Quarry’s Greatest Hits

Guest Services

An American flag flapped lazily on its silver pole against a sky so washed-out a blue the handful of clouds were barely discernible. The red, white and blue of it were garishly out of place against the brilliant greens and muted blues of the Minnesota landscape, pines shimmering vividly in late morning sunlight, the surface of gray-blue Sylvan Lake glistening with sun, rippling with gentle waves. The rails of the grayish brown deck beyond my quarters were like halfhearted prison bars that I peeked through, as I did my morning sit-ups on the other side of the triple glass doors of my well-appointed guest suite.

I was not a guest of Sylvan Lodge, however: I ran the place. Once upon a time I had owned a resort in Wisconsin not unlike this — not near the acreage, of course, and not near the occupancy; but I had owned the place, whereas here I was just the manager.

Not that I had anything to complain about. I was lucky to have the job. When I ran into Gary Petersen in Milwaukee, where he was attending a convention and I was making a one-night stopover to remove some emergency funds from several bank deposit boxes, I was at the loosest of loose ends. The name I’d lived under for over a decade was unusable; my past had caught up with me, back at the other place, and I’d lost everything in a near instant: my business yanked from under me, my wife (who’d had not a clue of my prior existence) murdered in her sleep.

Gary, however, had recognized me in the hotel bar and used a name I hadn’t used since the early seventies: my real name.

“Jack!” he said, only that wasn’t the name he used. For the purposes of this narrative, however, we’ll say my real name is Jack Keller.

“Gary,” I said, surprised by the warmth creeping into my voice. “You son of a bitch... you’re still alive.”

Gary was a huge man — six-six, weighing in at somewhere between three hundred pounds and a ton; his face was masked in a bristly brown beard, his skull exposed by hair loss, his dark eyes bright, his smile friendly, in a goofy, almost child-like way.

“Thanks to you, asshole,” he said.

We’d been in Vietnam together.

“What the hell have you been doing all these years, Jack?”

“Mostly killing people.”

He boomed a laugh. “Yeah, right!”

“Don’t believe me, then.” I was, incidentally, pretty drunk. I don’t drink often, but I’d been through the mill lately.

“Are you crying, Jack?”

“Fuck no,” I said. But I was.

Gary slipped his arm around my shoulder; it was like getting cuddled by God. “Bro — what’s the deal? What shit have you been through?”

“They killed my wife,” I said, and cried drunkenly into his shoulder.

“Jesus, Jack — who...?”

“Fucking assholes... fucking assholes...”

We went to his suite. He was supposed to play poker with some buddies but he called it off.

I was very drunk and very morose and Gary was, at one time anyway, my closest friend, and during the most desperate of days.

I told him everything. I told him how after I got back from Nam, I found my wife — my first wife — shacked up with some guy, some fucking auto mechanic, who was working under a car when I found him and kicked the jack out. The jury let me off, but I was finished in my hometown, and I drifted until the Broker found me. The Broker, who gave me the name Quarry, was the conduit through whom the murder for hire contracts came, and, what? Ten years later the Broker was dead, by my hand, and I was out of the killing business and took my savings and went to Paradise Lake in Wisconsin, where eventually I met a pleasant, attractive, not terribly bright woman and she and I were in the lodge business until the past came looking for me, and suddenly she was dead, and I was without a life or even identity. I had managed to kill the fuckers responsible for my wife’s killing, but otherwise I had nothing. Nothing left but some money stashed away, that I was now retrieving.

I told Gary all this, through the night, in considerably more detail though probably even less coherently, although coherently enough that when I woke up the next morning, where Gary had laid me out on the extra bed, I knew I’d told him too much.

He was asleep, too. Like me, he was in the same clothes we’d worn to that bar; like me, he smelled of booze, only he also reeked of cigarette smoke. I did a little, too, but it was Gary’s smoke: I never picked up the habit. Bad for you.

