The Wrong Quarry (6 page)

His eyes widened and his mouth dropped. “Fuck me.”

“You, fuck you, if you aren’t more cautious. Get my money.”

He swallowed. Gestured toward the open door to the room where we’d sat and spoken—the brown-leather couch and the framed Broadway posters visible. “You want to come in and go over things?”

“No. Get my money.”

He wasn’t sure whether to be offended or frightened. Then he shrugged and disappeared in there, was gone maybe half a minute, returning to hand me a thick envelope.

“Hundred, fifties and twenties,” he said. “Like you said.”

I stuffed the envelope in the jacket pocket that didn’t have a nine millimeter in it. “You need to be more careful. I am on top of this, but you need to be, too.”

He nodded and nodded some more.

There was a knock at the door, hard and rattling, and we both jumped like a couple of girls trying out for his class.

“Fuck,” we said softly.

Shortly I was edged along the inside wall next to the doors and, as per my whispered instructions, Vale stood plastered to the wall on the other side (“You know, Roger, it’s possible to shoot through glass, even if it is painted black”).

“Yes,” Vale nearly shouted. “What is it?”

“Pizza Hut,” a young bored male voice said.

I gave Vale the okay and he reached over and flipped the lock. The kid was allowed in, delivered the pie, got paid, tipped, and went on his way, unaware that a nine mil was in my fist behind my back all the while.

Vale stood there in his sweats with a big flat brown greasy box in his hands. How did he eat pizza like that and stay so fucking slim? Life was not fair.

He said, “Sure you don’t want to stay? There’s plenty.”

“I’ve stayed too long. Let me out the back.”

He did, and I was right—I shouldn’t have risked the trip to the dance studio at all. I had wanted to warn Vale and, frankly, get my down payment. But even before I pulled into the Holiday Inn parking lot, I could see the Bonneville was no longer parked in front of Cabin 12.

Fuck me,
as my client had said.

Was Mateski already on the way home? Had I somehow missed the requisite meeting between him and his partner? In these post-Broker days, that practice of passive and active conferring face-to-face could have evolved into something else—with Mateski filling his partner in via Ma Bell maybe, and leaving a notebook at some designated drop.

Shit.

I didn’t know who Mateski’s partner was. There was a longshot possibility that the active hitter would be somebody I knew, someone I’d worked with. But that was a short list, particularly compared to the Broker’s. I had looked at every photograph in the file, more than once, but it wasn’t like I’d memorized all those faces.

This left me shit out of luck—Vale, too. Worse for him, I’ll grant you. Me, I could leave Stockwell right now, taking along the dance instructor’s five thousand bucks, to make up for all the surveillance I’d sat. And what would be the harm? A dead guy doesn’t miss money.

Still, I preferred to earn my fees, and anyway another fifteen grand was at stake. I knew where Mateski was heading—Woodstock, Illinois. He’d probably begin that journey, at least, by heading north on Highway 218, going back the way we came.

With his car full to the brim with that primitive junk, he wasn’t heading in some other direction for more buying. No. Woodstock Or Bust. Right now he would only have maybe forty minutes on me.

But there was another possibility, glimmering like heat over asphalt.
Maybe Mateski was still in town.
Maybe he hadn’t met with his partner yet, and that meet was scheduled
for...right now.
This evening.

If so, where was that likely to be?

* * *

On a Sunday night, the Golden Spike was not hopping. Decent business, but nothing like a Friday or Saturday, or even a weeknight. I had been in a hundred of these bars and they were all the same, though they tended to vary on the sleaze scale. The Spike was about a seven, clean but loud, from the boisterous bullshit of farmers who thought they were ranchers and the hourly workers who thought they were cowboys, to a jukebox blaring Alabama and Rosanne Cash for the younger set and George Jones and Loretta Lynn for the older crowd.

As you came in, the bar was at your left, separated from a row of booths by a half-dozen high-top tables. Maybe half the booths were filled, all but one high-top empty; a third of the bar stools were taken. At the rear were two pool tables, one in use. George Strait was splitting the demographic difference on the jukebox.

I took the stool nearest the door, nobody next to me. The barmaid was a short brick-shithouse highlighted brunette in her early twenties in a glittery purple tank-top cut low enough to encourage generous tips. Some strategies never get old.

She didn’t ask what I wanted, just stared across the counter with dark bored eyes.

