If so, where was that likely to be?
* * *
On a Sunday night, the Golden Spike was not hopping. Decent business, but nothing like a Friday or Saturday, or even a weeknight. I had been in a hundred of these bars and they were all the same, though they tended to vary on the sleaze scale. The Spike was about a seven, clean but loud, from the boisterous bullshit of farmers who thought they were ranchers and the hourly workers who thought they were cowboys, to a jukebox blaring Alabama and Rosanne Cash for the younger set and George Jones and Loretta Lynn for the older crowd.
As you came in, the bar was at your left, separated from a row of booths by a half-dozen high-top tables. Maybe half the booths were filled, all but one high-top empty; a third of the bar stools were taken. At the rear were two pool tables, one in use. George Strait was splitting the demographic difference on the jukebox.
I took the stool nearest the door, nobody next to me. The barmaid was a short brick-shithouse highlighted brunette in her early twenties in a glittery purple tank-top cut low enough to encourage generous tips. Some strategies never get old.
She didn’t ask what I wanted, just stared across the counter with dark bored eyes.
“Coke,” I said.
This she found ridiculous but let her expression say it for her. When she returned with a glass, I was looking past her at the mirror under the array of neon beer signs and behind the row of liquor bottles.
“Run a tab?” she asked me.
I nodded.
“You seem distracted.”
Apparently I’d offended her by not looking down her tank-top. “Hard day at the office.”
“On Sunday?”
“I’m the new pastor at Calvary United. Saving souls is a bitch.”
She shrugged, said, “Explains the Coke,” and went away.
In the mirror, I was keeping an eye on the booth on the far end, trying not to be too conspicuous about it. But since Mateski was sitting with his back to me, I didn’t have to work very hard at it.
I wasn’t surprised to see him, having spotted the Bonneville in the parking lot. No one was across the booth from him. He had a beer in front of him, only a third or so of it gone. Reading again, if you can believe it, holding North and South near the booth’s little light over the napkin holder.
So he was waiting for somebody.
I sipped Coke. Smiled. And I knew who that somebody was, didn’t I? Or I sort of knew. Knew the role of the person, anyway, who would eventually enter that door near my back and go over to sit down with Mateski.
“I’m Jenny,” a husky female voice said from the stool next door. “You got a name to go with that nice face?”
My first look at her was in the mirror. I had stopped looking at Mateski and lowered my gaze as my thoughts kicked in, and hadn’t noticed her when she edged up onto the stool beside me, a dark lanky girl with unlikely large boobs poured into a black low-cut Harley t-shirt and frayed jeans.
I said, “Got a pretty nice face there your own self.”
But it was not a face that I would really call “nice,” exactly— sharp, well-defined features framed by a big head of gypsy curls, black with silver streaks; dark thick arching eyebrows, eyes big, an unusual light green, full wide mouth glistening crimson with a real-looking black beauty mark at one corner. High cheekbones, cleft chin. Kind of dark tan that turns leathery in a woman’s forties; she wasn’t quite there yet.
“Jack,” I said. “Jack Quarry.”
I could use her for cover, to make my presence here less conspicuous.
She took the hand I offered. Hers was warm. Somewhere between a handshake and a caress.
“You’re new in town,” she said.
I gave her half a grin, swirled my beverage. “You make it sound like an old western. What am I, a stranger in Dodge?”
She gave me the other half of the grin. “Are you?”
“I guess. You must get your share of strangers around here, Miss Kitty. It’s the Little Vacationland of Missouri, right?”
“Not this time of year.”
The barmaid rolled her chest and confidence over and deposited a lowball glass of ice and amber fluid before Jenny. The women nodded at each other, like members of opposing sports teams, and the barmaid went away.
“I didn’t hear you order,” I said.
“Mary Ann knows I always have Jack and Ginger.”
“Sounds like Gilligan’s Island, only with Jack in the middle.”