He looked like a big dead animal, except for his barrellike chest heaving with breath. I looked at this man — like me, he was somewhere between forty and fifty now, not the kids we’d been before the war made us worse than just men.

I still had liquor in me, but I was sober now. Too deadly fucking sober. I studied my best-friend-of-long-ago and wondered if I had to kill him.

I was standing over him, staring down at him, mulling that over, when his eyes opened suddenly, like a timer turning on the lights in a house to fend off burglars.

He smiled a little, then it faded, then his eyes narrowed, and he said, “Morning, Jack.”

“Morning, Gary.”

“You’ve got that look.”

“What look is that?”

“The cold one. The one I first saw a long time ago.”

I swallowed and looked away from him. Sat on the edge of the bed across from him and rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands.

He sat across from me with his big hands on his big knees and said, “How the hell d’you manage it?”

“What?”

“Hauling my fat ass into that Medivac.”

I grunted a laugh. “The same way a little mother lifts a Buick off her baby.”

“In my case, you lifted the Buick onto the baby. Let me buy you breakfast.”

“Okay.”

In the hotel coffee shop, he said, “Funny... what you told me last night... about the business you used to be in?”

I sipped my coffee; I didn’t look at him — didn’t show him my eyes. “Yeah?”

“I’m in the same game.”

Now I looked at him; I winced with disbelief. “What...?”

He corrected my initial thought. “The tourist game, I mean. I run a lodge near Brainerd.”

“No kidding.”

“That’s what this convention is. Northern Resort Owners’ Association.”

“I heard of it,” I said, nodding. “Never bothered to join, myself.”

“I’m a past president. Anyway, I run a place called Sylvan Lodge. My third and current, and I swear to God, everlasting wife, Ruth Ann, inherited it from her late parents, rest their hardworking souls.” None of this came as a surprise to me. Grizzly bear Gary had always drawn women like a great big magnet — usually good-looking little women who wanted a father figure, Papa Bear variety. Even in Bangkok on R & R, Gary never had to pay for pussy, as we used to delicately phrase it.

“I’m happy for you. I always figured you’d manage to marry for money.”

“My ass! I really love Ruth Ann. You should see the knockers on the child.”

“A touching testimonial if ever I heard one. Listen... about that bullshit I was spouting last night...”

His dark eyes became slits, the smile in his brushy face disappeared. “We’ll never speak of that again. Understood? Never.”

He reached out and squeezed my forearm.

I sighed in relief and smiled tightly and nodded, relieved. Killing Gary would have been no fun at all.

He continued, though. “My sorry fat ass wouldn’t even be on this planet, if it wasn’t for you. I owe you big-time.”

“Bullshit,” I said, but not very convincingly.

“I’ve had a good life, at least the last ten years or so, since I met Ruthie. You’ve been swimming in Shit River long enough. Let me help you.”

“Gary, I...”

“Actually, I want you to help me.”

“Help you?”

Gary’s business was such a thriving one that he had recently invested in a second lodge, one across the way from his Gull Lake resort. He couldn’t run both places himself, at least not “without running my fat ass off.” He offered me the job of managing Sylvan.

“We’ll start you at 50K, with free housing. You can make a tidy buck with no overhead to speak of, and you can tap into at least one of your marketable skills, and at the same time be out of the way. Keep as low a profile as you like. You don’t even have to deal with the tourists, to speak of — we have a social director for that. You just keep the boat afloat. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, and we shook hands. Goddamn I was glad I hadn’t killed him...

Now, a little more than six months into the job, and a month into the first summer season, I was settled in and damn near happy. My quarters, despite the rustic trappings of the cabin-like exterior, were modern — pine paneling skirting the room with pale yellow pastel walls rising to a high pointed ceiling. It was just one room with bath and kitchenette, but it was a big room, facing the lake which was a mere hundred yards from the deck that was my back porch. Couch, cable TV, plenty of closet space, a comfortable wall bed. I didn’t need anything more.

