“Then you haven’t gone past it. Anyway, therapy is a crutch; writing is catharsis. You put these experiences in your non-fiction novel, every single thing you witnessed, and when you’re done, you can close the book on that entire sordid chapter. Literally.”
I was confused. Who was writing the book on Annette’s mob-boss father? Professor or student? Or were they collaborating?
“Anyway, we can discuss it this evening,” Byron said, and rose, scooting his chair back and gathering his parka-style fur-lined khaki-green jacket; he was in a darker green sweater with the collars of a pale yellow shirt sticking out, and well-worn, just-another-radical blue jeans.
She asked him, “How many meetings do you have this afternoon?”
“Three. Should be safe to come around by six. We’ll cook up some chili and put the Coltrane on and just talk this through.”
She got up, too, getting into the familiar white coat with white fur collar, and that’s when she recognized me. She brightened and met my eyes and I frowned at her as if I didn’t know why the fuck she was looking at me-maybe not the most credible reaction from a straight guy having a beautiful girl gaze right at him.
“Hi!” she said.
“Hello,” I said.
“You remember me-from Sambo’s?”
The professor was studying me as if I were an exam paper written in crayon. Then he turned to Annette and asked, “What were you doing in Sambo’s?”
“Having coffee, reading. When you had your meetings last night? You know it’s just across from where I live.”
“Ah. Sure.” He put on a smile for me and nodded.
She held her hand out. “I didn’t get your name. I’m Annette.”
“Jack,” I said, and shook hands with her.
The prof didn’t offer his hand. But he did ask, with tight politeness, “What are you studying, Jack?”
“Just another English major,” I said. “Nice to meet you, Annette…Professor Byron.”
That seemed to please him, me knowing who he was. “So I don’t need to introduce myself.”
“No, I read your book about Vietnam. I’m a vet myself.”
“How did you like it?”
“Vietnam really sucked.”
“I meant my book.”
“Oh! It was really good.” I of course hadn’t read it. But I figured that was all you needed to say to any writer to make a pal out of him.
And it worked.
“Well, thanks, Jack,” he said, and now he finally held out his hand. “You interested in writing? You can always try out for the Workshop.”
His grip was cold and clammy.
I said, “I hear it’s tough, the competition.”
“Oh yes, definitely.” He nodded toward his favorite student. “But talent, like cream, does rise to the top.”
Some writer, coining a phrase like that.
He was saying, “Annette here is going to be the next Flannery O’Connor.”
“Hey, that’s great.” Who the fuck was Flannery O’Connor?
Must have been somebody pretty good, because Annette was blushing. That’s what I said: blushing.
She nodded and headed out and he followed with no nod to me and I finished my sandwich. The Broker would love that, me talking literature with the target and the client’s kid.
So that afternoon, with the world already growing dark outside my window, I called the Broker from the phone in my room at the Holiday Inn, and left out any report on my luncheon meeting at Bushnell’s Turtle.
“ You’ll be relieved to know,” the Broker said, “ that Charles Koenig has a small one-man private investigative agency in Des Moines, Iowa. He is divorced and has no children and is unlikely to be missed by anyone other than perhaps his landlord. ”
“Cool,” I said.
“And I would doubt that Mrs. Byron hired him in person. She lives in a small college town in Connecticut, where her husband first taught, before his writing career really took off. They, too, are a childless couple.”
“You figure the wife looked for a PI in Iowa who could take on this case. Let her fingers do the walking, or anyway the long distance operator’s fingers.”
“Precisely. Hence, Charles Koenig of Des Moines.”
I believe the Broker is the only person I ever heard speak the word “hence” in a sentence. Or not in a sentence, for that matter.
“So then I should stay,” I said, “and finish what I came to do.”
“I believe so…if you are willing to take a certain risk.”
Well, let’s see. Last night I had dragged a plastic-wrapped corpse down a hill so I could load it in a car trunk and drive to a truckstop and pass the stiff off to some other asshole. Yeah. I guessed I was up for a risk.
