Макс Коллинз - Killing Quarry

“I want the list,” he said, with a single nod. “The names, the information. But I’m not unreasonable. I don’t expect something for nothing.”

“In other words,” I said, “you’ll let me live.”

“Yes.”

Well, that was great to hear! Why wouldn’t I trust this fuck-hole?

“But there’s more,” he said, like an infomercial pitchman getting ready to throw in an extra Vegematic. “You can work for me, if you’re interested. Your skills are, well, well-known if not quite legendary. You’ll get the best paying contracts. Work as little or as much as you like.”

“I sort of retired from that,” I said. “I’ve kind of been working the other side of the street.”

He nodded. Still reasonable. “All right. Understood. But what if we were to become partners?”

Like he’d been with his friend, the late Charles Vanhorn?

“What did you have in mind?” I asked, letting it play out.

“A twenty percent kickback on any income the names on that list generate.”

I grinned. “How about twenty percent of your overall take, as the über -Broker?”

He frowned a little. “No. You wouldn’t deserve that, would you?”

Hell, the one thing I hoped I’d never get was what I deserved.

I said, “How about ten percent of everything? Nothing extra for the list income.”

He shook his head. “No. I think my offer is fair. And it’s firm.” All right, now — this guy really was no dope. No stooge. He obviously had no intention of giving me anything but a bullet. But by negotiating like this, he clearly figured he’d make me believe his offer was the real thing. Unfortunately for him, I was no dope or stooge, either.

Still, he was the guy with the gun. Always a plus in any negotiation.

I took some air in. “Twenty percent on the Broker-linked income,” I said, nodding. “It’s a deal.”

No handshake followed.

But he did give me his biggest smile yet. It was like a wound opening back up. “Good! Good. Let’s start with the list itself. Turn it over and I’ll leave you and your charming friend to enjoy the coming day. Dawn is on the way.”

“What if I don’t keep the list here? What if it’s in a safe deposit box, or buried in a friend’s back yard?”

He only smiled a little. “If the latter, we’ll find a shovel. If the former, we’ll go there together when the bank opens. A local bank, is it?”

“It’s not in a local bank. Not in any bank.” I pretended to mull it. “It’s here, Hank.”

He straightened a little. “Excellent. Why don’t you get up slowly and lead me to wherever it is you keep it.”

I gestured, a small one, at my nine mil in his hand. “Why don’t you put your gun away first?”

“Afraid I can’t do that. We haven’t built up that level of trust as yet.”

I wondered what level of trust he’d built with his old pal, the Envoy.

“I get that,” I said, “but I’m unarmed.”

“You may have a gun tucked away with the list, or lead me to where a gun is waiting with no list at all, hmm?”

I shook my head. “There’s no hidden gun, Hank. And we’re friends now, right? Business partners. I have the list, it’s right here nearby, and it isn’t under the floorboards in a box with a gun in it or a rattlesnake waiting or anything. But I don’t care to have an automatic in my face. Makes me nervous.”

He nodded and lowered the gun and I jumped him.

Took him off to the side of the couch section where he’d been sitting and tumbled onto the floor, about where Simmons had died. We rolled, ending up with him on top as I tried to wrest the gun from his grasp till he freed up one hand to yank my nine mil from his waistband and shoved the gun in me, right in my belly.

He got to his feet and pointed both guns down at me. “Stay there!” he said, looking flummoxed.

While I hadn’t accomplished much other than to surprise and rattle him, without any hidden snake’s help, he was glaring down with a grimace on that tight terrible mask of a face, likely wondering if he shouldn’t just go ahead and kill me and then rip the place apart till he found what he was after.

He stood there breathing hard, trying to decide, maybe thinking that shooting me in various non-lethal areas might make me talk. The scuffling put Lu, on her perch behind us, out of his view, and she got up, quick and quiet, and slipped over to a nearby section of the couch and dug her hand down between cushions.

Must have been a habit of hers — squirreling her little collection of firearms around a room, in case she might need one, as she had back at our room at the chalet. Then she disappeared from my sight as she slipped around in back of him.

He didn’t notice. He was too busy glowering down at me, saying, “You get me that fucking list now, or that slut of yours dies.”

So much for his fine, friendly talk.

“You have a bad attitude,” I advised him, “about women.”

That must have alerted him enough to look over at Lu by the fireplace, only she wasn’t there anymore, and he swung around and saw her in her new position, to the right near the draped sliding doors, and he was aiming both his ray-gun and my nine mil at her when, still prone, I kicked him in the ass with the flat of my right shoe, which had my right foot in it at the time, and he went stumbling toward her, till she greeted him with a bullet in the guts.

He stopped.

Sort of tottered and shimmied there for a few moments, his hands turning into fingers and the guns dropping, thankfully not firing when they hit, clunk clunk , and then she gave him two more in the belly to think about. He crawled on the floor, trying to get to those doors, leaving a snail-like trail, only not slimy silver but a brilliant red, then he just lay there on his side, legs up fetally, whimpering, his hands clutching his shredded skin over the punctured intestines within, blood oozing between fingers like water from a squeezed sponge.

Some of that blood had jumped out of him and onto her nice blue robe. She removed the garment, tossing it with a disgusted cringe. All she wore beneath were the orange bikini undies I’d seen before.

She gathered the guns and set her small one and Poole’s big clunky thing on the kitchenette counter, then brought along my nine mil as she headed back over to me. I was still down on the shag carpeting, on my ass, breathing hard.

“Thanks,” I said.

We could hear him whimpering.

I said, “No head shot?”

She half-smiled. “And risk you getting your boyish face splashed again? No, gut-shot will do the trick nicely. He’s an evil bastard and he deserves some suffering before the lights go out.”

“Agreed.” I was just starting to push up when she spoke.

“Now,” she said. She loomed over me and I thought she was going to hand me the automatic, but instead she pointed it at me and said, “About that list...”

“Really?” I said.

Lu and my own gun looked down at me. Her tanned legs seemed endless. Her breasts threw a voluptuous shadow on my fallen self.

“I don’t want to kill you,” she said. “Please don’t make me kill you.”

“No intention of doing that,” I said, on my back but with my hands up in surrender.

Seemed to me she was having to try too hard to keep her tone businesslike; something emotional was trying to show through that she couldn’t quite beat back, and I would swear her eyes were moist.

“I just want the list,” she said. “I just want the Broker’s file of names, addresses and information. Means nothing to you. You can’t use it anymore. What you’ve been up to these past ten years has been exposed. And you have no desire to use it the way the Broker or Envoy did, right? So let’s make it easy. Just hand it over and I’ll get out of your life. No harm, no foul.”