Max Collins - The last quarry

Slender, taller than I remembered, he wore a brown leather jacket and black jeans, a glimpse of darker brown shirt beneath. A good-looking guy, as vapid sons of bitches go.

Connie said something I didn’t catch, but Rick said, “Fuck you very much” to her, and shoved in beside Janet.

He was turning toward her, so I only got part of his face, but figuring out what he was saying wasn’t tough-he wasn’t exactly Noel Coward.

“Very funny,” he said to her.

She didn’t look at him, concentrating on her margarita, or pretending to. “What is?”

“Keeping me waiting.”

“Is that what I did?”

“I waited my ass off at the Brew for you, for half a fuckin’ hour.”

Now she looked at him. Her expression was commendably withering. “We weren’t meeting. We didn’t have anything set up.”

He shook his head, peeved. “So you make me go lookin’ for you? Lotta bars in this town. That any way to act?”

Connie, staring daggers at their uninvited guest, said, “Do you mind? We were talking.”

He leaned toward the big-hair blonde. “Probably you were talking…You mind giving us some privacy?”

“Let me see, let me give that a little thought-how about, I don’t frickin’ think so.”

Rick’s expression turned menacing. “ I think so.”

Connie looked at Janet.

Janet, reluctantly, nodded to her friend.

Disgusted with both of them, Connie got up and left. She hadn’t gone two steps when a guy asked her to dance, and they went out onto the floor and bumped loins to Kenny Chesney.

Rick came around to the other side of the booth, to sit across and make eye contact with Janet, who wasn’t cooperating.

Leaning halfway over, he said, “I wasn’t kidding, you know. About marriage.”

Janet’s eyes widened and she began to shake her head. “The last thing I want to do is marry you, Rick.”

“That’s not what you said, before.”

“That was weeks, maybe months ago. That was when…when you were still being…nice.”

“I’m always nice to you!”

She just looked at him.

He shrugged. “Well…I’ll be nice in the future. How’s that sound?”

“Insincere.” Now she leaned forward, and worked hard at softening her expression. “Rick-we’re over. You must know that. Can’t you see? Let’s just walk away friends.”

Suddenly he was out of the booth and reaching for her, dragging her out of her seat. He said something I didn’t quite catch, but along the lines of: “We’re gonna talk this out, now.”

Then he took her roughly by the arm and hauled her through the bar, toward the door. She was protesting, and I didn’t have to read her lips to catch what she said-hell, everybody in the place caught what she said: “ Rick! Please! No…no… ”

Half the eyes in Sneaky Pete’s were on the unhappy couple; the other half were making a point of not looking, ignoring what I gathered was a familiar scene around town.

The good-looking brunette bartender was bringing me my third beer. She looked toward the door, and said, “Pity. Hope he doesn’t hurt that poor kid, again.”

I said, “Isn’t anybody going to do anything about it?”

She raised an eyebrow. “You see anybody doing anything about it?”

I threw a five-spot on the counter and said, “Drink that last one yourself.”

“Anything you say, Daddy…”

When I was exiting onto the parking lot, half a dozen tobacco addicts were coming back in hurriedly, pitching their smokes sparking into the night. They apparently had no desire to be witnesses to what Rick might do to Janet.

Those two were the only ones in the lot, besides myself, and Rick had her cornered against a big blue Navigator, his hand against the metal, her face turned away from his, eyes shut tight.

“Two people,” he shouted at her, “who love each other oughta be able to talk to each other! God! Fuck!”

He used his keys to click open the vehicle’s door and shoved Janet in the front seat, rider’s side. He was about to shut her in when I put a hand on his shoulder.

Rick whirled, and took a few seconds to size me up-I’m not small, but to him I must have looked no threat, just some ancient asshole sticking his nose in.

He brushed my hand off his shoulder. “Go away. Not your business, dude.”

I punched him in the throat.

Rick went down on his knees, clutching his neck, trying to breathe, not having much success, gurgling, his face scarlet, his eyes popping.

From the nearby rider’s seat of the SUV, door still open, Janet Wright was taking this in with huge eyes…though not as huge as Rick’s.

“Excuse me,” I told her, and I took Rick by the collar of his leather jacket and dragged him like the sack of garbage he was across the asphalt. Hauled him through some brush and into the surrounding trees. Deposited him in a small clearing.

Finally able to breathe again, Rick had not, however, found his way up off the ground.

Hurt in more ways than one, he managed to squeak, “You…you coulda killed me!”

“No,” I said. “Next time I’ll kill you.”

“What the fuck…fuck business is it…of-”

I bitch-slapped the prick.

The sound surprised me-it was as loud in the night as a gunshot, and the woman in the SUV probably heard it, too. I hoped to hell she wasn’t like some abused women, her next move running off and getting her poor abuser some help.

Rick was down on his knees, as if praying. If he really was praying, he was keeping it inside his head, because the “dude” wasn’t saying anything-just whimpering.

I knelt before him and I locked my eyes onto his face, though his eyes tried to escape.

“Do you believe I’ll kill you?” I asked him.

“Yeah…yeah…sure.”

But I wasn’t convinced he was convinced.

I took the nine millimeter from my jacket pocket.

He drew in a breath, eyes and nostrils flared.

“Open wide,” I said.

“Fuck you!” he said.

The epithet gave me the opening I needed, and I inserted the nine’s snout.

I asked him again: “Do you believe I’ll kill you?”

Rick, all but deep-throating the barrel, nodded, his eyes white all around, something like “yes, yes” emerging from his throat.

“That’s too bad,” I said. “Because I really didn’t want you to.”

And I ripped the gun out of Rick’s mouth.

Rick’s hand clutched his face and blood streamed through his fingers in little red ribbons. As I’d intended, the weapon’s gunsight had carved a notch in the roof of his mouth and maybe chipped a tooth.

He was crying now.

“Anything you’d care to say to me?” I asked.

He lowered his hand; his mouth was a bloody mess, his teeth smeared red; one was, in fact, broken.

Good.

When he spoke, it was through bubbling blood.

“I won’t go near her,” he said. “Won’t ever go near her again.”

I shrugged. “Don’t decide all at once. Sleep on it.”

I whacked him with the nine millimeter and he went to sleep even before he collapsed in a pile in the brush.

The nine’s snout had a little blood on it, which I wiped off on the kid’s newer-than-new jeans, giving them a little character, wondering if Rick would know, when he woke up, how very lucky he’d been.

I put the gun back in my jacket pocket.

When I came out of the brush and trees, the woman I was here to kill was coming toward me. She was moving steadily, though her expression betrayed an uncertainty about whether she should be afraid or not.

I came to a stop.

She did, too, and asked me, “Is…is he all right?”

“No,” I said. “He’s a sick fuck.”

“Well…” She smiled just a little. “I know that, of course. But you didn’t…”