Quarry's vote q-5

by Maxallan Collins

  “Yes. I saw an attorney six months ago. And faced with that, Bob paid up, four months worth. Now he’s pulled the same thing-three months behind. I’ll have to go through the same damn rigmarole.”

  “Unless you take him back.”

  “Unless I take him back.”

  “Which is in the no-way-in-hell category, I’d guess.”

  “Sure is. Even though he’s trying to work on me through the girls.”

  She stopped, something catching in her throat; she had tears in her eyes. She finished the martini and got up and got herself another one. I sat up and poked at the fire while she did that.

  Then she settled herself on the cushion again, on her stomach, ankles crossed behind her, white dress hiked up, and said, “Why do you ask so many questions?”

  “I’m interested in you.”

  “Why?”

  “You got a nice smile.”

  “Is that all?”

  “You got nice just about everything.”

  She gave me a kiss; even the alcohol on her breath didn’t take anything away from it. Slow, kind of wet, very sweet. I liked it.

  “You don’t know me,” I warned her, wondering why I was warning her.

  “I don’t want to know anybody right now,” she said, smiled and sipped her martini. “Just want some company. Okay? Just be company.”

  “Fine.”

  We listened to the fire crackle.

  Then I said, “Somehow I can’t picture you getting caught up with this Freed character.”

  “Then you’ve never heard him speak. He’s something. Those eyes really hold you. Charmed the pants off many a girl.”

  “You said as much earlier. He really fools around with a lot of those pretty young things on his staff?”

  “He sure does. I was almost one of ’em, remember? But you know what I heard?”

  “What did you hear?”

  Giggled, sipped her martini. “I heard the damnedest rumor. Thing of it is, I think I believe it.”

  “Which is?”

  “Well, you know he has this TV ‘news’ show, told you about. In fact, I used to be sort of involved with it-if you call carting-the-tape-every-Monday-night-to-the-little-cable- outfit-that-does-his-uplinks being involved. He has a small but pretty elaborate studio at his house. Actually it’s more than a house, it’s kind of a mansion. Anyway, he tapes his weekly show right there.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “They say that’s not all he tapes there. They say he’s got a video-tape library, of all his ‘conquests.’”

  “You mean, his sexual conquests?”

  “Yeah, yeah. There’s this mirror over his bed, they say, and there’s a camera behind it. He tapes himself doing it with these girls.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I heard it on good authority. From a girl who found out and was pissed off, man, really pissed.”

  “So he doesn’t tell them, then?”

  “Hell, no! He just takes ’em into his bedroom and has his way with ’em and watches the replays to his heart’s content.”

  There was a mirror over Freed’s bed. And the bedroom had been well lit. And the candidate was a narcissistic son-of-a-bitch. It made a perverse sort of sense.

  “And none of these girls knew, at the time at least, they were on camera. Can you imagine?”

  If the Democrat Action party’s presidential candidate had been taping tonight, I’d been on camera, too. Stunning the stunning behind of Freed’s latest conquest. I didn’t like the thought of that. Leaving my image on tape, no, that I couldn’t allow. I’d have to check this out.

  “Angela, what’s the deal with Best and Freed? Why did Best drop out of the party? Did he get fed up with Freed’s excesses-political and/or sexual?”

  “Hey, this home porno-movie deal isn’t well known, not at all. I don’t think Lonny or anybody knows. I shouldn’t have told you. If I wasn’t who-knows-how-many- sheets-to-the-wind, I wouldn’t’ve.”

  “So it was a political rift, then?”

  “What?”

  “That split up Best and Freed.”

  “I don’t think so. Frankly, I think Lonny still believes in what Freed stands for. But as a businessman, visible in the community, Lonny doesn’t want to be associated with somebody controversial like Freed.”

  “Well, is Lonny active with any other political group?”

  “He’s a Republican. He gives ’em some money.”

  “But he’s never been really active in politics since splitting with Freed.”

  “No. Not nearly. Why are you so interested in this?”

