Quarry q-1

by Max Allan Collins

  “I’m worried about you, Boyd.”

  “Aw, can it.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be watching out that window?”

  “Hey, who appointed you foreman all of the goddamn sudden?”

  “Don’t push me, Boyd.”

  The irritation came back and got out: “Bullshit! I been cooped up watching a whole goddamn week, you break your ass watching for a while.’’

  “So that’s your trick: you watch with your ass.”

  “Oh fuck you. I’m going out to the kitchen and eat my tacos.”

  “Do that.”

  “I will.”

  “But before you do, maybe you might tell me who I’m supposed to be watching.”

  “Oh. Sure. Little ginky guy, about five-eight.”

  “Three inches taller than you, you mean.”

  “God, you’re a fucker.”

  “Never mind that. Tell me some more about him.”

  “What more? That’s it, just a gink, and a blind gink at that, always wears tinted glasses. Usually wears gray slacks and a cardigan sweater.”

  “A cardigan sweater? In the summer?”

  “Yeah. It’s got those diamond-shape type of patterns on it, in shades of gray. Damn thing looks like a big argyle sock.” Boyd snickered.

  “Shit, it’s eighty degrees out there.”

  “Naw, it’s cool tonight, but this guy leaves the sweater on even when it’s hot. It was up to ninety two days ago and he still had the sweater on.”

  “Sounds like an oddball.”

  “Believe me, we’re doing the world a favor on this one.”

  “Is it his apartment you’re watching, or what?”

  “Yeah. The building right across from us, but down a floor. There’s a do-it-yourself laundry below him and another apartment, empty, above him.”

  I went over to the window, standing to the side against the wall. I looked out. This was a weird commercial district, kind of off to one side of the downtown, on one of the streets running perpendicular to the river and just on the border of a dip where factories and plants took over down to the edge of the slope of East Hill. On the corner, to the right, was a fancy drugstore, taking up a quarter of the block, its tall display windows full of expensive gift-shop-type items. Next to it was an incongruously sleazy bar, and then the VFW hall, and another bar, and the taco joint, and the laundry, and a coin wash.

  I said, “The second floor, there? Where the light is on and kind of yellowish?”

  “Yeah. His eyes are bad, wears tinted glasses remember, and near as I can tell all the light bulbs in his apartment are yellow like that.”

  “You feel you got his pattern down pretty good?”

  Boyd nodded, confident. “He won’t be coming out again tonight, until quarter to nine. Then he walks down to that drugstore and has a soda at their fountain. Or at least that’s what he had the two times I followed him in and watched him up close.”

  “A soda.”

  “Yeah. Thank God I got a refrigerator full of beer here, or I’d go nuts walking by a bar to go into a drugstore for a soda.” Thinking of it, Boyd came over and leaned down and got his can of Bud, then, as an afterthought, picked up his paperback as well He said, “You go ahead and watch a while. Yell if he starts to leave or something.”

  I sat down. No need to play contortionist like Boyd: it would be easy watching from here, since this window on the third floor was well above street eye-level, and safely above second-floor level.

  “Quarry?”

  “Are you still in here?”

  “It’s… good to see you.”

  “Is it.”

  “You’re pissed off, aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “What’re you pissed off about?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You think I let you down last time, don’t you?”

  “You didn’t let me down.”

  “You think I did. You think I didn’t watch that guy in Toledo as close as I could’ve. You think if I’d done my part you wouldn’t almost’ve got seen leaving when those people showed at the place next door.”

  “We been all over that.”

  “Have we?”

  “We have.”

  “I’m telling you, Quarry, you can watch a mark for a week, two weeks, and you can get his life down fairly well, but there’s always going to be a joker or two turn up in the deck, you know? Hell you could watch a year and stuff could still crop up. The unexpected, right? You got to expect it.”

  “Your tacos are getting cold.”

  “Okay. How much do I owe you?”

  “For what?”

