The Last Quarry

by Max Allan Collins

  By late afternoon, with the library closing so early, she’d be back at her apartment. And somehow I hauled my dead ass off that bed and made it to my surveillance roost across the way from her.

  She beat me home. There she was, already, in a bathrobe again (not the blue borrowed one, but a similar green one of her own), sitting in that comfy chair, bunny-slippered tootsies on the footrest, reading a book (Memoirs of a Geisha), nibbling a sandwich, sipping at a Diet Coke.

  But I was having trouble watching her.

  Mostly I just sat there, staring at the blank wall in the rattrap vacant apartment, not even dipping into the cooler for my own sandwich and Coke, not fucking hungry at all. The nine millimeter and the binoculars were on the crate, looking like decorative items as opposed to anything practical a person might actually use.

  I did at dusk, at a good distance, follow her Geo to Sneaky Pete’s, which was open Sunday nights, where she and Connie met in the parking lot. I drove past, then pulled a U-turn and headed back.

  Inside, the place wasn’t very busy, the meat-market aspect given over to a modest family night, where pizza was served from a small kitchen that usually only offered up burgers and fries. The same country-pop was playing, but overlaid with the squeal of kiddies, and it occurred to me it might do the Sneaky Pete singles crowd of Friday and Saturday night some good, stopping by here Sunday, just to see what kind of trouble they might be getting themselves into.

  Janet and Connie had a booth, both young women dressed not to the nines now, just sweatshirts and jeans; this was about dinner and dishing, Connie pumping Janet for what had happened between her and “that big scary handsome guy.”

  That was the only thing I picked up, from my position at the bar. I couldn’t risk sitting any closer, and I was conspicuous as hell in this family crowd. Even the bartender, not my familiar brunette but a potbellied guy with a mustache, was giving me a hinky look. So unless I wanted to be spotted and invited over to sit with the girls, I had better split.

  I split.

  Back at the motel, the room was nicely dark, just a little neon sign blush finding its way through the curtains. I deposited the nine on the nightstand and flopped onto the bed, fully clothed, curled up on my side and tried to go to sleep.

  But it soon became clear sleep wouldn’t come, and before long I found myself seated on the edge of the bed, slumped, hands loosely interlaced.

  What were my fucking options?

  Piss and poor, with maybe a couple stops in between. This was what I got, allowing myself to be talked out of retirement for “one last job.” Fuck! There are reasons why you quit the killing business, and going soft is one of them, because then it’s you getting killed, which is no way to run a business.

  They were my Achilles’ heel, women. I had no goddamn sense where they were concerned. And it wasn’t the fucking, the fucking was great, but a woman—not just any woman, but a woman like, say, Janet—could touch something inside of me that I liked to think had died a long time ago. Something human that could only put a dipshit like me in a jam.

  I sat there, brooding, mentally listing the mistakes I’d made, but the list was so long, I got bored—being seen by the target was one thing, eating her pussy was another. That kind of up-close-and-personal contact can lead a guy to making bad calls.

  So I could walk away. You can always walk away.

  And someone else would kill her, and Jonah Green would, understandably, be miffed with me, and likely send people to kill me, loose end that I would become, people like me but not old and gone-soft ones, and then I’d be dead, too...or at least up to my asshole in dead assholes.

  That didn’t sound like any fun.

  I could go after the guy who hired me. I had full confidence that I could make Jonah Green’s death happen; but Green was an important guy, connected enough in Outfit circles to find out about my past, and with the wherewithal to find me at Sylvan Lake in short order. I killed him, who could say what the fuck I’d unleash?

  And I’d be dead, and Janet Wright would be dead, too.

  That left only one alternative: go ahead and do the job I’d been hired for. There was that little matter of a quarter of a million dollars, the kind of money that meant I’d never have to put myself in a situation like this again.

  And if I accepted that Janet Wright was really dead already, just didn’t know it yet—a premise I had expressed to Jonah Wright at the outset, a concept I knew to be true when any party had been marked for elimination—perhaps the only humane thing to do under the circumstances was kill her myself.

