I heard her take air in through her teeth, an angry hissing, a pissed-off snake. In my mind’s eye I could see Helen Swanson, and her thin dark naked body, as she said, “Bastard. Jesus Christ prick bastard.”
“Now, now.”
“You… you…” She sputtered on like that for a while, and there was a strange tone to her voice. Confusion? Fear? Arousal?
“What’d I do, piss you off this afternoon somehow?” I asked the phone. “Or do you do this to all of us? Sit out in your black bikini and sucker us in and then later tell old George about it, so he can play defender of woman- hood.”
“I only tell him sometimes.” Now there was a smile in her voice. It was soft. She was trying to be sexy. “I just tell him when somebody I like doesn’t appreciate me.”
“Hell, lady, I appreciate you. I really do. You’re something else.”
“I hope he didn’t hurt you.”
“No. Not at all. I enjoy getting punched in the nose.”
“I… I just told him you made a pass… I didn’t know he’d get rough.”
“You knew he’d get rough,” I said. “That’s what he always does, isn’t it? Tell me, what’s he like when he comes back fresh from beating the hell out of one of your ex-sweeties?”
“He’s beautiful,” she said. I could almost see the big fat self-indulgent grin she’d have going. “He’s mean and he’s beautiful. It’s the only time I can stand him in bed.”
“Well don’t expect much from him tonight.” Somebody was making noise in the background.
“Someone’s at the door,” she whispered, in a quickinto-the-closet sort of voice.
“I wonder who it could be,” I said.
“Listen…” She laughed softly. “I’m naked right now. What do you think of that?”
“I think it figures.”
“After he… falls back asleep, I’ll… come up to your room
… okay? You owe me that much.”
“You come upstairs I got a Coke bottle for you and that’s all.” I shook my head. “Let him in, will you? He’s probably out there bleeding all over the hall. He could use some help.”
I hung up.
I retrieved my automatic, switched on the TV again and found nothing going on any of the stations, flicked the set off and stretched out on the bed to wait for the Broker. Hell, I shouldn’t have underestimated Broker like that. Things weren’t rough enough yet that he’d stoop to hiring a George Swanson.
I laughed again, but only for a moment. It wasn’t really funny, not at all. Disgusting was more like it, the goddamn bitch. But who was I to judge? Takes all kinds to make a world.
6
At four-fifteen Broker came in by the hall entrance. He had company. Without a word he and his friend found chairs and sat and faced me. I closed the door and locked and night-latched it and went to the bed and sat where they would have to turn their chairs to look at me. They did.
“Hello, Quarry,” Broker said.
“Broker.”
“This is Carl.”
This was Carl: a young kid, twenty or twenty-two, with short black serviceman hair just starting to grow out, his complexion powder-white excepting a splotch-circle of red on either cheek which gave him the look of a clown in minimal makeup and was either natural rosiness or the boy was flushed. He was about the size of George Swanson, but leaner and harder-muscled, or at least so I guessed: His jaw was firm, eyes blue-gray. He was wearing a wine-color double-knit sports jacket and gray slacks with a light yellow shirt and a deep yellow tie; I looked at Broker in his gray double-knit suit and light pink shirt and deep pink tie and made a wild guess about who picked out Carl’s clothes. The sports jacket did not bulge from the gun under Carl’s left arm and I made a mental note to ask Broker sometime who was his tailor.
Carl stood and said, “How are you doing, Quarry?”
There were two things wrong with Carl: one of them was the smell of youthful anxiety that clung to him like dime-store perfume.
I pointed to his left leg, said, “Vietnam?”
He looked flustered, wondering how the hell I knew it was artificial, then nodded. “Hand grenade, I was walking point.”
“I asked where, not how.”
Broker was one fine American, finding jobs for us boys back from overseas like he did, and now here he was breaking in a handicapped veteran. The man deserved a commendation from the VA or the President or some damn body.
Broker said, “You’re still in that foul mood, aren’t you?”
I said, “Give me a second and I’ll get out the party hats.”
Carl sat back down and his cheeks weren’t red anymore. That was an improvement.
“What is he supposed to be?” I said.
“He’s here with me.”
“Oh. Well that explains it.”
“Now look… how am I supposed to know what you’re up to? You’ve never acted so damned irrationally, not in many years of what I always considered a good working relationship. But you’re acting like a wild man, holding out materials which you’ve been paid to deliver. Do you have any concept of the value of what you’re keeping from me? At any rate, I thought it best to have a man along.”
“Why didn’t you bring one, then? But no, you drag in a twelve-year-old gimp, who’s supposed to, what? Snap me in line? Beat me to death with his wooden leg?” I checked Carl out of the corner of my eye to see if he reacted; he didn’t, which was a sign of hope for the boy.
“Quarry, Quarry… let’s not fence.” The Broker smiled and the smile was a crease in his face. “Please, I’m tired of fencing with you. After what we’ve been through together, all of this bickering seems so childish.”
