The Contract

by JM Gulvin

  ‘I made a decision,’ Franklin said.

  ‘Like the one you made in Texas, you mean? We’ve had this conversation before.’

  Placing his gun on the bureau Franklin eyed him and the old man echoed his gaze.

  ‘So where is he?’ Tobie said. ‘What happened? Is he dead?’

  Franklin didn’t answer. He reached for a glass.

  ‘Is the Ranger dead?’ Tobie said.

  Franklin stood with his back to him and his shoulders hunched. ‘It’s me in the photo, my neck on the block . . .’

  ‘I asked you if he was dead.’

  Franklin shook his head. ‘No, he’s not dead. He’s still alive. I used Soulja and one of his goons. They blew it. He got away.’

  In silence the old man stared.

  ‘I sent them to search Anderson’s apartment. I had to be sure. We had to be sure. We had to know if there was anything else.’

  The old man stepped away from the chair. His back to Franklin briefly, he held the cane at his side.

  ‘I know what you said,’ Franklin went on, ‘but I couldn’t wait for that fat detective to get his answer. Quarrie already knew.’

  ‘So you talked to the supplier after all.’ The old man looked back at him again.

  Franklin nodded. ‘He made a call then phoned me back.’

  ‘How much did it cost?’

  ‘Enough, but it was worth it. They didn’t find anything and a copy of the photo was all Quarrie had.’

  ‘But you didn’t kill him. He got away?’

  ‘I told those fools to wait. I told them I wanted to kill him myself. But he got out of the storeroom into the river.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, he got away.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘The last time I saw him he was heading for the coroner’s office. He knows about the 28th.’

  Tobie sat down on the chair.

  ‘He doesn’t know what’s planned. But he’s not stupid. Wiley had an M1C.’

  Tobie was silent for a moment then he looked up. ‘So he was at the coroner’s office, which means he knows about the elevator, the parking garage?’

  ‘It’s the entrance Gervais told him to use.’

  ‘Then right about now he’ll be snooping round Garrison’s office. You say you used Soulja Blue?’

  ‘Him and his driver, we grabbed Quarrie in the parking garage and took him to Algiers. That’s where they fucked up. They’re dead men walking. They just don’t know it yet.’

  ‘Oh, I think they probably do.’ Tobie seemed to consider the painting hanging on the wall. ‘Franklin,’ he said, ‘despite appearances to the contrary your decision might not be as costly as it would appear. Not only will those two niggers know they’re on borrowed time, so will he.’

  ‘Quarrie you talking about? I don’t follow. What do you mean?’

  Tobie turned to face him once more. ‘There’s something you don’t know. After you talked to the supplier he called me at home. It wasn’t only Quarrie and De La Martin who were in touch with the NCIC. They received another teletype from the coroner’s office the day after Anderson was killed.’

  Franklin furrowed his brow.

  ‘Earl,’ Tobie stated. ‘It had to be. It’s why he was so bullish on the phone.’ He paused for a moment then. ‘He’d been in that apartment before Quarrie ever got there. He must’ve found Anderson’s paperwork, what he was working on, what he planned to expose.’

  Franklin looked a little pale.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ the old man said. ‘If he found something, Quarrie hasn’t seen it and that keeps us ahead of the play.’

  ‘Rosslyn,’ Franklin was shaking his head. ‘We have to forget about the 28th. We have to deal with this properly. We have no choice but to postpone.’

  Reaching for his briefcase the old man took out a paper file. ‘I told you we don’t do that. There’s no need. We’re going to kill two birds with one stone.’

  *

  Quarrie stared at the ceiling of his room. He’d driven back to his hotel with all he discovered in the DA’s office rattling around in his head. He didn’t remember sleeping, but it was light out in the courtyard and he was still in his clothes.

  ‘Nana,’ he said when the old woman answered the phone. ‘It’s John Q. Did you speak to Gigi at all?’

  ‘Yes, I did. I told her about Earl.’

  ‘How’d she take it?’

  ‘As well as can be expected, I suppose.’ She was quiet for a moment then she said, ‘Have you heard the news?’

  ‘What news?’

