Killing Quarry

Fifteen

Dawn was taking its own sweet time coming, and right now all I wanted to do was to beat it home. I had just somehow made it through one of the longest nights of my life, and come out the other side alive, and now I could trade the cold for a warm bed. I hoped I’d be sharing it with Lu, unless she’d finally decided enough was enough and headed back to St. Paul.

But she hadn’t, because the Camaro was still parked on the gravel apron in front of the A-frame, next to my Firebird, which she’d driven back here. That got a smile out of me. Lu still here, and that warm bed waited. What more could a man want?

I went up the short flight of steps to the deck and peeked in between where the drapes didn’t quite meet at the sliding doors. Unless they’d been drawn really tight, I should be able to get a glimpse in at the living room.

And there she was, seated on one of the ottomans of the sectional couch by the conical metal fireplace, which she had going. She was in a light blue silk robe, looking at the flames, their reflection dancing on the slick cloth of the garment. Her blonde hair touched her shoulders, looking full and well-brushed; she must have showered when she got back.

Couldn’t blame her. Even a tough cookie like Lu might want to wash away the memory of the bodies we found at the chalet, and ease the stresses and forget the dangers of the last few days.

She’d left the sliding door unlocked for me, which wasn’t smart, but what the hell. Anyway, I wasn’t dumb enough not to have the nine millimeter in hand when I slipped through the drapes into my living room, my eyes on her, but the alarm in those Asian orbs of hers, when she swung that unusual beautiful face toward me as I entered, hadn’t come soon enough to help.

The barrel of an automatic was already against my right temple, right against it, and a male hand was plucking my nine mil from my fingers, a kid getting a toy gun taken away by a parent who didn’t approve of such violent playthings.

I hadn’t even seen him yet, tucked back there against the drapes to my right, waiting. The voice, belonging to Henry Poole, said, “Welcome home... Quarry, isn’t it?”

I’d assumed he’d be in the wind. The only cars I’d seen in the front and rear lot of Wilma’s had been employees’ ones. No unfamiliar car parked along my lane and certainly not in front of the A-frame with the Camaro and Firebird. So I’d dismissed it. Stupidly.

“Hello, Hank,” I said. “That’s what you said to call you, right?”

“You bet. Hands behind your head now. Lock your fingers.”

I did that and he patted me down one-handed and found no other weapons on me. I didn’t have any to find. While he did that, my eyes went to Lu, her expression barely changed yet managing to convey a wealth of apology. Pros like us shouldn’t be taken down so easily. But then we shouldn’t have just had the night we’d shared.

“Okay,” he said. “Have a seat.”

I moved slowly over to the sectional couch, but not near where Lu sat on her ottoman; I glanced back at Poole who had my nine mil in his left hand and a Colt Combat Commander.45 in his right hand, its snout bearing a big and almost otherworldly noise suppressor — this was almost certainly the gun that had snuffed out those three seminar participants.

Though he was behind me, walking me over, I had not been specifically directed where to sit. I wanted to be as far away from Lu as possible without my buddy Hank objecting — if he was going to shoot us, make him do it one at a time, so somebody besides this fucker Poole had a chance of surviving.

I settled on the same section of the sofa as when I faced Lu’s late partner, Bruce Simmons, whose place opposite me Poole eased into, keeping that gun trained. He was in a sharp dark suit and pale yellow shirt, no tie, typical of the dress back at the Cayman Islands chalet get-together. My nine mil was stuffed in his waistband. The only light in the big A-ceilinged room came from that fireplace.

The once-handsome man, who’d fought advancing years with plastic surgery, again brought to mind the Phantom of the Opera in the orange and blue flickering flames thrown by the fireplace. Funny. This was my second fireside chat in the space of a few hours with somebody who wanted me dead.

Or did he?

Why the hell was I still alive?

I am, if nothing else, a dangerous motherfucker who will kill you without blinking if you pose a threat. Nothing personal, mind you. But particularly if you are somebody like this burn-victim-looking bastard, who has his own killing ways, you will get the switch thrown on your life by me with none of the fanfare of an electrocution by the state.

