“Sounds lonely.”
“Just terrible lonely. I could use some company.”
Was she part of this? Had I just been invited to my own murder? Silly as that might sound, keep in mind: I was sitting there looking in the barroom mirror at a guy whose definition of Iron Maiden wasn’t a heavy metal band.
I turned my gaze to her and smiled, gently. I touched the red-nailed hand that didn’t have a cigarette in it. “Sugar, you drained the company right out of me. But I’m hanging around town all week. I do want to get together.”
“If that’s the brush-off, you have nice technique.”
I shook my head. “Not the brush-off. You intrigue me, too.”
The gypsy hair and the dark tan and the wide scarlet mouth and the green translucence of her eyes really did intrigue me. So did the sadness behind her flip slutty manner, and the intelligence in that beautiful, time-and-cigarette-ravaged face. If she didn’t want to kill me, marrying her might be an option. She had money and she could suck the chrome off a ’57 Chevy fender. Who could ask for more in a female?
She got into her purse and took out a black felt-tip pen. “Give me your hand,” she said.
I complied.
She wrote a series of numbers across my wrist. “That’s my phone number. Don’t call before eleven A.M.”
I glanced at the black numbers on my skin. “That was unnecessary. You said you were in the book.”
“Well, that will remind you.” She tossed a five on the bar and gathered her things.
She’d had four of those Jack and Gingers. I knew I should drive her home, but I needed to keep an eye on Farrell and Mateski, who were still deep in conversation, former listening, latter chattering.
“Listen,” I said, “I can run you home, but I can’t come in. I’m meeting somebody here later and have to get right back.”
She slid off the stool. “Another woman, already?” She nodded toward the barmaid, down serving somebody. “Hate to break your heart, but Mary Ann has a boyfriend.”
“I’m not surprised, and it’s not another woman. It’s an interview for my story. Really.”
She shrugged elaborately. She was a little drunk. “You don’t owe me anything, Jack. You can go home and wash my number off and no big deal. Of course, late at night, every now and then, you’ll remember that hummer out by those garbage cans, and you’ll wonder what you missed out on. I’ll give you a hint— they call me Snapper Jenny. Wouldn’t you like to know why?”
“I think I might know.”
She grinned. Those teeth were yellowish but it was a hell of a smile. “I bet you do, Jack. I just bet you do.”
She leaned in and kissed me on the cheek, leaving lipstick behind. I swiveled on the stool to watch her go. Long limbs, bony kind of frame, but such a nice round ass.
Then she was out the door in a blast of cold air.
Mary Ann in her purple tank-top materialized, rubbed the lipstick off my cheek with a drink napkin, and asked, “Another Coke?”
“Just freshen this one, would you?”
She nodded, and when she came back with it, gave me the cleavage lean-in, saying, “You and Jenny have a good time outside, Pastor?”
“I ministered to her needs.”
“I’ll just bet you did. I bet she got down on her knees and prayed.”
“You’re half-right.”
She didn’t try topping that, just threw me a smirk and wandered down to needle some other customer.
Farrell was sliding out of the booth. He paused to smooth his sharp suit and shake hands with Mateski, then strode in my direction; but his eyes weren’t on me, or anything specifically. They were cold hard unblinking orbs, small black buttons sewn on a ragdoll’s face.
That nicely tailored suit did not allow for any document to be tucked away in a side pocket, and he wasn’t carrying anything. Had Mateski given him chapter-and-verse out loud, in that back booth? With no need for sharing his surveillance notes, and for Farrell just to remember? That seemed very damn doubtful.
The slender hitman let in some more brisk air in as he went out—the temperature was falling—and through the Spike’s front window I saw him stroll to a nondescript gray vehicle. When I’d seen him pull into the Spike’s lot, I hadn’t discerned the make, but now I did: a Chevy Cavalier, four-door, an ’80 or ’81. Nothing special, which made sense, because Farrell probably bought it for cash at some shady used lot like I had the Pinto. Like Mateski probably did the Bonneville.
Should I follow him?