  ‘They found that pharmacist, at least his body anyhow. It was all over the radio just now and it’s in the newspaper. Have you seen the Picayune?’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ Quarrie said. ‘Look, I wanted to ask you something, that older guy you were talking to yesterday. Who is he? What’s his name?’

  For a moment Nana did not reply. He heard her draw a breath and sigh. ‘That was Rosslyn Tobie,’ she said, ‘Rosslyn F to be precise. He’s a lawyer and businessman. I hadn’t seen him in a whole bunch of years then about a week ago he showed up out of the blue.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’ Quarrie said.

  ‘I don’t know. There’s no accounting for what he does. He’s a big noise in this city, got him a law firm and he’s the chairman of some charity too. There was a fundraiser just the other day and they were all there, the great and the good.’

  ‘What kind of charity?’ Quarrie said.

  ‘It’s called the Tobie Foundation. I don’t know much about it really. When he used to talk to me it wasn’t about that, it was business and politics mostly. I’m talking the southern kind. Sometimes I hear him on the radio now and then plugging what he’s doing with various projects for unfortunates and whatnot. The office is on Baronne.’ She sounded unimpressed. ‘He can talk all he wants, but I’ve lived in this city almost seventy years and never saw any lives he changed.’

  She was quiet for a moment then. ‘John Q,’ she said,‘I understand this city. I know the kind of people we got down here and I know what they can do. If I were you I’d leave this be now and go on home.’

  ‘I can’t do that, Nana,’ Quarrie said.

  ‘Yes you can and you should.’ He could hear a change in the timbre of her voice. ‘Looks to me like you’re messing with the kind of folks nobody messes with, you understand what I mean? What they’re saying in the paper, the way they’re saying it, somebody lit a fire under you and they’re pouring on gasoline.’

  Hanging up the phone Quarrie went down to the lobby and found a copy of The Times Picayune. Leaning on the desk he read the headline where they were calling him a ‘loose cannon’ then cast his eye over the rest of the page. The reporter seemed to know everything that had happened from the Chartres Street escapade with De La Martin to how he was supposed to have threatened Pershing Gervais. There were comments from a couple of patrons at the bar in the 7th Ward and another about how he had caused a disturbance on Bourbon and Governor Nicholls. His visit to the pharmacy was noted and that he was the last person to see Claude Matthews alive. There was a quote from De La Martin about the body being found on Esplanade Avenue and how he was close to making an arrest.

  When he got back to his room he called Amarillo and spoke to Van Hanigan. ‘Captain,’ he said, ‘I need you to do something for me.’

  ‘What’s up, John Q? What’s going on down there? I’ve still got Patterson rattling my cage.’

  ‘Clay Shaw,’ Quarrie said, ‘the businessman the DA just indicted. I need information: who he is, who he hangs out with; that kind of thing.’

  ‘Clay Shaw?’ Van Hanigan said. ‘Why? What the heck’s going on?’

  ‘I ain’t sure yet.’ Quarrie worked a pistol from its holster and studied it. ‘I’ll let you know just as soon as I do.’

  Twenty-five

  Colback was on the phone when he walked the corridor past the Xerox machine. The lieutenant looked up as he closed the door then told whoever he was talking to that he’d
call them back. For a moment he didn’t say anything, he just sat back in his chair.

  ‘Well,’ he muttered finally. ‘I heard you were meeting with the district attorney, how’d that work out for you then?’

  Quarrie stared across the desk.

  ‘Pershing Gervais gave me a call. Said you’d phoned him with some mad-fool story about one of their investigators, but when he tells you to come to the office you don’t show.’

  ‘I did show,’ Quarrie said. ‘I went down to the parking garage just like that sumbitch said. Only it wasn’t him waiting for me, it was the cab driver I thought was working for you.’

  ‘So you don’t think that anymore?’

  ‘It wasn’t just him,’ Quarrie went on, ‘had him two colored guys along from that club. One of them whacked me over the head and when I wake up I’m in some warehouse on Algiers Point.’

  Colback studied him across the desk. ‘You’re telling me Pershing Gervais set that up? So why would he do that? And why call me?’

