Quarry's deal q-3

by Max Allan Collins

  The messy business was this federal guy I shot. I didn’t know he was federal at the time. I didn’t know he was anything ex- cept a guy searching my hotel room, and he had a gun, which he started using when he saw me come in, so I used mine.

  I never killed a federal agent before, or any kind of cop for that matter, at least that I know of. Finding out the guy was federal gave me a bad moment: I wondered if maybe it might not be hard to get away with.

  But I was more worried about mob people, in whose affairs I’d been fiddling when I accidentally shot the federal guy. In fact that’s who I thought I was shooting at the time, a mob guy. So I’d covered my tracks (pretty well, considering it was spur of the moment) and retreated, burrowed in, waited to see what happened next.

  Nothing happened next. I just sat around all winter, in my A-frame cottage on Paradise Lake in Wisconsin, drinking Coke and watching television and listening to music and reading paperback novels and swimming once a day (at the YMCA at nearby Lake Geneva) and growing a beard.

  And thinking. Thinking about the new role I was preparing to play, assuming some federal guys didn’t come around to kill me. Or mob guys. Neither of which I intended to let happen, but in either case a change of plan would be called for.

  By spring nobody had come around, so I figured I was okay. I picked a name off the Broker’s list and got in my Opel GT and went to Florida.

  And now I was on my way back to the Midwest. Or would be tomorrow.

  Today I had to get half my face sunburned.

  7

  The Red Barn Club was five miles out of West Lake, Iowa, on a blacktop road, or so I’d been told. So far all I’d seen were farms and farmland, the latter still patched with snow, the fields flat except for an occasional stubborn corn stalk hanging crookedly against the pale orange sky like a crutch in search of a cripple.

  This was the end of my second day since leaving Florida. I’d done six hundred miles (give or take a hundred) both days, and had staggered into Des Moines earlier this afternoon, checking into a Holiday Inn which had a breathtaking view of the local freeway. The first thing I’d done after getting in my room was call the number I’d found in Glenna Cole’s apartment at the Beach Shore. It didn’t even take a long distance call: West Lake was one of a number of smaller towns in the surrounding area included in the Des Moines phone system.

  The voice on the other end of the line was female, pleasantly so, and answered this way: “Red Barn Club, Lucille.”

  I bluffed. “Excuse me… I was calling the Red Barn restaurant.”

  “We are a restaurant, sir.”

  “Oh, well, I’m from out of town, in Des Moines for the night, and they tell me the Red Barn’s a good place to eat, so…”

  “Where are you calling from, sir?”

  And I told her, and she gave me directions, which I followed, and now I was driving along a gently rolling black- top road, looking idly at farms and farmland, wondering where the hell this place was, anyway, and saw it.

  And almost missed it.

  The Red Barn was, of all things, a barn, a reconverted one to be sure, but driving by you could miss it easily, take it for just a freshly painted building where cows lived and hay was kept.

  After the pleasant female voice on the phone, eagerly dispensing directions to the place, I hardly expected such a painstakingly anonymous establishment: The wide side of the barn facing the road had no identifying marks, no sign decorating that expanse of red-painted, white-trimmed wood: No lighting called attention to the structure, and there weren’t any cars around. The only tip-off was the white picket fence gate, which was open and did have a small sign saying RED BARN CLUB. Why the low profile? I wondered. What was this a place where rich guys came to pay to fuck sheep?

  Whatever the case, I was joining the fun. I eased the Opel GT down a wide paved drive beyond the gate, followed around to a large parking lot in back, large enough for several hundred cars, and presently about half full, and on a week night, no less. I parked as close to the door as I could, pulling in between a Ford LTD and a Cadillac. Mine was one of the few cars in the lot without a vinyl top. This place had something, apparently, that attracted a money crowd. Good-looking sheep, maybe.

