Quarry (3 page)

She was all technique and no passion, like she lost that part of it somewhere along the line and spent lots of time since looking for it. She told me her husband hired people for industry and went around interviewing applicants all the time and when he discovered she was cheating while he was off on business, he started taking her along. The husband always did his interviews at downtown hotels wherever they happened to be, but she insisted that they stay at motels so she could be near pool and sunshine. That was as far as her explanation went, but the rest was obvious enough: while her husband interviewed at the downtown hotel, she picked up traveling salesmen and the like at the motel, mostly by sitting around the pool in her black bikini.

I had got to the Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge about an hour before I was supposed to meet the Broker in the restaurant part, so I checked in and managed to get picked up and laid by Helen or whatever-her-name-was before I was due to confab with Broker. Well, I did end up a little late but how was I to know the Broker had something last-minute urgent on his mind. I mean, he never pulled anything like that on me before.

And never again. I was glad I’d thought to arrange for a month rental on one of those lockers at the airport.

I figured Broker might be putting me onto something big and maybe I’d want to cache some or all of whatever it was for myself. So one of the lockers, which was good for only two days, had one of the little plastic bags of white powder in it; and another locker, good for a whole month, had the other. And I had both keys and Broker by the balls.

Of course this thing with Helen or whoever had worked out pretty nice, since the bitch provided me an alibi of sorts, not that I’d use it. As far as she knew, I’d screwed her, slept a while, then gone out for a swim. She didn’t know I stepped out to give last rites to a priest.

She sat up in bed, leaned back against the headboard and got a cigarette going. Her breasts were droopy and didn’t look so sexy anymore and I saw she had some tines in her face and all of a sudden she looked middle-aged housewife who slept around a lot, which is what she was. After a while it occurred to her she ought to offer me a cigarette too, and I told her I didn’t use them.

“Clean liver, huh?”

“That shit can kill you,” I said, fanning her smoke out of my face. “But it’s your life, do what you want.”

“You like to play at being hard, don’t you.”

“You don’t seem to mind me hard.”

She grinned and reached a hand down and played with me but neither it nor I was having any.

So she gave up and a few seconds went by and she said, “I got some booze, you thirsty?”

I was thinking that one over when outside, sirens cut the air.

“What the hell was that?” she said.

“Sirens.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought it was. Sounded like they went by here. Something happen at the airport, you suppose?”

“Somebody had a heart attack maybe.”

“Yeah. Ambulance, then, not police.”

“Who knows.”

“Yeah. Hey, should I build us some drinks or not?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Come on.”

“Look,” I said, “this has been pleasant, but I got no desire to do a number with your husband should he come back early or something. I’ll just put my trunks on and go swimming again, okay?”

“Aw, stick around.”

“No thanks.”

“Prick.”

I shrugged and got my trunks on and slid the glass door open. I strolled out to the pool and walked over to the diving board. Up on the board I bounced and looked across the grassy field toward the airport. It was all lit up, but no more than usual, and I couldn’t make out whether there were any ambulance or cop car lights up there. Not that it mattered. I dove in. The water was cold.

3

THE BEST PART
of the meal was the skillet of mushrooms. The Chablis was okay, but I don’t know enough about wine to tell good from bad. But I do know mushrooms, I’ve gone picking them before, and know enough to take the sponge and leave the button top be. You never can tell about button top, unless you get commercial grown. Like these were. Big and round as half dollars and plump and juicy and fine.

The steak was just fair, being grainy like maybe it was injected with something to make it tender while it was still a cow, but you got to remember too that I was full on bread and salad and mushrooms before I even got to the steak. Finishing the wine seemed a good top priority, and the last of it was just trickling down my throat when the Broker and his wife walked past my table, neither one of them showing a trace of recognition.

Which made sense with the wife, since she never saw me before. She was an aristocratic-looking, icy ice-blonde of maybe thirty-five who probably came out of one of those exclusive girl’s schools with a name like a winter resort, where a nun or some other kind of old maid had taught her how to be a proper little glacier.

She was good-looking enough to make you wonder if Broker picked her like he would any front or maybe there was some sex or love in it somewhere.