“What kind of risk, Broker?”
“You need to keep that meeting.”
“What meeting?…Oh. You mean, the meeting Charlie was supposed to have with the professor’s wife. And, what, I should pretend to be Charlie?”
“Yes. And why not? It’s the lounge in your very own hotel. As you said yourself, how much more convenient could it be for you?”
“Well,” I said, having second thoughts, “it won’t be very convenient if your assumptions are wrong, and Mrs. Byron has in fact met Charlie. You could put me in a position of having to do something else unpleasant. More collateral damage.”
“No. That shouldn’t be a problem. Don’t pass yourself off as Charlie, but as an operative in his employ.”
Actually, that was a good idea. I’d already thought of it, but said nothing, not wanting to burst the Broker’s bubble.
“Quarry, you know what Mr. Koenig was up to. Improvising your lines should be simple; a child could do it.”
“Yeah, well, Christmas is over and all the kids have checked out of this dump, except for me, and I wasn’t in any school plays or anything.”
“You underestimate your abilities, my boy.”
Broker was also the only person who had ever called me “my boy.” No, strike that: my drunken Uncle Pete called me that once, too, when I was six and he slipped his hands in my shorts. See how good I am at this non-fiction novel stuff?
“Okay, Broker,” I said, “I’ll do it. But what do I say to her?”
“Tell her you have the goods on her husband. That you’ll gather all the materials and provide them soon.”
“Listen, what’s she doing here anyway? She’s got an Iowa PI on the job who could report to her where she lives, which is Connecticut. What’s going on?”
“She probably wants to be assured by Mr. Koenig-that’s you-that her husband is indeed the philandering louse she assumes. And she plans to confront him about it, once having seen the evidence.”
“Great. One more cast member in the stateroom.”
“No. There won’t be. You will tell her that you need several more days to collect the evidence. Send her home. Advise her in no uncertain terms that a confrontation with her husband is a mistake. That it will compromise her position in court.”
“Would it?”
“Jesus Christ, young man!”
You guessed it: first time I ever heard that combination of words coming out of a fellow human; and it was a pretty rare outburst of any kind, coming from the Broker.
Who was saying, “What difference does that make? You aren’t really a private investigator working on a divorce case. You are merely trying to manipulate her ass into taking a goddamn hike. Understood?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Call me tonight and we’ll discuss how the meeting with Mrs. Byron went, and we will decide, together, whether or not you should resume your activities.”
“Okay.”
We said goodbye and hung up.
So I had a shower and brushed my teeth and gargled and even splashed on a little Brut. I left off the long johns but my wardrobe was limited-I had a dark gray shirt and some jeans I hadn’t worn yet, and that was the best I could do. I spent an hour in the coffee shop, having a bowl of chi
cken noodle soup for supper and reading the local papers. I don’t follow sports or world affairs, but the funnies and the movie reviews took some time away.
By a quarter to seven, I was in the lounge, which was about the size of a high school classroom, only all red and black and with a bar in the middle and a little stage and dance floor in one corner. The band wasn’t going on till nine, and a TV up high behind the bar showed Red Skelton doing Clem Kadiddlehopper and laughing at his own jokes. Within minutes, Rowan amp; Martin’s Laugh-In replaced it, the comedy team exuding cheerful irony, and the collision of the two eras was pretty jarring. The sound wasn’t on loud enough for me to make everything out from my booth, but I took in the sight gags and watched the girls in bikinis and body paint dance around and that passed the time.
A sultry alto said, “Hi.”
I looked up and a pretty, and pretty familiar, face was staring down at me: the redheaded bestower of hard ons from the whirlpool yesterday morning.
So she hadn’t checked out; and she had, after all, said she was “sometimes in the bar” here at the Holiday Inn. And now my fantasies were poised to come true, Penthouse Forum here I come, only I was supposed to meet someone else, wasn’t I?