And he had to know that.

That slit on his face was forming something that was supposed to be a smile. “Wondering why you’re still alive?”

I said nothing. Did nothing. But he was a perceptive son of a bitch, wasn’t he?

And why did he know to call me Quarry?

“You must have so many questions,” he said. “Would you like to pose them? I might miss something, if I just start rattling on.”

Again I glanced at Lu at her fireplace perch. Her eyes widened and she shrugged, just barely, obviously not caring to make any sudden move that might get her shot — or me, either, for that matter.

When I’d glimpsed her from outside through where the drapes didn’t quite meet, she had been turned toward the fire, her profile on display. Now she had slowly swung around so that she could watch the confrontation between me and my guest.

Just sitting there, hands folded in her lap, the half nearer the fire alive with fluctuating flame, the other half in shadow. I’m sure she was as confused as I was about still being alive.

As for Poole, he was no dummy. Where he sat, with his big ray-gun rod pointed at me, he was back away from me far enough that I couldn’t kick the thing out of his hand. And if I jumped him, he could take me down like a skilled hunter does a duck on the fly. Better than that, actually — no distance involved.

Unless I really caught him off-balance.

“Mr. Quarry? Do you have questions, or do you prefer a soliloquy?”

Like To be or not to be? With this guy choosing the second option? I almost asked as much, but smart-ass remarks to guys holding guns on you, particularly individuals who have been indulging in wholesale murder lately, well... that made for less than stellar strategy.

I said, “I do have a few questions.”

He nodded a little, a gracious mini-bow. “Please.”

“That was you back there. At the chalet.”

His eyebrows rose as far as the stretched skin would allow. “Doing the killing? Of course.”

“And at the Vanhorn place? Him and the two watchdogs?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any other hobbies?” Okay, I couldn’t help myself. Once a smart-ass, always a smart-ass.

And maybe it wasn’t even a bad strategy at that, because it made him chuckle. Not laugh. Chuckle.

“I do, actually,” he said. “I’m a collector of sorts.”

“Not stamps, I’m guessing. Old records maybe? Comic books?

Or... how about money?”

He nodded. He seemed loose-limbed, but that gun of mine in his paw stayed steady. “You are a good judge of character, Quarry. Money is my passion, all right. But you are reckless. No. Audacious. What else would you call this business of yours you’ve made a go of, for... what? A decade, or nearly so?”

So he knew.

Still, I had to ask: “What business is that?”

He shrugged. “Frankly, I don’t know exactly. Neither did my friend, Vanhorn.”

“Your friend?”

He nodded. “We weren’t partners, but unlike the other agents... you call us ‘brokers,’ I believe, because you were once the favorite of that pretentious twit out of the Quad Cities — the Broker? Right?”

No reason denying it. And Broker had been pretentious.

So I nodded.

“Anyway,” Poole said, looking like Joan Crawford in a horror movie in her later years when they were taping her skin back, “the agents, the brokers, the Envoy? They didn’t work together. They barely knew each other. But Charles Vanhorn and I got well acquainted, were put in touch by certain Chicago individuals, and would from time to time help each other out. For various reasons, having to do with personnel and sometimes location, I would take on a job for him and he for me.”

Why the hell was he telling me this?

But I said, “I can see how that might come in handy.”

His shoulders went up and down, but again that didn’t cause the gun-in-hand to lose its steadiness.

“It did,” he said. “And we were friendly. After all, we were in the same line, but a line that we couldn’t discuss with just anyone. We both had straight ventures going — successful ones, not just covers — and, well, you don’t go to the Rotary Club and talk over your business woes or even successes, when they have to do with our kind of contracts.”

“I can see that.”

The Asian eyes over by the fireplace widened. Was this guy nuts? she seemed to be asking. I flicked her the barest look that said, Who the hell knows?

“So,” he said, “Charles and I would discuss just what it was we thought was going on, where these periodic disrupted jobs and fallen pros were concerned. The deaths of our hired assassins often seemed accidental. The same was true of the individuals who’d taken out the contracts — occasionally one would die, again under mysterious circumstances. And it was sporadic enough... once or twice a year, out of any number of contracts... that it took time for our suspicion to grow into something more.”

