Max Collins - The last quarry

Deference hadn’t worked, so he’d gone straight to hard-nosed.

He was moving cautiously my way, saying, “And if you kill me, you won’t know how I found you.”

I said nothing.

He nodded, as if I’d actually answered, then came over and pulled up a metal deck chair and sat at the edge of the Jacuzzi, nearby but not getting in my space.

“Don’t worry,” he said, patting the steamy air. His expression was soft, the grooves in his face at ease; but the money-color eyes were hard. “I didn’t waste my resources finding you to get… even, or some idiotic bullshit.”

I said nothing.

Sitting forward slightly in the chair, Green said, “Before you kill me-strangle me with that towel or whatever, I would-”

I showed him the nine millimeter from under the towel.

“There’s an elegant expression,” he said with admirable cool. “z‘Don’t shit where you eat’…You live here, you manage this place, you have a life… why risk that with a death?…Hear me out.”

I said nothing, but I lowered the gun a fraction.

He put his hands on his chest. “I really do appreciate what you did for me, and my daughter. I’m well aware that those mob fagellehs would’ve killed the little smartass.”

I said, “Our business is over.”

He shrugged, a tiny smile forming, pleased he’d finally drawn me out into at least speaking. “Our old business is over, Mr. Quarry-I really do admire your resourcefulness, your abilities. Take DeWayne, for example.”

“No thanks.”

He shrugged in an admission of his subordinate’s imperfection. “DeWayne isn’t brilliant, but he’s dangerous. You handled him as if he were a helpless child.”

“A couple thousand DeWaynes have died in Iraq.”

The millionaire sighed, nodded, slumping in his metal chair. He shook his head. “And a goddamned shame.”

I shrugged with one shoulder. “We spilled more than that.”

Picking up on my attitude, and instantly getting over his sorrow for the lost lives in Iraq, Jonah Green said, “I’m sure you did. Which is why I won’t make the mistake of sending a boy to do a man’s work again…I’ve asked around about you, Mr. Quarry. By the way, is that a first name or a last name?”

“Probably.”

That stopped him for a beat, then he moved on briskly, almost cheerfully. “At any rate, I did some asking around…I do business in all kinds of circles, you know.”

“You talk in circles, too. What do you want, Mr. Green?”

He semi-ignored that question. “Seems there’s a certain freelance assassin who dropped out of sight, a few years ago. He had a reputation as the best man in a tough game, sort of a killer’s killer. He wasn’t mob, although sometimes he did jobs for-”

“I’m impressed you found me. Trouble is, now I have to move.”

I raised the gun.

Finally he got it, or maybe my raising the nine just let out the nervousness that had been inside him all along. His hands flew up, as if this were a stick-up.

He was half a second away from dead when he blurted, “I want you to do a job for me! Another job!”

My finger froze on the trigger.

This was a lot of money seated near me, begging me to let him give me some. I’m not a greedy man; but I’m not a monk, either.

I said, “I’m retired.”

He knew he’d made a dent and something lively came into the green eyes. “That would’ve been just before the stock market went to shit, wouldn’t it? How are your investments doing, Mr. Quarry? Did you get out before the dotcom bust?”

“I’m comfortable,” I said, which was funny in a way, because I was naked in a hot tub, so of course I was comfortable. On the other hand, I was holding a nine millimeter, thinking about killing this prick; so that part wasn’t so comfortable.

“So comfortable,” he said, unintentionally mirroring my thoughts in an openly Faustian manner, “that you wouldn’t come out of retirement for a quarter of a million dollars?”

Again I lowered the gun a hair. “…It’s not a political job, is it?”

“No! No, no, no.”

I sighed again, this time for my own benefit. “One last job is always a bad idea. Guys die trying to retire on one last job all the time.”

“But you are not just any guy, are you, Mr. Quarry?” He smiled; he had the same white feral teeth as his daughter, only his might have been false. The teeth part. The feral was real.

“No,” I admitted, “I’m not. What makes it worth a quarter mil?”

He answered with another question: “Do you have any reservations about taking out a woman?”

“I take women out all the time.”

“Not the way I mean.”

I smiled just a little. “Are you sure?”

We sat in my kitchen.

Jonah Green already knew the lay of my land, so there was no harm in taking him across the road to the A-frame cottage…no further harm, anyway. Plus, I was tired of negotiating with my dick hanging out. Water’s a bad place to hold a serious conversation, at least your half of it; the other guy can always make his point by kicking something electrical in-I know, because I’ve been that guy.

So now we were both dressed. The Mr. Coffee was on, and we were exploring the job. The only step remaining was me deciding to do the thing or not-the money required no further discussion.

A captain of industry through and through, Jonah Green had a folder of information, including half a dozen photos. The woman in the photos-all candid, surveillance-type-was in her early thirties, attractive but not making the most of it, her hair up, with reading glasses on in some of the shots.

She did not look like a likely contract-murder victim, but you never know. Karen Silkwood didn’t look like much, either (no, I didn’t do that one).

He was handing me across several information-crammed sheets. “Here’s everything you need to know about the woman-work and home addresses, personal habits and friends, everything.”

I glanced up at him. “Time frame?”

Green blinked. “Say again? I don’t follow.”

“You need her dead-I get that. When do you need her dead?”

He sat forward; for the first time the talk took on a truly conspiratorial feel. “In two months, her being alive is…a bad thing for me.” He sighed, and something that might have been regret, real or feigned, came into his expression and his voice. “Understand, Mr. Quarry, she didn’t do anything to deserve-”

I cut him off with a traffic-cop palm. “Mr. Green…you’re a powerful guy. You’ve decided you need her dead. That means she’s already dead.”

His forehead and eyes tightened. “I…now I really don’t follow…”

Tossing the pictures on the table, I said, “She’s already dead-she just doesn’t know it yet. My doing the job is…a detail.”

That made the millionaire slightly ill at ease, and he said, maybe for his own peace of mind, “Well, it’s strictly a matter of business-nothing personal. She’s a nice woman, I’m sure-”

“Nice women,” I interrupted, “don’t make themselves the targets of men like you, who aren’t nice.”

Blood drained from his face, but he said nothing. Hard to get indignant when the guy you’re hiring to kill somebody points out that you’re not Mr. Wonderful.

I gestured with the information sheets.

“This stuff is fine,” I said. “But understand, Mr. Green, I have to watch her a while, anyway. A few days, at least.”

He frowned, shaking his head, pointing to the info sheets. “But…I’ve got all her patterns recorded, already…library…apartment…”

“How old is the information? A P.I. gathered this. When?”

The frown deepened into irritation, as if I had questioned his professionalism. “I tell you, it’s fresh!”