The Contract

by JM Gulvin

  There weren’t many people eating, plenty of stools free at the counter. He took off his hat and laid it down as the middle-aged waitress came over with a pot of coffee. A little lined in the face, she wore her hair in a single plait that fed from under her cap.

  ‘Sergeant,’ she said. ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘Just some coffee, mam: thank you.’

  She poured him a cup and set the pot back on the warmer then rested on her forearms as he reached for sugar and crème. ‘You’re here about the shooting,’ she said.

  ‘That’s right. Were you the one who spotted them?’

  ‘Yes, I was.’ A little pride in her voice, she stood straight. ‘They were in here first off and the one guy with long hair, he was cussing in front of the customers. I can’t have decent folks putting up with that so I had to say something to him.’ Lips pursed she shook her head. ‘He didn’t like it. He didn’t like that at all.’

  Quarrie nodded. ‘I guess they were talking some, the two of them. Did you pick up on anything? They stole a whole bunch of guns from Mr Hemmings’s place, one of them a military rifle.’

  ‘I know they did,’ she said. ‘I saw them through the window. Mr Hemmings on the floor all bloody about his head.’ She shuddered. ‘No, sir, they didn’t say anything I really picked up on. The one guy was looking at the TV all foul-mouthed like I said. The other one, the younger one, he just looked plum nervous.’

  Quarrie took a sip of coffee.

  ‘The way he was and all, it’s what got me thinking about what they might be doing so when they left out I went outside myself and stood on the sidewalk.’ She pointed through the window. ‘Watched that Olds drive down the street aways then I saw it pull over. I knew something wasn’t right and I walked on down and that’s when I ran for the council office.’

  That was all she could tell him and Quarrie drove north once more and left the highway at the exit for Wichita Falls. Passing the Triple D Motel he could see a bunch of kids splashing around in the swimming pool where it was separated from the parking lot by a six-foot steel mesh fence. The old Tejano caretaker was keeping half an eye on them from where he painted a wall in the back. Hot today, it had been that way all year. With so much dust in the air the drought was taking its toll.

  As he turned onto Indiana he could see a coroner’s ambulance parked outside the Roosevelt Hotel. A couple of blocks beyond the First National Bank, the lights were going and the back door standing open. A mass of people were gathered on the steps and they moved aside as he flipped the switch for the siren briefly, before pulling up to the curb.

  Inside the hotel he crossed to the desk where a young clerk glanced at the badge on his chest.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ Quarrie asked.

  ‘One of the guests passed away in the night. Room 404,’ the young man indicated, ‘coroner’s crew just went up.’

  Quarrie climbed to the fourth-floor landing where a Tejano maid was in tears as she gave a statement to a uniformed cop. The door to the bedroom was open and the crew from the ambulance inside. The dead man was lying in bed with one arm hanging over the side and the two men in white shirts and black ties were about to lift the body onto a gurney.

  ‘Hold your fire there a minute, boys, would you?’ They looked round and Quarrie indicated the body. ‘Ranger, I need you to hold off for a second, OK?’

  They left him alone and he stood in the doorway, a regular room with the bathroom to his right and a king-size bed. He approached where the man was half on his side and half on his front, the skin of his face marked by the pattern from a rumpled pillow. His eyes were closed and his mouth open, with the tongue protruding slightly. The bed sheet only partially covered his torso and Quarrie took a minute to study the upper body but could find no sign of trauma. There were no cuts or bruising that he could see and no indication of blood settling in places that would suggest the body had been moved after the man was dead. Stepping closer he considered the hand where it flopped to the side of the bed. He took off his hat and bent to his haunches. Carefully he lifted the hand and it was chill to the touch but not stiffened by rigor mortis. He inspected each nail in turn then let the hand drop and went around to the other side. Nothing under the nails. He looked closely at the man’s features and figured him for being around thirty. His lips were drawn back over his teeth and Quarrie noted the yellow film on his tongue. He sniffed his mouth. Maybe there was the tang of something; he could not say for certain.