Very unlikely that Farrell would try anything tonight. He would want to get settled in, do some minor surveillance of Vale on his own, get comfortable with the information Mateski had shared, tool around town a little and get the lay of the land. And I didn’t mean Snapper Jenny.
I felt confident I’d be easily able to track Farrell down. He’d be at one of Stockwell’s half a dozen active motels—there were two resorts and another half dozen motels shuttered for the season—and I should be able to do that yet tonight. Then I would stake him out, watch for my opportunity, and if necessary follow him to Vale’s studio and intervene there. That Farrell would not have a quick kill in mind was helpful, as he’d probably be grabbing the dance instructor and transporting him somewhere for a road company show of The Marquis De Sade Follies. Too bad there wasn’t a poster for Vale to frame.
Farrell could wait.
Right now I needed to handle Mateski. I glanced at him in the mirror, still seated back there in his booth. He wouldn’t leave immediately after Farrell, that was a lock. At the moment he was talking to his waitress. She was a cute blonde, a little broad in the beam, thirties, probably a single working mom. Was he ordering more food? No. He was hitting on her!
He had just asked her out. I knew this because I had rudimentary lip-reading skills developed on surveillance stints over the years. These skills hadn’t helped with Farrell because he’d said very little, just sitting listening to Mateski, whose back had been to me. But now Mateski was turned toward the waitress, which aimed his face toward the barroom mirror. What time do you get off work, beautiful? Ah, Mateski, you smooth son of a bitch....
She let him down gently—my view of her was a sideways one, which is tricky to read, but I think she said, Sorry, honey, I have an early morning tomorrow. Maybe the truth. Working mom.
Sunday night was lousy for scoring a pick-up at the Spike. This I knew despite my own luck outside by the garbage cans. Friday and Saturday, and even some weeknights, it wouldn’t be that tough. This was the kind of almost upscale shitkicker bar that doubled as a meat market.
But I didn’t figure the chunky redheaded antiques dealer would get anywhere, though striking out with the waitress hadn’t been enough to dissuade him. Two foxy-looking twenty-something gals down the bar, in jeans and bandana halter tops and lots of permed hair, were deep in a conversation that Mateski, climbing onto a stool next to one of them, tried to enter casually. They weren’t having any, and he wasn’t getting any.
Those two might have been up for it with the right couple of guys, particularly in their own age group. But Mateski was no John Travolta, and the girls weren’t into antiques.
His eyes caught mine in the mirror, and I thought this might turn into a bad moment, but he just gave me a fraternal shrug, and I shrugged back at him, as if to say, You’re right — can’t blame a guy for tryin’.
He had already settled up with the waitress who’d turned him down, and now he went back over to the booth, got glumly into his quilted ski jacket, and trundled out.
I hung back five minutes, so it wouldn’t be obvious. Settled my two-buck tab with a keep-the-change five-spot, leaving Mary Ann on good if not promising terms. Then I ambled out into the cold, yawning, glancing around the parking lot, looking casual but in fact alert, gripping the nine millimeter in my jacket pocket.
If I’d been made by Jenny—or if Mateski had noticed me in that bar as a guy he’d seen around town a few too many times to be safe—I could have a king-
size problem on my hands. The last thing I needed was to have some asshole who specialized in torture decide to question me about what the fuck I thought I was doing here in Stockwell.
But nobody accosted me, and I got into the Pinto and headed in the direction I figured Mateski had gone—he would either go back to the Rest Haven Court for one last night, or right on by out to Highway 218.
When I passed the motel, no car was parked at Cabin 12. That didn’t surprise me. The way the Bonneville was loaded up with primitive paintings and other horseshit, I didn’t figure another night there was in the cards. So Highway 218 it was.
And it took only ten minutes to catch up with him. I’d had to push the Pinto’s meager horsepower to do so, and even then I didn’t want to go over the speed limit—getting stopped by a cop was not a good idea, not with the nine mil in my jacket.
But I counted on Mateski having stopped at a gas station to fuel up before his trip home, and to maybe grab some snacks and a restroom break. That should make up for the five minutes I’d purposely lagged behind at the Spike. Apparently my thinking was correct, because there up ahead was the Bonneville’s big ass with Mateski’s big ass in it.
