Max Collins - Quarry

In the bedroom, in the closet behind the double sliding doors, under the stack of books and magazines, I found a spot in the comer where the carpeting could be pulled back and two loose boards easily lifted up and out and a cubbyhole revealed, and down in the cubbyhole, wrapped in a black T-shirt, was the money and the wrench.

I counted the money and it was all there. I examined the wrench. He’d scrubbed it down clean, but had kept it, and kept it hidden, like the moronic amateur he was. I looked at the T-shirt. I set the nine-millimeter on the floor so I could take the shirt in my hands and rip it in half. After that I felt better.

And then I put the money down into the deep raincoat pocket. The wrench I stuck in my belt and I put the torn T-shirt back down in the cubbyhole, replaced the boards, patted the carpet back in place, restacked the books and magazines, picked up the automatic and left the apartment.

Out on the landing I took off my gloves, found room in the deep pocket for both money and automatic, and walked down the wooden steps and into the taxi stand parking lot, where I transferred the money and wrench to the trunk of Boyd’s car. Then I went back into the taxi stand to wait for Vince.

Fifteen minutes later he came in. Strutted in. He liked himself. A lot. His jeans were tight and worn down around the hips, his skinny arms tattooed and wiry-muscled, hanging from his short-sleeve red T-shirt like plastic tubing, his hair was greased back like he just heard of James Dean and if I’d had a motorcycle I could have sold it to him. He said, “Shitty night,” to the woman behind the counter.

“Shitty weather, you mean?” she asked him, working on another stub of a cigarette. “Or shitty fares?”

“Shitty everything,” he said.

“Guy at the back table wants to see you. Been waiting, acts like he knows you.”

“Yeah?” He leaned over to whisper, though he knew I could still hear him. “Who the hell is the bastard?”

“Oh, he’s been around here before. Just this mornin’ he rented some parking space from me.”

Vince shrugged and strolled over and got himself a cup of coffee and leaned against the counter and watched me. When he’d finished his coffee, he rooster-walked up to where I was sitting and sat next to me, close, and gave me his best chipped-tooth smile. He said, “Do I know you, Jack?”

My guess was he didn’t. We’d met twice before: once in that apartment, when he introduced me to his wrench; and again early this morning, when he approached me in his girlie voice. When he’d gone into that swish number this morning, I hadn’t recognized him; I didn’t figure he’d recognized me, either. It had been dark scuffling in that apartment, very dark, and my guess was he hadn’t seen me any better than I’d seen him.

“I was in here this morning,” I said, “remember? You were acting kind of cute.” I kept a hard edge in my voice to let him know I wasn’t back to see him because I found his body attractive.

He remembered. He got suddenly nervous, squirming in his seat, and he laughed, a coughing sort of laugh, and scratched his head. Waving his hands, avoiding direct eye contact with me, he said, “I was just putting you on, Jack. Do I look like some kind of goddamn fag?”

“No,” I said. “No you don’t.”

“So what do you want, anyhow?”

“I want to know if you’re interested in making some money.”

His smart-ass grin crawled over onto the left side of his face. He said, “I dunno, I dunno, Jack. I had me a… better than average couple days, you might say.”

“Piss.” I shook my head. “How much can you make driving a cab?”

He kept grinning, eyes twinkling with all sorts of private knowledge. “Just so happens you caught me when I’m not that bad off, Jack. So whatever your hustle is I ain’t interested.”

“You should be.”

“Oh should I be? I see. Suppose you tell me why you should be interested in me? I ain’t in the blowjob business, if that’s what you’re here for.”

I put on an indignant look and said, tightly, “Maybe I’m talking to the wrong guy. The guy I wanted was supposed to be a real hardass. I asked around to find just the right kind of guy, and they tell me, see Vince, this guy at the cab station, and I say, shit, I ran into that guy already, he’s a fucking queer, and they say, don’t let him fool you, that’s how he makes side money, rolling queers and generally hardassing it around. And they say this Vince isn’t afraid of doing anything, anything that’s got good money tied up to it somehow.”

He rubbed his chin. He wasn’t nervous anymore. He studied me for a moment, then said, “Maybe you got sent to the wrong place.”

“Yeah?”

And then the cocky little bastard wagged his head side to side and grinned wide and said, “Yeah, and maybe you got sent to the right place, only it just ain’t open for business at the time being, so forget it.” He stood up.

“I pay big and ask little.”

“Forget it, Jack.”

“One hour of your time.”

“Just forget it.”

“One thousand bucks.”

That caught him on one foot. He swallowed. His expression settled into a blank stare, which I took to be concentration. He sat back down. Then he started to nod. He was nodding more emphatically by the time he said, “Let’s go outside and talk. We can sit in my cab.”

I said, “Fine,” and followed him outside. The rain was easing up, but it was still insistent. We both were wet by the time we were sitting in the front seat of his cab. He was excited, his breath fogging up the windows right off.

“One thousand fucking bucks, Jack?”

“That’s right.”

“Times is good for me now, but even in good times I can use that kind of bread.”

“Who can’t?”

“But money that big, whew! Hell, Jack, that’s got to mean trouble, and I don’t know you from Adam, I don’t know you from shit, I don’t know period.”

“The less you know the better.”

“Fuck that shit, Jack! You can tell me what the hell’s going on or you can stuff the thousand. You haven’t even told me what the hell it is you want me to do.”

“All I want from you is one thing. One simple thing. I want you to drive a car for me. I want you to deliver a car.”

“A thousand bucks to deliver a car?”

“This car is special… what it’s carrying is special. The people you deliver it to will take the car to a garage and strip it down immediately and get the stuff they’re after.”

He smiled, tense, not showing his chipped tooth. He knew what I was talking about. He all but said, “Narcotics.” He wanted to say it. But he restrained himself. Finally he said, “Okay, Jack, but why me? You got a load of… Jesus, a load like that, and you ask a stranger’s help? You must be fucking desperate.”

“I am. I’m desperate.”

“What the hell’s the situation, anyway?”

“Well…” I made a show of weighing the consequences of telling him “the truth.” With mock reluctance I said, “My partner and I were making this run, and last night he took sick. Terrible sick. This was an overnight stop for us, so I figured by morning he’d be okay. But he got worse, much worse.”

“What was wrong with him?”

“I don’t know, food poisoning maybe, or some weird-ass virus. All I know is he’s practically dying. This infection or something hit him all at once, hit him out of nowhere, and now I need a driver. To complete the run. What do you say?”

“He’s too sick to drive?”

“I’m asking you, aren’t I?”

“That’s just it, it’s so crazy, you asking me.”

“Who the hell else can I ask in this damn hick town? You got to bail me out, Vince. The money’s good. Do it.”