The last quarry q-6

by Max Allan Collins

  …unless Harry was hiding out, holing up somewhere.

  This would be the perfect area for that.

  Only Harry didn’t use Tampax.

  He turned off on a side road, into a heavily wooded area that wound back toward Sylvan Lake.

  Good. That was very good.

  I went on by. I drove a mile, turned into a farmhouse gravel drive and headed back without lights. I slowed as I reached the mouth of the side road, and could see Harry’s taillights wink off.

  I knew the cabin at the end of that road. There was only one, and its owner only used it during the summer; Harry was either a renter, or a squatter.

  I glided on by and went back home.

  I left the Jag next to the deck and walked up the steps and into the A-frame. The nine millimeter Browning was in the nightstand drawer. The gun hadn’t been shot in months-Christ, maybe over a year. But I cleaned and oiled it regularly, because you never know.

  It would do nicely.

  So would my black turtleneck, black jeans, black leather bomber jacket, and this black moonless night. I slipped a spare. 38 revolver in the bomber jacket right side pocket, and clipped a hunting knife to my belt. The knife was razor sharp with a sword point; I sent for it out of the back of one of those dumb-ass mercenary magazines-which are worthless except for mail-ordering weapons.

  I walked along the edge of the lake, my running shoes crunching the brittle ground, layered as it was with snow and ice and leaves. The only light came from a gentle scattering of stars, a handful of diamonds flung on black velvet; the frozen lake was a dark presence that you could sense but not really see, the surrounding trees even darker. The occasional cabin or cottage or house I passed was empty. I was one of only a handful of residents on this side of Sylvan Lake who were staying year-round.

  But the lights were on in one cabin. Not many lights, but lights. And its chimney was trailing smoke.

  The cabin was small, a traditional log cabin of the Abe Lincoln and syrup variety, only with a satellite dish. Probably two bedrooms, a living room, kitchenette and a can or two. Only one car-the brown rental Ford.

  My footsteps were lighter now; I was staying on the balls of my feet and the crunching under them was faint. I approached with caution and gun in hand and peeked in a window on the right front side.

  Harry Something was sitting on the couch, eating corn curls, giving himself an orange mustache in the process. His feet were up on a coffee table. More food and a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun were on the couch next to him. He wore a colorful Hawaiian shirt; he looked like Don Ho puked on him, actually.

  In the nearby kitchenette, which was open onto the living room, Louis was fussing as he put the food away-a small, skinny, bald ferret of man, who wore jeans and a black shirt and a white tie. I couldn’t tell whether he was trying for trendy or gangster, and frankly didn’t give a shit.

  Physically, all the two men had in common was pockmarks and a desire for the other’s ugly body.

  And neither one of them seemed to need a tampon, though a towelette would’ve come in handy for Harry Something. Jesus. Imagine having a Burberry topcoat like that and a Hawaiian shirt underneath; they can make gay marriage legit if they want to, but that should be fucking illegal.

  I could hear them talking-muffled but audible through the window, the sound of the television, some old movie, underneath.

  From the couch Harry said, “Chip me!”

  From the kitchenette Louis said, “With your cholesterol? Isn’t a bag of cheese curls enough?”

  “Don’t mama me!..I wanna Coke, too.”

  “I thought you were off caffeine!”

  “Not when you expect me to sit up all fuckin’ night.”

  Louis was in the living room now. “ I’m the one dealing with her-what a spoiled little cunt she is!”

  Harry laughed; the laugh was like Uncle Fester, too. “That’s why daddy’ll pay up, sweet cheeks!”

  I peeked at them-Louis was delivering barbecue chips and Harry took them with a “Thank you,” and they interrupted their bickering to exchange fond expressions. Then Harry worked at adding a new shade of orange to his junk-food mustache.

  Me, I huddled back down beneath the window, wondering what I was doing here.

  Boredom, for sure.

  Curiosity, maybe.

  I shrugged. Time to look in another window or two.

  Because Harry and Louis clearly had a captive, and a female one at that. That’s what they were doing in the boonies. That’s why they were stocking up on supplies at a convenience store in the middle of night and nowhere. That’s why there were in the market for Tampax.

  And through a back window, I saw her.

  She was on a single bed in the small rustic room, naked but for white panties-a wrist cuffed to a nearby bedpost, sitting on the edge of the bed, bending over in obvious discomfort, crying…a darkhaired, creamy-fleshed beauty in her early twenties, suffering menstrual cramps.

  Obviously, Harry and Louis had nothing sexual in mind for this captive; the reason for her nudity was to help prevent her fleeing. The bed was heavy with blankets, and she’d clearly been keeping under the covers, but right now she was sitting and doubling over and crying. Right now was a bad period for her any way you sliced it.

  Thing was, I recognized this young woman. Like Harry, I spent a lot of hours during cold nights like this with my eyes frozen to a TV screen. And that’s where I’d seen her: on the tube.

  Not an actress, no-an heiress. Jonah Green’s daughter-“Daddy” was a Chicago media magnate whose name you’d recognize if I was using his real one, a guy who inherited money and wheeled-and-dealed his way into more, including one of the satellite super-stations I’d been wasting my eyes on lately. The Windy City’s answer to Ted Turner, right down to sailboating and baseball teams and womanizing.

