Макс Коллинз - Killing Quarry

We had not yet discussed why Lu — coming onto her presumably longtime partner, about to shoot the man she and he had come to kill — had instead killed that partner. That she had then soothed me, cleaned me up, and resumed a friendly relationship that, let’s face it, only lasted a few days in the first place, a lot of years ago.

What was this about?

What was she up to?

My winning personality and bedroom skills did not seem enough to encourage this old female friend of mine to kill for me. So far, I’d just been living the moments — the surprise of having Lu back in my life, the relief that she had chosen to save my ass, the procedure of dealing with a dead body that needed to disappear, even the social time spent together over chili.

No reflection.

Just moments. This moment into the next moment.

Now I was behind the Impala’s wheel, chasing my headlights. You might think I’d have felt comfortable, moving through my home turf; but my home turf was a heavily timbered area, a dense dark woods on a night with the moon blotted out by clouds, as I rode a concrete ribbon that I was sharing tonight with nobody but Lu.

That was an exaggeration. We encountered probably four cars on a journey that lasted half an hour and change. But it nonetheless seemed like a desolate, spooky, otherworldly world that I was moving through, as if I were already a ghost.

At the gravel pit, we exchanged cars, and when I started down the incline toward the drop-off, below which the ice-covered gravel pit waited, I wondered if I was about to be as dead as Simmons. I’d brought along my nine millimeter — it was again in my deep bomber jacket pocket — but what good would it do if she fired her Glock at me just as I rolled out onto the ground from the moving vehicle?

Or she might run me down with the Impala, maybe send it and me over that cliff, jumping to safety herself.

Perhaps it’s telling that I didn’t consider turning the tables on her to let her take a trip over the edge and into the pit with her partner. Why didn’t I? Did I trust her? If so, why?

What the fuck, Quarry?

Then I was rolling out of the wagon and it was on its way, then gone, followed by the crunch of the ice giving out, and a gurgling sort of burp from the water below, swallowing it.

Suddenly she was right there, helping me up, both of us in the Impala’s headlight glare. She was in a black raincoat, which made a silhouette of her. I brushed the dirt and dust off myself, and answered her facial query — you all right? — with a nod.

She drove.

Neither of us said a word on the way back, not once in over half an hour. And then we were both back in the living room of my A-frame, sitting beside each other like kids outside the principal’s office, looking at the couple of splotches of blood on the shag carpet that were all that remained of Bruce Simmons.

“I need another shower,” I said.

“You got dirty,” she allowed. “You do that and I’ll clean up the carpet.”

“You’ll find what you need under the sink,” I said, nodding toward the kitchenette.

I shuffled off and took another shower. This time I knew I wasn’t still asleep. Wasn’t dreaming. I scrubbed and soaped and leaned against the wall letting the needles have me. I came out in a bathrobe and almost bumped into her.

She gazed at me with those almond eyes and I could see that she was beat, too.

“My turn,” she said, and moved past me, and took over the bathroom, shutting the door on me. Then the spray was going in there.

Out in the A-frame, she’d done her housekeeping. The area on the shag carpet where the bloodstain and puke had been was moist but clean. The various barricades I’d put together with furniture were disassembled, returned to their places or close enough, and even the bubble-pack under windows was gone, stowed away in the supply room most likely.

“But can she cook?” I said to myself.

I got into some pajama bottoms and went into the guest room, where I regularly slept. I slipped under the sheets and covers, and they felt fine. I’d changed them a few days ago and my routine, going back to the Marines, was to make my bed every day. Hospital corners and all.

She’d had plenty of opportunities to take me out, so I didn’t worry about whether it was safe to fall asleep or not. As if I had any choice. A few years ago maybe what I’d been through these past, largely sleepless couple of days and nights wouldn’t have fazed me. But I was beat, all right. Dead. Not Simmons dead, but dead enough.

I shut the light off.

“Hey you,” she said.

She was framed in the doorway, lights on out there. Tall, leaning against the jamb. A silhouette again, her hair an unruly mane — must have washed it and given it a preliminary towel dry.

I clicked on the nightstand lamp, the glow of which was yellow — dim but just enough to read by, on nights I couldn’t get to sleep.

She had wrapped a towel around her, sarong-style. Dorothy Lamour on the lookout for Bing or Bob. Still in the doorway, she asked, “Interested? Bad timing? Been through a lot, I know. Maybe just sleep?”

Then she dropped the towel.

Fucking beautiful women and what they know they can do to you.

That lanky body with the pendulous breasts, the nipples erect in their dark sand-dollar circles, the lush thatch of dark pubic triangle. The years had only improved her, her legs not so skinny now, her body showing signs of working out. My vivid memory of whiteness left by her bikini when she sunned had been replaced by an all-over tan.

That lovely unusual high-cheekboned face, those almond eyes, the narrow nose, wide mouth, bore no makeup at all. By every stereotypical standard this was not a beautiful woman. But the combination of those features, and the intelligence in those gold-flecked blue orbs, set their own standard of beauty.

Who the hell cared if she could cook?

She came over to me and flipped the covers back. I was erect already.

“Sit,” she commanded.

I sat on the edge of the bed and then she was kneeling before me and her head was moving up and down in my lap, the velvety warmth enveloping all of me, not just what her mouth had taken in. Gliding up, gliding down. Her hair was still damp from the shower, its tendrils tickling my thighs as her head gently bobbed, building tempo until she had to stop if she didn’t want it to end.

And she didn’t.

She guided me onto my back and she climbed on and that sweet receptacle sucked me up into itself. She did all the work, or anyway most of it. Grinding but sweetly, building again, until this time I couldn’t hold back and she didn’t want me to. We clasped each other, shudderingly, and then she smiled down at me.

“Aren’t you glad,” she said, “you didn’t kill me, all those years ago?”

“Aren’t you glad,” I said, “you didn’t kill me tonight?”

The next morning, around nine, I heard somebody say, “Hey! You! Wake up!”

I got myself in a sitting position, blinked a few times, and there she was, sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed — another jumpsuit, but a lemon-color one today — with all her makeup done. She was probably around forty, and the years were showing some, but she knew not to hit the cosmetics too hard and looked just great.

“Question,” she said.

“Okay.”

“What kind of civilized human doesn’t keep any coffee in his house?”

“There’s tea. Diet Coke. If caffeine’s the point.”

She shook her head. No longer in a ponytail, the blondeness got itself nicely tousled. “ Coffee is the point. Did you have a nice time last night?”

“You mean, dumping that body or getting my ashes hauled?”

“The latter.”