  ‘I don’t know, Lieutenant, but he was the only one who knew I was going to be in that parking garage.’

  Quarrie squatted on the chair across the desk. ‘Earl Moore,’ he said, ‘the cop I told you about, the one who stole Gigi’s meds.’ He pointed out the window. ‘He arranges to meet Gigi in the park but when I show up instead of her somebody shoots him dead.’

  Colback stared at him then. ‘Who shot him?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know but they were pretty good with the long barrel, that’s all I can say.’

  Colback’s gaze was chill. ‘Are you trying to suggest it was me?’

  Quarrie shook his head. ‘I saw you in your window. It’s why I’m set here now.’

  Still the lieutenant stared. ‘Quarrie, I don’t know what’s wrong with you but I’m tired of you yanking my chain. Pershing Gervais might be an asshole but he didn’t have you picked up. For your information Earl Moore is home in bed with the flu. His wife called in and said how he’d caught a chill.’ Picking up his briefcase he stood up. ‘I don’t have time to talk to you right now. I got a meeting to go to with the Feds.’ He looked closely at Quarrie then. ‘I just had the ASAC on the phone about the article they wrote in the newspaper. He wants to know why I told De La Martin I’d vouch for you. Normally I’d tell him to go fuck himself, but with the headlines you’ve been making he’s got a point there, wouldn’t you say?’

  He was gone and Quarrie sat staring at the bay windows for a couple of moments then got up from the chair. Outside he gazed beyond the benches across Lafayette Square. The sun was so fierce where it reflected off the concrete he tugged at the brim of his hat. No wind and a stifling heat to the day, it was as if there had been no storm at all. He thought about what Colback had said just now and the comment he’d made about Earl. He thought about Gervais. He thought about Mr Football Scholarship and those two hoodlums from yesterday.

  The same overly made-up girl was working the counter in the drugstore when he went in. He had his badge on his chest and the twelve-gauge pump in his hand. He pointed to the metal fly curtain off to the side. ‘That door over there, whatever you do to get them to open it I want you to do it now.’

  The girl’s face was the color of chalk. Quarrie heard the buzzer sound and a couple of moments later a metallic click as the door opened and the man with the band aid came out.

  Shotgun against the base of his spine, Quarrie marched him across the road to the car. He had him drive while he sat in the back. Heading north from the Quarter they drove beyond mid-city making for the fairgrounds and Quarrie spotted a sign for Holt Cemetery. ‘The graveyard yonder,’ he said.

  The black man parked the car and they passed through a set of rusting iron gates that echoed the ragged-looking fence. The cemetery was shabby and unkempt. Graves had been dug in the traditional fashion rather than as tombs above ground like they were closer to the river. Overhead the sun was still a molten ball but clouds were building again in the south. Headstones gathered at the base of an old oak tree, haphazard and coated in moss and lichen; most seemed to tilt at awkward angles where the soil had shifted beneath.

  A sour expression on his face, the black man sat on a stone that was so sunk into the ground only about six inches showed.

  ‘You’re a dead man,’ Quarrie said. ‘You know that, don’t you, whether it’s them or me.’

  The man just stared.

  ‘The moment you don’t find me in the river you’re history. So is Soulja Blue.’

  He didn’t say anything; he just peered beyond Quarrie with a hunted look in his eyes.

  ‘Been on your mind some, you been thinking about that blond-haired guy. You figure there’s no point running because there’s nowhere to run to, leastways nowhere far enough away.’

  Still the black man stared.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  Mouth hooked into a grimace, he looked at the ground.

  ‘I asked your name.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ the black man said.

  Quarrie cracked him across the face with the barrel of the shotgun. Blood spurted; he fell off the stone and rolled on his side. Using the toe of his boot Quarrie rolled him onto his back then pressed a heel into his sternum till he gasped. ‘Mister, I asked your name.’

  ‘Vernon.’ He had blood pulsing from his nose. ‘My name’s Vernon, all right.’

  ‘You’re bleeding, Vernon. Go ahead and wipe your face.’

