MaxAllan Collins - Quarry's vote

“Well, I was there to check Best out. I didn’t know anything about you. Just that you were a pretty woman in red, white, and blue-and I’m as patriotic as the next guy.”

She smiled one-sidedly and touched my cheek. “I guess I don’t take it back. That you’re a nice guy.”

“I didn’t mean to take advantage of your good nature.”

“Frankly,” she said, “I wish you would.”

She kissed me again; another slow, sweet, sticky kiss. She rolled over on top of me and my arms slipped around her, my hand settling on her ass, dress hiked up over pantyhose and panties; nice shape to her ass, soft yet firm. Something stirred in me, below the belt. She kept kissing and I kissed back. The fire was warm on us. I rolled over on top of her, felt her breasts through her dress; she reached behind and unzipped it and brought it down over her breasts in a wispy bra that she slipped down and my hands went onto her cool flesh, warming to my touch and the glow of the fire. Her nipples were hard under my fingertips and I put my mouth on her breasts, suckled, and she moved my hand to her pantyhose, inside her panties, in front, and I pulled away, like my fingers had touched fire, not soft curly hair.

I was breathing hard. Blinking. Something was wrong.

“Jack… Jack, what’s wrong?”

She was sitting next to me, looking lovely if disheveled in the fire’s glow, and I tried to say something but my tongue was thick. My dick wasn’t.

“Jack, what is it? You’re…”

“What?” I managed to say.

“You’re crying.”

I touched my face. I’ll be damned if I wasn’t.

“What is it, Jack?”

“I… I’m sorry, Angela. I just can’t.”

She smiled wryly, but sympathetically, her arm around my shoulder. “You were doing fine. Just fine.”

“Can’t.”

She dabbed my face with the cloth of her dress. “What is it, Jack?”

“I lost my wife not long ago.”

“Oh, Jack…”

“I… haven’t been with a woman since.”

She swallowed. Patted my shoulder. “How long has it been?”

“A year.” It seemed like a year. And it seemed like a moment ago.

“I guess I’m just not ready,” I said.

“Oh, Jack, I understand.”

“I feel funny.”

“What is it?”

“The oddest feeling.”

“Are you sick?”

“I don’t know.”

“You… you want some aspirin or something?”

“No. It’ll be all right. Let me catch my breath.” What was this feeling?

“It’s natural to feel a little guilty,” she said.

Was that it? Guilt? Of all things.

“Why don’t you stay here tonight,” she said. “You can sleep out on the couch, if you like. We can just be there for each other. I think maybe we can both use some company tonight.”

I nodded.

We walked back through the living room and down a hallway. Several family photographs in frames lined the wall. I stopped at one.

“Your girls?” I asked.

“Yes. Taken a few years ago.”

“They look like you. They’re going to be beauties.”

She hugged my arm.

I envied her a little; even without a partner, she had something here. Kids and a house and a life. Mediterranean furniture or not, I could almost see myself here. In this house with this woman and her family and her life.

We moved to the next picture, a larger family portrait, and I stopped short.

“Your, uh, ex?” I asked.

“I should take it down, I know,” she said. “But to the girls he’s still dad.”

“What’s Bob doing for a living these days?” I asked her, studying the portrait.

“Are you okay, Jack?”

“What’s he doing for a living?”

“He works for George Ridge now. Real estate counseling, I guess you’d call it.”

I said nothing.

“Yeah,” she went on, “he’s making good money, too, flitting around. In Canada this weekend, some fancy deal.”

“Is that right,” I said. “I… I don’t think I can stay tonight, Angela.”

The dark blue eyes were very wide as she searched my face. “Why not?”

“I’d like to. But I just can’t.”

“The guilt,” she said, nodding sympathetically, eyes narrowing.

I said nothing. I just kissed her, briefly, and let her walk me out to my car.

And I drove away from there, from that house, from the family picture that included the round, pasty face, several facial moles and all, of the man who had come into my house and killed my wife, and my wife’s brother, and who had in turn been killed by me.

Around ten the next morning, Sunday, I went down to the lobby of the hotel and had a word with the man at the desk.

“I’m working for the Freed campaign,” I told him.

He nodded, smiled noncommittally. He was in his mid- twenties and blandly handsome; crisply dressed in a navy blazer and red and blue striped tie, he would be a manager here someday. The two women back behind the counter, doing the real work, wouldn’t have a chance.

“With the press conference tomorrow,” I said, “we have to be careful.”

“Certainly,” he said, the smile gone, very serious now, as if what I’d said was something he well knew, when actually it had never occurred to him.

“Our sources have informed us,” I said, “that one of the major parties has hired a political dirty trickster to disrupt the press conference.”

I was careful not to say which party. That way, if he were a Democrat he could assume Republican, and vice versa.

Whatever, he nodded, narrowed his eyes, leaned forward, pretended to be concerned.

“The agent provocateur in question,” I said, “makes G. Gordon Liddy look like Mother Teresa.”

He smiled at that, but a serious smile.

“We would like your help in keeping an eye out for him,” I said. “We’d like no one but yourself-and your night relief-to be aware of this request.”

“Do you have a photograph?”

“No. But I can give you a detailed physical description, and I know several of the names he frequently travels under.”

“That’s helpful.”

“He’s a slender man a few years shy of fifty. Six-one, pockmarked. Cleft chin. Eyes have kind of an oriental cast. Dark hair, widow’s peak, pale complexion.” I could tell, from his blank expression, he wasn’t visualizing anything yet, despite that laundry list of facial features. I tried again: “You know the guy in Star Trek?”

“William Shatner?”

“No, the other one-but without the pointed ears.”

He smiled, nodded.

“He looks something like that guy,” I said. “He sometimes uses the name Stone. He sometimes uses the name Brackett. Sometimes Pond. Sometimes Green.”

That was all the names I knew.

“Let me check the registry,” he said, and he began flipping the little cards, looking up each name. “Nothing,” he said.

“What about the description? Did it ring a bell?”

“Well, yes it did.”

I leaned against the counter. “What room number?”

“No, I just meant I knew which guy on Star Trek you meant.”

Maybe he wouldn’t be a manager someday.

“How long are you on?”

“Till five.”

“Two other shifts, then, after you?”

“Yes.”

“When does the graveyard shift start?”

“One A.M.”

“Good.” I handed him two twenties, folded once, lengthwise. “I’ll talk to the two night men personally. You just keep this to yourself.”

“That isn’t necessary, sir,” he said, meaning the money, which he was trying not to look at.

“Sure it is.” I let go of the bills and they made a little tent on the counter. “Now, I’m going to have to look things over for security purposes. Where is the press conference going to be held?”