Traffic was light, and often I was right behind him, though I tried to keep at least one car between us whenever possible. The Bonneville was doing fifty-five and so was the Pinto, but my mind was racing.
Should I stay on him?
Did I need to remove him, at the next gas station, or when he pulled in at some motel? I didn’t think he could make it all the way back to Woodstock on one tank of gas.
Did he need killing?
Whenever I had worked with a passive partner, I requested that my other half hang around town or at least the area, in case I needed back-up. But certain other active hitters preferred sending surveillance guys on their merry way. Mateski and Farrell had made their contact, and would not necessarily be back in touch over the next few days. Probably unlikely they would be.
At some point, assuming I was successful, Mateski would discover the job had gone south—that Farrell was dead. I didn’t do accidents, so the antiques dealer would know an interloper had taken his partner out. He would inform his middleman, assuming there was one, and another passive-active pair would be sent out to do the job, and do it right this time.
But not immediately. Not for a week or even a month or maybe not at all. That would give me time to find out which of Candy Stockwell’s family or friends had hired Vale’s killing, and once the person who hired the job was out of the picture, there’d be no incentive for Mateski or his middleman to do anything further.
Or so it seemed to me, as I tailed the Bonneville through a cold dark night on Highway 218, a dreary underlit stretch of Midwestern nothingness enlivened only by the oldies station I was listening to on the car radio.
Songs I had listened to with the girl I wound up marrying right before I went off to Vietnam. Songs that were popular when, a few years later, I came back and found her in bed with some asshole. Even the song that had been playing on the radio when I went over to that asshole’s house just to talk to him, but when he smart-mouthed me from under that sportscar he was working on, I kicked out the jack and crushed him to shit and almost went to prison for it, almost, and that had been a big part of the Broker noticing me. Songs like that.
I followed him for sixty-some miles and then pulled into a gas station, got the Pinto’s tank filled, and headed back to Stockwell. Had I done the right thing? Hard to know. This profession I had invented for myself was no exact fucking science.
As was proven when I rolled into town, pulled into the Holiday Inn lot, got out, stretched, and glanced across the street at the Rest Haven Court, where a gray Chevy Cavalier, four-door, ’80 or ’81 model, was parked in front of Cabin 12.
* * *
I went up to my room in the Holiday Inn and I sat in the dark by the window looking out across at the Rest Haven and that parked Chevy for probably half an hour, as if it were a mirage that might disappear.
Lights were on in Cabin 12 for the first twenty minutes, then went out. It was midnight and presumably the torturer in there had gone to bed. He’d traveled a good distance today. Probably he was tuckered.
So was I, but tough shit—I had things to do. I had to think this through. What did it mean, Farrell using the same room Mateski had? That was hardly standard operating procedure. Normally, beyond one meeting, the passive and active halves of a hit team stayed as far apart as possible, wanting to avoid anything that might connect them in anyone’s mind.
But after I mulled it a while, the answer came like somebody threw a switch. I smiled. Simple, and actually pretty smart. There had been no exchange of documents tonight, no notes handed over, because that material had been left behind in Cabin 12, by one partner for the other.
Almost certainly Mateski had paid for Cabin 12 in advance, say for two weeks, or however long the team figured the entire job would take. No one at the Rest Haven was apt to notice the switch in inhabitants, and if they did, so what, who cared? The room had been paid for, hadn’t it?
The Vale hit would go down soon. Tomorrow most likely, and if not, the following day. Mr. Roger, in separating himself from those in the community who viewed him as a pariah, had indeed made himself a sitting duck in that black bunker. A sitting duck served up on a silver platter.
How best to handle this?
Was there any reason to fear this torturer more than any other professional in the killing business? Probably not. If things went awry, he would just kill me, not torture me to death—after all, no one would be paying him for the fancy stuff.
Still, the idea of taking on a professional killer capable of systematically snipping away your fingers, toes and penis, and doing so in a way that keeps you alive for the longest, most painful, despair-ridden time, was...off-putting.
