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( Quarry - 2 )
Max Allan Collins
Max Allan Collins
Quarry's list
1
A noise woke me.
Not much of a noise, but enough of one to tell me I wasn’t alone in the house. The convincing thing was the dead silence that followed that little bump-in-the-night, an unnatural silence, and I found myself holding my breath, much as the intruder downstairs must have been.
I sat up in bed, leaned over toward the window, parted the curtains, and looked out. Looked down. It had snowed today, the season’s first snowfall; and the cold late November day had turned into a dark, even colder night. The ground was covered with a good five inches of white, and the footprints showed.
That was when I first consciously realized the. 38 was in my hand. I’d been keeping the gun under the pillow on the side of the bed that hadn’t been getting much use lately. Neither had the gun, outside of my carrying it around with me all the time, like some sort of goddamn. 38 caliber security blanket.
But all blankets were tossed aside now, and I was sitting up in bed, and the gun in my hand wasn’t a symbol any more, not just something to make me feel comfortable. No.
It was something to kill people with.
People like the two men who were invading my lake home at this very moment. Right now there was only one of them in the house, but another man was outside, backing the first guy up. No doubt of that. That was standard, a team of two, but that didn’t bother me. They wouldn’t be coming in together.
Which was nice, because it’s easier to kill people one at a time. Two-on-one may be okay in basketball, but not in this game.
I didn’t make any noise getting out of bed. Three and a half months of practice had made me good. The guy downstairs was good, too, I supposed, but he wasn’t that good; he hadn’t lived here like I had, he didn’t know this place other than maybe from photographs or an afternoon prowl he and his partner may have made sometime when I was away. And I’m always gone in the afternoon. So it would have been easy.
Easy to get in and look around, yes; but that wouldn’t make it easy to invade the place in the middle of an overcast, moonless, colder than fuck night. Not without making a noise, anyway.
And, too, I was ready for visitors. Oh, nothing elaborate. No alarm system or any of that bullshit. An alarm system isn’t going to do any good if the man who wants to come inside knows what he’s doing. Even a good amateur can get around an alarm. And a professional, a thief, say, or a hit- man like the one downstairs, wouldn’t be stopped by anything but an outrageously elaborate, expensive system with triple backups and the works. I didn’t have the money or the patience for that and of course most of the more effective alarm systems are arranged to trigger a light on a panel at some police station, and I didn’t exactly want to explain to any police why it was I needed an alarm in my house.
But I did have a system. Not an alarm system; nothing more than my own built-in alarm, which comes from those rice-paddy warfare years I suffered through, where you learned to sleep light unless you didn’t care about waking up. The best warning system depends not on electronics, but on devious thinking. You have to be smarter than the guy trying to break in. That comes from Vietnam, too, I guess: the tendency to think of psychological and even guerilla warfare than more conventional, unimaginative means. The layout of my little A-frame cottage is simple: two bedrooms in the rear, one of which is clearly the master bedroom (twice as large as the adjacent spare, and with triple the closet space); a small bathroom next to the master bedroom, across from the laundry room; a big open living room area, with a kitchenette on the left, as you come into the room from the hallway along which are the bedrooms, bath, and laundry rooms; and an open loft dominated by an oversize couch. The couch converts into a double-size bed at night.
Both bedrooms downstairs have easy access windows, and the footprints I’d seen had led to both of those windows, so I couldn’t be sure which bedroom he’d decided to enter. If my second-guessing of the intruder’s strategy was right, he’d have come in the window of the spare bedroom, the one that seemed not to be in use; but he may have been second-guessing me, and might have figured I’d use the spare bedroom to throw him off.
Whichever way he’d used to come in, he was by now surely finding out that the lumpish shape under the covers in the master bedroom’s bed was three pillows and not a body. In fact, if I listened real close, I might be able to pinpoint the exact moment when…
And I heard the thud.
I smiled.
There are a number of sounds in the world that can be described by the word “thud,” but there is only one sound like the thud that comes from a silenced automatic. And that thud had just sounded in the bedroom downstairs, right below me.
I had him. He was dead: Technically alive, yes, breathing. But dead.
The trick was, since another guy was outside, I probably should kill the one downstairs with his own gun. My. 38 was not silenced (as no silencer made can truly silence a revolver, with its exposed chamber) and if I fired it at him; the noise would probably, scare away his friend outside.
And I didn’t want him scared away.
I wanted him curious.
I wanted him to come in and say hello.
I wondered what the best way would be to get the silenced automatic away from the guy below. I don’t like to kill people with my hands; I’m not into that. Strangling people, breaking necks, snapping spines, you can have it.
But it looked like any way I figured it, some sort of struggle was going to be inevitable. Now, I’m not exactly a bruiser; I’m a couple inches under six foot, and at one hundred sixty pounds I was heavier than I’d been in a long time. I’m also no expert in karate or any of that; the only belt I wear holds my pants up. I know the basics of hand-to-hand, from Army training; but from practical experience I’ve found that whenever I’m in a kill-or-be-killed situation, pulling a trigger is all the exercise I crave.
