Max Collins - Quarry

Back in the bedroom I found Boyd’s suitcase in a corner, open, flung there after it had been dumped out.

I went through the pile of clothes and the envelope was gone. I glanced in a wastecan and found it: the envelope had been emptied and then crumpled into a tight ball. I looked around the room for a while, but only for a very short while, as a search was useless. It was something I had to face: the money was gone.

What I found in the living room was no surprise.

Boyd was in his usual position at the window: sitting on the floor; leaning against the wall; head tilted back; but dead. The upper side of his head was caved in and looked as though it had been gently done, as though his was the head of a china doll that had been delicately shattered with a single tap of a child’s hammer. But maybe that was because it was dark in there. Maybe if I had had to look at him closer, in the light, I would have seen it the way it was: a man’s skull cracked bloody open from two or more savage blows of a hard-swung wrench. His eyes were round open and glowing white in the blackness and I could almost hear his voice speaking in those dead eyes, Quarry… Quarry, what the fuck? The reality of death must’ve been a shock to Boyd, the cruelty, the absurdity, the finality, the million things that must flash through your mind as you die violently. A man can get detached on the winning side of a gun and he can forget what it is he’s doing and Boyd, evidently, died in a traumatic realization of what he was, what he did and what was being done to him. But at least he’d shown one last trait of professionalism, in his final moment: his right hand was still clutching the shade he’d pulled down to warn me.

I had to give him that much.

Under the wooden steps in back, grouped close against the wall, were garbage cans. Six of them. I arranged them into a slight semicircle and that was where I left Boyd.

My shoulder was a hunk of agony and made it no pleasure carrying my ex-associate down those three flights of steps. But it had to be done. I didn’t know if the Port City cops would buy this as what was perhaps a rare event around these parts-a mugging-but that’s what I was hoping. I had stripped Boyd of all valuables, leaving his pockets pulled inside out, not only to fabricate a robbery, but to prevent discovery of Boyd’s identity. With luck, Boyd would end up just another cipher in a potter’s field, a poor slob who was passing through Port City and got mugged and killed for his trouble.

I hadn’t had the time to analyze what had happened yet and was acting, really, out of sheer instinct: I was a knee struck by a mallet at the precise point and was jerking up like I was supposed to. Reflex had me getting Boyd out of there and away from that apartment, which had been provided by our nameless employer, who by unwritten law must be protected at all costs. Or almost all: it would have been better to lug Boyd off someplace farther away, like drive him out along the Mississippi twenty miles and dump him off a bluff, but I wouldn’t take that big a chance. Reflex action or not, confusion or no, I thought of my ass first. Survival.

So I had cleaned both Boyd and apartment of his effects and placed everything I collected in the trunk of his green Mustang. I had wrapped Boyd in a sheet, which I removed once I deposited him behind the wall of cans, and had slung him over my good shoulder and headed down the fire escape, hoping for the best.

I was lucky about the configuration of the alley, which in fact wasn’t really an alley at all, as it dead-ended halfway in, surrounded by three-story buildings, making for something of a modest courtyard back there. The windows in the buildings were few and as yet dark-it was still very early morning-and the building across the way was a garage and windowless. The dreary buildings and the overcast sky gave me a perhaps false sense of security, and once I had pulled Boyd’s Mustang up into the mouth of the street entry, blocking it off and partially obstructing vision from out there, I felt relatively safe carrying him down. Or as safe as you can feel in the company of somebody murdered.

I guided the Mustang out of the little courtyard and let loose a monumental sigh as I got out onto the still empty street. As I drove around to the front the street lights winked out, officially signaling morning’s arrival, and I pulled the Mustang into a vacant spot behind my gray rental Ford and turned the car off and sat there for a while. Across the street all was silent. No one had stumbled onto Albert Leroy as yet. Idle curiosity made me wonder who would be found first-Boyd or Albert.

That particular irrelevant thought was a sign of just how dazed I was. I got out of the car and walked down to the corner and stood there for maybe a minute, alone on the sidewalk, gathering my thoughts. My mind had been blown, almost literally, and I didn’t know how long it would take to collect the pieces and reassemble them.

Across the street, kitty-corner from where I stood, was a telephone booth, standing in front of a big gothic-looking church like a reminder of what century it was. The moment I saw it I was on my way over, digging a dime out of my pocket, searching for more change to make the necessary long-distance call.

“Hello,” a voice said. A slightly groggy voice.

“Is this Carl?”

“Yes… yes it is. Who is this?”

“Get Broker’s ass out of bed, Carl.”

“Uh, who is calling please?”

“Get him out of bed, you fucking gimp.”

“Quarry?”

I said nothing.

He said, “Okay, uh, okay, wait a second.”

“Just.”

It took three minutes.

Broker said, “Trouble?”

“Yes.”

“Can you talk?”

“Yes.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m in a pay phone.”

“Fine. What’s the number?”

I told him.

“I’ll need five minutes,” he said, “to get to where I can talk.”

“Okay.”

I hung up.

Five minutes later, give or take ten seconds, the phone rang and I picked it off the hook and Broker said, “Go.”

“Boyd’s dead.”

“How?”

“Somebody creamed him with a wrench.”

“What about the job?”

“The job went all right. I came back to Boyd’s right after and found him with his head smashed in. I had a scuffle with who did it, got my shoulder banged up a little, but nothing serious.”

“You saw him then?”

“The guy who did it? No. It was dark and he hit me before I knew what was coming.”

“No idea who or why?”

“I know why, I guess. Not who.”

“Why then?”

“The money was gone.”

“I see. This all just happened?”

“Within the past half hour.”

“The authorities?”

“Nobody’s seen either one of the bodies yet.”

“Nobody but you.”

“That’s right.”

“You cleaned up the mess?”

“Yeah.” I told him what I had done, how I’d faked the mugging with Boyd, removed his things from the apartment.

“Good man, Quarry.”

“What about Boyd? Can his body lead the law anywhere?”

“Not if you stripped him clean. His prints aren’t on file anywhere. He wasn’t even in the service, his homosexuality kept him free of that.”

“No homo arrests? Child molesting or anything?”

“No. Boyd was gay, but conservative. You know me well enough to know I don’t take on anybody unstable.”

“Broker.”

“Yes?”

“I’m getting an idea.”

“What kind of idea?”

“An idea of who wasted Boyd.”

“Who?”

“Who else? Our employer. The man who came to you and said he wanted Albert Leroy dead.”

“Impossible.”

“Possible. Very possible, for a number of reasons. Do I have to go into them, Broker?”