Truth was, I wished I was meeting this blue-eyed redhead. She looked fucking great. Her tower of titian curls on top of that attractive roundish face, softened by the lounge lighting, her shapely body nicely served by a fuzzy yellow sweater, orange toreador pants and off-white heels. She had a yellow clutch purse in one hand and was gesturing to herself with the other, her nails the same orange as her tight slacks.
I smiled and did a kind of half rise from my seat in the booth. “Dorrie, isn’t it? Gee, you look great.”
Yes, I said “gee.” But give me credit: I left off “whillikers.”
Big white teeth formed a terrific smile. “You look good out of trunks…Actually, that sounded wrong, didn’t it?”
I grinned. “Sounded just fine. Boy, do I wish I could ask you to join me, but I’m meeting somebody here.”
“Actually, so am I. Trouble is, I didn’t get a description.”
My brain was making connections that yours probably already has. I said, “Dorrie…that isn’t short for Dorothy, is it?”
Long lashes flashed over the blue eyes, which were almond shaped. “Well, yes…”
“You’re Dorothy Byron?”
Now those blue eyes narrowed. “Yes. But you’re not Charles Koenig, are you? You don’t sound anything like him.”
So she had dealt him over the phone.
I gestured for her to sit, and she slid in across from me. “I work for Mr. Koenig. He got called away on another case, out of state.”
Way out of state.
She was smiling again. “Then you’re handling this job?”
“That’s right.”
She shook her head, the red locks bouncing nicely, and said, “I feel so foolish. Here we were yesterday, sitting and talking and even…flirting, and…now I hardly know what to say.”
“Say ‘small world,’ and let’s take it from there.”
The lounge was about half full now. Seemed to be young working people, in their later twenties and early thirties, on the prowl.
“This can be a real meat market,” she said, casting her eyes around and frowning. “Could get fairly crowded. Is there somewhere else we could talk?”
“My room’s a kind of mini-suite. There’s a sitting area with a couch. We could send for some room service, if you haven’t eaten.”
“I’m not hungry, but I wouldn’t mind the privacy. Maybe you could buy us a couple of beers, at the bar?”
I bought four cans of Pabst and then escorted Mrs. Byron out of the lounge and over to the elevators. She was a head-turner in that yellow sweater; she wore an old-fashioned brassiere, unusual in these bra-burning times, but I kind of dug its twin rocket style. Made me think of Mamie Van Doren and my first orgasm; probably was more memorable for me than Mamie, since Mamie wasn’t there.
Now, I admit I did something stupid. I believe I was a little thrown by running into my whirlpool fantasy and having her turn out to be my target’s missus. Right before I’d gone down to the lounge, I tossed my nine millimeter on the bed, and it was sitting there on the made bed against a pillow like the worst mint any maid ever left.
I’d spaced out about the damn thing, and still hadn’t remembered the gun when I opened the door and she went on in ahead of me. But she saw it right away.
She turned and smiled, her eyes alive. “So private eyes do carry guns? Just like on TV!”
“We need protection,” I said lamely. “But the management frowns on it when you carry one into a cocktail lounge.”
I put the four beers on the coffee table by the couch, switched on the lamp (the overhead light was off, the bedroom nightstand lamp also on), and sat down. She deposited herself next to me, perhaps a little closer than most good-looking clients sit to their PI. Except on TV. She smelled very good. Perfume, but not too much. She was doing fine, Penthouse Forum — wise.
“So fill me in about the creep I’m married to,” she said.
“There’ve been several girls go around to see him,” I said, “but I think some are legitimately students. Couple guys have stopped by the cottage, too. He is an advisor, after all.”
The upper lip of her full mouth curled upward. “He’s been ‘advising’ for a very long time. I was one of his first. I was going to be a hell of a writer, myself, you know. The next Sylvia Plath.”
I didn’t know who that was, either, but I said, “I won’t lie to you. I don’t want to give you false hope-he is cheating.”
