Quarry's deal q-3

by Max Allan Collins

  In the bedroom, above the round waterbed, with its white silk sheets and black furry spread, was a painting. A black square with an immense red dot all but engulfing it. Nancy had a picture above her bed, too. An art nouveau print of a beautiful woman in a flowing scarf against a pastel background. Nancy had an antique brass bed. I had the feeling these girls weren’t two of a kind.

  Meanwhile, I was going through things. The name she was using here was Glenna Cole, but I found identification cards of various sorts in several other names. The Broker’s name for her was Ivy. Knowing Broker’s so-called sense of humor, that probably came from poison ivy. Broker called me Quarry. Because (he said) a quarry is carved out of rock. The Broker’s dead now.

  I found a gun. A spare, probably. She wouldn’t have taken her suitcases with her unless she was going off on a job. That was my guess, anyway, and it came from experience. Also, the gun was just a little purse thing, a pearl-handled. 22 automatic, and I imagined she used something a little heavier than that in her work. A. 38, at least. Speaking of which, I did find a box of. 38 shells behind some lacy panties in a drawer, and that substantiated my guesswork, as there was no gun here that went with these shells.

  What I didn’t find was evidence of where she’d gone. I went through the wastebaskets, and I even went through a bag of garbage in her kitchen, and found nothing, no plane or bus reservation notice, no nothing. I even played the rubbing a pencil against the top blank sheet of a note pad trick, and while it seems to work on television, all I got for my trouble was dirty fingers.

  I sat on an uncomfortable-looking comfortable couch in her living room and wondered what to do next.

  That was when her boyfriend came in.

  4

  I said,“Who the hell are you?”

  His mouth dropped open like a trap door.

  “So who the hell are you?” I demanded again.

  He cocked his head like a dog trying to comprehend its master, narrowing his eyes, making them seem more close-set than they really were.

  “Well?” I said.

  That’s the only way I know to handle a situation like that: turn the tables, put the shoe on the other foot, or whatever other cliche you want to use to describe what I was doing to him. It was the only way I knew that might avoid immediate violence. I don’t care for physical violence myself, and try to duck it whenever possible.

  Especially when faced with a guy both bigger and stronger than me, facts made obvious by his standing there in swim trunks and towel, the latter flung casually over a classically muscular shoulder.

  “Well, are you coming in or aren’t you?” I asked.

  He pushed the door shut. His teeth were showing. He wasn’t smiling. But he was too confused to be violent. At the moment.

  “I don’t know you,” he said.

  “If I knew you,” I said, “would I be asking your goddamn name every couple seconds?”

  His eyebrows were as light a blond as the hair on his head. His nose was small, almost feminine. He really was prettier-looking than the dragon lady. But nowhere near as interesting.

  “You got a reason for being in Glenna’s room?” he said. His voice was medium-range, flat, uninteresting.

  “Sure. Do you?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I do. I live here.”

  “The hell you say.” I knew he did, of course, had seen the men’s clothing in the closet and in dresser drawers, and knew of the female domination of the place which meant any man here was living with whatever woman he served. What I didn’t know was how fast this asshole was, that he’d pull a wham/bam/thank-you-ma’am on that female counterpart of himself he’d gone off into the shadows with. I mean, even at the Beach Shore you spent the night with whoever you banged. Sometimes you stayed the month.

  “Hey,” he said, sitting in a chair across from me, a glass coffee table separating us. “Hey, I’ve seen you someplace. You staying here with somebody? Have I seen you down by the pool?”

  “I’m staying here. You might have seen me.”

  “But we haven’t met.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m Norm Morrow.”

  “Burt Thompson.”

  We didn’t shake hands, by the way.

  “Okay, then. Okay, Burt. Now we’re introduced. Now maybe you don’t mind going into what you’re doing in here?”

  “I’m waiting for Glenna.”

  “Glenna’s gone.”

  “She’ll be back.”

  “Not for a while, bud.”

  “I’ll wait a while. And it’s Burt.”

  “I don’t give a fuck it’s Henry Kissinger. I’m starting to get the idea you’re fucking around with me, and I don’t like it.”

  “If you hadn’t gone fucking around with some other piece of ass but Glenna, maybe she wouldn’t have asked me up here.”

  “That’s horseshit, pal.”

  “How so?”

  “Glenna doesn’t give a damn what I do while she’s gone, she’s gone sometimes a month at a time, and she doesn’t expect me to be a fucking priest, you know? It’s an understanding we got. And I’m beginning to understand something else… I had about enough of you. Now what is this really about?”

  “All I know is she asked me up, asked me to stay on, maybe she just figured I’d pass the word onto you your welcome was worn out.. ”

  “Hey. You were just leaving, sport.”

  “I don’t want any trouble. You’re a whole lot stronger than me, I can see that. No need to go proving it.”

  “So get the fuck out of here, then.”

  “Look, why don’t we just ask Glenna which of us she wants to hang around.”

  “What? She split, she’s gone, hasn’t that sunk in yet, you jackass?”