During off-season, I could move into more spacious digs if I liked, but I didn’t figure I’d bother. Just a short jog across the way was an indoor swimming pool with hot tub and sauna, plus a tennis court; a golf course, shared with Gary’s other lodge, was nearby. My duties were constant, but mostly consisted of delegating authority, and the gay chef of our gourmet restaurant made sure I ate well and free, and I’d been banging Nikki, the college girl who had the social director position for the summer, so my staff relations were solid.

I took a shower after my push-ups and got into the usual gray Sylvan lodge T-shirt, black shorts and gray-and-black Reeboks, to take a stroll around the grounds, and check up on the staff. I was sitting on the couch tying my tennies, with a good view of the patch of green and slice of sand below my deck, when I heard an unpleasant, gravelly male voice tearing somebody a new asshole. “Why the fuck didn’t you rent the boat in advance, Mindy?”

“I’m sorry, Dick.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, woman, you think I want to come to a goddamn lake without a goddamn boat?”

His voice carried into my living room with utter clarity, borne by the wind coming across the lake.

I looked up. He was big — not as big as my friend Gary, but big enough. He wore green and red plaid shorts and a lime-green golf shirt and a straw pork-pie hat with a wide leather band; he was as white as the underbelly of a crocodile, except for his face, which was a bloodshot red. Even at this distance I could see the white tufts of eyebrows over narrow-set eyes and a bulbous nose.

He was probably fifty, or maybe more; his wife was an attractive blonde, much younger, possibly thirty-five. She wore a denim shorts outfit that revealed an almost plump but considerably shapely figure, nicely top-heavy. Her hair was too platinum for her age, and too big for her face, a huge hair-sprayed construction with a childishly incongruous pink bow in it.

Her pretty face, even from where I sat on my couch, was tired-looking, puffy. But she’d been beautiful, once. An actress or a dancer or something. And even now, even with the too big, too platinum hair, she made a man’s head turn. Except maybe for my chef.

“But I thought you’d use your brother’s boat...”

“He’s in fucking Europe, woman!”

“I know... but you said we were going to use Jim’s boat...”

“Well, that fell through! He loaned his place and his boat to some fucker from Duluth he wanted to impress! Putting business before his own goddamn brother...”

“But I didn’t know that...”

He grabbed her arm; hard. “You should’ve made it your business to know! You were supposed to make the vacation arrangements; God knows you have little enough to do otherwise. I have a fucking living to make for us. You should’ve got off your fat ass and...”

“Let’s talk to Guest Services,” his wife said, desperately. “Maybe they can help us rent a boat somewhere in the area.”

“Excuse me!” I called from the deck.

Still holding onto the woman’s arm, the aptly named Dick scowled my way. “What do you want? Who the hell are you?”

I was leaning over the rail. “I’m the manager here. Jack Keller. Can I be of any help?”

He let go of her arm and the plump, pretty blonde moved toward me, looking up at me with a look that strained to be pleasant. “I called both numbers your brochure lists, and wasn’t able to rent a boat...”

“It’s a busy time,” I said. “Let me look into it for you.”

“We’re only going to be here a week,” Dick said. “I hate to waste a goddamn day!”

She touched his arm, gently. “We wanted to golf while we here... we did bring the clubs... we could do that today...”

He brushed her hand away like it was a bug. “Probably have to call ahead for that, too.”

“I’ll call over for you,” I said. “You are...?”

“The Waltons,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“We’re the fucking Waltons! Dick and Mindy.”

The Waltons. Okay...

“Dick, I’ll make the call. After lunch, around one-thirty a suitable tee time?”

“Good,” Dick said, pacified. “Thanks for your help.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” I said.

“Thank you,” Mindy said, and smiled at me, and looped her arm in his, and he allowed her to, as he walked her over to the restaurant.

I called over to the golf course and got the Waltons a tee time, and called Gary over at Gull Lake Lodge to see about a boat.

