Max Collins - Quarry's list

“ Understatement as a Way of Life… if you ever write a book, Mr. Quarry, that should be the title… Understatement as a Way of Life. It is, indeed, going to get hot around here. Soon. Today.”

“Something you can’t handle, is it?”

“The police I can handle. The federal investigators, hopefully, will not be a major problem, since their man died in an exchange of fire with another man, who died himself in that same exchange. Still, an investigation of the magnitude federal people could conceivably exert will make some… friends of mine in Chicago somewhat… nervous. Yes. Chicago is another question entirely.”

“What’s Chicago got to do with anything? Broker’s operation was never a syndicate thing. You represent them in court, I know, but so what?”

“I wish my involvement with my friends in Chicago was as casual.. as voluntary… as you suggest.”

“But it isn’t?”

“No, Mr. Quarry. You see… what’s the best way to put it? They own me. The handsome fees you must think I receive are a figment of the public’s imagination. I am given an allowance, like a child. Occasionally I’m given permission to handle an outside case, for appearance sake. The money I do receive is just enough to maintain a certain level, a front, a facade. But nothing lavish. Surely you wondered about this office, and my lack of associates, distinguished or otherwise? I don’t even own my home, Mr. Quarry; a corporation does. And you can guess who owns the corporation.”

“How did it happen?”

“I owed them a lot of money. I was a young man, recently married, with a child, a promising career, and… gambling debts. Yes, I owed them a lot of money. I traded them my life for it. Those, literally, were the terms.”

“Then I was wrong…?”

“Wrong in guessing I was your Broker’s silent partner? Only in that you assumed I backed him financially. Hardly. What I did for him was help him build his own facade, here in the Quad Cities, where I enjoy a certain amount of respect and social standing. I let him bask in that, share it. And one other thing. I was his link. To the people in Chicago. His ‘clients’… came from me.”

“You.”

“Me. Where did you suppose your Broker found his clients? On the street? By advertising? How do you suppose people knew to turn to him with their… problems? Think about it. Take your average semi-respectable businessman, who wants someone out of the way… his wife, his mistress, a business rival, a business partner, a troublesome politician, anyone. To whom does a man with such a need, such a problem, turn? Well, being a businessman, he has, in the course of business, most likely come in contact with an occasional acquaintance who just might happen to have a link or two to so-called organized crime. He goes to this acquaintance, in confidence, discusses his problem, hypothetically, of course… and he asks his acquaintance, with the sinister connections, ‘Whom might one turn to if one wanted someone killed?’ ”

“And the guy with the problem eventually gets referred to a Broker, is that it?”

“That’s it exactly,” Brooks said, nodding smugly. “You see, Mr. Quarry, it’s convenient for my friends in Chicago to have people like yourself on tap, so to speak… it’s occasionally necessary for them to make use of outside people, for housecleaning, among other things, and they keep such people prosperous and thereby available by maintaining them, through a sort of referral service. Can you deny you’ve never been involved in a syndicate-related job? Of course, you can’t. Now, I’ve been generalizing here, naturally, and have been necessarily vague about the finer points, but you now have an idea, at least, of how the business you’ve been involved in for some years actually works. The cog finally begins to understand the wheel.”

“Didn’t you make any money feeding Broker clients?”

“Yes. My involvement in this particular, somewhat distasteful business arrangement was the sole crumb thrown me by my Chicago friends. Here, at last, I was allowed to pursue a dishonest dollar like any good American.”

“Then why are you still hurting for cash?”

“Because I made some decisions, relating to the stock market, which were no wiser than decisions I made years ago, when I gambled in less socially acceptable ways.”

“You’re still losing, you mean.”

“I wasn’t losing, Mr. Quarry, not in this situation, anyway, until you turned up on the scene.”

“You seem to think you’re going to lose where Chicago’s concerned.”

“Possibly. But I really think I can handle that. They won’t be happy about the death of that federal man, true, but as I explained to you, and will explain to them, that’s a storm we all should be able to weather. Still, it will be an effort to convince them I haven’t hopelessly botched my attempt to reopen your Broker’s referral service. Knowing I had the list would soothe them, a bit, however.”

“It means that much to you.”

“Enough to kill my own child, you mean?” He sighed, heavily, and the well-etched character lines in his browned face seemed to sag a little, for the first time. “Pay attention, Mr. Quarry, and I will do my best to once and for all satiate your seemingly unquenchable need to know. You may not be aware that my late wife was the only child of a rather wealthy industrialist, here in the area. That brown brick home you’ve been spending so much time watching of late is only one of several my wife’s parents maintained. You may be wondering why my wife’s parents didn’t, uh, bail me out, when I had my gambling debts to settle. They could have, but refused. My wife felt similarly. She was obsessed with the idea I married her for her money, when actually, that was only part of it. Nevertheless, there is a great deal of money there, that for many years has been just beyond my reach. Now. Do you understand, finally? I know that I will never understand your need to know these things, seeing as God alone knows how many men died at your hands while you had no notion at all of why they were dying. No, I will never understand what has suddenly turned you into someone so curious no stone must be left unturned, for fear some bug or snake or other crawling thing might escape your sight.”

He must have been something in front of a jury, pleading the life of some syndicate asshole. He could do things with words, pull them right out of his head and stick them in the goddamnedest sentences, without any apparent effort. I could see why the syndicate people had wanted him. He used logic and words as mindlessly, and effectively, as any gunman pulling a trigger.

Just the same, I felt he’d told me the truth, just now. It made too much sense, felt too much like something somebody like him or the Broker would do, for it to be anything else but the truth. If his daughter died, everything would go to him: not only the list, if she’d had it-as, unwittingly, she had-but all of the Broker’s business interests, the legal and extralegal alike, and all of his dead wife’s family’s wealth, and for the first time he’d have a financial life of his own; he could continue to repay his endless debt to the Family in Chicago, in court, but he’d no longer be a monetary prisoner; he could pursue the good life, whatever the hell his notion of a good life might be. Whatever it was, it sure didn’t include his daughter.

“You want the list,” I said.

“You know I do.”

“Then I want you to do one thing more for me, and it’s yours.”

“Name it.”

“I have a phone number I want you to dial. You’ll be calling Carrie. It’s the phone in a motel room where she really is waiting. I want you to call her and say, ‘I’m sorry, for everything,’ and hang up. Make sure she knows it’s you.”