MaxAllan Collins - Quarry's vote

I was passing for John Ryan, a name I had I.D. for, including a driver’s license. Even though I was out of the business all those years, I kept a spare identity active. One never knew, did one, when it would come in handy.

Ryan was supposed to live in Milwaukee, though the address was just a P.O. box. He had money in the bank-time certificates, mostly. His profession, should anyone ask, was sales. He owned his own small company and sold auto parts. That was the story. It wouldn’t hold up if I was in serious trouble, but if I was in serious trouble, I’d be past needing it to hold up.

But I had my driver’s license, Social Security number, and several credit cards. And that’s all anybody needs in the United States to qualify as a real person. It felt great being a real person. Real persons can rent cars, and I did, from National, another Buick, this one light blue. I wondered if National bought their cars locally, in which case it may have come from Best Buy over in Davenport. Everybody sing: it’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all….

It was eleven when I checked in at the Howard Johnson’s near the airport. I’d been here before, too, years ago, but it had been remodeled some, not that I gave a shit. Remodeling a Howard Johnson’s is like a homely woman getting a facelift; sure she looks younger, but why the fuck bother?

I was feeling alert and awake, the Seconal hangover easing off. I had slept some on the plane, nodding off half-way through a Freed article explaining the link between the Zionists and the Illuminati. But before I’d dropped off, I learned something extremely interesting about extremist Freed: his home base was right here in the Quad Cities. His campaign headquarters for the coming presidential election was a suite of offices in the Blackhawk Hotel. His private estate was nearby, “just outside Buffalo, Iowa, in America’s heartland.”

Well, somebody in America’s heartland wanted Freed dead. And if I could figure out who that was, I’d know who I wanted dead.

I sat on the bed in the motel room, knowing I wouldn’t need to sleep for a while, and decided to get to work. I checked the phone book for Victor Werner, but there was no listing. It figured that he’d be unlisted. I had an address for him, in the Broker’s papers, but it was ten years old, that address. Would he still be there?

Only one way to find out.

I had left the Browning nine-millimeter behind, of course, but the other two, a matched pair of Smith and Wessons, were still with me. So was an Automatic Weapons Company HP-9 suppressor, a dark round tube that attached to the end of about any nine-millimeter, my S amp; Ws included. With a silencer like this, all a nine-millimeter made was a little thump you could sleep through. Forever, if necessary.

I attached the suppressor to one of the nine-millimeters and rolled the gun up in a bathroom towel. I still had my shoulder holster, but the silenced weapon was too bulky to wear that way. I had a dark blue sweatshirt along, which I put on, still wearing the jeans, and threw the lighter blue CHICAGO BEARS windbreaker over that. With the rolled-up towel under my arm, I looked like I was going to the Y for a work-out.

I wasn’t. I was on my way, in my rental Buick, to Davenport, via the free bridge at Moline; traffic was brisk, but that was to be expected on a Friday night. In Moline I made a stop at a 7-11 and bought a roll of wide adhesive tape and a plastic-wrapped packet of clothesline. Soon I was cruising four-lane River Drive, which connected Moline and Davenport, and to my left was the Mississippi, its shiny black surface reflecting the lights of the cities across the way, and to my right was a slope on which perched various homes, many of them mansions or anyway near-mansions.

Werner’s was a big white would-be Tara, with six pillars in front, its slope of lawn winter-brown at the moment, unmarred by sidewalk. I drove up the nearest side street and found you entered via an alley, off of which was the house and its three-car garage. But the place was dark. Well, it figured. Friday night.

I left the car several blocks away and walked back to Werner’s and waited. I waited in the shrubs near the garage. I never did do home invasions. That wasn’t my style. I always worked as part of a two-man team, one of whom would do most of the watching, the surveillance, getting the target’s pattern down before choosing the right time and place, when the other team member would do the actual hit. Which was usually me.

But home invasions, no, and so I had only the most rudimentary experience with things like alarm systems. A connected guy like Werner would have a sophisticated one, too, and possibly a live-in bodyguard or two, though after an hour no one checked the grounds.

The night was overcast and cold and a little foggy up on this higher ground; the streetlamps in the alley glowed like halos. I should have been chilled, in the light jacket, but for some reason I couldn’t feel it much. I felt dead, even if my breath in the cold air indicated I wasn’t.

Finally, just after midnight, a security company car crawled down the alley. One of the two uniformed, brown leather-jacketed men got out and walked the grounds with a flashlight, while the other waited, sipping steaming liquid from a styrofoam cup. It was only a half-hearted effort, the one with the flash not even brushing the bushes where I hid with his beam. Good thing. Coldinspired laziness had saved a couple of lives.

And at one-thirty-something, a jade green Lincoln coasted down the alley and pulled in the drive; one of the three doors of the garage swung up upon electronic command, and the big boat of a car docked itself within.

The door shut itself, and a man in a camel’s hair overcoat and a woman in a mink exited the garage via a side door. The woman was in the lead, a harshly attractive blonde in her late forties who was staying perhaps too thin in an effort to hold onto her youth. The man was shorter than his wife, and in his mid-fifties though his hair was jet black; he had a round, youthful face, but his mouth was a tight gash. He was pulling on his gloves.

“We’re going to the game,” Mr. Werner said, irritably.

“You’ll go alone,” the apparent Mrs. Werner said. Her voice was as icily crisp as the air.

“Isn’t it enough I give those phony bastards my money? Do I have to…”

She turned and pointed a finger in his face; she was wearing black leather gloves. “The Arts Council is the most important thing in my life. Don’t louse it up!”

“We don’t have to be at every goddamn meeting…”

“Well, I do,” she said.

By this time they were at the back door. The woman stood with her arms folded, tapping her foot as if to some inner and no doubt unpleasant tune while Werner worked a key in the lock.

“I’m going to that game,” he said. “I didn’t spring for season tickets to stay home.”

“I’m co-chairperson, Vic. Don’t forget that.”

“Would that I could.”

He had the door open, now. The whine of an alarm system sounded.

“Doesn’t mean a thing to you the Hawks are number one in the nation, does it?” he asked, as he reached around inside to work another key in a wall socket, turning off the alarm.

With a patrician downward glance at him, she said, “I enjoy the games. Driving all the way to Iowa City doesn’t thrill me, but I’m as much a Hawk fan as you are…”

“I doubt that.”

“I just have my own priorities.”

So did I.

They stepped inside and I stepped in with them, putting the nine-millimeter’s silenced nose in the back of the woman’s neck.

“God!” she said.

Werner was looking at me through narrow eyes, as if trying to comprehend that I was really standing there. The kitchen was dark, but the alley was well lit and that made for some visibility.