“Coke,” I said.

This she found ridiculous but let her expression say it for her. When she returned with a glass, I was looking past her at the mirror under the array of neon beer signs and behind the row of liquor bottles.

“Run a tab?” she asked me.

I nodded.

“You seem distracted.”

Apparently I’d offended her by not looking down her tank-top. “Hard day at the office.”

“On Sunday?”

“I’m the new pastor at Calvary United. Saving souls is a bitch.”

She shrugged, said, “Explains the Coke,” and went away.

In the mirror, I was keeping an eye on the booth on the far end, trying not to be too conspicuous about it. But since Mateski was sitting with his back to me, I didn’t have to work very hard at it.

I wasn’t surprised to see him, having spotted the Bonneville in the parking lot. No one was across the booth from him. He had a beer in front of him, only a third or so of it gone. Reading again, if you can believe it, holding
North and South
near the booth’s little light over the napkin holder.

So he was waiting for somebody.

I sipped Coke. Smiled. And I knew who that somebody was, didn’t I? Or I sort of knew. Knew the role of the person, anyway, who would eventually enter that door near my back and go over to sit down with Mateski.

“I’m Jenny,” a husky female voice said from the stool next door. “You got a name to go with that nice face?”

My first look at her was in the mirror. I had stopped looking at Mateski and lowered my gaze as my thoughts kicked in, and hadn’t noticed her when she edged up onto the stool beside me, a dark lanky girl with unlikely large boobs poured into a black low-cut Harley t-shirt and frayed jeans.

I said, “Got a pretty nice face there your own self.”

But it was not a face that I would really call “nice,” exactly— sharp, well-defined features framed by a big head of gypsy curls, black with silver streaks; dark thick arching eyebrows, eyes big, an unusual light green, full wide mouth glistening crimson with a real-looking black beauty mark at one corner. High cheekbones, cleft chin. Kind of dark tan that turns leathery in a woman’s forties; she wasn’t quite there yet.

“Jack,” I said. “Jack Quarry.”

I could use her for cover, to make my presence here less conspicuous.

She took the hand I offered. Hers was warm. Somewhere between a handshake and a caress.

“You’re new in town,” she said.

I gave her half a grin, swirled my beverage. “You make it sound like an old western. What am I, a stranger in Dodge?”

She gave me the other half of the grin. “Are you?”

“I guess. You must get your share of strangers around here, Miss Kitty. It’s the Little Vacationland of Missouri, right?”

“Not this time of year.”

The barmaid rolled her chest and confidence over and deposited a lowball glass of ice and amber fluid before Jenny. The women nodded at each other, like members of opposing sports teams, and the barmaid went away.

“I didn’t hear you order,” I said.

“Mary Ann knows I always have Jack and Ginger.”

“Sounds like
Gilligan’s Island,
only with Jack in the middle.”

She laughed. Her teeth were handsome but a light yellow. Was that Opium perfume, trying to cover up the tobacco smell on her? How could she afford that shit? Of course, bikers dealt derivatives of that other opium, and she did appear to be a biker chick.

She asked, “What are
you
drinking?”

“Coca-Cola.”

“The hard stuff, huh?”

“You don’t think cocaine is hard?”

“Honey, they stopped putting cocaine in Coke Cola a long damn time ago.”

I liked the way she said that—Coke Cola. She wasn’t stupid. In fact, I was pretty sure she was smart.

I shrugged, sipped. “As long as they keep the caffeine in, I’m in. That’s
my
drug of choice.”

“Ha! That
is
good shit. Where would we all be without black coffee in the morning?”

I gave her a flirty smile. “I wonder where I’ll be in the morning?”

“It’s early yet. Who can tell?”

Mateski was still reading. His beer was down to a third of a glass now. A waitress came with another for him, and he seemed to be ordering something off the menu. Couldn’t blame him—good bar food at the Golden Spike, and I hadn’t seen him eat since Denny’s. He really seemed to be hunkering in for the duration.

But the duration of what?

Jenny was lighting up a smoke with a silver lighter with a Harley symbol on it. Camel, no filter tip. No Virginia Slims bullshit for this babe. She swung the pack toward me.

“No thanks,” I said.

“Don’t smoke, huh? Wanna live forever?”

“I have the Olympic trials to worry about.”

