Back in my own digs again, I got out of my corduroy coat because I was working up a sweat, despite the cold, and tossed it onto my side of the breakfast nook. The splash of gore on the wall behind where Charlie slumped needed cleaning up, but I’d have to stop and buy paper towels and spray bottles and so on, and that just wasn’t a priority. Right now I wasn’t even sure I’d be in this house again, once I’d left to dispose of Charlie. That would be up to the Broker.
I did have a pocket knife on me, and that allowed me to cut just the right size sheet of plastic from the floor to roll Charlie up in. Some blood and stuff got on the kitchen linoleum, but if I did come back, that would spruce up easy enough. Charlie was awkward and heavy and he smelled bad—and I don’t just mean the cigarette smoke on him and his clothes, that would have been a relief compared to the stink of shit from the bastard evacuating himself when he died. Shouldn’t be critical—he couldn’t help it.
He made a nice fat plastic cocoon when I was done, and I used the entire spool of electrical tape to make it happen. The fucker was literal dead weight, though, and back in my cord jacket again, I had to drag him out of there like a dog pulling a sled. The plastic mummy slid over the top of the frozen snow, and the slope down to the driveway next door was steep enough that Charlie almost got away from me. That might sound funny to you, me chasing a corpse across a bunch of snowy yards in the moonlight, but the idea of it sure didn’t make me smile.
I managed to maintain control over my plastic-wrapped charge, and before long I was down in that driveway, popping the trunk and hauling him up and in. It took some doing, but rigor hadn’t set in yet and Charlie was pretty pliable.
The interior of the Chevelle needed fumigation, but that was a luxury I couldn’t afford; but let me tell you, chain-smoker Charlie was lucky he hadn’t died of cancer. Plus, he was a slob—the front and back seat floors littered with crushed sacks and drink cups from McDonald’s and Dairy Queen, with the back seat a kind of reading room, and not the Christian Science Monitor variety, either: boxing magazines, the National Enquirer and the Globe, men’s magazines like Stag and Male, with guys fighting wild animals on some covers and sexy female Gestapo agents torturing bare-chested he-men on others. Also a few more skin books, notably Dapper and Follies, where the cover models looked like the mothers of your high school pals only in pasties and not aprons.
My karma had caught up with me—I’d killed the fucker, and now was condemned to drive his car. I backed out, drove the fraction of a block to the stop sign at Country Vista and turned left, going past the cobblestone cottage, whose resident seemed suddenly very low on my “to do” list, and made my way to the nearest pay phone, which was at a Standard Station on Dubuque Street.
I called the emergency number and, to his credit, the Broker himself answered it, on the second ring.
“We have a problem,” I said.
“Oh dear.”
“We need to meet.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“Right now?”
“Right now.”
“That would be most inconvenient.”
“I’m already driving a car that has something inconvenient in its trunk.”
“Well, good heavens.”
“Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.”
“Do I need to bring someone with me?”
“Let’s put it this way—I’ll be driving a car that I’ll have to leave behind. And I’ll need a ride somewhere.”
“Somewhere?”
“Where that somewhere is will be up to you.”
“Oh. So this is a serious wrinkle.”
“It’s fucking pruney.”
“All right. Understood. I have someone who can help us.”
“Peachy.”
“Where shall we meet?”
“Pick an all-night truckstop on the Interstate, why don’t you? Between where I am and where you are.”
“Fine. Drive east, toward the Quad Cities. Exit at Moscow. Look for the dinosaur.”
“Moscow? Dinosaur?”
“It’s one of those Sinclair gas station dinosaurs—at the Moscow, Iowa, exit.”
“If you say so.”
“When will you be leaving?”
“Now.”
“All right—go ahead. I can organize my end quickly and you have just a little farther to go.”
“I’ll say.”
I hung up.
When I started out, it was close to eleven. Interstate 80 was mostly big fucking trucks and me. I rolled along at seventy and might have found the ivory-cast winter landscape, with its gentle rolling terrain, serenely soothing if the tobacco smell in the car, which cracking the window didn’t seem to help, wasn’t damn near choking me. Charlie would have his revenge....
And then one of those big fucking trucks I mentioned would come along and, ten four good buddy, about blow my ass off the highway. Christ, I was almost glad to see first one and then another pulled over by the cops, or as glad as a guy with a plastic-wrapped stiff in his trunk can be to see the cops.
Charlie had some eight-tracks but it was all shit— country and western—and his radio seemed intent on pulling in Holy Roller preachers (“This is Garner Ted Armstrong, saying...”), additional hillbilly music (“Hello, Darlin’ ”), and really wretched rock stations (if “ABC” by the Jackson Five and “I Think I Love You” by the Partridge Family could be considered rock). Somewhere Charlie was laughing his ass off at me, although not in the trunk—he was nice and quiet back there.
Right alongside the Interstate, the green dinosaur loomed from in front of a Sinclair station truckstop, and I now knew the Broker’s instructions hadn’t been a hallucination on either of our parts. I took the Moscow exit and pulled in to a graveled parking lot filled with bigger, modern day dinosaurs, the semi variety; truckers not taking a nap in their rigs were inside having coffee and cholesterol. The Chevelle I left in a front space in front of God and everybody, and strolled into a brightly lit, wholesome-looking restaurant with a long counter.