“They should’ve called ahead,” Gary said. “Why do you want to help these people? Friends of yours?”

“Hardly. The husband’s an obnoxious cocksucker who’ll browbeat his wife into a nervous breakdown if I don’t bail her out.”

“Oh. The Waltons.”

“Addams Family is more like it. So you know them?”

“They were at Sylvan the last two seasons. Dick Walton is a real pain in the ass, and an ugly drunk.”

“Maybe we don’t want his business.”

“Trouble is, he’s as rich as he is obnoxious. He’s from Minneapolis — runs used car lots all over the Cities. Big fucking ego — does his own commercials. ‘Big Deals with Big Dick’ is his motto...”

“Catchy.”

“It’s been popular with Twin Cities school kids for a couple decades. He’s worth several mil. And he brings his sales staff up for conferences in the off-season.”

“So we cater to him.”

“Yeah. Within reason. If he starts busting up the bar or something, cut him off and toss his ass out. When he starts spoiling things for our other guests, then fuck him.”

“I like your attitude, Gary. But what about a boat?”

“He can use mine for the week. It’s down at dock nine.”

“That’s generous.”

“Generous my ass. Charge him double the going rate.”

The restaurant at Sylvan’s is four-star, and it’s a real asset for the business, but it’s the only thing Gary and I ever really disagreed about. Dinner was by reservation only, and those reservations filled up quick; and the prices were more New York than Midwest.

“The goddamn restaurant’s a real calling card for us,” Gary would say. “Brings in people staying at other lodges and gives ’em a look at ours.”

“But we’re not serving our own guests,” I’d say. “We’re a hotel at heart, Gary, and our clientele shouldn’t have to mortgage the farm to buy supper, and they shouldn’t get turned away ’cause they don’t have reservations.”

“I appreciate your dedication to the guests, Jack. But that restaurant brings in about a third of our income, so fuckin’ forget it, okay?”

But of course I didn’t. We had this same argument at least twice a month.

That particular evening I was having the house specialty — pan-fried walleye — and enjoying the way the moon looked reflected on the silvery lake when I heard the gravel-edged sound of Dick Walton’s voice, singing a familiar tune.

“You’re a stupid cunt!” he was telling her.

They had a table in the corner, but the long, rather narrow dining room, with its windows on the lake, didn’t allow anyone much privacy. Even approaching nine-thirty, the restaurant was full — older couples, families, a honeymooning couple, all turned their eyes to the asshole in the lime sport coat and green-and-white plaid pants who was verbally abusing the blonde woman in the green-and-white floral sundress.

She was crying. Digging a Kleenex into eyes where the mascara was already smeared. When she got up from the table to rush out, she looked like an embarrassed, haunted raccoon.

He shouted something unintelligible at her, and sneered, and returned to his big fat rare steak.

The restaurant manager, a guy in his late twenties who probably figured his business degree would get him a better gig than this, came over to my table and leaned in. He was thin, sandy-haired, pockmarked; he wore a pale yellow sweater over a shirt and tie.

“Mr. Keller,” he said, “what should I do about Mr. Walton?”

“Leave him alone, Rick. Without his wife to yell at, I doubt he’ll make much more fuss.”

“Should I cut him off with the bar?”

“No.”

He gave me a doubtful expression, one eyebrow arching. “Personally, I...”

“Just leave it alone. If he passes out, he won’t bother his wife or anybody, and that would probably be ideal.”

Rick sighed — he didn’t like me much, knowing that I was lobbying to have his four-star restaurant turned into a cafeteria — but he nodded in acceptance of my ruling, and padded off.

I finished my walleye, touched a napkin to my lips and headed over to Walton’s table.

“You got my message about the boat?” I asked.

His grin was tobacco-stained; the tufts of white eyebrow raised so high they might have been trying to crawl off his face. “Yeah! That was white of you, Jack! You’re okay. Sit down, I’ll buy you one.”

