Max Collins - The first quarry

He glowered at me and powered the window up and turned his eyes toward the building.

I took the steps to the exterior landing along which apartment doors were lined, motel-style, and I knocked at Annette’s. She answered right away, cracking the door, then undoing a night latch and letting me in. Looking pale and a not a little shell-shocked, she was in a black zippered top with pointed collars and black-and-white geometric-pattern bell bottoms, possibly the ones she’d worn that first night when I saw her go into the professor’s cottage.

Annette basically had two decent-size rooms and a bathroom here, the living room (which you entered into) taking up two-thirds of a long narrow area, the back third a kitchenette. The bedroom and bathroom were off to the left. These were not lavish living quarters, but in a college town, for a student, this was as good as it got-Annette lived alone with easily twice the space any double-occupancy dorm room would provide. Probably set her back two hundred bucks a month.

This pad, and her hip threads and that white Corvette, meant Daddy was still signing checks to and for his Darling Girl. And his Darling Girl-despite Daddy using her for a fuck toy when she was twelve-was still letting him underwrite her lifestyle and her education. She’d get cut off, no doubt, when her tell-all book came out; but Annette probably figured she’d be making her own way in the world by then.

A rust-colored couch was at left as you came in, a framed Warhol soup can over it-a framed pop art print was on the opposite wall, too, a panel out of a love comic book-and a big portable TV was sitting on a metal stand in the corner at right, angled so that couch sitters and a big overstuffed rust-color easy chair at right could take in its impressive 25 inches. Another example of Daddy’s love?

Speaking of Daddy, he was seated in that easy chair next to an end table with a remote control, a lamp with a Tiffany-style shade and a tumbler of what looked to be Scotch on the rocks resting on a coaster. I recognized him at once, since he’d been in many a national magazine and on the nightly news plenty of times.

Still, I was surprised by how small he was. He couldn’t have been more than five eight, and maybe weighed 140, despite a modest paunch. Like his boys, he wore a leisure suit, a money green one with a yellow shirt with pointy collars and a gold crucifix on a gold chain dangling in graying chest hair, bridging fashion and religion.

Very tan (he had a place in Florida), Lou Girardelli was probably late fifties but appeared older, with that shrunken look people in their seventies can get; his hair was cut short, no mutton chops for him, and was salt-and-pepper, emphasis on the salt. His face was oval like his daughter’s but his nose was hooked and crowded by dark little eyes behind goggle-lens glasses with dark green frames.

His smile was friendly enough as he got out of his easy chair and extended his hand, approaching me.

Annette, uncharacteristically timid, was saying, “Jack, this is my-”

“Jack!” Girardelli said in a sandpaper baritone, as we shook. “Nice to finally meet you. I spoke to your boss in Des Moines, of course, but you and I haven’t had a chance to talk ourselves.”

He was keeping to the PI story I’d fed Annette, whether from information the Broker gave him or what his daughter told him, I couldn’t say.

“No, we haven’t, sir.”

“Come, sit, sit.” He gestured to the couch and I sat and he played host, extending his arms as if this were a castle and he its king. “What can we get you? Annie has Scotch and bourbon and-”

“Nothing, sir,” I said, with a mild smile and an upraised hand. “I’m fine.”

“You’re sure? It’s no trouble.”

Not for him. It was Annette who’d have to play bartender.

“You’re very gracious,” I said. “No.”

Annette smiled, tightly, joining me on the couch, but not right against me, not too cozy. Her hands were folded in her lap and she sat very still and stiff and straight.

Girardelli shrugged, and rather than return to his easy chair, joined us on the couch, sitting next to his daughter, putting her between us, and she scooched somewhat closer to me.

“I’ll always be grateful to you, Jack, coming forward to help Annie last night.” He rested a hand on Annette’s shoulder. Her flinch was barely perceptible.

He was saying, “Those moolies would have done Christ knows what to my little girl.”

“Wouldn’t have been pretty, no.”

“Animals. A bunch of damn animals. There’s going to be a bonus in it for you, Jack.”

“I appreciate that, sir, but it’s not necessary.”

He was studying me, smiling. But the eyes behind those oversize lenses bothered me. They were small and hard and cold, like black buttons sewn on a doll.

“I just stopped by,” I said, “to make sure everything is cool where Miss Girardelli is concerned. That she has proper protection, which I can see she has.”

He patted Annie’s leg, just above the knee; she closed her eyes. “No one’s going to touch my daughter, that I promise you. Sal and Vin are two of my best men, and another team will be in by midnight. They’ll work shifts, and I may even bring in a third team.”

“Good. How long will you keep that up?”

“Well, an indefinite period. Not long. Not long. We’re dealing with our little Mau Mau uprising back home in our own way, on our own turf.”

Annette said to him, “Daddy, I don’t want to live in a bubble. I need my space, and privacy.”

Christ, she sounded about twelve.

“Sweetheart, no one will bother you. My boys will stay out of your way, but they’re here if you need them. I’m gonna stay tonight myself, right here on this couch.”

Annette closed her eyes again. The hands in her lap were fists.

“Sir,” I said, sitting forward, “I think you should know, I’ve taken care of our other business.”

“Good! Good!” The genial smile broadened but the eyes stayed just as dead. “I am going to make sure you get something extra for this quality work. If you ever get tired of the private eye business, Jack, I can find a place for you on my personal security staff.”

“You’re kind, Mr. Girardelli. But I do think I need to get going.” I rose. “We’re a small agency and there’s always another job waiting…”

He nodded, then he got up and said to his seated daughter, “Jack and I are going to step out for a few moments, Sweetheart. I need to talk to him.”

She smiled tightly. “Sure, Daddy.”

I said, “There’s a restaurant across the way.”

“All right.” He went to the door, opened it and gestured for me to go on out. “We’ll get coffee.”

I smiled at Annette and she smiled at me and rolled her eyes as kids have forever done behind the back of a parent.

“Be good,” I said.

And she nodded, and smiled again, the young woman smiling, not the twelve-year-old.

So once again I sat in a booth at Sambo’s, this time with one of the top mob bosses in Chicago. I had a Coke and he had coffee with lots of cream and sugar. In the bright glare of the relentlessly illuminated pancake house, I could see every freckle and age spot and wrinkle and stray facial hair on that too-tan puss, every blackhead and tiny red vein and enlarged pore on that hooked honker. His eyebrows were out of control with lots of white twisting around black, and his teeth were too white, too big, probably purchased.

“Do you smoke?” he asked.

It was the first thing he’d said since we left his daughter’s apartment. We’d nodded to his boys in the Thunderbird (both weasels were in the front seat now) and just walked quickly over. I had my corduroy jacket on, but he hadn’t put his topcoat on, and it was bitter.