  He turned his attention to a small overnight bag lying on the floor underneath the desk. Inside he found a T shirt and underwear. No paperwork or documents. A set of clothes were laid on the chair but he could find no wallet or billfold among them. There was nothing that identified the dead man. He checked the nightstand drawer and the wall closet but did not come up with anything. In the bathroom there was a wash-kit and razor, some shaving soap and a hairbrush, but no sign of any ID.

  ‘Don’t make a whole lot of sense,’ he muttered. ‘What kind of man is it checks into The Roosevelt without a credit card or driver’s license?’ Looking round he saw one of the coroner’s men watching him. ‘Any idea what killed him?’

  ‘Looks like a seizure of some kind,’ the man said, ‘heart attack maybe, we won’t know until the autopsy.’

  They carried the body down in the elevator and Quarrie watched from the balcony overlooking the width of the lobby. Then he went back to the dead man’s room and studied every aspect of it over again. Standing in the middle of the floor he considered the desk and drawers once more then bent to the garbage can where he found a sheet of screwed-up hotel notepaper. Taking a kerchief from his back pocket he flapped it out and used it to pinch the edge of the paper. The word Liberty was scribbled with a ballpoint pen. For a moment he studied that then folded the paper carefully again before slipping it into an envelope he took from the desk.

  Downstairs, he spoke to the clerk who told him the man had checked in under the name Williams. He had paid in cash. They had no credit card details, no forwarding address and no license number for any vehicle. Quarrie asked to see the register and noted where Williams had scrawled his name. On a hunch he cast his eye across the rest of the page and paused when he came to Room 210. ‘It’s almost noon,’ he said. ‘Are they all done with the housekeeping?’

  The clerk checked to see if that room had been cleaned yet and was told it hadn’t. He found the pass key and gave it to Quarrie who climbed the stairs to the second floor and fit it in the lock. Dark inside, with the drapes drawn across the window the room was all but black. He felt on the wall for the light switch and a couple of lamps came on as well as the one overhead. He stared at the pair of unmade beds.

  Just as he had in 404, he studied every aspect of the room collectively then separated it into sections. A short corridor with a wood-panelled closet led beyond the bathroom to where the beds were set. He took a look in the bathroom but it was empty save a metal garbage can with a few spent matches in the bottom. Looking more closely he could see that one wall was lightly coated with soot and he considered that for a moment before his gaze was drawn to the toilet. Lifting the lid he saw a small wodge of ashes floating in the water.

  He went through to the bedroom again, found a ballpoint pen in a drawer and used it to pry what he could from the toilet bowl. Most of what he salvaged was so sodden it broke up as soon as he touched it. He placed the residue on a bath towel which he laid on the floor. There were a couple of slightly larger pieces; one corner was almost intact and he thought the paper thick enough to have been a photograph maybe.

  Back in the bedroom he checked the trash under the desk where he found a few more screwed-up pieces of hotel notepaper. Right at the bottom was a small brown bottle that had contained prescription drugs. The top was missing and the bottle empty. Quarrie inserted the pen in the neck. ‘Proloid’: he had no idea what that was, but there was an address for the pharmacist in New Orleans together with the patient’s surname. From the bathroom he collected a couple o
f sheets of toilet paper and wrapped the bottle in that. Turning for the door once more he paused at the table where a few grains of white powder seemed to brush the surface.

  Half an hour later he parked his car outside the sheriff’s department and grabbed the weapons from the trunk. He walked the corridor to the mensroom and splashed cold water over the back of his neck. In the squad room he laid the duffel on an empty desk along with the shotgun and Henderson’s automatic. Dayton was on the phone; fifty years old, he was full in the belly and fleshy about the head. In the alcove outside his office, his secretary worked the keys of an LC Smith typewriter.

  ‘How you doing, John Q?’ The same age as the sheriff with red hair and pale skin, she looked up at him a little cautiously.

  ‘I’m fine.’ Quarrie glanced across the parking lot to the jailhouse. ‘Did the trooper bring Henderson in?’

