Max Collins - Quarry's ex

…but not by housekeeping.

I was wearing a polo shirt with my sport coat over it plus jeans and running shoes, looking very much like Jack Reynolds, publicist. But I carried with me a rolled-up towel that had in it my nine millimeter, with sound suppressor attached; and the stiletto was in my jacket pocket. Also, the western paperback was in my back jeans pocket-might be a long day, and there’d be no turning on the TV in here.

In fact-and here’s the unpleasant part-I would have to camp out in the john. Had there been a coat closet with some kind of door, sliding or folding or anything really, I would have had some place to slip into, and momentarily hide.

But there was no door on the closet-it was just an open recessed space with a horizontal pole and clothes hangers with a little shelf where extra blankets and pillows lived.

So the shitter it was.

I kept the door ajar enough to hear, and keeping the light on wasn’t suspicious-a lot of people leave bathroom lights on-so I sat on the toilet, lid down, of course, reading Valdez Is Coming, wondering when Varnos was coming.

Well, I finished it in two hours and-after another hour passed of me staring at white tile walls and yellow-andwhite floor tiles and the nubby glass of the shower stall- I got almost desperate enough to risk going out there and looking for that Jackie Collins.

Almost.

Then, fifteen minutes later, the sound of a key in the lock snapped me to my feet. My silenced Browning was on the counter next to a hair dryer, a brush, and a glass with toothbrushes in it. I had the gun in my hand by the time Varnos was all the way into 313, before he’d even shut the door behind him. I knew the bathroom would not be his first stop-and if it was, he wouldn’t likely have a gun in hand.

Varnos did exactly what I thought he’d do: take the time to put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the outer door-knob. So when he closed himself in, and I came out of the bathroom, right on top of him, his back was to me.

He didn’t even see it coming. The extended barrel of the nine mil slapped him on the back of his head and sent him down, hard, in an ungainly pile, slumped against the door he’d just closed.

This was the dodgy part-I wasn’t trying to kill him. I needed him knocked out. But a blow to the head, with any power in it at all, can do one of three things: knock you out; kill you; or not knock you out.

If Nick was down there playing possum, I might have a rough time of it, even with a gun on him.

There was no blood on the back of his head-that was a lucky break-so I turned him over gently with my left hand, the silenced weapon poised to do what was necessary. The mustached hitman’s eyes were half-lidded, unblinking and glassy, and he was either knocked cold or a much better actor than Stockwell could have afforded on Hard Wheels 2.

I gambled on the former.

As I’ve said, Nick Varnos wasn’t a big man. He was wearing a sport coat today, a rust-color polyester one, over a yellow sportshirt, with tan jeans. I patted him down and found no weapon. That did not surprise me-what he’d come here to do wouldn’t require one. If he’d been caught by a hotel employee in the wrong room, the last thing Varnos would want to have on him was a weapon.

What he did have was a key to room 313-I had no idea where Varnos got it; possibly he finagled it out of the desk pretending to be Stockwell. But this was an actual room key, not a dupe or a passkey or a skeleton job. That was interesting but I was too busy to give it much thought.

He had another room key, of course-his own.

And something else, something very interesting, and most telling: a small sealed envelope, about thank-you note size; but its bumpy surface told my fingers what it contained, and I knew at once how Jerry’s partner had intended to stage Stockwell’s accidental death.

So there would be no need for conversation.

Varnos must not have weighed more than 140, because I had surprisingly little trouble hauling him to his feet with just my left arm around his waist. I’m not saying it wasn’t awkward, but I was able to hold his limp frame alongside me as I opened the door and-finding the coast clear-dragged him, sort of drunk-walked him, to his own room, just a short trip down, on the same side of the hall.

The hardest part was keeping one arm around his waist, to keep him from falling to the floor, while I worked his room key in its slot. If he was faking, I could well be fucked here…

But Varnos still seemed to be out when I hauled him into his room and from there into the bathroom, where I dumped him gently on the floor.

I felt like leaning against something to catch my breath, but even though I would have a chance to tidy up after, leaving fingerprints remained a concern. Why make work for myself? So I just stood there heaving, hands on my hips, the nine millimeter in my waistband.

That was when he woke up.

Varnos had no idea what was going on. He had never seen me before. He had no clue what had happened, his lights had gone out, and now they were back on, and he was on a bathroom floor, as far as he knew the bathroom in Stockwell’s room, but that was irrelevant, it was all irrelevant, because he was a killer for hire who had just woken up.

And that meant he would be up and on me before I could even draw my weapon, and anyway I didn’t want to use my weapon on him, this needed to go down a whole other way.

So when he tackled me, I had to take it. Then he was on top of me, halfway out in the room’s entryway, and his hands were on my throat, which is where I would have put my hands in his place, but as badly as he wanted to be alert, he was still groggy, and as much as he wanted the advantage, I still had thirty pounds on him, and when my right fist jabbed him in the nuts, reflex made his hands loosen, and it was my turn to drive him back, through the open doorway into the bathroom, where I was on top of him and he was flailing, the punched-in-the-nuts pain an impossible thing to shrug off, and his eyes were wide, not with hate or hysteria, but with the knowledge that he was about to die, as I grabbed his head like it was a melon with ears and bashed his skull into the rim of the porcelain crapper with as much force as I could muster.

The crack of bone was unmistakable and the life went out of his eyes almost instantly-at least his ball-sack pain was over, hell, everything was over now that you mention it, and I rose and let him slide to the floor naturally, leaving a smeary dripping red trail along the edge of the bowl till the porcelain downslope gave way.

He lay on his back with lifeless eyes staring up into death but without recognition, his arms spread Christ-like, which I would bet was about the only Christ-like thing about the bastard.

I paused for a moment to catch my breath again, then I took a damp towel from where it had been hung on a metal rod to dry and I put it under his feet, giving the reasonable impression that the moist towel had been down there on the bathroom floor where he’d slipped on it and-tragically-fell backward and hit his head. More accidental deaths in the bathroom than anywhere else, I hear.

I regarded the scene with some satisfaction. Staging accidental deaths was hardly my specialty, but I’d pulled this one off under fairly difficult circumstances. I hadn’t touched much at all, but used a handkerchief I’d brought along to wipe anything it seemed remotely possible my fingers had met.

Such as the key to room 319 that I’d taken off him, which I put back in his pocket. And the inside knob, which I then turned with the hanky-in-hand to crack the door.

Lady Luck-alive and well in Boot Heel, it seemed-dealt me an empty hallway.

I had to take the time to wipe down the outer knob as well, of course. Varnos had already hung a DO NOT DISTURB card there, and that would aid in his body not being found right away. Although when it was found didn’t concern me much. No need to wipe the little plastic hanger of my prints because I had never touched the thing.