Quarry's Choice (24 page)

“It went well,” I said.

“Good.” She seemed nervous but I could tell only because I knew to look.

I said, “There’s time to take you back to the motel.”

“No. I’ll wait here.”

“You can’t drive. I don’t see what good—”

“If I see somebody comin’, I can honk the horn and warn you.”

That actually made sense.

“Well, if I’m in there, and you hear shots and I don’t come right out? You slip out of the car and run off somewhere. Just get the hell away, and hide till it seems safe.”

“Okay. Can I have a gun?”

“Have you ever fired one?”

She shook her head. “But I know what to do. Point and squeeze.”

Hawaii Five-O.
Who said kids can’t learn anything from television?

I showed her how the safety worked and handed the snub-nose over.

Various employees poured out, the strippers and waitresses and female bartenders in a kind of pack, followed by the two bouncers, who were lighting up smokes. Luann had already told me there was no clean-up crew—that was done by day. I started the car and pulled around to the rear lot for the Lucky Seven casino, where employees were still trailing out. Took a little longer on this side. Money in windows that had to be balanced and so on. But by 3:45, the Lucky Seven was dark.

I got out, leaving her in the car back there, grabbed something from the back seat floor, and ambled around to the front, where I got a start: there were no cars in the lot.

Had Mr. Woody gone home while we were checking out the back?

I positioned myself along the side of the building, nine millimeter in hand, peeking around the corner, wondering if I’d blown it.

Within a minute, a two-tone brown Caddy swung in, kicking up gravel. Mrs. Woody was behind the wheel, and barely cut her speed till she was parallel to the front entry. Apparently she was picking up her husband, who came out on cue. He was locking up as she hopped out in a dark pants suit and heels, a little purse tucked under an arm.

They stood facing each other, the building to his back, the vehicle to hers, and began to talk animatedly. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, in part because she had left the Caddy’s motor running and its stereo, too—Barbra Streisand singing “Don’t Rain on My Parade.”

But they heard me fine when I stepped out and pointed the nine millimeter at them: “I don’t think we should conduct business out here, do you?”

With my other hand, I held up the surviving video cassette and waved it just a little.

They made like a freeze-frame at the end of movie, then came to life in slow motion, Mr. Woody unlocking the door to the club and his wife studying me the way a spider does a fly trapped in its web. Only she had it backwards.

He led us through—like the Dixie Club’s casino last night, Mr. Woody’s was lit only by glowing beer neons—and his wife fell in alongside me.

She whispered, “If you stay and work for Woody, you and I. . .” And she raised both eyebrows and gave me a wicked half-smile.

So at least the job would have perks.

Then we were in his office. I tossed the video cassette on the desktop with a clunk, as if it were nothing special. I let him get behind there and his country-club wife towered next to him, tossing her purse on the desk with a smaller clunk.

I pointed the nine millimeter at him.

“I apologize about the indignities you suffered last night,” Mr. Woody said with quiet sincerity. “How did you know that I was in back of it, anyway?”

“They had a key. It’s your fucking motel. Woody, guy, fella—you sold me out to the Dixons. Come on, we went over this.”

He folded his hands before him, as if to demonstrate he did not have in mind going for any gun that might be in a desk drawer or somewhere.

“I underestimated you, Quarry. Now, from the start I truly
was
impressed with you. . .that was never a lie. . .but now I see that you really are someone who could be of great value to me. Of enormous use.”

He did love to use people.

“Here’s the thing,” I said. “I know this has been you all the way.
You
sent that prick in the green Caddy to take a shot at the Broker.”

He stared at me agape. “Why in hell would I want to kill the
Broker
? He’s my friend and colleague. That was
Killian’s
doin’! You know that!”

“Only because you told me so. No. This is your doing. Anyway, you
didn’t
try to kill the Broker—your man was told to miss. To just throw a scare into your ‘friend and colleague,’ to encourage him to send somebody down to kill Killian for you. Somebody like me. So you have Jackie out of the way, while taking no blame or credit for it. . .but Biloxi is all yours.”

He began to say something, then just shrugged, and unleashed all those teeth in a big shit-eatin’ grin, his eyes falling to the rectangle of plastic on his desk.

