Quarry

by Collins, Max Allan

  “I am. I’m desperate.”

  “What the hell’s the situation, anyway?”

  “Well . . .” I made a show of weighing the consequences of telling him “the truth.” With mock reluctance I said, “My partner and I were making this run, and last night he took sick. Terrible sick. This was an overnight stop for us, so I figured by morning he’d be okay. But he got worse, much worse.”

  “What was wrong with him?”

  “I don’t know, food poisoning maybe, or some weird-ass virus. All I know is he’s practically dying. This infection or something hit him all at once, hit him out of nowhere, and now I need a driver. To complete the run. What do you say?”

  “He’s too sick to drive?”

  “I’m asking you, aren’t I?”

  “That’s just it, it’s so crazy, you asking me.”

  “Who the hell else can I ask in this damn hick town? You got to bail me out, Vince. The money’s good. Do it.”

  “When is it, this delivery?”

  “Midnight.”

  “Shit, it’s after eleven now. Where we got to be?”

  “The quarry on the river road, just outside Davenport.”

  He was nodding his head, starting to buy it. He said, “We could make that, easy.”

  “Good. You take the lead and I’ll follow you. After you deliver the car, I’ll drive you back to Port City.” I got a roll of bills out from my pocket, part of the money Mrs. Springborn had given me. I peeled off five bills, all of them hundreds, and tossed them in his bluejeaned lap. He stared down at them. “Five more like that,” I told him, “when the job’s over.”

  He thought about it. He scratched his oily head and said, to himself, “This has been a day,” then to me, “Let’s get going, Jack.”

  “Right,” I said.

  We shook hands.

  28

  * * *

  * * *

  THE RIVER ROAD followed the Mississippi’s edge faithfully, and no doubt provided much visual pleasure for folks out on sunny afternoon outings. On the one side of the road, cottages dotted the river shore; on the other side, a high green bluff was strung with all sorts of houses, from modest to lavish, mutually enjoying the scenic view. After ten miles or so the bluff dwindled and the ground became flat and fenced off, the rich farmland Iowa is known for; on the other side of the road the cottages had given way to thick forest-like clumps of trees. At times the road rolled up hills, one of them peaking and leveling out to provide an overview of the river from a breathtaking highpoint, while on the road’s left was a sheer cliff-like wall of rock, like something out of Colorado or Wyoming. Other times the road swung down through valley-nestled villages, quiet, sheltered little worlds removed from this era. The river road was a Sunday driver’s paradise, the scenery varied and having more slices of America along it than any single stretch of twenty-five-mile road you can think of. At midnight, in the rain, it was a fucking nightmare.

  I was staying a quarter mile behind Vince because I didn’t want him to get a good look at the car I was driving. I’d hustled him into my rental Ford and after he’d taken off I had followed in Boyd’s green Mustang. I figured there was some chance Vince would recognize the Mustang as Boyd’s and I didn’t want him tipping to who I was or what I was doing. On the other hand, I didn’t want to let him get out of my sight. Out of my reach. So I had to stay right with him, without tailgating him.

  He’d questioned me about why I was trusting him with the delivery of the cargo-laden car, and I had to explain it six ways to get him to accept it. I kept inventing reasons and he kept shuffling and saying, “I dunno , Jack,” and then finally he said he guessed it made sense to him that I’d want him in front of me where I could see him, rather than in back where he could quietly disappear with my five hundred bucks and a car provided by me. Such a contingency he could comprehend, because it and every other crooked-ass possibility had occurred to him: Vince wasn’t smart, but he had a mind that twisted in those kind of patterns.

  So everything was fine until he suggested he’d run up to his apartment and stash the five hundred and grab his windbreaker since he might have to stand out in the rain a while. Before that could develop into a problem, I threw my raincoat around his shoulders (pockets empty of course, the nine-millimeter in the front seat of the Mustang, under a newspaper) and pushed him into the rental Ford and bid him bon voyage.