  There was some lighting back here, subdued, but lighting; and over the door, which was in the middle of the barn side, was a small sign, red neon letters on a white-painted wood field, just the initials: R B C. That was either class or snobbery, I wasn’t sure which. I wasn’t sure there was a difference.

  The interior was a surprise. The lighting was low-key, as I’d expected, but it was a soft-focus sort of thing, gold-hued, glowing, not unlike the sunset I’d just witnessed.

  The girl who greeted me at the door was glowing, too. A honey-haired young woman with a bustline you could balance drinks on. She was wearing a sleeveless clinging red sweater and high-waisted denim slacks and a beaming smile. The smile was phony, but she was good at it. And the bustline was real, so who cared?

  “Are you a club member, sir?”

  I said I wasn’t. I said I was from out of town. Which was a little moronic, since the Red Barn Club wasn’t in a town.

  “Will you just be dining with us, then, sir?”

  “I guess so,” I said.

  And was led up some stairs into the dining room. I hadn’t had time to absorb the entryway I’d been standing in, having been confronted with all that honey-colored hair and teeth and tits, but I did have time to notice a closed door at the bottom of a short flight of steps off on the right from the entry landing.

  But I was going upstairs, not down, and I was in a dining room, a surprisingly folksy one, at that. The decor was western and about as authentic as a Roy Rogers movie. Like the exterior, the walls were painted red with white trim. The dining room was separated into four rows of booths, a row against each wall, two rows side by side down the middle of the room, each booth made out of bare rough wood, picket-fence sides, crosshatched beams for roofs. The rustic effect was offset by plastic flowers on plastic vines twined around the front roof beam of each booth.

  I was in one of the side booths, next to a window, which had shutters below and ruffled, red-and-white checked curtains above. The curtains matched the tablecloths. I was wondering if I could see the parking lot from where I sat, but the shutters proved to be permanently closed.

  I wanted to look out over the cars in the lot and see if I could spot a certain one.

  Glenna Cole, or Ivy (as my late friend the Broker had called her), drove a light blue Stingray. Of course she might have changed cars en route, but not necessarily. It was worth checking, anyway.

  I was standing up in the booth, peeking out through the ruffled curtains, when the waitress came, a girl less busty but equally as attractive as the honey-haired greeter at the door. She too was wearing the red sweater and denim slacks combination, which proved to be the uniform of all the young women working at the Red Barn Club.

  I ordered, spent some time trying to look out the window at the lot, to no avail, and the food came, and was nothing special. The specialty was nothing special, in fact: barbeque ribs that were okay but that’s all. Salad, hash browns, bread, all of it okay. Nothing more.

  Outside of whoever hired the waitresses being a good judge of pulchritude, the Red Barn didn’t seem to me to have what it took to attract a hundred or so cars on a Thursday night. But that’s how many cars were out there.

  Only how many people were in here?

  A few couples, some foursomes, everyone dressed casually (I was the only person in the room with a coat and tie on). Twenty-four people, maybe. Figure ten cars, at the most.

  I had the waitress bring me a Coke from the bar and I sat and drank it.

  Then I went down to find out what was behind that closed door.

  8

  It was a room full of tables. The walls were that same barn red with white trim, but there was a noticeable absence of decoration. Only at the far end, which was given over to the bar, was the mock western
motif of the upper floor continued: horse-collar mirrors; some western paintings; chairs made from the same rough wood as the picket fence booths upstairs; tables that were glass-covered wagon wheels. But that was just in the bar area. Throughout the rest of the room the walls were bare, the tables were cardtables, round, the chairs metal folding type with padded backs and seats.

  It was also a room full of people. The cars in the parking lot now seemed justified, and then some. There wasn’t an empty seat in the house, though I felt sure one would be found, and room made, at any table I might care to join.

  There was one small area of the room that was unlit, with several long tables which were covered. This, I learned from a waitress, was where the roulette and craps was played, on the weekends. Week nights, only the card tables were open.

