Killing Quarry

Five

I sat up.

Not a sudden movement. Very slow and careful, and some part of my brain was wondering if this could be a dream, which is to say nightmare, but it wasn’t.

This was all too real.

Bruce Simmons was seated on a backless section of the sectional facing me, his somewhat pointed features lending him a satanic cast, as did a widow’s peak I hadn’t noticed before on the product-heavy dark hair, longer than mine. His position was edge of his seat, leaning just a little forward. I was slumped, which was why I needed to straighten some.

Falling asleep was unprofessional, if human, and I can credit myself only for snapping awake immediately, going instantly alert, the way you are if you hear somebody trying to break into your house or hotel room.

Of course I hadn’t heard him actually breaking in, had I? So I didn’t have much to brag about. And I had no idea how he’d got himself inside, maneuvering around my bubble-pack and furniture blockades, and didn’t really care. That was beside the point now, wasn’t it?

On the other hand, I’d been deep enough asleep that my guest had risked setting the stage some. The drapes on the double doors onto the deck and the lake were now closed. The square of cushioned sectional he was perched on was backed away from me enough to avoid a kick at his gun-in-hand or anything else for that matter.

And, as I said, he was aiming my own nine-millimeter automatic at me. The extra ammo clip he had confiscated and tucked away somewhere. He was out of his topcoat and wearing a black track suit with white stripes down the sleeves and legs. If he was here to force me into dressing like that, he’d have to shoot me.

I’d fallen asleep in the clothes I’d worn since yesterday and through the night, jeans and a long-sleeve navy t-shirt. I’d like to tell you I had a throwing knife or small revolver tucked at the small of my back, but I didn’t.

The only thing I had going for me was that I was alive. That he hadn’t killed me while I slept, which is what I deserved; but I’d only been awake maybe two seconds before I realized he was here for more than fulfilling a contract.

“Wondering why you’re still alive?” he asked. He had a baritone voice that would have gone well with a gig as a late-night jazz-spinning disc jockey. Soothing, almost, except for the part where he was a hired killer holding my own gun on me.

“I am,” I admitted. “Pleasantly so.”

“Thing is, I know who you are.” Smug. Proud of himself.

“If you didn’t,” I said, “this would be random, and you don’t look nuts to me. And I’m not just trying to get on your good side.”

His mouth twitched a smile. His dark eyes were hooded, which added to the vaguely sinister effect of the sharp if handsome features. Reminded me of the old movie actor Zachary Scott. Same oily smoothness.

“When I say I know who you are,” he said, “I mean I know who you are... Quarry.”

What did he want, applause? Or maybe for me to start shaking? I’d already done enough shaking for this prick, waiting outside his room at Wilma’s and he hadn’t even been in it. Fuck this guy.

“Is that right,” I said politely, “Mr. Simmons?”

The eyes weren’t hooded now.

“How do you know who I am?” he demanded, some edge in the disc-jockey baritone.

My turn for smug. “Is that really what you want to talk about? How we know who we are?”

He sat back just a little, but no couch was behind him to lean on. “You worked for the Broker. I did, too, a long time ago. That must be how you know me.”

“Must be how you know me. What next? And, uh, by the way — I didn’t work for the Broker.” I tapped my chest. “He worked for me. He was my agent.”

Simmons nodded in irritation, said, “Of course. I work through the Envoy.”

I had to laugh. “Christ, not a very imaginative bunch in this business, are they?”

He seemed vaguely offended. “There are a number of agents, brokers, in our game. They each have kind of... code name. Designating regions.” He gestured a little with the hand with my gun in it, not threatening, really — just gesturing. “Didn’t you know that?”

I shrugged, not putting much into it, not wanting to get shot. “Not really. I figured as much, but, no.”

I obviously knew the assassins on Broker’s roll call all had one-word aliases, and figured that was to keep real names or traceable fake ones off phone calls and other communications. That the same was true of other middlemen in the killing game came as no surprise.

And, of course, I knew what Simmons’ own wry little Broker-invented “code name” was — Brace. Something or somebody you could lean on. But it was also a synonym for “crutch,” wasn’t it?

I would keep that knowledge to myself, however — no need to show off, or show my hand.

I asked, “When somebody killed the Broker, did they divvy up his merry little band of butchers? Or did somebody take over as, what... regional manager?”

He was getting pissed off, which was fine by me, because that’s part of what I was going for — unsettling him.

“I’m asking the fucking questions, Quarry!... Another broker took over, yes. But some... talent... went elsewhere. That’s part of how you got away with it for so long.”

“Got away with what?”

