Max Collins - Quarry's ex

He exhaled smoke; his eyes were wide, his forehead furrowed. “Am I crazy?”

“I don’t know. Are you?”

“I’m believing this. I’m believing you. Who are you?”

“I used to be in the same business.”

“As me?”

“As the pair sent to kill you.”

“And, what? You came over from the dark side? Now you’re a good guy? This is not a script I would buy, Mr. Reynolds.”

“Good guys and bad guys aren’t the issue.”

“What is?”

“Whether you want to hire me to stop you from dying of an accident.”

His eyes flared and nostrils too and he sat sharply up. “Insurance,” he said.

“What?”

“That’s why Licata could afford to have me killed. There’s insurance on the picture. Completion bond, it’s called. Something happens to me, insurance pays off big-time. They can salvage what I shot, and start over later, but in the meantime, the production gets paid for, top to bottom.”

I was nodding. “Okay. That may make Licata the prime suspect. But just now we don’t want to solve your murder, Art-we want to prevent it.”

Suddenly he changed his position, in a couple of senses, including scooching closer to me and sitting like an Indian on the bed, hunkered over conspiratorially. “How will you do that? Is this something you…something you’ve…”

“I have done it before. I have helped people in your situation. Never lost a patient yet. But there’s something you have to come to grips with, before you can hire me.”

His eyes flared again and he gestured with his cigarette in hand, making a smoke trail that vaguely suggested a question mark. “Haven’t you given me enough already? To come to grips with?”

“No. There’s a bigger bump yet you have to weather. Something major you have to grasp, and endorse.”

“What the fuck are you-”

“The way I can help you, right now, is to stop this.”

“Well, sure…”

“To stop this. Understand? I have to remove the problem. Cut out the cancer. Get it?”

“You mean…you have to kill the…killers.”

“Yes.” I shrugged. “Actually, I’ve already killed one of them. Earlier tonight.”

His jaw dropped. Not a figure of speech-it dropped. “What?”

“The surveillance expert. Back-up guy I mentioned? He’s already turned over the info he’s gathered on you to his partner. And as far as the partner knows, the back-up guy has gone home. Which he has. In a big way.”

His eyes were tight; his tone tentative. “You…you killed someone tonight…”

“Yes.”

“Without knowing whether I would…without my…”

“Yes. You know what they say-first one’s free.”

“My God.” He seemed about to throw up, but he handled it. Probably didn’t want to waste the Percodan.

“You all right, Art? We cool?”

His smile was terrible. I’d call it curdled. “What’s your fee, Jack? There’s always a fee in these Faustian scenarios.”

“Hey, I’m not the devil. I don’t want you dead, and I sure as hell have zero interest in your soul. It’s twenty-five grand for removing both hitmen. Two-for-one sale. Can you handle that?”

He swallowed thickly. But then he nodded. “I can. Cash?”

“That would be better. But there are ways for you to pay with a check. Various names and accounts I use. Still, there’s less risk for us both if we can stay with cash. Plus I’d have to charge you more, because of the tax issues. Got to stay straight with Uncle Sugar.”

His eyebrows went up. “Oh yeah. You want to be a good citizen.”

“Art, I’m not the bad guy here. Or let’s put it this way-I’m your bad guy. Now let’s move on to part two.”

“There’s a part two?”

“Aren’t you in the sequel business? For another twenty-five K, I will find out if it’s Licata who took out the contract. If so, I’ll take him out. Same deal if it’s someone else-either way, I’ll remove the threat.”

He scooched back to his former position, legs straight out, back against the headboard. “You would just…kill a mob boss?”

“Sure.”

“Really?”

“Art-mob bosses getting killed is not that unusual.”

A grunty thing came out of him that might have been a laugh. “How can you be so goddamn casual?”

“Why, does it matter? Since I will have to do some poking around, I would need an official capacity with your production. I was thinking of a PR role. That would give me access to just about anywhere and anybody.”

“You’d be on set?”

“Some of the time. This ‘accident’ may be rigged to happen on set. Must be lots of equipment there that could fall over on a guy.”

“…That would work. We don’t have a unit press manager. You could be a PR person I brought in. That would give you an excuse to interview people. I can even make Kaufmann buy into that.”

“Perfect.”

Stockwell was staring past me. “Am I dreaming this? Am I hallucinating?”

“Why, how much Percodan did you take?”

He shook his head. “You have no idea how hard I work, how many hours I put in…”

Actually, thanks to Jerry, I did.

“…how many decisions, small, medium and large, I make in a single long day on set. Right now I am tired beyond imagining and zoned on painkillers and I am talking to a stranger about things that are just… unbelievable. Unreal. Surreal.”

“You have other options.”

“Really?”

“I can leave. I would request you do me the courtesy of waiting till morning, but then you could call the police. You could say you have reason to believe that you are the target of a contract killer. They might be able to help.”

“In this jerkwater?”

“It’s a casino town. You already have a good relationship with the local law-you shot a scene at the sheriff’s office, right? You might get cooperation. You could go to Vegas and talk to the cops there. It’s all Clark County. You do have options.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I’m not the fucking devil. This is your decision. I don’t do high-pressure sales. It’s undignified.”

He sat there against the headboard, motionless, like a ventriloquist’s dummy that had been propped up. A long time went by. A full minute, maybe. Which is a longer time than you might imagine. Watch the second hand that long and see.

“Is it a trick?” he asked. He sounded like a kid. “If I say no, will you just kill me and go? To cover your tracks?”

“What tracks? You have a phony name on me. Look at me, Art-how distinctive are my looks, would you say?”

“Joe Average.”

“Right. You can say no. You might do okay with the cops.”

His frown was so wrinkly and deep it turned his leading man looks into a kind of monkey face. “What do you really think would happen if I went with the cops and not you?”

“You’ll be dead in forty-eight hours. Let’s just say, I wouldn’t sweat the storyboards.”

He began nodding. He did this for perhaps fifteen seconds (also a long time), then he said, “Do you need any money down?”

“No. But I will report to you what I’ve done, and it won’t be pleasant. You’ll need to know, because people, including the authorities, may throw it at you. You understand? This is harsh shit about to go down.”

He swallowed thickly. “Okay. You passed the audition, Jack. Keep me alive. And…the whole boat.”

“Whoever’s behind it, too?”

“Whoever’s behind it, too.”

He got up to walk me out, giving me some information along the way, including where they’d be shooting tomorrow. We were standing near the door going over that when it opened and a nearly naked beautiful woman entered.

“Oh, I’m interrupting,” she said.