“My name’s Richard Cornell,” he said, and extended a hand. “I run the Paddlewheel. Did you and my wife have a nice talkie-poo?”
Chapter Four
I shook his hand. He smiled across the booth at me in a fashion that I’m sure fooled a lot of people, but I could see the coldness in the aqua-blue eyes, which were half-lidded and made his gaze seem casual when it was heart-attack serious.
“She’s a wonderful singer, your wife,” I said.
“Indeed she is.” The British accent was light but there, a touch of class that went well with his lilting baritone.
“Friendly, too. But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, Mr. Cornell.”
He leaned back, smiled on half his face. He’d blinked maybe three times since sitting down. “Angela’s a big girl. We’re separated. She goes her way and I go mine…though I maintain an interest in her welfare. Didn’t get your name.”
“Jack Gibson,” I said.
Cornell folded his arms and the smile widened, though it had no warmth. “And what brings you to my part of the world, Mr. Gibson?”
Not this part of the world—his part of the world.
In about half a second I processed the following: he wouldn’t have sat down casually to chat up a stray Paddlewheel patron, and as a nearly ex-husband he had no reason to check up on or protect his wife, meaning he was (for whatever reason) suspicious about me, I’d been noticed somehow, and if I trotted out the veterinary meds schtick right now, I’d soon be dancing in the parking lot with two or three of his satin-vest bully boys before he even got around to blinking again.
“Are you always this attentive to your guests, Mr. Cornell?”
A black waitress in an Afro wig delivered him three fingers of what looked to be Scotch over two ice cubes. He smiled, said, “Thank you, darlin’…drinky-poo, Mr. Gibson?”
“No thanks.”
“That’ll be all, darlin’,” he told her, kissed the air in her direction and she smiled and walked off.
He watched with admiration, his smile genuine now. “Boobs like cannonballs,” he said, and shook his head, eyes darting up. “You believe it? Wants to be a grade-school teacher. Mine were all prunes.”
“Community college student, huh?”
He gave me a sharp look and said, “You pick up a lot, don’t you, Mr. Gibson?…What were we talking about?”
“I was asking what I’d done to deserve the massa’s attention.”
He chuckled at that. “You’re here alone. You’ve been here since around nine-thirty. You’ve had a meal, alone, you gambled alone…about broke even I believe, very modest, very controlled…you spent some time upstairs, but didn’t dance, and you haven’t been drinking at all, except possibly a beer and maybe a few gallons of diet cola…really, how can you stand that bilge?” He shuddered. “Finally you wound up here in the bar, where you struck up a conversation with my wife. In fact, you struck up a lot of conversations this evening.”
Either I was getting sloppy, or his security team was smarter than they looked.
“I didn’t see any cameras,” I said.
That pleased him so much all his teeth came out to play in a beaming smile. “I don’t have security cameras—I just have a staff that looks out for their boss. The injuns send up smoke signals to their chiefy-poo, if somebody doesn’t fit any of the usual molds.”
“More like squaws—with the exception of your noneck squad, it’s mostly women here…like Cannonball Katie over there.”
His smile settled down and his eyes almost shut as he sipped the Scotch. He reached over for his wife’s purse and helped himself to a Virginia Slims—confident enough in his masculinity to risk the estrogen content. He used her matches and got his going, not bothering to ask me if I wanted one. The reports on me probably said I hadn’t been smoking. He knew everything about me. He thought.
“Here’s the thing, sport,” he said, and if condescension were a liquid he would have been dripping. “Casing the joint won’t do you any good. I’ll be upping my security team and my precautions will go on high alert status, so you can tell your friends that knocking over the Paddlewheel would be a very, very poor idea.”
“Of course it would. You’re doing land-office business, sure, which means a good payday for a score. But taking down a place that attracts a Wednesday night crowd like this? Calls for a D-Day Invasion.”
