The Last Quarry

by Max Allan Collins

  Tears were rolling down Harry’s chubby, stubbly pockmarked cheeks. I didn’t know whether he was crying for Louis or himself or the pair of them, and I wasn’t interested enough to ask.

  “Okay,” he said thickly, apparently resigned to his fate, his mouth slack but his eyes moving with thought.

  I watched him roll his partner up in the sheet of plastic, using duct tape to secure the package; he sobbed as he did it, but he did it. He got blood on his Hawaiian shirt; it didn’t particularly show, though.

  “Good job, Harry. Now...I want you to clean up the mess. Go on. You’ll find what you need in the kitchen.”

  Dutifully, Harry shuffled over to where the open kitchen met the little living room, got a pan of warm water and some rags, and dropped to his knees to clean up the brains and blood. He wasn’t crying anymore. He moved slow but steady, a fat zombie in a colorful shirt.

  “Stick the rags in the end of the plastic there, Harry, would you? Thank you.”

  Harry did that, then the big man lumbered to his feet, hands half-heartedly in the air, and said, “Now me?”

  “I might let you go, Harry. I got nothing against you.”

  His eyes jumped. “Not...not how I remember it.”

  I laughed. “You girls leaned on me once. You think I’d kill a person over something that trivial? What kind of asshole do you think I am, Harry?”

  Harry had sense enough not to answer.

  “Let’s see how Daddy’s little girl’s doing,” I said, and with the nine millimeter’s nose kissing Harry’s neck, I walked him to the door of the bedroom.

  “Open it,” I said.

  He did.

  We went in, Harry first.

  The girl was under the covers, holding the blankets and sheets up around her in a combination of illogical modesty and legitimate fear.

  Her expression melted into confusion mingled with the beginnings of hope, when she saw me.

  “Everything’s going to be all right, Miss Green,” I told her. “I’ve already taken care of the skinny one.” I nudged Harry with the gun in his neck. “You got a handcuff key?”

  Harry swallowed and nodded.

  “Uncuff her.”

  My gun trained on him from nearby, Harry was complying as she asked, “Did...did my Daddy send you?”

  I held out my hand to Harry and he dropped the cuff key in my palm.

  “Fatso and me are taking a moonlight stroll,” I told her. “Meantime, you stay put. I’m going to get you back to your father.”

  Her confusion didn’t leave, but she began to smile, wide, a kid Christmas morning, seeing her gifts. Her gift to me was dropping the blankets and sheets to her waist. The cute cupcake breasts had pierced nipples with rings, like beer cans waiting to be opened.

  “Remember,” I said, and waggled a teacherly finger. “Stay right there.”

  She swallowed and nodded and her eyes sparkled. Well, they did.

  I walked my host out, pulling the bedroom door shut behind me.

  “Where are her clothes, Harry?”

  He nodded to a closet. Same one he’d gotten the plastic out of.

  “Good,” I said. “Now let’s go for a walk. Just the three of us.”

  Harry frowned in confusion, glanced back toward the bedroom. “Girl’s comin’?”

  “No. Louis. Better give him a hand.”

  Now Harry got it.

  He leaned down and hefted his partner in the plastic shroud and held the crinkly corpse in his arms like a B-movie monster carrying a starlet. The plastic was spattered with blood, but only on the inside; you could sort of see what was left of Louis’s head trying to look out. Harry seemed like he was going to cry again.

  I still had the sawed-off shotgun under my arm, so it was awkward, getting the front door open.

  Cold came in, but I barely noticed. I don’t think Harry much noticed, either.

  “What...?” he asked. “Where...?”

  “Out on the lake,” I said, and nodded in that direction.

  “...can I get my coat?”

  “I don’t think so. I think the cold will keep you on your toes, and anyway, suppose you have a gun in your pocket, and I have to kill you, and mess up that beautiful Burberry. Which would be a fucking shame, plus which I’d have to make two trips, carrying Louis, and your fat ass.”

  He swallowed, nodded, as if all that sounded reasonable enough. “Okay. I...there’s a shovel I could get...?”

