“No.”
“Anyway, there were a lot of people with a lot of questions. Police, of course. Federal agents, because of the narcotics. More federal men, IRS, checking the books of my husband’s various businesses. It only began cooling down this past month, and I don’t anticipate it cooling down completely till who knows when.”
“Are the federal men gone?”
“All but IRS. They haven’t bothered me personally, much. The narcotics people and the police did, though. Unmercifully.”
“Has anyone else come around to talk to you, Carrie? Someone who might claim to be an old business associate of your husband’s.”
“I haven’t talked to anyone in the last three months except members of my family and police and federal people. And you, Jack.”
“And right now you’re wondering how the hell to ask who the hell I am.”
“Yes.”
“Officially I was a salesman for one of those mail-order companies your husband was part owner of.”
“Unofficially?”
“I guess you could say I delivered messages for him.”
“You’re being vague.”
“I have to be.”
“You’re trying to say you were involved in the illegal side of what my husband did.”
“Yes.”
“I see. Then it wasn’t accidental, our meeting each other?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t arrange the meeting, Carrie. Did you?”
“No.”
“Then we’ll have to assume it was accidental.”
“A coincidence, you mean.”
“I used to stay at the Concort, whenever I came to the Cities on business, to confer with your husband. I like the Concort. I like to swim there. So when I came to the Cities this time, I stayed there again. And swam there again. You inherited an interest in the Concort when your husband was killed. You like to come around and swim there in the mornings. So we bumped into each other.”
“That’s still pretty coincidental.”
“I know it is. It’s the reason I didn’t call you back today. I looked in your purse, last night, saw who you were. It bothered me. I wasn’t going to contact you again till I was sure about you.”
“Are you sure about me now?”
“I guess I have to be. Just like you have to be about me. Maybe we should just be tentatively sure about each other.”
The fog and misting had us crawling along the highway. Few other cars were foolhardy enough to be out on a night like this, pushing through the thick, gray shifting unreality.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” she said.
“Which question?”
“Why do you think someone’s trying to kill me?”
So I explained it to her, modifying certain parts and leaving others out, but giving her what was, essentially, the truth. I told her that an attempt had been made on my life, for reasons I had yet to ascertain, but that I had managed to trace the attempt to another former associate of her husband’s (Ash) who I’d followed to the Quad Cities, where some sort of takeover of her husband’s extralegal business activities seemed to be in progress, part of which involved Ash and another man staking out her home and recording her every move and, eventually, killing her.
I also told her that despite our poolside encounter, I hadn’t known until a few hours ago that she was the potential victim in the brown brick house. And I told her that if she hadn’t broken her usually rigid daily routine and driven to the Concort last night for an evening swim, she’d probably be dead now.
That chilled her a bit.
“I still don’t understand why anyone would want to have me killed.”
“Neither do I. I was hoping you could tell me.”
“I can’t. The part of my husband’s life these people would be interested in, I’m totally ignorant of.”
“Maybe they don’t know that. Maybe you’re in possession of information that could be dangerous to somebody, even if you aren’t aware of it.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Again, neither do I. But somebody does. Somebody considers you an obstacle. Somehow, you’ve got in the way of whoever it is who’s trying to take over where your husband left off.”
“And I don’t even know what it is they’re trying to take over. Narcotics smuggling? Crooked politics? What?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“No. No. No, I don’t.”
“Carrie, a while ago you said how those federal people and the police had bothered you . . . unmercifully, I think you said. Is that why you haven’t asked me to take you to the police?”
“Oh, you’re wondering if that’s occurred to me. That I should be thinking, if my life’s really in danger, shouldn’t I run to the police? Why put myself in your hands instead, the hands of a stranger? Well, why not? Who else do I have? I put myself in your hands last night, willingly enough. Why not again.”
There was an uneasiness in her voice, despite her artificially flip attitude, that disturbed me. A resignation, that seemed to say, If you’re my lover, fine . . . but if you’re my murderer, well that’s fine, too . . . it just doesn’t matter that much to me, one way or the other, anymore.
“Carrie,” I said. “If you think I’ve kidnapped you, you’re wrong. If you want to go to the police, just say so. I’ll turn this heap around and drop you off at the station in Davenport. Just say the word.”
“No. No police. I told you about my husband’s political ties. People in local government and beyond could be involved in the same illegal things he was involved in, and if there are people trying to kill me, it could very likely be them. So, no, I don’t have the urge to call the police. But I would like to know what you hope to do for me. Besides hide me out for a while. How can you stop killers, anyway?”
“The same way they stop you.”
“Oh. I think I see what you mean.”
“Maybe you’ll want to change your mind about the police, after all, Carrie. Knowing that.”
“Knowing what? That some people are going to die? And that you’re going to kill them? No. My husband was murdered. I’m apparently next on the list. People want to murder me. No, it doesn’t bother me if people like that are killed. It doesn’t even bother me if you’re the one who does it. I just don’t want to hear about it. Lie to me if you have to. But don’t tell me.”