  “We’ll call her and ask her.”

  “I don’t have a number to reach her, and neither do you.”

  “I admit I don’t. I just thought maybe you did. You say you live here.”

  “Well… sometimes she leaves a number.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t know why I’m playing along with you on this, I really don’t…”

  “We’ll call. Come on.”

  “She won’t be there till tomorrow, at least. She’s driving, and it’s a long way where she’s headed.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “You’re her new boyfriend and you don’t know? Hey. That’s all. That’s all I can take. Just haul your ass off that couch and get outa here. Okay?”

  I was admiring a metallic abstract sculpture on the glass coffee table between us. It was egg-shaped, the sculpture, with an indentation on either side, and about the size of a baseball, a little taller maybe. When I hit him with it, he went down without a sound. He missed the table, landed soft on the tufts of shag carpet. I hit him again, once, in the same spot, and made sure the skull was cracked open.

  One good thing was he landed on his right side and it was his left side I’d hit, the left side of his head I mean, so there wasn’t any blood on the carpet, and wouldn’t be if I moved him quick and careful.

  I left him in the bathtub, after pulling off his trunks, heaving him in, turning on the shower, and leaving him looking like he’d slipped and fallen in there, cracking his head open against the side of the tub.

  The work of art I wrapped in a towel and took with me, for later disposal.

  The telephone number she left him I found under the phone.

  5

  Killing people with blunt objects isn’t really my style, but then style is a luxury I can’t always indulge in. Carrying on a conversation with somebody I know I’m going to have to kill isn’t my style, either. Under ideal conditions I’d just walk in, without a word, use my gun, and go. Hello, goodbye.

  But conditions aren’t always ideal. Sometimes conditions are pure shit. And being able to adapt to an unforeseen, shit situation is what separates the men from the boys, the living from the dead. Being able to adapt and survive.

  That I learned in Vietnam.
I learned a lot of things in Vietnam, not the least of which was the meaninglessness of life and death, and the importance of survival. Those may not seem compatible, but they are. Only when you realize how little your life means, and how slender a thread it hangs on, do you begin to know the meaning of the word survival.

  There’s nobody easier to kill than a self-important man, a man who feels the world revolves around him, a man who finds it hard to imagine that maybe things would go on without him. For instance. Political assassinations. Every- body knows they happen every day, but there isn’t a world leader living who wouldn’t be shocked to be dying.

  Of course that’s an easy example. Everybody knows it’s easier for a politician to grasp the possibility of a nuclear war ending the world than to understand that a bullet through his brain, say, could end a brilliant political career. And those of them that live through assassination attempts teach their crippled bodies to walk again so as to get back on the firing line as soon as possible.

  I’ll tell you who else is an easy mark: anybody sitting on the board of any corporation. Wouldn’t have to be General Motors or U.S. Steel or anything. It could be the lowliest member of the board of the country’s least successful condom company. There isn’t a one of those assholes whose last words wouldn’t be, “There must be some mistake.”

  But it’s also the guy who’s been smoking for twenty-five years and has a hacking cough and is short of wind but keeps on lighting up smoke after smoke, pack after pack, and when the doctor shows the guy the X-ray of what’s left of his lungs, well, nobody could be more surprised.

  Religious people are easy marks, too. They all think the fix is in.

  It isn’t. Not in this world, anyway.

  For five years, more or less, I killed people for money. Good money, that is. Before that I’d done it for lousy money, for Uncle Sugar; and in one case, for free, when I got home from Nam and found my wife in bed with a guy named Williams, who I didn’t kill on the spot, waiting a day to cool down and then going over to his house where he was in the driveway under his sporty little car and kicked the jack out. Sometimes I wish it had been my wife under there instead of that poor bastard Williams. Ex-wife, now. Anyway, it got some attention in the papers, which is probably how the Broker heard about me.

  He’d picked a good time to come look me up. I’d spent I don’t know how long, months maybe, looking for work, but between the publicity I’d got for murdering my wife’s boyfriend, despite my acquittal, and the general bad reputation of returning Vietnam vets, who were considered poor risks for employment since all of us were crazed glassy-eyed dope addicts, I’d found nothing, nothing but a fleabag hotel room, a dose of clap from some hooker, and a visit from my old man who dropped by to tell me not to come back to Ohio because his latest wife was scared of me.

  At any rate, he looked me up, the Broker did, and made me a business proposition which I accepted without hesitation. The Broker was a middle man in the murder business; he provided insulation between client and killer. “Sort of an agent,” he’d said. I was to be part of a team, a two-man team breaking down to active and passive, hitman and back-up. He felt I’d find the active role more to my liking. He was right.

  He was right about a lot of things in those five years, though there had been one thing he was wrong about, but that’s a long story, which I’ve recorded elsewhere, and it would be beyond the purpose of this present account to go into all of that again.

  Suffice to say I’m alive and the Broker isn’t. And I have the Broker’s list.

