Julie was sitting forward and grinning nastily at her old man. “Wow-I’m blown the fuck away!” Then she looked at me. “Son of a bitch knows how I like my coffee! ” And back at him: “How old am I, Jonah? What’s my boyfriend’s name?”
Her father gave her an expression as blank as brick. “You don’t have a boyfriend, not since I paid Martin Luther Van Dross to take a hike. He loved you a whole ten grand worth, angel. So, yes, I know you like it black.”
“You bastard,” she said, and her eyes were tearing. “You heartless fucking bastard…”
I said, “This is touching, and would make great reality TV; but if you two don’t mind-business?”
Julie glared out the window.
Green shifted his weight, his eyes unblinking but not exactly cold as they settled on me. “I just want you to know, Mr. Quarry, that there will be no efforts made against you. Not with the law, not privately-and a man with my resources could easily do that, either way. But you saved my daughter’s life…and I value that. I do value that.”
Julie’s jaw tightened but her eyes didn’t leave the window.
“Swell,” I said. “I value money. Where is it?”
Green lifted an eyebrow, offered up a half-smile that was wholly conspiratorial. “If you’ll reach under the table…I trust you prefer that I not reach under there myself…you will find a briefcase.”
My left hand found it easily. I hauled the brownleather attache up beside me, near the aisle, away from the girl.
I said, “I’d be annoyed if this contained pepper spray or dye or some such shit.”
“I’m sure you would be,” Green said, reasonably. “But you’ll find it’s all there-just as you asked…” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Small bills. Unmarked.”
“Is this case locked?”
“No.”
“Well, your daughter’s handcuffs are,” I said, a foot in the aisle. “I’m going to the men’s room to count this. I’ll be back with the cuff key.”
Julie, eyes finally leaving the window, chimed in: “Good. That way I won’t have to stick my face in my pie…Mr. Quarry here loves it when I talk dirty, Daddy.”
Green ignored her, saying to me, “You really trust me, trust us, to be here when you get back?”
All sarcasm and attitude gone, serious as a heart attack, Julie leaned forward and gave her father the following advice: “Don’t fuck with this guy, Daddy…”
The magnate lost his cool momentarily: “Why-didn’t you?”
Her upper lip peeled back over teeth as white as they were feral: “No…but not for lack of trying.”
Green heaved his largest sigh yet, gathered his dignity and said to me, “You’ll have to forgive our little family bickering, Mr. Quarry, but-”
“If this isn’t money,” I told him, hefting the briefcase, already half out of the booth, “I’ll find you in hell.”
Green summoned another half-smile but his eyes were narrow. “Isn’t that a little melodramatic, coming from you, Mr. Quarry?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “But from what I see, melodrama is what you people understand…If you’ll excuse me.”
I could feel the millionaire’s eyes on my back as I headed to the men’s room, passing the redheaded waitress bearing Julie’s pie and coffee as I did.
And before I took the turn toward the restrooms, I could hear the handcuffed girl blurt, “Ah shit,” behind me. Maybe she’d have to stick her face in that pie, after all.
The men’s room (“Pointers”) was another small single-stool affair, but I knew that. I was not a regular here by any means, having only stopped at the Log Cabin twice since coming to the area; but I remembered the window, and the briefcase and I went out it.
DeWayne was behind the wheel, keeping loyal if pointless watch when I slipped in on the passenger side, the briefcase handle in my left hand and the nine millimeter in my right.
The gun was low, in my lap, as I pointed it up at the oval, unformed face.
His eyes were light blue and wide as hell when he looked at me, and then down into the dark unfathomable eye of the automatic’s snout.
“Fuck a duck,” he said.
His voice was on the high side, about a second tenor; but at least he didn’t squeak.
I asked him, “Are you going to make me kill you, DeWayne?”
His eyelashes, which were long and oddly feminine, fluttered. “No. Hell no!”
He put his hands up, shoulder high.
“Put those down,” I told him.
He did.