  I could figure out some way that would be quick and painless. If I left her to the devices of some amoral monster who killed people for money, Christ knew what shit she would be put through....

  I had always taken great pride in my lack of sadism, that I had never taken any sick pleasure or joy out of turning life into death. Mine had been a profession, and like a doctor with a patient or a lawyer with a client, I represented a person with a problem, and I just made that problem go away. Nothing fun about it. Nothing mean about it, either.

  Such were my thoughts, threading through my brain and the motel-room darkness, and I don’t honestly remember going to Janet’s. In my mind, I’m in the motel room one second, sitting on the bed, trying to figure this shit out, and the next second, I’m at the top of the stairs out on the small landing, staring at her apartment door, with the nine millimeter in one hand and working the doorbell with the other.

  She didn’t answer.

  Well, it was the middle of the night; or rather, really, really early Monday morning....

  So I rang it again.

  And again.

  Finally I could hear her moving in there.

  I checked the action on the nine.

  The sound of the night latch unlatching prompted me to slip the nine back in my jacket pocket, and then her face, pale and severe without makeup, was visible in the cracked-open door.

  She frowned just a little. “...Jack?”

  “I have to see you.”

  She frowned more than just a little. “You know, even Rick used to call the day after. Even Rick never showed up at three in the morning, demanding—”

  “Please?”

  She sighed.

  She let me in.

  Wrapped up in the green robe, which was feminine but not particularly sexy, Janet seemed embarrassed by my intrusion, self-consciously straightening her hair.

  “Sit down,” she said, leading me into a living room that I’d never been in before, though was entirely familiar with. “Give me a minute...freshen up.” She turned toward me, not mad at all, now. “You want coffee or something? Jesus, what time is it?”

  I took her into my arms, firmly but not roughly, and asked, “What time does it have to be?”

  And I kissed her.

  The kiss was a little over the top, zero-to-sixty kind of thing, and it surprised her; but she got into it, soon enough.

  I lowered her to the floor, and I drew open the robe and she was almost afraid, looking up at me, and her throat was red, her face white, her breasts full and staring at me.

  Then my pants were around my ankles and I was fucking her. Her knees were up and she was saying, “Oh, oh, oh,” really liking it; but halfway through I slowed it down and kissed her neck and breasts and ears and shoulders and face, and she was crying, and maybe I was crying, what the fuck are you going to do about it?

  The finish was slow and gentle and, again, I don’t remember going there, but we were in bed, Janet sleeping contentedly next to me, snuggling to me. Killing her in her sleep would have been so easy. Not the accident Green had requested, but painless and she would never know a thing.

  But I wasn’t about to kill her.

  She was coming alive, this woman, she’d been sleepwalking through a coma of a life, and now she was alive, and killing her would have been a goddamn crime. I had a new agenda I was working on, but a wonderful tiredness had me suddenly, and then I was asleep, too
.

  The next thing I felt was a hand gently caressing my neck, and then I heard Janet, saying, “Hey, Samson—wake up a second.”

  My eyes somehow opened, and she was sitting on the edge of the bed, in a white blouse and dark skirt, smelling great, but ready for work, not for me.

  I sat bolt upright, startling her a little, though she laughed.

  “Hey! Hey, relax....I’m leaving for the library. Thought I’d better see if you have anywhere to be.”

  I tasted my mouth; it wasn’t worth the effort. “No. No appointments....Can I just crash here?”

  “Sure.” She stood, smoothed herself, looking professional and adult, whereas I felt like a kid sleeping in instead of going to school. “I’ll leave the extra key on the kitchen table, if you wanna go in or out.”

  “When’ll you be home?”

  “I get off at five, today. Don’t you fix supper—I will!”

  “Listen—Janet....”

  She was poised at the door to the kitchen, and turned to me, eyebrows arched. “Yes?”

  “Tonight....We have to talk.”

