I moved slowly, breath visible in the chill air, easing through the trees, most of which were bare of leaves, though there were occasional pines, so I had both leaves and needles under my sneakered feet, which made for some crunching no matter how hard I tried not. I wasn’t any fucking commando, after all, though I’d done some jungle fighting. But you didn’t run into many pine cones or beds of leaves where I had my on-the-job training.
Finally I came to the edge of the trees and the house was perched on a gently rolling, landscaped lawn, like a tiny toy house on top of a great big cake. Only it wasn’t a tiny house: it sprawled, an angular, many-windowed affair, dark natural wood and sandstone giving it the feel of a cabin or lodge.
My vantage point was to the right rear of the place; in back there was a big garage—big enough for a small fleet of cars—which connected to that paved driveway, which I now could see travelled along the edge of the quarry drop-off. I was up high enough to see the view: Lake Quarry; the narrow highway; some trees and the Mississippi beyond. Even on this dreary night, it was some view. A man who lived in a house like that—who owned a house like that—who looked out on a view like that—could come to think of himself as pretty all fucking powerful.
I almost didn’t see the guard. He walked right by me, not five feet away. The trees hid me, and he was lazy, not directing his flashlight into the trees; in fact, his flashlight wasn’t even on.
But he was a burly guy, in a heavy brown leather bomber jacket with a .357 mag on his hip; he looked like a sheriff’s deputy but without the insignia. He didn’t hear me come up behind him, slip the stun gun under his coat and against the small of his back. My hand was over his mouth, stifling his scream, slapping the wide slash of adhesive tape in place and his body shook from the shock of it. Nice part is, the shock doesn’t transfer from his body to yours. You just hold on, pressing the button while counting One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, Three Mississippi, Four Mississippi, Five Mississippi, and he just does this pathetic jitterbug in your arms, wetting his pants.
I lowered him to the ground and brought his hands behind him, using flex-cuffs to bind him. I bought a gross of these “throw-away handcuffs” years ago—they’re like garbage bag ties, little lightweight pieces of plastic with a serrated tip that draws up tight through an eye. I put another one of them around his ankles—the only way these things could be removed was by cutting the fuckers off—and dragged him by the feet into the forest. He smelled bad. Full bladder.
There wasn’t piss on his jacket, however, and he was enough bigger than me that it fit over my own; his keys were in the jacket pocket. He was out of it. It would be fifteen minutes before his brain resumed control. I removed his black western-styled holster and slung on his .357 mag. I picked up his flashlight, which he had dropped (understandably), and carried it in my left hand—the stun gun in my right, twenty-nine or so more pops to go—and moved with casual authority across the rolling golf-course of a lawn, toward the house.
It was a walk that took probably three minutes and only seemed an eternity. I walked across the paved area to the back of the house, where a stone stairway with wood banister rose to a landing flush with what was probably the kitchen, and was about to go up when the door opened and another sentry came out and said to somebody within, “It’s quiet tonight, too quiet,” archly ominous. And then he laughed. He was another big man, wearing jeans and plaid shirt with a big revolver on his hip. Probably another .357.
He was standing on the landing, lighting up a cigarette when I joined him and put the stun gun in his belly, slapping tape across his open mouth, his eyes so wide the white showing overwhelmed iris and pupil. He struggled, and I pushed against him, maintaining the contact, and he danced with the jolt, and peed, and broke the railing behind him and landed on his back about a story down. I pondered going down and cuffing him, but figured the sound of wood breaking and flesh-and-bone thumping might have roused people within the house, and I couldn’t fuck around with it.
So I went inside, and it was a kitchen, a big, white, gleaming kitchen you could feed an army out of, though, incongruously, there was but a tiny table in its midst, where a paperback adventure novel was folded open, a cup of steaming coffee nearby, another empty cup before another chair, which was pulled out. No one sat at this table; apparently my most recent dancing partner had been sitting there. But so had somebody else, and where was the guy? Or was he the one who was sleeping in the forest, at the moment?
I moved into the house; the floor was slate—a stone waterfall, lit from below with amber lights, gurgled under a winding, open staircase. Off to the right was an office area, a secretarial post apparently, several photocopy machines, three desks with small computers, counters and cupboards for storage and work areas, the wall space decorated with framed posters from Freed’s various campaigns, all of them showing his white-haired, tanned, blue-eyed, boyishly smiling countenance. As much as ten years separated some of the posters, yet he seemed the same in them all; plastic surgery, or a portrait aging in the attic, maybe.
The secretarial room opened doorless onto what was apparently a conference room, although it had a fireplace (unlit) over which reigned a framed oil painting of Freed, dressed as a riverboat captain, and a small but well-stocked bar was in one corner. This room was hung with wildlife paintings and prints and glassed-in displays of frontier weaponry, rifles, bowie knives, the like. Attached to this warm, open-beamed room, with no doorway separating it, was a small office/study, with a desk and many phones and a wall of photos of Freed with celebrities (including Angela Jordan’s soap opera star), and two walls of books—political ones exclusively, authors ranging from Adolf Hitler to Robert F. Kennedy, from Karl Marx to Eugene McCarthy.