He seemed a little hurt-here he’d been trying to cooperate and voluntarily raised his hands, and all he got for it was a sharp rebuke. It’s a tough world, DeWayne.
I gestured with the nine. “Now put your weapon and your cell phone, pager, keys, anything in your pockets, on the seat here between us.”
DeWayne carried that out-his gun was a glock-and he was about done when I asked, “What branch?”
He frowned, parsing that, then said, “Marines.”
That got a dry chuckle out of me. “Semper fi, Mac.”
This caused DeWayne to brighten with hope. “You, too…? Where’d you serve?”
“In a real war…Now get out and open the trunk.”
He swallowed, nodded, and within seconds he was crawling up inside the Taurus trunk, a big ungainly fetus making a tight fit. The overflow lot was empty, except for us, and the windows on this end of the restaurant were vacant. So we were cool.
His expression was pitiful when he said, “Thanks.”
“What for?”
“Not…not killing me.”
“It’s early yet,” I said.
And slammed the trunk shut.
Super soldier.
Jonah Green’s face was in his booth’s window when I pulled out casually in DeWayne’s rental vehicle. Julie Green’s face was in the window, too. She was laughing her ass off.
“ Goddamnit! ” her father yelled.
Didn’t take a seasoned lip-reader to make that out.
Five
And that should have been the end of it.
I’d left DeWayne in the trunk of his rental at the rest stop where my Jag waited. The kid’s glock and belongings I left in the front seat-no call to take them and, anyway, I’m not a fucking thief.
I’d cleaned up after myself, disposing of Harry’s brown Taurus in the gravel pit, and doing further clean-up at the cottage, and put the money in a safe deposit box at Brainerd.
Rationalization is a seductive bitch, and I’d pretty much convinced myself that if Harry and Louis turned into floaters on that lake after the thaw, their mob credentials would get the killings written off as Chicago fun and games.
Almost a month had passed when, on an afternoon so overcast that the northwoods were more blue and gray than green and brown, I was lounging in the hot tub in the barnwood-sided building that housed my personal off-season sauna and swimming pool. The world outside was cold as fuck, but my indoors universe was pleasantly muggy, the jet streams working on that chronic low back of mine like Spanish dancers minus the castanets.
I didn’t even have trunks on. Since I was the sole winter resident of Sylvan Lodge, except on the two days a week Jose came around, I would just jog across the private lane to the pool building without even my jacket, and go in and strip down and swim a few laps, sauna a while and wind up in the Jacuzzi. I liked the free feeling, but in retrospect, bare-ass was vulnerable.
And vulnerable is not a condition I like to put myself in.
I was nursing a can of Diet Coke, the tub’s jets feeling just fine, and the events of less than a month ago were nowhere in my mind. Even over the hot tub burble, I heard the sound of the glass doors opening-this was not one of Jose’s days-and my hand drifted toward my folded towel, under which was the nine millimeter.
Bare-ass is one thing; unarmed something else again…
Jonah Green appeared to be alone.
I could see another Lexus parked out front-this one sky-blue-and no driver
was apparent. The millionaire was in a jogging suit the color of his name with running shoes and no jacket or topcoat, despite the cold; and his face was red with the weather because of it.
My first instinct was, he wanted me to know (or anyway think) he was not armed.
Very tentatively, he stood there with a glass door slid open, halfway in, and-with a deference I didn’t figure was usual coming from this man-asked, “May I come in?”
I just looked at him.
When he didn’t get permission, he came in just the same, closing the door behind him, and was goddamn lucky he wasn’t dead by the time he turned and said, “Don’t get your balls in an uproar, Mr. Quarry-I’m alone.”
Deference hadn’t worked, so he’d gone straight to hard-nosed.
He was moving cautiously my way, saying, “And if you kill me, you won’t know how I found you.”
I said nothing.
He nodded, as if I’d actually answered, then came over and pulled up a metal deck chair and sat at the edge of the Jacuzzi, nearby but not getting in my space.
