Quarry's Choice (13 page)

Sending her back to Mr. Woody at this point wouldn’t cut it. She was a witness now, and I had to keep an eye on her, keep track of her, in case I had to do something about it.

I couldn’t face The Dockside a second time in one day, even though I could sign meals to my room there, so I drove Luann over to a touristy seafood restaurant on Rue Magnolia, just off Highway 90—Mary Mahoney’s, an old French white-clapboard mansion right out of New Orleans.

The cute little Tonto to my Lone Ranger was in the red U-neck top and red-white-and-light-blue jeans again. Her hair was freshly washed and she smelled like Charlie perfume, very much maintaining that coed look she’d had at the Dixie Club. Underdressed for the room, but what the hell.

“No cheeseburger tonight,” I said. “Not allowed.”

We were at a white-linen-covered table seated on white dining chairs in a room with pale yellow walls with framed pictures of pelicans on them. Business was slow, meaning nice privacy.

“Everythin’s so expensive,” she said.

“I came into some money.”

“Let’s share somethin’.”

We did, a seafood platter. Her table manners were better than you’d think, but she put a lot of food away, including some bread pudding. I wasn’t that hungry.

Back at the Tropical, as we approached our side-by-side rooms, she said, “You want me to come in?”

“Sure. You can watch TV if you want. I’m on call. I could use the company.”

She followed me in and slipped into the bathroom. I went over and turned on the TV for her. Flip Wilson was on, doing his drag character, Geraldine. He said, “The devil made me do it!” and the audience roared.

The only light on was the bedside one. I took off my suitcoat and hung it over the back of a chair, got out of my tie, kicked off my shoes, and flopped onto the bed. She came out the bathroom, naked, and padded over to the TV and turned it off, her dimpled backside to me.

Then she came over and switched off the light and the only illumination was what bled in from the curtained windows onto the parking lot.

She began to unbutton my shirt and I said, “You don’t have to do that.”

She paid no heed. After she’d unbuttoned it, she took it off me, rested it gently on the chair where I’d left the suitcoat, and then began undoing my belt. She unzipped me and tugged the pants off, placed them carefully on the chair, then unceremoniously pulled down my jockey shorts. My dick bobbed at her, interested.

Now all I had on was black socks, like a guy in a stag film. If this had been the Fantasy Sweets, maybe I’d have been making an unwitting one.

Usually she got on top, my theory being that she had more control that way and could squeeze the come out of you with that tight child’s fist of a little snatch of hers, and sort of get it over with. This time she came around the bed and got beside me and was on her back, her legs spread wide, pink flower petals peeking out as they hid in the bush.

I reached for the bedside drawer where the Trojans were and she gripped my arm.

“No,” she said.

“No?”

“No. I want to feel you in me.”

“Honey, no offense, but. . .that’s just not safe.”

“I’m on the pill.”

“But. . .it’s not safe
other
ways. . .”

She shook her head and the blonde hair went a bunch of places, all nice ones. “No man’s ever been in me without a rubber.”

“
No
man?”

“Nope. It’s not good business.”

“You said you were on the pill.”

“Keeps my periods short and regular. You gonna fuck me or what?”

But I didn’t exactly fuck her. I’d done that three or four times over the past few days, but this was something else. This was sweet and tender and she was registering emotion, which was a first, her mouth open, her eyes rolled back, her cheeks red, her chest too, the aureoles wrinkled tight and their tips hard, blue veins pulsing in the pale whiteness of her breasts. She was tight, as always, but wet, too, and I plunged into her slowly and she ground her hips slowly, right with me, both of us building gradually to an explosion that wrenched loud, shuddering moans out of both of us.

I held her, trying not to put all of my weight on her, and she was hugging me, hugging me, hugging me.

Then she slipped out from under me and ran to the bathroom, like she’d seen a mouse.

I flopped back on the bed, feeling like I’d just fallen down the best flight of steps ever, and when my breath was normal, I noticed a sound from the bathroom. Well, I’d already heard water running and then a shower starting. But this was some other sound. I could use some washing off myself, so I got up and knocked at the almost-shut door.

“Luann?”

She was crying in there!

