Max Collins - Quarry

He jumped. He couldn’t have jumped higher if I goosed him. Which was something I wasn’t about to do, considering how he was liable to take it. “Shit! Shit!” he said. “Quarry.”

“You dumb asshole,” I said. “What in hell was that back door doing unlocked?”

His face got squinched up, but before irritation could climb out of him, his nose got scent of the tacos and he smiled. He reached down and picked up the bag and opened it and peeked in and said, “Hey, Quarry, you’re all right. You brought the tacos. Hey.”

“Hey. I brought the tacos. Now what about the damn door?”

He made a farting sound with his lips. “Who else is going to show but you, Quarry? I just unlocked the door about five minutes ago. No sweat.”

“I’m worried about you, Boyd.”

“Aw, can it.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be watching out that window?”

“Hey, who appointed you foreman all of the goddamn sudden?”

“Don’t push me, Boyd.”

The irritation came back and got out: “Bullshit! I been cooped up watching a whole goddamn week, you break your ass watching for a while.’’

“So that’s your trick: you watch with your ass.”

“Oh fuck you. I’m going out to the kitchen and eat my tacos.”

“Do that.”

“I will.”

“But before you do, maybe you might tell me who I’m supposed to be watching.”

“Oh. Sure. Little ginky guy, about five-eight.”

“Three inches taller than you, you mean.”

“God, you’re a fucker.”

“Never mind that. Tell me some more about him.”

“What more? That’s it, just a gink, and a blind gink at that, always wears tinted glasses. Usually wears gray slacks and a cardigan sweater.”

“A cardigan sweater? In the summer?”

“Yeah. It’s got those diamond-shape type of patterns on it, in shades of gray. Damn thing looks like a big argyle sock.” Boyd snickered.

“Shit, it’s eighty degrees out there.”

“Naw, it’s cool tonight, but this guy leaves the sweater on even when it’s hot. It was up to ninety two days ago and he still had the sweater on.”

“Sounds like an oddball.”

“Believe me, we’re doing the world a favor on this one.”

“Is it his apartment you’re watching, or what?”

“Yeah. The building right across from us, but down a floor. There’s a do-it-yourself laundry below him and another apartment, empty, above him.”

I went over to the window, standing to the side against the wall. I looked out. This was a weird commercial district, kind of off to one side of the downtown, on one of the streets running perpendicular to the river and just on the border of a dip where factories and plants took over down to the edge of the slope of East Hill. On the corner, to the right, was a fancy drugstore, taking up a quarter of the block, its tall display windows full of expensive gift-shop-type items. Next to it was an incongruously sleazy bar, and then the VFW hall, and another bar, and the taco joint, and the laundry, and a coin wash.

I said, “The second floor, there? Where the light is on and kind of yellowish?”

“Yeah. His eyes are bad, wears tinted glasses remember, and near as I can tell all the light bulbs in his apartment are yellow like that.”

“You feel you got his pattern down pretty good?”

Boyd nodded, confident. “He won’t be coming out again tonight, until quarter to nine. Then he walks down to that drugstore and has a soda at their fountain. Or at least that’s what he had the two times I followed him in and watched him up close.”

“A soda.”

“Yeah. Thank God I got a refrigerator full of beer here, or I’d go nuts walking by a bar to go into a drugstore for a soda.” Thinking of it, Boyd came over and leaned down and got his can of Bud, then, as an afterthought, picked up his paperback as well He said, “You go ahead and watch a while. Yell if he starts to leave or something.”

I sat down. No need to play contortionist like Boyd: it would be easy watching from here, since this window on the third floor was well above street eye-level, and safely above second-floor level.

“Quarry?”

“Are you still in here?”

“It’s… good to see you.”

“Is it.”

“You’re pissed off, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“What’re you pissed off about?”

“Nothing.”

“You think I let you down last time, don’t you?”

“You didn’t let me down.”

“You think I did. You think I didn’t watch that guy in Toledo as close as I could’ve. You think if I’d done my part you wouldn’t almost’ve got seen leaving when those people showed at the place next door.”

“We been all over that.”

“Have we?”

“We have.”

“I’m telling you, Quarry, you can watch a mark for a week, two weeks, and you can get his life down fairly well, but there’s always going to be a joker or two turn up in the deck, you know? Hell you could watch a year and stuff could still crop up. The unexpected, right? You got to expect it.”

“Your tacos are getting cold.”

“Okay. How much do I owe you?”

“For what?”

“The tacos.”

“Christ!”

“Okay, okay.” He trudged out of the room.

I turned away as he did and watched. A shadow slowly shuffled across the yellow window across the way. Then nothing. I watched.

The yellow window went black.

“Just turned out the lights, didn’t he?”

I cocked my head and looked at Boyd. He was glancing at his wristwatch and he had a wiggly little grin going under his curly brown mustache. He was showing off: from where he was, stretched out on the davenport against the wall behind me, sipping his latest Budweiser, he couldn’t see the window that had just gone dark. But he wanted me to know what a swell job he was doing, how perfect he knew the mark’s pattern. How just checking the time he could tell me what the mark was doing. I could almost feel on my own face the heat from his semidrunken glow.

“Yeah,” I said, turning back around, keeping my back to Boyd, keeping up my vigil.

“You might as well not bother watching anymore.”

“Oh?”

“The lights won’t be on again. He won’t be going out again either. He’s got a clock built in him, this gink does. And a boring damn clock it is.”

I looked at Boyd. I sat and leaned my shoulders against the wall and folded my arms and said, slowly, “Maybe you been at this too long.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re getting sloppy.” I glanced back out the window, making a pretense of keeping up my watch on the apartment across the way, just to let Boyd know I didn’t trust his judgment anymore.

“Aw bullshit, Quarry. Bullshit. You’re the one’s been in it too long. You’re getting old and paranoid.”

“I’m getting old? Christ, you got fifteen fucking years on me, Boyd.”

“Age is a state of mind.”

“Is it.”

“It sure as hell is. Take the mark over there,” he said, gesturing toward the window, “he was a hundred years old the day he was born. He’s supposed to be thirty-five but he walks around stooped over and shambles along with his head down like he’s looking for a hole to curl up and die in. He isn’t a man, he’s a tombstone walking around.”

When he said that it was all I could do to keep from laughing. Because as he spoke he was sprawled out on the davenport, hanging loosely over its edge, like a cadaver somebody was playing a morbid ventriloquist’s joke with.

I said, “Maybe it’s time you told me something about him.”

Boyd nodded, sat up a little. “He’s thirty-five or so, like I said. No wife. No friends I seen so far. No social life whatever. Works ungodly hours, about half-time, at a plant in the part of this town they call South End.”