Quarry's ex q-9

by Max Allan Collins

  I was hoping that the kiddies would be out of the pool by ten-that was the Spur’s supposed cut-off for swimming, as you may recall-and I got my wish. A young married couple was in the hot tub for the first ten minutes, but otherwise I had the pool to myself.

  The water had just enough coolness to contrast nicely with the humidity-free warmth of an evening enjoying a sultry breeze. The sky was like a special effect that the Hard Wheels 2 budget couldn’t manage-a Cheshire Cat smile of a moon and a scattering of sparkly stars. Desert night sky had a look of its own, faintly surreal, even from a hotel swimming pool.

  I’d been swimming easy laps and was floating on my back, looking up at that phony sky, when somebody dove in. Somehow I knew it was Joni.

  It was.

  She had her long dark hair rubber-banded back and was in the skimpy red bikini. She began treading water. I treaded water, too, and went over near her and said, “We have to stop meeting like this.”

  “What is this about, Jack?”

  “Your husband hasn’t told you?”

  “No.”

  “Then it isn’t my place to.”

  I swam over to the side of the pool and climbed up and sat there dripping. She swam over and treaded water some more. Looking up at me with big lovely brown eyes.

  “You were…telling the truth the other night?”

  “About what, Joni?”

  “About my husband being in danger. Death threats?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That wasn’t just some…some head trip you were pulling? To get even with me?”

  “Putting you through a ‘head trip’ wouldn’t quite do it.”

  Her hands moved in the water as if she were hiking through high brush. “Art hasn’t said anything. I keep asking him what’s bothering him, and he just says it’s a tough shoot. That’s all. Not sharing anything.”

  “His prerogative.”

  Breathing fairly hard, she said, “I want to know what’s going on, Jack. Am I in danger, too?”

  Collateral damage again.

  “I don’t think so. Maybe. I don’t want to see you die or anything.”

  That made her smile. Bitterly, but she smiled, still treading, spitting a little water now and then. “What about what you said the other night? About ‘all of the above?’ ”

  “I don’t want to kill you.”

  “That’s almost like…almost like hearing you say still love me, Jack.”

  “I don’t remember saying I ever stopped.”

  She treaded water some more.

  “Listen,” I said, “if you want him dead, just say so.”

  She frowned. “Are you kidding? What a terrible thing to say.”

  “Yeah, well…maybe I was just kidding.” I got up, trunks dripping heavily onto the concrete like a hard lazy rain. “Good night, Joni. Enjoy the rest of your swim.”

  From off the nearby deck chair, I got my towel-it had the nine millimeter wrapped in it again, not to impress my ex, just because I thought the shit on this job was getting deep enough that maybe having a weapon handy wasn’t a bad thing.

  I went up to my room, took a hot shower, and put on my jockey shorts to sleep in. I felt relaxed physically, no kinks in my shoulders or neck, but my mind was twitching in a way I didn’t much care for.

  I put the nine millimeter on the nightstand and got under between the sheets and played with the remote a while. Johnny Carson was a rerun and I had just about settled on an old Randolph Scott western (well, hell, all Randolph Scott westerns were old, weren’t they?) when somebody knocked on the door.

  I got out of bed, nine mil in hand, and used the little peephole.

  You’re ahead of me again, right?

  Joni.

  She was in a short white terrycloth robe and her hair was still damp from the swim. The darkness of her tan sharply contrasted with the white of the robe.

  I let her in.

  Shut and night-latched the door. The only light on was the TV, but the volume was muted. It threw a shifting, shimmering light on the room not unlike the effect of the under-lighting down at the pool.

  She took the gun from my hand and set it gently on the nightstand, like she knew where it went, then undid the belt at her waist and dropped the robe to the floor, leaving just the skimpy damp bikini and all that tan flesh.

  “Was there something you wanted?” I asked.

