Max Collins - The first quarry

What the hell, I was just another college student, right? Longish hair, young face, no sweat. The question was, did I take a nearby table to eavesdrop on their conversation, or did I play it safe and position myself as far away from the pair as possible?

Do I have to tell you I took a table adjacent? I didn’t figure there was much if any chance of Annette, who was deep in conversation with her loving prof, recognizing me from Sambo’s, where we’d had our brief and not terribly memorable conversation.

They seemed to be past their meal or just having coffee, and I nibbled at a delicious sandwich (not a sub) where bratwurst and mozzarella and sauerkraut mingled nicely on rye. Beat the hell out of Slim Jims and Hostess cupcakes. And I could hear the couple pretty well.

“You have to open up, Annette,” he was saying, the oratorical baritone nicely modulated into whispery intimacy, “you have to be honest. That’s part of the novel technique, you know.”

Her head was tilted, her brunette hair pausing at the shoulders of her green and black paisley blouse on its way down her back. “Honesty in characterization and human behavior, sure…but otherwise, isn’t all fiction a contrivance?”

An out-of-control eyebrow lifted in his hawkish face. “Of course it is, but when done well, a very high level of contrivance. Fiction is, after all, the lie that tells the truth. In a non-fiction work, you have to find multiple sources, and you often have to hew to accepted history, and that’s a joke. But in fiction, you are inside the narrator’s head, and in the first person, you share space with that narrator.”

She was frowning. “But narrators in fiction can be unreliable. You’ve told me that.”

“And that’s permissible in a non-fiction novel, too, as long as the narrator, the main character, is you, and any exaggerations or lies are told in the context of your personal truth.”

Wow. Was this guy full of shit!

“But I would encourage you not to lie,” he was saying. “I would encourage you to engage your memories head-on. Confront them and conquer them. For example, you need to share with your reader every horrible thing your father ever did to you.”

“K.J.,” she said, “I don’t want to relive all of that. It took me years of therapy to get past any of it.”

“Then you haven’t gone past it. Anyway, therapy is a crutch; writing is catharsis. You put these experiences in your non-fiction novel, every single thing you witnessed, and when you’re done, you can close the book on that entire sordid chapter. Literally.”

I was confused. Who was writing the book on Annette’s mob-boss father? Professor or student? Or were they collaborating?

“Anyway, we can discuss it this evening,” Byron said, and rose, scooting his chair back and gathering his parka-style fur-lined khaki-green jacket; he was in a darker green sweater with the collars of a pale yellow shirt sticking out, and well-worn, just-another-radical blue jeans.

She asked him, “How many meetings do you have this afternoon?”

“Three. Should be safe to come around by six. We’ll cook up some chili and put the Coltrane on and just talk this through.”

She got up, too, getting into the familiar white coat with white fur collar, and that’s when she recognized me. She brightened and met my eyes and I frowned at her as if I didn’t know why the fuck she was looking at me-maybe not the most credible reaction from a straight guy having a beautiful girl gaze right at him.

“Hi!” she said.

“Hello,” I said.

“You remember me-from Sambo’s?”

The professor was studying me as if I were an exam paper written in crayon. Then he turned to Annette and asked, “What were you doing in Sambo’s?”

“Having coffee, reading. When you had your meetings last night? You know it’s just across from where I live.”

“Ah. Sure.” He put on a smile for me and nodded.

She held her hand out. “I didn’t get your name. I’m Annette.”

“Jack,” I said, and shook hands with her.

The prof didn’t offer his hand. But he did ask, with tight politeness, “What are you studying, Jack?”

“Just another English major,” I said. “Nice to meet you, Annette…Professor Byron.”

That seemed to please him, me knowing who he was. “So I don’t need to introduce myself.”

“No, I read your book about Vietnam. I’m a vet myself.”

“How did you like it?”

“Vietnam really sucked.”

“I meant my book.”

“Oh! It was really good.” I of course hadn’t read it. But I figured that was all you needed to say to any writer to make a pal out of him.

And it worked.

“Well, thanks, Jack,” he said, and now he finally held out his hand. “You interested in writing? You can always try out for the Workshop.”

His grip was cold and clammy.

I said, “I hear it’s tough, the competition.”

“Oh yes, definitely.” He nodded toward his favorite student. “But talent, like cream, does rise to the top.”

Some writer, coining a phrase like that.

He was saying, “Annette here is going to be the next Flannery O’Connor.”

“Hey, that’s great.” Who the fuck was Flannery O’Connor?

Must have been somebody pretty good, because Annette was blushing. That’s what I said: blushing.

She nodded and headed out and he followed with no nod to me and I finished my sandwich. The Broker would love that, me talking literature with the target and the client’s kid.

So that afternoon, with the world already growing dark outside my window, I called the Broker from the phone in my room at the Holiday Inn, and left out any report on my luncheon meeting at Bushnell’s Turtle.

“ You’ll be relieved to know,” the Broker said, “ that Charles Koenig has a small one-man private investigative agency in Des Moines, Iowa. He is divorced and has no children and is unlikely to be missed by anyone other than perhaps his landlord. ”

“Cool,” I said.

“And I would doubt that Mrs. Byron hired him in person. She lives in a small college town in Connecticut, where her husband first taught, before his writing career really took off. They, too, are a childless couple.”

“You figure the wife looked for a PI in Iowa who could take on this case. Let her fingers do the walking, or anyway the long distance operator’s fingers.”

“Precisely. Hence, Charles Koenig of Des Moines.”

I believe the Broker is the only person I ever heard speak the word “hence” in a sentence. Or not in a sentence, for that matter.

“So then I should stay,” I said, “and finish what I came to do.”

“I believe so…if you are willing to take a certain risk.”

Well, let’s see. Last night I had dragged a plastic-wrapped corpse down a hill so I could load it in a car trunk and drive to a truckstop and pass the stiff off to some other asshole. Yeah. I guessed I was up for a risk.

“What kind of risk, Broker?”

“You need to keep that meeting.”

“What meeting?…Oh. You mean, the meeting Charlie was supposed to have with the professor’s wife. And, what, I should pretend to be Charlie?”

“Yes. And why not? It’s the lounge in your very own hotel. As you said yourself, how much more convenient could it be for you?”

“Well,” I said, having second thoughts, “it won’t be very convenient if your assumptions are wrong, and Mrs. Byron has in fact met Charlie. You could put me in a position of having to do something else unpleasant. More collateral damage.”

“No. That shouldn’t be a problem. Don’t pass yourself off as Charlie, but as an operative in his employ.”

Actually, that was a good idea. I’d already thought of it, but said nothing, not wanting to burst the Broker’s bubble.