Max Collins - Quarry's ex

Anyway, there was a lot of media coverage, strictly local, but a good deal of it. I should have got some jail time, manslaughter or something, but they didn’t even try me. The District Attorney wanted no part of it. At one point I sat across the desk from the guy, who wore a puzzled frown and a red bow tie. He was small and mustached and earnest, like a high school guidance counselor.

The D.A. asked, “Is it possible that when you walked up to him, Mr. Williams may have accidentally knocked that jack out himself?”

“Sure,” I said, and shrugged. What did that neighbor know, anyway? The one who’d been cutting his grass next door.

It came out that I’d won some medals, and that further complicated things. The editorial pages were already full of complaints from right-wing columnists who thought returning veterans were being mistreated. If they were really concerned about guys like me being mistreated, they shouldn’t have sent us the fuck over in the first place.

I told you before that I have never been a heavy drinker. But as I look back, I must admit I put it away pretty good for a while, after they cleared me of the murder. I got a little two-room apartment in a shitty section of L.A. and for several months sat around feeling sorry for myself, drinking rum and Coke and eating TV dinners and watching a little black-and-white TV and occasionally sprucing up enough to find a female to hate fuck.

My father tracked me down to the flophouse. We had a fairly pleasant conversation, and he said he sympathized with me, understood what I’d done, and regretted my present situation. But the punchline was that my stepmother was afraid of me now, and I was told in no uncertain terms not to come home.

Maybe Joni and I had something in common-maybe we were both looking for a father figure. The chief difference being she’d been looking for one to fuck her, like Williams, whereas I just needed a strong guiding hand. The Marine Corps wasn’t there to provide one anymore.

Was that why the Broker’s approach had worked so well on me? He had tracked me down, too, imposing figure that he was-a broad-shouldered six two with prematurely white hair and a well-trimmed matching mustache, contrasting with his dark tan; handsome, his face younger than his demeanor, his eyes an icy blue. Tailored suit and a knowing half-smile-the type who used to appear in those “What kind of man reads Playboy?” ads.

He was Madison Avenue smooth, all the way, and had really done his homework. Knew about my wife and Williams and the publicity (even though he did not live in California). We sat at a scarred table in my crap pad and he politely accepted a rum and Coke in a Yogi Bear jelly jar and told me how badly I’d been treated, by my wife, by the media, by my family, by the law.

I thought the law had done fine by me, actually. And what did he know about my family, and how did he know it?

I am good at remembering conversations. I can even recall the nuances, right down to gestures and tone of voice, and I can report everything from the time of day to the weather, including the clothing worn…usually. But as you’ve seen, my memory of conversations with darling Joni is limited. And that first conversation with the Broker — arguably the most important of my life-is similarly vague in my mind.

I do distinctly remember him saying, “I have an unusual opportunity for you, Mr…” He used my real name. “A money-making opportunity.”

He didn’t come right out and say, “Are you interested in killing for hire?” It wasn’t like I’d filled out a truck stop matchbook, answering a question like, Looking for Opportunities in the Murder Trade? Can you draw Winky?

No, but he did say something very similar to “How would you like to make real money at home doing what you did for almost no money overseas?”

There’s no question that he caught me at just the right moment. Maybe I would have pulled out of my tailspin some other way, had I been offered some other, more mainstream opportunity. Still, I knew-just like the Broker knew-that I had only one marketable skill.

I knew how to kill people.

And I knew how to do it dispassionately. Because I understood, when the Broker explained that the individuals I would be asked to remove were already tagged for death.

I believe he put it this way: “Essentially, they are walking around, marking time, until who they are and what they’ve done catches up with them. No one has earned the dubious distinction of being targeted for death without due cause.”

Broker made it sound like all of the targets were bad persons whose transgressions could not be addressed by the legal system. But that was a rationalization designed to draw me in. I soon understood that a given target might be a decent sort who stood in the way of another party’s selfish interests.

Anyway, none of it had anything to do with me. Someone with money enough to have another person killed had decided to do so, and that was that. The decision was made well before I got in the picture. My role was impersonal- clients opened a drawer, stuck in their hand, and I was the weapon they pulled out.

I worked with the Broker for over five years. He described himself as “sort of an agent,” a middleman in the murder game, providing insulation between client and killer. Actually, killers, because the Broker’s system was to use those two-man Passive and Active teams I mentioned.

The details are not important to this narrative, but you need to know that the Broker eventually betrayed me. And after disposing of him, I wound up with what today you’d call a database, but in the mid-’70s was just a list.

A very valuable list, however-over fifty names of guys like me, who had worked for the Broker, with full detailed files on each. Seeing my file with my face in it, as well as detailed info on two dozen kills of mine, I swore I’d never work through a middleman again. Not in the murder business, anyway.

Of course, I could have exited that business-I had some money saved-but an interesting thought presented itself. I saw how I could use the Broker’s list, and keep working, in a new way, and on my own terms.

I would choose a name from the Broker’s file-someone like myself-and travel to where that name lived and stake him out, then follow him to his next job. (I should note that a few of the names were female.) Through further surveillance, I would determine the identity of the target, whom I’d approach, offering to eliminate the threat. For a healthy fee, the hit team would be discreetly removed. For a further fee, I could also look into who had hired the hit, and remove that threat, too.

It was risky. What if a target-approached by a stranger with a crazy story, claiming to be a sort of professional killer himself-called the cops or otherwise wigged out?

But remember-anyone designated for a hit is somebody who almost certainly has done something worth getting killed over. Such an individual tends not to be a sterling model citizen-or, at least, is somebody well aware of a powerful, ruthless adversary, capable of such malfeasance.

My hunch had been that these people would welcome help, especially since the other option was to take a bullet or get run over or fall down icy stairs. The money I could demand of my clients meant that I’d only have to perform this risky task once a year or so.

And so far my thinking had proved valid-Nick Varnos was the sixth name I’d plucked from the Broker’s list. I’d watched him in Vegas for a month, and now I was in Boot Heel, Nevada, where I’d followed him. Admittedly, I’d got a little ahead of myself. But running into my talkative old pardner Jerry had saved me a lot of work.

I already knew who the target was-I just needed a name. Couldn’t be too many movie directors staying at the Spur Motel. Of course, Nick Varnos was staying there as well, and I had to make my pitch to my prospective client before Nick made an accident happen.