  “Fuck you, Jack.”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  The first kiss was passionate but not exactly loving, more like angry and demanding and she was making noises that sounded like tears being held back, or maybe it was rage. The next kiss was yearning and youthful, a real flashback right down to her searching, darting tongue. Then she let me take the bikini top off her and her breasts were larger and not as pert as before, but I recognized them all right, and stroked them and plumped them and kissed them, their dark nipples stark against white flesh untouched by the sun that had darkened the rest of her. Almost the rest of her, because as her long legs stepped up and out of the bikini bottoms, the thatch of tangled brown against the white, white flesh made a contrast that resonated in my memory.

  I kissed her neck, I kissed her ears, I kissed her face, here, there, then she dropped down and tugged down my shorts, leaving them around my feet in rumpled confusion, and she moved her mouth down the shaft of me in one long smooth move until her nose was getting tickled by the short and curlies and I thought I would pass out or at least lose my balance. She lavished attention on the old acquaintance standing at attention for her, with her mouth and her hands, kisses and licks and strokes and suckles and when she had me on the verge, she knew to stop and led me by the dick to the bed where she deposited me on my back and climbed on and I was sucked up into that tight familiar warmth and she ground slowly at first, her beautiful features caught in a dreamy, half-lidded state of realized desire, her damp hair dangling in dark tendrils at her shoulders, her slender body, still slender fifteen years later, moving serpentine with a dancer’s fluid grace, and when she came it was a shuddering thing, beaming and crying and whimpering and laughing. I didn’t think I was doing anything but fucking her, and didn’t realize that some of the tears on my face were my own.

  She was beside me then, against me, head where my arm and shoulder met, her cheek wet against my chest. She said nothing for endless seconds. I thought she was sleeping, but then she said, “Did you come looking for me?”

  “No. It was a coincidence.”

  “I don’t know if I believe in those.”

  “Well they do happen. Or maybe it was fate. It sure wasn’t God.”

  “Jack…Jack. I did love you. I didn’t want you to die over there. I wanted you to come home.”

  “You knew I was coming home.”

  “I did. But you came home a day early.”

  “Really? I’d forgotten.”

  “Jack, I was ready to take you back into my life. That afternoon…when everything went wrong…it wasn’t how it looked.”

  “Wow. Really?”

  “I was just…just saying goodbye to somebody.”

  “You know what the Beatles say.”

  “All you need is love?”

  “You say goodbye and I say hello.”

  “…You’re still angry.”

  “No. I just didn’t…nothing.”

  “What, Jack?”

  “Feelings. I thought were dead. Never expected…come back. I don’t know. I don’t know what I mean.”

  For maybe a minute we just lay there. I could feel our hearts beating in sync.

  Then, very quietly, she asked, “Why did you ask me…?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No. Say it.”

  “What made you think I wanted Art dead?”

  “Because somebody does. And you stand to benefit.”

  “You think I could be capable of that?”

  “What would ever make me think so?”

  “…Jack, that was a long,
long time ago. We were both kids. I was a fucked-up kid from a rough goddamn place. I just wanted a better life, Jack. And I never, never, never, never wanted you to die over there.”

  “Like your first two husbands, you mean.”

  “I didn’t want them to die, either. I didn’t love them like I loved you, but-”

  “Please! No.”

  “All I wanted was to make you…all three of you…but especially you, Jack…feel alive for a while, have a good time, experience a little joy, before you went over there where…where the odds were so stacked against you.”

  “And all you got out of it was monthly paychecks followed by death bennies?”

  “What do you want me to say? I gave you something to live for, Jack-can you deny it? Something to come home for? And you came home, didn’t you? You came home.”

  “I came home.”

  “And we finally had it, didn’t we?”

  “What?”

  “Our proper homecoming.”

  I laughed at that shit and pushed her away.

  “Give me a fuckin’ break,” I said, off the bed and onto my feet. “You better go back to your room. Art’ll be back from viewing his dailies before long.”

  She looked hurt. Wordlessly, she got out of bed and climbed into the bikini, then sashed the little white robe around herself.