  ‘Yes, sir, they just got here.’

  ‘Has anybody called his mom?’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘Best go ahead and get her done. With him just getting out and all she ain’t going to be very happy.’ He indicated the duffel on the desk. ‘I need somebody to bag those weapons for the lab. Tell them we’re looking for any kind of powder residue that might be there as well as prints.’ He glanced through the office door where the sheriff had put down the phone. ‘The one guy – Wiley – threw down on me with a twelve-gauge pump.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what Henderson said.’ Dayton beckoned him in. ‘Spoke to him just now and he told me how it was that feller pistol whipped the old boy and him who shot up the cruiser. Told me how he tried to talk him out of fixing to shoot you.’

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  The sheriff made a face. ‘Well, we can tell his mother that’s something in his corner I reckon.’

  Quarrie leaned against the doorjamb with one hand in a pocket. ‘When I talked to him he said the whole thing was Wiley’s idea and it was an M1C he was after.’

  Dayton arched one eyebrow. ‘What’d he want with a piece like that?’

  Quarrie shrugged. ‘First off I figured on him for having a buyer lined up, but now I’m not so sure.’ Stepping into the office he took a seat across the desk and plucked the empty bottle he’d wrapped in toilet paper from his shirt pocket. ‘I just came from The Roosevelt, Sam: one of the cleaners found a guest lying dead in their bedroom.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard about that.’

  ‘Young guy, no marks on him. Some kind of seizure. They reckon he died in his sleep.’ Quarrie placed the bottle on the desk. ‘I checked the room but couldn’t find any ID. The guy had no driver’s license or credit card, no check book or anything like that and it kind of struck me as odd so I took a look in the register.’ He lifted a hand. ‘The feller I killed on that dirt road, he spent last night in Room 210.’

  The sheriff sat back in his chair.

  ‘Him with the shotgun,’ Quarrie went on. ‘He signed the register and paid in cash but the room had two beds and both of them had been slept in.’

  ‘Which means Henderson was there as well. That what you’re telling me?’

  ‘Sure looks that way. Only he neglected to mention it.’ Quarrie was silent for a second then. ‘They’d been burning some kind of papers, Sam. I found ashes they tried to flush down the john.’

  ‘You want to talk to the kid right now?’ Dayton glanced towards the jailhouse.

  ‘No, sir.’ Quarrie shook his head. ‘They won’t be done processing him yet. I’ll give him the night to think on it and sit him down first thing.’

  Reaching for the pill bottle he peeled the toilet paper away. ‘This was in the trash can,’ he said. ‘Pharmacist out of New Orleans dispensed the drugs and we have the patient’s surname.’ Quiet for a moment he added, ‘Sam, something ain’t adding up here. I got those rooms taped off and I want a team down there to dust them.’

  Four

  Gigi woke to cramping muscles and the sound of a road crew working a pneumatic drill. Throwing off the sheet she had to grab the end of the bed for support and stood for a moment working palms up and down her legs. Through in the bathroom she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror as she searched the cabinet for her medication. Dark eyes and ebony skin, her hair cut so short it formed a dusky cap on her head.

  She could not find her meds. Cursing softly she grabbed a robe, went downstairs and picked up the phone.

  ‘Earl,’ she said, when he answered. ‘You were here the other night and I got a question for you. The cabinet in my bathroom, I had meds back there and I can’t seem to find them and those meds are for my thyroid. That’s the second time a bottle’s gone missing and . . .’

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said. ‘I don’t know anything about any meds and you can’t call here. Not anymore.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Things have changed. I don’t want you on this phone. I’ll call you from now on, OK?’

  Hanging up the phone Earl stared at the green painted walls of his study. A tiny space at the back of the house, the room seemed to close about the desk as he slumped in the chair. Through in the hallway he could hear his wife talking to one of the children and he stared at the wedding band on his finger with sweat soaking his light brown hair. He jumped as his wife knocked on the door. ‘Earl,’ she said. ‘Honey, did you call Mr Gervais back?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘He called a while back trying to get hold of you. Aren’t you supposed to be in the office already?’

