Broker nodded at the counter and the guy in denim sat there, while his master came over, removing brown leather gloves, and giving me a smile that was only technically a smile, going up at either end but mirthless and disapproving.
He glanced at the booth fore and aft of mine, noted that they were vacant, and sat rather heavily, then slid over, creating a farting sound on the faux leather of the booth and making me smile.
I asked Broker, “Where’d you find Rumpelstiltskin?”
Broker just looked at me, his puss as blank as a pie pan. “You might want to watch that kind of talk around Roger. He’s a formidable young man. Much like yourself.”
“Then maybe Roger ought to watch himself around me.”
One eyebrow went up. “You seem in a surly mood.”
“Maybe it’s just a preemptive strike, since I figure you aren’t too happy getting called out for a road trip in the middle of the night.”
“And, actually, I’m not. Can you give me the rough details?”
I didn’t respond to that, instead asking, “Who’s going to drive me back? That’s assuming you want me to go back.”
He frowned. “I presume I will drive you, since you indicated the car you’re in may…may require some clean-up.”
“Ah. That’s where Roger comes in.”
“Correct.”
I wiped a fry through the glistening red of watered-down ketchup. “I had to eliminate a business rival.”
He frowned. “I see. And you feel it’s best you give me the details on the ride back, rather than here in public?”
“Yeah. Not many people in this lovable greasy spoon, granted, but just the two of us in your car would be better. I gotta warn you, though. I smell like shit.”
“Is that right?”
I nodded. “The car I drove belongs to that business rival I mentioned. He damn near smoked himself to death. Damn near. And now I got that foul stench in my clothes.”
The Broker folded his hands prayerfully. “Pity. Did you get any identification from this rival?”
“Yeah. If you let me drive your car, I can give you that stuff and you can go over it.”
He nodded crisply.
The thousand-year-old waitress came over and Broker ordered a coffee to go. She stared at him for a moment, as if she were hoping he were an apparition that might disappear and remove the need of carrying out so difficult a task, but Broker didn’t disappear, so she did.
He asked, “Unavoidable, this elimination?”
“No. I needed practice.”
“There’s no need for sarcasm.”
“Ever see A Night at the Opera?”
“What, the Marx Brothers? Of course I have. Why?”
I dragged another fry through red. “Remember the stateroom scene? Every member of the cast piling into a little cabin on that steamship? Well, that’s this assignment. Crawling with names and faces that weren’t in that surveillance report. That’s why I say you may not want me to go back there.”
He sighed and shook his head. “You have to. This is a key client.”
“From Chicago, right?”
He blanched. “How do you know that?”
“When people talk to me, I pay attention.”
The Broker said nothing. His spooky blue eyes were half-lidded. He slid out of the booth, went over and tapped the denim midget on the shoulder, and he and Roger came over. Broker slid back into the booth and Roger sat next to him.
Broker said, “Quietly tell Roger what to expect.”
I considered telling Roger that what he could expect was a life of getting turned away at various amusement park rides for not meeting the height requirement. But I thought better of it.
“Hi, Roger.” I threw Charlie’s car keys onto the booth’s tabletop. Then I nodded out the window at the car parked just beyond where we sat. “You can expect to find a dead man in the trunk of that green Chevelle. Pre-wrapped in plastic, like a picnic sandwich.”
Roger said, “Anything else?”
“A duffel bag of his shit. There’s some skin magazines in the back seat you can help yourself to. My suggestion? Get rid of everything-the whole damn car.”
Roger turned toward the Broker.
Broker said, “I concur.”
Roger nodded.
Then Charlie’s new chauffeur exited the booth and stopped by the counter where he’d been in the middle of his own cheeseburger and fries, and requested of the thousand-year-old waitress a to-go sack, and got back a Lot’s Wife look but eventual cooperation.
