Max Collins: Quarry's cut

She let go of my hand, slowly, and drifted reluctantly off, disappearing into the dark.

I rejoined Castile.

“What was that all about?” he said.

“She was just wondering when I was going to come up.”

“I see. Is there any possibility…”

“That she isn’t the sweet child she seems to be? Sure. I told you before: there are women in Turner’s business.”

“You don’t think she’s been listening or anything…”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. But I don’t know.”

“Are you sleeping with her tonight?”

“I’ll be in the same bed. I’m not going to be getting any more sleep tonight than you, though. Where’s your room, anyway?”

“Not near Janet’s. It’s on the third floor.”

“I’ll move Janet and me next door to you and your wife. How’ll that be?”

“That’ll be fine with me. Is that one of the precautions you were talking about taking?”

“Yes.”

“What will you tell Janet?”

“I don’t know yet, something. But we’ll be next door. Count on that. How much does your wife know about all this?”

“Well… she knows I was involved with those slasher films, as middleman… and about the three o’clock phone call from the guy saying he… but I never told her about the relationship between the slasher films and that guy, his daughter… I just didn’t think Millie could handle that. All she thinks is that my life was threatened, and that I’ve been acting very paranoid since. Jesus. I’m scared. Really scared.”

“That’s what Janet said. That she was scared.”

“She did? Why, I wonder?”

“I don’t know. She had a bad dream, I think. She thought she heard something.”

And then, like punctuation to what I’d said, something landed heavily, thuddingly, out in the open area of the building, the central shaft area, a whump sound with overtones of brittle breaking sounds, like a bag of laundry that had been heaved onto the cement, only somebody had left something breakable in some of the coat and pants pockets, something made of china perhaps, some things that would shatter when hitting the cement…

I held Castile back with an arm, reached over with my free hand and flicked on a small lamp on an end table.

There was a naked body in the center of the floor, out in the open area. Oh, not exactly in the center, maybe, but close. The body was that of a man, and he’d hit face down, but twisting as he did, so that the trunk of him was visible, and there was no mistaking who it was.

Frankie Waddsworth, superstar of porn, wouldn’t have to sweat getting it up, anymore.

“Jesus,” Castile said.

I was kneeling next to the body. Castile was keeping his distance, though he was close enough for us to be able to speak in hushed tones. The only light was from the one lamp in the room where we’d been talking, and it made Castile cast a long, irregular shadow, helping make the already eerie, absurd situation all the more unsettling.

“So much for my nothing’s-going-to-happen-tonight theory,” I said.

“How can you… touch him?”

I was examining the body.

“Well I’m not getting a kick out of it,” I said. “But it’s not going to kill me, either.”

“You have such a soothing way of putting things,” he said.

“Thanks.”

I could find no wounds of any kind-bullet or knife or anything else, although if he’d been killed, say, with a long narrow needle or something, the wound wouldn’t be readily visible, particularly in this lousy light. One thing was obvious enough: his neck was broken; he’d landed on it, after apparently having fallen the entire four floors.

“Who’s sleeping on the upper floor?”

“Just Waddsworth… was. I believe.”

“Well he’s sleeping downstairs tonight.”

“You don’t think this is… your Turner’s work? Do you?”

“Maybe. Probably. Janet said she heard arguing. Maybe this is the aftermath of a quarrel up at the fag convention upstairs. I don’t know.”

Castile touched his throat, like he just heard Dracula was in town. “Then Turner could be inside the lodge… right now.”

“He could be. Or his partner could’ve done this. Or Waddsworth could’ve slipped and fell.”

“You don’t really believe this could be an accident.”

“I don’t believe anything except that this sucker’s dead as they come, and he could be starting a trend.”

“My God.”

I stood and joined Castile and we both cast long shadows on Waddsworth.

“We’re not telling anybody about this,” I said. “Somebody in the lodge already knows, of course… whoever pushed Waddsworth, that is… and that somebody’ll expect us to wake everybody up and start hollering and everything. We won’t do that.”

“We won’t?”

“No. We won’t do anything that’s expected of us. Whoever is responsible for this has thrown me off balance… and I’d like to do the same back at him.”

“The poor son of a bitch.”

“Who?”

“Waddsworth.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sure. Anyway, let’s go ahead and search the place and see if we can find Turner.”

“Then you do think he’s in the lodge?”

“He could be. But it’s a good idea to batten down the hatches anyway, right? You want to get that gun of yours?”

“All right.”

“And tell your wife you’re switching rooms. Take another room on the same floor, but get out of that room you’re in now.”

“What excuse’ll I give her?”

“Tell her there’s a draft in the room. Tell her anything. But don’t tell her about Waddsworth. We’ll save that little surprise for morning… if we make it to morning.”

“Jesus.”

“Go on. Get the gun. We’ll search the place together.”

He nodded, and headed toward the stairs. He glanced back once, at the naked dead figure sprawled on the rust-color shag carpet, and shuddered and went on.

We searched the lodge and didn’t find Turner. Of course he could’ve been hiding in somebody’s room, specifically the somebody who was in this with him. But all of the rooms that were supposed to be empty were empty, as was the basement, which was nothing but cement walls and floor and a big furnace.

And so I sent Castile off to bed, to the room he’d moved himself and his wife to, just a few doors down from their old room, which I intended to sleep in. Or rather to not sleep in. To wait in, for Turner and/or somebody else to come dropping in to see Castile.

I had a good idea who that somebody was, too. I hadn’t told Castile, as I always like to keep some information to myself, to stay in control of things; but based upon the description Turner had given, under the gun, of his partner Burden (“Short guy, balding, on the heavy side… late forties, early fifties”), Harry the fat cameraman was it.

I’d thought about going after my nine-millimeter, but had decided against it. It would mean going outside, in the dark, and that would be putting myself on a platter for Turner. And I didn’t want to go waving a gun around in here: I was, after all, a writer for Oui magazine, as far as everybody but Castile was concerned, and it was a cover I didn’t want blown. Now that there had been a death there would be a certain amount of investigation by the sheriff’s office and it would be very difficult for me to fade into the background of that investigation once I’d gone waving an automatic around. So for the time being, the gun stayed hidden out in the tool chest in the shed.

Since I intended staying awake all night, I shouldn’t have any trouble, no matter who came calling. All I had to do was flick on a light before I got mistaken for Castile and killed; it was that simple. If it was Turner, he’d want to find out what the hell I was doing here, before he did anything else; if it was Turner’s partner, which is to say Harry, in all probability, he’d be confused seeing someone besides Castile and wife in that particular room, and while he was confused I could either talk or act.