“So that’s why Albert Leroy had to die,” I said.
“He died a long time ago,” she said “He was a vegetable.”
“Yeah, I know, a potato, you told me before. What did he ask for?”
“He wanted to be vice-president of Springborn-Leroy Enterprises He wanted decision-making power. He wanted a fat salary, like you guessed.”
“He wanted too much.”
“Yes, he wanted too much! He was a lousy janitor, how could he expect to move into an executive position? He couldn’t’ve handled it, he would have been a public embarrassment to us, if he didn’t run us out of business first. He was enough of an embarrassment to us as he was.”
“What about that fabled treasure of his?”
“He did have around nine or ten thousand in the bank, left from his inheritance.”
“What of that?”
“It’s mine now. Or was. I’ve given you people the equivalent, now that you’ve been paid twice.”
“Shit, that was nice of your brother, wasn’t it? Paying you back what it cost to murder him.”
“What’s the purpose of this? What do you want, Quarry?”
“Nothing. This four thousand will do fine.”
“You’ll leave, then?”
“I want to know one thing more.”
“What?”
“Who is ‘Vince’?”
“I have no idea.”
“Now don’t bullshit me, Linda Sue. Maybe housewives all over middle America would believe you, but this is your brother’s killer you’re talking to.”
“I tell you, I have no idea! I heard Raymond mention the name just now, when you two were talking up in the tower room. I never heard the name mentioned before.”
“You realize, don’t you, that this ‘Vince’ is probably the guy who stole the four thousand and killed my partner?”
“What do you care? You have four thousand and you’re still alive.”
She was right.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be out of Port City before midnight.”
“Make it sooner if you can.”
“Don’t worry. I got no intention of settling down here.”
“Quarry…”
“What?”
“Why, uh… why…?”
“Why aren’t I twisting your arm for any more than just this four thousand? Because your brother tried the same thing, didn’t he? And you murdered him for it. Hell, I’m not even your brother. I’d hate to think what you’d have done to me.”
Her eyes and mouth were tight in the plastic surgeon’s mask. “You pompous ass… where do you get off with that condescending tone? You keep saying that I murdered my brother. Let me remind you, you smug smart-ass bastard… you murdered Albert Leroy.”
“No,” I said. “I killed him. You murdered him.”
And I left her to think about it. I hoped she’d think about it a long time. But I doubted it.
26
I woke with a start. I looked at my watch. Eight-thirty. I’d slept fifteen minutes. After two hours of staring at the ceiling, thinking more thoughts than is healthy, I’d dropped off to sleep, which wasn’t healthy either. When Port City was just another unpleasant memory, then I could sleep. Not now. Not yet.
Peg was beside me, asleep for an hour and a half, an arm draped loose across my midsection, her head snuggled under my shoulder, one breast crushed casually against my side. We’d had supper in the kitchenette and dessert in the bedroom and spent the rest of our time drinking the one third of a bottle of Scotch which constituted the remainder of her liquor supply and mindlessly chit-chatting, finding out as much about each other as we cared to know.
She gave me an uneasy feeling. All day, being around her had provided a pleasant but nagging sensation, like a dream not quite remembered. It was as though she were a thought in the corner of my mind trying to make itself known, a barely defined reminder of something my mind had long before blocked out. I didn’t want to admit what it was, who she indirectly reminded me of. I didn’t want those feelings to crawl up out of my subconscious and onto a rock of awareness where they could wriggle and tease and bathe in my understanding of them. I didn’t want to face the realization that I hadn’t felt like this since I was young, a young man who believed in certain absurd abstract notions, a young man who married before he should have, feeling emotions he defined as profound and should have seen for the animal instincts they were.
But Peg, this sexpot centerfold blonde right out of a wet dream, this gracefully aging beauty who liked one-night stands with greasy-haired potheads ten years her junior, this hard, delicate little broad who screwed me right after she saw me, she was getting dangerously close. She was getting dangerously close to being a person in my life. Women hadn’t been persons in my life for a long time. Women were pretty receptacles for pent-up biological and psychological waste material. An extension of self-abuse, nothing more.
