Quarry in the Black
Page 19
He squinted again, gazing out at the blue lake, his hands tented. He selected his words. Then: “Yes and no. I’ve dealt directly with him on just two occasions.”
His hands were clenched. Was that fear? Jesus, that was fear.
“Jack Killian,” he said, talking to the lake. “From a surprisingly upper-class background. Chose the Air Force over college. Became a car thief who graduated to bank robbery. Once just another of those traveling criminals, if a notably sadistic one, now the owner of every fleshpot on the Biloxi Strip. He is not the don, not in the traditional Mafia sense. More like a feudal lord.”
“But you don’t deal with him.”
He shook his head, paused for a sip of Coors. “Killian’s partner, Woodrow Colton—Mr. Woody, he is called—is the Dixie Mafia’s number two. The banker. The money launderer, the fixer, co-owner of Killian’s clubs.” He smiled, as if recalling a pleasant afternoon with a friend. “An amiable sort, Mr. Woody—who navigates through the political world of Biloxi, spreading joy. And cash. He has been my contact. And a pleasure with whom to do business.”
I was hearing things I was not supposed to know. That none of us who worked for the Broker were supposed to know.
“And it is through Mr. Colton,” the Broker went on, glancing at me with a faint smile flickering on the thin lips under the well-trimmed mustache, “that we have our avenue for…well, revenge is such an unpleasant word, and a concept for lessers. Let us call it retaliation. Let us call it self-protection.”
“Let us call it,” I said, “who do I kill?”
He resumed his contemplation of the lake. The sun had slipped behind some gently moving clouds that were making shadows in an afternoon suddenly turned a cool blue.
“Mr. Killian has ambitions,” he said. “Perhaps he does in fact see himself as the ‘don’ of the Dixie Mafia. He has been buying up roadhouses in the south, in particular the rather notorious State-line Strip between Tennessee and Mississippi. And, as I say, he owns virtually every striptease joint, shack-up motel and sleazy bar on the Biloxi Strip.”
“What does that have to do with the services we perform for him?”
The Broker was facing the lake but his eyes were closed now. “He has decided, Mr. Colton informs me, that he will henceforth handle all necessary liquidations ‘within house.’ That is certainly his privilege. I hold no long-term contracts with anyone.”
It seemed to me that every contract we handled was as about long-term as it got, but I let it go. Honestly, though, “henceforth?”
“I am viewed,” the Broker said, his eyes open now and on me, “as a loose end. The expression, however trite, remains apt: ‘I know too much.’ ”
And now so did I.
“So it’s Killian, then,” I said. “Point me.”
He shook his head, frowning. “It’s not that simple, nothing so straightforward. There’s a need for this to seem like something other than a simple hit.”
“I don’t do accidents.”
“No, I know, that requires special training, and gifts that are not among yours.” He had a healthy swig of beer. “No, I have something in mind for how this might be handled, but first it requires that you go…well, I suppose the term is ‘undercover.’ ”
“Come again?”
There was a twinkle in the gray eyes as he replied—a fucking twinkle, I swear. “Mr. Colton has agreed to help us remove Mr. Killian.”
“Could we skip the ‘misters’? We are talking about killing this prick. And what makes you think you can trust Colton?”
He batted that away. “I don’t think it’s a matter of the second-in-command wishing to stage a coup—more that Mr. Killian and his roughneck ways…no matter how well he may dress, and I understand he is quite the clotheshorse…is making enemies in certain Biloxi circles of power. His behavior is so outrageous and so damned grasping that the politicians would very much like to see him retire. Or I should say, ‘retired.’ ”
“A gold watch with a bullet through it.”
“Metaphorically correct.” He twisted toward me in the wooden chair and his hands were folded, resting against an arm of it. “There is an opening on Mr. Killian’s staff of bodyguards that Mr. Colton is in a position to arrange for you to fill. That will put you very close to Mr. Killian. Close enough for you to gain his trust, or at least his laxity.”
“Close enough to put out his lights.”
Short, quick nods. “But he is extremely well-insulated, and this must be accomplished in a manner that won’t embarrass or, worse, implicate Mr. Colton. Are you willing?”
“Like the Pope said on his death bed, why me?”
The Broker gestured in a slow-motion manner. “As it happens, you’ve never done a job in that colorful region. Never done a job emanating from that client. You are, after all, fairly new to the business.”
“Yeah, you can’t beat a fresh face. But what about the guys in the green Caddy the other night? You know, the one with the Mississippi plates?”
Both eyebrows went up, the white caterpillars on their hind legs again. “Well, one of them is quite dead, and the other was occupied, and probably got little more than a glimpse of you, if that, in that under-lit lot. Additionally, you were firing that weapon of yours, and I’m sure the orange flames it was spitting were a distraction.”
“They usually are. I don’t have to use a Southern accent or anything, do I?”
“No! You’ll be a damn Yankee, but one recommended by the Number Two in the organization. You’ll use ‘Quarry,’ and is ‘John’ all right for a first name?”
“Sure. Why not.”
He damn near beamed. Staying in the wooden deck chair, sticking his legs straight out, he dug in a pants pocket and withdraw a fat letter-sized envelope, folded over. “Here’s expense money, and a Michigan driver’s license.”
I took it. Two grand in hundreds, and a license with a picture of me—Broker had plenty of those from various states for this exact purpose.
But I frowned at him. “If you already had this ready, why ask if I was okay with ‘John’?”
“Why,” he asked, frowning back, “aren’t you all right with it?”
“No, that’s not the point. It’s just…skip it.”
My saying yes had brightened his mood considerably. “You’ll need to buy some new clothes with some of that. As I said, Killian is a clotheshorse and he expects his people to dress professionally. That money should also be plenty to front a plane ticket. Fly into somewhere other than Biloxi, New Orleans perhaps, and rent a car. You can use any of your current identities for those operations.”
There were many more details and we spoke into dusk. I invited him for a walleye dinner at Mildred’s Welcome Inn, but he passed. He had a long drive home ahead of him.
We shook hands just outside my front door and he was smiling as he walked briskly to the Lincoln. Behind the wheel, Roger gave me a nod. I didn’t return it.
I had a trip ahead of me, too.
I was fine with that—even if it was an unusual job that took me out of my element and meant I had to deal with people, which I didn’t love. But fifty grand was fifty grand. So heading South was no big deal.
As long as the job didn’t go south.
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