  “We won’t need it. Ground’s too hard, anyway.”

  Harry looked at me, his eyes behind the glasses wary, glancing from me to his plastic-wrapped burden and back again.

  I responded to the question his face was asking: “We’re going to bury Louis at sea.”

  “Huh?”

  Now I was noticing the cold. “Outside, Harry. My nipples are getting hard, and not in a good way. Okay? Outside.”

  He moved past me, his plastic bundle over one shoulder—he might have been delivering a rug.

  The chubby ex-gangster walked into the trees, heading toward the yawning white expanse of frozen water. I followed behind, nine millimeter in one hand, sawed-off in the other. Harry in his Hawaiian shirt was an oddly comic sight, but I was too busy to be amused.

  As we wound through the pines, the snow got deeper, ankle deep in places. As his glasses got unfogged and made his trek easier, Harry made conversation.

  “Was...was that you, Quarry? Back at that fucking convenience store?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And, what? You...you thought we’d come after you? This has nothing to do with you.”

  “Does now. And anyway, I got my question answered.”

  He risked a frown back at me. “What question?”

  “What the Odd Couple needs with Tampax in the middle of the night....Keep moving.”

  Finally, at the snowy edge of the wooded shore, Harry came to a stop, and half turned, Louis turning too, Harry asking another question with his face: What now?

  “Go on, Harry.”

  Harry frowned. “Go on? What the fuck, ‘go on?’ž”

  “Keep walking.”

  “Where?”

  I gestured with the shotgun, toward the lake.

  Harry followed the gesture, eyes tight, and it took a few seconds for him to absorb the meaning. Somehow, though, he couldn’t turn his confusion and apprehension into words.

  So I said, “When you sense the ice getting thin, give Louis a toss...let the lake have him. Then head back here, and we’ll talk.”

  Harry looked at the lake, then at me; the lake, me.

  His voice seemed even higher pitched than before, almost childish, his wide eyes buggy behind the lenses. “What...what if the ice gives, under me? I mean...it’s gonna get thin, farther out I get....”

  “We’ll keep the stress to a minimum.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll stay put.”

  All the air went out of Harry, and if Louis had been one pound heavier, both men would have gone down in a pile in the snow, right there. But he stayed on his feet, even though the despair must have been heavier than Louis.

  “Quarry...Quarry...will you just fuckin’ kill me. Kill me here and be done.”

  I shrugged. “Thought you might like a sporting chance, Harry. Before you know it, you’ll be out of range...maybe you can make it over to those trees, where I can’t catch up with you.”

  He summoned a sneer from somewhere. “If the ice don’t break first.”

  I shrugged again. “That’s between you and the ice.”

  He sneered at me; but the sneer dissolved into this pitiful, lower-lip trembling thing that got only a single shake of the head out of me. That, and another nod toward the lake.

  Cradling Louis like a groom carrying a bride across the threshold (which was fitting, as Louis had been the wife), Harry heaved a sigh, took a tentative step, and found the ice firm. He drew a deep breath, as if he were diving into water, not about to walk on the frozen variety, and then he was makin
g his way with the mummy-like bundle out onto the lake, walking carefully, hesitantly, testing the ice with one baby step after another, always letting the tentative ground settle under him.

  It took a long time—maybe two minutes. Harry would look at his feet, then off to the bank on the right and the thick darkness of trees, clearly considering that option. His breath was visible, small puffy clouds, and the heavy sound of it came back over the stillness of the lake, interrupted only by the call of a loon. Or something—some damn bird too stupid to fly the fuck south.

  Subtle at first, the cracking seemed something I was only imagining, in my anticipation; but Harry had heard it, too, because he was poised out there as frozen as the lake.

  Actually, more frozen, because suddenly the ice was snapping under his shoes, as if he were standing on a window, and that window was breaking....

  He didn’t even have time to run. He was clutching onto Louis, which might have been bittersweet, only I think he was hoping he could use Louis like a big piece of driftwood or something, but it didn’t work out that way.

