Max Collins - Quarry

“Maybe you’d feel better about it if you were swinging a wrench instead of a cue.”

He got a puzzled look on his face; had what I’d said really been a non sequitur to him, or was this a mask? He said, “You’re insane. Get out of my house.”

“Not without four thousand dollars.”

He looked at me blank-faced for a moment. Then he started to laugh.

Now I was the startled one.

He said, “I have to give you credit.”

I said, “Credit?”

“You’re good. Better than you should be You know, I ruled Vince out at first, because you didn’t look right, you didn’t seem like the type who’d get involved with him. But this ridiculous attempt to implicate me in Albert’s death… who but Vince could come up with something so absurd?” He laughed again, more harshly this time. “You even had me wondering if maybe Peg put you up to this, to force me into handing Bunny’s to her on a platter… though I couldn’t really believe Peg would try anything of this sort. But Peg is a friend of Carol’s and could possibly have known about Carol and me, so I was thinking about it.”

I swallowed. I wondered what the fuck was going on. I felt like an actor who had wandered into the last scene of a strange play.

“Vince is just crook enough,” he was saying, “just cretin enough, to try something ridiculous like this… what’s the matter, isn’t he satisfied with the cushy job I set him up in? Does he know anybody else driving a hack making that kind of money?”

I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. We’d been playing a game, both of us, but different games. Suddenly I was filled with doubt. Suddenly I knew Springborn was not the man with the wrench, and that I was digging a nice deep grave for myself by tossing around all those hints about Albert Leroy’s death.

I stood up and said, “Four thousand isn’t so much to ask.”

“No,” he said, “it isn’t. That’s one reason I figure this is Vince’s scheme. A small-time thinker, Vince, a man with extremely limited vision. Let me give you some advice. You seem like a reasonably intelligent guy. I don’t know how in Christ’s name you got mixed up with Vince, whether he’s a friend of a friend, or somebody you met in service, or someone you ran into in a bar, or what. But however you picked him, you picked a loser, Mr. Quarry. Now. I’d advise you to head back to wherever it is you hail from. Do not pass go. Do not collect four thousand dollars.”

“I don’t bluff easy,” I said, aching to go but for appearance sake not wanting to give in too quickly.

“How much do you know about Vince?”

“Not much,” I admitted. Christ, not much.

“You don’t… go in for that kind of stuff, do you?”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Maybe you aren’t, uh… listen, hasn’t he tried anything?” Those gray eyes were trying to tell me something.

“I don’t understand you.”

“Maybe. Maybe you don’t. Well, Mr. Quarry, you just find your own way out. You seem to have enough ingenuity to do that, anyway. I’m going to stay up here and shoot myself some pool… the activities downstairs are too morbid for my tastes. You know, you’re not a bad pool player yourself, Mr. Quarry, though you wouldn’t do well if we were to play a game for money. When we were shooting around I was sandbagging, you know.”

“So was I.”

“No you weren’t. You were playing full out. It’s a naive quality you seem to have. You’re a trusting sort, for a blackmailer. However, you do shoot a fair game of pool. But you won’t win playing with me. Pool’s my game.”

“Wrong, Springborn,” I said, with some admiration. “Your game is poker.”

He bent comfortably over the big old table and batted an eight-ball into a corner pocket and I left him.

One thought throbbed through my brain: get the hell out of here! I walked quickly across the unlit second floor hallway, anxious to reach the glowing area of light ahead that marked the top of the winding stairway which would lead me down into that big empty entryway and then outside into dreary, overcast freedom. I’d been an asshole to stay in Port City, an asshole to think I could find my way through so complex a maze in so short a period of time, an asshole to risk everything to regain four thousand dollars and maybe have a shot at avenging Boyd and myself on that son of a bitch with the wrench. Well, I wasn’t going to play asshole any longer. I was going to grab Peg by the hand, take her back to her apartment and bang her good-bye, then head on home, to Wisconsin. I actually sighed with relief as I neared the staircase. In the middle of the sigh, somebody touched my shoulder.

I shivered. Not from being cold, though cold I was, cold-sweat variety; I’d been all but running through that hallway like a kid afraid of the dark. And now somebody was touching my shoulder and I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, scream or crap my pants. So I didn’t do anything. I waited for something to happen. Linda Sue Springborn stepped out of the darkness and said, “I heard it all.”

She was speaking very softly. This made sense, because she’d just finished eavesdropping and we weren’t that far away from the entrance to the tower stairway; we were close enough to hear the distinct clacking together of pool balls in the background.

I didn’t say anything. She wasn’t acting hysterical. There was no hysteria in that smooth face at all. Had there been, I would’ve had to loop an arm around her chin and break her neck. A screaming woman was something I could do without right about now.

But she was anything but a screaming woman. She spoke again, her voice soft, very soft, a whisper was a scream compared to this; she said, “Do you want your four thousand dollars?”

It was like a hard blow against the chest, knocking the wind right out of me. But soon I was breathing easily again and I felt a grin tickling the corners of my mouth.

“… you?” I said. “You hired me?”

“Do you want your four thousand dollars?”

I nodded.

“And will you leave Port City?”

I nodded.

“Good. Go downstairs and escort Peg out of the house. She’s probably starting to wonder where you are and what you’re up to, so don’t waste any time. Go ahead, then, and leave with her.”

“Leave…?”

“Just walk her out to your car. Then tell her you forgot your raincoat. I’ll be waiting in front of the house for you. I’ll have your raincoat and the four thousand dollars.”

I nodded again.

She said, “Do it quickly. It won’t take me more than five minutes to get the money in order. Now go ahead.”

“All right.”

“Mr. Quarry?”

“Yeah?”

“Why couldn’t you just’ve done it and left town?”

“Good question,” I said.

I did as she told me. I went downstairs and found Peg in the drawing room getting her face talked off by a guy in a rumpled suit with a complexion so bad it looked like wax was running down his cheeks. Everybody else in the room was still about as lively as an oil painting, all standing around doing their best to look somber, but this guy was full of smiles and chatter.

“Who the hell was he?” I said, as we walked out of the drawing room into the hall. “He seemed like the only one having a good time.”

“Oh sure,” Peg said, “he’s lotsa yuks. He’s the fucking undertaker.”

“Well when he goes,” I said, “I hope they close the casket.”

Peg giggled. “Yeah, that is a nice face he’s wearing, isn’t it?”

Outside the rain was still holding back pretty much, keeping it down to a light misting. It was getting into late afternoon, but nobody told the sky about it; it was stuck at midnight. On the way to the Ford, Peg told me anecdotes about the various creeps she’d been talking to inside the house, and as I opened the car door for her, I said, “Shit, forgot my raincoat.”