I sat, where his wife had been (her own walleye practically untouched on the plate before me), but said, “I had enough for tonight. I know my limit.”

“So do I, buddy boy...” He pointed a steak knife at me and winked. “...it’s when the fuckin’ lights go out.”

I laughed. “Say, what was the little woman riding you about? If you don’t mind my asking.”

His face balled up like a fist. “Bitch. Lousy little cunt. She fucked up royal this afternoon.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, fuck her. We’re playing with another couple — the Goldsteins, from Des Moines. He’s a dentist. Those docs are loaded, you know. Particularly the Hebrew ones.”

“Up the wazoo,” I affirmed.

“Anyway, Mindy is a decent little golfer... usually. Shoots a nineteen handicap on the country club course back home... but this afternoon she didn’t shoot for shit. I lost a hundred bucks because of her!”

“Well, hell, Dick — everybody has a bad afternoon once in a while.”

His aftershave wafted across the table to tickle my nose — a grotesque parody of the pine scent that nature routinely provided us here.

“I think she did it just to spite me. I’d swear she muffed some of those shots just to get my fuckin’ goat.”

His speech was pretty slurred.

“That sounds like a woman,” I said.

He looked me with as steady a gaze as he could muster. “Jack — I like you.”

“I like you, Dick. You’re a real man’s man.”

I offered him my water glass for him to clink his tumbler of Scotch on the rocks against.

“I’ll have to sneak away from the little woman,” he said, winking again, “so we can spend some quality time together.”

“Let’s do that,” I said. “You going fishing tomorrow?”

He was lighting up an unfiltered cigarette; it took a lot of effort. “Yeah — me and that kike dentist. Wanna come along?”

“Got to work, Dick. Check in with me later, though. Maybe we can take in one of the casinos.”

“One of the ones those injuns run?”

Gambling having been ruled legal on reservation land, casinos run by Native Americans were a big tourist draw in our neck of the woods.

“That’s right, Dick. A whole tribe of Tontos looking to fleece the Lone Ranger.”

“Hah! How ’bout tomorrow night?”

“We’ll see. If you’re getting up early tomorrow morning, Dick, to fish, maybe you ought to hit the sack.”

He guzzled at his drink. “I ought to hit that fuckin’ cunt I’m married to, is what I oughta hit.”

“Take it easy. It’s a hell of a thing, but a man can get in trouble for hitting a woman, these days.”

“Hell of a thing, ain’t it, Jack? Hell of a thing.”

I walked out with him; he shambled along, slipping an arm around me, cigarette trailing ash.

“You’re a hell of a guy,” he told me, almost crying. “Hell of a guy.”

“So are you, Dick,” I said.

Outside the real pines were almost enough to cancel the room-freshener cologne he was wearing.

Almost.

I was sitting in the dark, in my underwear, sipping a Coke in the glow of the portable television, watching a Randolph Scott western from the 1950s. I kept the sound low, because I had the doors to the deck pushed open, to enjoy the lake breeze, and I didn’t want my movie-watching to disturb any of the guests who might be strolling along the beach, enjoying the night.

Something about the acoustics of the lake made her crying seem to echo, as if carried on the wind from a great distance, though she was at my feet, really — stumbling across the grass beneath my deck.

Underwear or not, I went out to check on her — because the crying sounded like more than just emotions: there was physical pain in it, too.

“Mrs. Walton,” I called, recognizing her. She still wore the flowered sundress, the scoop top of it displaying the swell of her swell bosom. “Are you all right?”

She nodded, stumbling. “Just need a drink... need a drink...”

“The bar’s closed. Why don’t you step up here, and I’ll get you a beer or something.”

“No... no...” She shook her head and then I saw it: the puffiness of the left side of her face, eye swollen shut, the flesh already blackening.

I ran down the little wooden stairs; if somebody complained to the manager about the man running around in his underwear, well fuck ’em: I was the manager. I took her by the arm and walked her up onto the deck and inside, where I deposited her on the couch in front of the TV, where Randolph Scott was shooting Lee Van Cleef.