  His daughter was a little wild-seen in the company of rock stars (she had a tattoo of a star-not Justin Timberlake, a five-pointed star-on her white left breast, which I could see from the window) and was a Betty Ford clinic drop-out. Nonetheless, she was said to be the apple of her daddy’s eye, even if that apple was a tad wormy.

  So Harry and Louis had put the snatch on the snatch; fair enough. Question was, was it their own idea, or something the Outfit put them up to?

  I heard a door open, and peeked in carefully, just barely able to hear the muffled speech through the window.

  Louis came in and tossed the box of Tampax in her lap.

  The girl snarled, “You took long enough!”

  “We’re being nice- you be nice.”

  “Fuck you. Fuck you!..I need the bathroom.”

  A clearly disgusted Louis dug a handcuff key out of his pocket, and worked at undoing her wrist.

  The girl, a spoiled brat even in the presence of kidnappers, said, “Hurry the fuck up, faggot! You want blood everywhere?”

  He looked at her coldly. “Do you?”

  That sobered her a little.

  Maybe Daddy should’ve tried some of Louis’s brand of psychology.

  Then Louis walked her off somewhere as the girl clutched the Tampax box like treasure.

  I dropped down from the window, hidden there in the dark in my dark clothes with a gun in my hand and my back to the log cabin, and I smiled.

  When I’d come out into the night, armed like this, it hadn’t been to effect a rescue. Whatever else they were, Harry and Louis were dangerous men, and I had to be ready to protect my ass. And if I was going to spend my sleepless night satisfying my curiosity and assuaging my boredom by poking into their business, I had to be ready to pay for my thrills.

  So I sat in the cold and dark and decided, finally, that it just didn’t matter who or what was behind it. My options were to go home, and forget about it, and try (probably without any luck) to get some sleep; or to rescue this somewhat soiled damsel in distress.

  And if I went home, they’d kill this girl.

  What the hell. I had nothing better to do.

&
nbsp; I went to the front door and knocked.

  No answer.

  Shit, I knew somebody was home, so I knocked again.

  Then I got right against the door, putting my ear to the wood, so I could gauge their reaction within…

  Harry was saying, “Who the fuck is that? Who could that be?”

  Louis was calming him, saying, “Could be that security company the owner told us about-on patrol. Saw lights on.”

  TV sound stopped-muted.

  Harry’s voice again: “You want me to-”

  “No! Hide the shottie…”

  “Louis, no one knows we’re here…”

  “That’s right-nothing to worry about.”

  Louis cracked open the door and peered out and said, “What is it?” and I shot him in the eye.

  Three

  The still night was cut by the harsh, shrill sound of a scream-not Louis, who hadn’t had time for that, but the girl in the next room, scared shitless at hearing a gunshot, one would suppose.

  I paid no attention to her and shouldered the door open-no night latch or anything-and stepped over Louis, kicked aside the. 38 revolver he’d been hiding behind him when he answered the door, and moved into the claustrophobic living room, pointing the nine millimeter at Harry, whose orange-ringed mouth was frozen open and whose bag of barbecue potato chips dropped to the floor, much as Louis had.

  “Don’t, Harry,” I said.

  I could see in Harry’s tiny dark eyes behind his thick black-rimmed glasses that he was thinking about the sawed-off shotgun under the pillow on the couch next to him.

  “Who the fuck…?”

  I moved slowly to the couch; behind me, an old colorized movie was playing on their captive’s daddy’s superstation. With my left hand, I plucked the shotgun from under the cushion next to Harry and tucked it under my arm.

  “Hi, Harry,” I said. “Been a while.”

  His orange-ringed mouth slowly began to work and his eyes began to blink and he said, “Quarry?”

  That was the name he’d known me by.

  His eyes showed white all around and he pointed at me. “You’re that fucker Quarry! ”

  I dipped down to pluck the. 38 from the floor. “Taking the girl your idea, or are you still working for the boys?”

  His words came to him from some remote part of his brain, a response not unlike the kick from a doctor-applied mallet to a knee. “We…we retired, couple years ago. God.”

  He looked past me, wide-eyed, at the thing on the floor and pointed again, this time like a kid in the backseat who just spotted a Dairy Queen. But not as happy.

  “You…you killed…Jesus Christ, you killed Louis…!”

  I sat on the arm of the sofa and kept the gun on him, casually but on him. “Right. What were you going to put the girl’s body in?”

  “Huh?”

  “She’s obviously seen you. You were obviously going to kill her, once you got the money. So. What was the plan?”

  Harry wiped off his orange barbecue ring with a hand. He was blinking, trying to think. “Got a roll of plastic in the closet. Gonna roll her up and dump her in one of them gravel pits they got around here.”

  “I see. Do that number with the plastic right now, with Louis, why don’t you? Okay?”

  Tears were rolling down Harry’s chubby, stubbly pockmarked cheeks. I didn’t know whether he was crying for Louis or himself or the pair of them, and I wasn’t interested enough to ask.