  The Mustang took the choppy old road badly, its suspension system outclassed by this patchwork quilt of concrete chunks. When things would get less bumpy, when a smooth stretch would show out of nowhere, the wetness of the pavement made driving all the more treacherous. Up ahead Vince fishtailed the Ford a couple times hitting slick spots like that, and he wasn’t doing over fifty-five. I felt myself start to slide once or twice. Just when the road would seem to be evening out for good, up would come a water-filled pothole big enough to do the backstroke in.

  I glanced down and saw the odometer had clocked twenty-one miles since leaving Port City. The quarry would be coming round soon. I crouched over the steering wheel and peered out through the windshield as the wipers swished back-and-forth.

  The half dozen buildings were huddled together like conspirators. Three of the buildings were cylindrical, resembling silos, and made of cement; the rest were gray ribbed-steel obelisks with smokestacks pouring out pure white smoke, puffy clouds as white as innocence, dissipating as the rain got to them. A black shaft slanted across the highway from one of the obelisks to a Quonset hut, the shaft housing the conveyer that brought the limestone from the quarry to the cement processing plant.

  The quarry itself was immense. Even in the darkness of the rainy night, partially-lit as I passed through the compound of buildings, I could see across to the other side and the damn thing looked like the Grand Canyon, only older, its limestone ledges having a barren, dead beauty. The depth of it varied from probably fifty feet in places to one-hundred and fifty. It covered acres, hundreds of acres, and it was long, extending a mile past the smoke-exuding plant, where a skeleton crew was continuing through the night, transforming the cold, brittle rock into sacks of cement.

  Broker had said two cars would be waiting for me, one of them to take me back to Port City. There was only one car, a dark blue Dodge Charger, its motor running. That was no surprise, but it was a solid confirmation: any slight doubt of Broker’s intentions dissolved like the smoke rising into the rain. I watched Vince pull the Ford over and, after hanging back for a minute, I drove on past both cars, like somebody who was just happening along. Half a mile later I cut my lights and U-turned and came back slow. When I got within an eighth of a mile I let the car crawl quietly off to the side of the road and got out. There were some bushes lining the fence that edged the quarry, and they hid me as I moved quickly along, careful not to brush against them.

  I had told Vince to sit in the car and wait for three minutes, to give me a chance to do what I had just done. The nine-millimeter was tight in my gloved hand and I was close by when Vince got out of the Ford and began to approach the dark blue Charger.

  Visibility was very low, but I saw what happened clearly, as I was only a few feet away.

  The two cars were parked parallel to each other, forming right angles with the road, but there was half a block distance between the two cars and Vince walked so slowly it seemed it would take him forever to near the Charger. Hands deep in the pockets of my raincoat, Vince baby-stepped toward the car and had cut the distance in half when the window on the driver’s side of the Charger rolled down. An arm extended from the open window. Vince stopped. He saw the gun pointed directly at him and he turned to move and the thud of a silenced automatic made a barely perceptible addition to the sounds of the wet night. Vince clutched his side. He fell to his knees. I couldn’t tell how bad the wound was, but my guess was it wasn’t fatal; he was moving too good, very good for a man crawling on his knees.

  The door flew open on the Charger. A slender figure in a dark coat jumped from the car, lim
ped frantically toward Vince, who was clawing through the mud and gravel toward the Ford. The slender man caught up with Vince without much trouble. He bent over, saying, “All right, Quarry, you bastard, this is going to be a goddamn pleasure,” and he turned Vince over and lifted him up by the raincoat lapels and realized it wasn’t me.

  He dropped Vince back to the muddy wet ground. “Christ!” Carl said, and I hit him behind the left ear with the barrel of the nine-millimeter.

  Carl went down face first, splashing into a puddle. He landed just to Vince’s left.

  I took the silenced automatic from Carl’s limp fingertips and stuck the gun in my belt. Vince sat there and watched me with his mouth open, his face a mixture of pain and incredulity and stupidity, the rain running down his forehead and over his face like a combination of tears and slobber. He looked at me hard, squinching his eyes, and then he got mad. But before he said anything, he scooched back on his ass toward the Ford, till he was leaning safely against the fender of the car, which gave him a little, not much, but a little breathing room from the unconscious Carl.