But why then was I thinking crazy thoughts about her? Wild thoughts, like thinking of asking her if she could use a business partner, someone who could add a fat bundle of cash to what she’d saved, to aid her in her attempt to either possess or escape from Bunny’s. Why was I entertaining the fantasy-insanity of wanting to ask her to go partners with me, to find a bar or club or restaurant or diner or anything somewhere, out west maybe, and run a quiet, legitimate business with days and nights and maybe years of breathing and eating and screwing and doing all those things that make life tolerable, maybe even grow old together, or at least older. Of course I didn’t have much saved up, but I did have that plastic bag of white powder that was worth a lot of money, and…
Bullshit.
I was used to being alone. I liked it. People annoyed me. Sometimes companionship got necessary, sure, so you would play some cards with people you could abide, you’d find some good-natured, well-bodied woman and take care of your needs.
But my needs now were shifting. This business of killing, for one thing; this making a life out of death. You can only do that as long as your stomach and head are hard; mine were getting soft in places. I was losing my edge. Otherwise why else would I stick in town after a hit? Detachment, never get personally involved in a job, the fundamental rule, and here I was hip-deep, Boyd’s death eating at the back of my head, Albert Leroy less a shadowy target in my mind and more a real person I’d shot in the chest this morning. And the one constant in my life for some years now, the Broker, long-time business associate, had become a person to be distrusted, perhaps feared, at the very least the umbilical cord of our working relationship was soon to be severed, in fact I was…
Goddamnit!
Thinking, I had to stop this goddamn fucking thinking!
I slipped out of bed. Peg moaned and reached for me in her sleep but I was too quick for her. I wandered out into the other room, moving through the museum her mother had left behind, went to the window and drew back the curtain. It was raining again.
On the chair by the window was my raincoat and in the raincoat was the nine-millimeter. I’d retrieved the automatic from the trunk of the car since I felt that until I was safely away from Port City it would be best to have gun close at hand. I patted the pocket which held the gun. It was a deep pocket, sewn in special for this purpose. I wished I could put on the coat and go out and find the goddamn man with the goddamn wrench and use the gun on him and leave Port City. There was only one part of this fucking town I’d want to remember, and she was asleep in the other room.
I looked out at the rain. It was coming down damn near straight, coming down heavy, hard, enough so that the gutters of the street were flooding. I looked out at the rain and wondered if I should leave now, while she was still sleeping.
“What are you doing, Quarry?”
I turned and looked at her. She was wearing lacy blue panties and that was all. She was stretching her arms above her head and yawning, her dark nippled breasts flattening as she reached her arms up, blooming full again as she lowered them.
“Nothi
ng,” I said.
Outside the thunder rumbled, cracked. She joined me at the window and looked out. The gray streaking rain reflected on her pink flesh, as though someone were projecting a film and using her as a screen. She leaned a knee against the chair and touched the window sill and said, “I like the rain.” She was smiling, but just a little. “I wish I could run out there just like this and jump around in it. Rain like that depresses some people. Not me. It’s a release, a gush, like crying, or coming.” She leaned over and picked the raincoat up off the chair so she could sit down. The gun fell out of the pocket and dropped to the floor. It was like another crack of thunder. “Christ!” she said, and sat down. She stared at the gun, as though she’d never seen one before and was trying to figure out what it was. Her eyes were very round, very white, like the plates in her mother’s china cabinet nearby. Then she looked at me with the blankness that precedes terror, and when her lower lip started to tremble she bit it.
“Easy, Peg,” I said. “Now don’t get upset.”
“Who… who the hell are you, Quarry? Who are you, for Christ’s sake?”
“Now Peg.”
“Quarry? Who… what are you doing here?”
“I can explain.” I went over and picked the gun up off the floor, shoved it in my belt. “Just take it easy.”
