Max Collins - Quarry

“Morning, Quarry.”

“Morning.”

“Want something to eat?”

“I don’t eat before a job.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right. How do you feel?”

“Okay. Good. Fine.”

Boyd got up from the table. He was in his T-shirt and boxer shorts. “Give me a second to get my clothes on.”

“Hurry up.”

“I will.”

I laid my raincoat on the table and went over to the sink and got myself a glass of water and drank it and Boyd came back. I said, “Set to pull out?”

“Sure.”

“You driving that green Mustang in back? In the alley there?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“I’ve seen that before. You drove it on the last job, too, didn’t you?”

“Course I did, it’s my car.”

“Think that’s wise?”

“You’re getting fucking paranoid, Quarry.”

“Maybe. Maybe I am.”

“Oh, I almost forgot…” He dug in his pants pocket and got out a key and handed it to me.

I looked at the key and shook my head. “A key to the front door.”

“Aw what’s so strange about that, we’ve had it easy before.”

“I didn’t say it was strange.”

“Bullshit, you been talking about what a strange job this was ever since you got here.”

“I’m not talking now.”

“Okay, all right, Quarry. Let’s just do it and get out, huh?” Boyd sat back down at the table. “You be sure to mess things up good. You know. Rip the mattress up a little, why don’t you? You got a knife?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. “

“I take it Mr. X made the drop okay.”

“Fine, real fine. You want to see?”

“Okay.”

Boyd got up and I followed him into the bedroom. He opened his suitcase and got out an envelope that had money in it. He rippled the edges of the bills and I nodded and he smiled.

“How much?” I said.

“Just shy two grand apiece,” he said. He was playing with one corner of his mustache.

“That’s a five-grand hit,” I said. “Not the best money in the world, but this has got to be more important a job than it looks to us.”

“If you want to ask Broker some questions, fine. Me, I’ll take my money and run.”

“Yeah. You’re right, Boyd, it’s not good thinking about a job like I been. Not good at all.”

“You don’t want to take your share with you now, do you?”

“Hell no. You think that would be smart?”

“I usually wouldn’t, Quarry, but in this hick town what’s the difference? Nobody’s up yet, and you could just hop in your car and leave directly.”

“No. I’ll stop up for it right after.”

“Well don’t take your time getting back.”

“Do I ever take my time getting back?”

“No.”

“Okay then.”

“Quarry.”

“Yeah.”

“You better get going, you want to get it done before light.”

“I’m on my way.”

“Do it, man.”

“Right.”

I stopped at the door and said, “Look, Boyd, this job has been a little, well…”

“Queer?” Boyd said, smiling a little. “Yeah, I guess it has. Not much we can do though, huh? Except do it.”

“Well just the same, we better have a signal, in case something sours.”

“Okay. His shade is up over cross the way. I’ll be watching out the window, so if something goes wrong, pull the shade. Halfway down if I should get the hell out, say it’s cops or something. Pull it all the way down if you need help. Okay?”

“Fine. Same signal goes for you, then.”

“Fine.”

I put on my gloves. I took the silenced automatic from out my belt and held it in my right hand and folded the raincoat over my arm, covering gun-in-hand. I said, “See you, Boyd.”

“See you, Quarry.”

He gave me a thumbs-up sign and I returned it and left.

The sky was almost light, if you can call a murky gray sky light, and between that and the still-burning street lamps, I didn’t exactly have the cover of night to protect me. Not that it mattered: the street was empty, like a deserted movie backlot, and down half a block at the corner the traffic lights were going, changing colors as if to entertain themselves. So I wasn’t upset when there was no back entrance to Albert Leroy’s building. I had to use a street entrance, an unlocked door stuck between the taco joint and the laundry, but had no bad feelings about it.

The stairs creaked as I ascended, and I guess I would’ve bitched too if I was a hundred years old and somebody walked on me. The walls were flaking brown paint and the air was so musty I wanted to cough. When I got to the tiny landing I found two doors, one of them obviously leading up to the vacant apartment on the upper floor, the other bearing a slot with a yellowed card in it reading, “Albert Leroy.”

I worked the key in the lock.

The door opened on the kitchen. The ceiling was high, the walls a yellowing white, the stained wooden cabinets a darkening yellow. The kitchen appliances were ancient-a stoop-shouldered Westinghouse refrigerator and a four-burner gas range, the kind you light-and a kitchen table with a speckled Formica top was showing age, its plastic-covered chairs having seen better days, and the linoleum on the floor was cracked here and there and was rolling up at the edges. But the kitchen was clean, hospital clean. It even smelled like a hospital, as though he used it for surgical work instead of cooking.

A doorless archway led into the living room. It was small, a live-in elevator, with wallpaper of a faded purple-flowered design, like the pattern on an old woman’s dress, fitting in well with the furniture, which was drab and lifeless, the kind of stuff the elderly stick doilies on to hide the shabbiness. The only modern piece of furniture was a reclining chair back across from the portable TV and it was broken into a constant back-tilt, which didn’t help the limited space of the room. The guy was a hoarder, obviously, as the room was somehow both cluttered and orderly, stacks of books everywhere, newspapers saved, piles of backdated TV Guides on the television, a table with a stamp collection in progress, but everything seemed in its special, assigned position.

To the right was the bedroom.

The door was open and I could see him, sleeping there on the bed. Since it had been a hot night, he was sleeping only in his pajama bottoms, and on top of the covers. His arms were stretched out as if reaching and his mouth was open and he looked like a fountain in a park. He was breathing hard but he was not snoring, his face a putty mask, formless, puffy.

I stood in the doorway and looked at him for a moment. I didn’t go in there with him because the bedroom was so small it made the living room seem gigantic. I was plenty close here in the doorway. Close enough to see that his chest was sunken and he had just the start of a potbelly and neither chest nor belly had a hair on it; he was hairless smooth like a baby and I suddenly wondered how old he was. I had thought of him as an old man, but he was smooth, unwrinkled, unused. The only solid indications of age were streaks of white in his sandy crewcut and deep creases in the checks of that putty face. On his left arm was a long and unsightly brown birthmark that was hairy and ran from his outer bicep down cross his elbow and twisting round almost to his wrist and I now knew the reason for cardigan sweaters and long-sleeve shirts in summer.

I thought I saw his eyes flicker open for a moment just after the gun made its snicking sound and the bullet went crushing through his sternum. But I wasn’t sure. His body did a little dance, a small, quick jerk and that was all. His mouth stayed open, but slackly so, and he was limp, a stringless puppet.

It took two minutes to mess up the apartment. As I was doing it I knew it was illogical that anyone would try to rob this guy, but that was the way we’d been asked to handle it. I kicked his books around, knocked some chairs over, ripped up a few of the newspapers, tipped over the table with the stamps and magnifying glass and stamp book on it, dumped everything out of his hoarder’s closet, which was more books, newspapers, magazines, letters, stamps, and other assorted junk, and spread it around. A dresser of clothes in the living room-no space for it in the bedroom-I emptied and then tipped over. I gutted the sofa with my pocketknife and when I was through I went into the bedroom, shoved him to one side and then my nostrils filled with the smell of blood and shit: his bowels had voided with his body’s death. I made one quick obligatory rip down the center of the mattress and wiped the knife blade clean on a sheet and got the hell out of there. I shut the bedroom door behind me to keep the stink from crawling into the living room and I took a long breath of fresh air, sucking it into my lungs as it rolled in the open window. I took my raincoat from where I’d slung it over a chair, then set the chair down on its side to help the ransack effect. I folded the coat over my arm and glanced out the window. Light out there now, I noticed. It was dawn.