Max Collins - Quarry's ex

“You’re…not to going to kill me?”

“Not unless your friend Art wants me to. I’m going to tell him you embezzled…two hundred K? Better come clean if it’s more.”

“No. That’s all.”

“Fine. I’m going to tell him you weren’t responsible for the hit team being sent in. That somebody you owed money did that, and that I have killed that somebody’s ass. He won’t want to know any more than that. That will satisfy him.”

Kaufmann almost smiled-he could hardly believe his good luck, running into a decent guy like me.

I opened the door for him. He zombie-walked out.

“You really gonna leave that open?” I asked, and he gave me a dazed look.

“What’s the term you movie people use?” I said. “It’s a hot set. We don’t need anybody blundering in and fucking with it, do we?”

He got my drift, and locked the diner door.

Couldn’t have any weary traveler stopping by thinking GAS amp; EATS was open for business, and stumble upon Skull in his booth, where the blood pooled on the playing cards was getting all black and crusty and nasty.

Kaufmann walked to his rental Lincoln, and I headed over to my lowly Nova. No wonder the production’s money was running through his fingers-a Lincoln!

But before he got in his car, he found the guts to turn and ask me something.

Called out, “Why…why would do this for me?”

“Not for you. For my client. For the director of this picture. Somebody he loved fucked him over. I been there. Now go buy yourself a shovel.”

By the time I got back to the Spur, it was late morning. I found Arthur Stockwell in his hotel room, spending his unexpected day off sitting at that table where I first saw him, again going over storyboards, also making notes off his script, which was in a hardshell notebook.

His wife was down at the pool, having a swim, he said, so the timing was good for a private talk.

Again he wore a t-shirt-this one black with a Good, the Bad and the Ugly image on it-and jeans. He looked like he’d had more sleep than had been his recent habit, and less puffy, the leading man appearance back, his general aura one of feeling better. But I would take care of that.

I sat at the table and told him the bullshit story as I’d outlined it to Kaufmann-his old friend had embezzled, someone bad who Jimbo owed money hired the hit team, and I took care of that someone. Pretty much that vague.

“So I’m finished here,” I said matter of factly. “Unless you’re mad enough at your old buddy to have me do something about him.”

Stockwell had been sitting there, hangdog, staring into nothing but disappointment and near despair, but my suggestion brought his face up sharply. “No! No. For Christ’s sake, no. I couldn’t live with that.”

“I could.”

“I couldn’t. ” He shook his head; his eyes were welling. “Jim’s my best friend. Or was my friend. I…I don’t know now. It’s not just childhood days together…or him standing up with me and Joni. It’s also…Jack, I’d have never made it in the independent movie business without his help…his support. He must have some terrible problem to sink so low.”

“Sure. He snorts coke.”

“Yes, but why does he snort coke? What demons drove him to it? What could make him betray his best friend?”

I would leave it to him to chase the cause and effect of that down whatever touchy-feely rabbit holes he chose.

We spoke briefly about how my payment would be made, and then I asked him, “Surely you’re going to fire his ass.”

But the director shook his head. “No. I’m going to sit down with him. I’m going to give him a chance to explain this thing. And then I’m going to let him know that no matter what he’s done, I am still his friend.”

I shrugged. “Your choice.” I stood. “Good luck with the picture.”

It took Stockwell a couple of seconds to realize I was standing, but he got to his feet somehow and shook hands with me. He was a zombie. Like Kaufmann had been, walking out of that diner.

“Say goodbye to your wife for me,” I said.

“Uh…will do.”

I was almost out the door when he called, “Jack!.. Jack, what am I thinking? Thanks! I mean, after all, you…you did save my life.”

“You’re welcome. Get that money to me, as we agreed, or you’ll have a problem worse than the one I solved for you.”

For some reason that made him smile. “You’re not as bad as you pretend to be.”

I smiled back at him. “Art, you’re the one in the business of make-believe.”

I’d had enough of a morning to justify another shower. I made it a long, hot one. Then I got into my one remaining fresh change of clothes, a gray t-shirt and gray jeans. Since my running shoes were gray, I looked like a man with a plan.

In a way, I had one.

I knew-even if I had told Arthur Stockwell the real truth about poor troubled Jimmy Kaufmann-that the director would not have the stones to let me rid the world of that evil scumbag.

And I also knew that me short-circuiting Kaufmann’s attempt to have his “best friend” eliminated didn’t necessarily mean no further tries would be made. Maybe not on this movie, but on the next, or the next. That life insurance on Stockwell hadn’t been taken out for Kaufmann not to cash it in…

Very soon I would contact my new best friend Louis Licata and let him know every dirty detail of Kaufmann’s plan. Licata would not put up with a producer on a picture he was backing embezzling, much less planning to kill that picture’s director in a murder-for-insurance payoff scheme.

I didn’t have to kill Kaufmann because Licata would see to that happening when I was happily somewhere else. He had the resources. And I, of course, would suggest that another accidental death specialist, like Nick Varnos but maybe a little better, be brought in. I liked the street justice of Stockwell benefitting from Kaufmann’s demise.

I packed and soon was stowing my carry-on bag in the backseat of the Nova. Damn near climbed in front and drove off. But I guess I needed one last little fix.

She was in the hot tub, by herself. The half-dozen kids in the pool were too much for her.

I knelt beside her and she looked up at me, curious.

“Everything’s fine,” I said.

“You took care of the threat?”

I nodded.

“Did you see the paper today?” she asked.

“No.”

“Two men died. One right here in the hotel, just yesterday. The other one got run over out on some lonely road.”

All roads were lonely when you got run over on them.

She was saying, “They’re being called suspicious deaths. Do you know anything about them, Jack?”

“Why would I?”

“Does it have anything to do with the threat to Art?”

“What if it did?”

“Jack…Jack, who are you, anyway?”

I grinned at her. “Why, just your ever-loving ex.”

That made her laugh. “It was good to see you again. Maybe…maybe we settled a few things.”

“I don’t want to kill you anymore, if that’s progress.”

“What about…the other?”

“We did that already. It was okay.”

She laughed gently. “It was more than okay, Jack. It showed me what…what might have been.”

“Don’t go all sentimental on me, Joni. It spoils your image.”

Her dark wet hair, that deep tan, those big beautiful eyes, that slender shape, the long legs…just like on the beach, when we were babies…

“You saved my husband’s life, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Why, Jack? Why would you do that for me?”

“Who said it was for you? I did it for money.”

“You did it for money, huh?” Her wet hand reached up and grasped my dry forearm and clasped. “Why really, Jack?”