I knew what this was about now, of course. I’d known for a while. I knew why I wasn’t dead, just another corpse with my blood and brains soaking a carpet or my pillow.

Yet.

I asked, “What did you and your friend Charles come up with?”

His gun-in-hand gestured, just a touch. “Well, as you may have gathered, we did know the Broker. Both Charles and I. In the early days, the regional set-up that since developed was in its earliest stages. So we knew about him. We’d even heard about you. You were something of a star in this business, Quarry.”

Who doesn’t like a compliment?

I said, “Not a good business to stand out in, actually.”

The capped teeth flashed in a smile. “True. And when the Broker was killed, you weren’t immediately suspected. Why, that would have been like patricide, wouldn’t it? You being his favorite and all. But then, you dropped out of sight. Dropped out of the business. Which was right around when those contracts and clients and killers of ours started going... what’s a good way to put it?”

“Tits up?”

Poole laughed. Jesus, all this guy needed was a pipe organ and a cackle to go flat-out Phantom.

He said, “That’s as good a way as any. So we deduced you must have laid hands on the Broker’s, what, special address book? And, now and then, followed one of our people to the job at hand, ascertained and approached the intended target, and offered help... for a price? That more or less it?”

“More or less.” Exactly fucking it.

That smile was meant to be pleasant, I thought. Hard to tell. “Other questions, Quarry?”

“Were you really drunk back at the chalet?”

The change of subject stopped him, but for just a second. “Oh, no. Of course not.”

“So that was staged? To get your girlfriend and those other women out of there, before...?”

Before the carnage began.

“Sort of,” he said off-handedly, again gesturing just a tad with the gun-in-hand. “Two people in each murder room, that would have been a lot to deal with. So much more could go wrong.” He shuddered. “Couldn’t have any silly women running around the place screaming. Anyway, killing them wouldn’t accomplish anything that simply sending them away from there wouldn’t. Six people dead, including three beautiful women? What a media circus that would create! And, anyway, please — I’m no monster.”

Oh-kay.

I asked, “So then your Playmate was in on it?”

“Oh, hell no! You have a satellite dish, don’t you? I saw it outside, of course. Big unsightly things, but they do open up the world, don’t they?”

“Afraid you lost me there.”

“Well, I only meant you probably have access to the Playboy Channel. And my girlfriend, as you quaintly put it, has appeared in several original movies of theirs.” He seemed a little proud of that, yet he added, “If you’ve seen her act, you’ll know I couldn’t risk giving her a speaking part.”

“So when you slapped her around and shook her like a rag doll, it was for her own good.”

“It was. And I will make it up to her. She’ll understand. She’ll come around.” He shrugged. “She likes the finer things.”

Finer things including this prick? And it seemed to me he was at least as pretentious as the Broker.

I said, “This is about the list, isn’t it?”

That gash on his face did its pseudo-smile. “Knew it wouldn’t take you long, my friend.”

I was his friend now.

I asked, “Didn’t you get Vanhorn’s list from his wall safe? I’d guess his list and the Broker’s were much the same.”

“That may well be the case. But I did not find it when I... called on Charles recently, and its whereabouts are unknown. Perhaps the local police got it, and have no idea what they have.”

“So you want the Broker’s list,” I said. “Understood. But it’s old. Almost ten years, Hank. Can’t guarantee every address.”

“I have my eyes open.”

He sure did. I didn’t see how he ever got them closed.

I said, “I assume you view those names, and the information that goes with them, as assets. Which makes this part of your expansion. Your takeover of the entire region, which included removing your competition a few hours ago.”

He nodded. No attempt at a smile now. The gun wasn’t smiling either.

“So you want me to give it up,” I said. “The Broker’s list. I get that.”

That was why I was still breathing. Temporarily. Lu, too. She’d have been dead already, but likely he figured her continued existence might serve as an inducement for me to cooperate.

“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...”