The Contract

by JM Gulvin

  ‘Wasn’t so much of a firefight, Pious: man threw down on me when his buddy had already folded.’

  ‘And now he’s dead. Better him than you, don’t let it bother you.’

  ‘It don’t.’ Quarrie gestured. ‘One thing my godfather taught me about this job is to understand why a thing goes down and don’t be raking over it again. I told James just now is all and it’s him I’m thinking about.’

  Pious took a pull at his beer. ‘Well, he ain’t going to hear anything from anybody at school that he didn’t already hear from you. All you can do, John Q.’ He looked askance at him then. ‘That the only thing on your mind, is it?’

  *

  The following morning Quarrie was up at six and it was seven when the captain rang.

  ‘John Q,’ he said, ‘I need you in Amarillo.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘SAC Patterson is on his way up.’

  ‘From Dallas, what does he want?’

  ‘He wants the lowdown on what happened yesterday. He was at pains to tell me how the world’s changing. It ain’t what it used to be.’

  ‘In Dallas maybe, that ain’t how it is up here.’

  ‘That’s what I told him. Said how the man threw down on you and you defended yourself. He wants to talk to you just the same.’

  Quarrie pressed air from between his lips. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I got some errands to run. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

  When he left the ranch he drove south to Wichita Falls and stopped at the hospital on 8th and Brook Street. There was no sign of any clerk at the desk in the morgue so he went through the automatic doors into the examination room. Four porcelain tables were set side by side with stainless steel sluices at the base. The red light on the ceiling was on and Tom Dakin, the medical examiner, was working the farthest table assisted by a nurse while he spoke into the microphone clipped round his neck. Quarrie approached as quietly as he could but the nurse looked up and the medical examiner switched the microphone off.

  ‘Speak of the devil,’ he said. ‘We just had one of yours in here with two in the chest at a half-inch spread. You know I heard somewhere how in the last round of state shooting exams you’d gotten your time below a quarter of a second. That was to draw, fire twice and re-holster. Did I read that right?’

  Quarrie nodded.

  Dakin indicated where the dead man from the hotel lay on the slab. ‘Well anyway, I guess you’ll want to hear how this guy made the pass by himself.’ Setting aside the scalpel he was holding he wiped his hands on a cloth. ‘Blood vessel burst in his brain. Aneurism he probably never knew he had, seizure would’ve killed him like that.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Kind of young for it maybe, I figure he’s only about thirty, but then anomalies like that never did make allowances for age.’

  Quarrie considered the marbled skin of the cadaver. ‘The ambulance crew said they thought it might’ve been a heart attack.’

  ‘I can see how they’d come to that conclusion because there is a bluish tint to his lips and that can happen with an aortal aneurism. Only this one was in his brain.’ Taking off his glasses Dakin wiped them on his house coat then sipped from a cup of coffee. ‘Could be it only occurred quite recently, then again he might’ve had it all his life.’

  ‘But it’s natural?’ Quarrie said.

  ‘Sure is. No sign, no real symptoms to give the sucker away. It just creeps up on you is what it does. Do we know who this feller was?’

  Quarrie shrugged. ‘Checked into The Roosevelt under the name Williams; can’t tell you any more than that.’

  ‘So I guess you’ll be wanting this then.’ The nurse offered him a piece of white card where she had pasted the dead man’s fingerprints. ‘I already made one for the coroner and allowed that you probably would.’

  Quarrie slipped the card inside his jacket and turned to Dakin again. ‘Did you come up with anything else?’

  ‘No, sir, nothing but a trace of blue ink on the skin of his right forefinger.’

  Quarrie nodded. ‘I got a question for you, Tom. What does Proloid do?’

  ‘The drug, you mean?’ Dakin made a face. ‘Usually a doctor will prescribe it to somebody whose metabolism is running slow. Thyroid playing up, stuff like that; kind of redresses the balance when things aren’t working quite as they should be. Why’d you want to know?’

  ‘I found an empty bottle in Wiley’s hotel bedroom.’

  Dakin looked puzzled.

  ‘The feller you had in here with two at a half-inch spread. There was some powder on the table and I got a hunch he was grinding tablets with the butt of his handgun.’