  Her mouth twitched with amusement. “Isn’t that usually the woman’s line?...Or maybe you just want to explain why a guy selling veterinary medicine carries a gun.”

  That sucker-punched me, and I glanced over at the chair where my corduroy jacket was draped and saw the nine mil’s butt sticking up out of the pocket.

  When I turned back to Janet, she’d gone.

  I ran after her, bare-ass, but she was already out the kitchen door and on her way across the alley to the lot were she parked her Geo.

  Over the next hour or so, I showered and made myself a little breakfast, and tried to get my thoughts together. How much did she know about me? When had she noticed the nine millimeter—just now? She sure didn’t seem worked up about it....

  All the days of surveillance, and being on top of her in more ways than one, I still had no idea why anyone on the planet, much less a mogul like Jonah fucking Green, would want this sexy little librarian wasted. The only thing she was guilty of was shitty taste in men.

  By late morning, I was pacing in her living room, the nine stuffed in my waistband. I’d come to a decision—I would tell Janet some kind of story that stopped well short of the truth, but would be enough to motivate her; and I would grab her and haul her ass out of here, to safety somewhere.

  And I would deal with Jonah Green, and everything that meant. Killing the guy who hired you is a non-starter in my business, but then I was ready to retire again, anyway, so what the fuck.

  But why wait?

  The sooner I got Janet out of Homewood, the better. I would go yank her out of that library, run her back here to pick up a few things, and we’d be on the road. That was the plan. That was the new plan....

  And I was just about to go out the door and head down to the street, where my rental was parked, when somebody on the other side of that door began to work a key in it.

  I took a step back, and the door swung rudely open, and standing framed there, key in hand, was a young woman who was not Janet, but an attractive enough example of the female sex, even though her ragged jeans and a jean jacket and a black hip-hop t-shirt didn’t do much for me.

  I knew this woman, this girl. And so do you—she was, after all, the kidnap victim who started it all.

  Jonah Green’s daughter—Julie.

  Eleven

  I grabbed the little bitch by the arm extending the key and yanked her into the living room and hurled her across the room. Her jean jacket came off in my hand, and I discarded it like a used tissue as she did a half spin and landed rudely on the couch, opposite, breasts bobbling under the black t-shirt. A little suitcase was out in the hall, and I grabbed it and tossed it inside the apartment, and slammed the door and turned to glare at her.

  But she didn’t scare easy, scrambling back off the cushions to get right in my face, holding the keys in her upraised fist like a blade. Eyes and nostrils flaring, white little feral teeth bared, she all but screamed: “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  The petite dark-haired beauty had a little ring in her nose now; she was packing enough piercings to set off an airport metal detector.

  As would my nine millimeter automatic, the snout of which I stuck under her defiant chin as I slapped the keys rattlingly from her fist.

  “You first,” I said.

  That took some of the fearlessness out of her. Her eyelids were quivering and she swallowed, or tried to. “Get...get that fucking thing out of my throat, you prick.”

  I did, shoving her back onto the couch with my free hand. Looming over her, keeping the nine trained on her, I paced a little area near where she sat, her arms folded tight as she looked up at me, face blank but for a crinkly chin.

  “Explain yourself,” I said.

  “Fuck you!...I’m visiting my sister.”

  I frowned down at her. “Where?”

  “Here!” Her eyes widened and tightened. “Where the hell else? She lives here!”

  My eyes narrowed and tightened. “In this apartment...?”

  “No, in a dumpster out back.” She unfolded her arms, leaning forward on the heels of her hands. “What the hell are you doing here, Quarry?”

  I was still pointing the gun at her, but suddenly I felt way off my game. “What’s your sister’s name?”

  “You’re in her apartment and you don’t know? Janet Fucking Wright!”

  I squinted at her, hoping that would help; it didn’t. I could see neither a resemblance in her face, nor any sense in this situation.

  “Your name is Green,” I said.