“Just let me get dressed,” I said, and I returned with pants on and a beer in hand, which I held out to her.

“It’s all I have, I’m afraid,” I said.

She took it and held it in her hands like something precious; sipped it like a child taking first communion.

I got her a washcloth with some ice in it.

“He’s hit you before, hasn’t he?” I said, sitting beside her.

She nodded; tears trickled from the good eye. Her pink-bowed platinum blonde hair wasn’t mussed: too heavily sprayed for that.

“How often?” I asked.

“All... all the time.”

“Why don’t you leave the son of a bitch?”

“He says... he says he’ll kill me.”

“Probably just talk. Turn him in for beating you. They go hard on guys who do that, nowadays, and then it’ll be harder for him to do it again.”

“No... he would kill me. Or have somebody do it. He has... the kind of connections where you can get somebody killed, if you want. And it’ll just be written off as an accident. I bet you find that hard to believe, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” I sipped my Coke. “Sounds utterly fantastic.”

“Well, it’s true.”

“Are you sure you’re not staying ’cause of the prenup?”

She sighed, nodded slowly, the hand with the ice in the washcloth moving with her head. “There is a prenuptial agreement. I wouldn’t get a thing. Well, ten thousand, I think.”

“But you’re not staying ’cause of the money.”

“No! I don’t care about the money... exactly. I got family I take care of. A younger sister who’s going to college, mom’s got heart trouble and no insurance.”

“So it is about money.”

The good eye winced. “No! No... it was about money. That’s why I married Dick. I was... I was trash. A waitress. Topless dancer, for a while. Anything to make a buck... but never hooking. Never!”

“Where did you meet Dick?”

“In a titty bar a friend of his used to run. I wasn’t dancing, then... I was a waitress. Tips in a topless place are always incredible.”

“So I hear.”

“This was, I don’t know... over ten years ago.”

“You been taking this shit all that time?”

“No. He was sweet, at first. But he didn’t drink as much in those days. The more he drank, the worse it got. He calls me stupid. He can’t have kids... his sperm count is lower than he is. But he calls me ‘barren’ and hits me... says I’m fat. Do you think I’m fat?”

I’d been looking down the front of her sundress at the time, and swallowed, and said, “Uh, no. I don’t like these skinny girls they’re pushing on us, these days.”

“Fake tits and boy’s butts, all of them.” Her lips were trembling; her voice sounded bitter. “He has a girl friend... she works in a titty bar, too. A different joint — this is one that he’s got money in. She’s like that: skinny little thing and a plastic chest and a flat little ass.”

“You should leave him. Forget his threats. Forget the money.”

“I can’t. I... I wish he was dead. Just fucking dead.”

“Don’t talk that way.”

Her whole body was trembling; she hugged herself with one arm, as if very, very cold. “I need a miracle. I need a goddamn miracle.”

“Well, here’s a suggestion.”

“Yes?”

“Say your prayers tonight. Maybe God’ll straighten it all out.”

“With a miracle?”

“Or something,” I said.

“Hop in,” he said.

He was behind the wheel of a red-bodied, white-topped Cadillac; his bloodshot face was split in a shit-eating grin as he leaned over to open the door on the rider’s side. He was wearing a green-and-orange plaid sportcoat — it was like a Scotsman had puked on him — and orange trousers and lots of clunky gold jewelry.

I slipped inside the spacious car. “Didn’t have any trouble getting away?”

“Naw! That little bitch doesn’t dare give me any lip. I’d just knock some more sense in her! Anybody see you go?”

“No. I think we’re all right.”

I’d had him pick me up at the edge of the road, half a mile from the resort, in darkness; I said I was on call tonight and wasn’t supposed to be away.

“You tell your wife where you were going, and who with?”

