Max Collins - Quarry's list

“Has anyone else come around to talk to you, Carrie? Someone who might claim to be an old business associate of your husband’s.”

“I haven’t talked to anyone in the last three months except members of my family and police and federal people. And you, Jack.”

“And right now you’re wondering how the hell to ask who the hell I am.”

“Yes.”

“Officially I was a salesman for one of those mail-order companies your husband was part owner of.”

“Unofficially?”

“I guess you could say I delivered messages for him.”

“You’re being vague.”

“I have to be.”

“You’re trying to say you were involved in the illegal side of what my husband did.”

“Yes.”

“I see. Then it wasn’t accidental, our meeting each other?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t arrange the meeting, Carrie. Did you?”

“No.”

“Then we’ll have to assume it was accidental.”

“A coincidence, you mean.”

“I used to stay at the Concort, whenever I came to the Cities on business, to confer with your husband. I like the Concort. I like to swim there. So when I came to the Cities this time, I stayed there again. And swam there again. You inherited an interest in the Concort when your husband was killed. You like to come around and swim there in the mornings. So we bumped into each other.”

“That’s still pretty coincidental.”

“I know it is. It’s the reason I didn’t call you back today. I looked in your purse, last night, saw who you were. It bothered me. I wasn’t going to contact you again till I was sure about you.”

“Are you sure about me now?”

“I guess I have to be. Just like you have to be about me. Maybe we should just be tentatively sure about each other.”

The fog and misting had us crawling along the highway. Few other cars were foolhardy enough to be out on a night like this, pushing through the thick, gray shifting unreality.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” she said.

“Which question?”

“Why do you think someone’s trying to kill me?”

So I explained it to her, modifying certain parts and leaving others out, but giving her what was, essentially, the truth. I told her that an attempt had been made on my life, for reasons I had yet to ascertain, but that I had managed to trace the attempt to another former associate of her husband’s (Ash) who I’d followed to the Quad Cities, where some sort of takeover of her husband’s extralegal business activities seemed to be in progress, part of which involved Ash and another man staking out her home and recording her every move and, eventually, killing her.

I also told her that despite our poolside encounter, I hadn’t known until a few hours ago that she was the potential victim in the brown brick house. And I told her that if she hadn’t broken her usually rigid daily routine and driven to the Concort last night for an evening swim, she’d probably be dead now.

That chilled her a bit.

“I still don’t understand why anyone would want to have me killed.”

“Neither do I. I was hoping you could tell me.”

“I can’t. The part of my husband’s life these people would be interested in, I’m totally ignorant of.”

“Maybe they don’t know that. Maybe you’re in possession of information that could be dangerous to somebody, even if you aren’t aware of it.”

“I don’t see how.”

“Again, neither do I. But somebody does. Somebody considers you an obstacle. Somehow, you’ve got in the way of whoever it is who’s trying to take over where your husband left off.”

“And I don’t even know what it is they’re trying to take over. Narcotics smuggling? Crooked politics? What?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“No. No. No, I don’t.”

“Carrie, a while ago you said how those federal people and the police had bothered you… unmercifully, I think you said. Is that why you haven’t asked me to take you to the police?”

“Oh, you’re wondering if that’s occurred to me. That I should be thinking, if my life’s really in danger, shouldn’t I run to the police? Why put myself in your hands instead, the hands of a stranger? Well, why not? Who else do I have? I put myself in your hands last night, willingly enough. Why not again.”

There was an uneasiness in her voice, despite her artificially flip attitude, that disturbed me. A resignation, that seemed to say, If you’re my lover, fine… but if you’re my murderer, well that’s fine, too… it just doesn’t matter that much to me, one way or the other, anymore.

“Carrie,” I said. “If you think I’ve kidnapped you, you’re wrong. If you want to go to the police, just say so. I’ll turn this heap around and drop you off at the station in Davenport. Just say the word.”

“No. No police. I told you about my husband’s political ties. People in local government and beyond could be involved in the same illegal things he was involved in, and if there are people trying to kill me, it could very likely be them. So, no, I don’t have the urge to call the police. But I would like to know what you hope to do for me. Besides hide me out for a while. How can you stop killers, anyway?”

“The same way they stop you.”

“Oh. I think I see what you mean.”

“Maybe you’ll want to change your mind about the police, after all, Carrie. Knowing that.”

“Knowing what? That some people are going to die? And that you’re going to kill them? No. My husband was murdered. I’m apparently next on the list. People want to murder me. No, it doesn’t bother me if people like that are killed. It doesn’t even bother me if you’re the one who does it. I just don’t want to hear about it. Lie to me if you have to. But don’t tell me.”

We were coming into a small town, a cemetery on our left, a sign welcoming us to Blue Grass, population 1032, on the right.

“You might be holed up at that cottage several days,” I said. “Got any food on hand there?”

“Not to speak of,” she said.

“Well, if something’s open here, we’ll stop and pick some up.”

A block later I pulled up along the curb in front of an old-fashioned clapboard grocery store and sent her in. Then I drove down another block and pulled in to get gas.

While the Buick was being filled, I went in and got change and used the pay phone.

I called the number Ash had given me earlier today.

The call went through immediately; one ring and a well-modulated baritone voice answered.

“Who’s speaking?” I demanded.

“Curtis Brooks.”

“Brooks, are you the man, or just a stooge? I don’t want to talk to another go-between.”

“You must be Mr. Quarry.”

“Do you have ten thousand dollars handy?”

“Why?”

“Have it handy by tomorrow morning. Early. I’ve got the Broker’s widow and that’s what it’ll cost you, if you want her.”

I hung up, paid for the gas and drove over and picked her up at the grocery store, and we headed through the fog and mist toward her cottage.

I let her carry the groceries. There was only one bag and it didn’t kill her. I carried the guns, the silenced Ruger I got off the dead backup man, and my. 38, which I’d packed as a spare, the only thing I’d bothered to dig out of my suitcase for the stay at her cottage; the Ruger I kept in hand, the. 38 I tucked in my waistband. And I did carry a six-pack of Coke, too, so don’t get the idea chivalry’s entirely dead.

Fifteen miles or so out of Blue Grass we had turned off the highway to cut over to the older highway that followed the river, and to do that we had to take side roads, gravel country roads that were winding and hilly and lined with trees, a journey that even under the best of conditions would have been a roller coaster ride, let alone in this weather. So we didn’t do much talking: I drove, and she helped navigate, and finally we came down a particularly steep hill and she pointed out the abandoned farmhouse she’d told me about, on the right-hand side of the road, near the bottom of the hill, just barely visible in the fog and looking like every kid’s idea of a haunted house. She’d said this would make a good place to leave the car, and as I pulled in there I wondered for a second what she was leading me into, but she wasn’t leading me into anything, as it turned out, except a good place to leave the car. With the Buick parked behind the sagging barn next to the deserted farmhouse, we set off through the fog on foot, her lugging the groceries, me the six-pack of Coke and guns.