“I can’t tell you, Quarry. I won’t tell you.”
“Broker.”
“No way, Quarry.”
“I want my money.”
“It’s gone. Live with it.”
“That’s what I want to do, Broker. I want to find my money and live with it.”
“I’ll tell you what, Quarry.”
“What?”
“I’ll let you have the twenty-five percent down payment that was left with me. My commission. I’ll hand it over to you. As a present. A bonus, let’s say. But give this a rest.”
“No.”
“You’re being unreasonable.”
“Am I. I don’t care if you give me the equivalent of all the money, my share, your share, Boyd’s share. I want to find the bastard responsible. I want to make him eat that wrench.”
“Maybe we should talk when you’ve calmed down.”
“Okay, then. Call me back next year.”
I hung up.
Thirty seconds later the phone rang again and I picked it up.
Broker said, “What do you intend to do?”
“I’m going to find out who hired me, Broker. If you won’t tell me, I’ll find out on my own.”
“Jesus Christ! You’re insane, man!”
“Impossible. You only work with stable personalities.”
“Listen. Listen to me. Get out of that town. Get out. Now.”
“I think I’ll stay a while.”
“Have you cracked up? You can’t hang around after a job, especially one that’s gone sour like this one has.”
“Watch me.”
“I’m going to tell you only one more time…”
“Good. Then I won’t have to hear it anymore after that.”
“… get out of Port City, Quarry.”
“This isn’t Chicago, Broker. This is a hick town and I’m not going to have any trouble.”
“You’re right, Port City isn’t Chicago, you could hide in Chicago. In Port City you’ll be conspicuous as hell.”
“Good-bye, Broker.”
“Wait!”
I waited.
“Isn’t there anything I can say?”
“Sure.”
“What?”
“The name of the guy who wanted Albert Leroy dead.”
“Quarry, I’m not going to stand for this.”
“Yes you are.”
“All right. All right, all right, all right make a fool of yourself, but Quarry… make damn sure none of it touches me. If you do that, if you even come close to endangering me, you know what I’ll do.”
“I know what you’ll try to do.”
“You aren’t the only assassin in the world, Quarry.”
“No. But how many do you have better?”
I hung up.
I sat there for thirty seconds and when the phone rang again I picked it up and said, “Hello, Broker.”
“Quarry!”
“What, Broker?”
“Uh, what about Boyd’s car?”
“What about it?”
“You’ve got to get rid of it.”
“How?”
“Bring it up here and we’ll get rid of it for you.”
“I’m not sure I want to do that, Broker. I’m going to be kind of busy today.”
“I tell you what… let me do some checking. I’ll contact the man you’re looking to find, I’ll talk to him and try to find out if he knows anything. Give me till tonight and if I haven’t got anything for you, go ahead, go ahead tomorrow and snoop all you want.”
“I don’t know, Broker.”
“Trust me.”
“Trust you. Kind of a sacred trust, huh, Broker?”
“Do you know the river road?”
“That old road that runs along the Mississippi, up to Davenport.”
“Yes. There’s a limestone quarry about ten miles outside of Davenport on the river road. Carl and I will be pulled alongside there at, say, midnight. Bring Boyd’s car and at that time I’ll tell you how I’ve done with… the man you want to find.”
“How will I get back to Port City, Broker?”
“I’ll have Carl drive you back. We’ll bring two cars.”
“Okay.”
“Tonight, then? At the stone quarry?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll see you tonight, then.”
“Sure.”
“At midnight.”
“Sure. See you then.”
“See you then. Quarry?”
“Yeah?”
“Take care of yourself, will you? Lie low today and just take it easy.”
“That’s sweet, Broker. Your concern is goddamn fucking touching.”
He hung up.
So did I.
18
The sign said “Coke” and underneath, in only slightly larger letters, “Port City Taxi Service,” but the place was more than that: it was an all-night grocery of sorts, as well as restaurant and bookstore. The groceries ran to pretzels, pop and milk, and the books ran to porno paperbacks and skin mags, and the restaurant was little more than a couple of tables stuck next to a stand that had on it a coffeepot and napkins and plastic spoons and an infrared mini-oven for the heating of cellophane-wrapped sandwiches which were for sale at the counter as you came in.
Behind the glassed counter, which was long and full of candy and cigarettes, was a heavyset woman of indeterminate age with frowzy gray-brown hair and a curiously friendly face. She was wearing a red and white checkered dress that looked like a tablecloth left over from a 1957 picnic and was sitting in the corner with her back to an ancient black metal sender-receiver, a squared hand mike leading out from it on a worn spiral rubber cord and resting in one of her hands, a mostly smoked cigarette in the other. From somewhere out of the radio outfit came muffled static which she apparently understood, as she responded to it now and then.
When she and the static had finished talking to each other, she grinned at me and said, “Howdy, mister. Little early yet, ain’t it?”
“Sure is,” I said.
“It gets early every morning round this time.” She rasped out a little laugh and pointed a finger down toward the end of the counter. “Fresh rolls down there, dime a piece. You get first pick today, sonny. Early bird catches the worm. The coffee’s still perking, shouldn’t be more’n a couple of minutes and it’ll be ready. There’s a dish on the stand, by the napkin container. Drop a nickel in the dish for every cup of coffee you drink.”
