Max Collins - Quarry in the middle

I didn’t answer, because I couldn’t. Anyway, these were rhetorical questions, or at least ones that Jerry G already knew the answers to: his little yellow-permed spy with the red Firebird had told him.

Most conversations between Cornell and me that might have been heard by Chrissy in part, or even in whole, had been somewhat elliptical. Only that had changed this evening with our most recent conversation, which had spelled it out so well that Jerry G didn’t need to hear about it from me.

And, of course, Chrissy’s spying ways explained how Jerry G had known I was an interloper at the Lucky Devil, a Cornell infiltrator at his card game, and arranged to have me beaten and maybe killed, if my mobile-home angel hadn’t come along to save my ass.

Somehow I didn’t think she’d come flying in to whisk me to safety this time.

Jerry G and I were not alone in the room. Two bouncers were also present-the big bald black guy, and the bearded bruiser who had head-butted me. The black guy had an automatic stuffed in his waistband-a nine millimeter, I thought, but not a Browning like mine. Smith and Wesson maybe. The bearded guy had a Mad Max-style sawed-off shotgun in one beefy fist. He had too much belly for a gun to fit in his belt. Did I mention he was wearing amber goggle-type sunglasses? In fucking doors? Should be a capital crime.

As for my host, in a gray silk jacket over a black t-shirt with gold-chain necklaces and stonewashed blue jeans, he didn’t appear to be armed-the jacket was open and no weapon showed in his waistband, nor any telltale bulge under either arm.

So all I had to deal with were a measly nine mil and a sawed-off. And a couple yards of duct tape. Piece of cake.

“You don’t look the part,” Jerry G said.

His horsey features had a dreamy cast, and I figured this was as philosophical a soliloquy as I could ever expect from him, even if I’d had a future.

He was saying, “You don’t look tough. You don’t seem like a psycho. Maybe that’s how you stayed alive this long. But you know what they say-all good things must come to an end, you motherfucking prick.”

He brought his elbow down into my nuts, like a wrestler faking a nasty blow, the kind that misses and jolts the canvas, only he wasn’t faking and he didn’t miss.

The pain was so intense, I saw flashing red and yellow stars, not cute cartoon ones, rather exploding ruptures, like the Fourth of July going off inside your skull. I’d heard Jerry G was a hothead, but he hadn’t shown that side to me, leaving it to his boys to teach me that lesson in the alley the other day.

This, however, was over the line. He knew damned well this was just business. Put a bullet in my head and be done with it. But there’s no reason, no excuse really, to lose your temper, and turn sadistic asshole. Unprofessional. Uncool.

“Cover this shit up,” he was saying. “Dump his sorry ass.”

I could see the carpeted room fairly well-Chrissy wasn’t there, just Jerry G and his two bully boys. But on the floor was a canvas tarp, and the black guy reached for it, and that’s what they were going to cover me up with.

But first the black guy swung the walnut-grip butt of his nine millimeter at my head. The angle was weird, and he couldn’t put much swing into it, and in that half-second or so, I figured it probably wouldn’t kill me, but likely would put me to sleep.

It did.

When I came to, I was under the tarp on a metal surface and I could hear a raspy rumble, and feel the lurch and bounce and sway of what I quickly realized was a motorboat cutting through somewhat rough waters.

I got my bearings. I was in the bottom of the boat. My head was toward the stern, where the motor was grinding up foam at a pretty good clip. Twenty miles an hour? I was on my side, so my duct-taped hands were against the deck, which was steel and gently curved, nothing fancy-a jon boat?

I minimized my movement, but the tarp was so heavy, and the boat’s trajectory loping enough, the engine noisy enough, that I figured I needn’t worry too much. The tape looped around my hands put them in a praying position, but I hadn’t stooped to prayer just yet. I still had better options.

And the best one was to find something sharp enough to work at the duct tape. These guys weren’t the brightest, or maybe their boss Jerry G wasn’t, because if they’d used any kind of rope, I really would have been praying-and making every promise to the Man Upstairs you can think of, about my new reformed life. As it was, they’d used duct tape.

And duct tape is designed to tear easily.

“River’s a rough fucker tonight,” a high-pitched, whiny voice said from the bow.

“Pretty, though,” came a more mellow, lower-pitched voice from nearer me, at the stern, working itself above the motor. “Nice clear night, for so choppy.”

This was the black guy, I’d venture. He had a soothing bass, with an Isaac Hayes vibe to it. The asshole at the bow was clearly white, probably the bearded head-butt artist with the beer belly.

“Wish to fuck I’d brought a jacket,” the white guy said.

“You got that right.”

“Is that why the river’s so empty? Too fuckin’ cold?”

“Yeah. Normally, this time of year, even this time of night? You’d have some assholes out drinkin’ and drownin’.”

“There was a few up nearer River Bluff.”

“Yeah. They’ll be more down Ft. Madison way.”

The river seemed to settle down a little. I wished they would start talking again. I’d thought the way my wrists were bound, I might be able to get my fingers down to where I could get enough purchase to do some judicious ripping. But that wasn’t happening. So now I was trying to explore the bottom of the boat, and find something sharp to work the duct tape on.

Two or three minutes went by before the white guy blurted: “Will you look at that full the fuck moon! Not a goddamned cloud in the sky. Look at them fuckin’ stars!..Ever wonder if anybody’s up there lookin’ back down at us?”

“What, like God, you mean?”

“Naw, not Jesus or nobody. I mean, outer-space-type aliens. You know, Star Trek shit. E.T. phone the fuck home?”

The black guy chuckled.“I don’t think so.”

“What, so then, like, we’re all alone down here? Whole great big universal galaxy, and it’s just us idjits? I mean, what are the fuckin’ odds? ”

“Odds, one hunnerd percent.”

“How you figure?”

“One hunnerd percent, fool. Ain’t no aliens on a star.”

“And why is that, smart-ass?”

“Because a star is a gaseous mass.”

The white guy made a farting sound with his lips. “ You’re a gaseous mass.”

“Maybe so. But I ain’t a ignorant redneck gaseous mass.”

That shut the white guy up.

I was enjoying the conversation-not because of its intellectual aspects, or its rustic American humor, but liking that these two stupid sons of bitches were distracting each other, while I was moving my hands down to where the metal hooks for a middle bench would’ve been, had it not been removed so the boat could be used for hauling contraband and dumping bodies and other fun and games.

I damn near laughed-the black guy on a bench at the stern, the bearded idiot on a bench at the bow, and me in the middle again. Didn’t take long at all, and made zero noise (at least any that registered), using the metal edge of that fastener to carve through the duct tape.

The white guy asked, “Where should we dump the cocksucker?”

“Let’s give it another ten miles or so.”

“ Before Ft. Madison, though.”

“Yeah. Before.”

“…You know, my brother’s in there.”

“Huh? Where?”

“Ft. Madison! The pen!”

“What’s he in for?”