Max Collins - Quarry

“Actually,” Peg was saying, “I guess he wasn’t jailed for being a queer exactly, it was something worse than that. Much worse, because Christ knows as far as I’m concerned a person’s sex life is his own business, but this Vince… he’s a pervert in the true sense of the word. You know why he got thrown in jail? He was propositioning other homosexuals, especially guys passing through town, you know? He’d take them out in the country in his cab and roll them. Take every cent they had, even their clothes sometimes, and beat the crap out of them for the sheer pleasure of it.”

I understood.

I understood it all.

Boyd, I said silently, Boyd wherever you are, you son of a lesbian bitch, wherever you are, you’re an asshole. A dead one, but an asshole. Why hadn’t it occurred to me? The obvious! The dead obvious fact that Boyd had been slipping lately, that Boyd was getting sloppy in his work, so sloppy bad I was thinking serious of quitting him. But he had been even more stupid than I’d given him credit for. He’d been stupid enough, asshole-dumb enough, out-of-his-fucking-mind crazy enough to get involved in one of his gay flings while on a job!

That broken heart he’d been nursing, that busted heart he’d been carrying around with him as a souvenir of his disintegrating personal life, that torn valentine he wore in his chest he’d tried to paste back together with a new love, a love he found for himself right here in Port City.

And Boyd had picked himself a dandy lover. I could picture the first meeting in my mind. Because I knew what Vince looked like, I was sure of it. I was sure he was that clown in the taxi stand this morning, the guy who’d sidled up to me in the Port City Taxi Service this very damn morning! I could see him in my mind, a skinny guy in a white T-shirt (though in the apartment it had been a black one, hadn’t it?) dark complexioned, his hair oily and curly and black, his smile leering with the tooth in front chipped, his voice tough one second, effeminate the next. I could see him talking to Boyd, while Boyd thumbed through Twilight Love at the paperback rack.

I’d been right about one thing: it was an inside job. Vince was the brother of Carol, the girl who’d been staying in the apartment where Boyd was doing lookout, meaning Vince knew enough about the situation to know that Boyd and I had been brought to town to do some kind of Springborn dirty work; it was unlikely he’d have it figured right down to the murder of Albert Leroy, but he knew that Boyd and I were in town to do something-under-the-table for one of the Springborns, though he no doubt assumed Raymond, but never mind that. Vince had probably been able to gather from Boyd that a large amount of money was involved, and Boyd had probably promised Vince some of that money. Might even have indicated when the money would become available. Might even have arranged one last rendezvous with the chipped-tooth charmer before leaving town.

I had the sudden urge to go back to that alley where I’d left Boyd behind a wall of garbage cans and see if the body was still there. If it was, I’d kick it in the ass.

Peg was staring at me, watching my eyes move with thought. When I came out of my near-trance, she said, “Is Vince the man… responsible?”

The man responsible? The man with the wrench? The man who killed Boyd? Who took my money? Who tried to murder me? Yes. Yes he was.

“Never mind,’’ I said.

“Do you want to know where he lives?” she said.

I nodded.

“Above the cab stand,” she said “There’s a wooden stairway in back. It’s the only apartment up there. He’s got the whole floor to himself. He makes good money driving a cab. Thanks to Ray.”

“Thank you, Peg.”

“It’s okay.”

“Now forget all about it.”

“I already have.”

“Good.”

“Quarry?”

“Yes?”

“Are you going now?’’

“I better.”

“Are you leaving Port City?”

“Yes.”

“Right now?”

“Soon.”

“Will I see you again?”

“Not tonight.”

“When?”

“Not tonight.”

“I’ll… hear from you, then?”

“You’ll hear from me.”

“Quarry.”

“Yes, Peg.”

“Come with me for a minute.”

“Yes, Peg.”

The same woman was sitting behind the glass counter, but she was wearing a different dress; she had traded in the red and white check for a blue and white, which was draped over her heavy-set frame like a pup tent without poles. Her hair didn’t look quite so frowzy this time, which probably meant she’d just come on during the past hour or so, whereas on my last visit to the Port City Taxi Service I must’ve caught her at the tail end of her tour of duty.