  Naked, I escorted her to the door. She was halfway into the hall when she looked back with mournful brown eyes and said, “You’ve changed, Jack.”

  “You haven’t,” I said. “Still fucking around on your husband.”

  And shut the door on her.

  ELEVEN

  The phone roused me to darkness, the hotel operator saying, “It’s your wake-up call,” and I thanked her and hung up before glancing at the nightstand clock and saying to myself, It’s four-thirty A.M., what fucking wake-up call?

  But that stirred me up enough to realize I had to piss, and on my way to the bathroom, I noticed the white sheet of paper that had been slipped under my door. I picked it up and looked at it with my free hand while I urinated-it was today’s call sheet. For several days I’d been getting these single sheets of paper with a grid of names and other production info, breaking down times for actors and crew members-everybody on the shoot did.

  This was Sunday and Hard Wheels 2 normally wouldn’t be shooting, but to accommodate the short schedule of the name actor playing the villain, the production would not have its day off until Wednesday, when he was gone.

  On a bigger-budget shoot, this would be an expensive proposition, but I gathered only the name actors and the Teamsters were union, so crew and secondary talent got their normal rates. Working when God rested would allow for a proper “turnaround” so that Stockwell could begin several days of night shooting. All-night shooting.

  Anyway, Hard Wheels 2 would be shooting at gas amp; eats again today, inside this time, the interior turned back into a functioning diner, or the approximation of one. That was the plan, as I understood it. But I’d expected the morning call to be eight a.m., which was typical. And I’d had no intention of going out there till nine or even ten.

  The person I wanted to talk to often didn’t show up till fairly deep into the day, and I could use a nice relaxing morning swim and figured I’d have some breakfast and develop a strategy for how I intended to handle what yet needed to be done. I had a feeling that I could arrange for my role on this shoot to wrap today.

  The call, however, was for six a.m., not eight or even seven, and a handwritten note to me at the bottom said: “Need to talk right away. Meet me at g amp; e at five-fifteen. A.S.” g amp; e was gas amp; eats, of course, and A.S. was Art Stockwell, so I took a shower and got dressed, another polo shirt and chinos and running shoes.

  I won’t say the call sheet struck me as overly suspicious, but this endeavor-my endeavor, not Hard Wheels 2 — was at a stage where I was not about to throw caution to the wind. I didn’t feel I could walk around the set with a nine millimeter in my waistband, even with a sport coat over it; so I took a precaution.

  In the bathroom, very carefully, soaping the skin up good, I shaved the hair on my inner thigh with my safety razor. Then I used adhesive tape to strap the knife, actually the handle of the knife (four inches long; the blade lived inside), to the inside of my now smooth-as-a-baby’sbottom inner thigh. Right up next to the old nut sack.

  Not that the retractable knife would be anything I could get to quickly. More like a last line of emergency defense. But it was better than going out naked.

  I did take the nine millimeter along for the ride, but stowed it in the glove compartment, as I drove out of Boot Heel into a desert enjoying the kind of sunrise where a blob of bright yellow and a horizon of brilliant orange blazed under a purple sky.

  I was running early, as I intended. I didn’t even bother to stop for a McMuffin. If there was anything hinky about this invite-I was not familiar with Stockwell’s handwriting, and couldn’t be sure he’d left me the note-I wanted to get there before anybody else, friendly or otherwise, and have a good look around.

  The sun was climbing when I got to the isolated world of gas amp; eats, but mine was the only car. I’d beat everybody here. Hooray-now what? I parked in the usual area, as if Ginger had been here to direct me, and just walked over and prowled around the place, looking in windows-diner unoccupied, the garage side too-and headed around back. I was fifteen minutes ahead of when “A.S.” had asked me to be here.

  I tried the back door to what I presumed was the kitchen, but somebody on the other side opened it first, hard, pushing me back, and two familiar bearded faces stepped out, Skull first, followed by Juke, both in their biker leathers and denims.

