Max Collins - Quarry

“My windows are down,” she said.

“Mine too.” I crawled into my trousers, zipped up and moved out of the room. “I’ll go out and take care of it.’’

I stepped out the door and the sky rumbled again and I ran to the Mustang, rolled up the windows, ran to the Ford, got my raincoat out of the backseat, rolled up the windows. A few drops of rain streaked my face and just as I got to the door the downpour began. Inside, I threw my raincoat down on the hard straightback chair next to the door and heard a clunk. My automatic was in the pocket. I hoped Peg wouldn’t run across it.

“Does it shock you,” she said, dressed in blue sweater and hotpants again, sitting on the sofa, “that I was a gangster’s woman?”

I laughed.

She smiled, but there was a hint of frown in the smile. “What’s so damn funny?”

“‘I Was a Gangster’s Woman,’” I said. “Sounds like something on the cover of True Confessions.”

She laughed. “That’s me. A real gun moll.”

“His business didn’t seem to bother you.”

“His business was his business. He only supplied what others demanded.”

I nodded.

“But,” she said, “if I’d known exactly what he did, I probably wouldn’t have stood for it.”

“That’s hypocritical as hell.”

“Hey, who appointed you preacher, Quarry? You’re awful moral all of a sudden.”

“Maybe you’ve just underestimated me.”

“Bullshit. Next thing you’re going to tell me is you’re not married.”

“I’m not.”

“Every traveling salesman is married.”

“Not this one. You’re even my first farmer’s daughter.”

“Sure. You’re my first man, too. Today.” She shook her head, smiled crookedly. “You know something?”

“What?”

“Something about you reminds me of Frank.”

“Who’s Frank?”

“My gangster. My poor dead gangster.”

“I thought you said I screw better.”

“Oh you do, you do. So far, anyway. But your eyes. There’s something in them, or something that isn’t in them…”

“Listen, I want to know something. Does it or doesn’t it bother you that this Frank was in the rackets?”

“It doesn’t bother me. So am I, in a way. You know, that guy I mentioned before? The one I’m in business with? The one who shafted my girl friend and sent her down to Florida for his health?”

“Yeah. Ray.”

“That’s right. Ray. How’d you know his name?”

“You let it slip two or three times.”

“So I did. Anyway, some of Ray’s money comes from that kind of people.”

“What kind of people?”

“Mob kind of people.”

“You mean he’s running businesses as fronts for them?”

“No. All his businesses are legitimate. But he’s done a lot of expanding, and some of the mob people in the Quad Cities channel money into his businesses, mainly ’cause it’s a good investment. Not to mention the last thing anybody’d suspect as being backed by that kind of money.” She touched her forehead. “Hey, that reminds me… I was supposed to go over to the Springborn place this morning. Going to talk with Ray just once more, and if we can’t settle those contractural differences of ours between us, I’ll get my lawyer to move on it. What time is it, anyway?”

“Quarter after eleven.”

“Shit! I was supposed to be over there at eleven!” She got up from the sofa and said, “I better call him and tell him I got, uh… waylaid.” She grinned and glided over to the telephone on the wall in the kitchenette. I followed her in and sat at the table and watched her dial.

“Mr. Springborn, please,” she said to the phone. She winked at me while she waited for Springborn. Finally she was saying, “Hello Ray, look, I’m sorry I didn’t make it over this… huh? What? You’re kidding?… Oh my God, that’s terrible, that’s awful, the poor guy

… What was it, robbery?… I can’t believe it, I just can’t believe it… Well, listen, what we have to talk about can sure wait until… Really?… Well, okay… Two-thirty then.”

She hung up, shaking her head, and I said, “What was all that about?”

She told me. She told me about Albert Leroy dying. She explained that Albert Leroy was a simple, harmless guy who was Springborn’s brother-in-law, a quiet little man who’d had a nervous breakdown once and afterward was never the same. No one in the family, she told me, gave a damn about old Albert; a lot of folks in town thought it was a sin that the Springborns gave Albert a token janitorial job at the soup plant and let it go at that. It was something of a pain, she said, hearing Ray Springborn pretending to be upset, just as it would be a pain to watch Linda Sue Springborn going through the motions of mourning. She said as an indication of how callous the Springborn reaction to the death was, Ray had told her to come on over for their business chat this afternoon, to help him “take his mind off the tragedy.” I asked her how it happened and she said, “Robbery, they say. His place was ransacked. You see, it’s almost a legend in town that Albert was something of a pack rat. And the Leroy family has been a money family in Port City for years. Somebody must’ve figured they’d find a mattress full of money.”

“Too bad.”

“Yeah. Sure as hell is.”

Thunder cracked again. The rain was coming down hard. She went to the window over the sink and parted the curtains and looked out at the rain slanting down and it reflected back on her face, running down her cheeks in gray streams. She said, “You know something, Quarry?”

“What?”

“I wish I hadn’t cried this morning.”

“What?”

“Because now I haven’t got any crying left in me. And it seems to me like somebody ought to shed a tear for that poor son of a bitch Albert Leroy.”

By early afternoon the rain let up, but the sky was black and constantly spitting, an arrogant reminder that this was only a temporary reprieve. The hot summer rain had taken the air away and left in its place a humid cloud, a dank overcast through which the Springborn place looked unreal, like something off the cover of a gothic paperback. But it was the mood of the afternoon that was gothic, not the house, which was a massive but fairly commonplace two-story structure, red brick trimmed with white-painted wood, the brick faded and smoothed by age to the color of rust. Outside of a rococo effect from the curlicued wood trim, the only vestige of nineteenth-century pretension was the single central box tower that sat on top of the two-story building like a little separate house that’d been plopped down on the big one. This was a house built by common folk who’d made it rich, an ordinary brick house only slightly puffed up by wealth.

There could be little doubt, however, that this was an important home: in a neighborhood crowded with would-be palaces, only the Springborn place had half a block to itself, sitting far back on a gentle hill of a lawn, graveled private drives on either side. The drive on the right led to a red-brick four-door garage large enough to barrack a hippie commune, and at present both drives were jammed with cars, as though the big old home were a way-station hotel filled with guests stranded during a storm.

We parked in front, or so I thought; when I got out of the Ford and stood and got a good look I could see we were facing the ass-end of the house. Somehow I resented that, it seemed vaguely pompous to me, even though it made sense to take advantage of the river view. But it was sort of hypocritical for this “common man’s mansion” to turn its back on a public street.

We stood at the big solid oak front door (or back door, depending on how you look at it) and Peg said, “Thanks for coming with me.”