He wasn’t sure what to make of that. His eyes tightened as he drew in smoke, held it so long it might have been marijuana, and let it out. Even in the dim nightclub light, you could see his face was as cracked and leathery as it was handsome.
Then he said, “Whatever you have in mind, mate, ponder this—I am connected to individuals in Chicago who would not rest until anyone who tried anything against this facility was apprehended. And by apprehended, I mean castrated, fed their genitals and dumped in the river.”
“Concrete overshoes?”
“Some fashions never go out of style.”
“That’d be the Giardelli family, I suppose.”
That surprised him, his nostrils flaring, though the eyes remained half-lidded. He said nothing.
I shook my head, laughed a little. “I’m not an advance man for a plunder squad. Get real, Dickie.”
“…Only my friends call me ‘Dickie.’ ”
“Oh, we’re going to be friends. You see, I’ve done work, off and on, myself for the Giardellis. Checking up on me would be tricky, though, because I worked through a middleman and he’s dead now. But I can give you chapter and verse on mutual acquaintances.”
He set the cigarette in the glass tray. “If you’re a federal agent, Mr. Gibson, I’m asking you to declare yourself, right now. Or we’ll be talking entrapment.”
“Oh, we’re talking entrapment, all right. Anyway, the fix your Chicago friends put in must go at least up into the lower federal rungs. You don’t open up a casino because you have the county sheriff in your pocket. This has to go way higher.”
“What kind of middleman?”
He’d been thinking. He might even have figured it out.
“I used to do contract work.”
“Used to?”
“Now I’m more in…preventive maintenance.”
“What kind of…preventive maintenance?”
“Helping people like you stay alive.”
“Why would I need your help to stay alive?”
“Because other people still do contract work.”
He was staring at me, the eyes wider now, though more alert than scared. He got it. He followed.
“I’m not wearing a wire,” I said. “And I don’t have a weapon on me. You can have one of your musclemen frisk me, if they can bend over that far.”
He had another sip of the Scotch. And another.
He checked his watch, mumbled to himself, “It’s after two…” Then he said, “Maybe we should talk privately.”
“Maybe we should,” I said.
The “after two” reference had been about the dance club on the upper floor closing at that time. He mentioned on the way up in a private elevator off the kitchen that he had a small business office on the restaurant level, but a larger, more comfortable one shared the third floor with the Paddlewheel Lounge.
Office wasn’t really the word for it—bachelor pad would be more like it, a room wider than it was long with the far wall engulfed by a projection TV screen and a viewing area consisting of a plump brown leather sofa bookended by overstuffed brown leather chairs. Between them was a glass coffee table under which the projection TV unit lurked, and a brown geometric-patterned area rug was beneath all those furnishings. The exposed floor was a gray marble-like tile, with the upper reaches of the brick walls at left and right given to shelving, books at left, video cassettes and CDs at right; stereo speakers rode the walls, as did track lighting.
The wall to the left of the projection screen displayed a framed Warhol “Marilyn” pop-art print. An open door to the screen’s right provided a glimpse of a bedroo
m, though the lights were off and its shape remained vague. Much less vague was the shape of the slender little blonde, with an Orphan Annie head of yellow curls, who was in sheer white panties, her knees on the rug in front of one brown comfy chair, as she leaned prayerfully over the glass table, snorting a line of coke. And I don’t mean Diet.
“Chrissy!” Cornell snapped. “Go wait in the other room.”
Still on her knees, she looked up, powder on her nostrils; she was cute as cotton candy, if you injected cotton candy. No more than twenty, I’d guess, skinny enough for her ribs to show but with pert little puffynippled handful titties.
“Sure, Dickie,” she said.
But she finished snorting before jumping up to pad into the bedroom, displaying a cute dimpled ass and not one iota of cellulite (or for that matter shame), shutting the door tight behind her.
“Sorry,” he said.
I shrugged. “Kids.”
There was a wet bar against the back wall, next to where we’d come in.