We were coming into a small town, a cemetery on our left, a sign welcoming us to Blue Grass, population 1032, on the right.
“You might be holed up at that cottage several days,” I said. “Got any food on hand there?”
“Not to speak of,” she said.
“Well, if something’s open here, we’ll stop and pick some up.”
A block later I pulled up along the curb in front of an old-fashioned clapboard grocery store and sent her in. Then I drove down another block and pulled in to get gas.
While the Buick was being filled, I went in and got change and used the pay phone.
I called the number Ash had given me earlier today.
The call went through immediately; one ring and a well-modulated baritone voice answered.
“Who’s speaking?” I demanded.
“Curtis Brooks.”
“Brooks, are you the man, or just a stooge? I don’t want to talk to another go-between.”
“You must be Mr. Quarry.”
“Do you have ten thousand dollars handy?”
“Why?”
“Have it handy by tomorrow morning. Early. I’ve got the Broker’s widow and that’s what it’ll cost you, if you want her.”
I hung up, paid for the gas and drove over and picked her up at the grocery store, and we headed through the fog and mist toward her cottage.
20
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I LET HER carry the groceries. Ther
e was only one bag and it didn’t kill her. I carried the guns, the silenced Ruger I got off the dead backup man, and my .38, which I’d packed as a spare, the only thing I’d bothered to dig out of my suitcase for the stay at her cottage; the Ruger I kept in hand, the .38 I tucked in my waistband. And I did carry a six-pack of Coke, too, so don’t get the idea chivalry’s entirely dead.
Fifteen miles or so out of Blue Grass we had turned off the highway to cut over to the older highway that followed the river, and to do that we had to take side roads, gravel country roads that were winding and hilly and lined with trees, a journey that even under the best of conditions would have been a roller coaster ride, let alone in this weather. So we didn’t do much talking: I drove, and she helped navigate, and finally we came down a particularly steep hill and she pointed out the abandoned farmhouse she’d told me about, on the right-hand side of the road, near the bottom of the hill, just barely visible in the fog and looking like every kid’s idea of a haunted house. She’d said this would make a good place to leave the car, and as I pulled in there I wondered for a second what she was leading me into, but she wasn’t leading me into anything, as it turned out, except a good place to leave the car. With the Buick parked behind the sagging barn next to the deserted farmhouse, we set off through the fog on foot, her lugging the groceries, me the six-pack of Coke and guns.
We, walked on the gravel road about a quarter-mile and then hit the highway, which immediately to our left was blocked, a sign on a fence-type barricade saying “Bridge Out—Detour,” with an arrow pointing back the way we’d come, and flashing lights to make it all clearly visible even on a night like tonight. We skirted the barricade and followed the highway another quarter of a mile and then she led me off onto a graveled drive, which wound through a marshy area that was heavy on dead trees and strange shrubs and gnarled vines that stuck up out of and hovered over pools of water whose surfaces were as blotchy as a disease of the skin; it was a nice area, if you were looking for a preserve for water moccasins. Maybe that explained the privacy afforded a cottage that wasn’t particularly fancy, just a little white house with a shingle roof, sitting way up on flood-precautionary stilts made of stacked cement blocks, above a snow-patched lawn that fell to the river and a modest dock; very ordinary-looking, really, the sort of place you’d expect to see as one of a cluster of such cottages, not isolated, like this. Huddling around protect- tively were tall thick-trunked trees that didn’t at all have the sinister appearance of the nearby swamplike area that gave this oasis its seclusion. There were wooden steps with rail along the side of the cottage, and she went up, and I followed, onto a sun deck. She put the grocery sack down to unlock the door and I asked her if this was the only entrance. She said it was. She asked if that was good or bad. I said probably good.
And it was. Unless somebody planned to set the place on fire or shoot tear gas in at us or something, having a single way in and out was a good thing. At this height, it would take mountain-climbing gear to come in a window anywhere but off that sun deck, where the front of the cottage made a sort of porch, with windows that were slatted, like oversize Venetian blinds made of glass, cranking shut from within and backed with screens and impossible to use for entry short of taking an ax to them. The only practical way into the place was through the front door, which, not surprisingly, is how we went in.
Stepping into the porch area, Carrie flicked on a standing lamp, explaining there was no overhead lighting at all inside, and I had a look around. The porch had a sofa and several soft-cushioned lawn chairs and a Formica top table with chairs and a portable television on a stand and a braid rug on a tile floor. The walls were pine, though three sides of the room were dominated by those slatted windows; the back wall was decorated with framed prints of fishing and hunting scenes.
I asked Carrie if there’d been any trouble with vandalism, a lot of stuff in here to leave unattended, but she said before her husband died, he’d all but lived down here, keeping the place in use pretty much year round, and, too, the constable of a little town a few miles from here kept an eye on the place, so seldom was it ever bothered. She doubted the constable would be around tonight, though, what with the heavy fog and all, but if he was, she could handle him.