  ‘No, he knows I’m working from home.’

  ‘Well, he said he was trying to get hold of you. I think you should give him a call.’

  Again Earl stared at the phone. He picked it up and started to dial but seemed to change his mind and put the receiver back in the cradle. He sat with the palms of his hands pressed together then picked the phone up again and dialled. When the call was answered his words came harsh and hurried. ‘I’ve just had Gigi on the phone.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘She was asking if I took her meds. That’s twice now. I got away with it the first time. What the hell am I supposed to tell her?’

  ‘You don’t tell her anything.’ The voice was chill in his ear. ‘Maybe you misunderstand the nature of our relationship. You don’t ask questions. You don’t make demands. You do exactly as you’re told. Earl, you need to think about what we know about you and the fact we’re paying for your education. You need to understand that everything you’ve done, everything you’ve given us implicates nobody but you. Probably it’s best that you don’t call me again. I think you should stay off the phone.’

  ‘And supposing I don’t want to do that,’ Moore said. ‘Supposing I decide this just isn’t worth it?’

  ‘You won’t do that.’ The voice had dropped to a whisper. ‘You’re not that foolish. Remember that blond-haired guy back in February? His idea of a good time is to wait till you’re out then drive to your house and visit with your family.’

  *

  On the other side of town Rosslyn F Tobie sat in the leather swivel chair with the telephone to his ear. In his seventies, a mane of silver hair seemed to climb from his forehead; he was deeply tanned in the face. ‘No, my wife is sick,’ he said. ‘She has a temperature and won’t be able to make it tonight, which is a shame. But everyone else will be there.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, yes, the governor will be at the top table. His office already confirmed.’ With that he hung up the phone.

  The French windows opened onto the patio and he could smell diesel where it lifted from the surface of the Mississippi. No cloud in the sky, the city seemed choked with the weight of the air. There was a knock on the door. He turned to see the sweating face of his butler. ‘Sorry to disturb you, sir, but there’s someone else on the phone. I said you were talking to the mayor, but I see you’re done with that. Downtown, sir, are you available for another call?’

  With a nod Tobie waved him away. He did not take the call right away; instead he poured coffee from the china pot and repla
ced the pot on the tray. After that he picked up the phone. ‘What do you want?’ he said. ‘I’m busy this morning. There’s still a lot to arrange.’

  ‘I need to talk to you, Rosslyn,’ the voice said. ‘I just listened to that program you recorded on the radio. Apparently it’s been broadcast all across the south.’

  ‘So they tell me,’ the old man said.

  ‘Well, that’s got to be good publicity for the foundation and the timing couldn’t be better right now what with the fundraiser at City Hall.’

  ‘A sentiment echoed by the mayor. Is that the reason you called?’

  ‘No, it’s not. Franklin, he’s in Deacon’s Mount, Texas; the gun store. It didn’t go well over there.’

  Pausing with his coffee cup halfway to his mouth Tobie stared where a starling pecked at the lawn.

  ‘Wichita Falls,’ the other man went on. ‘The mark wouldn’t give up his real name. It’s Franklin’s fault, his idea to use that guy for both jobs. I never agreed with it. You know that. I voiced my opposition at the time.’

  ‘He made a case for it,’ the old man said, ‘kill two birds with one stone. So he wouldn’t give us his real name. Apart from that, did it go as planned?’

  ‘I think so. Franklin said everything should appear just as you said it had to. There is one thing though; the mark did give up an address but it was Louisiana Avenue Parkway.’

  Placing his cup back on its saucer Tobie shifted the phone to his other hand. ‘Did he?’ he said. ‘That sounds like he knew more than he was telling us. It sounds like he was playing games.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. I’m checking into it now. There’s another thing, I just had Earl Moore on the phone. He’s getting a little ahead of himself. He . . .’

  ‘Deal with him,’ Tobie said. ‘Right now he remains important.’