Max Collins - Quarry's cut

“He’s been in movies with every major porno actress. And after all of that, he still had time for me. Can you imagine how that made me feel?”

“Not exactly.”

“And, so, now Harry is angry with me. I wish I could make him understand.”

“Has anything like this ever happened before?”

“No. Not with Harry and me. Though he’s always been the possessive type. That’s hard to cope with, sometimes, and anyway, who can resist a superstar?”

I couldn’t argue with that.

Then Janet appeared, with a platter of sandwiches, which she set on the bar, and everyone-except Frankie Wadds- worth-appeared to get something to eat. With the arrival of Harry, Richie and I parted company, so as to not further aggravate the situation, although later I saw Richie sneaking off with some extra sandwiches tucked under his arm, probably going up to serve Waddsworth his supper in bed.

Janet and I shared a booth. The sandwiches were good. They were on rye and mine was corned beef and Swiss cheese. There was beer, too. Olympia and Budweiser. I chose Oly, which is Clint Eastwood’s favorite. Who can resist a superstar?

Castile was sitting with his wife. His brown-tinted goggle type glasses were gone, now. Apparently that was part of his directing costume that he discarded when shooting for the day suspended. He was still wearing the DIRECTOR sweatshirt, though.

I had to get him alone and talk to him. Soon. Before Turner beat me to him.

After everyone had had their fill of the sandwiches and beer, Castile disappeared upstairs with his wife. I was starting to think there was no way to get him by himself, and I couldn’t say what I had to say in front of his wife.

There were several small lounge areas on the first floor, most of them living rooms on the order of the sunken one, though without fireplaces, and dominated by the large windows that were standard throughout the lodge. The windows were draped, but looking behind the drapes you could see frost and nothing much else.

Castile or someone had turned on the heat, but it was still a little chilly. I told Janet that everybody seemed to have guessed that she and I had a natural rapport, and so she consented to share a couch with me, and we snuggled together, there, in a cooperative effort to battle the cold and watch some television.

Castile came in, after a while, sat in a soft chair near the couch, asking if we minded the intrusion: the movie we were watching was His Girl Friday, one of his all-time favorites. Howard Hawks directed it, he said. I was tempted to go looking for Richie to tell him.

But everyone besides Janet, Castile and me had disappeared to private cubbyholes in the big lodge.

And after we had watched a second movie, a James Cagney gangster opus called Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, which was not directed by Howard Hawks (I asked Castile), Janet said she was getting sleepy and was going to head on up to her room. I gave her a look that told her I’d be up later. She gave me a look that told me she understood my look, and went on up.

“I didn’t know you were a movie buff,” Castile said.

The room was dark, except for the TV screen, which right now was between movies, and a long commercial about getting your car repainted was playing.

“I’m not,” I said. “But I stay up watching them all night sometimes. The box can be hypnotic.”

“It can at that.”

“I wonder if we could skip the next movie, though. I’d really like to take a few minutes and talk to you.”

“More interview material? Can’t that wait till tomorrow. We’ll probably be snowed in all day, plenty of time for that then. There’s another Cagney coming on in a few minutes…”

“This is something else. Something completely different than an article for Oui magazine. It’s something important.”

“Well. Go ahead, then.”

“The telephone isn’t out because of the storm.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I cut the wire.”

“You cut the wire?”

“I cut the wire.”

“What are you…”

“I’m just trying to make a point.”

“Which is?”

“How easy it was I got in here. How quick you’ve been to buy my story.”

“You’re not a writer.”

“No.”

“Who are you, then? You’re not a cop of any kind.”

“No, I’m not. I’m somebody can help you. That’s what I’m here for, really. To help you.”

“That’s funny. You don’t look humanitarian.”

“I’m not. I’d make a profit on this deal, hopefully.”

“This is the most convoluted approach to blackmail I ever heard of

…”

“It’s not blackmail, and it’s not a confidence game or anything like that, either. I’m here to offer you a service.”

“And that service is?”

“A kind of bodyguard, I guess. What would you say… and I know this may sound sort of crazy, but bear with me… what would you say if I told you someone was going to kill you? Not try to kill you.. but kill you. A professional job, bought and paid for. What would you say?”

“Is that what you are? You’re here to kill me?”

His reaction threw me a little: he was taking it so cool… apparently he didn’t believe me, thought I was a nutcase.

I tried to straighten him out.

I said, “If I were here to kill you, you’d be dead now.”

“I see.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“Your question…?”

“What would you say if I told you someone was coming here to kill you? Probably tonight?”

And then he surprised me.

He said, “I’d say I believe you.”

“I guess we both have some explaining to do,” he said. His smile was natural, for a change; and he looked older, now, less like Andy Hardy and more like the nearly forty his wife said he was.

“Why don’t you start,” I suggested.

“I thought you might say that. Suppose I tell you some of it. And then you can tell me who you really are, and how you’ve come to be here.”

“Fair enough.”

He leaned back in the chair, looked toward the television. The second Cagney movie had begun, a western of some sort, from the 1950s, with Cagney looking heavy and somewhat long-in-the-tooth, and the sound was still on, and it made it a little difficult to hear what Castile was saying. But it was worth the effort.

“Six months ago I received a phone call,” he said. “Three o’clock in the morning, give or take a few minutes. As it happens I was up, working on one of my films, using a Movieola to check on some editing problems… a Movieola is a… well, never mind what it is. That’s not important. What’s important is the phone call.”

He paused. Swallowed. Went on.

“It was a man’s voice, on the other end. Very average sounding. Perhaps a little on the high-pitched order. And there was a tremor in the voice, but it wasn’t nervousness… it was something else. Something else.

“He said, ‘I’m sorry to wake you.’

“I said, ‘You didn’t. I was up already. Who is this?’

“He said, ‘I’m nobody you know. And we’ll never meet.’

“I didn’t know what to make of that. I said, ‘I’m hanging up…’

“He said, ‘Don’t. I have something to say that you’ll find… noteworthy.’

“I said, ‘What is it, then?’ Impatient.

“He said, ‘I killed you this afternoon.’

“And I said, ‘What?’ And then I said I was hanging up again.

“‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘It’s true… I killed you. I arranged to have you killed, I should say. Took a contract out, just like the movies, just like TV. Hitmen. All of that.’

“I was frightened now. There was something in the voice that was.. real. It wasn’t a crank call. It was real. ‘Who is this?’ I said.