  This wasn’t Las Vegas, but for a place stuck between a couple of Iowa cornfields it was close enough. It certainly lacked the trappings of Las Vegas, excluding the showgirl-pretty waitresses, who went around keeping the customers well-lubricated, but all of it went on the bill, none of your free drinks stuff here, and instead of chips, the players used money, stacks of it littered each table, paper money, and not that multicolor stuff they use in Monopoly, either: the real, green thing.

  To be in this room you had to be a member. I was a member. I had just paid ten dollars for an out-of-town membership. Des Moines area members paid ten dollars, too. Membership was lifetime. The little brown card, which I was required to sign, said so. Considering the kind of stakes in question here, ten bucks was a drop in a bucket so deep you wouldn’t hear the drop.

  I played blackjack for a while. For half an hour. I lost fifty bucks without trying. I went from there to a table where they were playing five-card stud and lasted five hands, throwing away twenty-five bucks on nothing but anteing up.

  I shouldn’t have chosen blackjack, which is my worst game, or five-card stud either, my second worst. I shouldn’t have been playing cards at all, coming off of two days of solid driving, which had left me sluggish to say the least, and one thing I didn’t need to spend any more time in was a sitting position. What I did need was a bed. I was getting sleepy just thinking about it.

  But this place, this Red Barn Club with its hokey decor and mediocre restaurant and high stakes gambling set-up, was where my dragon lady, Glenna Cole, had gone. Or anyway, where simple reasoning said she’d gone, considering the Barn’s phone number was the one she’d left for her (late) lover.

  So I needed to get the feel of the place, find out what it was about, find out what was going on here that could require the specialized talents of the beautiful Ms. Cole.

  By the time I’d settled in at a table where three-card draw poker (jacks or better to open, progressive ante) was being played, I had traversed the room and pretty well convinced myself Glenna Cole was not around, not anywhere where I could see her, anyway.

  I was beginning to think I’d beat her here. I hadn’t made great time on my way up from Florida, but not terrible time, either, and maybe she’d made a side trip or something.

  If she was here, she’d be easy enough to spot. The oriental eyes, the awesome breasts, how could you miss her? Even if the room were full of women.

  Which it wasn’t. There were a few ladies mixed in at the blackjack tables, several others playing casino, just one or two playing at a poker table where a handsome young house dealer was offering seven-card stud. The week nights at the Barn, it would seem, belonged primarily to area businessmen having a night out; the weekends apparently attracted more couples, from the area and outside of it too, probably, with the craps and roulette tables being better suited to the needs of a mixed crowd.

  At any rate, if Glenna Cole was among the few females present, she was wearing a hell of a disguise. Outside of the waitresses, these were women in their forties, wives, divorcees, maybe a mistress or two. Too much make-up. Expensive, ugly pants suits. A hell of a disguise.

  The men were dressed more casually, country club casual, sports shirts, knit slacks, occasionally a sport coat, seldom a tie. This included the house dealers, who, unlike the waitresses, wore no specific uniform.

  The house dealer at the draw poker table was a guy in his early twenties with short black hair, glasses, and a worried expression. He was the weakest dealer in the room, easy, and I started winning off him right away. Most of the dealers were making cheerful, if terse, conversation with the patrons, but this kid was tightlipped, bordering on sullen.

  I was up a hundred and a half after less than an hour, and a guy across from me at the table (there were five of us in) was up maybe two hundred. He was a fat guy in a striped shirt with a string tie that had a little calf’s head choker; whether or not he’d dressed to suit the decor, or was just an asshole, I can’t say. I’d guess the latter.

  We were up to aces or better to open, second time around. The ante was five bucks, so there was a hundred seventy-five bucks in the pot before any betting started. I opened with aces, betting ten bucks. Everybody stayed. I drew three cards, picked up another ace. Everybody drew three except the fat guy, who drew to either a four-card flush or four-card straight; whichever it was, he didn’t make it, and folded before the second round of betting could begin.

