Quarry in the Black (17 page)

The swelling had gone down some, but bruising and scrapes still made him look the monster in a Grade Z horror flick—particularly when he made a face, like he was doing now.

“Quarry, we
can’t
stick. We just can’t. We got five grand each out of what you did last night. Let’s cut our losses and count ourselves lucky.”

I flipped a hand. “Why don’t we hold off till we see how the morning goes down? And then we can call the Broker and get his take.”

He was shaking his head. “His take on you killing some colored drug dealer behind the target’s place? After he hears that, you think you’ll even still be on the Broker’s team?”

That sent my brain a quick image of Boyd and me and others I’d encountered in Broker’s network of damaged goods, all of us in basketball jerseys. With him as frustrated coach, yelling at the refs. But then I immediately realized the coach’s way of benching me in this game would be to have my ass killed.

“No, Boyd. That’s gotta be our little secret. Here’s what we tell him. We woke up this morning, and learned to our dismay about the murder of one of the Reverend’s staffers. An apparent drug deal gone wrong.”

“Yeah,” Boyd said thoughtfully, “Broker would wonder why you went over there last night, when you saw those lights on. Why
did
you go over there, Quarry?”

“You didn’t question it last night.”

“We didn’t discuss it, really. You just did it.”

How could I explain to Boyd that something in me wanted to make sure our target was part of the dope distribution ring operating out of his domain? How could I make him understand that I needed Reverend Raymond Wesley Lloyd to be dirty, to somehow deserve what we’d been hired to do to him?

How could I explain all that to Boyd if I couldn’t explain it to myself?

“I had to make sure,” I said, “that whatever was happening over there wasn’t a result of what went down at that Klan meeting.”

Which sounded lame even to me, but Boyd let it pass.

Boyd and the sun were up before I was. I’d found him at the window in his half-turned position, one pillow under his ass, the other propped against the wall, as he used the binoculars. The portable radio, turned to the easy-listening station, was softly playing “The Good Life” by Bobby Darin.

“Anything yet?” I’d asked, barely awake.

“Not yet,” he said.

That didn’t surprise me. While André’s body had surely been discovered by now, any cop cars would be along the side street in and near the alley, beyond our sight. And nobody got to the Coalition HQ till eight
A.M.
Plus, everybody who’d made the weekend trip had been told they could wander in as late as they liked. Even if that meant after lunch.

I’d crawled out of bed after a bracing three hours of sleep, took yet another shower, shaved, shat, and got into some of the few clothes of mine that weren’t stuffed in a garbage bag ready to be dumped somewhere. Then I walked down to the Majestic, got us doughnuts and coffee, and walked back.

Around eight, the worker bees began arriving across the way, the usual mix of black and white, and mostly older staffers who had passed on the road trip. By eight-fifteen, a black Plymouth Fury made a parking place out of a yellow-curbed area near the front of Coalition HQ; it might as well have had
UNMARKED POLICE CAR
stenciled on the side, and the two lumpy-looking plainclothes cops in rumpled suits canceled any lingering doubt.

Boyd and I passed the binoculars around for half an hour, watching these obvious detectives get greeted first by a staffer and then by Harold Jackson, who took them deeper into the building than could be seen from our perch. Presumably back to his office and—assuming the Reverend had made it in by now—that office, as well.

Lowering the binoculars, Boyd said, “Shit.”

“Nothing we didn’t expect. Put those down. We have things to do.”

“We do?”

“In a little while, you’re going to call the Broker. Tell him our adjusted story about the drug-dealer killing across the way. Explain that I’ll go in the office after lunch and deal with the detectives then, when they’re getting tired of hearing what they’re hearing. He’ll know we can’t skip that step before skipping, if that’s what he wants us to do.”

Boyd nodded. “And you?”

“I’m going downtown to the YMCA and make myself known. I’ll take that swim the Broker recommended. Either before or after that, I’ll find a Dumpster to get rid of that garbage bag of bloody clothes. Probably find a department store to buy a few new clothes, since my wardrobe has been seriously depleted. I’ll return here before I go across the street for a grilling, and see what the Broker advises.”

“Okay,” he said.

