“Oh, you’re wondering if that’s occurred to me. That I should be thinking, if my life’s really in danger, shouldn’t I run to the police? Why put myself in your hands instead, the hands of a stranger? Well, why not? Who else do I have? I put myself in your hands last night, willingly enough. Why not again.”
There was an uneasiness in her voice, despite her artificially flip attitude, that disturbed me. A resignation, that seemed to say, If you’re my lover, fine… but if you’re my murderer, well that’s fine, too… it just doesn’t matter that much to me, one way or the other, anymore.
“Carrie,” I said. “If you think I’ve kidnapped you, you’re wrong. If you want to go to the police, just say so. I’ll turn this heap around and drop you off at the station in Davenport. Just say the word.”
“No. No police. I told you about my husband’s political ties. People in local government and beyond could be involved in the same illegal things he was involved in, and if there are people trying to kill me, it could very likely be them. So, no, I don’t have the urge to call the police. But I would like to know what you hope to do for me. Besides hide me out for a while. How can you stop killers, anyway?”
“The same way they stop you.”
“Oh. I think I see what you mean.”
“Maybe you’ll want to change your mind about the police, after all, Carrie. Knowing that.”
“Knowing what? That some people are going to die? And that you’re going to kill them? No. My husband was murdered. I’m apparently next on the list. People want to murder me. No, it doesn’t bother me if people like that are killed. It doesn’t even bother me if you’re the one who does it. I just don’t want to hear about it. Lie to me if you have to. But don’t tell me.”
We were coming into a small town, a cemetery on our left, a sign welcoming us to Blue Grass, population 1032, on the right.
“You might be holed up at that cottage several days,” I said. “Got any food on hand there?”
“Not to speak of,” she said.
“Well, if something’s open here, we’ll stop and pick some up.”
A block later I pulled up along the curb in front of an old-fashioned clapboard grocery store and sent her in. Then I drove down another block and pulled in to get gas.
While the Buick was being filled, I went in and got change and used the pay phone.
I called the number Ash had given me earlier today.
The call went through immediately; one ring and a well-modulated baritone voice answered.
“Who’s speaking?” I demanded.
“Curtis Brooks.”
“Brooks, are you the man, or just a stooge? I don’t want to talk to another go-between.”
“You must be Mr. Quarry.”
“Do you have ten thousand dollars handy?”
“Why?”
“Have it handy by tomorrow morning. Early. I’ve got the Broker’s widow and that’s what it’ll cost you, if you want her.”
I hung up, paid for the gas and drove over and picked her up at the grocery store, and we headed through the fog and mist toward her cottage.
20
I let her carry the groceries. There was only one bag and it didn’t kill her. I carried the guns, the silenced Ruger I got off the dead backup man, and my. 38, which I’d packed as a spare, the only thing I’d bothered to dig out of my suitcase for the stay at her cottage; the Ruger I kept in hand, the. 38 I tucked in my waistband. And I did carry a six-pack of Coke, too, so don’t get the idea chivalry’s entirely dead.
Fifteen miles or so out of Blue Grass we had turned off the highway to cut over to the older highway that followed the river, and to do that we had to take side roads, gravel country roads that were winding and hilly and lined with trees, a journey that even under the best of conditions would have been a roller coaster ride, let alone in this weather. So we didn’t do much talking: I drove, and she helped navigate, and finally we came down a particularly steep hill and she pointed out the abandoned farmhouse she’d told me about, on the right-hand side of the road, near the bottom of the hill, just barely visible in the fog and looking like every kid’s idea of a haunted house. She’d said this would make a good place to leave the car, and as I pulled in there I wondered for a second what she was leading me into, but she wasn’t leading me into anything, as it turned out, except a good place to leave the car. With the Buick parked behind the sagging barn next to the deserted farmhouse, we set off through the fog on foot, her lugging the groceries, me the six-pack of Coke and guns.
We, walked on the gravel road about a quarter-mile and then hit the highway, which immediately to our left was blocked, a sign on a fence-type barricade saying “Bridge Out-Detour,” with an arrow pointing back the way we’d come, and flashing lights to make it all clearly visible even on a night like tonight. We skirted the barricade and followed the highway another quarter of a mile and then she led me off onto a graveled drive, which wound through a marshy area that was heavy on dead trees and strange shrubs and gnarled vines that stuck up out of and hovered over pools of water whose surfaces were as blotchy as a disease of the skin; it was a nice area, if you were looking for a preserve for water moccasins. Maybe that explained the privacy afforded a cottage that wasn’t particularly fancy, just a little white house with a shingle roof, sitting way up on flood-precautionary stilts made of stacked cement blocks, above a snow-patched lawn that fell to the river and a modest dock; very ordinary-looking, really, the sort of place you’d expect to see as one of a cluster of such cottages, not isolated, like this. Huddling around protect- tively were tall thick-trunked trees that didn’t at all have the sinister appearance of the nearby swamplike area that gave this oasis its seclusion. There were wooden steps with rail along the side of the cottage, and she went up, and I followed, onto a sun deck. She put the grocery sack down to unlock the door and I asked her if this was the only entrance. She said it was. She asked if that was good or bad. I said probably good.