  “The tacos.”

  “Christ!”

  “Okay, okay.” He trudged out of the room.

  I turned away as he did and watched. A shadow slowly shuffled across the yellow window across the way. Then nothing. I watched.

  11

  The yellow window went black.

  “Just turned out the lights, didn’t he?”

  I cocked my head and looked at Boyd. He was glancing at his wristwatch and he had a wiggly little grin going under his curly brown mustache. He was showing off: from where he was, stretched out on the davenport against the wall behind me, sipping his latest Budweiser, he couldn’t see the window that had just gone dark. But he wanted me to know what a swell job he was doing, how perfect he knew the mark’s pattern. How just checking the time he could tell me what the mark was doing. I could almost feel on my own face the heat from his semidrunken glow.

  “Yeah,” I said, turning back around, keeping my back to Boyd, keeping up my vigil.

  “You might as well not bother watching anymore.”

  “Oh?”

  “The lights won’t be on again. He won’t be going out again either. He’s got a clock built in him, this gink does. And a boring damn clock it is.”

  I looked at Boyd. I sat and leaned my shoulders against the wall and folded my arms and said, slowly, “Maybe you been at this too long.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’re getting sloppy.” I glanced back out the window, making a pretense of keeping up my watch on the apartment across the way, just to let Boyd know I didn’t trust his judgment anymore.

  “Aw bullshit, Quarry. Bullshit. You’re the one’s been in it too long. You’re getting old and paranoid.”

  “I’m getting old? Christ, you got fifteen fucking years on me, Boyd.”

  “Age is a state of mind.”

  “Is it.”

  “It sure as hell is. Take the mark over there,” he said, gesturing toward the window, “he was a hundred years old the day he was born. He’s supposed to be thirty-five but he walks around stooped over and shambles along with his head down like he’s looking for a hole to curl up and die in. He isn’t a man, he’s a tombstone walking around.”

  When he said that it was all I could do to keep from laughing. Because as he spoke he was sprawled out on the davenport, hanging loosely over its edge, like a cadaver somebody was playing a morbid ventriloquist’s joke with.

  I said, “Maybe it’s time you told me something about him.”

  Boyd nodded, sat up a little. “He’s thirty-five or so, like I said. No wife. No friends I seen so far. No social life whatever. Works ungodly hours, about half-time, at a plant in the part of this town they call South End.”

  “What kind of plant?”

  “Something to do with food. He goes there at five in the morning and gets out round ten. He spends the rest of his day walking around the downtown.”

  “Every day?”

  “Yeah. And don’t think I’ve enjoyed getting up at four-thirty A.M. like that gink over there. Shit.”

  “What does he do in the afternoon, exactly? When he walks around downtown.”

  “Oh, he’s got his little daily routine. He goes to Woolworth’s after work for his lunch. It’s about eleven when he gets there, and he beats the noon rush that way, and has the waitresses to
himself. He likes to pester them, in a gentle kind of way. They laugh at him behind his back but treat him pretty decent to his face. After that he walks from Woolworth’s to the Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop out at the Port City Mall.”

  “The shopping center, you mean?”

  “Right.”

  “Christ, that’s some walk.”

  “Tell me about it. Anyway, he goes there and has a banana split, even though there’s a chubby kid behind the counter who cracks up laughing every time he walks in. But he doesn’t seem to notice, or mind anyway. When he’s through he walks back downtown. By that time it’s two-thirty. He goes to a place called Hermann’s, which is sort of a drugstore but no prescriptions. But everything else a drugstore has, from Tampax to comic books. And a fountain, where he sits and has a Coke and bothers the waitresses, who put up with him. He spends an hour there, so at three-thirty he sets out for the hospital, where he has a piece of pie at the hospital lunch counter. He enjoys himself there because the help changes every day as it’s local housewives doing volunteer work for a hospital auxiliary and so he’s treated pretty nice by them, since they’re public-service-minded and don’t have to see him day after day, like the other waitresses he comes up against. At four-fifteen he starts walking back downtown and ends up at the Port City Journal, where he buys a paper fresh off the presses from the coin machine out front. By four-thirty he’s back to his apartment where he goes up to read his paper or jack off or whatever. Anyway, he comes back out at six-thirty and here’s where his day gets exciting: he chooses, at random, what restaurant he’s going to eat his supper at. At random means one of four places, but I’ll give him credit for breaking pattern here, as in the week I been on his ass he’s jumped around irregular between the four.”

