Max Collins - Quarry

“He died a long time ago,” she said “He was a vegetable.”

“Yeah, I know, a potato, you told me before. What did he ask for?”

“He wanted to be vice-president of Springborn-Leroy Enterprises He wanted decision-making power. He wanted a fat salary, like you guessed.”

“He wanted too much.”

“Yes, he wanted too much! He was a lousy janitor, how could he expect to move into an executive position? He couldn’t’ve handled it, he would have been a public embarrassment to us, if he didn’t run us out of business first. He was enough of an embarrassment to us as he was.”

“What about that fabled treasure of his?”

“He did have around nine or ten thousand in the bank, left from his inheritance.”

“What of that?”

“It’s mine now. Or was. I’ve given you people the equivalent, now that you’ve been paid twice.”

“Shit, that was nice of your brother, wasn’t it? Paying you back what it cost to murder him.”

“What’s the purpose of this? What do you want, Quarry?”

“Nothing. This four thousand will do fine.”

“You’ll leave, then?”

“I want to know one thing more.”

“What?”

“Who is ‘Vince’?”

“I have no idea.”

“Now don’t bullshit me, Linda Sue. Maybe housewives all over middle America would believe you, but this is your brother’s killer you’re talking to.”

“I tell you, I have no idea! I heard Raymond mention the name just now, when you two were talking up in the tower room. I never heard the name mentioned before.”

“You realize, don’t you, that this ‘Vince’ is probably the guy who stole the four thousand and killed my partner?”

“What do you care? You have four thousand and you’re still alive.”

She was right.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be out of Port City before midnight.”

“Make it sooner if you can.”

“Don’t worry. I got no intention of settling down here.”

“Quarry…”

“What?”

“Why, uh… why…?”

“Why aren’t I twisting your arm for any more than just this four thousand? Because your brother tried the same thing, didn’t he? And you murdered him for it. Hell, I’m not even your brother. I’d hate to think what you’d have done to me.”

Her eyes and mouth were tight in the plastic surgeon’s mask. “You pompous ass… where do you get off with that condescending tone? You keep saying that I murdered my brother. Let me remind you, you smug smart-ass bastard… you murdered Albert Leroy.”

“No,” I said. “I killed him. You murdered him.”

And I left her to think about it. I hoped she’d think about it a long time. But I doubted it.

I woke with a start. I looked at my watch. Eight-thirty. I’d slept fifteen minutes. After two hours of staring at the ceiling, thinking more thoughts than is healthy, I’d dropped off to sleep, which wasn’t healthy either. When Port City was just another unpleasant memory, then I could sleep. Not now. Not yet.

Peg was beside me, asleep for an hour and a half, an arm draped loose across my midsection, her head snuggled under my shoulder, one breast crushed casually against my side. We’d had supper in the kitchenette and dessert in the bedroom and spent the rest of our time drinking the one third of a bottle of Scotch which constituted the remainder of her liquor supply and mindlessly chit-chatting, finding out as much about each other as we cared to know.

She gave me an uneasy feeling. All day, being around her had provided a pleasant but nagging sensation, like a dream not quite remembered. It was as though she were a thought in the corner of my mind trying to make itself known, a barely defined reminder of something my mind had long before blocked out. I didn’t want to admit what it was, who she indirectly reminded me of. I didn’t want those feelings to crawl up out of my subconscious and onto a rock of awareness where they could wriggle and tease and bathe in my understanding of them. I didn’t want to face the realization that I hadn’t felt like this since I was young, a young man who believed in certain absurd abstract notions, a young man who married before he should have, feeling emotions he defined as profound and should have seen for the animal instincts they were.

But Peg, this sexpot centerfold blonde right out of a wet dream, this gracefully aging beauty who liked one-night stands with greasy-haired potheads ten years her junior, this hard, delicate little broad who screwed me right after she saw me, she was getting dangerously close. She was getting dangerously close to being a person in my life. Women hadn’t been persons in my life for a long time. Women were pretty receptacles for pent-up biological and psychological waste material. An extension of self-abuse, nothing more.

But why then was I thinking crazy thoughts about her? Wild thoughts, like thinking of asking her if she could use a business partner, someone who could add a fat bundle of cash to what she’d saved, to aid her in her attempt to either possess or escape from Bunny’s. Why was I entertaining the fantasy-insanity of wanting to ask her to go partners with me, to find a bar or club or restaurant or diner or anything somewhere, out west maybe, and run a quiet, legitimate business with days and nights and maybe years of breathing and eating and screwing and doing all those things that make life tolerable, maybe even grow old together, or at least older. Of course I didn’t have much saved up, but I did have that plastic bag of white powder that was worth a lot of money, and…

Bullshit.

I was used to being alone. I liked it. People annoyed me. Sometimes companionship got necessary, sure, so you would play some cards with people you could abide, you’d find some good-natured, well-bodied woman and take care of your needs.

But my needs now were shifting. This business of killing, for one thing; this making a life out of death. You can only do that as long as your stomach and head are hard; mine were getting soft in places. I was losing my edge. Otherwise why else would I stick in town after a hit? Detachment, never get personally involved in a job, the fundamental rule, and here I was hip-deep, Boyd’s death eating at the back of my head, Albert Leroy less a shadowy target in my mind and more a real person I’d shot in the chest this morning. And the one constant in my life for some years now, the Broker, long-time business associate, had become a person to be distrusted, perhaps feared, at the very least the umbilical cord of our working relationship was soon to be severed, in fact I was…

Goddamnit!

Thinking, I had to stop this goddamn fucking thinking!

I slipped out of bed. Peg moaned and reached for me in her sleep but I was too quick for her. I wandered out into the other room, moving through the museum her mother had left behind, went to the window and drew back the curtain. It was raining again.

On the chair by the window was my raincoat and in the raincoat was the nine-millimeter. I’d retrieved the automatic from the trunk of the car since I felt that until I was safely away from Port City it would be best to have gun close at hand. I patted the pocket which held the gun. It was a deep pocket, sewn in special for this purpose. I wished I could put on the coat and go out and find the goddamn man with the goddamn wrench and use the gun on him and leave Port City. There was only one part of this fucking town I’d want to remember, and she was asleep in the other room.

I looked out at the rain. It was coming down damn near straight, coming down heavy, hard, enough so that the gutters of the street were flooding. I looked out at the rain and wondered if I should leave now, while she was still sleeping.