She sat there with her fists clenched and her chin quivering and she stared at the wall across the way, which wasn’t worth staring at really, having a nondescript winterscape framed there (screwed into the wall, to keep me from sticking it in my suitcase). Her eyes were hard but they were also wet, glistening with emotion, hate, love, the works.
I asked, “You didn’t have any doubt, did you?”
She shook her head, red curls bouncing. “No. No. This is typical.”
“Isn’t this just about getting the goods on the guy? So you can finally pull the plug on this marriage and come out smelling like a rose on the financial end?”
She nodded.
I got up and went over to the cans of beer. I pulled the ring top on a Pabst and handed her the can and she sipped at it delicately. I pulled a ring top on another and returned to my place on the couch. I took a drink and set it on the floor. Wasn’t that thirsty, but she was greedily consuming hers now, gone from sipping to gulping.
I said, “You don’t have any kids, do you?”
“No. Didn’t I tell you that? No.”
She put the beer back on the end table, then got up and went over to the bed. She took the gun from the pillow and she turned around and the nine millimeter was huge in her orange-nailed hand. Her expression was a little crazy. But crazy enough.
She said, “You know I could just kill the son of a bitch.”
“Not a good idea. Give me that.”
“Or maybe you could. Would you kill him for me?” She seemed a little drunk. Maybe that hadn’t been her first beer.
“No. That’s not a toy.”
She handed it to me, with a babyish pout that, oddly, was the first thing that had made her look her age. I took the weapon and held it in both hands; I’d never felt the metal so cold.
She plopped down next to me again. “One of us should kill that miserable prick.”
“Yeah, well, not tonight.”
Then she started crying, and I slipped an arm around her and she sobbed into my chest. Now and then she would say, “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me?”
So I told her there was nothing wrong with her.
This went on a while.
Then she got up, suddenly, and ran to the bath-room, taking her little purse along. I thought maybe she was going to throw up, and I did hear the toilet flush,
but when she came back, she’d redone her makeup, the mascara having run all to hell.
And she looked good again. Very good. Damn good. And weirdly together, her face devoid of emotion, devoid of anything but those attractive features, the kind of blank prettiness you see in advertising.
She positioned herself in front of me.
“How old are you?” she asked.
I told her.
“I was in junior high when you were born,” she said.
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Would you believe grade school?”
The Get Smart reference made me laugh.
She took off her sweater, yanked it over her head with magnificent casualness. She stared down at me; so did the bullet bra.
“Would you believe,” she said, overtly Maxwell Smart now, “kindergarten?”
Her hands went behind her to undo the bra. I looked away, the gun still in my hands. This was wrong. Fucking the target’s wife was wrong. I could get in ten kinds of trouble. A hundred. She was a beautiful, sad, troubled woman and she was taking her bra off and I was about to get fucked several ways, not all of them good.
Her breasts had needed no help from the bullet bra. Sure, they drooped just a little, but that was what my hands were for. I reached up and caressed them, globes that overflowed my fingers, her aureoles large and puffy, and then I suckled them and the nipples grew hard and long, and I was hard and long, too, so I pulled her down on the couch and I climbed on her and we kissed or mostly I kissed her, nuzzling her neck and worshiping those breasts…
She slipped out from under me and had a naughty-child look as she stood there and wriggled out of the skin-tight slacks and revealed a healthy reddish pubic patch and when she half-turned to toss the slacks away, I saw how incredible and full her ass was, dimples so deep you could drink champagne out of them. If you had champagne.
Then she was on her knees and unbuttoning my pants and she gave the porno girls a real run for the money, sucking the tip, then sliding her mouth down, then up and down and licking around and making me wonder what the fuck that dipshit husband of hers was thinking. I almost came in her mouth, but she knew just when to stop and she smiled up at me, those eyes incredibly blue, and got to her feet and walked to the bed, hip-swaying till I was drunk with it, and it was only about six steps.
The first quarry q-7 Page 8