“Drinky?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
He got himself a few inches of Dewar’s on the rocks, then gestured to the chair Chrissy had been kneeling before. I took it. It was warm. From here I could see on the glass the ghosts of two more lines of consumed coke. People and their vices.
He seated himself on the brown comfy chair opposite, rested an ankle on a knee—he was wearing Italian loafers and, like me, no socks. It was like we were long-lost brothers—this was just like my place at Paradise Lake, except for the dope, the near-naked doper girl, the projection TV and the leather furniture.
His eyes at half-mast but his smile full-bore, he asked, “So who the fuck are you, love?”
“I’m using Jack Gibson. When I worked for a guy called the Broker, I used Quarry.”
His eyes tightened. “I, uh…know that name.”
“Quarry?”
“No. The Broker. Quad Cities, isn’t it?”
“Right. You ever have occasion to use his services?”
“No. Indeed not. But I was…aware of those services.”
“Yeah, well. I used to perform that kind of service. I perform another one now.”
He took in some Dewar’s, swirled it around, sent it down. “And what service would that be?”
“I have a method, which is my own concern, of following assassins to their intended targets. The assassins usually work in pairs of two—back-up slash recon, and the actual trigger puller.”
He pretended to smile on half his face; the rest of his sour puss told the truth. “You sound like Mario Puzo suffering from the D.T.’s. What kind of fantasy is this?”
“Not the good kind. Somebody wants you dead, Dickie. I don’t know who that somebody is, although I might be able to find out. That would be extra, of course.”
“Extra. Extra to what?”
“To the price of saving your ass.”
He thought about that. “How would you go about saving my…ass?”
“I’d stop the hit from going down.”
“Non-violently?”
“Of course not. I’ll have to kill the bastards. What do you think?”
His eyes widened and his smile widened and he played at thinking this was funny. “You are a card, Mr. Quarry.”
“Let’s stick with Gibson. There’s no extra charge for the amusement factor.”
He grunted a laugh. “This may be the most outrageous shakedown I’ve ever heard of. You come in to my place of business and make a few references to low people in high places, to convince me of your authenticity…and then you presume to have me pay you off, to protect me from what? From whom?”
“I’ll want twenty thousand dollars,” I said, ignoring most of that. “After I’ve delivered. I don’t expect you to pay in cash, though with the casino you probably could. But I understand the accounting problems that might ensue.”
“Oh you do. Accounting problems.”
“I’ll give you the banking information—I’m using the Cayman Islands now—and you can have the twenty K transferred to an account there.”
“I see. I agree to pay you, and nothing happens to me.” He laughed loud enough now for it to ping off the brick wall opposite. “This has to be the most audacious extortion scheme I’ve ever heard of…and I’ve heard of a few.”
“Bet you have.”
His face seemed to darken further under the leathery tan. He slammed the empty tumbler down on the glass and leaned forward and pointed a finger at me. “Listen, booby—you know not with whom you fuck. I ran key clubs on the West End for the Kray brothers when you were sucking your mama’s titty.”
“I’m a bottle baby.”
“I’ve seen things undreamed of in your fucking philosophy, Horatio. Fuck! I ran Rush Street Clubs for the Giardellis when you were—”
“Shooting gooks with a sniper rifle?”
That stopped him.
“Listen,” I said, and I held my hands up, palms open. “I’ve invested some time and money and energy in this, but I’m well aware it’s a speculative endeavor. You can say no—you don’t have to buy my Fuller brushes, you can pass on my Amway products, you don’t even have to buy any magazine subscriptions to send me to Bible camp. Your choice. Of course, you’ll be dead, this time tomorrow.”
I rose.
He looked up at me. I had a feeling he had a gun stuffed down in that chair, particularly because of the way his hand was way back on the cushion. If he made a move, I could have the glass coffee table in his face faster than Chrissy could snort a line.
But he raised his own palms and patted the air, gently. “Sit,” he said. “Sit.”
