Max Collins - The first quarry

“If that memo does mean what I speculated it might, yes. And of course it might not.”

“Christ. Hell.”

“So then we do pull out?”

“Can you think of another alternative? I would be grateful, Quarry, if you could.”

I shrugged, feeling powerful behind the wheel of the majestic buggy. “If she hasn’t ever met this guy she hired? Then I could be him. I could be Charlie, the PI. It covers why I’m shadowing her husband. I handle her, get rid of her, and-”

“What do you mean,” he said, giving me a sharp glance, “ ‘get rid of her’?”

“I hope I mean, I talk to her and she goes on her way.”

He was staring at the memo. “What if she’s already met Charlie?”

“Then maybe…well, there’s other ways of getting rid of people.”

The Broker sighed; his expression was one of extreme distaste. “Yes. Yes there are.” He looked over at me, eyes half-lidded again. “I will have this Charlie character looked into. I’ll have information available by late Monday afternoon. Call me before five at the same number. Don’t do anything till then-don’t return to your surveillance post, just stay in your hotel.”

“The Holiday Inn.”

His eyes and nostrils flared. “Hell, I hadn’t thought of that. You’re already in the hotel where the woman would be meeting you…”

“What’s wrong with that? It’s convenient.”

He shook his head. “This world in Iowa City-it’s too small, it’s too cluttered.”

“Tell me about it.”

Broker’s icy blue eyes bore down on me. “If I can confirm that our late friend Charlie was a single operative, and that he did not work out of the same city where Mrs. Byron lives, then there is a good chance that, A, she has never met him in person and dealt with him only over the phone, and, B, he will not immediately be missed, since he has no associates to miss him.”

“You’re assuming he worked alone-wasn’t part of an agency.”

“His business card implies a one-man operation. It’s worth checking out.”

I let some air out. “That would buy us a couple of days.”

“Yes.”

We rode along in silence for a while.

Then: “So what’s in the manuscript, Broker?”

“What manuscript?”

“Don’t play dumb. You don’t play dumb at all well. The manuscript I’m expected to find and burn, after killing this philandering fucker.”

“…It’s a so-called non-fiction novel he’s been working on.”

“Well, that’s his specialty, right? He’s the Collateral Damage guy.”

The Broker chuckled dryly. “Yes, in more ways than one, now. He’s writing what he’s described to others as his magnum opus-a non-fiction novel about a Mafia kingpin.”

“Fuck,” I said. “The girl’s father?”

“Yes,” the Broker said. “But ask me nothing more about it.”

I didn’t need to. But you had to hand it to the prof-not everybody can do research and get a blowjob at the same time.

The Holiday Inn’s pool room was free of screaming kiddies on this Monday after Christmas. Families were homeward bound, and even my redheaded whirlpool partner was nowhere in sight-if she’d gone home, too, that would be a shame. I had worked up some pretty good fantasies about my thirty-something pick-up-I had a rough draft of a Penthouse Forum letter well under way in my mind.

But having the pool to myself-it was warm, maybe a little too warm-was a pleasure. My arms and legs cutting the water in this aquamarine echo chamber provided an otherworldly backdrop for the twenty laps I swam. The whirlpool felt good, really good, as my neck and upper back were fairly tense from all of last night’s fun and games.

I didn’t feel guilty about Charlie-he’d gone wading in and found himself in the deep end and that wasn’t my doing-but I hadn’t ever shot a guy right next to me before. Much of what I’d done in Vietnam had been as a sniper or in fire fights, and I’d seen plenty of bloody bodies nearby, but usually my fellow soldiers. As for that guy Williams I dropped the car on, well, obviously, the car was between him and me.

But I did have to face that a profession presented to me by the Broker as clinical, surgical, and distant could have some haphazard, sloppy, and close-up ramifications. Didn’t bother me, but this wasn’t exactly what I expected. No biggie.

So I sat and relaxed for maybe half an hour in the swirling, soothing hot water, just enjoying the emptiness of the big room. I did a little time in the sauna, too, and was loose and comfortable and ready to start my day, come mid-morning.

The Broker had told me not to go back to the split-level till I’d talked to him, late afternoon; but I wasn’t comfortable with the mess I’d left behind. So after I asked a few questions at the hotel’s front desk, I headed out in the rental Maverick and picked up some cleaning stuff at the Kmart and headed over.

The stuff on the wall in the kitchen, on Charlie’s side of the breakfast nook, was crusty and nasty, and took some muscle with the Brillo pad to make go away. I thought there’d be a bullet hole under there, but the slug must have still been in Charlie’s noggin, possibly because where I’d shot him had been where the bone was pretty solid.

I cleaned up blackened blood from the linoleum, and some other encrusted grue, and the place soon looked like a kitchen and not a slaughterhouse. Probably nothing I’d done would have given a good forensics team any problem, but for a real estate agent or home buyer who came wandering in, nobody would be the wiser.

You might think I would do exactly what the Broker told me to, and not stray in any way from his instructions; but the thing was, my ass was hanging out, not his. I was in the trenches and he was in his Caddy or at the Concort Inn or in some fancy mansion somewhere, so the decision was mine. If, this afternoon, the Broker wound up telling me to book it out of Dodge, and I’d have to leave that house behind, with blood spatter that wasn’t about to be mistaken for a Jackson Pollock painting, then we’d just be asking for trouble.

Cleaning up that mess wasn’t my only secret insubordination where the Broker was concerned: I had also failed to mention the half a dozen rolls of 35mm film of Charlie’s that I’d found. My favorite game is poker, if I haven’t mentioned it, and in poker you protect your hole card. And my hunch was those film rolls might be my ace.

In downtown Iowa City, I went to the photo shop the Holiday Inn desk clerk recommended, and left the rolls to be developed, with my photos ready tomorrow morning. I told the bored middle-aged guy behind the counter these were art shots, meaning naked women would be on some of them, and asked if that would be a problem. He said no, but it would be an extra twenty bucks.

By then it was close to noon and I followed another of the desk clerk’s tips and walked over to a sandwich shop called Bushnell’s Turtle, named for an early submarine and reflecting the style of sandwiches they served.

A record store, a book shop and Bushnell’s were among half a dozen businesses in double-wide temporary buildings housed right out in the middle of Clinton Street at the end of East College, which was mostly blocked off for the construction of a pedestrian mall. I walked up a wheelchair-friendly ramp and into the unpretentious sandwich emporium, where you ordered at a counter from a chalkboard menu on the wall, got your food and found a table.

For winter break being on, the unpretentious sub shop was surprisingly busy, with straight customers from the business and retail community mixed in with hippie-ish college students. I’d already ordered when I spotted Annette Girard and Professor Byron, at a table over by the windows along Clinton, too late to make an inconspicuous retreat.