  I’d gone too far with my questions. Time for a strategy shift.

  I leaned close to her. “Well, frankly… can you keep a secret?”

  She grinned, very crinkly. “Judging by the way I’ve been spilling things tonight, no. But I’m willing to try to learn.”

  “Good. I’m not really in the auto parts business. I’m in security work.”

  “You mean you’re a detective?”

  “No. Security. I was approached by Preston Freed to help him train and prepare his security team for the upcoming primary campaign.”

  That perked her up. “Oh, yeah?”

  “I haven’t taken the job yet. I knew Freed was something of a nut, and I didn’t know if I wanted to get involved with him, professionally speaking. So I needed to check him and some of his friends out.”

  “Is that why you hit on me?”

  There was no expression in her face. Her eyes, deep blue, were unreadable as they fixed upon me.

  “Yes,” I said.

  She smiled sadly, looked into her martini.

  “That,” I said, “and your smile, and I wasn’t lying about liking you.”

  “You came to the car lot looking for me, then?”

  “No! That was a coincidence.”

  “A coincidence?”

  “Well, I was there to check Best out. I didn’t know anything about you. Just that you were a pretty woman in red, white, and blue-and I’m as patriotic as the next guy.”

  She smiled one-sidedly and touched my cheek. “I guess I don’t take it back. That you’re a nice guy.”

  “I didn’t mean to take advantage of your good nature.”

  “Frankly,” she said, “I wish you would.”

  She kissed me again; another slow, sweet, sticky kiss. She rolled over on top of me and my arms slipped around her, my hand settling on her ass, dress hiked up over pantyhose and panties; nice shape to her ass, soft yet firm. Something stirred in me, below the belt. She kept kissing and I kissed back. The fire was warm on us. I rolled over on top of her, felt her breasts through her dress; she reached behind and unzipped it and brought it down over her breasts in a wispy bra that she slipped down and my hands went onto her cool flesh, warming to my touch and the glow of the fire. Her nipples were hard under my fingertips and I put my mouth on her breasts, suckled, and she moved my hand to her pantyhose, inside her panties, in front, and I pulled away, like my fingers had touched fire, not soft curly hair.

  I was breathing hard. Blinking. Something was wrong.

  “Jack… Jack, what’s wrong?”

  She was sitting next to me, looking lovely if disheveled in the fire’s glow, and I tried to say something but my tongue was thick. My dick wasn’t.

  “Jack, what is it? You’re…”

  “What?” I managed to say.

  “You’re crying.”

  I touched my face. I’ll be damned if I wasn’t.

  “What is it, Jack?”

  “I… I’m sorry, Angela. I just can’t.”

  She smiled wryly, but sympathetically, her arm around my shoulder. “You were doing fine. Just fine.”

  “Can’t.”

  She dabbed my face with the cloth of her dress. “What is it, Jack?”

  “I lost my wife not long ago.”

  “Oh, Jack…”

  “I… haven’t been with a woman since.”

  She swallowed. Patte
d my shoulder. “How long has it been?”

  “A year.” It seemed like a year. And it seemed like a moment ago.

  “I guess I’m just not ready,” I said.

  “Oh, Jack, I understand.”

  “I feel funny.”

  “What is it?”

  “The oddest feeling.”

  “Are you sick?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You… you want some aspirin or something?”

  “No. It’ll be all right. Let me catch my breath.” What was this feeling?

  “It’s natural to feel a little guilty,” she said.

  Was that it? Guilt? Of all things.

  “Why don’t you stay here tonight,” she said. “You can sleep out on the couch, if you like. We can just be there for each other. I think maybe we can both use some company tonight.”

  I nodded.

  We walked back through the living room and down a hallway. Several family photographs in frames lined the wall. I stopped at one.

  “Your girls?” I asked.

  “Yes. Taken a few years ago.”

  “They look like you. They’re going to be beauties.”

  She hugged my arm.