Precautions were needed. I didn’t want to fuss with the noise suppressor—silencers are unwieldy, and if things got to the point of shooting, noise would be the least of my problems. The clothes I had on would do—sweatshirt and jeans—and the sheathed hunting knife clipped onto my belt just fine. I disliked knives, but sometimes they came in handy. From my suitcase, I took the switchblade, five inches long (ten extended) and half an inch wide, with no hilt. Also a small standard screwdriver, which I stuck in my right pants pocket, in case the old motel had doorknobs and I needed to pop a night latch. For night-latched doors with handles, all I needed was a rubber band, and I took a handful of those, loose in the bottom of the suitcase. In the bathroom, I rolled up my right pant leg and shaved my lower leg and then duct-taped the switchblade to my calf, enough tape to secure it, but not so much to require a hard tug.
I took some deep breaths. Got my shit together. Made sure I had a full clip in the nine millimeter. Loaded the .38 snubnose. Slipped into my fleece-lined jacket. Placed the nine mil in the right jacket pocket, snubby in the left. Snapped on surgical gloves.
Just after three A.M., I crossed the Holiday Inn lot. The street could only have looked deader if tumbleweed were rolling down. Not that long ago, the night had been pleasant enough for an outdoor blow job. By the time I’d left the Spike it was chilly. Now it was cold. My breath smoked.
Hands in my jacket pockets gripping guns, I walked over to the Rest Haven Court, to the slightly larger cabin near the neon sign (VACANCY). I looked in the side window nearest the front. A bell was over the door. Okay. Nobody in the small front office, though a light was on. I moved to the side window toward the back. Sheer curtains were drawn, but I could see a bald man in his forties in a plaid shirt asleep in his chair in front of a TV with snow on the screen. The white noise of it bled through the window.
Out front, I carefully opened the door, reaching up to grab and silence the bell. I stepped inside, leaving the door slightly ajar. The small front office had several STOCKWELL: MISSOURI’S LITTLE VACATIONLAND posters on the walls, a small waiting area with chairs and old magazines, and several racks of tourist booklets. The count
er had a mini-rack of the vacation fliers, a guest registration book, a ding-type bell for service, and a modern cash register. Through an open doorway, I could see the snowy TV screen and hear the accompanying hiss; I could not see the sleeper facing it, not from this angle.
Anyway, I hoped he was sleeping. I did not care for collateral damage.
When I slipped behind the counter, I could see the guy now, and he was deep asleep, wire-frame glasses having slid down his nose. Snoring, hands folded across a shirt-button-separating paunch. I allowed myself a smile, grabbed the spare key to Cabin 12 off its hook, made sure that bell didn’t jangle when I shut the door quietly, and went back out into a night that seemed even colder now.
Breath pluming, I walked the short distance to the row of cabins, then stopped and took stock. Not including Farrell’s Chevy, five cars were parked in spaces. No cars outside Cabins 10 and 11. Good. The doors to rooms had handles, not knobs. Even better.
I tried to look in the window of 12, but the curtains were drawn, the fabric heavy, though the slight space between the curtains, and beneath them, gave no indication of any bleed-through of light. No glow from under the door, either. There seemed to be nothing beyond this door but the room, its inhabitant, and darkness. At the door, I placed my ear and listened for a good minute. Maybe I heard snoring.
Maybe.
Certainly no conversation, no television, no phone talk. It was after three in the morning, wasn’t it? Every reason to believe Farrell was sleeping, probably sleeping soundly.
Or was there some way I could be walking into a trap? Was Snapper Jenny not what she seemed? Had I been made somehow? And got suckered into some kind of elaborate set-up?
With the nine mil in my left hand now, my back to the street side, concealing my activity, I inserted the key slowly, turned it, winced at the tiny click, worked the handle, then eased the door slightly open until the chain of the expected night latch stopped me. I paused to see if I got any reaction from within the room.
None. And I could hear a gentle snoring accompanying deep breathing.
The Wrong Quarry Page 6