I went quickly in and she was sitting in the tub, at the back but with the shower on, the nozzle aimed away from her, hugging her legs to herself, her hair wet, her face wet, too, streaked with tears, mascara making a break for it.

“Are you all right, honey?”

She nodded, but she was still crying, her little chin all crinkled, her thin arms hugging her shapely legs to her.

I knelt beside the tub and put a hand on her head, got my fingers entwined in the wet hair. “What’s wrong, kid?”

“Your. . .your name is John, right?”

Well, it was supposed to be, so I nodded.

“I never called you that,” she said. “I never called you anythin’.”

I shrugged. I hadn’t noticed, but I guessed that was true.

“You know what a john is,” she said.

“Sure.”

“Well, I didn’t want to call you that.”

“Oh?”

“I. . .liked the way you look right away.”

“You didn’t show it.”

“I try not to show things.”

“Me, too. You don’t want to call me ‘John’ because maybe I’m not just a john to you. Is that it?”

She nodded six times. Maybe seven.

She said, “Can I call you ‘Johnny’?”

“Sure.”

“I like the way you didn’t want to call me ‘Lolita.’ ”

It had just struck me as corny, but I said, “Luann’s a pretty name.”

Neither of us said anything for a while.

Then the light-blue eyes were on me and she said, “Johnny?”

I could barely hear her over the shower water drumming down nearby.

“Yes?” I said.

“I’m not cryin’ ’cause I’m sad.”

“No. Well, are you happy?”

And she laughed—I swear she did—and nodded four times. Maybe five.

She wiped tears, shower water and snot off her face, then asked, “You know why I’m cryin’?”

“Why?”

“I never did before.”

“You never what before?”

“I never came before.”

“You never. . .?”

She shook her head. Still squeezing her legs to her, water streaming from her damp hair like oversize tears. “I didn’t think I could. I never liked sex. I just. . .did it.”

“I get that.”

“I liked it tonight, Johnny.”

“Well. . .cool.”

She nodded. “Cool. Really cool.”

“You’re crying. Didn’t you like. . .coming?”

“Man! It was totally awesome.”

So I helped her out of the shower, and started toweling her off, till she took over. Not crying anymore. Smiling. Happy.

And for all of you out there keeping track, add to my list of accomplishments the ability to make a girl of nineteen who’d been having sex since she was twelve finally experience an orgasm. I’ll wait for the applause to die down before moving on.

The closet had a terry cloth robe with
TROPICAL
on the breast pocket—why a terry cloth robe needs a breast pocket is beyond me—but I bundled her in that, and we went back to the bed and cuddled there, on the bedspread, watching Flip Wilson and Bobby Darin sing, “It’s Just One of Those Songs.”

She was such a little thing, fitting snugly to me with my arm around her, that when a stray thought entered my mind, I tensed enough that she looked up at me.

I answered her look with, “Luann, I need to ask you something.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t be upset.”

“Okay.”

“Did Mr. Woody ask you to keep tabs on me?”

I thought she might be hurt. That she might start to cry in a whole other way.

But instead she shook her head at the notion of being sent to my side as a spy, saying, “He wouldn’t trust me with that. He thinks I’m just a dumb little cunt.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t think that, do you?”

“No.”

“You believe me? You trust me?”

“Sure.”

“I’d never do anythin’ bad to my knight in shiny armor.”

“What?”

“That’s what you are.” She was beaming but looking past me. “The way you went to that little man’s rescue last night. . .like a knight in shiny armor.”

Christ, she
would
have to remind me that she’d witnessed that.

The nightstand phone rang.

I answered it.

“You’re needed,” Killian’s voice said. “Now.”

* * *

That the sprawling Keesler Air Force Base was located a mere three blocks north of much of the Biloxi Strip was no coincidence. The roughly three miles of sin palaces between Camelia Street and Rodenberg Avenue depended on the business of young airmen, particularly in off-season.

All I’d gathered was that a problem involving one of those airmen was bad enough to bring Jack Killian out of his (as he put it) well-armed cocoon. I was with Killian in back of a white Cadillac Coupe de Ville with red leather seats; a driver and one of the Tropical watchdogs, both in those trademark black suits, were up front.

