Макс Коллинз - Quarry in the Black

Boyd was out there, long-barreled revolver in hand, checking the bodies.

“Hey!” I called.

“You’re welcome,” he said. He was in a black sweatshirt and black jeans.

“Now him,” I said, pointing at Jackson. “With one of their guns!”

Jackson flew to his feet, as I stepped away from the bench with the bag in hand. Boyd shot four times and only one of the shots hit, but it was in the forehead, so that did the trick. Jackson sat back down on the bench in that effortless way only a corpse has.

Bringing Boyd in meant I’d have to split my twenty grand with him, and come up with some half-assed reason why there was extra in the bag. But people are never hard to convince when they’re getting more money than they thought.

Anyway, after last night, I was happy just to wind up without blood all over me.

As expected, the Broker called off the job.

He did so immediately after I gave him the news of our client’s death. Of course, the story I told him wasn’t the one you’ve just heard — what he got was that two white accomplices of Jackson’s had tried to steal the payoff loot, and everybody got shot for their trouble.

Everybody, that is, but Boyd and me, who had helped ourselves to the bag of cash the client had brought.

“How did it happen,” the Broker asked me on the phone, “that you and Boyd were there when the money was delivered?”

“Too much crazy shit had gone down for us not to be,” I said, nestled in one of the phone booths at Duff’s. “Like that hick who dropped in on us...” Delmont. “...and that drug dealer who got killed in that alley.” André.

“You felt,” he said, “the need to exert some caution.”

“Yup. And I’m exerting some more by sticking for a few days — to keep John Blake from attracting undue official attention.”

“Probably wise. But, Quarry — stay alert.”

“Will do. Listen, should it come up, I split the payoff with Boyd.”

“Why is that?”

“I just felt like he earned it as much as I did. Since the job never really came off.”

“Ah. A man with a conscience.”

“Let’s not get carried away, Broker.”

To this day, I’m not sure the Broker really believed what I told him about what happened at the Korean War Memorial near the Jewel Box; but he pretended to, and it never came up again.

And I did return to the Lloyd house in the Ville, after the Forest Park payoff drop. Nobody had noticed I was gone. I returned with breakfast rolls and coffee, carrying in the built-in alibi I hadn’t needed. I was still there when the Reverend got the call about his “friend” Jackson’s body being discovered near the floral memorial.

As for Boyd, he was able to fly out that morning. I dropped him at the airport but he was already flying high.

“Boy,” he said, “that job couldn’t have gone smoother.”

“Really?”

“Great surveillance pad, we don’t even have to go through with the job, and wind up way in the black.”

I didn’t have the heart to remind him of certain little bumps in the road — like two Nazi country boys jumping me, Delmont beating him senseless, a KKK Klavern chasing me across an open field. Then there was me getting splashed with blood — more like in the red than the black — and him shooting it out with St. Louis hoodlums before assuming the active role and finishing Jackson off.

Funny how we only remember the good things.

I wound up staying on at Coalition HQ only for two more days. The first was mostly taken up by a replay of those same two cops coming around and asking all the staffers, myself included, minor variations on the questions they’d asked after André’s killing. The second day was really only a morning, because right away the Reverend gathered everybody back by his office and, essentially, said goodbye.

Standing beside him was his somber but ever-radiant wife, in a black-trimmed white dress with a white corsage. She might have been going to a funeral. Or the prom.

“We have been forced to prematurely shut down our get-out-the-youth-vote campaign,” the Reverend said, the resonant voice lacking its usual fire. “The organizers of Saturday’s rally have asked me not to speak, in light of the various tragedies, as well as what has come out about Harold Jackson and André Freeman, and... well, I don’t have to go over the embarrassing, disheartening details that you’ve all read and heard in the media.”

Then with obvious sincerity and a good deal of warmth, he thanked them for their dedication and hard work, adding, “I will be regrouping in the near future, with a smaller staff. Our mission of non-violence, education, and brotherhood... and sisterhood... continues.”

They all applauded, wildly at first, but rather quickly ran out of steam.

Smiling, he took his wife’s white-gloved hand and said, “In the light of so much tragedy and disappointment, I am pleased to give you some happy news. My new chief administrative assistant will be Mrs. Marianne Lloyd.”

That got a nice round of applause, too, and Mrs. Lloyd gave her own little speech about being proud to join her husband in the fight.

“My children are grown,” she said, “but the world they live in could still use some work. And Raymond and I are both ready to roll up our sleeves.”

A little more applause, and then everyone went about emptying their desks and filling boxes that had thoughtfully been provided.

My desk didn’t have anything in it, so I helped Ruth. She was in the same maroon vest, matching pants and navy blouse as the first day. Same hoop earrings, too.

She gave me a glum smile and said, “So what do you think, John? Will I be offered a position on the Reverend’s new scaled-down staff?”

“No. But you weren’t going to stay on anyway. You’re just pouting.”

Her smile lost its glumness. “They say the truth hurts, but when it comes out of your mouth, it just makes me smile.”

“I was put here to spread joy. You know, we really should celebrate.”

“Celebrate? Celebrate what?”

“Not having to go to a dull rally this Saturday.”

Of course, she had no idea how un-dull it might have been.

“Okay,” she said, “so we celebrate. Any ideas?”

Within two hours, we had piled into the Impala SS and headed for the Lake of the Ozarks and a resort where I’d stayed last year after a job.

That evening, in bed, after making love in the glow of a fire, she snuggled up and said, “They’re going to blow up my building.”

“What?”

“ Our building, Mother’s and my sisters’ and mine. At Pruitt-Igoe. The whole dangerous, rat-ridden place is coming down, which is for the best. But some of it stayed nice. It was home. And now I need someplace else for my mother and me and the girls.”

“Your mom is welcome here at the lodge. In her own room.”

Ruth grinned. “And my sisters?”

“How old were they again?”

She batted my chest playfully and said, “Thanks for your concern, Jack, but we’ll find something. I’ve applied at several law firms and, with any luck, we’ll be able to afford someplace really nice.”

“You deserve it.”

The last evening of our stay, McGovern lost. It hadn’t taken long. We’d been watching in our room and she switched off the set with the remote, saying she had no stomach for any network post-mortems.

We were back in bed when she said, “Now another four years of Nixon. Doesn’t that suck.”

I said I supposed it did.

But I wasn’t thinking about the next four years. I was enjoying the right now of sharing a bed with a beautiful woman, getting daily rubdowns, plenty of swims, taking long walks in the woods. Scarfing down delicious food, too. Life sucked less suddenly.