I took her by the arm and guided her over to the table in the kitchenette. I held her hand and she said in a soft, frightened but firm little voice, “Just what the hell kind of man are you, anyway?”
I patted her hand and said, conversationally, “What was that man’s name? The one in Chicago, the gangster, you called him.”
“What… what does that have to do with anything?”
“What was his name?”
“… his name was Frank.”
“Frank. Peg, I’m the kind of man your Frank was, I would guess. You can call it what you want… gangster, mob person, whatever.. the label doesn’t really matter.”
She blinked. Just once. “What are you doing in Port City,” she said quickly, almost defiantly. “What are you doing here with me?”
“You really want to know?”
“You tell me, Quarry. You tell me now.”
I paused, gathered my thoughts. I said, “I was brought to Port City to carry out a certain task, never mind what. The people I work for have a policy of not telling me why I’m performing a function, or who exactly that function’s being performed for. I just do as I’m told, and I’m given money, like any other working stiff. But this time, after the task was carried out, bad things started happening. For openers, almost four thousand dollars that belonged to my partner and me was stolen, and that was the nicest thing that happened to us. Then somebody murdered my partner and hung around and tried to murder me. You’ve noticed the bruised area on my chest and shoulder?”
She didn’t answer right away. Her face had turned bloodless white when I mentioned murder, but after a moment she managed to nod her head yes.
“That was from where somebody tried to do me in with a wrench. Damn near succeeded, too. So I been nosing around, asking questions, looking under beds. I’m at a dead end right now. I wanted to find the guy who worked the wrench on my partner, and then on me, but I’m at a dead end. So now I’m going to throw in my cards, cash in my chips and look for another game.”
“Does this have anything to do with the Springborns?”
“I’d rather not say. The less you know about the specifics, the safer you are. All I can tell you is I was looking to find the man responsible for killing my partner and stealing my money.”
“And if you would have found the… man responsible?”
“Let’s just say he would’ve paid what he owes me. You wouldn’t want to know the details.”
She shuddered slightly. “No. I wouldn’t.” She paused for a moment, pulled her hand out from under mine. “What about us. Quarry? What about you and me?”
“I won’t pretend our meeting was accidental. You knew about some people I wanted to get at. I managed to find out in an underhanded way some of the things I needed to know.”
The color came back to her cheeks. “And getting into my pants was sort of a bonus for you, then, wasn’t it?”
“Peg.”
“I’m a tour guide providing sex on the side, right? That’s what I am to you, that’s all I am to you.”
I said, “It could’ve been that way. Things worked out different.”
“Did they?” Her face was emotionless-motionless-but I thought I could see something starting to melt in her eyes.
“Peg,” I said, “remember what you said this morning? Remember what you said about being able to tell somebody in twenty years all about what we did together, making love together? Well so could I. Twenty years from now I’ll remember every detail of being with you. You just look me up in twenty years and try me.”
She gave me a tentative smile. She said, “Will you, Quarry?”
“Yes I will,” I said.
She was quiet for a moment; she was thinking. Then she made her decision. She said, “Okay. So you’re a bastard. You’re a son of a bitch and a bastard but I can live with it.” She grinned. “Who knows? Maybe I just got a thing for men with guns.”
“Maybe so.”
“Quarry?”
“Yes, Peg?”
“Have you given up on finding the man responsible?”
“Pretty much.”
“You don’t want to give up, though, do you?”
“No. I’m close to him. I’m very close.”
“Can I help you?”
“I don’t want to involve you any deeper in this.”
“Aren’t there any questions you could ask me? That isn’t involvement, not really. There’s no risk in me answering a few questions.”
“Well…”
“Please.”
I stopped. Then I said, “Do you know anybody named Vince?”
She gave me an odd look, cocking her head to one side.
“Vince,” I repeated. “A guy named Vince.”
“He wouldn’t be a cab driver, would he?”