“Don’t worry,” he said, patting the steamy air. His expression was soft, the grooves in his face at ease; but the money-color eyes were hard. “I didn’t waste my resources finding you to get… even, or some idiotic bullshit.”
I said nothing.
Sitting forward slightly in the chair, Green said, “Before you kill me-strangle me with that towel or whatever, I would-”
I showed him the nine millimeter from under the towel.
“There’s an elegant expression,” he said with admirable cool. “z‘Don’t shit where you eat’…You live here, you manage this place, you have a life… why risk that with a death?…Hear me out.”
I said nothing, but I lowered the gun a fraction.
He put his hands on his chest. “I really do appreciate what you did for me, and my daughter. I’m well aware that those mob fagellehs would’ve killed the little smartass.”
I said, “Our business is over.”
He shrugged, a tiny smile forming, pleased he’d finally drawn me out into at least speaking. “Our old business is over, Mr. Quarry-I really do admire your resourcefulness, your abilities. Take DeWayne, for example.”
“No thanks.”
He shrugged in an admission of his subordinate’s imperfection. “DeWayne isn’t brilliant, but he’s dangerous. You handled him as if he were a helpless child.”
“A couple thousand DeWaynes have died in Iraq.”
The millionaire sighed, nodded, slumping in his metal chair. He shook his head. “And a goddamned shame.”
I shrugged with one shoulder. “We spilled more than that.”
Picking up on my attitude, and instantly getting over his sorrow for the lost lives in Iraq, Jonah Green said, “I’m sure you did. Which is why I won’t make the mistake of sending a boy to do a man’s work again…I’ve asked around about you, Mr. Quarry. By the way, is that a first name or a last name?”
“Probably.”
That stopped him for a beat, then he moved on briskly, almost cheerfully. “At any rate, I did some asking around…I do business in all kinds of circles, you know.”
“You talk in circles, too. What do you want, Mr. Green?”
He semi-ignored that question. “Seems there’s a certain freelance assassin who dropped out of sight, a few years ago. He had a reputation as the best man in a tough game, sort of a killer’s killer. He wasn’t mob, although sometimes he did jobs for-”
“I’m impressed you found me. Trouble is, now I have to move.”
I raised the gun.
Finally he got it, or maybe my raising the nine just let out the nervousness that had been inside him all along. His hands flew up, as if this were a stick-up.
He was half a second away from dead when he blurted, “I want you to do a job for me! Another job!”
My finger froze on the trigger.
This was a lot of money seated near me, begging me to let him give me some. I’m not a greedy man; but I’m not a monk, either.
I said, “I’m retired.”
He knew he’d made a dent and something lively came into the green eyes. “That would’ve been just before the stock market went to shit, wouldn’t it? How are your investments doing, Mr. Quarry? Did you get out before the dotcom bust?”
“I’m comfortable,” I said, which was funny in a way, because I was naked in a hot tub, so of course I was comfortable. On the other hand, I was holding a nine millimeter, thinking about killing this prick; so that part wasn’t so comfortable.
“So comfortable,” he said, unintentionally mirroring my thoughts in an openly Faustian manner, “that you wouldn’t come out of retirement for a quarter of a million dollars?”
Again I lowered the gun a hair. “…It’s not a political job, is it?”
“No! No, no, no.”
I sighed again, this time for my own benefit. “One last job is always a bad idea. Guys die trying to retire on one last job all the time.”
“But you are not just any guy, are you, Mr. Quarry?” He smiled; he had the same white feral teeth as his daughter, only his might have been false. The teeth part. The feral was real.
“No,” I admitted, “I’m not. What makes it worth a quarter mil?”
He answered with another question: “Do you have any reservations about taking out a woman?”
“I take women out all the time.”
“Not the way I mean.”
I smiled just a little. “Are you sure?”
We sat in my kitchen.
Jonah Green already knew the lay of my land, so there was no harm in taking him across the road to the A-frame cottage…no further harm, anyway. Plus, I was tired of negotiating with my dick hanging out. Water’s a bad place to hold a serious conversation, at least your half of it; the other guy can always make his point by kicking something electrical in-I know, because I’ve been that guy.
