Max Collins - The first quarry

Knowing how much he appreciated my sense of humor.

But he didn’t hear me, too busy flopping onto the tabletop, his forehead making a dull thump as he left on the wall behind him a nice splash of color in this drab kitchen.

I had things to do, and Charlie wasn’t going anywhere, slumped as he was at the breakfast nook tabletop, like a school kid napping at his desk. In his right trench-coat pocket I removed not only my nine millimeter but his car keys and also, on a separate little ring, three keys-each had tiny strips of masking tape with black-marker lettering that identified one as FRONT, another as BASEMENT and the other, which was somewhat smaller, as PATIO.

His gun I dropped into my right-hand corduroy jacket pocket, and I slipped out the back way into the cold, my feet crunching on snow that had turned crispy with ice. My nine millimeter was back in my waistband and I figured anything that came up, Charlie’s. 38 would do nicely, a gun after all traceable to him. I went into the garage not to get my car, but to remove a flashlight from my glove compartment; the flash I dropped in my other coat pocket, and then I returned to the great out of doors.

Perhaps I was overcautious, but I moved along the back yards of the half dozen split-levels on my side of the unlived-on lane. No street lamps were up yet on the nameless street but that full moon illuminated the landscape, so I felt I should take a roundabout route to the split-level opposite mine, where Charlie said he’d been camped out. He had not mentioned working with anyone (other than me, had I gone along with him), but I saw no reason to trust a sleazy little character who would sell out, or anyway compromise, his own client. A round-the-clock surveillance, if that’s what Charlie had been up to, might mean a second PI in that other split-level.

Of course, they might be trading shifts, with Charlie alone with his partner due to show up any time- assuming I wasn’t just imagining this partner. At any rate, a look inside that house might tell me if Charlie had or had not been working alone.

So I went all the way down to the end of the lane and beyond into a wooded area, through which I cut just a little ways to come up through the back yards of the other half dozen split-levels. The snow was crunchy back here, too, but I moved very slowly and carefully; on the other hand, if the interior of Charlie’s split-level had that same plastic on the floor, I might wind up fucked.

The back yard of the corner split-level, the doppel-ganger of mine, rose up at the left to a patio area and dropped at the right to accommodate a driveway and allow entry to the basement and garage. One of these keys apparently opened the glass doors onto the patio. These would open onto a family room, where plastic on the floor would almost certainly await.

The basement door seemed my best option. Much as I didn’t relish entering into darkness and then going up the stairs and opening a door onto God knew what (or I should say God knew who), going in the patio way and snap-crackle-popping across a covered floor held even less appeal.

Of course when I said I’d be coming up from the basement into God knows what, that was an exaggeration, even an inaccuracy, because I knew darn well the kitchen-the only room in my split-level where the floor hadn’t been covered with protective plastic-would be waiting. Of course, so could Charlie’s partner, should he happen to exist.

So I used the basement key and went on into darkness and, remembering the layout across the street, made my way fairly easily to the stairs. I slipped out of my boots and went up in my stocking feet. At the top I turned the knob as slowly as I could, creating only the faintest click, and pushed the door open onto a darkened kitchen.

My night vision was good. Nobody was in the kitchen, unless you counted me. No lights seemed to be on in the house, which had been the case across the street, as well. But as I moved cautiously toward the expansive living room beyond the kitchen, I heard a soft, faint voice and froze.

Despite the low volume, the voice was sonorous, commanding and familiar.

It should be: it belonged to Ben Cartwright, or that is, Lorne Greene. The “Bonanza” TV theme kicked in as a television, in the living room, went to commercial-a little portable on the floor over by the window that faced Country Vista, with a view on a certain cobblestone cottage. The lighthouse beam of the tiny television illuminated the living room somewhat, creating light and shadow, and told me there were indeed some differences between my quarters and the late Charlie’s.

First of all, no plastic covered the carpeted floor. Second, and most surprising, the place was furnished; no one was living here yet, no one was living in any of these split-levels except me (and the late Charlie), and yet new furniture smell joined the paint and plaster and antiseptic odors, the blocky shapes of undistinguished contemporary furnishings, right out of a Sears catalog, revealed by the TV’s cathode rays.

The furnishing was fairly sparse, however, and I had little trouble maneuvering. No sign of Charlie’s partner, who was starting to feel nonexistent to me. Near that floor-positioned TV, where Ben and Little Joe and Hoss were currently having an intense if barely audible conversation on horseback, Charlie had a fucking La-Z-Boy pulled over to where in my parallel world I’d been leaning against a sleeping bag. An open package of Ruffles Potato Chips was propped against the chair, and Budweiser cans were littered on the floor. The new house smells were tainted by cigarette smoke and an ashtray with eight or ten butts was on an end table he’d pulled around on the right side of the recliner.

Room by room, level by level, I searched the house. I entered doorways low, 38 in my right hand, flash in my left, sweeping the rooms with frantic slashes of light, like Zorro making one Z after another, and revealing nothing except a fully, blandly furnished house that showed no signs of humans living here.

No humans, that is, except Charlie, who had actually been sleeping on the premises. The master bedroom had a queen-size with quilt and blankets and sheets, and Charlie had tucked himself in for the nights he’d been here, really making himself at home.

And yet nobody lived here, that was for sure. No family pictures, no clothing in closets, none of the signs of life except for Charlie’s food in the refrigerator, which ran to beer and cold sandwiches. A house in this price range wouldn’t be sold furnished, would it?

Then it came to me: Charlie, the lucky stiff, had selected the development’s model home! This struck me as foolish and even dangerous, since people might eventually come around. But maybe Charlie had known that the model home wouldn’t be open for inspection for a time, making his squatting feasible. The Broker had known that I could safely camp out across the way, hadn’t he? And obviously Charlie had his own reliable intel.

I spent quite a while in that house, maybe an hour. I found Charlie’s camera, a high-end Nikon with a tele-photo zoom attachment, and half a dozen rolls of undeveloped film, which was a nice catch. No other weapons presented themselves, not even a box of shells. I looked for a notebook and didn’t find one. That was a disappointment.

I thought about wiping the house down of Charlie’s fingerprints, but I couldn’t convince myself it was necessary. What would the owners of the model home find? Signs that some asshole had moved in for a few days. I did take a few things with me, the kind of things an ambitious homeless guy taking advantage of an empty house wouldn’t leave behind: Charlie’s personal items, toiletries, changes of clothes, and skin mags, all stuffed in a little duffel bag, and that portable TV, which I thought might be nice to have.