Max Collins - Quarry's deal

“You start off each dealer with a set amount of cash, each night, then, which can be replenished if necessary…”

“Yeah, two thousand each, and that usually holds up, if they’re any good.”

“What if they aren’t?”

‘‘What?”

“Aren’t any good? What if they lose?”

“If a guy has a bad week, I come through for him. It can happen to anybody. I help him out, lay a few hundred on ’im. I keep my people happy, and that way they don’t try to pull anything on me.”

“What if somebody consistently loses?”

“Then I fire his ass, of course. What’s this all about?”

“The other night you said you were thinking of replacing a dealer. Did you say that just to have an excuse for giving me the job, or do you really have somebody worth getting rid of?”

“You tell me, Quarry. You played here for a week.”

“Then I’d say it’s the sour little asshole with the glasses. The college boy.”

“I’d say you’re right.”

“He loses heavily?”

“Not really. But he doesn’t win. He’s been with me a couple of months. Did okay at first, then had a real bad night and I think it kind of threw him for a loop. He’s never really recovered. He lost a few more times after that and then ever since he’s been just sort of breaking even.”

“He lost all the nights I played him.”

“Not according to him. He’s had at least two thousand to turn back in, at the end of the night.”

“He’s giving you money out of his own pocket, then.”

“Why in hell would he do that?”

“To postpone the inevitable… his getting canned.”

“It still doesn’t make any sense. If he’s losing, why would he want to hang onto his chair?”

“He could be a compulsive gambler, and’s hoping to recoup. Or he could be somebody who’s here to do something besides play cards.”

“Oh. Jesus. Is that what he is?”

“Possibly. I don’t know. I do know he’s one of the guys who worked me over a few nights back. The other one’s another college-boy type who’s been a regular here. Blond-haired kid with big ears?”

“I think I know who you mean.”

“Yeah, well the other night, before Lu and I joined you at DiPreta’s, I had a little run-in with that clown. He was following me, and I suckered him into an alley and put him to sleep. Temporarily, that is. He drives a Chevelle. It’s out in your lot right now. So is he, probably. I didn’t see him upstairs or down, but that’s no surprise. I broke his nose the other night and he probably doesn’t want to show what’s left of his face around here, where he might see me.”

“Then why’s he here at all?”

“I can think of a reason.”

That stopped him for a moment.

“This is it, then,” he said.

“Tonight’s the night, you mean? Shit, I don’t know. There’s too many things that just don’t track here. I’m starting to think this is something else entirely.”

“Like what?”

“I’m working on it. I think we better have an under- standing. If I get involved in something that is apart from our other business together, but something that turns out to be of benefit to you, can I expect to be rewarded accordingly?”

“You bet your ass.”

“Okay, then.”

And I got up and went to the door.

Went out to gamble.

John Smith was sitting in the blue Chevelle, on the rider’s side. Slouched against the door, smoking a cigarette, two fingers resting gingerly on his bandaged nose. Where surveillance was concerned, he’d been an incompetent agent, but you could hardly ask for a better subject. It was like sneaking up on a corpse.

The parking lot, dimly lit except directly under the small neon over the door, was empty of anything but cars at the moment. Ten o’clock was too late for many people to be arriving and too early for many people to be leaving. And a perfect time to go out to my GT on one side of the lot, unlock the glove compartment and get out the silenced nine-millimeter, and walk over to the other side of the lot and the Chevelle.

The door he was leaning against was unlocked, I noticed, and when I opened it he fell out like an ironing board from its closet.

He had a gun, a Smith and Wesson snubnose. 38, but it, like his cigarette, tumbled out of his fingers while he was tumbling out himself. I scooped up the. 38, dropped it into a jacket pocket and pointed the nine-millimeter at the middle of his face.

He was sprawled on his right side and looked like he was trying to swim in the gravel. He looked comical. More so, when his eyes crossed to look at the barrel of the nine-millimeter.

“You motherfucker,” he said, lamely, like he’d never used the word before in his life.

“Shhh,” I said.

“What’s going…”

I poked his nose with the gun’s.

“Shhh, I said.”

He put a hand over his nose. He started to weep.

“Please,” I said. “This is embarrassing enough as it is.”

I patted him down with my free hand. He had no other weapon.

“Keys,” I said.

He pointed at the car.

I looked over and the keys were in the dash.

“Get them,” I said.

He pushed himself up, hesitantly, and leaned into the car. I leaned in with him, pressing the flat snout of the silenced gun against his back, his ribs, and he got the keys. We leaned back out and he turned slowly and held out the keys to me. They dangled like a vulgar earring.

I didn’t take them. I shut the car door and said, “Open the trunk.”

He cocked his head, like he couldn’t quite make out what I was saying. With those ears of his, you’d think he wouldn’t have any trouble hearing.

“The trunk,” I said.

He shrugged, but the casualness of that gesture didn’t work for him. This was one scared shitless character.

Which didn’t keep him from opening the trunk, fumblingly of course, but he opened it.

I had, by this time, stuck the nine-millimeter in my waistband. For a guy like this I didn’t need the gun. In fact I could’ve given it to him to hold for me.

I glanced around, looking for the beams of light that would indicate someone coming up the drive into the lot, looking to see if anyone was coming out a Barn door, or if anyone might be able to see us from a window. The latter was barely possible, but between the lack of windows downstairs and the shuttered ones upstairs, and our being way over to the far side of the lot, I felt it unlikely there were any eyes on us.

So we were standing in front of the trunk of the Chevelle like a couple of guys in front of an altar, or urinal. And my bland-looking college kid companion, with his busted nose and big, apparently nonfunctional ears, looked at me wondering what to do next. I told him.

“Get in,” I said.

He cocked his head again.

“In,” I said, and pointed at the trunk.

He cocked his head and pointed at the trunk with me.

“Oh Jesus,” I said, and pushed him in there and shut the lid.

After closing I sat at the bar and nursed a gimlet while Lu was cleaning glasses and generally tidying up. The dealers were filing into Tree’s office to turn in their money, and witness the ritual of seeing the money go in his fat relic of a safe. There was a second ritual, nightly, of the money being shifted to the real safe, the one in the floor under the carpet, but the dealers didn’t get to see that.

The guy with glasses was one of the first to go, but the sound of the outer door opening and closing didn’t follow him. I hadn’t expected it to.

I waited till the line of dealers had thinned down to two, and went to the coat room to get my jacket. The. 38 I’d lifted from the party currently residing in the trunk of a Chevelle was still in the pocket I’d dropped it in. I’d returned the bulky nine-millimeter to the GT’s glove compartment. If Lu happened to see me with a gun, I’d prefer it was the. 38 and not the silenced automatic, professional tool that the latter one was.