Quarry (28 page)

“What was wrong with him?”

“I don’t know, food poisoning maybe, or some weird-ass virus. All I know is he’s practically dying. This infection or something hit him all at once, hit him out of nowhere, and now I need a driver. To complete the run. What do you say?”

“He’s too sick to drive?”

“I’m asking you, aren’t I?”

“That’s just it, it’s so crazy, you asking me.”

“Who the hell else can I ask in this damn hick town? You got to bail me out, Vince. The money’s good. Do it.”

“When is it, this delivery?”

“Midnight.”

“Shit, it’s after eleven now. Where we got to be?”

“The quarry on the river road, just outside Davenport.”

He was nodding his head, starting to buy it. He said, “We could make that, easy.”

“Good. You take the lead and I’ll follow you. After you deliver the car, I’ll drive you back to Port City.” I got a roll of bills out from my pocket, part of the money Mrs. Springborn had given me. I peeled off five bills, all of them hundreds, and tossed them in his bluejeaned lap. He stared down at them. “Five more like that,” I told him, “when the job’s over.”

He thought about it. He scratched his oily head and said, to himself, “This has been a day,” then to me, “Let’s get going, Jack.”

“Right,” I said.

We shook hands.

28

THE RIVER ROAD
followed the Mississippi’s edge faithfully, and no doubt provided much visual pleasure for folks out on sunny afternoon outings. On the one side of the road, cottages dotted the river shore; on the other side, a high green bluff was strung with all sorts of houses, from modest to lavish, mutually enjoying the scenic view. After ten miles or so the bluff dwindled and the ground became flat and fenced off, the rich farmland Iowa is known for; on the other side of the road the cottages had given way to thick forest-like clumps of trees. At times the road rolled up hills, one of them peaking and leveling out to provide an overview of the river from a breathtaking highpoint, while on the road’s left was a sheer cliff-like wall of rock, like something out of Colorado or Wyoming. Other times the road swung down through valley-nestled villages, quiet, sheltered little worlds removed from this era. The river road was a Sunday driver’s paradise, the scenery varied and having more slices of America along it than any single stretch of twenty-five-mile road you can think of. At midnight, in the rain, it was a fucking nightmare.

I was staying a quarter mile behind Vince because I didn’t want him to get a good look at the car I was driving. I’d hustled him into my rental Ford and after he’d taken off I had followed in Boyd’s green Mustang. I figured there was some chance Vince would recognize the Mustang as Boyd’s and I didn’t want him tipping to who I was or what I was doing. On the other hand, I didn’t want to let him get out of my sight. Out of my reach. So I had to stay right with him, without tailgating him.

He’d questioned me about why I was trusting him with the delivery of the cargo-laden car, and I had to explain it six ways to get him to accept it. I kept inventing reasons and he kept shuffling and saying, “I dunno , Jack,” and then finally he said he guessed it made sense to him that I’d want him in front of me where I could see him, rather than in back where he could quietly disappear with my five hundred bucks and a car provided by me. Such a contingency he could comprehend, because it and every other crooked-ass possibility had occurred to him: Vince wasn’t smart, but he had a mind that twisted in those kind of patterns.

So everything was fine until he suggested he’d run up to his apartment and stash the five hundred and grab his windbreaker since he might have to stand out in the rain a while. Before that could develop into a problem, I threw my raincoat around his shoulders (pockets empty of course, the nine-millimeter in the front seat of the Mustang, under a newspaper) and pushed him into the rental Ford and bid him bon voyage.

The Mustang took the choppy old road badly, its suspension system outclassed by this patchwork quilt of concrete chunks. When things would get less bumpy, when a smooth stretch would show out of nowhere, the wetness of the pavement made driving all the more treacherous. Up ahead Vince fishtailed the Ford a couple times hitting slick spots like that, and he wasn’t doing over fifty-five. I felt myself start to slide once or twice. Just when the road would seem to be evening out for good, up would come a water-filled pothole big enough to do the backstroke in.

I glanced down and saw the odometer had clocked twenty-one miles since leaving Port City. The quarry would be coming round soon. I crouched over the steering wheel and peered out through the windshield as the wipers swished back-and-forth.

The half dozen buildings were huddled together like conspirators. Three of the buildings were cylindrical, resembling silos, and made of cement; the rest were gray ribbed-steel obelisks with smokestacks pouring out pure white smoke, puffy clouds as white as innocence, dissipating as the rain got to them. A black shaft slanted across the highway from one of the obelisks to a Quonset hut, the shaft housing the conveyer that brought the limestone from the quarry to the cement processing plant.

The quarry itself was immense. Even in the darkness of the rainy night, partially-lit as I passed through the compound of buildings, I could see across to the other side and the damn thing looked like the Grand Canyon, only older, its limestone ledges having a barren, dead beauty. The depth of it varied from probably fifty feet in places to one-hundred and fifty. It covered acres, hundreds of acres, and it was long, extending a mile past the smoke-exuding plant, where a skeleton crew was continuing through the night, transforming the cold, brittle rock into sacks of cement.

