Hard Case Crime: The First Quarry

by Collins, Max Allan

  “Listen, kid,” he said, regret in his voice but the Bucky Beaver grin still going, “I gotta pat you down.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  His eyes got hard and the grin vanished; his mouth was a puckery thing in the five o’clock-shadowed face, an anus that wandered off course. “You put your hands up, kid, and stand for a frisk. Be a good boy. I been at this longer than you. I got ties older than you.”

  That I believed.

  I put my hands up. I was ready to bring them down on him, but he was experienced, I’ll give him that. When he got close, he shoved the snout of the revolver in my side and with his free hand unzipped my coat.

  “Now that’s a weapon,” he said admiringly of the nine millimeter in my waistband. He plucked the gun like a metal flower and dropped it in a trenchcoat pocket and backed up a couple steps.

  Was I dead?

  “Let me guess,” he said genially. “You’re working for the father.”

  “Am I?”

  His somewhat Neanderthal brow wrinkled. “Don’t answer questions with questions. It’s annoying.”

  “Is it?”

  The bucktooth grin again. “You have a sense of humor. That’s good. Because people with senses of humor, they have a certain love of life. What is it the French say?”

  “Merde?”

  “Joie de vivre. And people with a love of life don’t take stupid chances, particularly when they don’t have to. I don’t wanna kill you, kid. Really I don’t. It would be a real pain in my keister, and neither would I want to piss off the girl’s father.”

  “Who would?”

  He chuckled. “You know, you’re pretty good. I didn’t spot you till today. How many days you been here?”

  “This is the second.”

  “Well, I’ve been on the job for three days. I’m in the split-level house across the way. I saw you take your car out earlier this evening. That’s maybe not a good idea in the daylight.”

  “You may be right.”

  “Who do you think I’m working for?”

  “Not the girl’s father.” That’s all I could think of to say—my information was limited.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head in agreement, “not the girl’s father, which is a pity.”

  “Is it?”

  His tiny glittery eyes tightened. His nose was really ugly, with veins and blackheads and whiteheads in the crevices. And those beaver teeth were yellow, probably from smoking, because he stank of it. Death is never pretty, but did I really have to get killed by somebody this unpleasant?

  He moved just a little closer. The gun-in-hand was angled away just a shade, to make me feel less threatened, I guess, and more like we were pals. Or anyway, business associates. Affiliated teams and all.

  “The wife has money,” he said confidentially. “I mean, the prof has done fairly well, hasn’t he? Movie sale on that book of his, a big advance for this opus he’s knocking out now.”

  So he was working for the professor’s wife—that made sense: a philandering husband can attract the likes of this bucktoothed frog.

  “You’re a private eye,” I said.

  He reared back with a blink and a grin. “Yeah, of course I’m a PI. Like you are. That is, unless you’re just one of daddy’s regular helpers, which you don’t look like in the least. Anyway, he’s all tied up with that nigger problem, ain’t he?”

  “Yeah. Fuckin’ spooks.” What the hell was he talking about?

  He sighed, shook his head. “You know, those Italians think Chicago is their birthright, and when a bunch of uppity spades start moving in on the dope business, things can get hairy.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “But if we know one thing about these Outfit wops, it’s that they are rolling in dough. Illegal dough, sure, but dough don’t know where it comes from.”

  “Right.”

  “Like I said, the wife has money. But the girl’s father has real money.”

  “No argument.”

  He moved his weight from one brown shoe to the other. “Hey. This is awkward. I mean...we’re gonna be friends, kid. What’s your name?”

  “Jack.”

  “And I’m Charlie.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Charlie.” I extended my hand but he didn’t take it—his right hand was busy pointing a gun at me, after all. “What kind of friendship are we going to have?”

  “The business kind. Let’s go out in the kitchen and sit down and make this nice and friendly and non-hostile, shall we?”

  “Sure. After you.”

  He horse-laughed, flecking my face with spittle. “Naw, Jack, I think you’ll lead the way. Sense of humor. Kid’s got a sense of humor....”