  “What about Sunday?”

  “Well, I’m only going by one Sunday, mind you, but I’d guess it’s typical for him. He goes to the Methodist church and sits in a back pew. He wears a gray sportcoat and brown pants. He goes to the drugstore there on the corner and has a soda and buys the Chicago Tribune and the Des Moines Register. He disappears into his apartment until three, when he walks out to the park to watch the Little League game at four. When that’s over he starts walking down to the stadium in South End… another nice walk… where he watches the local semipro team play a game at eight o’clock. For supper he has a hot dog at the stadium stand. And I use the word stadium loosely.”

  I scratched my head. “He always walks?”

  “Unless somebody offers him a ride. Which is rare.’’

  “Maybe he likes to walk.”

  “Maybe. Anyway he doesn’t own a car.”

  “What do you suppose he does at that plant?”

  “Not sure, but it’s something in the line of janitorial work or clean-up or something. He’s there in between shifts. A group works till five when he shows, and another comes in at ten when he leaves. Since it’s food preparation, maybe he cleans the big basins or whatever. I didn’t find a way to check the place out too close.”

  “Is that a big plant he works at?”

  “Not particularly. One-story building, kind of medium- size. About twenty on each shift, by the way.”

  “I don’t get this.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Who’d want to kill a nothing like this guy? Why erase a zero?”

  “Ours is not to reason why.”

  That was the first sensible thing Boyd had said lately and almost restored my faith in him. Almost.

  I said, “You’re right, it’s none of our business who hired us and why. Maybe all the waitresses this guy bugs got together and put out a contract on him, who knows? It’s not our concern. But…”

  “But?”

  “But this whole set-up is fucked over. Like this place… what are you doing at a lookout where you’re cooking meals and sleeping? What are you doing inside a furnished apartment, obviously lived in, like this one?”

  “Who knows? Who cares? All I know is Broker gave me the address and a key to the back door. He didn’t give me any explanation, except that it was entirely safe. He said I was to say I was subletting the apartment from…” He thought. “… well I don’t remember the name offhand, but I got it written down somewhere. Carol something, I think it was.”

  Bad. Christ, Boyd was getting bad.

  “Anyway, Broker said the owner of the building, and the broad I’m supposedly subletting it from, would cover for me should anybody official ask. In the meantime, naturally, I’d leave town at once and we’d scratch the hit.”

  “Does anybody know you’re here?”

  “Not really.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Well Broker knows, and I assume whoever hired us knows.”

  Standard Operating Procedure was that the identity of our employer not be known to us. There were many reasons for that, most of them obvious, most providing various kinds of protection for the employer. But it also meant that we knew nothing of the motivation behind our action.

  Another part of S.O.P. was that Broker-the middleman our employer contacted-received a twenty-five per cent down payment, which was his share of the fee; later, at a designated drop point, we would pick up the balance. But only after a lookout had had time to survey the situation and decide whether or not all systems were go. Should Boyd, for example, stake-out a mark and decide the job was either impossible or just too damn risky, we would back out and Broker would return all but a minimal fee for his and our time. Once Boyd, or someone like him, gave the go-ahead for the hit, a day would be set and the employer contacted, one way or another, and the rest of the payment made. Prior to the actual carrying out of the assignment. Cash up front or no hit. This was my policy, at least. Mine and Boyd’s.