Broker had said two cars would be waiting for me, one of them to take me back to Port City. There was only one car, a dark blue Dodge Charger, its motor running. That was no surprise, but it was a solid confirmation: any slight doubt of Broker’s intentions dissolved like the smoke rising into the rain. I watched Vince pull the Ford over and, after hanging back for a minute, I drove on past both cars, like somebody who was just happening along. Half a mile later I cut my lights and U-turned and came back slow. When I got within an eighth of a mile I let the car crawl quietly off to the side of the road and got out. There were some bushes lining the fence that edged the quarry, and they hid me as I moved quickly along, careful not to brush against them.

I had told Vince to sit in the car and wait for three minutes, to give me a chance to do what I had just done. The nine-millimeter was tight in my gloved hand and I was close by when Vince got out of the Ford and began to approach the dark blue Charger.

Visibility was very low, but I saw what happened clearly, as I was only a few feet away.

The two cars were parked parallel to each other, forming right angles with the road, but there was half a block distance between the two cars and Vince walked so slowly it seemed it would take him forever to near the Charger. Hands deep in the pockets of my raincoat, Vince baby-stepped toward the car and had cut the distance in half when the window on the driver’s side of the Charger rolled down. An arm extended from the open window. Vince stopped. He saw the gun pointed directly at him and he turned to move and the thud of a silenced automatic made a barely perceptible addition to the sounds of the wet night. Vince clutched his side. He fell to his knees. I couldn’t tell how bad the wound was, but my guess was it wasn’t fatal; he was moving too good, very good for a man crawling on his knees.

The door flew open on the Charger. A slender figure in a dark coat jumped from the car, limped frantically toward Vince, who was clawing through the mud and gravel toward the Ford. The slender man caught up with Vince without much trouble. He bent over, saying, “All right, Quarry, you bastard, this is going to be a goddamn pleasure,” and he turned Vince over and lifted him up by the raincoat lapels and realized it wasn’t me.

He dropped Vince back to the muddy wet ground. “Christ!” Carl said, and I hit him behind the left ear with the barrel of the nine-millimeter.

Carl went down face first, splashing into a puddle. He landed just to Vince’s left.

I took the silenced automatic from Carl’s limp fingertips and stuck the gun in my belt. Vince sat there and watched me with his mouth open, his face a mixture of pain and incredulity and stupidity, the rain running down his forehead and over his face like a combination of tears and slobber. He looked at me hard, squinching his eyes, and then he got mad. But before he said anything, he scooched back on his ass toward the Ford, till he was leaning safely against the fender of the car, which gave him a little, not much, but a little breathing room from the unconscious Carl.

Vince sputtered, his mouth full of rain, and perhaps blood. He said, “You, you fucking son of a bitch, you, you goddamn son of a fucking bitch . . . I’m shot, Jesus I’m shot, that shit shot me . . . no trouble, you said, easiest money I ever made you said . . .”

“Shut up,” I said.

The narrowed eyes went suddenly wide, and wild, and he said, “What are you gonna do, what are you gonna do for me? You gotta do something for me . . . you’re not going to leave me bleed? Huh? Huh? I’m hurt, Christ Jesus I’m hurt, but I know I can make it if you just help me—you’re gonna help me aren’t you?”

“You be quiet. You be quiet and maybe I’ll help you.”

“But . . .”

“Sit there and relax. Don’t panic or shock’ll set in. Don’t waste your energy or you’ll go unconscious. Just sit there and stay cool.”

‘‘But . . .’’

I raised the automatic and he shut up. Or almost shut up. He was whimpering, but not loud enough to be annoying.

Carl was starting to rouse. I helped him. I poked his ribs with my foot.

“Up,” I said.

Carl groaned. He rolled around in the puddle and got his nose deep down in the water and he started choking and coughing and flapping his arms. He pushed up on his hands and made wedges in the soft ground and hobbled onto his feet. Or foot. There was mud hanging on his face like melting gelatin.

“How’s it going, Carl?”

Carl swallowed and it didn’t taste good. He said, “You double-crossing son of a bitch!” His voice was strained, and almost shrill.

“I’d laugh at that,” I said, “if I thought we had time to be funny.”

“You’re dead, Quarry. You’re a dead man.”

“No. Not the case. Had Broker sent somebody competent out here to kill me, somebody with two legs and a brain, I might be dead. But I’m not.”

“The Broker . . .”

“The Broker is home cozy and warm in his bed. He wouldn’t bother coming out here. He doesn’t dirty himself with this sort of thing.”

Carl wiped off his face and stood very still. Like he was at attention, or facing a firing squad or something. He said, “Go ahead, Quarry. Get it over with.”

“Get what over with? You think I’m going to kill you? You aren’t worth killing, you gimpy asshole.”

“What . . . what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to send you home to Broker. I’m going to let you limp back over to your shiny new Dodge Charger and roar into the sunset.”

He was frozen with disbelief.

I said, “Go back to Broker. Shoo.”