  Louis disappeared, sliding under like a turd down the crapper, leaving Harry to flail, and try to hold onto the bigger chunks of ice; he was screaming my name and swearing, then the splashing was louder than the screaming and then the screaming stopped altogether and finally the splashing subsided.

  And he was gone.

  I studied the lake—soon you could barely see the hole Harry had made—with the black starry sky my only companion. Even the loon had nothing to say, the frozen expanse and the surrounding blackness of trees as quiet as, well, death. Suddenly this wintry world seemed austerely beautiful to me, a study in white and gray and gray-blue and black, but enjoying myself like that seemed vaguely creepy, so I headed back to the cabin, shotgun slung over my arm.

  Back inside, I got the girl’s clothes out of the closet—her cell phone was in a pocket—and went in and gave them to her, keeping the phone. A black hip-hop t-shirt and designer jeans and Reeboks.

  “Did you kill those men?” she said, breathlessly, her eyes dark and glittering. She had her clothes in her lap.

  “That’s not important. Get dressed.”

  “You’re wonderful. You’re goddamn fucking wonderful.”

  “I know,” I said. “Everybody says so. Get dressed.”

  She got dressed.

  I watched her.

  She was a beautiful piece of ass, no question, and even with those rings in them, the titties were cute as puppy dogs. The way she was looking at me made it clear she was grateful.

  I said, “We need to call your father.”

  “What’s your hurry? After a reward? There’s all kinds of rewards....”

  I held her cell phone out to her. “We should call him.”

  She shrugged and came at me and I found myself backed against the wall, as if she were holding a gun on me. Then her arms were around me and the pretty little mug was looking up at me devilishly.

  She had to get up on tiptoes to do it, but she kissed me long and slow and her tongue knew things it shouldn’t have at her age.

  Then she drew away from me, her arms still around me. “What do you say, hero?”

  “Kind of a bad time, isn’t it?”

  Her eyes flashed. “I think it’s exciting.”

  “I mean...of the month.”

  That made her laugh. She raised an eyebrow. “Other ports in a storm...?”

  “Maybe later,” I said, and smiled.

  She looked like AIDS-bait to me. I could be reckless, but not that reckless.

  Disappointed, she took a step away and accepted the cell phone, and within seconds was saying, “Daddy?...I’m fine, I’m fine...yes!...Daddy, you know that man you sent...what?”

  She frowned up at me in confusion. “He says...he says he didn’t send anybody.”

  I gestured impatiently for the phone and she gave it to me.

  “Good evening, sir. I have your daughter. As you can hear, she’s just fine....Get together one hundred thousand dollars in unmarked, non-sequential tens, twenties and fifties, and wait for the next call.”

  I hung up.

  She looked at me with wide eyes and wide-open mouth.

  “Relax,” I told her. “I’m not going to kill you—just turning a buck.”

  “You bastard! You prick!”

  She spit in my face.

  I wiped it off with a hand and gave her a look.

  She started backing up, her eyes wild, and I got hold of her, carried the squirming creature back to her bed and dumped her there.

  I thrust a stern finger in that cute face. “Look! I gotta get some sleep. Pipe down, or I’ll duct-tape your little trap.”

  She behaved after that, though she cried and sniffled and tried to make me feel as sorry for her as she did for herself, which would have been impossible; on the other hand, some of it was genuine—she did have cramps. I cuffed her to the bedpost and she was able to recline. I even covered her up.

  Then I went over and curled up on the other bed, nine millimeter in my waistband.

  I’d taken some risks tonight.

  I lived and worked on this lake, after all. But it was winter, and the bodies wouldn’t turn up for a long time, if ever, and the Outfit had used this part of the world to dump its corpses since Capone was just a mean street kid. Very little chance any of this would come back at me. And killing Harry and Louis had, at least, killed my insomnia.

  For the first time in a long time...

  ...I slept like a baby.

  Four

  The Log Cabin, true to its name, was a log cabin, a roadside gas station and latter-day diner a good hundred miles from Lake Sylvan, a minor intrusion of civilization into a world of snowy pines. At eleven A.M., breakfast was a memory and lunch the future, so the graveled parking lot was home to only a couple of cars and two trucks.

