Max Collins - Quarry

Carl pouted. His eyes told me to go to hell. But he said nothing.

“You can close your coat now,” I said.

“Where’s your friend,” Carl asked.

He meant Vince.

At the bottom of this limestone pit, Carl, where he landed when I shoved his remains over the edge.

“I patched him up,” I said, “and he’s doing fine. Walking up and down the road here, keeping his eyes open. Making sure you and Broker didn’t bring any of your friends along.”

Carl said, “Broker wants you to get in the car and talk with him in there.”

I waved the gun toward Broker, whose face in the window of the Buick was bland and emotionless and practically bored. “Broker,” I said, loud, “get your ass out here!”

The back door opened. Broker didn’t come out, but his voice did. He said, “Climb in here with me, Quarry. No need to stand out in the rain and catch pneumonia.”

“Why don’t you come out here and join me, Broker. I been in the rain so long it’s gotten to be my natural state.”

“Please,” the Broker said. With solemn patience.

“Why not,” I said. I looked at Carl and said, “You get in the front. Sit on the rider’s side and don’t cause any trouble.”

Carl did as he was told.

Broker was wearing a charcoal double-knit suit and a dark blue shirt and a wide tie colored robin’s egg blue. He moved over to make room for me, which put him directly behind Carl. There was plenty of room in the Buick’s back seat-headroom, legroom, everything. I laid the nine- millimeter on my lap and folded my gloved hands. It was cold in the car. The damn airconditioner was on, which was stupid on a rainy and not particularly warm night like this one, and between its coldness and size, that Buick could’ve been used as a meat locker.

“Excuse the delay,” Broker said. “My wife and I were entertaining a houseful of guests, and it was most difficult getting away.”

“Having a party, huh, Broker? Well that’s one way to establish an alibi.”

“Please, Quarry.” His mustache quivered.

“You and your pretty wife are eating caviar and sipping cocktails and I’m out here in the rain getting my nuts shot off by a cripple.”

I could see Carl in the rearview mirror. I could see his face get tense. But he didn’t say anything.

I said, “You might be interested to know that my business in Port City has been settled, and without rousing the police or causing J. Edgar Hoover to rise from the dead.”

Broker’s expression turned grim. He nodded slowly and said, “I received a call from the party who contracted your services…”

“Mrs. Springborn, you mean.”

Broker couldn’t keep back the sharp look this time. But it passed quickly. He said, “The party informed me of your visit, and that you had promised to leave Port City.”

“That’s right.”

“And that you demanded and were paid an additional four thousand dollars. How do you think that makes me look? I’m not a blackmailer, Quarry, I won’t condone extortion.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh at the bastard or strangle him. I told him so.

“Quarry, please!” The Broker patted his hands at the air. “Please. I shouldn’t have brought up the subject.” He cleared his throat. “My friend, we could drag this out forever, shouting at each other, accusing each other of all sorts of things. You could tell me again of your distaste for that job at the airport, and reexpress your general displeasure with my management of your affairs these past several months. And I could remind you again of your unpardonable behavior in Port City, and, successful or not, could you really refute the insanity of staying on the scene after a job and, in the name of God, investigating? I think not. This is unfortunate, this is all most unfortunate, and rehashing all of our grievances will get us nowhere. I’m sorry our mutually beneficial working arrangement must be dissolved in so disagreeable a way, after so long a period of time. It’s obvious reconciliation is impossible. I’m fond of you, I really am, and you’ve done good work for me. But in recent days we’ve treated each other badly and have left our relationship in a state of damage beyond repair. Tonight, and I admit my judgment was faulty, tonight I tried to have you killed. Just as you, while working for me, betrayed our trust and kept for yourself valuable property belonging to me. Well, one hand washes the other, as they say, and I say let us dispense with past differences and get on with the business at hand.”

If he’d been running for something, I would’ve voted for him. The rain beat on the roof of the car like applause.

“Well, Quarry?”

“Okay,” I said.

The Broker nodded gravely and withdrew from his inside suitcoat pocket a thick, sealed envelope. He ripped the envelope open with a great sense of the dramatic, and displayed the thickness of green bills.

I dug into my pants pocket for the key. I handed it to him.

He said, “The airport? A locker at the airport?”

I nodded.

“Reckless,” the Broker said, softly, “most reckless.”

He handed me the envelope, without ceremony this time. I spread it open, ran my thumb across the edges of the bills. The bills were new and crisp; they even smelled new. I started to count the money, and from the corner of my eye I saw the Broker make a movement of his head and in the rearview mirror I saw Carl nod back.

And I saw that the glove compartment was open.

Sometime during Broker’s pompous speech, Carl had quietly opened the glove compartment.

Carl was watching me in the mirror to make sure I wasn’t watching him. I waited until his hand was inside the glove compartment and on the revolver and then I grabbed Broker by the arm and yanked him over hard and plastered myself against the door and Carl fired.

Carl fired and his bullet caught Broker in the right eye and the back of Broker’s head flew off and sprayed-splattered a surrealistic, mostly scarlet design across the back window.

There was a moment when it could have been over for me. Broker had fallen on me, a thousand pounds of dead Broker had fallen on my lap and I couldn’t get to the automatic, but somehow I shoved Broker over toward the other door and got my hands on the gun and brought it up to return fire.

I should have been dead by that time, but Carl had hesitated; he had hesitated and let his mind get in front of his reflexes. He had hesitated and had had time to realize what happened, to see through the smoke and red mist, to see Broker’s ghastly mutilated face, and Carl knew what he had done, and the look of horror on his face lasted only a fraction of an instant, because that was when the nine-millimeter came mercifully up and rested against his cheek and kissed his face into nothing at all.

Fingers fumbling, I unlocked the door, jerked the latch, rolled out of the car, gratefully crawled into the muddy gravel, choking on the smell of cordite, ears ringing from the explosion of Carl’s unsilenced revolver going off in the confines of the car.

My instinct was to leave immediately, just get the hell out. I got to the Ford and inside and drove up out of the quarry access road and by the time I was back onto the open area where the Buick was parked, the engine still purring, I had decided on a course of action. I guess it had been in my mind all along. If I’d been honest with myself, I would have admitted that my relationship with the Broker couldn’t have ended any other way. But I hadn’t faced the truth. I’d waited for the inevitable situation to come around, and had met it as though it were a surprise.

I placed my nine-millimeter automatic in Broker’s limp hand. I put Vince’s wrench under the front seat of the Buick. The investigating team would have a merry time sorting it all out. They’d get as far as a crossfire between Broker and Carl and then would face a maze leading at one turn to a locker in the Quad City Airport, a locker with a little plastic bag full of heroin in it, leading into an even vaster labyrinth of mob activity. Another turn of the maze would lead back to Port City and Boyd’s corpse and Albert Leroy and maybe even the Springborns. But not me. I’d be gone. Like I’d never been there.