“It’s barely possible the detectives will call in more troops to canvass the neighborhood. So don’t answer the door, and turn that radio off. Nobody’s home. Got it?”

“Got it.”

And now I was back, and the Broker had advised that we stay, “if possible.”

We were in the living room, on the couch.

I said, “Stay how long, did he say?”

“Till the job’s done.”

“Jesus, Boyd—they’ve seen me across the street. Everything I said about police sketches and my face getting famous still goes.”

He shrugged, sitting sideways with one leg tucked under the other. “But it always did. Once you went undercover, you risked that, unless you could find a way to take the mark out without raising general suspicion. Accident or suicide or some shit.”

I shook my head. “You should be doing the hit, not me. What I’ve been doing is the recon. You’re still a new face. Fucking Broker. This is so fucked up.”

Boyd swallowed, licked his lips; he really didn’t like taking the active role. “You want
me
to do it? You see a way we can set this up? I mean, if that’s what it takes—”

I shook my head again. “No. And we only have the rest of the week to bring it off. Dead white Nazis, dead black drug dealers…this is not like anything we’ve dealt with before.”

His eyes were close enough to normal now to widen, though he still looked like Lon Chaney halfway through having his makeup removed. “Fuck the Broker. He’s not on the fucking firing line. You wanna bail, Quarry, I’ll bail.”

“Not yet. We might as well see how this afternoon plays out.”

I went in to Coalition HQ around eleven. The Reverend was in his office, on his phone, looking as cool as ever but for a vertical crease between his eyebrows indicating the pressure he was under. Jackson was out in the bullpen, hovering around, mother-henning his bummed-out staff and keeping an eye on the two lumpy cops, who were split up and moving from desk to desk doing interviews, pads and pencils in hand like carhops taking orders.

When he saw me, Jackson came right over.

“Jack,” he said, “you just got here?”

I nodded.

“Are you aware of last night’s tragedy?”

“What?”

He took me by the arm, walked me all the way back to the office. I glanced over at Ruth’s desk. Empty. Then I was in the chair across from a shell-shocked Jackson, seated in his swivel chair, stroking his thick mustache nervously; even the shaved skull had lost its luster.

I sat forward. “Mr. Jackson, what’s going on?”

He told me about the terrible discovery out back, in the alley, that had been made early this morning by Sanitation Department workers. That André Freeman, one of the Coalition’s oldest, most respected staffers, had been found with his throat cut.

Oldest staffers, maybe. Respected? I didn’t see anybody out at those desks who looked teary-eyed or heartbroken or anything. A little blindsided, maybe, and uneasy talking to cops—so what else was new?

“When I got here,” Jackson was saying, “the back room was swarming with blue uniforms who’d let themselves in somehow. I couldn’t catch the Reverend before he left home, so his drivers delivered him right into the middle of a three-ring circus, cops, lab techs, photographers. Those men out there in our work space are
interrogating
our people. Can you imagine?”

Didn’t seem strange to me.

“No,” I said, “I can’t.”

“And the worst part of is…I can tell this from the nature, the
tenor
of their questions…they think this is some kind of…
drug
deal. Drug deal gone wrong.”

“No,” I said.

“Obviously, that’s not what it is.”

“Obviously.” What the fuck else could it be?

“This violence toward one of the Reverend’s staff members,” he said with a world-weary sigh, “indicates the extent of racial discontent in this community.”

“You mean, that black people are discontented?”

“No! Well, of course,
certainly
black people are discontented. But what I mean is, the racists, the White Supremacist lunatics who would do to the Reverend what was done to Dr. King.”

“Murder him, you mean.”

He flinched at the word “murder,” and his echo was whispered: “Assassinate him, yes. And this movement doesn’t need another martyr. Did you hear about this neo-Nazi maniac, Starkweather, turning up dead this morning?”

“No.”

And I hadn’t. I mean, obviously, I knew he was dead, just not that he turned up.

Jackson was saying, “He was found burned head to toe, shot in the head.”

“Found where?”

“Dumped behind the church where he preached, in Ferguson.”

“Wait,
Starkweather
was the preacher at that church?”

“Certainly.”

Had to hand it to the late Commander. He had a lot of things going.