  Vince sputtered, his mouth full of rain, and perhaps blood. He said, “You, you fucking son of a bitch, you, you goddamn son of a fucking bitch . . . I’m shot, Jesus I’m shot, that shit shot me . . . no trouble, you said, easiest money I ever made you said . . .”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  The narrowed eyes went suddenly wide, and wild, and he said, “What are you gonna do, what are you gonna do for me? You gotta do something for me . . . you’re not going to leave me bleed? Huh? Huh? I’m hurt, Christ Jesus I’m hurt, but I know I can make it if you just help me—you’re gonna help me aren’t you?”

  “You be quiet. You be quiet and maybe I’ll help you.”

  “But . . .”

  “Sit there and relax. Don’t panic or shock’ll set in. Don’t waste your energy or you’ll go unconscious. Just sit there and stay cool.”

  ‘‘But . . .’’

  I raised the automatic and he shut up. Or almost shut up. He was whimpering, but not loud enough to be annoying.

  Carl was starting to rouse. I helped him. I poked his ribs with my foot.

  “Up,” I said.

  Carl groaned. He rolled around in the puddle and got his nose deep down in the water and he started choking and coughing and flapping his arms. He pushed up on his hands and made wedges in the soft ground and hobbled onto his feet. Or foot. There was mud hanging on his face like melting gelatin.

  “How’s it going, Carl?”

  Carl swallowed and it didn’t taste good. He said, “You double-crossing son of a bitch!” His voice was strained, and almost shrill.

  “I’d laugh at that,” I said, “if I thought we had time to be funny.”

  “You’re dead, Quarry. You’re a dead man.”

  “No. Not the case. Had Broker sent somebody competent out here to kill me, somebody with two legs and a brain, I might be dead. But I’m not.”

  “The Broker . . .”

  “The Broker is home cozy and warm in his bed. He wouldn’t bother coming out here. He doesn’t dirty himself with this sort of thing.”

  Carl wiped off his face and stood very still. Like he was at attention, or facing a firing squad or something. He said, “Go ahead, Quarry. Get it over with.”

  “Get what over with? You think I’m going to kill you? You aren’t worth killing, you gimpy asshole.”

  “What . . . what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to send you home to Broker. I’m going to let you limp back over to your shiny new Dodge Charger and roar into the sunset.”

  He was frozen with disbelief.

  I said, “Go back to Broker. Shoo.”

  “What’s this . . . what’s this all about?”

  “Go back to Broker, Carl. But one thing . . . bring him back here.”

  “What? You’re crazy.”

  “Get him up and bring him out here and let him get his ass wet like the rest of us.”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “You got forty minutes. Broker doesn’t live all that far from here. I’ll wait forty minutes. Now go.”

  “Go?”

  “Go.”

  “Sure,” Carl said, humoring me, “fine. I’ll bring him back in forty minutes.”

  “I know you will. Just tell him one thing for me. You tell him I only gave him half that load of heroin from the airport job. You tell him I kept back a bag. Tell him I got it hid safely away, and if he wants the key to where I hid it, he should come back here within forty minutes and bring twenty thousand in hundreds with him.”

  Carl didn’t argue with me. He didn’t try to tell me Broker wouldn’t be able to raise the money or other similar lies. Twenty thousand was a low figure for the stuff, very low, and I only picked that figure because I knew Broker would have that much on hand at home.

  Carl said, “I’ll be back in forty minutes with the Broker.” Carl knew the Broker would come; for the heroin, Broker would come.

  “Go, Carl.”

  Carl nodded. Very carefully, very slowly, he sloshed back to the Charger, its motor still running. He waited at the door for any last instructions I might have I said, “You come back with him, Carl. Don’t bring anyone else. Come unarmed.”

  Carl nodded again, got in the car and pulled out. I watched the Charger disappear into the rain and seconds later the road was deserted again.

  Behind me, Vince said, weakly, “What . . . what’s this about? Who . . . who the hell are you?”

