MaxAllan Collins - Quarry's vote

Then I went back into the conference room and joined in on the discussion about how to keep candidate (and home-video buff) Preston Freed from getting blown away (as opposed to just blown) on the first day of his primary campaign.

Pennants flapped lazily overhead as the last few Sunday afternoon browsers strolled around the BEST BUY lot, peering in windows, perusing price stickers, kicking the tires. The day was too cloudy, too cold, to attract much business; and the sales personnel, Angela Jordan among them, had finally made a concession to the undeniable reality of winter by wearing heavy coats of various sorts over their identical red blazers. It was almost five. Quitting time.

I waited for Angela to deal with the young couple looking droolingly at a shiny silver Firebird, and when they left in a boxy little brown AMC something-or-other, talking animatedly, I figured she had another sale in the bag.

“Next trip in,” I said, “and you’ll sell ’em.”

“I think so,” she smiled. “Just hope they can afford it. I’m trying to steer them toward something a little smaller.”

“Better not let your boss hear you talk like that.”

“You don’t understand the car business,” she said. “If I treat those two right, they’ll be my customers for the next thirty years.”

We walked toward the showroom.

I said, “I’m sorry about last night.”

“No need to apologize. I understand. It’s tough enough adjusting to the single life, after divorcing somebody you don’t love anymore, let alone after… losing somebody you still do love.”

“I was hoping I could take you out for a bite of supper.”

“That’d be nice. I don’t have any plans.”

“Maybe we could take your girls along.”

She smiled; teeth didn’t come much whiter, smiles didn’t come any better. “Wish you could meet them. And you will one of these days. But my mom drove the girls into Chicago for the day for a big shopping spree. They won’t be back till nine or ten tonight.”

“How much longer are you here?”

She checked her watch. “It is five, isn’t it? I’m off as of now. Let me go back in my office and change clothes. I’m going to be pretty casual…”

I was still in the suit and brown leather overcoat. “Well, I could always change into my ninja threads,” I said.

She laughed and said I looked just fine.

I followed her into the showroom and the smell of new cars. “You got any place special you’d like to eat?” I asked her.

“Any place but the Embers,” she said, and flashed her smile and disappeared into a small office. The other sales people had either gone or were going. But sitting in his office, staring out at me, was chunky little Lonny Best in his shirtsleeves and red-white-and-blue tie. He had a filtered cigarette going. He was frowning at me.

He stood and crooked his finger, like I was a kid he was summoning.

What the hell.

I went into his office and closed the door behind me.

“What the fuck’s the idea,” he said.

“Could you be a little more specific?”

He came out from behind the desk, apple cheeks blazing, eyes hard and small and glittering. He thrust a hard forefinger into my chest.

“You lied to me,” he said. “What was that shit about auto parts?”

“Come again?”

“You’re in the security game. Working for Freed. I know all about it.”

I had hoped Angela would be more discreet.

“Maybe I was checking up on you,” I said.

He thumped my chest again. “Well I don’t fuckin’ appreciate it! And stay away from Angela. I don’t want you havin’ anything to do with her.”

“Don’t touch me again.”

He shoved me hard. “I’ll touch you. I’ll fuckin’ kill you.”

I opened my coat and reached under my arm and took out the nine-millimeter.

His eyes got very large, considering how small they were, and he backed up. “Jesus-what’s the idea…”

I slapped him alongside his head with the barrel and he went down like a kid’s tower of blocks.

I sat on top of him and put the gun’s nose against his. His ear was bloody from where the gun slapped him. His eyes looked back and up at me, frantic and afraid. “Jesus, Jesus… I didn’t mean…”

“Don’t threaten to kill people,” I said. “It isn’t nice, unless you mean it. It isn’t nice if you mean it, either, but in that case, what’s the difference?”

He was sweating. “What… what do you want?”

“Like you said, I’m in the security game. And I’m working for Preston Freed.”

“What… what’s that to me?”

“That Buick that was stolen off your lot.”

His eyes tensed. That told me something.

“The men who took it,” I said, “did not have Preston Freed’s best interests at heart. Only I don’t think they ‘took’ it. I think you gave it to them.”

“You’re… you’re fuckin’ nuts.”

I twisted the bleeding ear and he howled.

“You used to be a Freed supporter,” I said. “What turned you against him? Why do you want him dead?”

“I don’t want anybody dead!”

“You can be dead yourself, if you don’t come clean.” I twisted the ear again. “Talk to me Lonny,” I said, above his howl.

A knocking at the office door interrupted us. “What’s going on in there?” Angela’s voice cried. “Lonny? Is Jack in there? Lonny, are you all right?”

I climbed off him, helped him up. He was shaking and shaken.

“Not a word about this,” I said, putting the gun away. “Find something to wipe off your ear.”

“You’re crazy,” he said, breathlessly; it was not an accusation, or an insult-more a surprised statement of assumed fact. He stumbled into a small washroom off his office and used a damp cloth on his ear.

I cleaned his blood off my hand with a handkerchief and opened the door and a wide-eyed, worried Angela was standing there, poised to knock again. I slid past her and pulled her along.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get something to eat.”

“What was going on in there?”

“Your car or mine?”

“Let’s take both this time, I’ll follow you; but what…”

“I’ll tell you when we get there.”

The Sundance Restaurant in the Blackhawk Hotel was a yuppie’s notion of the old west-pottery and Indian-blanket carpeting, sepia photos of Wild Bill Hickok and Sitting Bull, mingling with the usual hanging plants. Rather large, the open-beamed place was sectioned off and made to seem cozy, its unfinished pine walls cluttered with wagon wheels and mounted buffalo heads and lamps made from antlers. We sat by ourselves in a nook below a blue-and-orange stained-glass skylight.

“What was going on in Lonny’s office?” she asked, leaning forward. The ride over had not dimmed her interest or her concern. She was nervously toying with the gold chain around her neck; she was wearing a white blouse and blue jeans.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. I would have liked to take off my coat and tie and unbutton my top button; but I still wore my nine-millimeter in its shoulder holster. So I remained less than casual.

“You’d said you’d tell me,” she said with brittle, barely controlled anger. “It sounded like you were fighting in there.”

“It was just a scuffle.”

“A scuffle! What about?”

“You. He told me to stay away from you, and took a swing at me. I decked him, then sat on him a while till he was cooled down. That’s all.”

Exasperated, she shook her head, eyes large, said, “Does this sort of thing happen to you often?”

“It used to. I been leading a pretty quiet life lately.”

“Well, you’re certainly getting back into the swing of things, aren’t you?”