Quarry's Choice (9 page)

After my meeting with Killian, I’d sat with Luann in the hot tub, enjoying the Jacuzzi spray but having to talk up a little to get over the noise. I was at one end and she was at the other. With her hair damp, she had a baby bird look. A baby bird with nice tits bobbing in the water.

I asked, “You ever work any of the state-line clubs?”

“No.”

“Not stripping
or
hooking?”

“No. One of my girlfriends did. One of my roommates.”

“What does she say about it?”

“Plenty.”

“Such as?”

“Don’t work there.”

I nodded. Those clear blue eyes were looking at me but with no discernible interest.

I said, “I have to do a job for Mr. Killian tomorrow at the Dixie Club.”

“Oh.” She closed her eyes and her face said the Jacuzzi spray felt good. Then she opened them. “Be careful.”

“Okay. Any particular reason why?”

“There’s a woman that runs it with her husband and she kills people with a hammer.”

This may sound to you like a typically off-the-wall comment coming from a little blonde bimbo, but even if that’s what she was, this specimen was neither flaky nor spacey. And anyway, this gibed with what Killian had told me.

Dixie and Dix Dixon—which was, let’s face it, a lot of dicks—were a couple in their mid-forties who had been running roadhouses since the early ’50s in McNairy County, Tennessee, and Alcorn County, Mississippi, along the state line, an area notorious for that kind of thing.

Currently they were running the Dixie Club, a restaurant with a gambling joint and a shady motel. Their specialty was rolling customers who complained about getting rooked or who flashed a big wad of dough without having the courtesy to lose it all at the Dixie. While locals were on occasion known to get this rough treatment, tourists almost always did, and drunks from anywhere.

“That kind of old-fashioned approach is small-picture thinking,” Killian had said. “Big-picture thinking keeps the customers happy and coming back for more.”

Which they didn’t when they were killed and dumped in a river, swamp or along a highway’s edge.

“Don’t,” Killian said, “let Dixie get behind you. She sometimes works as a bartender, so keep track of her whereabouts. Eyes peeled. She keeps a ball-peen in her apron.”

“What,” I said, “and she just pulls out Maxwell’s silver hammer and bang bangs you in the head? Right in front of God and any other patrons?”

“Yes.”

There was food for thought.

Seemed that Killian had bought out or into almost every roadhouse on the Mississippi/Tennessee state line. The exceptions were the Dixie Club and three more such fleece-and-fuck joints owned by other members of the Dixon clan, who had turned down every offer and overture from the Biloxi boss these past six months. No matter how generous.

Now he needed something done about Dixie and Dix. And if you think he was sending me up there to reason with them, you aren’t paying attention.

Late that same night, after fucking Luann in my bed and tucking her into hers, I had left the Tropical again to cross Highway 90 and walk to a beachfront phone booth. There I got the operator to make a collect call to a long-distance number I knew well.

I said, “I don’t do jobs for just anybody.”

“Job” was the over-the-phone euphemism for that other euphemism, “hit.”

“I know,” the Broker replied in that single-malt whiskey baritone. “You only do jobs for me. But this would seem an extension of that. And it does appear you are being paid. Which is, of course, an above-and-beyond benefit for you.”

I sighed into the receiver. “This sounds dicey as hell, Broker, and it’s well beyond anything you and I discussed. And I have to do the Biloxi job at my first reasonable opportunity, even if I haven’t been paid yet for this side trip.”

“If that proves to be the case,” the Broker said smoothly, “you’ll be taken care of on this end.”

“Try that again, not so ambiguous.”

“I will pay for the state-line trip if necessary.”

“Thanks.”

His sigh was weary but not irritated. “I well understand that you find yourself in a strange environment, undertaking an assignment of some delicacy. That the ground may be continually shifting under your feet. . .”

“There’s sand under my feet, Broker.”

“. . .but this is obviously a vital job not only for my future, but yours. I wish I had more encouraging words for you.”

What was this, Home on the Fucking Range?

“Goodnight, Quarry. Get some rest. It would appear that you’ll need it.”

And he hung up.

This morning I had taken Luann to the Edgewater Mall, where there was a lot of construction. A famous adjacent hotel was getting torn down, and Sears and some other new stores were coming in. At a department store called Gayfers, I bought the girl some non-hookerish things in the teen department and picked up some collegiate things for myself.