  “Listen,” I said, “is the drop all set for our money?”

  “It sure is.”

  “Where?”

  “It’ll be in a garbage can right out back of this place, the day we make our move.”

  “Is the exact day already set?”

  “Yes. I called in today.”

  “Don’t you think you should have waited for me? So we could’ve decided together, like usual?”

  “Aw piss, this was so cut-and-dry, Quarry. Come on. Besides, I told Broker if you had other feelings I’d call him back and tell him about change of plans, if any. You and I’ll decide that.”

  “All right,” I said “But somehow I don’t like the smell of this thing, or the feel of it or something.”

  “You’re paranoid.”

  He looked very young right then, the curly head of hair and eyebrows and mustache pasted on, like a kid dressing up like an adult for Halloween.

  I said, “Let me tell you something, Boyd.”

  “What?”

  “Something’s changed with you. I don’t know what it is. Your personal life maybe. I don’t know. But unless you get back to normal.. by which I mean your normal efficient self… you and I, Boyd, we’re getting a divorce.”

  Boyd sat up. Even in the dark I could see his face had gone white.

  “We been together a long time, Quarry.”

  “I know,” I said. “Maybe too long.”

  12

  Bunny’s was a bar and restaurant on the outskirts of South End, with a pizza place on one side and a Laundromat on the other, neighbors distant as well as disparate, as between them the three took up land enough for a block and a half of town. The businesses down there on the fringes of Port City were clean and mostly recent-built, and Bunny’s was no exception: a handsome darkwood single- story building, perched on a little hilly lawn with an almost absurdly large parking lot surrounding it. Long smoke- color windows fronted the street with not a solitary plastic beer sign in sight, and on both sides of the building, spotlight-lit and painted in big blue block letters, was the word Bunny’s.

  It was approaching eleven-thirty when I pulled into the lot which had seemed oversize to me when I drove by that afternoon but right now was jampacked. I had
no easy time finding a parking place and settled for one a good walk from the door and counted myself lucky. As I neared the building I heard rock music faintly and then the door opened and as some people came out so did the music, loud but not too loud and well-played by a live combo of drum-bass-guitar.

  I was relieved to hear rock rather than country western, and not from my being a supporter or detractor of either cause, but because my experience has been that rock bars run to fewer fights than country western. I don’t really know why. It almost seems the more violent the music, the less violent the crowd. And with the rock bar’s younger patrons you’ll sometimes find a moderate amount of parking lot pot-smoking going on which can make for a scattering of sleepy happy people who seem to spread gentle, passive vibrations through a crowd; in a country bar a similar scattering of drunken unhappy people can send a wave of irritation through a crowd that can result in anything from a scuffle to a brawl.

  Which was why when I’d driven around town this afternoon, I kept my eyes open for a place like Bunny’s. A place where I could sit and drink and get quietly drunk and maybe pick up some broad who didn’t have hair sprayed into a style that died in 1961 everywhere else but Iowa.

  Wouldn’t have done to choose too high class a bar, either, like the hotel cocktail lounge or something of that sort. Too much chance I could get cornered by some Port City V.I.P. who might get friendly about why-ya-in-town and what-business-ya-in, or worse yet, some Chamber of Commerce smiler full of talk/shit. None of that would do. I wanted to be invisible.

  Like my mark was invisible. Like Albert Leroy. That was his name, the mark. Albert Leroy. The man who wore a gray sweater in the summer and got his rocks off watching a Little League ballgame at the park and drinking a soda at the drugstore.

  It didn’t make sense, it didn’t make fucking sense. Invisible people nobody wants to kill. Sometimes-like in my case-you get invisible because you want nobody to notice you. But other guys are born that way. Other guys the doctors yank from the womb and can’t see an ass to slap.

  This was working on my mind as I walked into Bunny’s. This and the way Boyd was acting, the little things out on the edges of the way Boyd was behaving, the little things out on the borders of the job that made no logical sense.