  I threw another ten in and everybody dropped but the dealer. He raised me twenty-five, which was the limit. I raised him another twenty-five, and he swallowed, and called.

  “Bullets,” I said, and showed him the aces, two red ones and a spade.

  He swallowed again, and his cards tumbled out of his fingers and I caught a glimpse of a king, and he raked the cards back in.

  “Three kings, huh,” I said. “A rough one.”

  “I just had two,” the kid said defensively.

  “Why the hell did you stay in, then? I had to have aces to open.” I didn’t mention that he’d raised me: why rub it in?

  “I didn’t think you had them,” he said, and shuffled.

  So he was calling me a liar. Big fucking deal. But I found myself wondering, back in the back of my head someplace, why a house dealer would be playing so stupid, and why a guy working for the house would be carrying desperation around in his watery eyes.’

  Then again, my eyes were watery, too, and I wasn’t desperate. I was just reacting to the layer of smoke created by all the gamblers in the room whose penchant for games of chance extended to lung cancer roulette.

  I stayed a few more hands, not wanting to leave the table at a point where doing so might cause a scene, and came away with three hundred and eighty-some bucks, and that didn’t include what I spent on the four or five Cokes I drank while at the table.

  In spite of which, I was still thirsty, and I went over to the bar area, which was the least busy part of the room, except for the trio of waitresses hustling back and forth with trays of booze for the members at the gaming tables.

  In fact, when I crawled up on a padded stool at the bar, I was alone. Except for the bartender, or rather barmaid, whose shapely back was to me at the moment, though I didn’t have much doubt the front would be just as nice. Another in the parade of beautiful female employees here at the Barn.

  She was on the tall side, with shoulder-length dark blond hair, and she turned and gave me a wide, earthy smile and said, “What’s your pleasure?”

  I laughed.

  Now that wasn’t the most original line I ever heard, nor the wittiest, but I laughed.

  It was a nervous laugh, a laugh to cover any of the surprise that might have shown through when I found out who she was.

  For one thing, she had a name tag on her red sweater that said “Lucille,” meaning she was the pleasant voice on the telephone who had directed me here.

  For another thing, she was Glenna Cole.

  9

  She didn’t recognize me.

  At least I didn’t think she did. Nothing showed in her eyes, or anywhere else. Maybe I’d managed to watch her all that while back in Florida without her noticing, after all. Maybe my trick of shaving off
the beard had worked. Maybe my efforts to complete my half-face tan had been worth the bother.

  Or maybe she was just better than me. Maybe she could be surprised without registering it one iota. Maybe she could recognize somebody without having to cover with a silly nervous laugh. Maybe a lot of things.

  Right now she was waiting.

  And it took me a beat to remember what it was she was waiting for, which was the answer to the musical question, “What’s your pleasure?”

  “Coke,” I said.

  “Don’t tell me you’re the guy,” she said.

  I managed not to do my famous nervous laugh this time.

  “What guy?” I said.

  “The guy who’s been ordering the straight Cokes all night long. Don’t you know that stuff’s not good for you?”

  I’d said Coke only to be saying something. Simple reflex. Truth was, all that caffeine-loaded cola had helped make me feel jumpy, and left me with a lousy taste in my mouth as a bonus.

  But it was an opening, a place to start a conversation, so I followed up.

  “I suppose booze’d be better for me?”

  “Sure. Ever see what a nail looks like when you leave it in Coke over night?”

  “Can’t say as I have.”

  “Eats the sucker up. Like acid.”

  “You convinced me.”

  “You’re swearing off Coke.”

  “No. But I won’t go leaving nails in it.”

  She laughed, just a little. Not a nervous one, either. Not covering up anything. I didn’t think.

  “Somehow you don’t seem the type,” I said.

  “Which type is that?”

  “Bartender type.”

  “Is that it? You don’t trust lady bartenders?”

  “Can you make a gimlet?”

  “Can I make a gimlet? Gin or vodka?”