  The kitchen, a modern, spacious white-and-gray affair, had no plastic on the floor, just linoleum. A breakfast nook with a little table in a booth right out of a restaurant was off to one side, with a window that let in moonlight. He motioned me in and then slid in and sat across from me, his hand with the .38 on the table, casual but ready, like a fork in his fist as he anticipated a meal.

  “Now, let’s think about this,” he said in that genial if squeaky tenor. “We have clients with similar interests, right? Both of them want that cheating prick of a professor hung out to dry by his gonads.”

  “Agreed.”

  His round head tilted. “But there are places where we overlap, our interests...and places where we don’t overlap. Would you agree on that point, too?”

  “I may not be following you.”

  He shrugged. Frowned, dark little pellet eyes narrowing. “My client, the wife, wants evidence on this horny asshole, so she can divorce his unfaithful ass and get as much of his loot as possible.”

  “Oh...kay.”

  With his free hand, he gestured grandiosely. “And I have photos that demonstrate this fact—some that catch him naked as a jaybird...with females the same buck nekkid way.”

  “You didn’t get that from sitting across the street. Through a window, huh? Up close and personal?”

  “Yeah—I got him through his study window and his bedroom, too.” He leaned across a little. “You know, this guy likes to gets blown more than he wants to get fucked; he likes to sit in his chair in that study and have those sweet young things worship his cock.”

  “Better than no religion at all, I guess.”

  He snorted his laugh and I backed up a little, in hopes of avoiding spittle; no such luck. “You’re a funny kid, Jack. That sense of humor. I just knew we were gonna be tight.”

  “So you have photos of Annette and Byron.”

  He leaned back; the grin widened again, his pride palpable. “Damn straight. But I also got photos of him and a little blonde. Which is where things get interesting.”

  I frowned. “You mean, that girl Alice, who tore the professor a new asshole yesterday?”

  “Yeah. He was banging her the morning before. Or she was blowing him or whatever. Anyway, she was in there with him, and they kissed in the doorway for about a month, before she left in her little car, happy as a clam. And then that afternoon, the brunette showed.”

  “This is the day before yesterday?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did she stay the night, Annette?”

  “No. But she did last night.” He smiled cannily. “You knew that, though.”

  “Yeah. Just trying to get a pattern down.” I shook my head. “It’s Grand Central Station around here.”

  He leaned in with his yellow grin. “But that’s a good thing, Jack. See, we can serve both our masters and still make some real money.”

  “How?”

  He shrugged elaborately. “Your boss wants to confirm that the prof is banging his daughter. You’ve pretty much accomplished that by now, so I figure before long? You, or one or more of the Chicago bent-nose boys, will come lean on the prof and teach him, for a change.”

  “You mean kill him?”

  “No! No, I don’t think so.” He laughed heartily, genuinely amused
. “I’m not supposed to think you’re a hit man, Jack! Please. Nice clean-cut kid like you—you really fit in around here, which is great. I could use somebody like you, your age, able to blend with these hippie shits.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Naw, the girl’s father will put the fear of God into that horny bastard, and the prof will stay away from daddy’s little girl in future, out of fear of something worse happening.”

  I shifted in the booth. “Okay. Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say you’ve figured this out perfectly. Where do our interests converge, Charlie? Where’s money to be made for you and me?”

  The grin widened and the Nixon jowls turned into chipmunk cheeks. “If I give my pictures of daddy’s little girl going down on the Prof to my client...Mrs. Prof? Of sweet Annette riding Byron’s pecker like a rodeo queen? Then those photos could find their way into divorce court, and lots of embarrassment, the tabloid variety, could ensue.”

  “Okay. I can see that.”

  With the hand not holding the gun, Charlie held up a finger, as if he’d just had a brilliant idea, though he’d obviously been working on this a while. “But—I also have pictures of the prof with the little blonde, every bit as damning. These I could give to my client. Then I will sell the pictures of Annette and the prof, and the negatives, no tricks, none whatsoever, to her father. We don’t need the Annette shots to make the divorce case. Your client is happy. My client is happy. We are happy. What do you say, Jack?”

