Max Collins - The first quarry

“Quarry, you know what Mr. Koenig was up to. Improvising your lines should be simple; a child could do it.”

“Yeah, well, Christmas is over and all the kids have checked out of this dump, except for me, and I wasn’t in any school plays or anything.”

“You underestimate your abilities, my boy.”

Broker was also the only person who had ever called me “my boy.” No, strike that: my drunken Uncle Pete called me that once, too, when I was six and he slipped his hands in my shorts. See how good I am at this non-fiction novel stuff?

“Okay, Broker,” I said, “I’ll do it. But what do I say to her?”

“Tell her you have the goods on her husband. That you’ll gather all the materials and provide them soon.”

“Listen, what’s she doing here anyway? She’s got an Iowa PI on the job who could report to her where she lives, which is Connecticut. What’s going on?”

“She probably wants to be assured by Mr. Koenig-that’s you-that her husband is indeed the philandering louse she assumes. And she plans to confront him about it, once having seen the evidence.”

“Great. One more cast member in the stateroom.”

“No. There won’t be. You will tell her that you need several more days to collect the evidence. Send her home. Advise her in no uncertain terms that a confrontation with her husband is a mistake. That it will compromise her position in court.”

“Would it?”

“Jesus Christ, young man!”

You guessed it: first time I ever heard that combination of words coming out of a fellow human; and it was a pretty rare outburst of any kind, coming from the Broker.

Who was saying, “What difference does that make? You aren’t really a private investigator working on a divorce case. You are merely trying to manipulate her ass into taking a goddamn hike. Understood?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Call me tonight and we’ll discuss how the meeting with Mrs. Byron went, and we will decide, together, whether or not you should resume your activities.”

“Okay.”

We said goodbye and hung up.

So I had a shower and brushed my teeth and gargled and even splashed on a little Brut. I left off the long johns but my wardrobe was limited-I had a dark gray shirt and some jeans I hadn’t worn yet, and that was the best I could do. I spent an hour in the coffee shop, having a bowl of chicken noodle soup for supper and reading the local papers. I don’t follow sports or world affairs, but the funnies and the movie reviews took some time away.

By a quarter to seven, I was in the lounge, which was about the size of a high school classroom, only all red and black and with a bar in the middle and a little stage and dance floor in one corner. The band wasn’t going on till nine, and a TV up high behind the bar showed Red Skelton doing Clem Kadiddlehopper and laughing at his own jokes. Within minutes, Rowan amp; Martin’s Laugh-In replaced it, the comedy team exuding cheerful irony, and the collision of the two eras was pretty jarring. The sound wasn’t on loud enough for me to make everything out from my booth, but I took in the sight gags and watched the girls in bikinis and body paint dance around and that passed the time.

A sultry alto said, “Hi.”

I looked up and a pretty, and pretty familiar, face was staring down at me: the redheaded bestower of hard ons from the whirlpool yesterday morning.

So she hadn’t checked out; and she had, after all, said she was “sometimes in the bar” here at the Holiday Inn. And now my fantasies were poised to come true, Penthouse Forum here I come, only I was supposed to meet someone else, wasn’t I?

Truth was, I wished I was meeting this blue-eyed redhead. She looked fucking great. Her tower of titian curls on top of that attractive roundish face, softened by the lounge lighting, her shapely body nicely served by a fuzzy yellow sweater, orange toreador pants and off-white heels. She had a yellow clutch purse in one hand and was gesturing to herself with the other, her nails the same orange as her tight slacks.

I smiled and did a kind of half rise from my seat in the booth. “Dorrie, isn’t it? Gee, you look great.”

Yes, I said “gee.” But give me credit: I left off “whillikers.”

Big white teeth formed a terrific smile. “You look good out of trunks…Actually, that sounded wrong, didn’t it?”

I grinned. “Sounded just fine. Boy, do I wish I could ask you to join me, but I’m meeting somebody here.”

“Actually, so am I. Trouble is, I didn’t get a description.”

My brain was making connections that yours probably already has. I said, “Dorrie…that isn’t short for Dorothy, is it?”

Long lashes flashed over the blue eyes, which were almond shaped. “Well, yes…”

“You’re Dorothy Byron?”

Now those blue eyes narrowed. “Yes. But you’re not Charles Koenig, are you? You don’t sound anything like him.”

So she had dealt him over the phone.

I gestured for her to sit, and she slid in across from me. “I work for Mr. Koenig. He got called away on another case, out of state.”

Way out of state.

She was smiling again. “Then you’re handling this job?”

“That’s right.”

She shook her head, the red locks bouncing nicely, and said, “I feel so foolish. Here we were yesterday, sitting and talking and even…flirting, and…now I hardly know what to say.”

“Say ‘small world,’ and let’s take it from there.”

The lounge was about half full now. Seemed to be young working people, in their later twenties and early thirties, on the prowl.

“This can be a real meat market,” she said, casting her eyes around and frowning. “Could get fairly crowded. Is there somewhere else we could talk?”

“My room’s a kind of mini-suite. There’s a sitting area with a couch. We could send for some room service, if you haven’t eaten.”

“I’m not hungry, but I wouldn’t mind the privacy. Maybe you could buy us a couple of beers, at the bar?”

I bought four cans of Pabst and then escorted Mrs. Byron out of the lounge and over to the elevators. She was a head-turner in that yellow sweater; she wore an old-fashioned brassiere, unusual in these bra-burning times, but I kind of dug its twin rocket style. Made me think of Mamie Van Doren and my first orgasm; probably was more memorable for me than Mamie, since Mamie wasn’t there.

Now, I admit I did something stupid. I believe I was a little thrown by running into my whirlpool fantasy and having her turn out to be my target’s missus. Right before I’d gone down to the lounge, I tossed my nine millimeter on the bed, and it was sitting there on the made bed against a pillow like the worst mint any maid ever left.

I’d spaced out about the damn thing, and still hadn’t remembered the gun when I opened the door and she went on in ahead of me. But she saw it right away.

She turned and smiled, her eyes alive. “So private eyes do carry guns? Just like on TV!”

“We need protection,” I said lamely. “But the management frowns on it when you carry one into a cocktail lounge.”

I put the four beers on the coffee table by the couch, switched on the lamp (the overhead light was off, the bedroom nightstand lamp also on), and sat down. She deposited herself next to me, perhaps a little closer than most good-looking clients sit to their PI. Except on TV. She smelled very good. Perfume, but not too much. She was doing fine, Penthouse Forum — wise.

“So fill me in about the creep I’m married to,” she said.

“There’ve been several girls go around to see him,” I said, “but I think some are legitimately students. Couple guys have stopped by the cottage, too. He is an advisor, after all.”

The upper lip of her full mouth curled upward. “He’s been ‘advising’ for a very long time. I was one of his first. I was going to be a hell of a writer, myself, you know. The next Sylvia Plath.”