And it was. Unless somebody planned to set the place on fire or shoot tear gas in at us or something, having a single way in and out was a good thing. At this height, it would take mountain-climbing gear to come in a window anywhere but off that sun deck, where the front of the cottage made a sort of porch, with windows that were slatted, like oversize Venetian blinds made of glass, cranking shut from within and backed with screens and impossible to use for entry short of taking an ax to them. The only practical way into the place was through the front door, which, not surprisingly, is how we went in.
Stepping into the porch area, Carrie flicked on a standing lamp, explaining there was no overhead lighting at all inside, and I had a look around. The porch had a sofa and several soft-cushioned lawn chairs and a Formica top table with chairs and a portable television on a stand and a braid rug on a tile floor. The walls were pine, though three sides of the room were dominated by those slatted windows; the back wall was decorated with framed prints of fishing and hunting scenes.
I asked Carrie if there’d been any trouble with vandalism, a lot of stuff in here to leave unattended, but she said before her husband died, he’d all but lived down here, keeping the place in use pretty much year round, and, too, the constable of a little town a few miles from here kept an eye on the place, so seldom was it ever bothered. She doubted the constable would be around tonight, though, what with the heavy fog and all, but if he was, she could handle him.
If the porch area was the equivalent of a living room, the larger, single room beyond was all the other rooms: kitchen in the near right corner, off in a cubbyhole separate but unenclosed from the rest of the room, and off of which was the john; a double bed in the far right corner, next to a window; wood-burning stove (for heating purposes only) in the middle of the room, with stovepipe rising through the low tiled ceiling; an informal office area in the near left corner, just an old battered oak desk with an equally battered wooden swivel chair; and a dark pine trunk and several tall storage cabinets filling the rest of the space along the walls, which were t
he same light pine as the porch.
She put the groceries away while I built a fire. It was cold in there, and we were both damp from our walk in the mist, and I didn’t figure a little chimney smoke was going to attract any attention, in fog this dense.
So I sat feeding wood into the mouth of the stove, and she came and sat on the floor next to me, getting close to the warmth, watching the flames move. For a long time her face was expressionless, blank, a mask the glow of the fire began to play upon, making attitudes and emotions and expressions seem to be there and then flicker away.
Maybe she was waiting to see if I’d brought her here to kill her. Maybe I was thinking the same thing about her. I did see her glance now and then at the guns, the Ruger on the floor between us, the. 38 in my belt, but the meaning of her glance was elusive. She also looked at me, occasionally. Studied my face like she did the fire.
Then, suddenly, impulsively, she pulled her sweater over her head. She was wearing a skimpy, translucent bra, which she undid and let drop, and the shadows and colors of the fire reflecting off her flesh gave her an almost mystical look, like a textured photograph. She covered her breasts with her hands. She shook her head and the shoulder-length white-blond hair shimmered and caught glints of yellow and orange and copper, tossing them around like sparks. A grin glimmered across her no-longer mask of a face, and she opened her mouth and touched her tongue to her upper lip, then her lower, and then she grinned again, mouth still open, spreading her fingers over her breasts to let the nipples peek through. I reached out and touched her face, and her expression changed again, the smile disappearing, and something like pain crossed her features. She was cupping her breasts, now, offering them to me. I accepted.
We made love. We’d fucked in the pool, and screwed in bed, but this time we made love, on the cold tile floor, bathing in the heat and color of the fire, moving slowly together, slowly together, and after a long while warmth flooded into warmth, and then we were holding onto each other another long while afterward, the fire crackling and warning us it would die down completely if left unattended.
21
The broker had his arm around her. She was wearing a bikini, the same white bikini she’d worn for-me, last night. Broker was in a blue sport shirt and tan pants and looked happier than I’d ever seen him, smiling so broadly the ends of his wispy mustache were sticking straight up. Carrie was smiling, too. They didn’t look as wrong together as you might think. Broker never did look his age, despite his stark white hair and politician’s bearing. And while Carrie was in her twenties, she could have been taken for older; it’s difficult to pin down a woman’s age, which is how they want it, I suppose.
Seeing them in the photograph together was a shock, somehow, and an involuntary twinge of resentment wormed its way through me, at the sight of this thick hand on her soft tanned shoulder. I’d accepted the fact that she’d been married to him, but an image of them together had never formed in my mind. And I’d instinctively chalked the marriage up as an arrangement, a marriage of convenience, and the obvious love between them shook me a little.
What got me wasn’t Carrie, really. I already knew she was a sensitive type, able to feel loving toward just about anybody. But the Broker loving her, the Broker loving anybody, that was the surprise. I’d always assumed that behind his empty eloquence and stuffed-shirt demeanor there lurked something twisted and wrong. He was, after all, a man who fancied himself just another (very) successful businessman, and seemed bothered not a bit that his business was murder. Especially as long as people like me were around to carry it out for him.
No, it didn’t seem right, the look of devotion, affection, and happiness on that self-important old bastard’s face. Not right at all. I’d have been much less surprised to discover a photograph of him being whipped by some broad in black leather, or getting sucked off by one of the succession of young male bodyguards I saw him go through. I mean, surely the Broker was into something more kinky than just a younger woman. It was like finding the Boston Strangler shacked up with Miss America… the very wholesomeness of it was disgusting.
