Макс Коллинз - Quarry in the Black

“What order do you want me to take those in, Delmont?”

“Huh? Any order, I guess.”

“Okay. If you crash the car with me in it, you’re also in it. So what happens to me probably happens to you.”

He was frowning. “Like getting killed.”

“Like getting killed. Or maimed or fucked-up, and should one or both of us survive to wake up in a hospital, guess who would be there?”

“...Family?”

“Cops. Or possibly somebody else who handles contracts for your middleman, Fred — to take you out. So the cops can’t ask you about him.”

“Fred wouldn’t do that.”

“Are you sure?”

He clearly wasn’t.

I said, “Now let’s say you start speeding up and I sense you plan to crash into something on purpose, side of a bridge, a harvester poking along, whatever. And I shoot you. You are dead. I am alive. I can reach over and steer and maybe even get my foot over there to the gas and brake pedals — tricky in these bucket seats, I admit — but most likely I could guide the car to safety. Why, Delmont? Were you thinking of doing any of those things?”

He was frowning. Like a kid taking a time out in a corner. He shook his head.

“Just makin’ conversation,” he said.

Suddenly the moon was brilliant silver-white. The rolling landscape became as sharply focused as a prize-winning photograph.

After a while he asked, “What branch was you in?”

“Did I say I served?”

“I can tell. Can’t you usually tell?”

“Yeah. Marines.”

A big grin blossomed. “Me, too! Man, I shoulda known. Hardass like you. You ain’t so big, you know physically, but you got that attitude. Semper fi, mac!”

“Semper fi,” I said.

“I got USMC tattoos all up and down my arms and my back, too. You got any?”

“No.”

“Where was you? I mean, Nam, of course. But where?”

“Hill 55, south of Da Nang.”

“Weren’t that a sniper platoon?”

“Yeah.”

“You know where I was?”

“No.”

“Hill 51. Firebase Ross. We was practically neighbors.”

“Practically.” I was referring to the typed directions. “That’s the turn — that gravel road past the mill pond.”

He didn’t slow enough to suit me, whipping onto the thing. But I didn’t say anything. Nobody likes a backseat driver.

“So,” he said, finally slowing down, the ride bumpy and crunchy, harvested fields on either side of us, the Hunter’s Moon brighter than the Charger’s headlights. “You got somebody like Fred?”

“I do.”

“You always work in pairs like that?”

“Almost.”

“Makes for less money, don’t it?”

“Yeah. Half the money.” Usually.

“What we’re doin’ here tonight, Jack — pickin’ up the payment before the job is done... does that seem odd to you?”

“No. Why. Does it to you?”

“No. Just thought maybe it did to you. Different folks work different ways. Way we do it, Fred guarantees the client reimbursement if the hit don’t go down or the hitter gets hit or some shit.”

“My Fred does the same.”

“Hangin’ around after the job to pick up the paycheck, well, hell, that just don’t cut it.”

“No it don’t.”

“Listen, uh... I’m sorry about knockin’ around your little Jew friend.”

“That’s all right. If we’d been as sharp as you, we’d have handled you pretty much the same.”

He frowned over at me, confused. “What do you mean, if you was as sharp as me?”

“You noticed us, Delmont. We didn’t notice you. You were one up on us.”

He grinned, feeling good about himself, apparently not factoring in that I had the gun. “Yeah, well I guess that’s right. Got a lot in common, you and me. Marines. And in the same business and such. Might’ve been buddies in other circumstances.”

“Might have,” I allowed. “But we’re partners now, and that’s friendly.”

The fields had fallen away and we had trees on either side of us, mostly bare of leaves with an occasional evergreen making its smug presence known. The moon was so big, it looked unreal. You couldn’t get away with it in a movie.

He chuckled. “I got to say, sittin’ on the sidelines and collectin’ my pay for doin’ diddly squat? That don’t suck. That don’t suck at all. That gun you got there?”

“What about it?”

“Browning, right? Nine mil? I never seen a silencer that long.”

“Does the job.”

“I never found one works for shit. It sure ain’t like on TV.”

“This one is.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Just makes a little hiccup.” I sat forward. “I think we’re here.”

Up ahead on the right, starting at the foot of a hill, half a dozen cars were parked on the right, straddling the road and its shoulder, leaving only narrow passage. The vehicles ranged from a Chevy pick-up to a familiar white Lincoln. Delmont went on by and up and over. On the downslope another half dozen or so more parked cars hogged the road, again in a mix that suggested owners from the highest and lowest strata of what passed for civilization around here.

He pulled in after the final car, almost at the bottom of the hill, and shut off the engine.

“Keys,” I said.

I held out my palm.

When he frowned, the eyes crowding the flat bridge of his nose seemed even closer together. “What for?”

“For now. Our partnership is in the early stages, Delmont, and I’m senior partner. So it’s all about pleasing me.”

He gave me a pouty look but also the keys, which I stuck in my windbreaker pocket.

I said, “I got a bad feeling I already know what kind of meeting this is.”

The pout turned into a grin. “Bet you do. You’re a smart one. But you can just wait here. I’ll go get my money. Could take a while.”

“I’ll tag along for now.”

“But you won’t be able to...” He sighed, smirked, said, “Suit yourself. Anyway, you got the keys and I gotta get somethin’ out of the trunk.”

He got out and so did I. At the rear of the vehicle, I unlocked the trunk and Delmont raised the lid. At first glance what was within looked like folded white sheets, but Delmont rustled around with them, before taking them out, and revealed them as a white uniform with a red insignia bearing a white cross. Tucked beneath was a pointed hood with eye holes in a full-face mask.

“Now do you see why,” Delmont said grinning goofily, “the client can make the payoff directly and still not see who I am? Or me him, neither?”

“I do,” I said. “Hand me those.”

“Why?”

“Never seen one of these costumes up close.”

“Not costume, uniform.”

“Uniform, then. Gimme.”

Reluctantly, he gathered up the white garment and its snappy hood and I took them and laid them on the hood of the car parked behind us for appraisal — a nice clean Buick that wouldn’t spoil the freshly laundered cotton. Spread out there, it was like a KKK member had got deflated.

Delmont, reaching for the outfit, said, “I might need a little help gettin’ into ’em.”

“I don’t think so.” I pointed the silenced nine mil at him, and nodded to the open Charger trunk. “Get in.”

“What?”

“Come on, Delmont. You heard me. I’m gonna go collect your money for you.”

“What for? We’re partners! And anyway, ain’t no way I’m gonna fit in that trunk.”

“Sure you can. You’re big but nimble. As for you going after your money, how do I know you wouldn’t bring a bunch of crazy darkie haters back here and eliminate me?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because everything you’ve done in our partnership so far has been under duress.”

“Under what the fuckin’ fuck?”