Max Collins - The last quarry

“He’ll be fine tomorrow. And I don’t think he’ll bother you again.”

“His family…They’re important.”

I nodded. “Sent him to the best schools, I bet. But he got his most important lesson tonight…I don’t care if his father is named Bush-he won’t bother you again.”

The brown eyes were wide with worry. “Why did you do that? You…you shouldn’t have.”

I sighed. “I know.”

With no urgency, I took her by the arm and walked her toward the bar.

Her sideways look indicated worry had given way to curiosity. “What’s your name?”

“Jack,” I said. “Jack Ryan.”

“Like in the Tom Clancy novels?”

“Yeah, only a little more heroic.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “So I see…”

We were in front of Sneaky Pete’s now.

“I’m taking off,” I said. “You need a ride anywhere?”

“No…thanks. My friend’ll take me home.”

I frowned and gestured behind me, toward the trees. “Not that friend…”

“No! No. My friend Connie.”

She was studying me now, and I felt ill at ease, suddenly. Her face told me what she was thinking-how St. George had just saved her from the dragon, but how strange and even frightening her savior was.

Then her eyes tightened and she spoke. “Were you at the library today?”

“Yes,” I said. I gave her a little lame one-finger goodbye salute. “…Good night.”

I moved hurriedly to my rental vehicle.

And I could feel her eyes on me, getting in the car and behind the wheel, and even with the window up, I could hear Rick’s voice: “ Unnggh…oh…Jesus! ”

He had stumbled from the edge of the wooded area, his mouth bloody, looking like he’d fallen down a couple flights of stairs. He sat on the asphalt, on his knees, prayer-like again, shoulders hunkered over, crying.

I could see Janet thinking about it. She even started toward him, then thought better of it, and yelled, “You deserve it, you dick!”

And she went into the bar.

Starting up the car, I smiled, thinking, Good for you.

Then I caught my reflection in my rearview mirror and frowned.

I shoved my hand into the steering wheel, furious with myself, muttering, “Fuck you think you’re doing…”

Soon I was pulling into the Homewood Motor Court, which had last been remodeled about five years after Bonnie and Clyde stayed there. Inside, sitting on the edge of my bed with the nine millimeter in one hand and a photo in the other.

I was staring at one of the surveillance shots of Janet Wright, a fairly close-up shot in which she looked not bad at all. I thought about a lot of things, including about how Jonah Green’s fucking P.I. reports didn’t even mention this Rick character, but I couldn’t work up a healthy sense of indignation, since I was the dipshit who had exposed himself to the target. Saved her from harm and worked up a conversation with her.

Nothing good could come from it-and if this thing went to hell, I’d deserve it. That’s what you get for being nice.

I put the photo on the nightstand, image side down. The nine millimeter I shoved under the pillow next to me on the double bed-easier to get to than under your own pillow, plus more comfortable.

Naked, I got between the sheets, shut off the light, but I’d be a fucking liar if I said I went to sleep right away. For a long goddamn time I thought about this young woman, and about what a sweetheart she seemed to be, but that she was dead already, just didn’t know it yet, and I shouldn’t go all soft in the center or anything, just because she had nice knockers and frilly pink panties.

A long goddamn time.

Five minutes, anyway.

Janet Wright’s apartment-judging by the living room, which was all I could see from my vantage point-indicated an interesting woman lived there: funky ’30s deco antiques, a big bookcase of hardcovers, a few striking modern art prints on light green plaster walls. This was a second-floor apartment over a beauty shop, in downtown Homewood, in the last business block before residential kicked in.

She slept in till nine-thirty, and by ten was sitting in a blue terrycloth robe on a big comfy-looking chair with her feet in bunny slippers up on a matching footrest (matching the chair, not the bunny slippers), drinking a cup of what I presumed to be coffee, taking her time, watching television absently.

Finally she got up and went into the next room and quickly came back in a state-college sweatshirt and jeans and went out to run a few errands and have breakfast.

I shadowed her.

Nothing happened.

She returned.

So did I.

The rest of the morning into the early afternoon, hair pinned up, she vacuumed and dusted the living room. At times she disappeared, presumably to have lunch and do laundry somewhere, probably her kitchen area-the apartment seemed to be laid out box-car style, how many rooms I couldn’t be sure. The double windows gave me a generous view, but only of the living room.

Judging by my similar apartment, directly across the way, hers would have three big rooms, one after the other, back to the alley. Like hers, my apartment indicated someone interesting lived there-the complicated kind of guy whose decor runs to a metal folding chair with a cushioned seat, a crate near the double window serving as a table (my nine millimeter resting there, and sometimes my binoculars) and a cooler on the bare floor, where already several Coke cans, a wadded-up napkin and a sandwich wrapper lurked.

Unlike Janet’s building, this one hadn’t been renovated yet, or anyway the upper floors hadn’t-the lower floor had been half-heartedly redone but a computer store filling the space was out of business. Homewood had one of those funky downtowns getting gradually rehabilitated, and this empty apartment was, as I said, “similar” to hers…in its positioning and layout.

But there were differences. Her apartment, for example, was not a hellhole unfit for the foodstamp crowd who’d not long ago been consigned here.

My surveillance roost stank of old food and new ratshit, but it was free, and it was safe-some company of Jonah Green’s owned the building and had it earmarked for eventual Yuppification. I’d been provided a key to the back door and an assurance that no nightwatchmen would be checking.

The building across the way mirrored this one, had probably been designed by the same architect and built by the same outfit somewhere after the turn of the century-19th century, that is. Fuck, I was old, having to keep track of goddamn centuries…

Anyway, my target had double windows, too, and she kept the shades up and the sheer, decorative white window dressing blocked almost nothing. She didn’t worry about privacy, because you couldn’t see in from the street, and the apartment across the way was dead.

But, unlike my swimming-pool surveillance yesterday afternoon, this was no peep show. After the morning of vacuuming, she spent the afternoon sorting and folding laundry, again with the TV on, though I extrapolated that, as my view didn’t show it. She also read and listened to music, a CD player nestled in among the hardcovers in the big bookcase. Her comfy chair was near the two windows with a phone stand between.

She had a couple calls, one from Connie setting up another evening out, which interrupted the vacuuming, and another while she was reading.

In both instances, through my binoculars, I saw her checking caller I.D. before picking up-possibly avoiding Rick, although I found it extremely unlikely he’d ever call her again.

Still, she answered the afternoon call warily, then brightened. “Well, Sis!..Sure…No problem…Well, that’s great!..Cool!..Play it by ear.”

Well, that was scintillating.