So was the idyllic atmosphere they were basking in. They were on a boat, a cabin cruiser apparently, fishing gear evident in the background of the color photograph, and lots of sun and blue sky.
“That was taken a year ago,” she said. “In the Bahamas.”
The picture was on the wall, with a number of other framed pictures of the Broker and Carrie, and of the Broker and various men and women I didn’t recognize. I was sitting at the big scarred-top desk, flashing a high-intensity lamp on the wall of pictures, and had centered in on this one.
“You know,” I said, “I saw you together once. I’d forgotten about it, just remembered. You were at a restaurant together, a fancy one, in the Quad Cities.”
“When?”
“I don’t remember exactly. Not too long ago.” I did remember exactly, but didn’t want to say; it was just days before the Broker died trying to have me killed.
“Did my husband introduce us?”
“No. I spoke to him, but not in front of you.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“Wasn’t hard. We met in the toilet We talked in toilets a lot, your husband and me. It was that kind of relationship.”
“Jack, I… I’d rather you didn’t go into any of that. I… there are some things I’d really rather not know, Jack. I don’t think I could handle knowing some things, you know?”
“Sure. Forget it. I didn’t mean to bring any of that up, anyway.”
“Listen, why… why don’t I get us something to drink?” She was standing there in bra and panties with a plaid woolen blanket she’d got from somewhere shrugged around her shoulders.
Her eyes were big and clear and blue, and she looked like a kid. Funny, in that restaurant that time, I’d thought she was in her mid-thirties, thought she looked cold, the frigid bitch type, figured her for a wealthy, worldly, well-educated pain in the ass. Now, I knew she was in her late twenties and young for that, and anything but cold or a bitch, and no matter how many times she may have been to Europe or the Bahamas, worldly she wasn’t, and no matter how many private schools for girls she’d suffered through, there was a lot this girl had yet to learn.
“I have bourbon in the cabinet,” she said.
“Just put some Coke in a glass,” I said. “Nothing hard for me.”
She touched my leg and grinned in a way I hadn’t seen since last night. “Maybe I’m in the mood for something hard.”
“Maybe you better let me catch my breath,” I grinned back. “For now, just some Coke and ice, okay?”
She went over to the kitchen area, dragging her blanket, and I flashed the little lamp across a few more pictures. Many of them were of the Broker and Carrie in shots similar to that one I’d lingered over, some of the photos taken here at the cottage and on the river, others sunny vacation pictures, the Bahamas, Florida, what-have-you. I skimmed right over one picture, thinking it was the Broker and Carrie with some unknown fellow vacationer, then something clicked in my head and I went back to it, lifted it in its frame off the wall, and gave it a close look.
The picture was of three people dressed in white tennis garb, rackets in hand, leaning against the wire-mesh fence of a court somewhere. One of them was the Broker, all right, but years ago. His face had never been lined, but it had gotten fleshy over the years, and in this picture his face was firm and lean, and his hair dark brown, with a few streaks of the premature white that would eventually take over. Next to him was a beautiful woman, who looked remarkably like Carrie, but was someone else, someone obviously related to her, an older sister perhaps. The woman was, in the picture, perhaps eighteen or twenty, and she had the same naturally white-blond hair as Carrie, only worn in the pageboy style of the times. It wasn’t a color picture, but her eyes were light and clear and probably as blue as Carrie’s, and only something slightly different around the nose and mouth made the woman less than a dead ringer for Carri
e.
“My mother,” she said, looking over my shoulder. She set the glass of Coke on the desk.
“Who’s this next to her?” I asked, pointing at the guy on the woman’s left. Broker was on her right.
“That’s my father,” she said.
“I see. Is there a story here?”
“I guess so. Sort of. Both of them loved her. They all three went to school together-college, I mean-back east someplace. My father ended up marrying her.”
“And the other guy in the picture waited around a few years and then settled for you, is that it?”
“You make it sound sick or something…”
“Sorry.”
“Maybe I can make you understand…”
“Please.”
She didn’t have the whole story, having just heard pieces of it, over the years. She gathered that her father and the Broker had been close friends before her mother came between them, and it wasn’t until some few years later, with her mother’s early death, that the two men resumed their friendship, perhaps out of a need to console each other. At any rate, she’d grown up having two fathers around, in a way, though the real one paid little attention to her (“He was busy, out of town on business a lot, still is… his firm handles cases all over the place”), though doting on her younger sister who didn’t bear such a painfully close resemblance to their dead mother. Her surrogate father, however, the kindly old Broker, didn’t shun Carrie for looking like her mother, rather his reaction was to worship the child for it. And she liked the attention of a doting father figure; she had settled for that, in lieu of the real thing. “I always told him I was going to marry him, when I grew up,” she said, “and I did. And if you want to make something sick out of that, that’s your problem.”
She’d been frank with me, but there was one thing she’d sluffed over, and I had to go back to it, even at the risk of upsetting her further.
“Your mother,” I said.
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