At the same mall, we stopped at Godchaux’s, which made Gayfers look like a Salvation Army shop. Three black suits and half a dozen silk ties were waiting, courtesy of Mr. Killian. I tried on the suits, which got marked up for alterations, and would be delivered to the Tropical tomorrow. That was fine, because I wouldn’t need them where we were going today.

While Luann’s participation was my idea, Killian had suggested I take the plane to Memphis, rather than make the nearly six-hour drive from Biloxi to the state-line strip. The girl’s airfare came out of my pocket, but I figured the Broker would reimburse.

We were barely out of the rental car lot when Luann found a rock station. She liked it loud, but not blaring—she probably got enough of that on stage at Mr. Woody’s—and I had a feeling she cranked it just to where conversation would be difficult. Conversation seemed to be something in life that she just put up with. Like fucking the occasional fat guy.

The idea was that she’d look like a nice girl, a coed or a newlywed, and the clothes I’d put her in did the trick: a red cotton short-sleeve top with a U-neck, a wide red belt with a big gold-and-red buckle, and striped jeans of red, white and pale blue. Her feet were in leather open-toed sandals with cork bottoms, or they were when she didn’t have them off to paint her toenails red as we drove.

I had on dark brown jeans and a rust-color short-sleeved turtleneck, untucked, just a little big for me, enough to conceal the Browning nine millimeter stuck in my waistband. Since it got cool here at night, I’d have a brown windbreaker on, too, which would also help hide the weapon. I was wearing tan sneakers, anticipating I might need to move quickly.

Highway 45 alternated through tall piney woods and fertile farm country. Often roadsides were choked with thickets overtaken by kudzu, making odd shapes, like a topiary garden of extinct beasts. The land we were winding through had some roll to it, but was mostly flat, interrupted by the occasional small house and/or big barn. Country churches (where anti-state-line sermons surely flourished) sent their steeples skyward to greet the Lord and flee the overgrowth.

When the state-line strip kicked in, it wasn’t a Vegas or even Biloxi kind of thing. The roadhouses—with names like the Shamrock, the Plantation, the Nitefall—popped up only now and then, like clusters of mushrooms, the kind you shouldn’t swallow. Now and then one would be across the road from another. But mostly each joint ruled its own little roost.

The Dixie Club was no exception. The parking lot was big and gravel, the building itself a long, one-story white frame building with a green pitched roof, green-and-white striped awnings, and a central neon saying

DIXIE CLUB

in red with smaller neons along the right roof saying

DINE DANCE DRINK

while a metal Coca-Cola sign ran horizontally along the left roof adding

STEAK   CHICKEN   BURGERS   HOME-COOKING

although I doubted whoever was cooking actually lived there. The motel was a separate building off to the right, sitting at a forty-five degree angle with a red neon sign that said

DIXIE
COURT
TV   AIR-CONDITIONING   POOL

but the pool must have been in back.

Some roadhouses we passed had small fleets of campers where the hookers took their johns, the girls escorting their clients across parking lots while other fallen flowers leaned in camper doorways, in skimpy tops and hot pants or minis, casually displaying their wares. But the Dixie was much classier than that—the motel apparently served as its brothel.

The parking lot at 7:30 on a weeknight was maybe a third full, the motel’s parking spaces about the same. I wondered if you could actually check in there, or was it strictly for working girls, and maybe cheaters paying by the hour.

But I gave it a try at a registration desk overseen by a hard-looking but not unattractive brunette in her late thirties who had apparently moved into management. She wore a sleeveless dress, white with cherries all over it; maybe that was irony. On the counter were dust-covered leaflets about the sites and attractions in the area and a tumbler of an amber liquid that was probably bourbon.

She frowned at me in confusion. “
All
night?”

“Yeah.” I smiled over at Luann, who was staring blankly at nothing. Then I smiled back at the brunette in the cherry-strewn dress. “We’re on our honeymoon. Kind of collecting out-of-the-way motels.”

Her pretty face had more wrinkles than a slept-in suit.

“You kids have fun,” she said. “That’ll be thirty-five. No credit cards.”

