Max Collins - Quarry's deal

There was a comfortable sofa along the wall, across from the glass wall through which the large indoor pool could be seen. I sat and watched a middle-aged lady doing laps, and wished there were some younger female swimmers to watch. A nice looking woman of about twenty-five, dark hair, two-piece yellow suit, was down at the far end making use of the sun lamp. A man about sixty sat directly across from me on the other side of the pool, his bloated belly like a beach ball on his lap, a thick cigar in one hand, martini in the other, features of his face lost in a wealth of wrinkles. The middle-aged lady had two kids, or grandkids, I don’t know which. One was a boy about ten, the other a girl about eight. They were apparently trying to drown each other. In the glass I could also see my own vague reflection, and that of the wall behind me, with its several framed tintypes of Amana settlers, and various hanging artifacts, ox yoke, pitchfork, wagon wheel, superimposed on the guests enjoying the Holiday Inn pool. Maybe I would have made something profound out of all that, but then Tree was there, sitting down next to me.

He was wearing a stylish sportsjacket, about the color of cigarette smoke, with a dark blue open-collar shirt and white slacks. He smelled of musk cologne and his short white hair was brushed down flat on his head, a butch that had been made to behave. He had the suspiciously sincere smile and hard cool eyes you find in any self-made man. His business could be used cars or gambling, real estate or women, construction or heroin. Whatever. The look is the same.

“I don’t believe I caught your name,” he said, not looking at me, except maybe in the reflection on the glass wall.

“Quarry,” I said.

“That a last name or a first name?”

“It’s just something you can call me.”

“All right, Mr. Quarry. Convince me.”

“Of what?”

“Of all the danger I’m in.”

“You’re here, aren’t you? Doesn’t that mean you’re already convinced?”

“Maybe so. Let’s say I was convinced when you had a gun on me. What I don’t know, yet, is how convincing you are unarmed.”

“If that’s the way you feel,” I said, getting up, “I’ll just be running along…”

He caught my arm. Brought me back down with a strong grip. “One moment. You’re a poker player, Mr. Quarry. I’ve seen you indulging at the Barn, the last week or so. You know, you might have introduced yourself.”

“I’m shy.”

“Let me make my point. In playing poker, as you well know, there are bets made, and raises, and more raises, and then finally one player calls and gets to look at the other man’s hand, before showing his own. Well, we’ve played our little games, Mr. Quarry. In the dark. And me, I’m always sitting under the gun, it seems, keep having to check to your pat hand. Well this time I’m calling.”

I smiled. That was a rehearsed speech if I ever heard one. I wondered if he’d written it down on paper and memorized it or what. No matter. I had him. He already believed me, was convinced he was set up for a hit. He just needed to make up for the minor humiliations I’d put him through those two times. That is, if any humiliation is minor to an ego like his.

Some tourist types, a couple of near-elderly couples, stopped in front of us and stared at the artifacts on the wall over our heads. People were constantly flowing by, which in a strange sort of way afforded us privacy. The glass wall didn’t hold in all of the echoing pool noise, and the lobby was nearby, and so was the bar. Just enough commotion to make us invisible, and to keep our conversation to ourselves.

When the aging tourist types moved on, Tree picked up where he left off.

“Maybe I haven’t made myself clear,” he said. “I know how this kind of thing works. Hitting people, I mean. I know how much it costs. I know the channels you go through to get it done. I know how many people come in to do the job, and what each one does. I been around, in other words. I know some things that you better know, Mr. Quarry, or you may find out the hard way what getting hit is all about.”

“I know all those things, Frank.”

“Prove it.”

“All right. Ask.”

“How much does it cost?”

“That depends.”

“On?”

“Whether you hire some asshole in a bar for a hundred bucks or something, or you go for real professionals.”

“Real professionals.”

“Two thousand up.”

“How do I get in touch with them?”

“You don’t. There’s a middle man, a broker.”

“I go to him, then.”

“No. He gets fed his clients from mob people.”

“So these are mob killings we’re talking about.”

“Not necessarily. Say some businessman has a problem, a wife, another woman, a competitor, a partner, a problem. Say he has a friend, another businessman, who has links to the mob. He asks his friend to put him in touch with somebody who takes care of problems. That puts the wheels in motion.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Maybe I used to kill people for money.”

“Is that so?”

“Since you already know all this, maybe you hired me once. Who knows?”

But he wasn’t out of questions yet. “How many people involved?”

“Three.”

“Three?” he said. Like he’d caught me.

“There’s somebody to do the stakeout work,” I said. “And somebody to pull the trigger.”

“You said three.”

“Sure. The victim makes three, Frank. That’s where you come in.”

The psychopathic hospital at Iowa City was a sprawling one-story brick building on a spacious lawn whose many trees and bushes were apparently tailored to provide a soothing landscape, no matter what the season. Only right now it was no season at all, rather that limbo period between winter and spring, trees gray and skeletal, grass brown as cardboard. Even the few evergreen bushes looked wilted, like a salad that sat out.

We came in separate cars. I had already determined that no one (except me) had followed Tree from Des Moines to the Amana turn-off on Interstate 80. But that didn’t mean somebody, knowing Tree’s patterns, might not drive to Iowa City by some other route and pick up shadowing him there. So Tree parked along the curb of a half-circle drive designed for outpatient pick-up, where you could legally park for thirty minutes or so; and I left my latest rental Ford in a metered stall down the slope of the hill just beyond the hospital. I spent ten minutes trying to see if anybody was here ahead of us, watching, and there didn’t seem to be, but I couldn’t be sure: the University Hospital was across the way, with its large parking lot, where somebody could easily be staked out. My main concern was not wanting to be recognized, not wanting to be seen with Tree, particularly by Lu, who might be sitting in a car in that lot watching right now. Maybe the ten minutes between Tree going in and me following would be enough; that and my rental car and feeble disguise, consisting of glasses and a sweater I’d pulled on over my shirt, hopefully affecting the look of a straight-type college kid. The man of a thousand faces.

Inside was a hallway, with a glassed-in office area off to the left, with a pretty young nurse in it, who Tree was unsuccessfully flirting with when I came in. I was identified as a cousin of the patient; evidently only relatives were admitted. Then the nurse told Tree that Dr. Cash wanted a word with him before the visitation, and Tree went down the hall and knocked on a door on the right and it opened and he went in.

I waited downstairs, in a room full of tables and chairs and vending machines. This room, like the corridor I’d been briefly in upstairs, was as coldly institutional as a tax form. Some lunch room. I’d sooner have a sandwich in the morgue. Which didn’t stop me from feeding some change to a vending machine that sold me a Coke that was all ice and syrup and I drank it anyway.