“Thanks.”
I lifted the sheet of white paper on the box and looked in at rows of fresh, well-iced danish rolls and picked several out and left the old lady a quarter on the counter. I walked back and sat down at one of the tables and nibbled at a roll while I waited for the coffee.
The place was all length and little width, the groceries crowded on shelves on one side of the room, a few tall skinny glass-doored refrigeration units backed up flat against the wall like men in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, and the paperbacks and magazines were thick on the other side of the room, various sorts of racks rubbing shoulders with one another. The ceiling was high and had all the room’s breathing space to itself; the ceiling edges were curved, ornately sculpted with little nude cupids and such and vines and flowers, and I wondered how old the building was and what it once had been.
I sat and stared at the tarnished aluminum coffeepot and listened to it perking. My mind was doing the same thing: perking, playing with thoughts, trying to get ready.
I didn’t understand, yet, what exactly the occurrences of this still early morning added up to. My mind was fuzzy, the events floating around inside my head like the synthetic snow in a wintery paperweight. I didn’t know what would happen next. I wasn’t sure what had happened so far. But I did know what I was going to do.
I was going to find the man.
The man who had paid to have Albert Leroy killed.
Who else in Port City knew Boyd and I were in town? Who else in Port City knew Boyd would
have thousands of dollars in a suitcase in that particular apartment on this particular morning?
Motivation? I had no idea of what motivation lurked behind all of this. In the first place, it was still a mystery to me how anyone could feel it necessary to have Albert Leroy killed. He wasn’t my idea of the kind of man who posed a threat. Motivation, I didn’t know about that. Yet.
The coffee was ready and I got myself a cup. I sipped it slowly and thought some more.
What about Broker? He knew about Albert Leroy and Port City and all of it; hell, he set it up. Was this some kind of Broker Machiavellian kiss-off?
Unlikely. If Broker wanted to get rid of a man he wouldn’t do so in so sloppy a fashion, and in Broker’s home territory. There are plenty of methods, far better ones, for weeding out your bad stock. If Broker wanted me dead, he’d send someone up to see me between jobs, when I was sitting on my ass, fishing in Wisconsin or something. I’d be found floating in the lake up there, if I was found at all, not in an apartment in Port City, across the street from where I’d just hit a man.
Of course I was well aware that Broker meant to stop me, at all costs, from playing Sherlock Holmes in Port City. I knew that the meeting tonight at that stone quarry (which could’ve been the very place that provided Broker the inspiration for the name he’d bestowed on me years back) would be in one way or another designed to get me out of this, out of the area, out of the situation, out. Just what extent of violence he had in mind for me, if any, I didn’t know. I doubted Broker would try to have me killed, but it was possible. Possible.
It wasn’t smart to stay in Port City, I knew that. But it wasn’t smart to leave, either. In my business you have to know what’s happening, where you stand, what exactly’s being done to you and who by. I didn’t want to leave Port City till I understood what had happened this morning. All I knew now was that someone had tried to kill me, and it wasn’t smart to leave Port City till I knew who and why.
I also knew it wasn’t risky, particularly, to stay in town, as long as I didn’t stick around very long, long enough to give even hick town cops a chance to put the pieces together. If I could do it fast, in a day, maybe two, there was nothing to worry about. I had my salesman credentials and sample case if anyone asked questions at me hard, a cover that would hold water if it was checked out. As long as I didn’t attract too much attention or act too overly cautious about my actions, suspicions weren’t likely to be aroused. Soon as I left here, I would change barrels on the gun, toss the old barrel wrapped in the gloves I’d worn down a sewer duct, so nothing to worry about there.
There were logical answers to all the questions that came to my mind, and I answered them, all the while thinking: I don’t need reasons for what I do. No excuses, no logic. I do what feels right. I feel like I was double-crossed by the guy who hired me, and I feel like doing something about it.
The door slammed up front and I looked up. A skinny guy in jeans and a white T-shirt walked over to the counter and slammed down his coin changer and tossed some bills down. “Checkin’ in,” he said. His voice was high-pitched and didn’t fit the lean but tough look he carried with him, mostly coming from a dark complexion and scruffy black hair and a chipped-tooth smile.
“Where you been?” the old woman said. “Tried to get you on the call box.”
“Some ol’ bitch had me drive her home out in the country and I had to carry some shit in the house for her. She tipped me a goddamn quarter, you believe it, shee-it.”
He came over, grabbing a couple of danish rolls, and got himself some coffee and sat down with me at the table and said, “Care if I sit down here with you, Jack?”
“You already are.”
“Thanks, don’t mind if I do.”
He sat there and yelled up to the old lady, bantered back and forth with her, laughing over in-jokes, and the smell of him and his eating mouth-open while talking and the inane boring chatter got old fast. I got up and walked back to the book racks and looked them over.
One rack of paperbacks seemed largely devoted to gay literature and I recognized Twilight Love, a book I’d seen Boyd reading the other day, among the various titles and smiled for a moment and for that moment thought about Boyd and how before lately he hadn’t been that bad of a guy.