  To their standard ensemble had been added guns in their fists and they wore the wild eyes of guys whose courage came from uppers. They were on me before I could do a fucking thing, one on either side, and they hauled me through the grease-smelling kitchen and around the counter into the diner.

  The tables had been swept aside onto the borders of the room and a single chair-chrome and worn padded plastic, sparkle-red-was waiting.

  Juke gave me a pat-down but did not go anywhere near my balls. Which meant I had a chance at getting out of this mess. I wasted no time berating myself, because I don’t think under any circumstances I could have seen exactly this coming. No cars had been out front because they’d arrived on their cycles, and I’d glimpsed those at kick-stand ease in the kitchen when I was dragged through.

  And why in hell would anybody hold me captive on a movie set that was maybe half an hour away from a film crew showing up?

  They shoved me into the chair and Juke did a little maypole dance with duct tape, tying me into the chair, binding me tight. Some of the tape was on the flesh of my arms. Just a couple of trips around my chest. Nothing around my legs. I began wondering how much I could accomplish tied into a chair with just my legs free.

  Probably not much, considering they both had little snubby. 38s. Matched pair-S amp; W Model 15 Combat Masterpieces. Two-inch barrel, full-size grips. Somebody bought those for these clowns, or anyway provided them with the weapons, which were too fucking good for them.

  Right now skinny Skull, the smarter and more dangerous of the two, was horse-laughing, showing off yellow teeth and a missing incisor in the midst of his scraggly Fu Manchu facial hair. Laughing so hard his leather vest was flapping over his hairy, bony torso. He had a broken, blood-weeping heart tattoo, by the way-on the wrong side of his chest.

  So not that smart.

  “You got a bogus call sheet, sweetcheeks,” Skull chortled, ponytail swinging. “Today’s shoot got canceled.”

  Bandana-headed Juke saw an opening for a funny. “Like maybe your ass gonna get canceled!”

  Both of them laughed at that. Higher than fucking kites.

  Now I did start to blame myself-any time you’re bested by dipshit trash like this, who else is there to blame?

  “What do you boys want?” I asked.

  Skull s
lapped me. He had some rings on-one a skull ring, I’d wager-and it cut the corner of my mouth. I tasted blood.

  “Speak when you’re the fuck spoken to,” he said, with a curl of the upper lip that I might have found comical in other circumstances. I chose not to point out that they had in fact been speaking to me.

  Then they did something I found odd.

  They let me sit there.

  They went over to a booth and put the guns on the tabletop-they were seated by the window just to my left and over a ways, near the door-and they played cards for pills.

  Each biker had little piles of what I figured were amphetamines. Like poker chips, the colors varied-pale shades of purple, orange, green. Those were the pills. Mixed in were bright orange capsules. I wasn’t paying close enough attention to determine if any of these were worth more for betting purposes. I did figure out they were playing draw poker.

  In addition they were drinking cans of beer-Miller, champagne of beers, nothing too good for my hosts-and it didn’t take me long to realize they were holding me for somebody. I had a hunch I knew who that somebody was, but the way they had dug in-cards, smokes, beers, ignoring me-made me figure they weren’t expecting my real host for a while yet.

  So there I sat with a stiletto strapped to my thigh and my arms pinned to me. I could almost reach my waistband with either hand, but I was in full view, and that knife was well below where I could reach.

  “Guys,” I said.

  “Shut-up,” Skull said.

  “I gotta piss.”

  “Go ahead and piss.”

  “Just piss myself you mean.”

  Juke said, “Don’t bother us! We’re busy!..Two kings.”

  Skull said, “Three tens.”

  “Aw, fuck you, Skull! Nobody’s that fuckin’ lucky.”

  Skull took no offense, shuffling what looked to me like greasy cards. “I am that fucking lucky. You are looking at the lucky fucker who is that fucking lucky.”

  I said, “I piss myself, fellas, it’s gonna smell in here. Worse than you two already do.”

  That at least got their attention.