  “It makes sense. You have a figure in mind?”

  His eyebrows lifted. “What do you think the market will bear? I mean, this is not the kind of person you want to piss off, the girl’s father.”

  I lifted my eyebrows. “No he isn’t.” I leaned forward conspiratorially. “Could you live with ten grand?”

  He thought about that, then demonstrated his math skills out loud: “Half of ten, five for me, five for you?”

  I shook my head. “No—I think ten apiece is possible. Without seeming too greedy and getting our asses in a sling.”

  The tiny eyes glittered. “Cool! We have a deal then?”

  I grinned at him. “We have a deal.”

  Again I held my hand out for him to shake. This time he put the .38 on the table and extended his hand and I picked the gun up and shot him between the eyes, right above that disgusting nose.

  After the sharp crack of the gunshot, I said, “Goodbye, Charlie...or as the French say, adieu.”

  Knowing how much he appreciated my sense of humor.

  But he didn’t hear me, too busy flopping onto the tabletop, his forehead making a dull thump as he left on the wall behind him a nice splash of color in this drab kitchen.

  FIVE

  I had things to do, and Charlie wasn’t going anywhere, slumped as he was at the breakfast nook tabletop, like a school kid napping at his desk. In his right trench-coat pocket I removed not only my nine millimeter but his car keys and also, on a separate little ring, three keys—each had tiny strips of masking tape with black-marker lettering that identified one as FRONT, another as BASEMENT and the other, which was somewhat smaller, as PATIO.

  His gun I dropped into my right-hand corduroy jacket pocket, and I slipped out the back way into the cold, my feet crunching on snow that had turned crispy with ice. My nine millimeter was back in my waistband and I figured anything that came up, Charlie’s .38 would do nicely, a gun after all traceable to him. I went into the garage not to get my car, but to remove a flashlight from my glove compartment; the flash I dropped in my other coat pocket, and then I returned to the great out of doors.

  Perhaps I was overcautious, but I moved along the back yards of the half dozen split-levels on my side of the unlived-on lane. No street lamps were up yet on the nameless street but that full moon illuminated the landscape, so I felt I should take a roundabout route to the split-level opposite mine, where Charlie said he’d been camped out. He had not mentioned working with anyone (other than me, had I gone along with him), but I saw no reason to trust a sleazy little character who would sell out, or anyway compromise, his own client. A round-the-clock surveillance, if that’s what Charlie had been up to, might mean a second PI in that other split-level.

  Of course, they might be trading shifts, with Charlie alone with his partner due to show up any time— assuming I wasn’t just imagining this partner. At any rate, a look inside that house might tell me if Charlie had or had not been working alone.

  So I went all the way down to the end of the lane and beyond into a wooded area, through which I cut just a little ways to come up through the back yards of the other half dozen split-levels. The snow was crunchy back here, too, but I moved very slowly and carefully; on the other hand, if the interior of Charlie’s split-level had that same plastic on the floor, I might wind up fucked.

  The back yard of the corner split-level, the doppel-ganger of mine, rose up at the left to a patio area and dropped at the right to accommodate a driveway and allow entry to the basement and garage. One of these keys apparently opened the glass doors onto the patio. These would open onto a family room, where plastic on the floor would almost certainly await.

  The basement door seemed my best option. Much as I didn’t relish entering into darkness and then going up the stairs and opening a door onto God knew what (or I should say God knew who), going in the patio way and snap-crackle-popping across a covered floor held even less appeal.

  Of course when I said I’d be coming up from the basement into God knows what, that was an exaggeration, even an inaccuracy, because I knew darn well the kitchen—the only room in my split-level where the floor hadn’t been covered with protective plastic—would be waiting. Of course, so could Charlie’s partner, should he happen to exist.

  So I used the basement key and went on into darkness and, remembering the layout across the street, made my way fairly easily to the stairs. I slipped out of my boots and went up in my stocking feet. At the top I turned the knob as slowly as I could, creating only the faintest click, and pushed the door open onto a darkened kitchen.