  I envied her a little; even without a partner, she had something here. Kids and a house and a life. Mediterranean furniture or not, I could almost see myself here. In this house with this woman and her family and her life.

  We moved to the next picture, a larger family portrait, and I stopped short.

  “Your, uh, ex?” I asked.

  “I should take it down, I know,” she said. “But to the girls he’s still dad.”

  “What’s Bob doing for a living these days?” I asked her, studying the portrait.

  “Are you okay, Jack?”

  “What’s he doing for a living?”

  “He works for George Ridge now. Real estate counseling, I guess you’d call it.”

  I said nothing.

  “Yeah,” she went on, “he’s making good money, too, flitting around. In Canada this weekend, some fancy deal.”

  “Is that right,” I said. “I… I don’t think I can stay tonight, Angela.”

  The dark blue eyes were very wide as she searched my face. “Why not?”

  “I’d like to. But I just can’t.”

  “The guilt,” she said, nodding sympathetically, eyes narrowing.

  I said nothing. I just kissed her, briefly, and let her walk me out to my car.

  And I drove away from there, from that house, from the family picture that included the round, pasty face, several facial moles and all, of the man who had come into my house and killed my wife, and my wife’s brother, and who had in turn been killed by me.

  14

  Around ten the next morning, Sunday, I went down to the lobby of the hotel and had a word with the man at the desk.

  “I’m working for the Freed campaign,” I told him.

  He nodded, smiled noncommittally. He was in his mid- twenties and blandly handsome; crisply dressed in a navy blazer and red and blue striped tie, he would be a manager here someday. The two women back behind the counter, doing the real work, wouldn’t have a chance.

  “With the press conference tomorrow,” I said, “we have to be careful.”

  “Certainly,” he said, the smile gone, very serious now, as if what I’d said was something he well knew, when actually it had never occurred to him.

  “Our sources have informed us,” I said, “that one of the major parties has hired a political dirty trickster to disrupt the press conference.”

  I was careful not to say which party. That way, if he were a Democrat he could assume Republican, and vice versa.

  Whatever, he nodded, narrowed his eyes, leaned forward, pretended to be concerned.

  “The agent provocateur in question,” I said, “makes G. Gordon Liddy look like Mother Teresa.”

  He smiled at that, but a serious smile.

  “We would like your help in keeping an eye out for him,” I said. “We’d like no one but yourself-and your night relief-to be aware of this request.”

  “Do you have a photograph?”

  “No. But I can give you a detailed physical description, and I know several of the names he frequently travels under.”

  “That’s helpful.”

  “He’s a slender man a few years shy of fifty. Six-one, pockmarked. Cleft chin. Eyes have kind of an oriental cast. Dark hair, widow’s peak, pale complexion.” I could tell, from his blank expression, he wasn’t visualizing anything yet, despite that laundry list of facial features. I tried again: “You know the guy in Star Trek?”

  “William Shatner?”

  “No, the other one-but without the pointed ears.”

  He smiled, nodded.

  “He looks something like that guy,” I said. “He sometimes uses the name Stone. He sometimes uses the name Brackett. Sometimes Pond. Sometimes Green.”

  That was all the names I knew.

  “Let me check the registry,” he said, and he began flipping the little cards, looking up each name. “Nothing,” he said.

  “What about the description? Did it ring a bell?”

  “Well, yes it did.”

  I leaned against the counter. “What room number?”

  “No, I just meant I knew which guy on Star Trek you meant.”

  Maybe he wouldn’t be a manager someday.

  “How long are you on?”

  “Till five.”

  “Two other shifts, then, after you?”

  “Yes.”

  “When does the graveyard shift start?”

  “One A.M.”

  “Good.” I handed him two twenties, folded once, lengthwise. “I’ll talk to the two night men personally. You just keep this to yourself.”

  “That isn’t necessary, sir,” he said, meaning the money, which he was trying not to look at.