She laughed. Her teeth were handsome but a light yellow. Was that Opium perfume, trying to cover up the tobacco smell on her? How could she afford that shit? Of course, bikers dealt derivatives of that other opium, and she did appear to be a biker chick.
She asked, “What are you drinking?”
“Coca-Cola.”
“The hard stuff, huh?”
“You don’t think cocaine is hard?”
“Honey, they stopped putting cocaine in Coke Cola a long damn time ago.”
I liked the way she said that—Coke Cola. She wasn’t stupid. In fact, I was pretty sure she was smart.
I shrugged, sipped. “As long as they keep the caffeine in, I’m in. That’s my drug of choice.”
“Ha! That is good shit. Where would we all be without black coffee in the morning?”
I gave her a flirty smile. “I wonder where I’ll be in the morning?”
“It’s early yet. Who can tell?”
Mateski was still reading. His beer was down to a third of a glass now. A waitress came with another for him, and he seemed to be ordering something off the menu. Couldn’t blame him—good bar food at the Golden Spike, and I hadn’t seen him eat since Denny’s. He really seemed to be hunkering in for the duration.
But the duration of what?
Jenny was lighting up a smoke with a silver lighter with a Harley symbol on it. Camel, no filter tip. No Virginia Slims bullshit for this babe. She swung the pack toward me.
“No thanks,” I said.
“Don’t smoke, huh? Wanna live forever?”
“I have the Olympic trials to worry about.”
She chuckled, snapped shut her lighter. It was louder than the jukebox. “You’re that good influence I’ve been trying to avoid all my life.”
“Yeah, I think I could straighten you out in a hurry.”
She put a hand on my thigh. “You took the words right out of my mouth.”
My dick twitched, like a heavy sleeper reacting to an alarm clock. Down boy, I told it.
She leaned on an elbow and gave me a wide, nasty smile, gazing at me with translucent green eyes, such lovely eyes to be wearing so much mascara in such a hard face. Lovely face. Probably wrinkled if the lights were up. But they were down.
“What do you do, anyway, Jack?”
“In what sense?”
“In the work sense. Are you employed?”
“Self-employed.”
“And you do what?”
I stuck with my cover story. “I’m a journalist. Freelance.”
“And what brings you to scenic Stockwell in the dead of winter?”
“It’s still fall.”
“Felt like winter all week.”
“No argument there. I’m working on a story about the local arts scene.”
That subject apparently held no interest for her. She blew out more smoke. For a top-heavy gal, she had a bony look, elbow against the bar, half-turned to me with her legs crossed, her knees sharp, the toes of her motorcycle boots the same. How could all those angular bones seem so feminine?
“So you’re in town how long, Jack?”
“Maybe a week.”
“And you’re from where, exactly?”
“Ever live in St. Louis, Jenny?”
“No.”
“St. Louis.”
“It’s a fun town. I’ve partied there before.”
I hid my shock. “Wish I’d run into you. Take you up to my apartment. Show you my etchings.”
She frowned at me. “What are etchi
ngs, anyway?”
“Fuck if I know.”
That got a throaty laugh out of her and her empty glass was automatically replaced by the other bosomy babe.
“What do you do, Jenny?”
“Nothing. Whatever the fuck I like. I’m independently wealthy.”
“Are you now?”
“You think I’m shitting you? I’m not shitting you.”
“Did I say you were shitting me?”
“No, Jack, I don’t believe you did. Excuse me. Little girl’s room.” She slid off the stool and hip-swayed toward the back and the johns. The tits might be fake, but that well-shaped ass was the real deal. Might have been on pistons, the way those cheeks moved up and down.
She wove around the waitress bringing Mateski a plate with burger and fries.
“Hey,” somebody said.
Mary Ann.
The barmaid was leaning in, giving me a very generous view down the blouse at the decidedly real thing. The head of my half a hard-on turned toward her.
“You be careful, honey,” she said.
“Yeah? Why?”
“That crazy cunt, excuse my French, has screwed everything that moves in this town, and a few that were standing still.”