“Have you seen Dick?” somebody behind me asked.
I picked up a paperweight from the desk—a heavy brass replica of the Presidential seal, about as big around as a glazed doughnut—and turned and hurled it into the stomach of the approaching bodyguard, another brute, the missing link from the kitchen table, this one with thinning blond hair and a light blue workshirt and jeans and, on his hip, the ever-present .357 mag.
Which he was going for, incidentally, when I reached out and shoved the stun gun in his belly and pressed the button; he let a yelp out, but not much of one, because the paperweight I had tossed into him, like a discus, had knocked the wind out of him and he hadn’t recovered. And now he was busy doing the electrical dance. I kept my hand over his mouth till he was under, and eased him down. He didn’t pee. Maybe that’s where he’d been: the john.
I did take the time to flex-cuff this guy, hands and ankles both, and slap some tape on his mouth, and went back the way I’d come—past the winding staircase and waterfall, past the front entryway, and into a living room with the breathtaking picture-window view I’d expected. There was another fireplace, also unlit; over it was another oil portrait of Freed—this time dressed in buckskins, like a frontier hero. The furnishings were modern and expensive but looked comfortable; modular stuff, earth tones. A big 27-inch console TV was perched in one corner. Glass sliding doors opened onto a patio, or did in nicer weather, anyway.
I back-tracked again, and went up the winding staircase. I found myself in a round room, a circular bar with more political posters and Freed memorabilia on display, a few more antique frontier weapons hanging, and windows on the world. Chairs were gathered around the edges of the circle, as if someone (gee, I wonder who) might have occasion to stand centerstage and pontificate in the round.
Off to the right, I could hear muffled sound; then laughter, also muffled. I moved closer to it. From behind a door, to the left of a well-stocked, leather-fronted bar. Talking, laughter, very muffled.
Sitcom.
Somebody was watching TV in there. But who, and how many of them were there? Well, sometimes one is reduced to the obvious. I looked through the keyhole.
Another large bodyguard type was sitting in a chair, and he was
smiling; the chair was comfortable, he had a can of beer in one hand, and Bill Cosby was on the TV screen. What more could a man ask for?
I was on top of him putting the stun gun in his belly as he slouched there before he could do anything but try to scream into my hand and the adhesive strip, and pee his pants. Beer’ll do it to you.
I cuffed him, hands in back, and secured his ankles, too, then looked around what seemed to be the quarters for the security staff. Though not much more than a cubicle, there was a TV, a small refrigerator, a couple of couches, several stacks of men’s magazines and paperbacks and a private bathroom. Then I explored the room beyond: a simple guest room, double bed, empty dresser.
Moving back into the circular bar, I tried another doorway, found myself in a hallway; past a closed side door, at the end of the hall, was light. Muted light, but light, like the first glow of dawn over the horizon. If you get up that early.
I rounded the corner and there, on a waterbed the size of New Jersey, on black silk sheets, a mirror overhead, was the Democratic Action party’s candidate, with his dick in the mouth of an attractive young woman. Or at least what I could see of her was attractive: her ass was to me.
That’s where I hit her with the stun gun.
Right above the crack of it, actually, and fortunately for Freed, she opened her mouth wide, rather than clamp down, and I slipped the tape over her mouth and gave her a three-second jolt, which did the trick. Freed recoiled, his icy blue eyes damn near as shocked as the unconscious girl, who I noticed with certain amusement was the redhead from his campaign headquarters. He’d been feeding her the party line, but now he plastered his naked self against the fancy western-carved headboard of the waterbed, withering.
“W-What do you w-want?” he said. Even stuttering, his voice was melodious, like a radio announcer’s.
“Sorry about your silk sheets,” I said, making a tch-tch sound, noting the dampness the girl had caused.
“If you’re going to kill me,” he said, suddenly brave, “then get it over with.”
“If I’d have agreed to kill you,” I said, “my life wouldn’t be so fucked up now. And you’d already be dead.”
The blue eyes narrowed. “The Soviets?” he asked.
“Put some clothes on,” I sighed. “I don’t talk business with naked politicians.”
12
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HE SLIPPED INTO a dark blue silk robe while I cuffed the girl’s hands and ankles. I moved her off the area of the bed she’d made wet—it was the least I could do—carrying her in my arms like a big baby. She was a nice looking woman, despite the circumstances.
He stood nearby, while I did that, nervous but hiding it pretty well. He was taller than me, and had considerable bearing, the mane of white hair, the china-blue eyes, the dark tan, a striking human being; feeling no humiliation at all, it would seem, despite being caught with his pants down.
“Are you going to tell me what this is about?” His baritone, melodious or not, did have an edge of irritation. Not that I blamed him. Nobody likes to get interrupted in the middle of a blow job.
“We have to get a couple things straight first,” I said, and the nine-millimeter was in my gloved right hand now, the stun gun tucked away in a jacket pocket, his sentry’s .357 on my hip.
“Such as?” he said. He had winced, just slightly, upon sight of the automatic; otherwise he maintained an admirable cool.