“Broker, will you quit acting like this is some goddamn company and I’m going to get a gold watch and a pension after twenty-five years? Have you worked the front office of the fertilizer plant for so long you don’t remember it’s shit you’re selling?”
“You’ve been paid, Quarry. Don’t play with me.”
“If you come alone, I wouldn’t play. But you’re the one playing, Broker. And you keep playing with me and I keep telling you I won’t be played with.”
Broker looked at Carl and pointed at the door. “Wait outside, Carl.”
Carl made a face.
“Go on Carl,” he said. “Just out in the hall there will be fine.”
Carl got up. He walked to the door. He was pretty good on the leg. Whoever gave him therapy knew what they were doing. I said, “Watch yourself going down steps, kid,” and he was out the door, which he nearly-almost, but not quite-slammed.
“You’re a damned sadist,” Broker said.
“I’m no such thing,” I said.
“Riding a kid with one leg, my sweet God.”
“You’re the sadist,” I said, “hiring a kid with one leg. What’s the idea? Don’t forget, hire the vet?”
“You saw him on it, he’s doing an outstanding job. He’s better on that artificial limb than most men are with what nature gave them. And he’s in tip-top shape otherwise, and he’s hard-nosed and handy with firearms. He’ll be a good man.”
“Doing what? What I do?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m grooming him. He’s one of the men I keep on the payroll here in town. He’s one of two men presently guarding my home, and giving me personal protection.”
“Well he may make a bodyguard,” I said, “but don’t send him out in the field. Not if you want him to last a month, anyway.”
“Oh? Really?”
“Oh really. He may be hard-nosed, but he’s thin-skinned. You saw his hackles rise when I needled him, didn’t you?”
Broker shrugged. “Perhaps you have a point. I don’t know, I’ll watch him. But I still think he has promise.”
“You really think you’re doing the kid a favor,” I said, “giving him a job.”
“You don’t seem to think there’s anything wrong with this business.”
“There isn’t, not for me. I didn’t get into the tr
ade because I lost a leg, either.”
“You lost a wife. Is that so different?”
“Yes. You can grow a new wife.”
“You haven’t.”
I didn’t say anything. It was time for getting things out of the way. I dug into my pocket and tossed him an envelope. The key to the locker was in it. Of course the key to the other locker was elsewhere, tucked safely away for my own later use.
“What’s this?” Broker said.
I told him what it was, and what was in the locker the key opened.
“Christ almighty, you mean to tell me you left the stuff right there in the airport?”
“Right there. In the airport.”
Broker got angry for a moment, said, “What if the police searched the lockers for some reason? After the body was discovered, for example, or in the case of a bomb threat.”
“Why, you thinking of calling one in?”
Broker wanted to stay mad, but saw it wouldn’t do any good. “I don’t know about you, Quarry,” he said, like a father disappointed with junior’s grades.
I said, “You going to send Carl after the stuff? You and I can wait here.”
“I’ll have to go myself.”
“Yourself? You’re full of balls in your old age, Broker, what’s got into you?”
“I can trust myself.”
“And you can’t trust Carl? Broker, I’m ashamed of you. Talking that way about a disabled veteran.”
“Go to hell, Quarry. I’m sending Carl up to keep you company. Any objections?”
Why bother? “No,” I said.
So Broker went out and Carl came in. He got settled back in his chair and sat there and gave me a hard look, which he’d no doubt been practicing outside while he thought about me and the remarks I’d made about him and his leg, or lack of same.
Finally he let it out. He said, “What the hell you got against one-legged guys, anyway?”
“Four of them got together and gangbanged my sister.”
“Aw eat shit, Quarry, can’t you answer straight just once?”
“I got nothing against one-legged guys,” I said. “It’s just you I can’t stand.”
“Oh, oh, really? And, and what’s wrong with me?”
“Don’t ask me for reasons. Don’t ever ask me for reasons.”
“I don’t think I ever met any bigger bastard than you, Quarry. You’re one big fucking bastard.”
“Army teach you to talk that way? Really foul stuff like that? Shocking.”
“You just shut up.”
“What?”
“You shut up, I said.”
“Didn’t Broker tell you what I am?”
“He told me.”
“Then you ought to know better than to tell me to shut up.”
“I’ll tell you again.”
“You tell me again and I’ll come over there and feed you that wooden leg.”
His eyes got big. “It’s… not wooden. It’s not a wooden leg.”
“What the hell would you call it?”
“A prosthesis.”
“Whatever.”
“What… what the hell makes you hate me?”
“I didn’t say I hated you.”
“Oh? What then?”
“I said I couldn’t stand you.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Yeah.”
“Such as?”
“Such as I don’t waste energy hating you. But I can’t stand to look at you, because you’re an asshole, and I don’t like looking at assholes… now that’s all the explanation you’re going to get, so leave it alone.”
He did. He got quiet and folded his hands in his lap and sat there thinking, trying to understand what it was he did that made me want to give him so bad a time. I didn’t know why myself. I just knew this kid was going to die and somewhere in the back of my head, somewhere it seemed vaguely a waste.