By the time the Broker had paid our check, Roger and Charlie and the Chevelle were gone. We stepped into the cold air and the Broker pulled on his leather gloves. I didn’t have to be told which ride was the Broker’s-that silver Cadillac Fleetwood Eldorado.
I’d never been inside one before, let alone sat behind the wheel. But Broker entrusted it to me.
God, it was all leather and padded dashboard with a cassette player and still had the new car smell, and no tobacco stench at all. I felt like I was sitting in a penthouse, not a car. But I hid my reaction from Broker, who I handed Charlie’s wallet.
I drove toward Iowa City, keeping it at seventy, and filled Broker in on what had happened, including Charlie’s elliptical references to the girl’s father and his not so-elliptical references to the professor’s wife.
“He was an untrustworthy man,” the Broker said of Charlie. “You made the right decision.”
“But it’s collateral damage.”
“Ah, and you don’t like collateral damage.”
“No, I don’t, but this guy was a sleazy prick, so I’m over it. But do we need to pull out? Scrap the contract? We have all kinds of players in this that your surveillance guy didn’t pick up on.”
“True. But this is a vital contract.”
“Right. Because that brunette’s father is a Chicago Outfit guy.”
Broker didn’t like hearing me say that.
“And,” I went on, “he wants the prof snuffed because he doesn’t like daddy’s little girl taking entrance exams from a faculty member’s member.”
He sighed heavily. “Something like that. The ‘why’ is not your concern. It’s not even my concern.”
“When assholes like Charlie come waltzing into my life…into our life…it is. So, then, I stay?”
“You stay. But get this thing done.”
“Look, Broker.” My eyes were on the ivory world we were gliding through. “Bumping off a Charlie Who’s-it is one thing. Putting that brunette at risk is another.”
He straightened as much as his seat belt would allow. “Well, under no circumstances take her out. My God, she’s the client’s daughter.”
“Even if she wanders in on me in the process?”
“Wear a ski mask if you have to.”
“Oh, this just gets classier.”
“Quarry…there’s nothing classy about murder.”
“Says the guy in the camel’s hair coat with the Fleetwood Caddy.”
He didn’t have anything to say to that.
Then the Broker turned on a little light on his side of the vast vehicle and went through all that I.D. I’d handed over.
“You’ve looked at this,” he said.
“Yeah. Like I said, he was a PI.”
Broker nodded and went through the credit cards and various papers tucked in with the cash in the fold.
“What does this mean?” he asked, reading aloud from a slip of paper, “ ‘We’ll meet on Monday night at the Holiday Inn lounge. 7 p.m. D.B.’ ”
I shrugged. “Could be this case-could be something else of Charlie’s, something old.”
He frowned at me. “Is that what you think?”
“It’s possible that ‘B’ stands for ‘Byron,’ and that this note is from Charlie’s client.”
“The wife.”
“The wife.”
I glanced over at the Broker and his expression was stricken.
“That means,” he said, “we cou
ld have the professor’s wife added to your stateroom scene.”
“If that memo does mean what I speculated it might, yes. And of course it might not.”
“Christ. Hell.”
“So then we do pull out?”
“Can you think of another alternative? I would be grateful, Quarry, if you could.”
I shrugged, feeling powerful behind the wheel of the majestic buggy. “If she hasn’t ever met this guy she hired? Then I could be him. I could be Charlie, the PI. It covers why I’m shadowing her husband. I handle her, get rid of her, and-”
“What do you mean,” he said, giving me a sharp glance, “ ‘get rid of her’?”
“I hope I mean, I talk to her and she goes on her way.”
He was staring at the memo. “What if she’s already met Charlie?”
“Then maybe…well, there’s other ways of getting rid of people.”
The Broker sighed; his expression was one of extreme distaste. “Yes. Yes there are.” He looked over at me, eyes half-lidded again. “I will have this Charlie character looked into. I’ll have information available by late Monday afternoon. Call me before five at the same number. Don’t do anything till then-don’t return to your surveillance post, just stay in your hotel.”