On the other hand, there are certain situations where a certain amount of physical violence can’t be avoided.
When the guy below me stepped out of the hallway and into the open, I jumped down from the loft and landed with both feet on his shoulders.
The air gushed out of him, but he didn’t have a chance to say anything before he was unconscious. He hit the floor limp, like a fat man rolling out of bed, and I came down on top of him, using him to cushion my own fall. The silenced automatic tumbled from his fingers. I picked it up.
A nine-millimeter automatic. Like the one I used to use. I had to smile. The sensation of the nine-millimeter in my hand was not an altogether unpleasant experience. It was almost like shaking hands with an old friend.
On the floor, the guy was starting to rouse.
There were no lights on, of course, so I couldn’t see much of him. He was my size, about, a little heavier maybe. He was wearing black: heavy turtleneck sweater, slacks, even the stocking cap pulled down over his ears. His cheeks were red, against otherwise pale, pale skin.
And now he was up into a sitting position, there on the floor, his eyes open, and before he could say a word I said, “Take off your clothes.”
He didn’t say, “What?”
He didn’t say anything. He was a pro. He just started taking off his clothes, sweater first. The ribbing of thermal underwear was revealed as the sweater gave way. I didn’t blame him for the long johns. It was cold out there.
“Just down to your underwear,” I said.
He nodded, piled the sweater and slacks and stocking cap on the nearby kitchenette counter. “Shoes and socks, too,” I said.
He shrugged and started to unlace his black military- style boots.
“I don’t have to tell you not to try throwing a shoe at me or anything, do I? No, I didn’t think so.”
He put the boots on the counter, and sighed, as to say, “What now?”
“Back to the bedroom,” I said.
He started walking down the hallway. When we got to the end, he veered toward the master bedroom.
“No,” I said. “The other one.”
I wanted him to use the spare bedroom, because I had new sheets on the other bed, and the bed in here just had some old ragged ones I wouldn’t mind messing up. Also, there was a plastic liner.
“Get in,” I said, motioning to the bed.
He hesitated, showing confusion and, for the first time, worry.
“Don’t screw it up now,” I said. “You been fine up to here. Very professional. I respect that. So do as I say, and maybe you’ll be around tomorrow. Get in bed.”
Reluctantly, he climbed under the covers. There was more light in here, as the drapes were back and the light from the street a quarter-mile over was seeping in. I saw his face: young, rather blank, his features very ordinary but not unpleasant. His skin was extremely pale, the cold-reddened cheeks fading now.
“Pull the covers up around your neck,” I said. He did.
“Now what?” he said, speaking for the first time.
And the last.
The silenced nine-millimeter made its thudding sound and I went back out into the living room to get into the dead man’s clothes.
2
I sat on the floor in the spare bedroom with my back against the dresser and played dead. The second guy would be coming in sometime within the next five to ten minutes and, hopefully, would in the darkness assume the figure dressed in black, slumped on the bedroom floor, was his partner; and that the blood-spattered shape in the bed was me.
I didn’t have to fool him forever; all I wanted was a second. One second for him to be confused, seeing things not as they were but as I wanted them seen. One second, and I could take him without a struggle.
It would have been easier, of course, to just shoot him. But I couldn’t do that. Not and kill him, anyway. I could have shot him in the arm or leg, I suppose, but that wouldn’t necessarily incapacitate him. Some people can put up a pretty good fight, despite a wound. Some people can even be more dangerous wounded than not; getting shot pisses them off, and the next time you shoot it better be to kill.
And killing was out of the question, at this point, at least. I had to talk to this guy, which is why I wanted to avoid any extended struggle with him. In a struggle, people can get hurt. They can even get killed. And like I said, I had to talk to this guy, and if one of us was dead, talking would be pretty well ruled out.
That was where all of my precautions, all my strategy had begun. Three and a half months ago I had tried to burn same bridges behind me, but I knew the possibility existed of a bridge or two surviving my incendiary efforts. And if such was the case, someone-I didn’t know who, exactly, but someone-would decide to have me hit. The contract would very probably be handled by a team of two; one would carry out the hit itself, the other would be the backup man. From the very beginning I had known the best way to handle that eventuality would be to kill the first man in, and then wait for the backup man, who, seeing his partner dead, might be persuaded to give me certain information.
Precisely what that information would be, I couldn’t say. I hoped for the name of the man who had hired the two killers, but that was a slim hope. Most likely the assignment had been through somebody like the Broker. But with the Broker dead, some other middleman would be involved, and if I could get the middleman’s name, it would be an easy step to the name I really wanted.
So I was prepared for the invasion of my home by men sent to kill me. I had almost been looking forward to it, as until an attempt was made on my life, or until sufficient time had passed-say three years-without any such attempt, my life would be in limbo. And I didn’t have the funds to maintain a three-year vacation. Or, the patience. The cottage has been my home for five years, and I always had enjoyed my quiet, lakeside existence. But that had been when I was working, when I was gone for a week or more on a job, and then would come back for rest and solitude. Year-round rest and solitude, though, could prove boring and probably stagnating. And, in the past, I’d spent a lot of time enjoying myself, with friends (a regular group of us played poker, sometimes as often as three nights a week), and at nearby Lake Geneva, primarily at the Playboy Club. This was a vacation area, with water sports in the summer, skiing in the winter, so there were good-looking women to be had most of the time.