But die he would. Like anybody who goes into it for any other reason than to make money. There’s no room for revenge. No leeway for crusades. You can’t kill people because you hated your daddy or because you saw mammy screwing the milkman when you were five or because when you were six a bully took your wagon away from you or because you want back the leg some other mindless idiot blew off for some mindless idiotic nonreason. You last only if you don’t care. If you care, if you have to care about something, care about money. Money and your ass.
7
Dawn was poking at the sky. I was standing at the glass door to the balcony, drawing back the curtain and watching the colors of the sky change and reflect and shimmer on the water of the pool below. I hoped I’d be able to get in another swim before I left.
An hour or so had passed and Carl and I had stopped trying to make conversation. It got to the point where either we’d have to get friendly or keep quiet, and I wasn’t about to get friendly. The air was so heavy with mutual hostility I was almost relieved when the single, soft knock came at the hall entrance. I went to the dresser and got open the drawer where I’d stashed the nine-millimeter automatic and took it out and Carl’s eyes flickered. I walked to the door, the gun behind me.
Broker came in and with one quick motion dismissed Carl, who was only too glad to go. I put the automatic away and sat on the bed. Broker selected a chair and brought it up close to where I sat. He took off his suitcoat and folded it across his lap, folded his hands. He looked at me. He looked at me hard, his eyes moving toward the center of his face, all but crossing.
“Well, Quarry?”
“Well, Broker.”
“That was all.”
“You asking or telling or what?”
“The one bag. Was that all?”
“Of course it was all.”
“There should have been more.”
“Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“How much more should there have been, Broker?”
“Another bag.”
“Oh?”
“Another bag of the same size.”
“There was only the one.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Positive?”
“How many times do I have to answer the same question, Broker?”
“Until I believe you, Quarry.”
“There was one bag. One bag, Broker. I won’t fool with that stuff, you know that, don’t you?”
“I thought I did. Where did he keep it?”
“Well, I had to search him. He claimed he shipped the stuff out by some other route. Said he didn’t have any of it on him. But I shook him down and found that bag in the lining of his coat.”
“Some other route. Did he say what route?”
“No. When he said that, I didn’t pursue it. I thought he was bullshitting. And when I found the bag on him, I was convinced.”
“Do you remember what it was he said?”
“No.”
“What did he say, exactly?”
“I don’t remember, exactly.”
“Quarry… are you being straight with me? Can I trust you you’re telling the truth?”
“You’ll have to.”
“If you’re lying, I can get it out of you.”
“If I’m lying, you can’t, Carl can’t, and nobody you know can.”
He thought that over. A tic got going, gently, under his left eye; he touched his mustache. He decided what I said was true; he decided Quarry was so tough no man alive could make him talk. Wrong. There are guys so fucking mean they could look at me and I’d tell them whatever they wanted to know. But Broker didn’t know that, so it didn’t matter.
“Broker,” I said, “I’ve been working through you for, what, now? Five years? Have I ever tried to pull one single damn thing on you?”
Broker shook his head no.
“And,” I said, “haven’t I told you I didn’t want to be involved in any part of anything except this one thing I do? Just my one thing. We’ve talked about that several times. Few hours ago, at th
at restaurant, for instance.”
Broker nodded.
“So what do you think?” I said.
Broker hesitated. Then he touched his hands to his knees and said, “I think we ought to forget this matter.”
“Good.”
“I think we ought to forget this matter and get on to something, else.”
“Good.”
Broker seemed to relax; the tic was gone; he touched his mustache again, but in a different way. He said, “This afternoon, at the airport, was a rather hastily conceived affair. You were, of course, called in for another purpose entirely. But with you available, I felt it less than prudent to use someone local, like Carl, who wouldn’t have been able to perform in the professional manner I can depend upon you to employ.”
“Thanks for the orchids,” I said. “Now what about the assignment yon had in mind before the sidetrack?”
Broker nodded and said, “Your associate is already doing preliminary work.”
“Boyd’s there already?”
“Yes. Mr. Boyd has been on the scene for a week. You can join him tomorrow afternoon…” Broker glanced at his watch. “Rather, I should say, this afternoon.”
“He’s not somewhere here in the Cities, is he?”
“No. One hit this close to home… my home, that is… is dangerous enough, let alone two. But you will be closer than perhaps is best. Thirty miles from here, small town of twenty or twenty-two thousand, on the Iowa side.”
“Port City?” I asked.
“Yes. You know it?”
“Been through it. Wouldn’t say I know it. Just another river town, little smaller, little older than some I worked.”
“A very simple assignment, really. You’ll need three, four days at most.”
“Fine.”
Broker unfolded his suitcoat and got an envelope out from a side pocket and handed it to me. “There’s a piece of paper in there, with a phone number on it.”
I took the envelope and folded it and stuck it in my shirt pocket. “Boyd’s number?”
Broker nodded.
“Motel or hotel or what?”
“Phone rings where he’s doing surveillance. He’ll be there most of the time.”
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