The bottom floor of the Conklin Building was taken up, primarily, by a motion picture theater, the last surviving such theater in the business district, not counting various porno houses on the fringes. The theater was not at all rundown, in fact had obviously had its face lifted not long ago; but the rest of the Conklin Building was no great shakes. It was a white stone building that had long since turned dingy gray, whose only distinction was twelve stories, ranking it among the tallest of buildings in this modest Midwestern downtown.
Not that it was shabby, but neither was it what I expected of a building where Curtis Brooks, nationally prominent attorney, would keep his office. Surprising, too, was the absence of any junior or other partners; Brooks, despite his fame (or infamy) in his profession, was alone in his practice. This I discovered as I studied the registry in the cubbyhole that served as a lobby for the Conklin Building, just an entryway leading to an elevator, which I stepped into, punching the button marked 12, Brooks’s floor.
When the elevator door opened, Ash was waiting for me.
We didn’t say anything to each other, even though I had said (or implied) I’d contact Brooks by phone rather than come in person. Ash wasn’t surprised to see me, and I wasn’t surprised by his lack of surprise. He walked me down an echoing corridor, lined with flat colorless, plaster walls, wood doors with steamy pebbled glass panes with black lettering, doctors, insurance agents, lawyers. I wondered how many teen-age girls had walked the corridors of this building, on their way to have a quiet little illicit abortion.
At the dead-end of the corridor the pebbled translucent glass read: “Curtis Brooks, Attorney at Law.”
Ash opened the door, but I waited for him to go in first. The reception room was dark, small, unpopulated, reasonably well-appointed but nothing fancy. To the rear of the room, behind the receptionist’s desk, were two doors, one of them standing open to reveal a small law library, four walls of books, room enough to walk around but that’s all. The other door was closed, and I waited for Ash to open it and go in, and then followed.
This room was barely larger than the outer office. It too was well-appointed: dark paneling, green shag carpet, leather couch against one wall, several chairs, big, imposing mahogany desk. The most interesting thing in the room was the oil painting on the wall over the couch. It was a painting of a beautiful middle-aged woman.
The second most interesting thing was Brooks himself, sitting in the high-backed swivel chair, half-turned and looking out the sheer-curtained window behind his desk, not blinking, let alone speaking at our entrance. He still seemed smaller than he should, but I had to admit he had a certain presence, like a movie star who can’t act but somehow commands your attention, anyway. The deep tan, the character lines in all the right places, the wavy brown hair with white around the ears, the intense brown eyes, the expensive suit he wore even for a six-thirty in the morning appointment with the likes of me, all conspired to make him as imposing a figure as the desk he loomed behind.
On that desk, which was otherwise empty but for a phone, was a briefcase. Not turning toward us, Brooks reached a hand over and flicked the latches on the briefcase and it yawned open, revealing neatly stacked and tightly packed rows of green, banded packets of cash.
“There,” Brooks said, “is your money.” His baritone was almost bored; no courtroom flair at all.
I reached in my pocket and took out a key. Brooks turned, finally, his chair turning with him; he wanted to see what I was doing.
I was handing the key to Ash.
“Cozy Rest Motel,” I said. “Highway 6, past the city limits a few miles.”
Brooks waved a finger at Ash. “Go,” he said. Ash hesitated.
“Well?” Brooks said.
Ash said, “You . . . want me to leave you here?”
“We aren’t going with you,” Brooks said. Sarcastic. Impatient.
“Well . . . okay. But what do I do with . . . ?”
“Do what you should have done two nights ago.”
Ash made a whatever-you-say face and left. I pulled a chair around in front of the desk, closed the lid on the briefcase.
“Is there twenty thousand here?” I asked.
“Frankly,” Brooks said, “no. There isn’t. More like ten.”
“Well. I only gave you half of your package, anyway.”
“When I see your . . . list,” he said, “you can have the rest.”
“You don’t believe I have it.”
“No.”
“Then why are you sitting here with me in your office, at six-thirty Saturday morning, your day off . . . pushing a briefcase of money at me.”
“For that motel room key you gave Ash. Nothing more.”
“You’re not pretending there’s no list, are you?”
Polite laugh. “I’m not even sure I know just what sort of a list you’re talking about, Mr. Quarry.”
“Oh. You want to know how much I know, before committing yourself further. You want to know how much I’ve figured out.”
He shrugged with his eyebrows, and as I looked at his eyes I saw that this casual manner was a pose. The eyes looking out of the shell that pretended to be relaxed and even disinterested spoke instead of urgency and even desperation. And something else. A flicker of something else.
Fear?
“You were the Broker’s business partner,” I said. “A silent partner. You provided financial backing for him and shared in the revenue of his business. Oh, you weren’t actively involved in that business . . . but you knew what it was about . . . you knew murder was the commodity Broker dealt in.”
He was beginning to smile, now, just a little.
“For some reason, though, Broker kept you in the dark about some parts of the business. Maybe he anticipated you might try and take over the operation, if you had half a chance . . . half a chance, and his list.”