I sat.
“Suppose I take you seriously,” he said. He got a cigarette going, taking one from a gold box on the coffee table—not a Virginia Slim, I’d wager. “Suppose I accept this outrageous scenario as potentially real and not just ridiculous twaddle.”
“Isn’t twaddle inherently ridiculous?”
He closed his eyes. “You are insufferable.”
“Sorry. Just trying to lighten the mood.”
“What do you know about this?”
“About this?”
“About how I would be…eliminated.”
I shrugged. “It’s going to be nasty. You’re going to be run down by a car.”
His eyes popped. “You said something about triggers being pulled…”
“That was meant to cover the whole panorama of how many ways your ass can be ‘eliminated.’ My guess is, this particular specialist has been brought in so that your death can pass as accidental. Somebody wants you dead who doesn’t want a killing coming back on them.”
He frowned, looked off toward the door. But he wasn’t thinking about Chrissy, I didn’t think.
Then his leathery puss turned toward me and he said, slowly, “I know who hired this done.”
“Ah. So it is credible, then.”
He nodded. “Very credible. That’s why we’re still talking, Mr. Quarry.”
I didn’t correct him. It was his way of saying he was talking to a hired killer, not a veterinary medicine salesman.
“What,” he said, “if I wanted that party removed. By that I mean, the party who wanted me removed.”
“Party of the first part?” I said and risked a grin. “It is a contract, after all…I’d be glad to. I couldn’t quote a price until I knew more of the circumstances, but I’d be fine with that.”
Really fine—after all, when you kill the contract killers, the guy who hired them might be miffed with you. So eliminating the buyer would be the best kind of contract to get—lucrative and self-interested.
“Should we discuss it?” he asked.
“Let’s discuss you. First things first. How many on your security staff?”
“Twelve.”
“I counted six.”
“Six working tonight.”
“Are you including the parking-lot deputy?”
“No.”
“Is he trustwo
rthy, the deputy?”
“Of course not.”
“So what’s the story on law enforcement in Haydee’s Port?”
“There isn’t any, Mr. Quarry. There’s a county sheriff’s sub-station in Burris, which is ten miles from Haydee’s. They have half a dozen deputies and one very corrupt sheriff. All of them work for not only me but the other businesses in Haydee’s.”
“Like the Lucky Devil downtown?”
“That’s right. The Lucky Devil and all of the other low-rent dives.”
“When does the deputy go off duty?”
“You mean, off duty here?”
“Right—when does he stop babysitting your parking lot?”
“He’ll stay till the lot’s emptied out.”
“Which is?”
“Five-fifteen.”
“Latest he could still be around?”
“Five-thirty.”
“What’s your pattern? Do you stay here? You’ve got a bedroom.”
“Not usually. Sometimes on weekends, when I allow myself a little…latitude. Otherwise I maintain regular hours.”
“So, during the week, when do you leave here? And where do you go?”
“I leave, oh, about five-thirty or six. I live just down the road a few minutes.”
“What about…?” I was nodding toward the closed bedroom door.
“I don’t take my work home with me,” he said. “I’m separated, and my wife and I don’t live together right now, but, still, I wouldn’t insult her like that.”
He would fuck a little coke slut the floor above where she was singing her heart out, though. Good thing this guy had that English accent or I might think he was a shitheel.
“So when you leave at five-thirty or six, is the lot generally empty?”
“I’m the last out, yes.”
“Okay. Makes sense.”
“You mean…that’s when he’d do it? He’d…Jesus fucking…he’d run me down in my own parking lot?”
“Bingo.”
“How in God’s name is that not suspicious?”
“It’s a not a bullet in the head. It’s a guy who got run down in the parking lot of a place that serves drinks till dawn. Getting tire tracks on you from a drunk under those conditions isn’t suspicious at all, particularly in a county where the sheriff and his deputies are just possibly on the takey-poo.”
Quarry in the Middle Page 5