“The Holiday Inn.”
His eyes and nostrils flared. “Hell, I hadn’t thought of that. You’re already in the hotel where the woman would be meeting you…”
“What’s wrong with that? It’s convenient.”
He shook his head. “This world in Iowa City-it’s too small, it’s too cluttered.”
“Tell me about it.”
Broker’s icy blue eyes bore down on me. “If I can confirm that our late friend Charlie was a single operative, and that he did not work out of the same city where Mrs. Byron lives, then there is a good chance that, A, she has never met him in person and dealt with him only over the phone, and, B, he will not immediately be missed, since he has no associates to miss him.”
“You’re assuming he worked alone-wasn’t part of an agency.”
“His business card implies a one-man operation. It’s worth checking out.”
I let some air out. “That would buy us a couple of days.”
“Yes.”
We rode along in silence for a while.
Then: “So what’s in the manuscript, Broker?”
“What manuscript?”
“Don’t play dumb. You don’t play dumb at all well. The manuscript I’m expected to find and burn, after killing this philandering fucker.”
“…It’s a so-called non-fiction novel he’s been working on.”
“Well, that’s his specialty, right? He’s the Collateral Damage guy.”
The Broker chuckled dryly. “Yes, in more ways than one, now. He’s writing what he’s described to others as his magnum opus-a non-fiction novel about a Mafia kingpin.”
“Fuck,” I said. “The girl’s father?”
“Yes,” the Broker said. “But ask me nothing more about it.”
I didn’t need to. But you had to hand it to the prof-not everybody can do research and get a blowjob at the same time.
SIX
The Holiday Inn’s pool room was free of screaming kiddies on this Monday after Christmas. Families were homeward bound, and even my redheaded whirlpool partner was nowhere in sight-if she’d gone home, too, that would be a shame. I had worked up some pretty good fantasies about my thirty-something pick-up-I had a rough draft of a Penthouse Forum letter well under way in my mind.
But having the pool to myself-it was warm, maybe a little too warm-was a pleasure. My arms and legs cutting the water in this aquamarine echo chamber provided an otherworldly backdrop for the twenty laps I swam. The whirlpool felt good, really good, as my neck and upper back were fairly tense from all of last night’s fun and games.
I didn’t feel guilty about Charlie-he’d gone wading in and found himself in the deep end and that wasn’t my doing-but I hadn’t ever shot a guy right next to me before. Much of what I’d done in Vietnam had been as a sniper or in fire fights, and I’d seen plenty of bloody bodies nearby, but usually my fellow soldiers. As for that guy Williams I dropped the car on, well, obviously, the car was between him and me.
But I did have to face that a profession presented to me by the Broker as clinical, surgical, and distant could have some haphazard, sloppy, and close-up ramifications. Didn’t bother me, but this wasn’t exactly what I expected. No biggie.
So I sat and relaxed for maybe half an hour in the swirling, soothing hot water, just enjoying the emptiness of the big room. I did a little time in the sauna, too, and was loose and comfortable and ready to start my day, come mid-morning.
The Broker had told me not to go back to the split-level till I’d talked to him, late afternoon; but I wasn’t comfortable with the mess I’d left behind. So after I asked a few questions at the hotel’s front desk, I headed out in the rental Maverick and picked up some cleaning stuff at the Kmart and headed over.
The stuff on the wall in the kitchen, on Charlie’s side of the breakfast nook, was crusty and nasty, and took some muscle with the Brillo pad to make go away. I thought there’d be a bullet hole under there, but the slug must have still been in Charlie’s noggin, possibly because where I’d shot him had been where the bone was pretty solid.
I cleaned up blackened blood from the linoleum, and some other encrusted grue, and the place soon looked like a kitchen and not a slaughterhouse. Probably nothing I’d done would have given a good forensics team any problem, but for a real estate agent or home buyer who came wandering in, nobody would be the wiser.