  “Aren’t you the observant son of a bitch?” She sighed impatiently. “Jan doesn’t use Daddy’s name—she fucking hates Daddy, which is the one thing we have in common....Wright’s our mom’s maiden name. Late mom...”

  Suddenly her face whitened, as if she’d finally noticed an asshole was pointing a gun at her.

  “Oh shit,” she said, pointing a gun-like finger back at me, for nobody’s benefit in particular. “Oh hell. Oh no....”

  “What?”

  She was shaking her head, almost frantically. “You’re not ‘him,’ are you? You couldn’t be him....” She rolled her eyes and laughed harshly. “Oh fuck me....Jack? You’re Jack? Jack Ryan...?”

  I lowered the nine a hair. “She told you about me?”

  Still shaking her head, she said, “Oh Christ—you’re her white knight? Kill me. Kill me now.”

  “It’s an option,” I said.

  Not knowing how much trouble she was potentially in, Julie sneered up at me. “I answered your question, now you owe me a fucking answer—what the hell are you doing here, anyway?”

  She had a point.

  I put the gun in my waistband. I could see no reason not to level with her. More or less.

  I sat next to her and said, “Your father hired me.”

  She gave me a frowning sideways look, not so much disapproving as curious. “What’d he hire you for? Oh fuck...tell me it wasn’t to rough up that abusive boyfriend of hers! That prick Rick?”

  I shook my head. “That was my bright idea.”

  She grunted a non-laugh. “Not that Daddy would do anything that thoughtful.” Confusion colored her features. “Then why—”

  “Your father hired me to watch your sister. He didn’t say why.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Just watch her—like a P.I. or something?”

  “Or something.”

  A little half-hearted laugh made the cupcake breasts bounce; you could see the nipple rings outlined against the black t-shirt. “Well, I can’t say it surprises me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t you know?” She leaned toward me conspiratorially. “Sis is about to come into a good share of the family fortune.”

  I said nothing.

  My expression must have been talkative, though, because a faintly amused Julie Green said, “Huh...You look shocked, Quarry...I didn’t know you were the fuck
shockable.”

  Normally I wasn’t.

  “I liked you better with the beard, by the way,” she said. She got up and collected her jeans jacket and laid it over a chair, and picked up her little suitcase and put it next to the same chair.

  “It was your sister’s idea,” I said. “She shaved me.”

  She glanced at me, smirky but not unfriendly. “I bet she did....You okay?”

  “Peachy.”

  Over the years, in my business, I’d run into lots of things, many of them disgusting or creepy or downright evil. A father hiring a hitman to take out his own daughter had just rocketed to the top of my personal chart.

  With a bullet.

  Twelve

  Julie Green and I sat in her sister’s tiny kitchen where the girl had a turkey sandwich and chips and a Diet Coke; I just had a Diet Coke, my appetite dulled somehow. She filled me in, chapter and verse, on the Green family fortune and how it impacted Daddy and his daughters.

  Seemed Green’s media empire had started when he married money—that money belonging to the late mother of Janet and Julie.

  “It’s a trust fund deal,” Julie was saying, nibbling at the white bread and white turkey meat. She could wear hip-hop clothes all she wanted—this kid was Caucasian. “Jan’s gonna be thirty next month, and she’ll get a pile.”

  “What about you?”

  She grinned as she chewed. “Oh, I will, too, when I’m her age....I still got a few years of youthful abandon left.”

  I was squinting again, but this time things were coming into focus. “And if something bad happened to Janet—before the trust fund money came available to her—your father inherits...?”

  “Yeah. Sure. Who else?”

  One aspect remained fuzzy, however, so I asked, “But why would that matter to a mogul like Jonah Green? He’s loaded....”

  She snorted a laugh, and the nose ring jiggled. “He was, before his second wife’s settlement...and before he invested in fucking Enron. He’s riding on fumes, my clean-shaven friend. Hope you enjoyed your hundred K for rescuing me, ’cause the bastard made me give him an I.O.U. for it!”