“This list again. And again I must ask: What sort of a list is it, exactly?”
“A master list, you might say.”
“And just what is on this ‘master list’?”
“Not what. Who.”
“All right, Mr. Quarry. We’ve come this far. I’ll ask . . . who is on the list?”
“Me. And around fifty other people like me. Many here in the Midwest, but others all around the country, too. Names. More than names . . . dossiers, really. The people who pulled triggers for Broker. People willing to kill, for a price.”
A small pearl of sweat was moving down his forehead. He touched a finger to it and said, “Of what value would such a list be to me?”
“You’re the new Broker. Or, you want to be. You need the list, to be in business.”
“I see. And you have it. The list.”
I let him see the manila envelope. The outside of it, that is. Didn’t hand it to him. Just let him see.
And I also dropped the corduroy jacket down into my lap, to let him see Ash’s gun in my hand, in case he’d had any doubt it was there.
“Your price,” Brooks said, the faintest tremor in his voice, “is fair. In fact, asking only ten thousand more is more than fair, considering the value to me that list holds. This I freely admit to you. I also freely admit I do not have the money.”
“What?”
“It’s the truth. I simply don’t have it. The time element isn’t the problem, either. The money’s just not there.”
“Brooks, ten thousand, twenty thousand, fifty thousand, ought to be nothing to you.”
“It ought to be. It isn’t. I can offer you something else, something potentially far more profitable . . .”
“Ash’s chair, you mean? No thanks.”
“What do you want, then?”
“Suppose all I wanted was the answers to a couple questions. Suppose I’d settle for that, and the money in the briefcase.”
“I wouldn’t believe you.”
“You’re not in a position not to believe me.”
“True. In that case, I’d accept your terms.”
&
nbsp; “Those are my terms.”
“Then ask your questions.”
“You can start by explaining why you tried to have me killed.”
“Complexity of reasons. As a precautionary measure, if nothing else. Did you know we had your lake home in Wisconsin watched, for several months? And it was searched, thoroughly, more than once. We needed to know if you had the list. We knew ‘the Broker,’ as you call him, had gone to meet you on the night of his death, for which we assumed you were responsible, and . . .”
“You keep saying we . . .”
“Oh. You’re wondering if I mean the editorial ‘we’? I mean Ash and myself. I had been using Ash as a personal bodyguard, off and on, for about a year . . . I have periodic threats on my life, thanks to the nature of my courtroom activities . . . he was, you might say, and as you may have guessed, on loan to me by your Broker, after whose death I would never have been able to even attempt picking up the pieces, without Ash. Without Ash, I would have had no direct connection to your end of this business, Mr. Quarry.”
“Ash knew Broker had gone to see me the night he died, is that it?”
“Precisely.”
“Has Ash told you, since talking to me, that I didn’t kill the Broker? That Broker tried to have me killed, and got it from his own man in the process? That your precious fucking list had nothing to do with it?”
“Yes, but at the time we assumed differently. We assumed the list had everything to do with it, and took the steps I’ve already mentioned . . . watching your home, searching it . . .”
“If I’d had the list, what good would killing me have done?”
“First of all, Ash advised not having you tortured, to find out what you knew. He said, in effect, you were just perverse enough to lie in the face of death, especially an inevitable one. He also said killing you point-blank was a better idea than forcing a confrontation, which you might be able to squirm out of.”
Ash knew me pretty well.
“After your death,” Brooks continued, “all of your property would have gone to your family, who would have no knowledge of the nature of your line of work, and from whom the list could easily be bought, stolen, or coerced. If you think that is far-fetched, I can tell you the city and street address of your parents in Ohio, Mr. Quarry. Our research has been most thorough, I assure you.”
“I’m impressed,” I said, honestly. “Suppose I’d been hired to kill the Broker, by somebody else after the list, somebody who wanted to take over Broker’s operation just like you do.”
He was beginning to enjoy himself. Smiling. “Killing you might flush out whoever that somebody else might be, in that event. If we had competition, we wanted to know who it was. And if you had killed him for some other reason, some personal reason, you were still a dangerous loose end that needed tying off . . . as you have so ably proven, with your presence here these past few days.”
He reminded me then of the Broker, sitting there with his hands calmly folded across his chest, slight smirky smile on his face, the picture of respectability, having a fine time telling of the intricate and self-centered schemes he’d cooked up, schemes that included murder and anything else it took to get ahead, to be successful.
It was no wonder they were friends and business associates. It was no wonder they’d been friends at that college back east, even sharing the same lover, the beautiful woman who even now was looking down from the oil painting across the room, that portrait of a woman whose hair was blond and pulled back away from a face that in life probably had not grown older as gracefully as the artist indicated, though he’d captured a great sadness in the familiar blue eyes.
“Okay,” I said. “That explains why you tried to have me killed. But what about Carrie. Explain that to me, Brooks. Why are you trying so hard to kill your daughter?”