“Oh. Well, that discourages me. We don’t go in for that kind of thing at Calvary.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you don’t. But she wasn’t lying.”
“Huh?”
“She’s richer than shit. She’s the black sheep of the biggest family in town.”
“What, the Stockwells?”
She nodded. “That’s Jenny Stockwell you’re flirting with.”
What the hell?
I said, “So if I marry her I’ll be rich, then?”
“She’s not the marrying kind. At least not lately. Likes her freedom.”
“Kiss and run, huh? That’s depressing. I’m only interested in long-term relationships. What time do you get off? And I mean that in the nicest way.”
She grinned at me. Her teeth were white. “Okay, smart-ass. Don’t listen to me. But will you take just a little friendly advice?”
“Maybe.”
“Don’t go out in the rain without your rubbers on. You might catch something, and not a cold.”
Jenny was nearing the bar as the barmaid gave me a knowing smirk and a raised eyebrow and got lost.
“Let’s go outside,” Jenny said. A big black purse was slung over an arm; it had a Harley logo, too. “I could use a little air.”
Mateski was eating his burger, slowly, still reading.
“Okay,” I said.
She took me by the hand and led me out into the parking lot. She escorted me around the side of the building where it was dark, only a single angled row of cars parked between the lot and the next building. I had a feeling this was where the help left their vehicles. There were garbage cans back here, but they were probably empty, because nothing stank.
She pushed me against the side of the Spike. No windows back here. Nice and private, though I could see an occasional car pull out of the lot. Driver and any passengers wouldn’t see us unless they looked in their rear-view mirror as they exited. She smothered my mouth with her sticky lipstick-moist lips and her tongue raped the tender space between my upper and lower teeth. It was disgusting. My dick throbbed like a thumb caught in a car door.
Jenny Stockwell—a coincidence? Small town. Possible. Or had I been made? Was she meeting Mateski here? Had she hired the hit on Vale, and was going to confab with both Mateski and his partner? Maybe hired them herself, independently, no middleman. Did she have a gun in that big black purse? I had one in my fleece-lined jacket....
And yet I still had a raging hard-on.
We necked for a frantic while, then my hands went up under that t-shirt and the breasts were large and perfect and a little hard, probably implants, but I did not give a flying fuck. The nipples were hard as bullets and I didn’t care who saw, I tugged that Harley shirt up and transferred the lipstick she left on my face to those big firm globes and the hard tips begged for suckling and I didn’t disappoint. She was on her knees then, and unzipped me and unbuttoned me and tugged my shorts down to let the brains of the organization out for some air. It bobbed and pulsed and stared at her like a creature in a Ray Harryhausen movie. She grinned at it, happy as a kid with a brand-new toy, though I was pretty sure she’d seen plenty of previous models; she flicked at it with a forefinger and school-girl giggled as it bobbed up and down.
Then, surprisingly, she said, “Listen, sweetie, I’m a spitter, okay? Just so we got the ground rules.”
“Yeah. Sure. Okay.”
“I got wet naps in my purse if you want to finish on my face.”
“Spitting’s fine. I don’t offend easily.”
Then she was gobbling the thing, taking it deep, a messy, slurpy, saliva-heavy, nasty fucking process that had me drunker than anybody inside. I almost missed it when a car came in the wrong way and I recognized the guy behind the wheel, who disappeared from view pulling into the lot to park.
“Honey,” she said, her hand working me, “you’re losing it. Concentrate.”
“Yeah. Yeah.”
I didn’t know him. I’d never worked with him. But I remembered him from the Broker’s file. I had studied that face long and hard because it was a face I never wanted to see in the flesh. It was one name on the list that I would never, under any circumstances, pursue.
She was working me with her hand. “Hmmm, good boy. You’re doing fine, sugar. Just fine.”
Then she took me back into her mouth and worked her magic till I was shivering and shuddering like a guy in his fucking death throes and when she went over to discreetly spit me out, behind the garbage cans, I felt she conducted herself with considerable dignity.