So now we were both dressed. The Mr. Coffee was on, and we were exploring the job. The only step remaining was me deciding to do the thing or not-the money required no further discussion.
A captain of industry through and through, Jonah Green had a folder of information, including half a dozen photos. The woman in the photos-all candid, surveillance-type-was in her early thirties, attractive but not making the most of it, her hair up, with reading glasses on in some of the shots.
She did not look like a likely contract-murder victim, but you never know. Karen Silkwood didn’t look like much, either (no, I didn’t do that one).
He was handing me across several information-crammed sheets. “Here’s everything you need to know about the woman-work and home addresses, personal habits and friends, everything.”
I glanced up at him. “Time frame?”
Green blinked. “Say again? I don’t follow.”
“You need her dead-I get that. When do you need her dead?”
He sat forward; for the first time the talk took on a truly conspiratorial feel. “In two months, her being alive is…a bad thing for me.” He sighed, and something that might have been regret, real or feigned, came into his expression and his voice. “Understand, Mr. Quarry, she didn’t do anything to deserve-”
I cut him off with a traffic-cop palm. “Mr. Green…you’re a powerful guy. You’ve decided you need her dead. That means she’s already dead.”
His forehead and eyes tightened. “I…now I really don’t follow…”
Tossing the pictures on the table, I said, “She’s already dead-she just doesn’t know it yet. My doing the job is…a detail.”
That made the millionaire slightly ill at ease, and he said, maybe for his own peace of mind, “Well, it’s strictly a matter of business-nothing personal. She’s a nice woman, I’m sure-”
“Nice women,” I interrupted, “don’t make themselves the targets of men like you, who aren’t nice.”
Blood drained from his face, but he said nothing. Hard to get indignant when the guy you’re hiring to kill somebody poi
nts out that you’re not Mr. Wonderful.
I gestured with the information sheets.
“This stuff is fine,” I said. “But understand, Mr. Green, I have to watch her a while, anyway. A few days, at least.”
He frowned, shaking his head, pointing to the info sheets. “But…I’ve got all her patterns recorded, already…library…apartment…”
“How old is the information? A P.I. gathered this. When?”
The frown deepened into irritation, as if I had questioned his professionalism. “I tell you, it’s fresh!”
“ How fresh?”
Now he sounded defensive, and did a Rodney Dangerfield tug of his jogging-suit collar. “A month, six weeks at the outside.”
I shook my head. “I have to watch her a while. Patterns change. Shift.” I sat forward. “Mr. Green, the elimination side is only part of the process-it starts with surveillance. Otherwise the cops find me. And if they find me, they find you.”
In the old days, the guy hiring me wouldn’t have been sitting across from me; it would have been the Broker or someone like him.
Jonah Green let out a sigh worthy of a Christian martyr. “Fine.” His eyebrows rose and he shook a finger. “But two months, and she’s a problem, Mr. Quarry.”
“I heard that the first time.”
He tasted the inside of his mouth and didn’t seem to like it much. “There’s, uh…one other thing. It’s a part of why your fee is so generous.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“It’s…well, it’s got to be an accident.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “Say again?”
He gestured with both hands, obviously finding it distasteful to have to discuss this. “You know…slip and fall in the tub, brakes go out, hell, I don’t know… that’s your department!”
I looked at him for a while.
He was getting uneasy by the time I said, “I don’t usually do ‘accidents.’z”
Irritably, he said, “For a quarter mil, make an exception-you mind if I smoke?”
“Take it outside.”
Dusk had settled on us as we stood on the deck, looking out on Sylvan Lake’s still frozen expanse; you couldn’t see Harry and Louis’s hole at all from here.
The millionaire leaned on the deck rail, gazing out at the stark, serene landscape, his plumes of breath alternating with exhales of tobacco smoke. I was standing there, arms folded, looking at my prospective employer, wondering if I should take the job or go out there and drop another one in that hole.
The last quarry q-6 Page 4