24
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HE CLAPPED HIS hands together once, not loud, just a “well!” gesture, and said, “I suppose you sent Ash to an empty motel room.”
“That’s right.’’
“Surely you don’t expect me to be surprised to find you know I’m the girl’s father. You had plenty of time with her to learn that, what with all the questions you must have asked her . . . though I admit your failure to mention it till now had me assuming perhaps you didn’t know, which seemed possible, since my daughter and I share a singularly empty relationship, making it somewhat unlikely she’d mention me, without some prodding from an outside source like yourself, that is. No matter. Why don’t we go on to more important things.”
“Than killing your kid, you mean.”
“Ash did tell you about the federal agent who was killed last night? In your room at the Concort? You do understand the implications of that?”
“Sure. It’s going to get hot around here.”
“Understatement as a Way of Life . . . if you ever write a book, Mr. Quarry, that should be the title . . . Understatement as a Way of Life. It is, indeed, going to get hot around here. Soon. Today.”
“Something you can’t handle, is it?”
“The police I can handle. The federal investigators, hopefully, will not be a major problem, since their man died in an exchange of fire with another man, who died himself in that same exchange. Still, an investigation of the magnitude federal people could conceivably exert will make some . . . friends of mine in Chicago somewhat . . . nervous. Yes. Chicago is another question entirely.”
“What’s Chicago got to do with anything? Broker’s operation was never a syndicate thing. You represent them in court, I know, but so what?”
“I wish my involvement with my friends in Chicago was as casual . . . as voluntary . . . as you suggest.”
“But it isn’t?”
“No, Mr. Quarry. You see . . . what’s the best way to put it? They own me. The handsome fees you must think I receive are a figment of the public’s imagination. I am given an allowance, like a child. Occasionally I’m given permission to handle an outside case, for appearance sake. The money I do receive is just enough to maintain a certain level, a front, a facade. But nothing lavish. Surely you wondered about this office, and my lack of associates, distinguished or otherwise? I don’t even own my home, Mr. Quarry; a corporation does. And you can guess who owns the corporation.”
“How did it happen?”
“I owed them a lot of money. I was a young man, recently married, with a child, a promising career, and . . . gambling debts. Yes, I owed them a lot of money. I traded them my life for it. Those, literally, were the terms.”
“Then I was wrong . . . ?”
“Wrong in guessing I was your Broker’s silent partner? Only in that you assumed I backed him financially. Hardly. What I did for him was help him build his own façade, here in the Quad Cities, where I enjoy a certain amount of respect and social standing. I let him bask in that, share it. And one other thing. I was his link. To the people in Chicago. His ‘clients’ . . . came from me.”
“You.”
“Me. Where did you suppose your Broker found his clients? On the street? By advertising? How do you suppose people knew to turn to him with their . . . problems? Think about it. Take your average semi-respectable businessman, who wants someone out of the way . . . his wife, his mistress, a business rival, a business partner, a troublesome politician, anyone. To whom does a man with such a need, such a problem, turn? Well, being a businessman, he has, in the course of business, most likely come in contact with an occasional acquaintance who just might happen to have a link or two to so-called organized crime. He goes to this acquaintance, in confidence, discusses his problem, hypothetically, of course . . . and he asks his acquaintance, with the sinister connections, ‘Whom might one turn to if one wanted someone killed?’ ”
“And the guy with the problem eventually gets referred to a Broker, is that it?”
“That’s it exactly,” Brooks said, nodd
ing smugly. “You see, Mr. Quarry, it’s convenient for my friends in Chicago to have people like yourself on tap, so to speak . . . it’s occasionally necessary for them to make use of outside people, for housecleaning, among other things, and they keep such people prosperous and thereby available by maintaining them, through a sort of referral service. Can you deny you’ve never been involved in a syndicate-related job? Of course, you can’t. Now, I’ve been generalizing here, naturally, and have been necessarily vague about the finer points, but you now have an idea, at least, of how the business you’ve been involved in for some years actually works. The cog finally begins to understand the wheel.”
“Didn’t you make any money feeding Broker clients?”
“Yes. My involvement in this particular, somewhat distasteful business arrangement was the sole crumb thrown me by my Chicago friends. Here, at last, I was allowed to pursue a dishonest dollar like any good American.”
“Then why are you still hurting for cash?”
“Because I made some decisions, relating to the stock market, which were no wiser than decisions I made years ago, when I gambled in less socially acceptable ways.”
“You’re still losing, you mean.”
“I wasn’t losing, Mr. Quarry, not in this situation, anyway, until you turned up on the scene.”
“You seem to think you’re going to lose where Chicago’s concerned.”
“Possibly. But I really think I can handle that. They won’t be happy about the death of that federal man, true, but as I explained to you, and will explain to them, that’s a storm we all should be able to weather. Still, it will be an effort to convince them I haven’t hopelessly botched my attempt to reopen your Broker’s referral service. Knowing I had the list would soothe them, a bit, however.”
“It means that much to you.”
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