  My night vision was good. Nobody was in the kitchen, unless you counted me. No lights seemed to be on in the house, which had been the case across the street, as well. But as I moved cautiously toward the expansive living room beyond the kitchen, I heard a soft, faint voice and froze.

  Despite the low volume, the voice was sonorous, commanding and familiar.

  It should be: it belonged to Ben Cartwright, or that is, Lorne Greene. The “Bonanza” TV theme kicked in as a television, in the living room, went to commercial—a little portable on the floor over by the window that faced Country Vista, with a view on a certain cobblestone cottage. The lighthouse beam of the tiny television illuminated the living room somewhat, creating light and shadow, and told me there were indeed some differences between my quarters and the late Charlie’s.

  First of all, no plastic covered the carpeted floor. Second, and most surprising, the place was furnished; no one was living here yet, no one was living in any of these split-levels except me (and the late Charlie), and yet new furniture smell joined the paint and plaster and antiseptic odors, the blocky shapes of undistinguished contemporary furnishings, right out of a Sears catalog, revealed by the TV’s cathode rays.

  The furnishing was fairly sparse, however, and I had little trouble maneuvering. No sign of Charlie’s partner, who was starting to feel nonexistent to me. Near that floor-positioned TV, where Ben and Little Joe and Hoss were currently having an intense if barely audible conversation on horseback, Charlie had a fucking La-Z-Boy pulled over to where in my parallel world I’d been leaning against a sleeping bag. An open package of Ruffles Potato Chips was propped against the chair, and Budweiser cans were littered on the floor. The new house smells were tainted by cigarette smoke and an ashtray with eight or ten butts was on an end table he’d pulled around on the right side of the recliner.

  Room by room, level by level, I searched the house. I entered doorways low, .38 in my right hand, flash
in my left, sweeping the rooms with frantic slashes of light, like Zorro making one Z after another, and revealing nothing except a fully, blandly furnished house that showed no signs of humans living here.

  No humans, that is, except Charlie, who had actually been sleeping on the premises. The master bedroom had a queen-size with quilt and blankets and sheets, and Charlie had tucked himself in for the nights he’d been here, really making himself at home.

  And yet nobody lived here, that was for sure. No family pictures, no clothing in closets, none of the signs of life except for Charlie’s food in the refrigerator, which ran to beer and cold sandwiches. A house in this price range wouldn’t be sold furnished, would it?

  Then it came to me: Charlie, the lucky stiff, had selected the development’s model home! This struck me as foolish and even dangerous, since people might eventually come around. But maybe Charlie had known that the model home wouldn’t be open for inspection for a time, making his squatting feasible. The Broker had known that I could safely camp out across the way, hadn’t he? And obviously Charlie had his own reliable intel.

  I spent quite a while in that house, maybe an hour. I found Charlie’s camera, a high-end Nikon with a tele-photo zoom attachment, and half a dozen rolls of undeveloped film, which was a nice catch. No other weapons presented themselves, not even a box of shells. I looked for a notebook and didn’t find one. That was a disappointment.

  I thought about wiping the house down of Charlie’s fingerprints, but I couldn’t convince myself it was necessary. What would the owners of the model home find? Signs that some asshole had moved in for a few days. I did take a few things with me, the kind of things an ambitious homeless guy taking advantage of an empty house wouldn’t leave behind: Charlie’s personal items, toiletries, changes of clothes, and skin mags, all stuffed in a little duffel bag, and that portable TV, which I thought might be nice to have.

  You could access the garage through the basement, which I did (after I got my boots back on), and I put Charlie’s duffel bag in his car’s trunk, where I had a nice piece of luck: I found a fresh roll of electrical tape among some tools of the road. I dropped this in the same pocket as my flashlight. The little TV I rested on the rider’s side seat. On an otherwise empty workbench, I found a garage door opener that made my life easier and soon I’d moved Charlie’s car—a light-green Chevelle—over into the driveway of the split-level (right behind mine) whose garage was where I parked the rental Ford while on stakeout.