I found a window booth, from which I ordered an iced tea, cheeseburger and fries. My waitress was a thousand years old, but was efficient for her age, and I enjoyed my meal while I waited for the Broker to show.
When he came in about fifteen minutes later, he didn’t look any more out of place than Rex Harrison at a 4-H meeting. His tan camel’s hair topcoat probably cost as much as every trucker at the counter’s red-and-plaid jacket put together, and his long face with the angular cheekbones and soft blue eyes and stark white hair wouldn’t be any more memorable than Martians landing, should the cops ever come around asking.
With him was a guy in a denim jacket and blue jeans, hands in the pockets of the jacket, which wasn’t near warm enough for winter. He was a fairly small specimen, maybe five six and of average build, but his burr haircut and dead dark eyes in a chiseled, weathered face said he was ex-military.
That didn’t surprise me. I figured most of Broker’s recruits came from the ranks of Uncle Sam’s cast-offs. His business worked best with outsiders, trained killers who were not mob-affiliated or otherwise burdened with criminal records and backgrounds. Clean-cut all-American mercenaries.
Broker nodded at the counter and the guy in denim sat there, while his master came over, removing brown leather gloves, and giving me a smile that was only technically a smile, going up at either end but mirthless and disapproving.
He glanced at the booth fore and aft of mine, noted that they were vacant, and sat rather heavily, then slid over, creating a farting sound on the faux leather of the booth and making me smile.
I asked Broker, “Where’d you find Rumpelstiltskin?”
Broker just looked at me, his puss as blank as a pie pan. “You might want to watch that kind of talk around Roger. He’s a formidable young man. Much like yourself.”
“Then maybe Roger ought to watch himself around me.”
One eyebrow went up. “You seem in a surly mood.”
“Maybe it
’s just a preemptive strike, since I figure you aren’t too happy getting called out for a road trip in the middle of the night.”
“And, actually, I’m not. Can you give me the rough details?”
I didn’t respond to that, instead asking, “Who’s going to drive me back? That’s assuming you want me to go back.”
He frowned. “I presume I will drive you, since you indicated the car you’re in may...may require some clean-up.”
“Ah. That’s where Roger comes in.”
“Correct.”
I wiped a fry through the glistening red of watered-down ketchup. “I had to eliminate a business rival.”
He frowned. “I see. And you feel it’s best you give me the details on the ride back, rather than here in public?”
“Yeah. Not many people in this lovable greasy spoon, granted, but just the two of us in your car would be better. I gotta warn you, though. I smell like shit.”
“Is that right?”
I nodded. “The car I drove belongs to that business rival I mentioned. He damn near smoked himself to death. Damn near. And now I got that foul stench in my clothes.”
The Broker folded his hands prayerfully. “Pity. Did you get any identification from this rival?”
“Yeah. If you let me drive your car, I can give you that stuff and you can go over it.”
He nodded crisply.
The thousand-year-old waitress came over and Broker ordered a coffee to go. She stared at him for a moment, as if she were hoping he were an apparition that might disappear and remove the need of carrying out so difficult a task, but Broker didn’t disappear, so she did.
He asked, “Unavoidable, this elimination?”
“No. I needed practice.”
“There’s no need for sarcasm.”
“Ever see A Night at the Opera?”
“What, the Marx Brothers? Of course I have. Why?”
I dragged another fry through red. “Remember the stateroom scene? Every member of the cast piling into a little cabin on that steamship? Well, that’s this assignment. Crawling with names and faces that weren’t in that surveillance report. That’s why I say you may not want me to go back there.”
He sighed and shook his head. “You have to. This is a key client.”
“From Chicago, right?”
He blanched. “How do you know that?”
“When people talk to me, I pay attention.”
The Broker said nothing. His spooky blue eyes were half-lidded. He slid out of the booth, went over and tapped the denim midget on the shoulder, and he and Roger came over. Broker slid back into the booth and Roger sat next to him.
Broker said, “Quietly tell Roger what to expect.”
I considered telling Roger that what he could expect was a life of getting turned away at various amusement park rides for not meeting the height requirement. But I thought better of it.
“Hi, Roger.” I threw Charlie’s car keys onto the booth’s tabletop. Then I nodded out the window at the car parked just beyond where we sat. “You can expect to find a dead man in the trunk of that green Chevelle. Pre-wrapped in plastic, like a picnic sandwich.”
Roger said, “Anything else?”
“A duffel bag of his shit. There’s some skin magazines in the back seat you can help yourself to. My suggestion? Get rid of everything—the whole damn car.”
Roger turned toward the Broker.
Broker said, “I concur.”
Roger nodded.
Then Charlie’s new chauffeur exited the booth and stopped by the counter where he’d been in the middle of his own cheeseburger and fries, and requested of the thousand-year-old waitress a to-go sack, and got back a Lot’s Wife look but eventual cooperation.