The Caddy pulled into a mostly empty graveled parking lot on the south side of Highway 90. A one-and-a-half-story brown-brick building with darker-brown shingled roof squatted there, the white beach at its back. A small window in front could accommodate only a single beer neon,
HAMM
’s, which seemed fitting; the entrance was recessed, a windowless heavy-looking dark brown door, above which a plastic marquee said

BOTTOMS UP
GIRLS     GIRLS     GIRLS
NO COVER     NO MINIMUM
OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK
HAPPY HOUR 4 PM
.

Even among an array of joints with such elegant names as the Titty Ho, the Wits Inn, the Landing Strip and the Climax, this was one sleazy-looking dump.

The driver stayed with the car. The bodyguard, the unibrow guy from the vestibule, went in first. We were greeted by stale beer smell, cigarette fog, and Tom Jones blaring “She’s a Lady,” while—on a plywood stage with a stripper pole and green carpet (same stuff was on the walls)—a tall skinny brunette with fake tits did a topless/bottomless bump-and-grind that contradicted Mr. Jones. College boys, airmen and seamen (do your own joke) sat around the stage, contributing wadded-up dollars to the cause when the stripper came around to give them a closer look at the mystery of life. The small round tables on either side were empty. The hard-looking handful of waitresses, in halter tops and minis, looked bored, and the six feet of bar with a six-foot bartender behind it was otherwise unattended.

Seated on a stool just inside the door, a mustached bruiser in a black t-shirt and black jeans stood with his arms crossed in a way that made his biceps bulge even more. The scowl that was his reflex when anybody entered wiped itself off when Killian came in.

The bouncer said thickly, “Expectin’ you, Mr. Killian. Boss is waitin’ in back.”

Killian nodded and took the lead. I fell in behind him with the unibrow bodyguard trailing; we cut past the backs of patrons seated at the stripper stage and the empty tables on the periphery.

Soon we were in a smallish storeroom where boxes of liquor and beer were piled up along several walls, leaving an open area where right now a slender red-headed ponytail stripper in a skimpy pink cotton robe was seated on a wooden chair, slumped, knees primly together, crying or anyway she had been crying.

Pacing behind her was a medium-sized, round-faced guy about forty with black-framed glasses, a lot of greasy black hair and too much sideburn, with a paunch that threatened to pop the lower buttons on his short-sleeve white shirt. His tie was wide and dark green. His pants were green plaid flared polyester.

Killian said, in a perfectly measured manner, “Morrie—I take it this is the young lady.”

Morrie had frozen in his pacing upon noticing Killian’s presence. Without joining us, he nervously pushed his glasses up on his nose and nodded, saying, “This is her. This is Kelly.”

Killian walked to the girl. In his black suit and dark blue tie, this knife-blade of a man might have seemed threatening. But his voice was almost gentle.

“Kelly,” he said. “You’re not in trouble. Do you understand? You’re not in trouble.”

She swallowed and nodded, but did not look up at him.

He put his hand under her chin, forcing her gently to look up. “
Not
in trouble. Just tell me what happened.”

She glanced back at Morrie, but Killian took her by the chin and, again not with any particular force, turned her narrow, almost pretty face his way. Big green eyes looked up at him, bloodshot and mascara smeary.

“His name is Tommy,” she said. “He’s been comin’ in for. . . three weeks, I guess. Three or four times a week. He always wants to do coke.”

Killian glanced past her at Morrie, who frowned and shrugged, in a what-are-you-gonna-do-with-these-kids manner.

“So I sold him some,” she said, shrugging. “He always bought enough for me to have some, too.”

“Did he come alone?”

She nodded. “Always.”

“Did he drive over from the base?”

She shook her head. “Walked.”

“Where did you get the coke, Kelly?”

She glanced back at Morrie, who gave her a look to kill.

Killian patted her on the head, like a dog who had piddled but still was loved, and walked to where Morrie was standing. As for me and the unibrow, we were near the door we’d come in, in front of some stacked boxes, watching this like a play.

“Morrie,” Killian said, slipping an arm around the smaller man’s shoulder, “you know how we operate. Our is a strictly wholesale business.”

“I know that, Mr. Killian. She’s lying her little cunt off! She never got that stuff from me.”

“I don’t recall her saying she did.”