood, and the inherent fire hazard, I figured there’d be another stairway somewhere, but no—just the one, and the small elevator.

  Our guest room was more of the wood-dominated same—floor, walls, open-beamed ceiling, even rough-hewn furnishings, as well as our own wood-framed fireplace, already burning wood (something unsettling about that). Saving grace was the queen-size bed with faux-fur coverlet, a few light-color throw rugs and some cut flowers in vases almost making up for the deer-hoof lamp with a nature-scene pictorial shade that might have depicted its former owner (of the hooves, not the lamp).

  “Is it my imagination,” I asked, tossing my black leather jacket on a chair, “or does it smell like a cedar chest in here?”

  Lu was already unpacking. She had brought half a dozen handguns, mostly small but very much serviceable, which she was salting around. Here a Colt Auto .25, there a Garcia Berretta Model 70S—little weapons wrapped in underthings in a drawer, or beneath a folded open book on the nightstand. How about a Walther PPK/S .22 under a pillow, or maybe Smith and Wesson .22 in a bathroom soap dish?

  Me, I just had my nine mil, which was in a shoulder holster I rarely used and which had required me at the mall to buy a bigger size suitcoat than I preferred.

  I sat on the bed. “What exactly do you think we’re in for?”

  “No idea,” she said, still fussing with her guns.

  “None?”

  “Well…somebody killed Vanhorn and his two boys the other night and the ones on the receiving end didn’t seem to be ready for it. We should
be.”

  I nodded. “Not sure what the program is myself. I do know that the women attending—other than yourself, my dear—are not married to the participants. This leads me to believe you may be excluded from the seminar.”

  She was hiding the Berretta. “Most likely. Not that I give a damn. They sound like a bunch of chauvinistic pigs.”

  “Ah, then you haven’t stopped subscribing to the feminist newsletter.”

  That made her smile. She shut the dresser drawer and came over and sat next to me.

  Right next to me.

  She nibbled my ear and asked, “Are you still the kind of man who reads Playboy?”

  “Yeah. But also Hustler and Climax.”

  “Gynecology fan, huh?”

  “Big fan.”

  “Prove it.”

  She stripped out of the pink jumpsuit and, naked as a grape, she bent her bare bottom toward me as she neatly folded the garment and laid it over a rough-wood chair with furry upholstery. She had some, too. Then she climbed onto the bed and put her head on a pillow and her hands behind her head, elbows winged, and spread her legs wide.

  “Let me know,” she said, “if you see anything you like.”

  After a frozen moment, I dropped trou and—climbing onto the bed awkwardly, using my knees mostly, my pants around my ankles—scrambled over and had a look. Spread the petals and really had a look.…

  Then I buried my face and my tongue went searching and she began to giggle and laugh and squirm. The laughter eased into something else entirely, as did the squirming, and then she was saying, “Why don’t you get up here and fuck me, you big hairy ape.”

  I did.

  It didn’t take long, but it was energetic and she seemed to like it.

  I rolled off and tried to catch my breath.

  “We better clean up,” she said.

  I said something unintelligible, even to me.

  She said, “Come on, you lazy lout. Time to eat.”

  Again, already?

  * * *

  After a quick shower, I got into my new black suit with skinny silver tie and shiny gray shirt, looking sharper than a mannequin at Chess King. Lu, back in her pink jumpsuit and now wearing black spike heels, stood at the window.

  “Take a look at this,” she said with a nod, arms folded over her shelf of bosom.

  I came over and did as she said, gazing out into the dreamlike dusk.

  My assumption that the other participants would arrive in various expensive rides, BMWs maybe or Mercedes or even a Porsche or two, had missed the mark. A black Cadillac Fleetwood, a stretch limo with the de rigueur tinted windows, was pulling in, making my black Firebird look like a kiddie toy.

  A door was held open by a burly chauffeur in black full-length topcoat. But he was pulled up close enough to the building that the passengers he was about to let out were not bothering with coats, though it was cold enough for breaths to smoke.

  First to step out was a beautiful woman. Blonde, bosomy, in a leopard print, off-shoulder cheetah dress.

  “Patrick Kelly,” Lu whispered.

  “She doesn’t look like a Patrick to me,” I said.

  “That’s who she’s wearing,” she said patronizingly.

  “Oh,” I said, and another beautiful woman climbed out.

  This was a brunette with big frizzy hair and bright red lipstick, her bosom straining at the metallic liquid gold blouse, her skirt a black midi.

  “Michael McNally,” I said.

  “She doesn’t look like a Michael to me,” she said.

  “Well, she is one. Like that actress. She was also runner-up Playmate of the Year in ’75. Or maybe ’76.”

  “Must be old home week for her,” Lu said, unimpressed.

  The next beauty out, black, wearing a red leather jumpsuit and an Afro that stopped just short of ridiculous, might have been Pam Grier’s stand-in. After that came a redhead with a nice slender body, top-heavy with implants, probably, but stunning in any case, in a denim jumpsuit.

  “Maybe,” I said, “I could have worn jeans.”

  “No. They don’t look the same on you.”

  No argument.

  Then came a parade of non-beautiful people.

