Макс Коллинз - Quarry in the Black

He grinned again, half-amused, half-impressed. “A stick-it-in-your-waistband type like you? I never remember you wearing one of those.”

“On one job I did,” I said. “You weren’t there. A solo gig.”

His voice turned teasing. “Were you lonely without me?”

“It was terrible. But I thought about you when I beat off at night.”

He flushed. He didn’t like that.

I said, “I almost didn’t take this job.”

“Really? Why?”

“Well, this Lloyd character didn’t seem to fit the profile.”

“What do you mean, profile?”

I shrugged. “Usually we take out people who... well, I don’t want to say ‘have it coming,’ because that’s not it exactly. More like they got themselves in whatever mess they’re in, and they’re already dead, really. They just don’t know it.”

“Walkin’ obituaries,” Boyd said, and gulped some more Bud. He’d finished the can, and got up and got himself a fresh one. When he sat back down, he asked, “What made you change your mind? The money?”

“The money was part of it. But then the Broker told me that Reverend Lloyd was dirty. A phony preaching one thing and doing another.”

He was nodding. “Yeah, that black bastard’s moving dope, Broker says, although not out of that storefront. I bet it’s these rallies he’s off doing, two or three a week now.”

“You follow him to any?”

He shook his head, once. “No. Broker said stay put. Said you’d be doing that, once you wormed your way inside.”

“I guess that’s right. You’d start being a familiar face popping up once too often. That means you’ve had some days off with pay. Not bad.”

“Not bad,” he admitted. “I’ve seen Lady Sings the Blues three times.”

Lucky him.

“Boyd, tell me — what if he was straight, this Lloyd?”

Boyd frowned. “Well, isn’t he straight? I mean, he’s married, though that doesn’t always—”

“Not that kind of straight. What if that wasn’t a front across the way, and the Rev was for real?”

“What if he was?”

“Would you still take the contract?”

He crinkled his chin and shrugged. “Why not?”

“Well, they say... a lot of people think... he’s the new Martin Luther King.”

“Yeah. And?”

“Would you have done that job?”

“What job?”

“Martin Luther King, dummy! Or JFK or Bobby?”

Boyd waved that off. “Nutballs did the two Kennedy brothers.”

“Maybe not. Plenty of people say they were contract jobs, fitted up with fall guys.”

He almost choked on his beer. “Now you’re the nutball! Quarry the conspiracy nutball, that’s a good one.”

I drank some Coke. “I asked the Broker about the Kennedys once and he said something interesting.”

“What?”

“ ‘Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.’ ”

He was frowning. “If they were really contracts, those kills, so what?”

I locked eyes with him, something I rarely did. “So would you have taken them on? King, for example.”

Squinting one eye, he said, “Well, that one probably was a contract. That James Earl Jones guy.”

“James Earl Ray.”

“Whoever. Some dude that got paid to do it.”

“Would you have done it, Boyd?”

“Not for the kind of money we usually get. Not even for ten grand.”

“But if the money were right?”

“...I think so. Retirement money, yeah, you bet.”

“Martin Luther King. How about Bobby Kennedy? Or Jack?”

He thought for a few moments. “High six figures. Political hits are high risk in lots of ways, but sure, I’d take a flier.”

I finished my Coke.

“What about you, Quarry?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

That seemed to annoy him. “Why not? Yeah, yeah, I get you, they’re good people, decent men, maybe great men. But they’re like anybody else we take out — they put themselves there. They made enemies. They became walkin’ obits like everybody we hit. So if somebody’s gonna get rich, why shouldn’t it be us? You? Me?”

Rich like Oswald? Or Sirhan Sirhan? Or James Earl Ray?

Boyd said, “What makes you so holier than thou, all of a sudden?”

“Nothing. I just didn’t sign on for anything political.”

Boyd said nothing. But I’d got him thinking.

I sighed. Got to my feet. “I’m gonna go get myself something to eat.”

“Want company?”

“No thanks. I want to get the hang of the neighborhood. Got a key for me?”

“Sure,” he said, and fished it out of pocket. “Listen, Quarry, the way this flat is set up, you gotta walk through my bedroom to get to yours. By the time you get back, I may already be asleep. I’ll have the door shut, so just knock and say it’s you. That way you won’t get accidentally shot or anything.”

“Okay.”

“And the can, Quarry, it’s off your bedroom, so I’ll do the same, if I need to use it.”

“Fine.”

“I don’t want to get accidentally shot, either.”

“Who does?”

I crushed the Coke can, tossed it in the wastebasket in a corner.

Said, “I’m going to shower and change my clothes.”

“Okay.”

“You want to watch, it’ll cost you a buck.”

He grinned. “Fuck you, Quarry.”

“That’d be ten bucks.”

He was smiling and shaking his head as he and his Bud headed out to the living room.

When I left, in fresh jeans and a nice sportshirt and the windbreaker, he was sitting on the floor in front of the TV, Indian-style, watching Dean Martin flirt with the Golddiggers.

Going down the stairs, I thought, Sure you’d have taken on King or the Kennedys, you gay asshole. All you’d have to do is surveil the fuckers.

The Euclid Bar and Grill, practically downstairs from Boyd, served food till ten P.M. and I was there in plenty of time. The small kitchen turned out real French fries with some of the skin on — not the frozen crap so frequently foisted on innocent diners — and my cheeseburger was thick, medium-rare and smothered in grilled onions. Life was good.

But the band was bad, living up to my first impression, butchering songs by a few groups I liked, Deep Purple, Crazy Horse, and others I didn’t, Black Oak Arkansas, REO Speed-wagon, though even they deserved better. Finally the guilty parties took a break and the jukebox spat out “Elected” by Alice Cooper, which considering the job that lay ahead seemed appropriate.

The bar was goddamn smoky and mostly lit by beer neons and the band’s lighting on the little stage. The clientele ran to college-age and young professionals, with something of a unisex vibe, most of the females in the same tight-fitting flared pants and patterned tops as the males, yellow and red a preferred color, though miniskirts popped up here and there, nostalgic for the recently passed ’60s. My longish hair might have been a butch for all the shoulder-length hair these guys wore, while the young women sported both very short and very long ’dos.

Falling in the latter category, my waitress was in a white blouse and black slacks, a curvy button-nose redhead too cute for her own good, and we’d struck up a relationship based on silly smiles and her leaning in to my booth, trying to talk over the band and take my order and me doing the same trying to give it.

Now that I’d finished my food, and the Marshall-amp-driven band was on break, she came around and was easily heard over the jukebox, which merely blared.

“Well, now, honey,” she said, just a slight Southern lilt coloring her pleasant second soprano, “you jus’ hated that, didn’t you?”