  I turned and looked at him. He looked pitiful. A skinny shot-up kid in my raincoat, leaning against the Ford and clutching his side. His long hair was hanging in thick wet streaks across his forehead, making a stark contrast with his pale white face. His mouth was slack open, the chipped tooth giving him a look of naive idiocy.

  I said, “You don’t know, do you?”

  Vince said nothing.

  I said nothing.

  We waited.

  Vince said, “In Christ’s name, do something . . . help me . . . I’ll fucking bleed to death if you don’t do something . . .”

  I just looked at him.

  He said, “You got to, got to . . . please . . . oh, please, please, do something . . .”

  He was right. It was time to do something.

  I said, “All right. I got a first-aid kit in the trunk of my car. I’ll go get it.”

  He made a strange sound, a cross between a whimper and a sigh. He whispered, “Thanks . . . thanks, Jack.”

  I walked the eighth of a mile back to the Mustang and opened the trunk.

  I got out the wrench.

  29

  * * *

  * * *

  “SHIT,” CARL SAID. He paced awkwardly back and forth, like he was trying to make fun of himself. He’d been fifty minutes bringing Broker out here and I’d told him forty. He’d come back and found the area deserted and for a full minute now he’d been pacing and saying shit. He didn’t know I’d moved the two cars to where they couldn’t be seen. The rental Ford was at the mouth of the gravel access road to the quarry, the car just barely out of view, where I could get to it quick if I had to. Boyd’s Mustang was down in the quarry itself, not far from what was left of Vince.

  Carl looked at Broker, whose face was visible in the back side window of the car. Carl held out the palms of his hands as if to say, “What can I do?” Broker pursed his lips and shrugged with his eyebrows. Carl shook his head as if to say, “I’m sorry.” Broker eased the irritation from his face and nodded forgiveness.

  Just the same, Carl went back to his pacing alongside the car, which this trip was not the shiny dark blue Charger, but a big brown Buick with a vinyl top. Broker’s car, obviously. An executive’s car.

  “Shit,” Carl said again, “shit, shit, shit.”

  “Oh stop crying,” I said. I stepped out from the bushes and let Carl see I was still keeping company with the nine-millimeter.

  Relief flooded Carl’s face, and then anger.
Carl spoke and his voice dripped venom, but his words were contrite: “I’m . . . I’m sorry I was late.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Open your coat.”

  He unbuttoned the black raincoat and held it open. I walked over to him and gave him a quick, one-handed frisk. He was unarmed. “Good boy,” I said. “That fake leg of yours isn’t hollowed out and full of firecrackers, now is it?”

  Carl pouted. His eyes told me to go to hell. But he said nothing.

  “You can close your coat now,” I said.

  “Where’s your friend,” Carl asked.

  He meant Vince.

  At the bottom of this limestone pit, Carl, where he landed when I shoved his remains over the edge.

  “I patched him up,” I said, “and he’s doing fine. Walking up and down the road here, keeping his eyes open. Making sure you and Broker didn’t bring any of your friends along.”

  Carl said, “Broker wants you to get in the car and talk with him in there.”

  I waved the gun toward Broker, whose face in the window of the Buick was bland and emotionless and practically bored. “Broker,” I said, loud, “get your ass out here!”

  The back door opened. Broker didn’t come out, but his voice did. He said, “Climb in here with me, Quarry. No need to stand out in the rain and catch pneumonia.”

  “Why don’t you come out here and join me, Broker. I been in the rain so long it’s gotten to be my natural state.”

  “Please,” the Broker said. With solemn patience.

  “Why not,” I said. I looked at Carl and said, “You get in the front. Sit on the rider’s side and don’t cause any trouble.”

  Carl did as he was told.

  Broker was wearing a charcoal double-knit suit and a dark blue shirt and a wide tie colored robin’s egg blue. He moved over to make room for me, which put him directly behind Carl. There was plenty of room in the Buick’s back seat—headroom, legroom, everything. I laid the nine- millimeter on my lap and folded my gloved hands. It was cold in the car. The damn airconditioner was on, which was stupid on a rainy and not particularly warm night like this one, and between its coldness and size, that Buick could’ve been used as a meat locker.