“How’s she goin’, mister?” she said, her smile a fold in the layered flesh of her face. She puffed at the last inch of a cigarette and flashed a brown grin and said, “What can I do you for?”

“Hi,” I said. “Hell of a night.”

“Hell of a night is right. Miserable as hell.”

“Yeah, all that damn rain. Listen, is Vince working tonight?’’

“Vince? Sure, he went on an hour ago. You want me to get him on the squawker for you?”

“No, don’t bother. Just wondered what shift he was working.”

“He don’t get done till early this mornin’ after dawn.”

“He very busy tonight?”

“She comes in spurts. Right now he is. He’s backed up four or five calls. But if you want to see him, just take a load off and wait. He stops in for coffee every hour or so, when he gets a slow spell. He’ll be along as soon as these calls is done, give him a half hour, forty-five minutes.”

“Well, I’ll come back in a little while.”

“Suit yourself.”

I bought a package of gum from her and swapped her smiles and went out the door and stood in the soaking rain. The night was particularly dark, the street lamps like flashlights in a huge dark warehouse. The street was full of rain and empty of cars. Only in the taverns a block down (Albert Leroy’s block) were there signs of life, but even the drinking crowd seemed intimidated by the dreary weather, the noise and jukebox music of the bars seeming muted, half-hearted. Up here, by the taxi stand, all was quiet, deserted.

I walked around to the back, passing Boyd’s green Mustang, and put on my gloves and got the nine-millimeter automatic firmly in hand. I climbed the open wooden stairway up to where Vince kept his apartment and got to work on his door. It had a new-style lock that might have been designed by a moonlighting burglar, the type of lock you can use a credit card to open. Once inside I pulled the shades in the kitchen and switched on the light and for a moment I was startled. For that moment I thought I was back where Boyd had stayed, back in that apartment I’d since found out belonged to somebody named Carol-the same pink stucco walls, the same new but cheap furniture like something you’d see in a middle-grade mobile home; the wall-to-wall carpeting was even the same color, a murky green. The layout of the apartment was identical to the other one and it was obvious the renovations of both had been handled by the same contractor. Which wasn’t surprising considering Vince and his sister Carol shared the same landlord in Raymond Springborn.

Vince was not a neat housekeeper. Any fears I might have had about coming in from the rain and leaving a tell-tale mess behind were quickly dispelled. The kitchen table was a sea of empty beer bottles and cans (mostly Budweiser) with more of the same littered around the edges of the room; the sink was full of several days dishes and the smell of garbage was so strong I wanted to wrap the whole room in brown paper and put it out for the trash. The bedroom’s focal point was its unmade bed, its sheets soiled and smelly and sticky-damp. Underwear and dirty socks and colored T-shirts and jeans were wadded and tossed here and there, as though Vince took off his clothes like a greedy kid unwrapping a Christmas present. On the bedroom walls were stuck various clipped-out pictures from porno mags, though nothing outright obscene: muscle men parading around in jocks, and lots of women showing lots, but nothing frontal below the waist. Vince’s taste did seem evenly divided between men and women, so the boy wasn’t strictly gay, and he wasn’t particularly kinky either, from the look of the pics on the wall; no whips or chains or that. Vince seemed to like his perversion kept within certain limits of good taste, and there was no real indication of a penchant for violence, though I later found some karate books in his closet, mixed in with automotive magazines, books and magazines on body-building and some “swinging singles” publications. The living room was better ordered than the rest of the place, probably because the only furniture was a sofa and a color television, the rest of the room being as empty as I imagined Vince’s mind and personality to be. Oh there were a few, just a few, scattered beer cans and bottles, and a half-eaten sack of corn curls and mostly eaten cup of clam dip on the floor by the sofa. A very mild, unimpressive mess after the kitchen and bedroom, which were the work of a virtuoso slob. The only other room in the apartment was the bathroom, which I’d rather not go into.