I thought for a moment. What was it Springborn had said? Something about Vince driving a hack and making a lot of money? “He might be,” I said.
“That’d be Carol’s brother, then.”
Carol’s brother? Carol? That was the other name Springborn had mentioned! And was that the name Boyd had used, the name of the woman he was “subletting” the apartment from?
“Who is Carol?” I said. Knowing the answer.
“The girl I told you about this morning. My friend. The one Ray Springborn was shacking up with, then all of a sudden sent packing to Florida.”
It was making sense. It was starting to make a lot of sense. I said, “Tell me about Vince.”
She shrugged. “He’s a deadbeat, and that’s the whole story. He drives a cab, thanks to Ray. Carol asked Ray to fix him up with a good job and Ray agreed. Besides, it keeps Vince’s mouth shut about Ray and Carol. Matter of fact, I think Vince might’ve been putting the squeeze on Ray just lately, maybe that’s why Ray sent Carol down to Florida for a while.” She shook her head. “Why Carol cares about that brother of hers is a mystery to me, but I suppose it’s because he’s all the family she’s got around here. You see, their parents are split up, divorced, and moved away long ago. That Vince is a real shit, Quarry. He’s queer as hell, too.”
“What?”
“He’s queer. They even had him in jail for it.”
I remembered what Springborn had said, the implication in his words… hasn’t he tried anything? Springborn had said. You don’t go for that stuff, do you?
“Actually,” Peg was saying, “I guess he wasn’t jailed for being a queer exactly, it was something worse than that. Much worse, because Christ knows as far as I’m concerned a person’s sex life is his own business, but this Vince… he’s a pervert in the true sense of the word. You know why he got thrown in jail? He was propositioning other homosexuals, e
specially guys passing through town, you know? He’d take them out in the country in his cab and roll them. Take every cent they had, even their clothes sometimes, and beat the crap out of them for the sheer pleasure of it.”
I understood.
I understood it all.
Boyd, I said silently, Boyd wherever you are, you son of a lesbian bitch, wherever you are, you’re an asshole. A dead one, but an asshole. Why hadn’t it occurred to me? The obvious! The dead obvious fact that Boyd had been slipping lately, that Boyd was getting sloppy in his work, so sloppy bad I was thinking serious of quitting him. But he had been even more stupid than I’d given him credit for. He’d been stupid enough, asshole-dumb enough, out-of-his-fucking-mind crazy enough to get involved in one of his gay flings while on a job!
That broken heart he’d been nursing, that busted heart he’d been carrying around with him as a souvenir of his disintegrating personal life, that torn valentine he wore in his chest he’d tried to paste back together with a new love, a love he found for himself right here in Port City.
And Boyd had picked himself a dandy lover. I could picture the first meeting in my mind. Because I knew what Vince looked like, I was sure of it. I was sure he was that clown in the taxi stand this morning, the guy who’d sidled up to me in the Port City Taxi Service this very damn morning! I could see him in my mind, a skinny guy in a white T-shirt (though in the apartment it had been a black one, hadn’t it?) dark complexioned, his hair oily and curly and black, his smile leering with the tooth in front chipped, his voice tough one second, effeminate the next. I could see him talking to Boyd, while Boyd thumbed through Twilight Love at the paperback rack.
I’d been right about one thing: it was an inside job. Vince was the brother of Carol, the girl who’d been staying in the apartment where Boyd was doing lookout, meaning Vince knew enough about the situation to know that Boyd and I had been brought to town to do some kind of Springborn dirty work; it was unlikely he’d have it figured right down to the murder of Albert Leroy, but he knew that Boyd and I were in town to do something-under-the-table for one of the Springborns, though he no doubt assumed Raymond, but never mind that. Vince had probably been able to gather from Boyd that a large amount of money was involved, and Boyd had probably promised Vince some of that money. Might even have indicated when the money would become available. Might even have arranged one last rendezvous with the chipped-tooth charmer before leaving town.
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