  Men in suits just as sharp as Dan’s. Men in their fifties. No topcoats, being dropped off just outside the chalet to head right in, as they were. Wearing sunglasses, though the sun had set—on the day and on them. One with a fat face, another with a narrow one. This one wrinkled, this one a victim of a bad facelift.

  And none in ties—all open collar, like Dan. Pastel shirts. Young at heart, these old fucks.

  Even two floors up, we could hear them coming in. Out the window, the cauliflower-ear chauffeur was gathering luggage from the trunk, getting ready to haul the stuff in.

  “Let’s wait till they get settled,” I said.

  Lu agreed.

  A TV hiding in a corner, as if ashamed of itself for existing in such an indoor outdoor paradise, gave us an Andy Griffith rerun to watch and then the Chicago news. No mention of the late Envoy.

  “That was fast,” she said.

  I knew what she meant. Said, “Looks like the murders in Wilmette are old news already.”

  “Else somebody put the lid on.”

  We’d heard our new neighbors in the hallway moving in. Before too long, out our window, we noticed the beefy chauffeur and the stretch limo taking off, which surprised me a little—you might think this group would feel the need for a security man. Not that it had done Charles Vanhorn any good.

  Now, after some relative quiet, came muffled conversation out there indicating everybody was finally heading down to supper. Lu and I waited till the talk subsided, then we went out and took the stairs again.

  In the kitchen, everybody was at a buffet line set up at that long table. A chef and a male staffer were serving things up, and neither had faces I knew, so that was one small break, anyway. Dan was back there, too, handing out plates and silverware-in-napkins, answering questions, chatting with the men as they went through the line, not pushing it, just playing genial host. Oddly, the men were lined up first, as a group, and the women after, the females mere side dishes at this banquet, apparently.

  That made me the only male here who’d made sure his female companion went before him. Was I committing some reverse etiquette faux pas?

  The fare included prime rib, whitefish, and pepper steak over rice, various veggies and potatoes, apple and cherry crisp for dessert. A Styrofoam ice chest was brimming with cans of beer and soda. No other alcohol was on hand for the retreat. They were roughing it, I guess.

  In that spirit, the men had their coats off, having left them in their rooms. Trying to fit in, I’d only managed to be out of place—I was that goofball in his shirt and tie who let his woman go in front of him!

  I discreetly removed my offending tie, slipped it into a pocket, and opened my collar. Lu and I exchanged a few quick wide-eyed looks through all this. It was like sneaking into a Moose Lodge and not knowing the secret handshake.

  In the rustic adjacent dining room, the former Playmate, the blonde, the redhead and Pam Grier’s stand-in sat at the near round table, not talking much. The men were at the other table. As we passed that first group, the young women gave me confused looks, as if a nude guy had wandered into their convent. Lu settled into one of the chairs with the beauties; she fit in fine. Those Asian eyes narrowed at me just a little, confirming my own opinion that I needed to join the men without her.

  So I went over to an empty chair between the guy with the bad plastic surgery and the fat-faced fuck. Nobody was wearing sunglasses now, and they seemed to know each other, yet they really weren’t talking any more freely than they might have had the women joined them.

  In a lull in the conversation—which as conversation went wasn’t much of anything, apparently the topic being how poorly the chauffeur drove, and why such a convoluted route?—I said, “Evening, gents. I’m William Wilson.”

  They looked at me. E
very single one. They all put down their fork or knife or whatever silverware they happened to be holding and, if they were chewing, swallowed. It was a group glower. They were the jury and I had just copped to an ax murder on the witness stand and punctuated the confession with a big loud fart that echoed in the courtroom.

  I said, with a smile that tried hard not to try too hard, “And who are you, gents? Let’s go to left to right.”

  Silence.

  The plastic surgery guy, next to me (on my left, so my suggestion wasn’t so outrageous after all), said, “Are we going to do this now? I thought we might finish supper first.”

  He had been a good-looking man once. He was almost a good-looking man twice. But that plastic surgery had pulled the flesh of his face just a little too tight, like a plump woman wearing a dress a size too small with no girdle.

  “Before doing what?” I asked. I put just a little edge in it.

  They were in their shirtsleeves and I’d taken enough of a look at them to see they weren’t packing, or if they were it was something small, like the pop guns Lu hid around our room. I had a nine mil under my arm and could shoot these bastards twice over.

  “Those names,” the plastic-surgery guy said, “we checked in under? They’re only for that purpose.”

  His hair had started out black, and it still was, but needed help. His eyes were green—like the green felt of my poker table back at the A-frame—and his nose was straight and plastic-surgery perfect and his capped white teeth could smile nice, I bet. Right now they weren’t. Smiling nice.

  Though they were smiling.

  “I’m Henry Poole,” he said. “My friends call me ‘Hank.’ Like Henry Fonda. People say I look like him, some.”

  “I can see that.”

  “And this is Alex Kraft,” Poole said, gesturing to the fat-faced fuck.

  Kraft had skimpy blond hair and little tiny light-blue eyes in pouches and puffy little lips and no chin to speak of. His face was pale with some reddish mottling.

  I said, “Mr. Kraft.”

  Nothing.

  “Over there is Joe Field,” Poole said, and gestured to the narrow-faced man, who was slender, brown-haired, brown-eyed, with something of a jut to his chin. His tan was dark and, I think, fake.