  Dakin glanced at the nurse.

  ‘So, I was wondering,’ Quarrie said, ‘what would happen if somebody took Proloid when their metabolism wasn’t running slow?’

  ‘It would depend on how much they took.’

  ‘How about they swallowed the whole bottle?’

  ‘Then they’d be toast.’ Dakin jutted his chin at the corpse. ‘Either from a heart storm or burst blood vessel in the brain like him.’

  Quarrie followed his gaze. ‘Is there any way you can tell?’

  ‘Overdose of Proloid, if you’re looking for it, sure there is.’ Stepping around the table Dakin took another swallow of coffee. ‘You’d need to run some extra tests, more blood maybe, spinal fluid; one sure sign is an overabundance of iodine.’

  ‘Test for it would you?’ Quarrie said.

  He drove from the hospital to Amarillo and pulled into the Department of Safety building where Captain Van Hanigan was based. Outside in the parking lot he spotted a government issue Ford and figured the FBI agents had arrived. They were waiting for him, two men in dark suits and narrow ties. One had a trilby with a feather in the band resting on his lap. Quarrie caught Van Hanigan’s eye from the corridor then made his way to the ID Bureau and asked them to send the fingerprint card to both Ranger HQ in Austin and the National Crime Information Center to see if they could come up with a match.

  Back in the office Van Hanigan got to his feet. The two men seated before his desk remained where they were and the captain introduced the older one as the Special Agent in Charge. His name was Patterson, hair the color of iron filings; he looked to be in his mid-forties. Quarrie considered him briefly then the other agent who was smaller, squatter and balding.

  ‘This is Sergeant Quarrie,’ the captain said.

  Patterson looked up from where he sat. ‘Yes, we know who he is.’ Half a smile on his face, he gestured. ‘Yesterday, Sergeant: the shooting off 287.’

  ‘What about it?’ Quarrie said.

  ‘I’d like to know what went down. I guess you’ll be talking to the district attorney at some point and I’m going to need a copy of his report.’

  ‘Has somebody made a complaint?’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘So why do you want the report?’

  ‘I want to be abreast of the situation.’

  ‘There’s no need.’ Quarrie looked from him to the other agent. ‘A couple of sleazeballs rob a gun store and club old man Hemmings over the head. When I come up on them one puts his piece down and the other one doesn’t. There ain’t anything more to it than that.’

  ‘Old school, aren’t you?’ It was the balding agent who spoke. ‘It doesn’t really fit with the times.’

  Quarrie turned to him. ‘And what times are those exactly?’

  ‘These times,’ Patterson cut in. ‘1967. The old days are gone in case the news never made it up here to the panhandle.’ He spread his palms. ‘Look, I know all about your Uncle Frank and Lone Wolf Manuel T. I know about Dick Crowder and how they made sure Mickey Cohen was on a plane back to LA. I know about how it used to be but the days of the old-school Ranger are gone.’ A little condescendingly he shook his head. ‘Law enforcement is accountable now in a way it’s never been. The world’s not like it was, there’s a war on TV every night and folks see how it really is. Sergeant, you shoot a suspect dead, we need to know what happ
ened, that’s just the way it is.’

  Quarrie glanced from him to Van Hanigan and back.

  ‘Think about it,’ Patterson went on. ‘We’ve got coloreds wanting to be treated like white folks and students on the streets protesting about Vietnam. We got hippies living in communes along the Red River. God knows it’ll be the Mexicans next.’

  ‘So what-all you’re telling me,’ Quarrie said. ‘Two of them and one of me, next time I should ask if they’d be so kind as to set their piece down?’ He looked a little weary. ‘And what if they don’t want to do that? I defended myself. That’s the front and back of it.’

  Patterson sat back. ‘Sergeant, nobody’s saying you can’t defend yourself. It’s—’

  ‘It’s a fact that some things don’t ever change.’ Quarrie peered at the other agent. ‘If a man’s pointing a gun at you it don’t matter whether it’s 1967 or 1867, things are the way they’ve always been.’

  Nobody spoke for a moment and Van Hanigan shifted his weight. Patterson glanced at him then he looked back at Quarrie. ‘Even so, I will want a copy of the report. Look, we’re on the same side here and the last thing I want is to sound off to a fellow cop, but a man is dead and I need to understand what happened.’