I’d put myself back together by the time she returned. She was using a little breath-freshener spray, which she then slipped into her purse. Her lipstick was gone but otherwise her makeup looked fine. Industrial strength mascara.
“That was fun,” she said. “You have a good time, honey?”
“Sure did.”
“You wanna see me again while you’re town, I’m in the book. Jenny Stockwell.”
We shook hands.
“Keep in touch,” she said. “I got somewhere else you might like to stick that thing.” And grabbed my crotch in a friendly way.
“No problem,” I said.
We held hands as she walked me back in. Our bar stools were waiting. Mary Ann brought me a fresh Coke and Jenny another Jack and Ginger.
Mateski had been joined in the bar by a man I knew as Reed Farrell. He was a very well-dressed man for this down-home a venue—a sharp charcoal suit and thin emerald tie, a cadaverous undertaker of a man, with a long narrow face that was baby’s-butt smooth, as if it had never experienced an emotion. His hair was cut very short, his eyebrows thick but trimmed back, his complexion blister pale, with slitted eyes that blinked in slow motion. He sat with his hands folded, a mixed drink before him as Mateski leaned across the booth’s table, quietly filling him in.
Remember how I said there was one guy in my business who specialized in torture?
Or were you ahead of me?
FOUR
When I say torture, I don’t mean anything psychological and not even using increasing degrees of discomfort and violence to make somebody talk. Sure, I’ve put a bullet in a kneecap to pry loose information, but I don’t consider that torture. Just expedience.
The kind of torture Reed Farrell administered was not designed to make you talk—more like scream. My late, longtime back-up guy, Boyd, had worked with Farrell once and swore he never would again. Boyd hadn’t witnessed any of the rough stuff, but later got freaked out to learn that the hit he’d set up resulted in some middle-echelon Cincinnati mob guy having his fingers, toes and dick cut off systematically with garden shears, then dumped to die, bleeding out of those various new orifices.
Seemed Farrell had been a field medic in Vietnam and picked up
tricks from the Cong—he could make punishment of that kind last without the victim passing out or going into the kind of shock that robbed the client of the satisfaction of the target’s suffering.
Mob hits were something I had occasionally done, and that was true for everybody who worked through the Broker, but those jobs were the minority. Mostly we disposed of crooked business partners, pesky business rivals, cheating wives, cheating husbands, and other civilians who had displeased some important somebody.
Imagine mob guys feeling they needed to bring in a guy like Farrell—that their own in-house expertise for mayhem just wasn’t up to the task of making some asshole suffer sufficiently. Kind of says it all.
This wasn’t just a guy skilled with a gun and/or a knife, or an expert in staging believable accidents; this was (as the Broker’s file detailed) an individual skilled in such arts as bone-breaking, freezing, live burial, castration, toe/fingernail removal, flaying, limb-sawing, burning, and scalping; a specialist able to prolong a victim’s misery before death for many hours and even days, skilled with such esoteric devices as cattle prods, thumbscrews, cat o’ nine tails, branding iron, Tucker Telephone (don’t ask), and Picana (ditto).
“You men,” Jenny was saying, lighting up another Camel.
“Huh?” I said, shifting my eyes to her in the barroom mirror from watching the back-booth meeting between the torturer and the antiques dealer.
“You shoot your wad,” she said, curling her crimson-lipsticked upper lip (she had redone her makeup in the Spike ladies’ room), “and then get all quiet. All morose.”
“Maybe I’m just satisfied.”
I hadn’t seen any documents passed between them. Maybe I’d missed that, since Farrell was already in that booth when I’d returned. But there was no manila envelope or folder or notebook on the table, and almost always the surveillance guy turned over extensive notes to the hitter. Maybe it was beside Farrell on the booth seat, blocked from view.
Jenny said, “You intrigue me.”
“I’m an intriguing sort of guy.”
“You wouldn’t want to come see my etchings, would you? I got a nice house. Nice bed. No kids. No husbands.”
The Wrong Quarry (Hard Case Crime) Page 5