“Whatever it is you’ve been doing. There are theories.”

I raised my eyebrows. “What does the ‘Envoy’ think? Do you two talk in his secret lair? Use the Cone of Silence, maybe?”

His eyebrows, on the other hand, furrowed. “Do you want to die, Quarry?”

“Not particularly. Not today. What is it you think I’ve done? Theories about what?”

He shifted a little on the cushion. We were around the campfire now.

“Since the Broker’s murder, almost ten years ago,” Simmons said, “something odd has been happening. Took a while to make itself clear — for a pattern to emerge out of you doing whatever it is you’re doing. But it finally did, and you might have got away with it, if you had only pursued this...” He shrugged. “...project of yours for a few years. Or perhaps only indulged yourself once a year.”

“Oh, I indulge myself practically every day. I subscribe to Hustler magazine. I even have the occasional hot fudge sundae.”

He let that slide. “We’re not exactly sure how you’ve gone about it, or even why, or whether it’s a moneymaking enterprise or just some kind of... We’ve speculated you are trying to atone for what you did, in your years working for the Broker.”

I started to laugh, genuinely laugh. “Stop. You’re killing me. Atone? Jesus!”

Simmons was working hard at staying calm. At not taking the bait. I would rate his results as just fair.

He said, “Took more than a couple of years for anybody to notice. But the talent roster kept getting thinned — people like us, Quarry, out in the field on a job, started dying mysteriously. Violently. And contracts got cancelled, after... when the clients themselves got cancelled. Also violently.”

I risked another little shrug. “I suppose once the client is out of the picture, so is the contract. Point becomes moot. What does that have to do with me?”

He was studying me but not getting anywhere. “All of the teams whose efforts have been disrupted — all of those killed out in the field under those violent, mysterious circumstances — once worked for the Broker. This strange, slow epidemic, which has raged on for damn near a decade, has not touched the other regions in any major way. But it got noticed, Quarry. Whatever it is you did, that you’re doing, it got noticed. You shouldn’t have been greedy.”

I held out an open palm. “Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say this Envoy character has valid suspicions, although you must admit they’re vague. What you do for a living — what I used to do for a living — it’s dangerous work. A man can get killed.”

“He can,” Simmons agreed.

“But I would be willing to assure you and, through you, assure your Envoy that I am happily settled here with a good, prosperous little business... I have a restaurant lodge I run, not far from here — maybe you noticed it? I have no desire to give that business up or my quiet life here, and will guarantee you and your business associate that I am not interested in doing anything else. Certainly nothing involving my previous... career. I won’t be hard to find. You can come back and plug me at your convenience. Isn’t that fair?”

Now he smiled. A sudden calm came over him and his smile became a narrow, reptilian thing.

“You misunderstand me, Quarry. Mind if I smoke?”

He could fucking burn, as far as I was concerned.

“Not at all,” I said. “Use the fireplace as an ashtray.”

“Thanks.” He’d worked up some ambidextrous skills, too, in his time; he got out a deck of Marlboros from a track suit pocket — must have liked to have a smoke while he jogged — and a lighter, too. Got a cigarette going.

I never smoked. That shit can kill you.

“Oh, the Envoy sent me to take you out, all right,” Simmons said cheerfully. We were just two guys in the same line of work swapping war stories now. “But I have my own agenda.”

“That right?”

He nodded. “I’ve been doing this work a long time. Since I got back from Vietnam. You served, right?”

“Yes.”

“Marine, wasn’t it?”

“Semper fi, Mac.”

“Sorry. I was regular army.” He let smoke out of his lungs to pollute my living room. “I’ve been at this over a dozen years.”

“Long time.”

“Too damn long. Few years ago I met a nice woman and something inside of me... rekindled.”

Maybe it was the smoking.

He went on: “Something human woke up in me. I met a girl in a bar. Not a girl, no — a young woman. Smart, funny, nice, beautiful.”

“Congratulations.”

“We have a kid. Little boy. Looks like me, they say.”

I hadn’t noticed.

“Anyway, I don’t want to be out playing with guns like this anymore.” He gestured with my nine mil in hand again. “I’ve had it with that shit.”

“So go straight.”

He made a face. “And do fucking what? You think I got a college degree over in the Nam? I own a little business, but I can’t live the way I want from it. And I don’t want to get killed in the line of duty, either, particularly since that duty is just wasting some cheating wife or crooked business partner or mob guy when they want somebody from outside to do their dirty work.”

“Tell me about it.”

This time he offered up the one-shoulder shrug. “So I need something lucrative. And you can help me on that score.”

“I can?”