“Hell no! None of her goddamn business! I tell you, Jack, I should never have married that lowlife cunt. She’s got a family like something out of Deliverance. Poor white trash, pure and simple. No fuckin’ class at all.”

“Why don’t you dump her, then?”

“I just might! You know what a prenuptial agreement is, don’t you, Jack?”

“Got a vague idea.”

“Well, my lawyer assures me I don’t have to give her jack shit. She’s out in the cold on her flabby ass, soon as I give the say so.”

“Why don’t you, then?”

“I might. I might... but it could be bad for business. I use her in some of my commercials, and she’s kinda popular. Or anyway, her big ol’ titties are, pardon my French.”

“She helps you put up a good front.”

“Hah! Yeah, that’s a good one, Jack... that’s a good one...”

The drive to the casino was about an hour, winding through tall pines and little bump-in-the-road towns; the night was clear, the moon full again, the world bathed in an unreal, and lovely, silver. I studied the idyllic landscape, pretending to listen to Walton blather on about his accomplishments in the used car game, cracking the window to let some fresh air cancel out his Pine-Sol aftershave and cigarette smoke.

It was midweek, but the casino looked busy — just a sprawling one-story prefabricated building, looking about as exotic as a mobile home, but for the huge LAKEVIEW CASINO neon; the term “Lakeview” was cosmetic, as the nearest lake was a mile away. Some construction, some expansion, was going on, and the front parking lot was a mess.

He pulled around back, as I instructed; a couple of uniformed security guards with guns — Indians, like most of the employees here — were stationed in front. None were in back. A man and a woman, both weaving with drink, were wandering out to their car as Walton found a place to park.

“No limit here, right?” he asked.

“Right. You bring a pretty good roll?”

“Couple grand. I got unlimited cash access on my gold card, too.”

The car with the couple in it pulled out, and drove unsurely around the building. Once their car lights were gone, it was as dark as the inside of cow, back here. I got out of the Cad.

“If you need a couple bucks, Jack, just ask.”

He had his back to me, as we walked toward the casino. When my arm slipped around him, it startled him, but he didn’t have much time to react: the knife had pierced his windpipe by then.

When I withdrew the hunting knife, a scarlet geyser sprayed the night, but away from me. He fell like a pine tree, flopping forward, but the sound was just a little slap against the pavement. The knife made more noise as it clattered against the pavement; I kicked it under a nearby pickup. He gurgled a while but that stopped soon.

Yanking him by the ankles, I dragged him between his Caddy and the Dumpster he’d parked next to; a slime trail of blood glistened in the moonlight, but otherwise he was out of sight. So was I. I bent over him, using the same flesh-colored, rubber-gloved hand that had held the knife, and stripped him of his gaudy gold jewelry and lifted his fat wallet from his hip pocket, the sucker pocket the dips call it. I removed the wad of hundreds and tossed the wallet in the Dumpster.

The jewelry was a bit of a problem: if somebody stopped me to talk to me about the dead man in the parking lot, I could be found with it on me. But a thief wouldn’t leave it behind, so I had to take it, stuffing it in my jacket pockets. Tomorrow I would toss it in Sylvan Lake.

Right now, with my couple of thousand bucks, I walked around the front of the casino, said, “Nice night, fellas,” to the Indian security guards, who grunted polite responses to the paleface.

Inside, the pinball-machine-like sound of gambling fought with piped-in country western — the redskins seemed to favor cowboy music. I found Nikki where I knew she’d be: at the nickel poker machines. The slender girl had a bright-eyed, pixie face and a cap of brown curls.

“Jack! I’m doing fantastic... I’m up four dollars!”

“Sounds like you’re making a killing.”

“How about you?”

“Same.”

I had told Nikki I’d meet her here — we usually took separate cars when we went out, since the manager and his social director weren’t supposed to fraternize.

She moved up to the quarter poker machines, at my urging, and ended up winning about thirty bucks. Before long, I was up two hundred bucks on blackjack. If somebody found the body while I was there, things could get interesting; I’d have to dump that jewelry somewhere.