  Quarrie studied him for a moment. ‘All right, Special Agent, when I’m done with the district attorney I’ll have him send you a copy.’

  ‘That’s all I ask,’ Patterson said.

  Taking off his hat Quarrie passed the brim between the tips of his fingers. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘he wasn’t my uncle, he was my godfather.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Patterson lifted an eyebrow.

  ‘Captain Hamer. He wasn’t my uncle, he was my godfather.’

  Patterson got to his feet. ‘Before we go, this other business in Wichita Falls, the dead guy at The Roosevelt, is there anything we should know?’

  ‘Nope,’ Quarrie said. ‘Right now I’m checking his ID.’

  When they were gone Quarrie gazed the length of the corridor. ‘Captain,’ he said, ‘what was all that about?’

  ‘Beats me,’ Van Hanigan said. ‘With Hoover on their case all the time I guess they like to be seen to be flexing their muscles.’ He flapped a hand. ‘So anyway: The Roosevelt, this guy with no credit card or driver’s license. After what you told me yesterday I spoke to a cop in New Orleans name of Colback to see if there’s anything he could tell us.’ He made a face. ‘Said to me how there’s a couple of crews he’s looking at down there but no one with links to Texas.’

  Quarrie nodded. ‘Right now I got Tom Dakin running tests on the body and if I hadn’t had to come up here this morning I’d be finding out what-all Henderson forgot to tell me.’ He was quiet then for a moment. ‘Colback, you said that cop you talked to’s name was?’

  ‘That’s right; he’s a lieutenant with the organized crime squad.’ Sitting back in his chair Van Hanigan broke out a cigar.

  ‘Captain,’ Quarrie said, ‘I got a hunch the lab’s going to come up with Proloid residue both on that table in the hotel room and the butt of Henderson’s handgun. That means those meds were ground into powder so they could be mixed with water. That might work if it’s Wiley with a thyroid problem, but I ain’t going to hold my breath.’ He adjusted the leg ties on his gunbelt. ‘Colback,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t know where it was, but I heard that name someplace already.’

  Back in Wichita Falls he stopped by the sheriff’s office and grabbed a cup of coffee then picked up the phone to the district attorney. He told him about his meeting with the SAC and asked him to send a copy of the report to the field office in Dallas. When he put the phone down again dispatch buzzed through with a message to call the morgue.

  ‘Tom,’ he said when the medical examiner answered. ‘This is John Q.’

  ‘What we talked about,’ Dakin said, ‘cerebrospinal fluid. I performed a spinal tap and there’s more iodine back there than fluid. Good job you mentioned that bottle otherwise I’d never have thought to check.’

  Perched on the edge of the desk, Quarrie narrowed his eyes. ‘So what you’re telling me here, that feller didn’t die of natural causes, he was killed by prescription drugs?’

  ‘Yes, sir, that’s what I’m telling you.’

  When he put down the phone for the second time Quarrie was thinking about yesterday on the dirt road and what Henderson hadn’t said. Unbuckling his gunbelt he opened the large drawer in his desk, stowed the weapons then locked the drawer and pocketed the key. Leaving the office he crossed the parking lot to the jailhouse, a newly built brick building with a single line of cells. At the desk he asked the deputy for a copy of Henderson’s fingerprint card.

  Two minutes later he locked the door to an interview room with no windows save the one that overlooked the hallway. He closed the blinds so nobody could see in then turned to where Henderson was sitting on the other side of the table with one hand cuffed to a fixed metal ring. Quarrie did not say anything. He leaned against the wall with his arms folded and studied Henderson. There was nothing in the room except the table, two chairs and an ashtray made from aluminum foil. Shaking a cigarette from his pack Quarrie rolled the wheel on the Zippo he’d been issued in Korea. Still he didn’t speak; he just cast a glance from Henderson to the fingerprint card and back.

  ‘What’s up, John Q?’ Henderson said.

  ‘Did you talk to your mom yet?’

  Henderson seemed to hunch where he sat on the chair. ‘Yes, I did, and she bawled me out some, I can tell you.’

  ‘What did you expect? You just got done with pre-release. What the hell were you thinking?’