She chuckled, snapped shut her lighter. It was louder than the jukebox. “You’re that good influence I’ve been trying to avoid all my life.”

“Yeah, I think I could straighten you out in a hurry.”

She put a hand on my thigh. “You took the words right out of my mouth.”

My dick twitched, like a heavy sleeper reacting to an alarm clock.
Down boy,
I told it.

She leaned on an elbow and gave me a wide, nasty smile, gazing at me with translucent green eyes, such lovely eyes to be wearing so much mascara in such a hard face. Lovely face. Probably wrinkled if the lights were up. But they were down.

“What do you do, anyway, Jack?”

“In what sense?”

“In the work sense. Are you employed?”

“Self-employed.”

“And you do what?”

I stuck with my cover story. “I’m a journalist. Freelance.”

“And what brings you to scenic Stockwell in the dead of winter?”

“It’s still fall.”

“Felt like winter all week.”

“No argument there. I’m working on a story about the local arts scene.”

That subject apparently held no interest for her. She blew out more smoke. For a top-heavy gal, she had a bony look, elbow against the bar, half-turned to me with her legs crossed, her knees sharp, the toes of her motorcycle boots the same. How could all those angular bones seem so feminine?

“So you’re in town how long, Jack?”

“Maybe a week.”

“And you’re from where, exactly?”

“Ever live in St. Louis, Jenny?”

“No.”

“St. Louis.”

“It’s a fun town. I’ve partied there before.”

I hid my shock. “Wish I’d run into you. Take you up to my apartment. Show you my etchings.”

She frowned at me. “What are etchings, anyway?”

“Fuck if I know.”

That got a throaty laugh out of her and her empty glass was automatically replaced by the other bosomy babe.

“What do
you
do, Jenny?”

“Nothing. Whatever the fuck I like. I’m independently wealthy.”

“Are you now?”

“You think I’m shitting you? I’m not shitting you.”

“Did I say you were shitting me?”

“No, Jack, I don’t believe you did. Excuse me. Little girl’s room.” She slid off the stool and hip-swayed toward the back and the johns. The tits might be fake, but that well-shaped ass was the real deal. Might have been on pistons, the way those cheeks moved up and down.

She wove around the waitress bringing Mateski a plate with burger and fries.

“Hey,” somebody said.

Mary Ann.

The barmaid was leaning in, giving me a very generous view down the blouse at the decidedly real thing. The head of my half a hard-on turned toward her.

“You be careful, honey,” she said.

“Yeah? Why?”

“That crazy cunt, excuse my French, has screwed everything that moves in this town, and a few that were standing still.”

“Oh. Well, that discourages me. We don’t go in for that kind of thing at Calvary.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you don’t. But she wasn’t lying.”

“Huh?”

“She’s richer than shit. She’s the black sheep of the biggest family in town.”

“What, the Stockwells?”

She nodded. “That’s Jenny Stockwell you’re flirting with.”

What the hell?

I said, “So if I marry her I’ll be rich, then?”

“She’s not the marrying kind. At least not lately. Likes her freedom.”

“Kiss and run, huh? That’s depressing. I’m only interested in long-term relationships. What time do you get off? And I mean that in the nicest way.”

She grinned at me. Her teeth were white. “Okay, smart-ass. Don’t listen to me. But will you take just a little friendly advice?”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t go out in the rain without your rubbers on. You might catch something, and not a cold.”

Jenny was nearing the bar as the barmaid gave me a knowing smirk and a raised eyebrow and got lost.

“Let’s go outside,” Jenny said. A big black purse was slung over an arm; it had a Harley logo, too. “I could use a little air.”

Mateski was eating his burger, slowly, still reading.

“Okay,” I said.

She took me by the hand and led me out into the parking lot. She escorted me around the side of the building where it was dark, only a single angled row of cars parked between the lot and the next building. I had a feeling this was where the help left their vehicles. There were garbage cans back here, but they were probably empty, because nothing stank.

She pushed me against the side of the Spike. No windows back here. Nice and private, though I could see an occasional car pull out of the lot. Driver and any passengers wouldn’t see us unless they looked in their rear-view mirror as they exited. She smothered my mouth with her sticky lipstick-moist lips and her tongue raped the tender space between my upper and lower teeth. It was disgusting. My dick throbbed like a thumb caught in a car door.