But I didn’t think anybody would be using that Dumpster tonight, and I knew nobody would use the Caddy. Leaving too soon would be suspicious. So I stayed a couple hours.

“Jeez,” I said, as we were heading out finally, her arm in mine, my hand on my head. “I think I drank a little too much.”

“That’s not like you, Jack.”

“I know. But you better drive me home.”

“What about your car?”

My car was back at the resort, of course, parked where Nikki wouldn’t see it when she went to her own cabin.

“I’ll have Gary drive me up for it tomorrow.”

“Okay,” she said, and she steadied me as we walked back around to the parking lot in the rear.

It was still dark back there, and quiet. Very quiet. I could barely make out a dried dark streak on the pavement, over by the Caddy, but nothing glistened in the moonlight, now.

First thing the next morning, the police came around to see me; Gary was with them, a pair of uniformed state patrolmen. It seemed, around sun-up, that one of our guests had been found dead in the parking lot at the Lakeview Casino. His wallet, emptied of money, had been found nearby. “Mr. Walton wore a lot of jewelry,” I said. “The gold kind?”

“Asking for trouble,” said one of the cops, a kid in his mid-twenties.

Gary, wearing a gray jogging suit, wasn’t saying anything; he was standing behind them like a mute grizzly, his eyes a little glazed.

“That casino’s probably gonna get sued,” the other, slightly older cop said. “Bad lighting in the parking lot back behind there. Just asking for it.”

“Both Walton and that casino,” the young one said.

I agreed with them, said sympathetic things, and pointed them to the cabin where they could find — and inform — the new widow.

Gary stayed behind.

“You know,” he said quietly, scratching his beard, “I’m glad that bastard didn’t get killed on our grounds. We might be the ones getting sued.”

“Right. But that’s not going to happen around here.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t worry, Gary.” I put a hand on his shoulder; had to reach up to do it. “We have adequate lighting.”

He looked at me kind of funny, with narrowed eyes. He seemed about to ask me something, but thought better of it, waved limply and wandered off.

I was doing my morning sit-ups when she walked up on my deck, looking dazed, her perfect, bullet-proof platinum hair wearing the girlish pink bow, her voluptuous body tied into a dark pink dressing gown. She stood looking through the cross-hatch of screen door, asking if she could come in.

“Of course,” I said, sliding the door open, and took her to the couch where she’d sat two nights before.

“You heard about Dick?” she said, in small voice. She seemed numb.

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“You... you won’t say anything, will you?”

“About what?”

“Those... terrible things I said about him.” Her eyes got very wide; she seemed frightened, suddenly, but not of me. Exactly. “You don’t think... you don’t think I...”

“No. I don’t think you did it, Mrs. Walton.”

“Or... or hired somebody... I mean, I was saying some crazy things the other night.”

“Forget it.”

“And if the police knew about Dick hitting me...”

“Your face looks pretty good today. I don’t think they’ll pursue that angle.”

She swallowed; stared into nothing. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Why don’t you just lean back and wait to inherit Dick’s estate? You can do those TV commercials solo, now.”

She turned to look at me, and the faintest suspicion seemed etched around her eyes. “You’ve been... very kind, Mr. Keller.”

“Make it Jack.”

“Is there anything I can do to... repay your kindnesses?”

“Well... you can keep coming to Sylvan Lodge, despite the bad memories. We could sure use your business, for those sales conferences and all.”

She touched my hand. “I can promise you that. Maybe we could... get to know each other better. Under better circumstances.”

“That would be nice.”

“Could I just... sit here for a while? I don’t really want to go back to the cabin. It still... still smells of Dick. That awful cologne of his.”

Here all you could smell was the lake and the pines, real pines; the soothing touch of a breeze rolled over us.

“Stay as long as you like,” I said. “Here at Sylvan Lodge, we strive to make our guests’ stay as pleasant as possible.”