  “Sure it is.” I let go of the bills and they made a little tent on the counter. “Now, I’m going to have to look things over for security purposes. Where is the press conference going to be held?”

  He pointed across the lobby to some stairs going down. “The Bix Beiderbecke Room,” he said. “At nine o’clock Tuesday morning.”

  “Thanks. By the way, my status with the Freed campaign is known only by the top-level people. So don’t go throwing my name around.”

  “Uh, what is your name, sir?”

  “Ryan. Jack.”

  “Of course,” he said, smiling, as if the name had just momentarily slipped his mind.

  I gave him a smile and a little forefinger salute and left him and the money behind.

  The Blackhawk was an older, recently refurbished hotel; the lobby’s black and white marble floor gave it an art deco feel, though the extensive mahogany woodwork and whorehouse-red-trimmed-gold ceiling harked back to frontier days. The lobby wasn’t small, but a low ceiling and comfortable furnishings made it seem intimate, as did the way the thick pillars separated it off into areas. A row of shops and offices-one of them the rear end of the Freed campaign headquarters-was just around the corner from the check-in desk.

  I went down marble stairs, following a sign that said ARCADE, and found an arcade in the earlier, pre-Pac Man sense: a row of shops and businesses, about a half a block long, beneath the hotel lobby. The walls were light plaster and decorated with amateurish murals depicting New Orleans street scenes, in honor of Davenport’s legendary Dixieland jazzman, Bix Beiderbecke, who died young. Frightened by the mural, possibly, with its grotesque Mardi Gras figures and frozen Basin Street musicians.

  The shops were closed today, although from the looks of things, several stalls were shuttered no matter what day it was. Among those currently in business were a barber shop, a beauty shop, a shoeshine stand and an architect’s office. A ghost town on Sunday; I was alone down here, despite the crowd brunching it upstairs at the hotel’s Sundance Restaurant.

  The arcade walkway was really just a hall-perhaps eight feet wide-with a fairly low ceiling
made lower by chandelier-style light fixtures. At the end of the hallway were carpeted steps moving up into a newer, beige-brick section of the hotel.

  But just prior to that was the entry to the Bix Beiderbecke Room, a short hallway with a short flight of steps that led down to an open area outside the room itself: a medium-size meeting hall with a door at right and another down at its other end, at left. I peeked in the door at right.

  A podium was set up facing a room full of chairs, arranged in rows with a central aisle. Seating for probably a hundred or so. Standing in that doorway, I was within twenty feet of the podium.

  I looked at my watch, waited for the second hand to point straight up. Then quickly ran from the doorway, down the short hall out to the arcade and up the carpeted steps. Checked the second hand.

  Ten seconds.

  I looked up from my watch and saw that I was indeed in the new part of the hotel, a high-ceilinged add-on that connected the Blackhawk with its parking. I was a few steps away from a door to the street, where there was plenty of parking at the curb on both sides of the wide one-way; and a few steps away from the parking garage itself, where if I had a car parked on the bottom floor nearby I was within seconds of wheeling out of here. A few more steps to my right, down a gentle Oriental-carpeted ramp-like walkway, were hotel elevators.

  Back up the ramp, still in the beige-brick modern addendum, which was overseen by a huge, old-fashioned wall clock, I was facing the glass wall of the indoor swimming pool/sauna area. A few families were in there splashing around. I’d have a swim later. The door was kept locked, but your room key would open it.

  The upper lobby’s arcade connected nearby, and I wandered back in, thinking over what I’d seen. A row of telephone booths, set in the mahogany walls, was on my right. I used one of the phones to call the number Freed had given me.

  After several rings, Freed himself answered.

  “Yes?” he said, thickly, obviously awakened by the call.

  “This is Quarry.”

  “Quarry!”

  “That’s Jack Ryan to you.”

  “Yes, certainly-what is it?”

  “I’ve had a look around here at the Blackhawk Hotel. We better have that security briefing we talked about. Gather the key people who are going to be covering your butt at the press conference. I need to talk to them.”