But all of that I’d had to put on the shelf. With the possibility of an attempt on my life coming at any given moment, I couldn’t allow myself the luxury of being distracted. And my poker-playing pals, who were straight types who thought I was a lingerie salesman, might get a little unnerved if our game got broken up one night by gunfire. My sex life had to be forgone, if for no other reason than it’s hard to keep it up when any second you might get shot down. And, too, you tend to be somewhat off your guard when you’re fucking somebody. People have been killed in bed before, it happens all the time, and dying happy is some small compensation, I guess, but no thank you.
All of my attention, then, had been focused on my survival in this specific situation: the invasion of my home by killers. And my biggest worry right now, as I sat slumped on the floor in the spare bedroom, in the company of a man I’d just killed, was that I had overtrained. Not so much in the sense of an athlete who leaves his best game on the practice field; but that I had gone overboard, had devised a paranoid’s plan, and not that of a realist. Had I been too elaborate? I couldn’t help feeling like a silly ass, sitting there playing dead, dressed up in somebody else’s clothes, waiting to point my gun and say, “Trick or treat!”
In the late summer and fall afternoons, when I would sit on my porch studying the shimmer of the lake, watching the leaves turn gold, sipping a bottle of soda (I’m not a beer drinker) and daydreaming about my eventual triumph over the killers who would, one day, one night, invade my lakeside sanctuary, my preparations had seemed sane and necessary. Now, in early winter, the day of the first snow, sitting on the cold floor of the spare bedroom, sharing that bedroom with a dead man, wearing his clothes, pretending to be dead myself, I wasn’t sure.
However I figured it, the second guy would be harder to take. He’d be coming into a situation he assumed had gone wrong. That’s what working backup is all about. Your partner’s late getting back, and you figure something must have got fucked up, and you go in to see what.
If I could have counted on him coming in the same way as his partner, through the window just to my left here in the spare bedroom, all I would have had to do was stand to one side and stick a gun in his ribs as he stepped over the sill. No problem. No struggle.
But he wouldn’t come in the same window. He wouldn’t be coming in at all if something hadn’t gone wrong. His partner had, obviously, made at least one mistake. Going in the same way could mean stepping in the same pile of dog shit as his partner. So the window was out. That much I could count on. That, and that he would be coming in. Somehow.
In the meantime, I waited.
Sharing a room with a dead man can be a less than pleasant experience, especially if the man’s bowels empty when he dies, as is common. All of a sudden you begin to understand how the tradition of flowers at funerals got started. But this corpse had better manners than most, and wasn’t smelling up the room at all. He was, in fact, better company than a lot of people I’ve met.
The only bad thing about him was he was a size smaller than me, and his clothes made a tight, slightly uncomfortable fit. But I did have the silenced nine- millimeter to thank him for, so what the hell. You can’t have everything.
I was just wondering if I could get away with clearing my throat when I realized I wasn’t alone.
I’d expected him to be good, but this was ridiculous. He was a few feet away from me before
I even knew he was inside. The second guy, I mean, not the corpse. The corpse was staying put. But his partner was inching silently toward the spare bedroom, moving down the hall like something floating. He must have come in through the living room, which was damn near impossible. The door in there creaked, and the only way to open the windows from the outside was with a screwdriver or maybe a crowbar; and once open, the windows led in over all sorts of furniture, which would in turn lead to making all sorts of noise.
But there had been no noise, and I was so surprised to sense him approaching, I almost moved.
He stooped down to me. Touched my shoulder with his left hand. His right hand had a gun in it. “Beatty?” he said.
I grabbed his right hand and shook the gun loose. I nudged his belly with the nine-millimeter. “Up,” I said.
We stood together. Slowly. His gun on the floor, mine in his gut.
“You must be Quarry,” he said.
3
I flicked on the light switch with my free hand and got a look at the guy. He, too, was dressed in black; he wore a quilted thermal jacket instead of a sweater, but basically we were dressed the same, and stood there facing each other like a reflection.
He was smaller than me, at least an inch or two shorter, though by weight he was a little heavier, I’d imagine, but not softer. His brown hair was thin on top, trimmed close on the sides, and he had the friendly face of a bartender who can be your buddy all night long, then the second you step out of line, whip a sash weight from under the bar and split your head open.
“The jacket,” I said.
He made a shrugging smile and unzipped the jacket and got out of it slowly and let it drop. He watched my eyes to see if they followed the jacket. They didn’t.
He wore a red, black, and white plaid shirt, a hunter’s shirt. There was no holster, shoulder or otherwise. His silenced automatic, the nine-millimeter’s twin, which I’d already kicked over in the corner, was more than a holster could handle, except for perhaps something special made. But then a hitman usually has little need to constantly carry a gun, would only carry a gun those few minutes it takes to get a job done, so the lack of a holster was no surprise.
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