“What can I say, Quarry? I
really
did underestimate you. Now, as it happens, I
do
have considerable funds on hand here at the club.”

“Fifty grand in funds?”

He almost seemed embarrassed. “Actually. . .I do. I was, uh. . . just putting you off to buy a little time. Would you mind if I had my lovely wife take down that framed poster of Miss Doda there? Wall safe’s behind ’er.”

“Fine.”

Wicked Wanda gave me a flinch of a smile and I backed up, almost into the hall—I’d left the door open—and she went to the framed poster and removed it from its nail, rested it below. About the size of a 45 record, a gray metallic circle with a combination dial and handle was now exposed. Wanda glanced at me and I waved the gun for her to go back to where she’d been. She did.

Mr. Woody rose, slowly, and gestured toward the safe with an open hand, saying, “May I?”

I nodded. “If you come back with a gun, I’ll shoot you both.”

He paused to raise his hands as if in surrender, flashing all those teeth. “There is no weapon in that safe, son. Not that I truly
believe
you would shoot an unarmed woman.”

“You never know.”

He dialed the combination and swung the little round door open. He reached in and came back not with a gun, but with banded money—one at a time, stacks of hundreds each making ten thousand. As promised, there were five of these. He set them on the desk, near the video cassette he was buying, shut the safe, re-hung the Carol Doda poster, and resumed his place, sitting with hands again folded.

“I assure you, son, that if you stay on board and become a partner,
not
an adversary, this amount here, that must seem so considerable, will become triflin’ indeed.”

That didn’t rate a response.

I turned to his wife. “Hey. Lady Macbeth. Hand me your purse.”

She frowned just a little. “My purse?”

I just looked at her and she shrugged and handed it over. Shifting the nine millimeter to my left hand, I unsnapped the purse with my right, bracing the thing against my left forearm, and dug inside. As the clunk had indicated, a weapon was in there. I let the purse drop but held onto the little gun, a .25 automatic.

Mr. Woody frowned at me, making the hazel eyes behind the lenses smaller. “What the hell, man—”

But when I swung the little gun in his direction, those eyes got very big again and I put a bullet in his left one, spider-webbing the lens, his mouth open to express words of shock that would never come.

She lurched at me with bared teeth and clawed hands, red nails looking plenty sharp, but I sidestepped like a bullfighter and, the snout of her .25 flush to flesh and hair, shot her in the right temple.

She fell in an ungainly pile that seemed mostly legs and I put my nine millimeter away while I knelt to wipe off the .25 and press it into her right hand.

“Oh my,” someone said.

I turned fast and there in the hallway was Luann, a hand to her lips. She had the .38 in the other hand, pointing down. Those almost invisible-blue eyes were wide.

She said, barely audible, “I thought you might need help.”

I collected the .38 from her, stuffed it in my waistband, and took her by the elbow, walking her into the club where she’d danced so many times. I sat her down there in darkness and told her to stay put, not even taking time to scold her for not staying in the car.

So she’d witnessed another two killings of mine. This was getting to be a bothersome habit on her part. I’d deal with that later.

For now, I needed to check out the scene of the two latest killings and make sure things were staged correctly. The bodies didn’t need any help in their positioning, and I hadn’t touched much of anything. The wife had lost her grace in death, sprawled on the floor and taking up a lot of space. Mr. Woody slumped forward on the desk, his eyes open and surprised. No gore got on the money, the wall behind him getting a squirt of blood and brains. The currency
was
a little clumsy to deal with—I had to distribute packets to various pockets.

Then I looked everything over. Seemed fine. The video cassette on the desk would help explain this tragedy.

But I sure hoped Mrs. Woody had been right-handed.

I drove Luann back to the Tropical Motel. It wasn’t dawn yet. The little cracks that were the .25 automatic’s gunshots did not seem to have attracted any attention—doubtful they could even be heard outside the warehouse-like structure that housed Mr. Woody’s and the Lucky Seven. The tragic homicide-suicide in the strip club office wouldn’t be found for a while. No reason not to go back and check out. Or anyway, leave.