You might think I would do exactly what the Broker told me to, and not stray in any way from his instructions; but the thing was, my ass was hanging out, not his. I was in the trenches and he was in his Caddy or at the Concort Inn or in some fancy mansion somewhere, so the decision was mine. If, this afternoon, the Broker wound up telling me to book it out of Dodge, and I’d have to leave that house behind, with blood spatter that wasn’t about to be mistaken for a Jackson Pollock painting, then we’d just be asking for trouble.
Cleaning up that mess wasn’t my only secret insubordination where the Broker was concerned: I had also failed to mention the half a dozen rolls of 35mm film of Charlie’s that I’d found. My favorite game is poker, if I haven’t mentioned it, and in poker you protect your hole card. And my hunch was those film rolls might be my ace.
In downtown Iowa City, I went to the photo shop the Holiday Inn desk clerk recommended, and left the rolls to be developed, with my photos ready tomorrow morning. I told the bored middle-aged guy behind the counter these were art shots, meaning naked women would be on some of them, and asked if that would be a problem. He said no, but it would be an extra twenty bucks.
By then it was close to noon and I followed another of the desk clerk’s tips and walked over to a sandwich shop called Bushnell’s Turtle, named for an early submarine and reflecting the style of sandwiches they served.
A record store, a book shop and Bushnell’s were among half a dozen businesses in double-wide temporary buildings housed right out in the middle of Clinton Street at the end of East College, which was mostly blocked off for the construction of a pedestrian mall. I walked up a wheelchair-friendly ramp and into the unpretentious sandwich emporium, where you ordered at a counter from a chalkboard menu on the wall, got your food and found a table.
For winter break being on, the unpretentious sub shop was surprisingly busy, with straight customers from the business and retail community mixed in with hippie-ish college students. I’d already ordered when I spotted Annette Girard and Professor Byron, at a table over by the windows along Clinton, too late to make an inconspicuous retreat.
What the hell, I was just another college student, right? Longish hair, young face, no sweat. The question was, did I take a nearby table to eavesdrop on their conversation, or did I play it safe and position myself as far away from the pair as possible?
Do
I have to tell you I took a table adjacent? I didn’t figure there was much if any chance of Annette, who was deep in conversation with her loving prof, recognizing me from Sambo’s, where we’d had our brief and not terribly memorable conversation.
They seemed to be past their meal or just having coffee, and I nibbled at a delicious sandwich (not a sub) where bratwurst and mozzarella and sauerkraut mingled nicely on rye. Beat the hell out of Slim Jims and Hostess cupcakes. And I could hear the couple pretty well.
“You have to open up, Annette,” he was saying, the oratorical baritone nicely modulated into whispery intimacy, “you have to be honest. That’s part of the novel technique, you know.”
Her head was tilted, her brunette hair pausing at the shoulders of her green and black paisley blouse on its way down her back. “Honesty in characterization and human behavior, sure…but otherwise, isn’t all fiction a contrivance?”
An out-of-control eyebrow lifted in his hawkish face. “Of course it is, but when done well, a very high level of contrivance. Fiction is, after all, the lie that tells the truth. In a non-fiction work, you have to find multiple sources, and you often have to hew to accepted history, and that’s a joke. But in fiction, you are inside the narrator’s head, and in the first person, you share space with that narrator.”
She was frowning. “But narrators in fiction can be unreliable. You’ve told me that.”
“And that’s permissible in a non-fiction novel, too, as long as the narrator, the main character, is you, and any exaggerations or lies are told in the context of your personal truth.”
Wow. Was this guy full of shit!
“But I would encourage you not to lie,” he was saying. “I would encourage you to engage your memories head-on. Confront them and conquer them. For example, you need to share with your reader every horrible thing your father ever did to you.”
“K.J.,” she said, “I don’t want to relive all of that. It took me years of therapy to get past any of it.”
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