  It’s a list running to approximately fifty names, fifty entries, each including extensive biographical information, current and previous addresses, photographs, and a record of each specific job carried out. I used to be on the list, but I removed and destroyed my entry as soon as the thing landed in my hands. But I’d been there. All of us were. All of the people like me who’d done work for the Broker.

  (This is not to suggest any brotherhood, any bond, between myself and the others on the list. I’d only worked with a handful of them. My longtime partner, for instance, was dead.)

  The Broker was by no means a unique entity; there were others like him. And by now most of the people on the list would be working again, carrying out new assignments for their new Brokers. Life goes on, after all. Death, too.

  But for me there would be no more Brokers; no more middle men. No way.

  I had the list.

  And no desire to take over where the Broker left off, no intention of playing the middle man role myself and becoming what I’d come to hate. Nor did I have any intention of using the list to try and blackmail anyone on it. A hired killer isn’t your ideal blackmail victim. Docile they aren’t.

  But suppose.

  Suppose I were to pick a name off the list, pick a killer out of the Broker’s hat. Suppose I were to follow that killer to his latest job, wait and watch and find out who his potential victim might be. And suppose I were to then go to that potential victim and tell him what’s about to happen to him. And offer my help in the matter. Offer a little preventive medicine. For a fee.

  It was a crazy idea.

  But suppose it worked…

  6

  I brought the razor up to my throat and stroked. A final patch of beard disappeared and the face looking back at me in the mirror was vaguely familiar.

  And not a little strange. The upper part of my face was Florida tan, but the lower, newly bare half was pale as baby powder. I had grown the beard to change my appearance temporarily, assuming once the thing was off that my rather ordinary features would keep me a face in the crowd. Only not many faces in the crowd have two-tone complexions.

  I shrugged at my familiar, strange reflection, thinking what the hell, I’ll just have to take time out and do something about it.

  I splashed some water on my face, a little sting of shave lotion, and walked naked out into the bedroom part of the motel room, where the television was going, a morning game show on, a woman dressed as a head of cabbage standing next to a man, presumably her husband, wearing a sort of perforated tin skirt. The host was asking him what he was supposed to be, and the guy was saying, “I grate.” I couldn’t have agreed more. I turned it off, got into my swim trunks, and went out to the pool.

  It was eleven-thirty and the sun was almost to the middle of the sky, a nice hot sun that would take care of my facial prob- lem no trouble. I found a beach chair near poolside, adjusted it to make sure I would get full benefit of the sun’s rays, and leaned back, covering the top of my face with a towel.

  I suppose I looked a little weird, but it didn’t matter much, as there wasn’t a soul around. It was a terrific place to spend a morning and afternoon. Finally, around three, a mother and her couple of kids took a quick dip, and then a bit later another mother and her teenage daughter came out for some sun. The teenage daughter was a sweet little thing, very slim but very pretty, and she smiled at me. I didn’t smile back. I didn’t want to encourage her. One thing I didn’t need right now was sexual activity. That’s what I was recovering from. I also didn’t need an indignant mother, which can happen when you screw a teenage daughter, as it irks a middle-aged mother to discover her offspring is the more sexually attractive of the two.

  I had left the Beach Shore early this morning, waking Nancy to tell her goodbye, as I didn’t want to seem to be sneaking out. I had no idea when the body in the shower would be found, didn’t expect it to be for several days at least, but at any rate I didn’t want to make a suspicious exit. Nancy wasn’t surprised to see me go. She was a little sad; she even managed a tear. Ours, apparently, had been one of her longer-lasting recent relationships.

  I had made no attempt to make good time; in fact I had stopped mid-morning while still in Florida (barely) at this motel to get some rest, shave off my beard, do some thinking, and swim in a pool that wasn’t populated with water bunnies of various sexes. Now that I had found out about the pale beneath my beard, I was especially glad I’d stopped while st
ill in the sunny south. I tan easily, or rather burn easily, the burn turning to tan literally overnight. So by tomorrow I’d be a new man.

  I knew where she was headed. Glenna Cole or Ivy or whatever you want to call her. All it had taken was a few minutes on the phone with a helpful operator. I merely said a message had been left for me, a request that I call this certain number and I wanted to find out the source of the number before returning the call. The operator had said it was against company policy to do that, and I said I didn’t need a name or a street address, just the town would do fine. She gave me the town and I thanked her and when I hung up I had to laugh.

  The name of the town the operator had given me was West Lake, Iowa.

  I had picked Glenna Cole from my list because her permanent address was the Beach Shore in Florida. I had wanted to escape the Midwest, a Midwest which was still cold as hell though this was supposed to be spring, and break the rule and mix business with pleasure, get some sun, swim in the ocean, maybe get laid. In my desire to ease the boredom of working stakeout, I had chosen Florida, where I had not once been able to swim in the ocean, and where I got laid till I wanted to check into a monastery, and where I got so much sun half my face got tan.

  And now I was heading back to the Midwest, back to Iowa, for Christ’s sake, where I’d just a few months ago been involved in a messy business that had put me in hiding until just a week and a half ago.