  I was keeping watch through binoculars on the slope across the two-lane highway, sheltered and concealed by more of those snowy pines; the ground had only a dusting of snow but the air was brittle with cold. I’d left the ninja-black wardrobe home—in daylight, it would have only made me stand out against the winter whiteness—and was in work boots and jeans and a brown corduroy fleece-lined jacket that were comfortable enough. I’d been keeping tabs on this ransom drop for half an hour already, and it took that long for the girl to speak.

  “He won’t come himself, you know.”

  Julie Green was seated like an Indian, leaning back against a big nearby tree, looking utterly bored, an old brown leather jacket of mine loose over her shoulders, her nipples perked under the black hip-hop t-shirt that peeked out, her designer jeans brushed with snow, her handcuffed hands in her lap.

  Basically, she looked like a surly high school student waiting outside the principal’s office.

  “Well, Daddy should come,” I said, “if he has any use for you. Those were the terms.”

  She shrugged and smirked. Her teeth chattered now and then. “He doesn’t have much use for me. Plus, don’t ever forget—he’s a lying untrustworthy shit.”

  I lifted the binoculars again. “Good to know.”

  A money-green Lexus was pulling in, taking one of half a dozen stalls next to the restaurant. I re-focused the binoculars and watched millions of dollars get out from behind the wheel.

  Jonah Green was not exactly a typical patron of the Log Cabin. At least sixty, he had a commanding presence, even from a distance, six foot one and perhaps two-hundred-twenty pounds with only a slight paunch and a close-cropped, almost military haircut that minimized both the gray and the receding hairline. His face was square, including his jaw, and grooved with lessons learned and given.

  From my perch I couldn’t see his eyes, but they were searching the landscape and, for one unnerving moment, his gaze seemed to linger on me, even though he couldn’t be seeing me, not without his own binoculars.

  I lowered mine. “Your father.”

  “No shit!”

  “He’s early�
�a good hour.”

  “So are you.”

  I raised them. “I’m a lying untrustworthy shit.”

  “...Good to know.”

  From a pocket of his topcoat—dark gray and probably Saville Row, unbuttoned and providing a glimpse of a well-tailored gray suit over Italian loafers—he withdrew something. I couldn’t tell for sure, but it seemed to be a cell phone.

  He spoke into it, briefly.

  The object was returned to the topcoat pocket, and Green stood there inhaling deeply and exhaling smoky breath until, within a minute, a second car pulled in, a nondescript number, a brown Taurus.

  This gave me a momentary start, because the car was similar if not identical to the rental Harry Something had driven, an automobile I had yet to deal with (it would need disposal, probably in one of the gravel pits intended for Julie, before I came along).

  But this turned out to be a coincidence—and how I hate those—when its driver got out, a brawny dip-shit in a brand-new green-and-black hunting jacket and matching flop-ear Elmer Fudd cap. In his early twenties, this ripe specimen had broad shoulders and close-set eyes in an oval face that seemed utterly blank from this distance. I had a hunch a closer look wouldn’t fill that oval in much.

  The two men began to speak, though Green did most of the talking, gesturing, giving orders. At the start of this one-sided exchange, Green’s flunky took off the Fudd cap respectfully, revealing blond hair, cut even shorter than his boss’s; he would nod when it seemed appropriate.

  I centered on their faces, and I had a good three-quarter angle on Jonah Green, with a decent side view of his boy. Much of what I have done over the years involves surveillance, and while I never studied the art, I’d picked up lip-reading early on.

  Green was saying, “Prick’ll probably show early. Stay sharp.”

  “How will I recognize him?”

  “Oh, I don’t know—maybe because he has my daughter with him?”

  The subordinate blushed. I’m not lying. He fucking blushed, and shook his head and said, “Right. Right! Sorry. That was dumb. Really dumb.”

  The millionaire just looked at him, for the longest time, then said, “Form the thought. Examine it. Decide if it’s worth sharing. Understand this concept, De-something?”