  ‘I don’t know what I was thinking, probably five hundred dollars.’

  ‘And did you get it?’

  Henderson squinted at him.

  ‘The money: did Wiley pay you?’

  ‘Well, if he did it don’t matter now.’ Henderson let go a sigh. ‘Matter of fact he didn’t get around to it, no.’

  ‘And you’re set there having only just got out of Ferguson the first time.’

  Henderson looked away. ‘I’m hoping the way I surrendered to you will help some. What-all I said to Wiley about giving it up. How much more time d’you figure they’re going to give me?’

  Quarrie sat down in the opposing chair and tipped ash from his cigarette. ‘We ain’t talking jail time, Scott. Right about now I figure you’ll be lucky if you don’t get to ride the lightning.’

  Henderson stared at him wide-eyed.

  ‘If what you’d told me yesterday was all there was then the way you hung up your gun and put your hands on your head, what-all you said to your buddy, that might’ve meant something.’

  ‘What’re you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about the Roosevelt Hotel. A room booked out to Wiley with two beds and both of them had been slept in.’ He stared at Henderson then. ‘It don’t matter that you told Wiley to put his piece down, not after what you did.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Henderson tried to spread a palm but the handcuff held it.

  ‘Sure you do,’ Quarrie said. ‘It don’t matter what you told me yesterday. You kill a man in Texas you’re going to the chair, ain’t no two ways about it.’

  Henderson’s face was the color of chalk. ‘Mr Hemmings you mean? He ain’t dead, is he? That whack on the head, it was Wiley done it, not me.’

  ‘Will you quit jerking my damn chain?’ Quarrie leaned across the table. ‘I ain’t talking about old man Hemmings. I’m talking about the feller in the Roosevelt Hotel.’

  Henderson tried to hold his eye but he had to look away. Quarrie stubbed out his cigarette and then he walked around behind Henderson and bent with his mouth to his ear. ‘There ain’t a whole lot I like less in life than somebody lying to me. The fact is you didn’t just hook up with that asshole and split a pitcher like you told me, you took a room at the Roosevelt Hotel.’

  Henderson stared at the table top.

  ‘So what happened, the truth this time? I don’t want any more bull
shit.’

  ‘It wasn’t me.’ Henderson shook his head. ‘I didn’t do anything. I—’

  ‘Sure you did.’ Quarrie pointed to the fingerprint card. ‘Those are your dabs right there and I found a set in the room where a man was killed and another bunch in 210. I ain’t talking about the door handle or TV remote, I’m talking powder residue we recovered from the desk.’

  He paced around the table again and Henderson was trembling. ‘Where did the pills come from? G Matisse, the name of the patient on the bottle, Scott. Who is that? I know we’re talking New Orleans on account of the pharmacist, but who were those drugs for, huh?’ He slapped a palm on the table and Henderson jumped. ‘Wiley’s dead so that leaves you and me. It might be you read somewhere how there’s a moratorium on the chair right now, but this is Texas and I got strings I can pull if I want to.’

  When he went back to the office he unlocked the drawer in his desk, took out his gunbelt and buckled it on. As he fastened the leg ties he was thinking about the dead man and an address in New Orleans. Louisiana something, Henderson had told him; he couldn’t remember the rest. Quarrie was thinking about the photograph they had found hidden in the trouser press. Henderson swore he never got to see what it was because Wiley burned it as soon as they were back in their own room.

  He looked up as a helicopter passed overhead. It was making for Andrews Airforce Base and as he listened to the distinctive sound of the rotor blades he was reminded of the time he’d been medi-vaced off a freezing mountain in Korea. He’d taken a bullet in the stomach and Pious had dragged him into a foxhole before carrying him down to where a Huey flew him to the MASH unit. The memory was as clear as if it was yesterday and as he turned from the window he knew where he’d heard Colback’s name.

  Picking up the phone he asked the operator to connect him with the organized crime squad in New Orleans. The line went quiet and a minute later a gruff voice spoke in his ear.

  ‘Lieutenant Colback?’ Quarrie said. ‘My name’s Quarrie, Ranger Sergeant out of Wichita Falls. Yesterday you talked to my captain.’