“Obviously,” Jackson said, “he was murdered by one of his own people. These hate groups are highly competitive. His ‘Klavern’ was only one of several in the area, none sanctioned by the official Klan.”

“Well, the official Klan wouldn’t want to take on just anybody,” I said.

That stopped him for a moment, but he picked right up. “And of course it’ll be the black community that gets the blame for Starkweather’s much-deserved death. Which will stir up the race hate even more.” He paused dramatically. “And we have the big rally coming up this Saturday, with the Reverend as the main speaker. I personally think we should cancel, but he won’t hear of it.”

“You’ll need heightened security.”

“We’ll have it. Local, federal…but as a great man once said, ‘If history has taught us anything, it’s that anyone can be killed.’ ”

Truer words.

“What great man?” I asked.

“John F. Kennedy.”

I nodded. He would know.

I started to rise. “Well, you must have plenty to deal with without wasting time on a grunt like me….”

He held up a stop palm, half-rising himself. “No, Jack! Please sit down. I brought you back here to ask your help. To ask that you, in our time of crisis, go above and beyond the call of duty.”

I sat back down. “Okay. What exactly?”

He settled back in his chair, too. “The Reverend has two regular handlers…
bodyguards
, who I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

The two big black guys packing heat? Yeah, I’d noticed.

“Believe so,” I said.

“Well, you’re an ex-Marine. Bronze Star winner. I would imagine you can handle yourself. And know your way around a firearm.”

“I know which end to point.”

He flashed a smile but his eyes couldn’t have been more serious. “We could use some additional security ourselves, and you’re the only person on staff who qualifies. Would you be willing to go over to the Reverend’s home this evening, and essentially be a third bodyguard?”

“Glad to,” I said.

“Should I see about getting you some kind of weapon?”

“I own a handgun. It’s in my suitcase. I can use that.”

“Well, Jack, that would be fine. But surely you aren’t licensed in the state of Missouri…?”

I gave him half a smile. “I’m not licensed anywhere. But I’ll risk it if you will. Should some son of a bitch make a move on the Reverend, and I have to shoot him? I have a hunch all will be forgiven.”

He grinned, and got up and held out his hand, which was a very nice way to say I’d been dismissed.

I shook it, then at the door paused to say, “I’m gonna grab some lunch. Would you tell Friday and Gannon that I’ll be back by one? To answer whatever questions they might have.”

“Jack, I’d be happy to.”

The two cops didn’t notice me head out. They were busy, now that many of the staffers from the weekend trip were starting to drift in. No sign of Ruth yet.

I caught lunch, alone, at a place called the Ladle, where I had the chicken-pot-pie soup with a puff pastry floating on top. Very good, but this was another of these Central West End hippie-type joints—art glass, Goodwill furniture, church pews, colored tablecloths. I ate slowly, thinking, letting the comfort-food soup warm my belly and encourage my mind.

Like Duff’s, the Ladle had indoor old-fashioned telephone booths, a row of four right out of a ’40s train station. I’d come up with the beginnings of a plan, but it couldn’t include Boyd. Not a double-cross, that’s not my deal. But something that might work best single-o.

I closed myself in a booth and put in a collect call to the Broker. This time I did get some fucking flunky and so I had to sit in there and wait for him to get back to me.

I took the opportunity to reflect on how the money worked with the Broker, at least on a usual job, and this admittedly wasn’t that. But generally he received a down payment from the client that covered his end and enough more to give Boyd and me—or any of his two-man teams (those basketball jerseys popped into my head again)—an advance.

I’d received five grand up front and I assumed Boyd the same. The rest of the payoff—Boyd’s second five grand, and my twenty—would be made a night or two before the hit. Procedure was to call the Broker and report that everything was in place and the job about to go down. The Broker would contact the client, instruct him or her to make the drop, the client providing a time and place, of course, which would be passed along to me.

Finally the Broker called. “Yes?”

Was he a little peeved, hearing from Boyd and me so often on this contract? Was I interrupting a secretarial blow job? Was he playing cribbage at his club? Okay, so I don’t know what cribbage is and didn’t know what club that would be, but you get the drift.