Quarry (5 page)

What shit was this?

The phone rang while I was trying to figure it out I picked up the receiver and a voice said, “George?” and I recognized the voice and figured it out and started to laugh.

When I got through laughing, I set the receiver down on the nightstand, the voice squeaking, “George? George!” and hauled George Swanson out into the deserted hall, dumping him down a good ways from my door. Then I went back to the room and picked up the receiver and said, “After what I did to your husband, I don’t think he’ll be of much use to you for a day or two.”

I heard her take air in through her teeth, an angry hissing, a pissed-off snake. In my mind’s eye I could see Helen Swanson, and her thin dark naked body, as she said, “Bastard. Jesus Christ prick bastard.”

“Now, now.”

“You . . . you . . .” She sputtered on like that for a while, and there was a strange tone to her voice. Confusion? Fear? Arousal?

“What’d I do, piss you off this afternoon somehow?” I asked the phone. “Or do you do this to all of us? Sit out in your black bikini and sucker us in and then later tell old George about it, so he can play defender of woman- hood.”

“I only tell him sometimes.” Now there was a smile in her voice. It was soft. She was trying to be sexy. “I just tell him when somebody I like doesn’t appreciate me.”

“Hell, lady, I appreciate you. I really do. You’re something else.”

“I hope he didn’t hurt you.”

“No. Not at all. I enjoy getting punched in the nose.”

“I . . . I just told him you made a pass . . . I didn’t know he’d get rough.”

“You knew he’d get rough,” I said. “That’s what he always does, isn’t it? Tell me, what’s he like when he comes back fresh from beating the hell out of one of your ex-sweeties?”

“He’s beautiful,” she said. I could almost see the big fat self-indulgent grin she’d have going. “He’s mean and he’s beautiful. It’s the only time I can stand him in bed.”

“Well don’t expect much from him tonight.” Somebody was making noise in the background.

“Someone’s at the door,” she whispered, in a quickinto-the-closet sort of voice.

“I wonder who it could be,” I said.

“Listen . . .” She laughed softly. “I’m naked right now. What do you think of that?”

“I think it figures.”

“After he . . . falls back asleep, I’ll . . . come up to your room . . . okay? You owe me that much.”

“You come upstairs I got a Coke bottle for you and that’s all.” I shook my head. “Let him in, will you? He’s probably out there bleeding all over the hall. He could use some help.”

I hung up.

I retrieved my automatic, switched on the TV again and found nothing going on any of the stations, flicked the set off and stretched out on the bed to wait for the Broker. Hell, I shouldn’t have underestimated Broker like that. Things weren’t rough enough yet that he’d stoop to hiring a George Swanson.

I laughed again, but only for a moment. It wasn’t really funny, not at all. Disgusting was more like it, the goddamn bitch. But who was I to judge? Takes all kinds to make a world.

6

AT FOUR-FIFTEEN
Broker came in by the hall entrance. He had company. Without a word he and his friend found chairs and sat and faced me. I closed the door and locked and night-latched it and went to the bed and sat where they would have to turn their chairs to look at me. They did.

“Hello, Quarry,” Broker said.

“Broker.”

“This is Carl.”

This was Carl: a young kid, twenty or twenty-two, with short black serviceman hair just starting to grow out, his complexion powder-white excepting a splotch-circle of red on either cheek which gave him the look of a clown in minimal makeup and was either natural rosiness or the boy was flushed. He was about the size of George Swanson, but leaner and harder-muscled, or at least so I guessed: His jaw was firm, eyes blue-gray. He was wearing a wine-color double-knit sports jacket and gray slacks with a light yellow shirt and a deep yellow tie; I looked at Broker in his gray double-knit suit and light pink shirt and deep pink tie and made a wild guess about who picked out Carl’s clothes. The sports jacket did not bulge from the gun under Carl’s left arm and I made a mental note to ask Broker sometime who was his tailor.

Carl stood and said, “How are you doing, Quarry?”

There were two things wrong with Carl: one of them was the smell of youthful anxiety that clung to him like dime-store perfume.

I pointed to his left leg, said, “Vietnam?”

He looked flustered, wondering how the hell I knew it was artificial, then nodded. “Hand grenade, I was walking point.”

“I asked where, not how.”

Broker was one fine American, finding jobs for us boys back from overseas like he did, and now here he was breaking in a handicapped veteran. The man deserved a commendation from the VA or the President or some damn body.

Broker said, “You’re still in that foul mood, aren’t you?”

I said, “Give me a second and I’ll get out the party hats.”