A girl in a short-skirted barmaid outfit seated the Broker and his missus in a secluded corner where two wine-rack walls met. She took their drink order and then a kid in a rust-color puffy-sleeve cavalier shirt waited on them. The outfits fitted in with the glorified old English pub atmosphere of the place: high ceiling, rough wood, a central roaring fireplace (gas), and huge wrought-iron chandeliers above pouring out coppery semilight from candles (electric).

I poked at my steak and waited for Broker to make a move. He made an effort not to look my way. I stared at him. At his brown double-knit pinstripe suit. At his distinguished white hair. At the prissy expression under the wispy mustache.

He stood, excused himself with his wife, who didn’t seem to notice he was getting up to go. He was a tall man, six-two and well-built, but he walked like he was gelded.

I watched him go past me and round the fireplace and head toward the restrooms. I waited a minute or two—I was willing to play his game that far—and then went after him.

He was washing his hands. A guy was taking a leak and one of the crappers was occupied. I walked over to one of the urinals and got busy.

After a while everybody left, except Broker and me, and I joined him at the sinks. Broker stopped washing his hands, but he kept the water running.

“Well?” he said.

“Don’t ever try pulling anything like this on me again, Broker.”

“How did it go?”

“It went.”

“Did you get what he had?”

I looked at the Broker’s double-knit brown suit. He was wearing a blue shirt and a white tie and his cheeks were rosy. He was fifty and he looked forty and his face was long and fleshy without many lines.

“I got it,” I said.

Somebody came in and Broker started washing his hands again. I joined him. The guy did what he had to and left.

“Seems like when I work with you,” I said, “all my time’s spent in toilets.”

“Is that where you took care of him? In a restroom?”

“No. I walked him out to the runway and threw him in front of a Boeing.”

A little dark guy with a little dark son came in and stood at the urinals, like a big salt shaker and a smaller pepper. When they were done they seemed to want to wash their hands, but Broker and me had the sink concession, so the pair gave up quick and left.

“What are you upset about, Quarry?”

“Horse.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about H, Broker. Smack. Heroin, horse, shit, horseshit!”

“Will you please keep your voice down?”

“Christ, Broker. That’s all I need is to get found with a bundle of that on me. I got enough fucking risk going for me as it is.”

“You disappoint me, Quarry.”

“I disappoint you.”

“You were told your man had a valuable package which did not belong to him. You weren’t told to examine the contents of the package.”

“It was a lump of snow in a plastic bag, Broker, it didn’t take a goddamn chemist to tell.”

“Since when are you so God almighty precautious? You complain of risk. Yet you use the same gun from job to job, don’t you? That would seem a dangerous habit to me.”

“That is one thing. This other today is something else.”

“I’m not going to stand here and argue with you, Quarry. My hands are getting puckered from washing.”

“Your hands are getting puckered. My ass is getting puckered! Look, I work one kind of thing, and I work it one kind of way, you know that better than anyone else, but what do you do? You bring me in for a half-ass deal like this one.”

“This was last minute, Quarry, I called you in for something else entirely, and . . .”

“I don’t like getting brought to town for one job and doing another. I don’t like playing courier with a load of H. You want to play with smack, get a pusher. And this humiliating people, I got no stomach for that. You got somebody who’s going to die, fine, I’ll be the means. You want strong-arm, get a goon.”

“Are you quite finished?”

“Don’t pull that pompous bullshit tone on me, Broker. I’ve known you too long. I know what you are.”

“If you don’t like working for me, Quarry, why don’t you just quit?”

“What? What did you say?”

“I said if you don’t like working for me you can always quit.”

“Now that tears it. Now that really fucking tears it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“
You
work for
me
, Broker, don’t forget that . . . I work for you like Richard Burton works for his agent.”

Broker sighed. “Where’s the stuff, Quarry?”

“Never do this to me again, Broker. Understand? Nothing else like this. Or you’re going to see the side of this business you don’t like seeing.”

“Where’s the stuff?”

“Do you get my meaning, Broker?”

“Yes. Where’s the stuff?”

“Where’s my money?”

Broker turned off the faucet and wiped his hands on a paper towel. He took an envelope from his inside jacket pocket. He handed the envelope to me and I looked inside: three thousand in hundreds. I put the envelope in my inside pocket.

“I’m still at the Howard Johnson’s,” I said. “You come talk to me there. You know what room I’m in. I’m sick of using cans for my office.”