By the time the Broker had paid our check, Roger and Charlie and the Chevelle were gone. We stepped into the cold air and the Broker pulled on his leather gloves. I didn’t have to be told which ride was the Broker’s—that silver Cadillac Fleetwood Eldorado.
I’d never been inside one before, let alone sat behind the wheel. But Broker entrusted it to me.
God, it was all leather and padded dashboard with a cassette player and still had the new car smell, and no tobacco stench at all. I felt like I was sitting in a penthouse, not a car. But I hid my reaction from Broker, who I handed Charlie’s wallet.
I drove toward Iowa City, keeping it at seventy, and filled Broker in on what had happened, including Charlie’s elliptical references to the girl’s father and his not so-elliptical references to the professor’s wife.
“He was an untrustworthy man,” the Broker said of Charlie. “You made the right decision.”
“But it’s collateral damage.”
“Ah, and you don’t like collateral damage.”
“No, I don’t, but this guy was a sleazy prick, so I’m over it. But do we need to pull out? Scrap the contract? We have all kinds of players in this that your surveillance guy didn’t pick up on.”
“True. But this is a vital contract.”
“Right. Because that brunette’s father is a Chicago Outfit guy.”
Broker didn’t like hearing me say that.
“And,” I went on, “he wants the prof snuffed because he doesn’t like daddy’s little girl taking entrance exams from a faculty member’s member.”
He sighed heavily. “Something like that. The ‘why’ is not your concern. It’s not even my concern.”
“When assholes like Charlie come waltzing into my life...into our life...it is. So, then, I stay?”
“You stay. But get this thing done.”
“Look, Broker.” My eyes were on the ivory world we were gliding through. “Bumping off a Charlie Who’s-it is one thing. Putting that brunette at risk is another.”
He straightened as much as his seat belt would allow. “Well, under no circumstances take her out. My God, she’s the client’s daughter.”
“Even if she wanders in on me in the process?”
“Wear a ski mask if you have to.”
“Oh, this just gets classier.”
“Quarry...there’s nothing classy about murder.”
“Says the guy in the camel’s hair coat with the Fleetwood Caddy.”
He didn’t have anything to say to that.
Then the Broker turned on a little light on his side of the vast vehicle and went through all that I.D. I’d handed over.
“You’ve looked at this,” he said.
“Yeah. Like I said, he was a PI.”
Broker nodded and went through the credit cards and various papers tucked in with the cash in the fold.
“What does this mean?” he asked, reading aloud from a slip of paper, “ ‘We’ll meet on Monday night at the Holiday Inn lounge. 7 p.m. D.B.’ ”
I shrugged. “Could be this case—could be something else of Charlie’s, something old.”
He frowned at me. “Is that what you think?”
“It’s possible that ‘B’ stands for ‘Byron,’ and that this note is from Charlie’s client.”
“The wife.”
“The wife.”
I glanced over at the Broker and his expression was stricken.
“That means,” he said, “we could have the professor’s wife added to your stateroom scene.”
“If that memo does mean what I speculated it might, yes. And of course it might not.”
“Christ. Hell.”
“So then we do pull out?”
“Can you think of another alternative? I would be grateful, Quarry, if you could.”
I shrugged, feeling powerful behind the wheel of the majestic buggy. “If she hasn’t ever met this guy she hired? Then I could be him. I could be Charlie, the PI. It covers why I’m shadowing her husband. I handle her, get rid of her, and—”
“What do you mean,” he said, giving me a sharp glance, “ ‘get rid of her’?”
“I hope I mean, I talk to her and she goes on her way.”
He was staring at the memo. “What if she’s already met Char
lie?”
“Then maybe...well, there’s other ways of getting rid of people.”
The Broker sighed; his expression was one of extreme distaste. “Yes. Yes there are.” He looked over at me, eyes half-lidded again. “I will have this Charlie character looked into. I’ll have information available by late Monday afternoon. Call me before five at the same number. Don’t do anything till then—don’t return to your surveillance post, just stay in your hotel.”
“The Holiday Inn.”
His eyes and nostrils flared. “Hell, I hadn’t thought of that. You’re already in the hotel where the woman would be meeting you....”
“What’s wrong with that? It’s convenient.”
He shook his head. “This world in Iowa City—it’s too small, it’s too cluttered.”
“Tell me about it.”
Broker’s icy blue eyes bore down on me. “If I can confirm that our late friend Charlie was a single operative, and that he did not work out of the same city where Mrs. Byron lives, then there is a good chance that, A, she has never met him in person and dealt with him only over the phone, and, B, he will not immediately be missed, since he has no associates to miss him.”
“You’re assuming he worked alone—wasn’t part of an agency.”
“His business card implies a one-man operation. It’s worth checking out.”
I let some air out. “That would buy us a couple of days.”
“Yes.”
We rode along in silence for a while.
Then: “So what’s in the manuscript, Broker?”
“What manuscript?”
“Don’t play dumb. You don’t play dumb at all well. The manuscript I’m expected to find and burn, after killing this philandering fucker.”
Hard Case Crime: The First Quarry Page 7