Max Collins - The last quarry

Not an actress, no-an heiress. Jonah Green’s daughter-“Daddy” was a Chicago media magnate whose name you’d recognize if I was using his real one, a guy who inherited money and wheeled-and-dealed his way into more, including one of the satellite super-stations I’d been wasting my eyes on lately. The Windy City’s answer to Ted Turner, right down to sailboating and baseball teams and womanizing.

His daughter was a little wild-seen in the company of rock stars (she had a tattoo of a star-not Justin Timberlake, a five-pointed star-on her white left breast, which I could see from the window) and was a Betty Ford clinic drop-out. Nonetheless, she was said to be the apple of her daddy’s eye, even if that apple was a tad wormy.

So Harry and Louis had put the snatch on the snatch; fair enough. Question was, was it their own idea, or something the Outfit put them up to?

I heard a door open, and peeked in carefully, just barely able to hear the muffled speech through the window.

Louis came in and tossed the box of Tampax in her lap.

The girl snarled, “You took long enough!”

“We’re being nice- you be nice.”

“Fuck you. Fuck you!..I need the bathroom.”

A clearly disgusted Louis dug a handcuff key out of his pocket, and worked at undoing her wrist.

The girl, a spoiled brat even in the presence of kidnappers, said, “Hurry the fuck up, faggot! You want blood everywhere?”

He looked at her coldly. “Do you?”

That sobered her a little.

Maybe Daddy should’ve tried some of Louis’s brand of psychology.

Then Louis walked her off somewhere as the girl clutched the Tampax box like treasure.

I dropped down from the window, hidden there in the dark in my dark clothes with a gun in my hand and my back to the log cabin, and I smiled.

When I’d come out into the night, armed like this, it hadn’t been to effect a rescue. Whatever else they were, Harry and Louis were dangerous men, and I had to be ready to protect my ass. And if I was going to spend my sleepless night satisfying my curiosity and assuaging my boredom by poking into their business, I had to be ready to pay for my thrills.

So I sat in the cold and dark and decided, finally, that it just didn’t matter who or what was behind it. My options were to go home, and forget about it, and try (probably without any luck) to get some sleep; or to rescue this somewhat soiled damsel in distress.

And if I went home, they’d kill this girl.

What the hell. I had nothing better to do.

I went to the front door and knocked.

No answer.

Shit, I knew somebody was home, so I knocked again.

Then I got right against the door, putting my ear to the wood, so I could gauge their reaction within…

Harry was saying, “Who the fuck is that? Who could that be?”

Louis was calming him, saying, “Could be that security company the owner told us about-on patrol. Saw lights on.”

TV sound stopped-muted.

Harry’s voice again: “You want me to-”

“No! Hide the shottie…”

“Louis, no one knows we’re here…”

“That’s right-nothing to worry about.”

Louis cracked open the door and peered out and said, “What is it?” and I shot him in the eye.

The still night was cut by the harsh, shrill sound of a scream-not Louis, who hadn’t had time for that, but the girl in the next room, scared shitless at hearing a gunshot, one would suppose.

I paid no attention to her and shouldered the door open-no night latch or anything-and stepped over Louis, kicked aside the. 38 revolver he’d been hiding behind him when he answered the door, and moved into the claustrophobic living room, pointing the nine millimeter at Harry, whose orange-ringed mouth was frozen open and whose bag of barbecue potato chips dropped to the floor, much as Louis had.

“Don’t, Harry,” I said.

I could see in Harry’s tiny dark eyes behind his thick black-rimmed glasses that he was thinking about the sawed-off shotgun under the pillow on the couch next to him.

“Who the fuck…?”

I moved slowly to the couch; behind me, an old colorized movie was playing on their captive’s daddy’s superstation. With my left hand, I plucked the shotgun from under the cushion next to Harry and tucked it under my arm.

“Hi, Harry,” I said. “Been a while.”

His orange-ringed mouth slowly began to work and his eyes began to blink and he said, “Quarry?”

That was the name he’d known me by.

His eyes showed white all around and he pointed at me. “You’re that fucker Quarry! ”

I dipped down to pluck the. 38 from the floor. “Taking the girl your idea, or are you still working for the boys?”

His words came to him from some remote part of his brain, a response not unlike the kick from a doctor-applied mallet to a knee. “We…we retired, couple years ago. God.”

He looked past me, wide-eyed, at the thing on the floor and pointed again, this time like a kid in the backseat who just spotted a Dairy Queen. But not as happy.

“You…you killed…Jesus Christ, you killed Louis…!”

I sat on the arm of the sofa and kept the gun on him, casually but on him. “Right. What were you going to put the girl’s body in?”

“Huh?”

“She’s obviously seen you. You were obviously going to kill her, once you got the money. So. What was the plan?”

Harry wiped off his orange barbecue ring with a hand. He was blinking, trying to think. “Got a roll of plastic in the closet. Gonna roll her up and dump her in one of them gravel pits they got around here.”

“I see. Do that number with the plastic right now, with Louis, why don’t you? Okay?”

Tears were rolling down Harry’s chubby, stubbly pockmarked cheeks. I didn’t know whether he was crying for Louis or himself or the pair of them, and I wasn’t interested enough to ask.

“Okay,” he said thickly, apparently resigned to his fate, his mouth slack but his eyes moving with thought.

I watched him roll his partner up in the sheet of plastic, using duct tape to secure the package; he sobbed as he did it, but he did it. He got blood on his Hawaiian shirt; it didn’t particularly show, though.

“Good job, Harry. Now…I want you to clean up the mess. Go on. You’ll find what you need in the kitchen.”

Dutifully, Harry shuffled over to where the open kitchen met the little living room, got a pan of warm water and some rags, and dropped to his knees to clean up the brains and blood. He wasn’t crying anymore. He moved slow but steady, a fat zombie in a colorful shirt.

“Stick the rags in the end of the plastic there, Harry, would you? Thank you.”

Harry did that, then the big man lumbered to his feet, hands half-heartedly in the air, and said, “Now me?”

“I might let you go, Harry. I got nothing against you.”

His eyes jumped. “Not…not how I remember it.”

I laughed. “You girls leaned on me once. You think I’d kill a person over something that trivial? What kind of asshole do you think I am, Harry?”

Harry had sense enough not to answer.

“Let’s see how Daddy’s little girl’s doing,” I said, and with the nine millimeter’s nose kissing Harry’s neck, I walked him to the door of the bedroom.

“Open it,” I said.

He did.

We went in, Harry first.

The girl was under the covers, holding the blankets and sheets up around her in a combination of illogical modesty and legitimate fear.

Her expression melted into confusion mingled with the beginnings of hope, when she saw me.

“Everything’s going to be all right, Miss Green,” I told her. “I’ve already taken care of the skinny one.” I nudged Harry with the gun in his neck. “You got a handcuff key?”