Carl sat back down and his cheeks weren’t red anymore. That was an improvement.

“What is he supposed to be?” I said.

“He’s here with me.”

“Oh. Well that explains it.”

“Now look . . . how am I supposed to know what you’re up to? You’ve never acted so damned irrationally, not in many years of what I always considered a good working relationship. But you’re acting like a wild man, holding out materials which you’ve been paid to deliver. Do you have any concept of the value of what you’re keeping from me? At any rate, I thought it best to have a man along.”

“Why didn’t you bring one, then? But no, you drag in a twelve-year-old gimp, who’s supposed to, what? Snap me in line? Beat me to death with his wooden leg?” I checked Carl out of the corner of my eye to see if he reacted; he didn’t, which was a sign of hope for the boy.

“Quarry, Quarry . . . let’s not fence.” The Broker smiled and the smile was a crease in his face. “Please, I’m tired of fencing with you. After what we’ve been through together, all of this bickering seems so childish.”

“Broker, will you quit acting like this is some goddamn company and I’m going to get a gold watch and a pension after twenty-five years? Have you worked the front office of the fertilizer plant for so long you don’t remember it’s shit you’re selling?”

“You’ve been paid, Quarry. Don’t play with me.”

“If you come alone, I wouldn’t play. But you’re the one playing, Broker. And you keep playing with me and I keep telling you I won’t be played with.”

Broker looked at Carl and pointed at the door. “Wait outside, Carl.”

Carl made a face.

“Go on Carl,” he said. “Just out in the hall there will be fine.”

Carl got up. He walked to the door. He was pretty good on the leg. Whoever gave him therapy knew what they were doing. I said, “Watch yourself going down steps, kid,” and he was out the door, which he nearly—almost, but not quite—slammed.

“You’re a damned sadist,” Broker said.

“I’m no such thing,” I said.

“Riding a kid with one leg, my sweet God.”

“You’re the sadist,” I said, “hiring a kid with one leg. What’s the idea? Don’t forget, hire the vet?”

“You saw him on it, he’s doing an outstanding job. He’s better on that artificial limb than most men are with what nature gave them. And he’s in tip-top shape otherwise, and he’s hard-nosed and handy with firearms. He’ll be a good man.”

“Doing what? What I do?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m grooming him. He’s one of the men I keep on the payroll here in town. He’s one of two men presently guarding my home, and giving me personal protection.”

“Well he may make a bodyguard,” I said, “but don’t send him out in the field. Not if you want him to last a month, anyway.”

“Oh? Really?”

“Oh really. He may be hard-nosed, but he’s thin-skinned. You saw his hackles rise when I needled him, didn’t you?”

Broker shrugged. “Perhaps you have a point. I don’t know, I’ll watch him. But I still think he has promise.”

“You really think you’re doing the kid a favor,” I said, “giving him a job.”

“You don’t seem to think there’s anything wrong with this business.”

“There isn’t, not for me. I didn’t get into the trade because I lost a leg, either.”

“You lost a wife. Is that so different?”

“Yes. You can grow a new wife.”

“You haven’t.”

I didn’t say anything. It was time for getting things out of the way. I dug into my pocket and tossed him an envelope. The key to the locker was in it. Of course the key to the other locker was elsewhere, tucked safely away for my own later use.

“What’s this?” Broker said.

I told him what it was, and what was in the locker the key opened.

“Christ almighty, you mean to tell me you left the stuff right there in the airport?”

“Right there. In the airport.”

Broker got angry for a moment, said, “What if the police searched the lockers for some reason? After the body was discovered, for example, or in the case of a bomb threat.”

“Why, you thinking of calling one in?”

Broker wanted to stay mad, but saw it wouldn’t do any good. “I don’t know about you, Quarry,” he said, like a father disappointed with junior’s grades.

I said, “You going to send Carl after the stuff? You and I can wait here.”

“I’ll have to go myself.”

“Yourself? You’re full of balls in your old age, Broker, what’s got into you?”

“I can trust myself.”

“And you can’t trust Carl? Broker, I’m ashamed of you. Talking that way about a disabled veteran.”

“Go to hell, Quarry. I’m sending Carl up to keep you company. Any objections?”

Why bother? “No,” I said.

So Broker went out and Carl came in. He got settled back in his chair and sat there and gave me a hard look, which he’d no doubt been practicing outside while he thought about me and the remarks I’d made about him and his leg, or lack of same.

Finally he let it out. He said, “What the hell you got against one-legged guys, anyway?”

“Four of them got together and gangbanged my sister.”