Max Collins - The last quarry

I knew this woman, this girl. And so do you-she was, after all, the kidnap victim who started it all.

Jonah Green’s daughter-Julie.

I grabbed the little bitch by the arm extending the key and yanked her into the living room and hurled her across the room. Her jean jacket came off in my hand, and I discarded it like a used tissue as she did a half spin and landed rudely on the couch, opposite, breasts bobbling under the black t-shirt. A little suitcase was out in the hall, and I grabbed it and tossed it inside the apartment, and slammed the door and turned to glare at her.

But she didn’t scare easy, scrambling back off the cushions to get right in my face, holding the keys in her upraised fist like a blade. Eyes and nostrils flaring, white little feral teeth bared, she all but screamed: “What the fuck are you doing here?”

The petite dark-haired beauty had a little ring in her nose now; she was packing enough piercings to set off an airport metal detector.

As would my nine millimeter automatic, the snout of which I stuck under her defiant chin as I slapped the keys rattlingly from her fist.

“You first,” I said.

That took some of the fearlessness out of her. Her eyelids were quivering and she swallowed, or tried to. “Get…get that fucking thing out of my throat, you prick.”

I did, shoving her back onto the couch with my free hand. Looming over her, keeping the nine trained on her, I paced a little area near where she sat, her arms folded tight as she looked up at me, face blank but for a crinkly chin.

“Explain yourself,” I said.

“Fuck you!..I’m visiting my sister.”

I frowned down at her. “Where?”

“Here!” Her eyes widened and tightened. “Where the hell else? She lives here!”

My eyes narrowed and tightened. “In this apartment…?”

“No, in a dumpster out back.” She unfolded her arms, leaning forward on the heels of her hands. “What the hell are you doing here, Quarry?”

I was still pointing the gun at her, but suddenly I felt way off my game. “What’s your sister’s name?”

“You’re in her apartment and you don’t know? Janet Fucking Wright!”

I squinted at her, hoping that would help; it didn’t. I could see neither a resemblance in her face, nor any sense in this situation.

“Your name is Green,” I said.

“Aren’t you the observant son of a bitch?” She sighed impatiently. “Jan doesn’t use Daddy’s name-she fucking hates Daddy, which is the one thing we have in common…Wright’s our mom’s maiden name. Late mom…”

Suddenly her face whitened, as if she’d finally noticed an asshole was pointing a gun at her.

“Oh shit,” she said, pointing a gun-like finger back at me, for nobody’s benefit in particular. “Oh hell. Oh no…”

“What?”

She was shaking her head, almost frantically. “You’re not ‘him,’ are you? You couldn’t be him…” She rolled her eyes and laughed harshly. “Oh fuck me…Jack? You’re Jack? Jack Ryan…?”

I lowered the nine a hair. “She told you about me?”

Still shaking her head, she said, “Oh Christ- you’re her white knight? Kill me. Kill me now.”

“It’s an option,” I said.

Not knowing how much trouble she was potentially in, Julie sneered up at me. “I answered your question, now you owe me a fucking answer-what the hell are you doing here, anyway?”

She had a point.

I put the gun in my waistband. I could see no reason not to level with her. More or less.

I sat next to her and said, “Your father hired me.”

She gave me a frowning sideways look, not so much disapproving as curious. “What’d he hire you for? Oh fuck…tell me it wasn’t to rough up that abusive boyfriend of hers! That prick Rick?”

I shook my head. “That was my bright idea.”

She grunted a non-laugh. “Not that Daddy would do anything that thoughtful.” Confusion colored her features. “Then why — ”

“Your father hired me to watch your sister. He didn’t say why.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Just watch her-like a P.I. or something?”

“Or something.”

A little half-hearted laugh made the cupcake breasts bounce; you could see the nipple rings outlined against the black t-shirt. “Well, I can’t say it surprises me.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t you know?” She leaned toward me conspiratorially. “Sis is about to come into a good share of the family fortune.”

I said nothing.

My expression must have been talkative, though, because a faintly amused Julie Green said, “Huh…You look shocked, Quarry…I didn’t know you were the fuck shockable.”

Normally I wasn’t.

“I liked you better with the beard, by the way,” she said. She got up and collected her jeans jacket and laid it over a chair, and picked up her little suitcase and put it next to the same chair.

“It was your sister’s idea,” I said. “She shaved me.”

She glanced at me, smirky but not unfriendly. “I bet she did…You okay?”

“Peachy.”

Over the years, in my business, I’d run into lots of things, many of them disgusting or creepy or downright evil. A father hiring a hitman to take out his own daughter had just rocketed to the top of my personal chart.

With a bullet.

Julie Green and I sat in her sister’s tiny kitchen where the girl had a turkey sandwich and chips and a Diet Coke; I just had a Diet Coke, my appetite dulled somehow. She filled me in, chapter and verse, on the Green family fortune and how it impacted Daddy and his daughters.

Seemed Green’s media empire had started when he married money-that money belonging to the late mother of Janet and Julie.

“It’s a trust fund deal,” Julie was saying, nibbling at the white bread and white turkey meat. She could wear hip-hop clothes all she wanted-this kid was Caucasian. “Jan’s gonna be thirty next month, and she’ll get a pile.”

“What about you?”

She grinned as she chewed. “Oh, I will, too, when I’m her age…I still got a few years of youthful abandon left.”

I was squinting again, but this time things were coming into focus. “And if something bad happened to Janet-before the trust fund money came available to her-your father inherits…?”

“Yeah. Sure. Who else?”

One aspect remained fuzzy, however, so I asked, “But why would that matter to a mogul like Jonah Green? He’s loaded…”

She snorted a laugh, and the nose ring jiggled. “He was, before his second wife’s settlement…and before he invested in fucking Enron. He’s riding on fumes, my clean-shaven friend. Hope you enjoyed your hundred K for rescuing me, ’cause the bastard made me give him an I.O.U. for it!”

I leaned back in the hard kitchen chair. Sipped my Coke and mulled this new information.

Julie sat forward. “Okay, what wheels are turning in that fucked-up skull of yours?…Quarry, are you trying figure out a way to make a buck again? Squeeze Daddy over Janet?”

I flicked her a little frown.

Her eyes went big and her smile was big, too. “Don’t tell me…don’t tell me you really fell for my dowdy ol’ big sis…? The degenerate hardass and the maiden librarian…Didn’t I see that on Lifetime?”

“I’m going to help her,” I said.

She didn’t seem to be sure whether to be amused by that or not, and just asked, “Help her where Daddy’s concerned? How the fuck?”

“Will you help me do it?”

She smirked. “Sure. Do what? ”

“ Will…you…help? ”

She shrugged magnanimously. “Sure-why the fuck not? My sister is the only relative on the planet that I give two shits about, and anything that gives Daddy a bad day is my idea of a good time.”