  Vernon got to his feet and Quarrie told him to sit back down on the stone. Perching again he wiped the blood from his nose on his sleeve.

  Quarrie looked doubtfully at him then. ‘If you really don’t believe you’re dead already I’m pretty sure your boss does. So where’s he at?’

  Vernon shook his head.

  ‘Soulja Blue,’ Quarrie said. ‘The man with the shaved head who figured out a way to give those good old southern boys exactly what their granddaddies got. A black man who lets white folks beat up on his own people. Gigi told me how he don’t care what happens so long as it’s covered with green.’ He curled his lip. ‘She told me she knew him when he was just a bitty kid living across the street. So what happened to him, Vernon, how’d he turn out like he did?’

  Vernon looked coldly at him then. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Just got to figure the meaner side of folks I guess.’

  ‘So what about you?’

  ‘What’s it matter to you?’

  Quarrie laughed. ‘It don’t,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t give a shit about you or your boss, but right now whether you know it or not I’m your best chance of seeing out the day.’ He indicated the badge on his chest. ‘This is all that stands between you and one of those graves right there so best you be talking to me.’

  In silence Vernon stared.

  ‘They’ll kill you,’ Quarrie said. ‘You know it and I know it and so does Soulja Blue. It’s only a matter of when and where and if they make it quick or slow.’ He peered closely at him now. ‘Yesterday you let me escape and I showed up at the drugstore just now. How long do you figure it’ll be before word gets back to that blond-haired guy?’

  Still Vernon stared.

  ‘What do you call him by the way?’

  ‘I don’t call him anything,’ Vernon said.

  ‘But you do know who he is.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Sure you do. You work for him. You must know who he is.’

  ‘I don’t work for him. I work for Soulja Blue.’ More blood dribbled from Vernon’s nose and he wiped it on his sleeve.

  ‘Who is he? Where will I find him?’ Quarrie said.

  ‘He drives a taxi. That’s all I know.’

  Quarrie thought for a moment then he said, ‘Yesterday, after we had that little get-together in the office, you locked me up and then took off. Where’d you go, Vernon? What did you do?’

  ‘We didn’t go anywhere,’ Vernon said.

  Quarrie moved a little closer to him then. ‘Buddy, I nearly drowned in that river and I figure th
at was down to you. I told you, you’re dead already. You don’t speak up, I’ll kill you right here, right now.’

  ‘I ain’t talking,’ Vernon said. ‘Do what you got to do.’

  Quarrie let go a sigh. ‘All right then, we’re done. You want to be an asshole I got no time for that. Kneel down with your back to me.’

  Eyes wide Vernon looked up.

  ‘I said, on your knees with your back to me.’ He levelled the shotgun at his head.

  ‘All right, all right.’ Vernon held up his hands. ‘I’ll talk to you; tell you what you want to know.’

  Putting up the gun Quarrie stepped back under the tree. Head to one side he looked beyond Vernon for a moment where he perched on the stone. ‘So where was it?’ he asked him again. ‘When you left out of that warehouse where’d you go?’

  ‘Back to the club.’ Vernon gestured. ‘That’s where Matthews was at, the pharmacist, we had to dump his body and it was in a freezer back at the club.’

  ‘You took him from his house on Alabo Street?’

  Vernon nodded. ‘I was driving; it was me and Soulja Blue.’

  ‘Who killed him?’

  He did not reply.

  ‘Who killed him, Vernon? I ain’t going to ask you again.’

  ‘It wasn’t us,’ Vernon said. ‘It was that blond-haired guy.’

  Quarrie looked evenly at him then. ‘He was there when you brought Gigi in. That was you and your boss at my hotel. He was there, wasn’t he, the blond-haired guy? What did he do to her, did you see?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there.’

  ‘I need a name, Vernon: what’s his name?’

  ‘I can’t give you a name. I don’t know his name. He just drives that cab. I don’t know who he is.’

  ‘What about your boss? What about Soulja Blue?’

  ‘I don’t know, man. I can’t tell you. You’d have to ask him.’

  ‘The body,’ Quarrie gestured with his gun, ‘why Esplanade Avenue, why that apartment block?’