“You can. I am even willing to cut you in for a healthy taste. Twenty-five percent just for sitting here in your nice cottage on this nice lake.”

On my nice ass. Right. That would happen.

“Twenty-five percent,” I asked, “of what?”

“I figure you have names. Addresses. Information. All these brokers around the country have that shit. The Broker certainly had it. I figure that’s what you’ve been using, the Broker’s list.”

Uh-oh, like some long-dead lady on the I Love Lucy laugh track always said.

Simmons went on: “I don’t know exactly how you’re using the list, and I don’t care. But I know how I would use it.”

He didn’t go into that, though.

Finally I said, “Let’s say I know what you’re talking about. Just hypothetically.”

“Let’s,” he said.

“How — exactly — would you use this list?”

“Is that your concern?”

“If I get twenty-five percent it is.” Of course he had no intention of doing that, but I had to play along.

He mulled it some, or pretended to. Then he sat forward and almost whispered, as if we were in public and not in my living room.

“Okay, Quarry — I’ll really give you an opportunity. Ground-floor kinda deal. See, I know where the Envoy keeps his information. Very old-fashioned fella, the Envoy. Wall safe at home. His list of names, merged with the names you have, would be very lucrative.”

I nodded slightly, eyes narrowed, getting it, yet managing not to laugh at this shit. So he wanted out of the killing business, and his way of doing that was to become a magnate of murder, with an expansive stable of professional killers and an ongoing relationship with organized crime. The better to make a nice life for the little woman and his boy.

Beautiful.

I leaned forward, just a shade, and my eyes locked onto his. “You may have something there. But we have to find a way for me to trust you. And for you to trust me. Any ideas?”

“Absolutely,” he said, and I slapped the nine mil from his hand and the gun flew past the shag carpet and into the kitchenette where it skittered on the tile. This I heard, not saw, as I was diving for him, taking him back over the section of couch onto the floor.

He hit hard with me on top of him, but he reacted fast, getting a hand under my chin and shoving me off and back, where I clanged into the metal fireplace, feeling the heat. I crumpled in on myself and he hit me in the jaw, dropping me to the shag. He looked toward the kitchenette, apparently having seen where the nine mil went, and was on his way there, hunkered like a tackle looking for a quarterback to cripple, but I kicked him in the ass with the flat of my running shoe, shoving him back down to the floor again. Him on his belly, like a flopping fish on deck, gave me a less than ideal path to his balls, but his legs were apart enough that I could send the toe of a shoe between and under his ass cheeks.

His howl meant I’d judged right, and then while he was busy screaming, I went past him to retrieve my nine mil, which was resting by the cabinets under the sink.

But then he was on me, even as he whimpered from the gonad goal I’d kicked, and hugged me from behind, around the waist, like he was going to fuck me whether I wanted him to or not. He had my arms pinned and I hadn’t made it to the nine mil, so we were locked in a kind of awkward dance there in the small area.

Suddenly he let me go and his hands came up and fingers gripped my either ear and he slammed my head into the kitchenette counter. That left me reeling, all but unconscious, and he had the nine mil again and dragged me into the living room and threw me on the floor.

I looked up at him. And down the barrel of the silenced nine mil.

He was breathing hard, but then so was I.

He came down on top of me, shoving a knee in my stomach — apparently he was in no mood to get kicked in the balls again — and I turned my head to one side and puked up some of my breakfast.

Again, I could only think of a rapist as he held me down, kind of sitting on me, knee in my belly, gun snout in my face. He was as out of breath as I was. “Where... where’s... the... fucking... list?”

“Not... here.”

“Don’t... fucking... lie... to me...”

“Tear... the place... up. Go for it.”

“Where is... is it, then?”

“Bank. Safe deposit... box.”

“Then there’s... a key. We’ll get... get the key... and go... go to the bank.”

“Never... never mind.”

“What?”

“The list... is here.”

He grinned, said “Good,” then the cough of a silenced handgun made me think, momentarily, he’d accidentally shot me.

But that wasn’t it.

His eyes were wide — not at all hooded — and a gaping hole in his forehead spewed brains, bone and blood on my already puke-flecked face, while a projectile whizzed over my scalp, practically parting my hair.

Somebody came over and yanked the dead weight off of me. I sat up, blinking. Somebody ran water. Somebody brought me a towel. I cleaned my face off. Looked up at who had saved me.

A beautiful woman in a forest-green jumpsuit loomed, too slender for her voluptuous breasts, her almost Asian eyes dark and staring.

“Hello, Jack,” she said.

“Hello, Lu,” I said.