She had a few things to gather in her room, all of which fit into one light-blue suitcase and that canvas tote. I had a single suitcase, too, but also a garment bag courtesy of Godchaux’s for the three black suits I’d acquired. Now I was ready for weddings and funerals, and job interviews, should I ever decide to change professions.

We each freshened up a little, and as sunlight began bleeding in around the curtains onto the parking lot, Luann and I—both in jeans and t-shirts now, an odd reminder that only a few years of age separated us—once again sat on the foot of the bed.

She had her interlaced hands in her lap and looked pale.

Without looking at me, she asked, “Why don’t you kill me?”

“What, is that a request?”

Not surprisingly, she didn’t smile at that. A sense of humor wasn’t her long suit, and anyway it was kind of in bad taste.

Looking at the TV screen as she so often did, only now it was blank but for our distorted reflections on the curved glass, she said, “I saw you kill those people. It was so fast. They were alive and then. . .not.”

“That’s how it always is. Even when guns aren’t involved. There’s life in you and then there isn’t.”

She swallowed and looked at her folded hands. “Did she deserve it? His wife? Was she the mastermind or somethin’?”

“Pulling her husband’s strings? Maybe. Anyway, she was in it with him. Doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t?”

“No, and as for deserving it, hell, I don’t know. She got involved in murder and that opens you up for things.”

Her face turned toward me, eyes slitted, like she was trying to bring me into focus. “So you’re not goin’ to kill me?”

“No.”

“But you’d probably say that if you were.”

“Yes.”

Strangely, that didn’t seem to bother her. “When you drowned that man, it didn’t seem real.”

“Well, you saw it on a TV screen. It’s different, close up.”

She nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“For askin’ you to kill Mr. Woody.”

“You’re not sorry you’re
free
of him, though.”

She shook her head firmly. “No. No, I’m glad. And maybe there was no other way. Maybe I’m just sorry I saw it. So if you not gon’ to kill me, Johnny, what do we do now?”

I patted her denim-clad knee. “You are going to go back to your life.”

“Really?”

I raised a palm. “Temporarily. Not hooking, unless you want to. But dancing. Just kind of staying. . .under the radar.”

She frowned at me. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, there’s nothing to connect you to those killings. You’re just a dumb little stripper who’s going about her business. Other Dixie Mafia people will step up and take over, right? The clubs and so on?”

She nodded.

I asked, “Are you beholden to any of them?”

“No. Just Mr. Woody. He controlled my money.”

“He doesn’t anymore. You just keep an eye on the papers. You can read, right?”

She nodded. “I went to the seventh grade.”

“Okay, good. Watch and see if what just happened goes down as a murder-suicide. If that’s the case, you go to the bank where your money is. With Mr. Woody dead, you’ll be able to get at it.”

She smiled, nodded some more. “Kinda thought that might be the way.”

No dope, this kid.

I said, “If they call it two murders, just sit back a while. You don’t want to be a suspect. You might just wait for the bank to contact you.”

“Will they?”

“Probably. If not, you may have to keep your head down and your body in shape and keep dancing a while.”

“Easy on the cheeseburgers?”

“Maybe a little. In the meantime. . .”

I got up and went over to my suitcase on a little metal and canvas stand by the dresser. The nine millimeter was in there. I counted out three of the five banded packets of hundreds. I tossed them one at a time on the bed next to her. Her eyes went wider than Orphan Annie’s.

“What’s that for?” she asked.

“For you. Thirty grand. I’m keeping twenty for myself. That’s what Mr. Woody paid us for the video tape of his wife fucking his partner. Don’t declare it on your income tax.”

“Mr. Woody always handled that stuff for me.”

“Well, he won’t be now. This is just your. . .get-out-of-town money. Which you’ll do at some point. How much you got in the bank?”

“Eighty-seven-thousand-five-hundred-and-forty-two-dollars-and-fifteen-cents.”

I whistled low and slow. “Nice nest egg. When you have that money, you add this to it. You can go somewhere and buy that strip bar you were talking about. . .just
not
in Biloxi.”

She had a determined look. “If I do, I won’t strip.”