The skinny cabbie came over carrying a half-eaten danish and poked me in the ribs with his elbow and winked and said, “Like that stuff, honey?”
His voice seemed effeminate now. I didn’t know whether he was putting it on or not. For a second there I got mad-I don’t really know why-and I looked at him straight on and cold and didn’t say anything but he got the point. He was dumb, but he was smart enough to know I was going to hurt him if he said anything else.
After he went away I left the rack of books and headed for the magazines, then noticed a stack of papers in the corner, back by the Coke cooler. I walked over and bent down and took a look at them. Davenport papers, daily Times. They went back several days. Just for the hell of it I thumbed through them till I found notice of the airport death of a few days ago.
Floyd Feldstein, the guy’s name had been. He was a buyer associated with Quad City Art Sales, Inc., which was a front of Broker’s. There was no mention that he’d been dressed as a priest, or that he was carrying airline tickets made out in someone else’s name. The Chief of Police stated that, after preliminary investigation, it was assumed that Feldstein had been robbed and killed by one of the “long-haired undesirables who have been seen of late frequenting our public places during off hours, presumably in the hopes of gaining ready cash for the purchase of illegal drugs.” Well, something like that, Chief.
I walked back up to the table and got myself another cup of coffee and sat and drank it. It seemed like the more hot coffee I drank, the less my shoulder hurt. So I sat and sipped and thought.
Tonight, I decided, tonight I’m going to have to be careful.
Tonight, Broker. I’ll see you tonight.
Today I’ve got other things to do.
19
Along the side wall of the Port City Taxi building, in the open area between building and filling station next door, was a long row of parking spaces, two of them filled by taxis, five by other cars, a number of them vacant. The upper wall was a triple billboard advertising toothpaste, cigarettes, and a politician, but below that, hanging low but visible, was a large sign saying, “Private Parking,” in big black block letters, with the usual warning of “Illegally Parked Cars Towed Away at Owner’s Expense” in strident, no-nonsense red. The bottom lines of the sign, in businesslike black said, “For Weekly, Monthly and Yearly Rates, Inquire at Taxi Stand Desk.” For ten dollars, the lady in the red and white checkered dress behind the counter was only too happy to provide a week’s space for one automobile and she asked no embarrassing questions. I liked her.
A siren sliced the air just as I was getting into Boyd’s car to move it to the taxi lot. The high-pitched whine was nearing when I started the car and leisurely drove it around to an alley that three blocks later brought me up behind the taxi building. I pulled the Mustang around into the space I’d leased, parked and locked the car, and started walking back to the rental Ford. By the time I was passing the building where Boyd had recently lived-and-died, both ambulance and police car were parked zigzaggedly, half in the street, half up on the sidewalk, and half-ass overall when you consider there were plenty of open spaces in front of Albert Leroy’s building. But then, parking sensibly isn’t in the spirit of an emergency. As if rushing around was going to do Albert Leroy any good.
Actually, the rushing around was pretty well over by now. Two cops were standing with hands on butts as two guys in white were coming down out of the stairwell carrying a stretcher with a sheet-covered Albert Leroy. A few people were milling around, mostly women from the Laundromat down a couple doors, but there was no crowd really, still too early for that. A tall man in his forties, well-dressed, was standing next to one of the policemen, who was asking him questions in a respectf
ul, next-of-kin sort of way. An older man, who’d been standing in the background, moved forward and touched the tall man on the shoulder and seemed to be offering condolences. The tall man nodded his head sadly and the shorter, older man nodded back and turned and walked across the street, in my direction.
As he approached I saw that he wasn’t just short, he was very short, maybe five-four, but he carried himself erect and he was a handsome old guy. His features were well-defined and though deep-set in his face, unmarred by age, and the character lines down his cheeks were straight, slashing strokes. He was wearing a white shirt, rolled up at the sleeves, and loose brown trousers and when he passed by me, he muttered, “Poor old soul,” as though he expected me to know what he was talking about.
My eyes followed him as he entered Boyd’s building, through the front door on street level. As the door closed I noticed the sign in the draped front window: “Samuel E. Richards, Chiropractor.”
I stroked my shoulder, said to myself, “Why not?” and followed the old guy inside.
“Sir?” I said.
He turned quickly and smiled. A kind smile, but shrewd. “Yes, young man?”
“You’re Dr. Richards?”
“I’d better be,” he grinned, “otherwise I’d be breaking the law using his office.”
“I could use some help.”
“Most people could. Wellsir, I’ll tell you, I’m not open for business just yet. The wife’s cooking up some breakfast and I’ll have to take care of that before I take care of you. How about coming back in thirty minutes, half an hour?”
“I can smell the bacon frying. Smells good.”
“We got a little apartment set-up to the back of the office. The wife and me’re getting on in the years, couldn’t manage an office and house both. And she’s got arthritis, don’t you know, and the steps in our house weren’t doing her any good. You know, you got to compromise sometimes, so here I am.”
I told him it sounded like a nice arrangement. I looked around; we were in a waiting room, with several chairs and a stand with some old magazines on it. There was no receptionist. “You don’t mind if I wait here, do you?”
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