“Do we have it understood,” I said, “that if I were here to kill you, you’d be dead by now? That if I were here to steal from you, you’d be trussed up and we wouldn’t be talking at all? That if this were a kidnapping, I’d have hauled your ass out of here already? Do we understand all that?”
He nodded very slowly. The light blue eyes bored into me like soothing lasers. Their color reminded me of Linda’s eyes. I tried not to think about that.
“I came in here the way I did for a couple of reasons,” I said, “all of them good. First, you’re not an easy man to see. I tried finding you at your campaign headquarters, and heard all about how reclusive you are. Second, I wanted to show you that if somebody did want to see you bad enough, they could get it done, reclusive or not.”
His mouth twitched in a half-smile. “I thought I had excellent security.”
“Your security is pretty half-assed. But even if it were great, you could be gotten to. Anybody can be gotten to.”
“If you’re not here to kill me or steal from me or kidnap me,” he said, “why are you here?”
“To make you a business offer, for one thing. For another, to save your life.”
An eyebrow arched. “Why don’t we go out in the bar and talk.”
“Fine. But if any of your staff should show up— somebody I don’t know about, or the one guy I didn’t take time to bind up, or anybody else with a gun or something —you’re going to make ’em back off. Otherwise, people are going to get hurt. And I can just about guarantee you, you’ll be one of them.”
He nodded, as if to say, fair enough.
“Could I use the bathroom first?” he asked. There was one off the bedroom.
“Sure,” I said. “Leave the door open.”
He frowned at that, but said nothing. He went in there but didn’t use the john. He ran water, washed his hands. Then he bent over the counter, like he was almost kissing it. I didn’t know what he was up to, until he turned and was wiping a little white powder off his nose. The small mirror on the bathroom counter reflected the overhead light.
Then I followed him out into the circular bar.
“Would you care for something to drink?” he asked.
“No. But help yourself.”
He went to the bar and poured himself several fingers of Scotch. Not one to deny himself anything, he withdrew a long fat cigar from a box on the bar and lit it with a wooden match; then he sat in a captain’s chair, which he had dragged to the center of the circle, and motioned for me to sit nearby. I chose instead to take a chair that put my back to the wall and gave me a view of several doors and the open stairway. I kept the gun in my hand and in my lap.
“And what do I call you?” he asked. Half the room between us.
“You can call me Quarry. It’s not my name, exactly, but it’ll do.”
“All right, Mr. Quarry. Perhaps you can explain why you’ve invaded my home—and, apparently, put my entire security staff out of commission.”
“Let me ask you something first. If someone, this afternoon, had told you that one man would enter your compound and put you in the position you’re in right now, what would you have said?”
“I would have found it impossible. Unbelievable.”
“Fine. Keep that in mind when you consider the story I’m about to tell.”
And I told Preston Freed, self-styled presidential candidate, the story. That I was a retired professional assassin who had been offered a million-dollar contract; that he was the target of said contract; that I had refused the contract; that an attempt on my life had subsequently been made. I did not mention the loss of my wife, my life at Paradise Lake. That was none of his fucking business.
Freed listened with rapt attention, eyebrows arching, nostrils flaring, eyes narrowing, widening, as one might expect. But disbelief was something I did not sense. Perhaps in a way I was making a dream come true for him: his paranoia was finally being substantiated, even if the Soviets weren’t involved.
“Now,” I said, “it would seem to me we have some mutual interest in this matter. For my part, I’d like to respond in kind to those who tried to have me killed.”
“Understandable,” Freed said, nodding.
“And you, I would think, would like to identify those who are trying to have you killed.”
“Frankly,” he said, drawing on the thick cigar, “I’d like to do more than just identify them.”
“I thought yo
u might. You need to consider exactly what this situation is: I turned the contract down. That made me a loose end—in a political assassination, involving a national figure, a presidential candidate, one does not leave loose ends. But that speaks only to my situation. What about yours?”
“Mine?”
“Someone else—someone like me—was approached with that million-dollar contract. Someone who accepted it.”
“Is this a conclusion you’ve drawn, or . . . ?”
“It’s more. It’s direct knowledge. I understand you fear retaliation from what you describe as the ‘Drug Conspiracy’—the banks and the mob.”
“The Sicilian/Hebrew Connection,” he said, nodding.
“Spare me. But I will give you this much: somebody with mob connections who died recently gave me that information.”
The icy blue eyes narrowed to slits in the tanned face. “Victor Werner? You killed Victor Werner?”
“I didn’t say that. Did you know him?”
“I never met the man, but I knew of him.” Then, with contempt: “Knew of his ‘family’ ties. He told you of a second assassin?”
“Yes, Werner gave me a name. It’s a name I’m familiar with. Which is one reason why I think I can head this thing off.”
“Head it off?”
“I can stop the hit from going down. Because I know who it was that came to see me, the upstanding citizen who tried to hire me. And I know who he hired in my place.”
“I have to do something about this!”
“No kidding. Look, we can go about this a couple of ways. I can just tell you who these people are, and fade away. You have men on your staff; you might be able to deal with this in-house.”
I knew he wouldn’t want that; but saying this gave me leverage.
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