Max Collins: Quarry's cut

But that was then. This was now.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said Her near baritone voice was soft sounding. Gentle.

“Mind what?”

“My seeing you. You advised against it, remember?”

“Well, it’s been two months, practically. It’s okay. No one’s come round to talk to me about it. You?’’

“Yes,” she said, looking out at the lake, not me. “They tracked me down… despite my having used Stein instead of Katz as my last name.”

“Through your friend at the Playboy Club at Geneva?”

“Right. The one who recommended me to Castile for doing sound. Anyway. Some men came around. It was in Chicago, and they were Chicago police detectives. I don’t know why they were involved… but they were who did the questioning. They were no problem. They talked to me at my apartment a couple of times. That was it.”

“What did they ask you?”

“They asked when I’d left the lodge, and I told them in the afternoon before the snow got heavy. Like you suggested. They asked how I got to and from the lodge, and I said I’d taken my car… which I hadn’t… Castile had those two men, Harry and Richie, come pick me up… and you drove me home, of course. But the detectives accepted everything I said. They were also good about keeping my real name out of the papers. My parents still don’t know I was involved.”

“That’s good.”

“I’m a little numb about it all, to this day. Did you read Castile’s confession in the papers? The crazy suicide note he left, on tape? Weird.”

“Very.”

“That’s one of the things the detectives wanted to know about.”

“Pardon?”

“The tape Castile made… he didn’t say anything about that one man he killed. The detectives showed me pictures of the man and I’d never seen him before… he wasn’t anybody who was at the lodge when we were.”

“Isn’t that strange.”

“Yes. They found him in that farmhouse… gives me the creeps just thinking about it. All that time we were sitting in your car, in that barn, cuddling together keeping warm, trying to hold each other a little and forget about some of the ugliness… all that time that man was in that farmhouse, next door, with his throat cut.”

“Really.’’

“It gives me the creeps just thinking about it.”

“Don’t think about it.”

“How could anyone do a thing like that?”

“I don’t know.”

“I read where the film is going to be released. Isn’t that… sick? Just awful?”

“It’ll make money.”

“I know. I know it will and it’s just sick. Oh… I’m sorry. I forgot that you invested in the picture…”

I had told her, in the barn, when she finally got around to asking me whether or not I really was a writer for Oui and if not what had I been doing there, that I was a silent partner in the film, that I had invested with Castile and wanted to come around and watch the filming, without announcing myself as one of the “money men.”

“I won’t be able to come forward for any of the money,” I said. “I used a false name and I don’t want to stir the investigation, up, where I’m concerned.”

“That’s too bad, in a way. Money is money, after all.”

“I guess so.”

“Anyway. I just wanted to stop and tell you how things came out on my end… and see how you were doing.”

“I’m doing fine.”

“I wish it had been different. Not just for those people that got murdered. You know, it’s really something… people are talking about what happened at the lodge in terms of what Manson did and terrible crimes like that… they’ll be writing books about it, trying to figure out what exactly went on at that place.”

“Good luck to them.”

“But I started to say… I wish it could’ve been different. For us. I think I said back at that lodge… and I know I said it waiting in that car in that barn with you… but I’ll say it again: I wish we could get to know each other better, under better circumstances, than either of the times we got thrown together… that first time by my father, the second time, horrible time, at the lodge… But now we never will, I suppose.”

“I suppose.”

“Every time I’d see you I’d be reminded of what happened back there… and the memory of that is hard enough to deal with without being reminded of it constantly.”

“I understand.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I am too.”

She touched my face and got in the Lincoln and pushed her glasses back down and drove away.

I stood there a while, looking out at the lake. There was a breeze. It was cold for June.

I went back to my game.