If the porch area was the equivalent of a living room, the larger, single room beyond was all the other rooms: kitchen in the near right corner, off in a cubbyhole separate but unenclosed from the rest of the room, and off of which was the john; a double bed in the far right corner, next to a window; wood-burning stove (for heating purposes only) in the middle of the room, with stovepipe rising through the low tiled ceiling; an informal office area in the near left corner, just an old battered oak desk with an equally battered wooden swivel chair; and a dark pine trunk and several tall storage cabinets filling the rest of the space along the walls, which were the same light pine as the porch.
She put the groceries away while I built a fire. It was cold in there, and we were both damp from our walk in the mist, and I didn’t figure a little chimney smoke was going to attract any attention, in fog this dense.
So I sat feeding wood into the mouth of the stove, and she came and sat on the floor next to me, getting close to the warmth, watching the flames move. For a long time her face was expressionless, blank, a mask the glow of the fire began to play upon, making attitudes and emotions and expressions seem to be there and then flicker away.
Maybe she was waiting to see if I’d brought her here to kill her. Maybe I was thinking the same thing about her. I did see her glance now and then at the guns, the Ruger on the floor between us, the .38 in my belt, but the meaning of her glance was elusive. She also looked at me, occasionally. Studied my face like she did the fire.
Then, suddenly, impulsively, she pulled her sweater over her head. She was wearing a skimpy, translucent bra, which she undid and let drop, and the shadows and colors of the fire reflecting off her flesh gave her an almost mystical look, like a textured photograph. She covered her breasts with her hands. She shook her head and the shoulder-length white-blond hair shimmered and caught glints of yellow and orange and copper, tossing them around like sparks. A grin glimmered across her no-longer mask of a face, and she opened her mouth and touched her tongue to her upper lip, then her lower, and then she grinned again, mouth still open, spreading her fingers over her breasts to let the nipples peek through. I reached out and touched her face, and her expression changed again, the smile disappearing, and something like pain crossed her features. She was cupping her breasts, now, offering them to me. I accepted.
We made love. We’d fucked in the pool, and screwed in bed, but this time we made love, on the cold tile floor, bathing in the heat and color of the fire, moving slowly together, slowly together, and after a long while warmth flooded into warmth, and then we were holding onto each other another long while afterward, the fire crackling and warning us it would die down completely if left unattended.
21
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THE BROKER HAD his arm around her. She was wearing a bikini, the same white bikini she’d worn for-me, last night. Broker was in a blue sport shirt and tan pants and looked happier than I’d ever seen him, smiling so broadly the ends of his wispy mustache were sticking straight up. Carrie was smiling, too. They didn’t look as wrong together as you might think. Broker never did look his age, despite his stark white hair and politician’s bearing. And while Carrie was in her twenties, she could have been taken for older; it’s difficult to pin down a woman’s age, which is how they want it, I suppose.
Seeing them in the photograph together was a shock, somehow, and an involuntary twinge of resentment wormed its way through me, at the sight of this thick hand on her soft tanned shoulder. I’d accepted the fact that she’d been married to him, but an image of them together had never formed in my mind. And I’d instinctively chalked the marriage up as an arrangeme
nt, a marriage of convenience, and the obvious love between them shook me a little.
What got me wasn’t Carrie, really. I already knew she was a sensitive type, able to feel loving toward just about anybody. But the Broker loving her, the Broker loving anybody, that was the surprise. I’d always assumed that behind his empty eloquence and stuffed-shirt demeanor there lurked something twisted and wrong. He was, after all, a man who fancied himself just another (very) successful businessman, and seemed bothered not a bit that his business was murder. Especially as long as people like me were around to carry it out for him.
No, it didn’t seem right, the look of devotion, affection, and happiness on that self-important old bastard’s face. Not right at all. I’d have been much less surprised to discover a photograph of him being whipped by some broad in black leather, or getting sucked off by one of the succession of young male bodyguards I saw him go through. I mean, surely the Broker was into something more kinky than just a younger woman. It was like finding the Boston Strangler shacked up with Miss America . . . the very wholesomeness of it was disgusting.
So was the idyllic atmosphere they were basking in. They were on a boat, a cabin cruiser apparently, fishing gear evident in the background of the color photograph, and lots of sun and blue sky.
“That was taken a year ago,” she said. “In the Bahamas.”
The picture was on the wall, with a number of other framed pictures of the Broker and Carrie, and of the Broker and various men and women I didn’t recognize. I was sitting at the big scarred-top desk, flashing a high-intensity lamp on the wall of pictures, and had centered in on this one.
“You know,” I said, “I saw you together once. I’d forgotten about it, just remembered. You were at a restaurant together, a fancy one, in the Quad Cities.”
“When?”
“I don’t remember exactly. Not too long ago.” I did remember exactly, but didn’t want to say; it was just days before the Broker died trying to have me killed.
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