“No problem,” I said, still smiling, but hoped not overdoing it. I handed over the cash, signed us in as Bob and Holly Johnson, and asked, “Is the food good over next door?”

“It’s all one business,” the brunette said, “so of course I’ll say yes. Can’t go wrong with the chicken. Meat’s iffy by midweek.”

“Thanks.”

Our room was dingy but not dismal, with pea-soup color walls, a yellow nubby spread on the double bed (which for a quarter vibrated), and chairs covered in orange fake leather (not that any real leather came in orange). A darker green semi-sheer curtain covered a window onto the parking lot. A little hallway went past the john to a door to the pool area. The pool, which nobody was using, was small but serviceable, surrounded by sad-looking deck chairs, the kind that drifted up on a beach after a shipwreck.

Swimming was my chief mode of exercise, relaxation and reflection, but I didn’t figure I’d be partaking of this particular perk of the Dixie Court.

Luann, not surprisingly, was trying out the TV, a futuristic mid-’60s portable on a stand.

“Shit reception,” she said, sitting on the foot of the bed. She looked cute and young in the red top and the striped jeans.

I sat next to her. “Most people don’t check in here to watch the tube.”

She turned her eyes toward me. Such a light blue. Such a lack of interest. “If you want sex, I’m okay with it.”

How could a man resist that kind of passion?

“No, Luann, we’re not here for that, either.”

I hadn’t filled her in much, because my plan was still sketchy in my mind. Back at the Tropical, I did tell her that things might get dangerous and she could stay home if she wanted. She’d just shrugged and said that she knew any trip to the state-line strip could be hairy.

“We’ll go over to the Dixie Club,” I said, holding onto her right hand like she was a child I was reassuring, “and get something to eat. Your name is Holly and I’m Bob.”

“Got it.”

“I’m going over there to kind of. . .get the lay of the place.”

“You said you didn’t want sex.”

“I mean just kind of. . .what would they say on
Hawaii Five-O
? Case the joint. Take a look at everything and everybody. That woman with the hammer is probably going to be there, and I want to get a handle on her.”

“You better, because she’s already got a handle. On her hammer.”

This girl was not stupid. She just had lived in a kind of bubble. Of course, that bubble had been sleazy skin palaces like Mr. Woody’s, so she should be able to take care of herself in a rough situation.

“After a while,” I said, “I’ll walk you back here. And I’ll go back by myself.”

“To do a job for Mr. Killian.”

“That’s right.”

“Rob the place? I saw you put that gun in your suitcase.”

“No. Something else. Something you don’t need to think about. Don’t need to know.”

The downside of Luann’s presence was that I was potentially bringing along a witness, and the last thing I wanted to do was have to snuff the little twat. But the upside was considerable. With her next to me, the whores at the Dixie wouldn’t swarm me. With her, I was a credible clean-cut young tourist just begging to be taken.

Whereas a guy alone could get rolled and killed.

And killing two young tourists, say a nice honeymooning couple, could get some real out-of-state interest stirred up in the side businesses at the Dixie Club.

So bringing Luann along seemed worth the risk.

Right now she was almost smiling at me. “Really, if you want to fuck before we go over there, it’s no problem.”

I had zero intention of fucking her or anybody else in this room. This was the kind of bed where you could catch twelve kinds of V.D. just jerking off.

“No, honey, this is business,” I said.

She smirked as if to say,
And what I said
wasn’t
business?

Soon the clean-cut couple was walking across the gravel lot, where pick-up trucks mingled with sports cars and various stops between. We entered through red double doors into a big dining room with a high open-beam ceiling adding to a barn feel. Four waitresses in red-and-white checked uniforms with lacy aprons were taking orders and picking them up at a window. Nothing about the place, with its red-plastic tablecloths, folksy wooden chairs, and cement floor, conveyed anything fancy, much less sinister. What looked to be local couples aged twenties through fifties seemed comfortable dining here—not a lot of them tonight, half a dozen maybe.

A pleasant middle-aged waitress took our orders—two fried chicken baskets and Cokes—and, when I asked, said I was welcome to have a look around. But the dance hall (down to the right) was only open weekends. When our drinks came, Luann stayed behind as I did some reconnoitering.