  “Okay,” he said thickly, apparently resigned to his fate, his mouth slack but his eyes moving with thought.

  I watched him roll his partner up in the sheet of plastic, using duct tape to secure the package; he sobbed as he did it, but he did it. He got blood on his Hawaiian shirt; it didn’t particularly show, though.

  “Good job, Harry. Now…I want you to clean up the mess. Go on. You’ll find what you need in the kitchen.”

  Dutifully, Harry shuffled over to where the open kitchen met the little living room, got a pan of warm water and some rags, and dropped to his knees to clean up the brains and blood. He wasn’t crying anymore. He moved slow but steady, a fat zombie in a colorful shirt.

  “Stick the rags in the end of the plastic there, Harry, would you? Thank you.”

  Harry did that, then the big man lumbered to his feet, hands half-heartedly in the air, and said, “Now me?”

  “I might let you go, Harry. I got nothing against you.”

  His eyes jumped. “Not…not how I remember it.”

  I laughed. “You girls leaned on me once. You think I’d kill a person over something that trivial? What kind of asshole do you think I am, Harry?”

  Harry had sense enough not to answer.

  “Let’s see how Daddy’s little girl’s doing,” I said, and with the nine millimeter’s nose kissing Harry’s neck, I walked him to the door of the bedroom.

  “Open it,” I said.

  He did.

  We went in, Harry first.

  The girl was under the covers, holding the blankets and sheets up around her in a combination of illogical modesty and legitimate fear.

  Her expression melted into confusion mingled with the beginnings of hope, when she saw me.

  “Everything’s going to be all right, Miss Green,” I told her. “I’ve already taken care of the skinny one.” I nudged Harry with the gun in his neck. “You got a handcuff key?”

  Harry swallowed and nodded.

  “Uncuff her.”

  My gun trained on him from nearby, Harry was complying as she asked, “Did…did my Daddy send you?”

  I held out my hand to Harry and he dropped the cuff key in my palm.

  “Fatso and me are taking a moonlight stroll,” I told her. “Meantime, you stay put. I’m going to get you back to your father.”

  Her confusion didn’t leave, but she began to smile, wide, a kid Christmas morning, seeing her gifts. Her gift to me was dropping the blankets and sheets to her waist. The cute cupcake breasts had pierced nipples with rings, like beer cans waiting to be opened.

  “Remember,” I said, and waggled a teacherly finger. “Stay right there.”

  She swallowed and nodded and her eyes sparkled. Well, they did.

  I walked my host out, pulling the bedroom door shut behind me.

  “Where are her clothes, Harry?”

  He nodded to a closet. Same one he’d gotten the plastic out of.

  “Good,” I said. “Now let’s go for a walk. Just the three of us.”

  Harry frowned in confusion, glanced back toward the bedroom. “Girl’s comin’?”

  “No. Louis. Better give him a hand.”

  Now Harry got it.

  He leaned down and hefted his partner in the plastic shroud and held the crinkly corpse in his arms like a B-movie monster carrying a starlet. The plastic was spattered with blood, but only on the inside; you could sort of see what was left of Louis’s head trying to look out. Harry seemed like he was going to cry again.

  I still had the sawed-off shotgun under my arm, so it was awkward, getting the front door open.

  Cold came in, but I barely noticed. I don’t think Harry much noticed, either.

  “What…?” he asked. “Where…?”

  “Out on the lake,” I said, and nodded in that direction.

  “…can I get my coat?”

  “I don’t think so. I think the cold will keep you on your toes, and anyway, suppose you have a gun in your pocket, and I have to kill you, and mess up that beautiful Burberry. Which would be a fucking shame, plus which I’d have to make two trips, carrying Louis, and your fat ass.”

  He swallowed, nodded, as if all that sounded reasonable enough. “Okay. I…there’s a shovel I could get…?”

  “We won’t need it. Ground’s too hard, anyway.”

  Harry looked at me, his eyes behind the glasses wary, glancing from me to his plastic-wrapped burden and back again.

  I responded to the question his face was asking: “We’re going to bury Louis at sea.”
/>   “Huh?”

  Now I was noticing the cold. “Outside, Harry. My nipples are getting hard, and not in a good way. Okay? Outside.”

  He moved past me, his plastic bundle over one shoulder-he might have been delivering a rug.

  The chubby ex-gangster walked into the trees, heading toward the yawning white expanse of frozen water. I followed behind, nine millimeter in one hand, sawed-off in the other. Harry in his Hawaiian shirt was an oddly comic sight, but I was too busy to be amused.

  As we wound through the pines, the snow got deeper, ankle deep in places. As his glasses got unfogged and made his trek easier, Harry made conversation.

  “Was…was that you, Quarry? Back at that fucking convenience store?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And, what? You…you thought we’d come after you? This has nothing to do with you.”

  “Does now. And anyway, I got my question answered.”

  He risked a frown back at me. “What question?”

  “What the Odd Couple needs with Tampax in the middle of the night…Keep moving.”

  Finally, at the snowy edge of the wooded shore, Harry came to a stop, and half turned, Louis turning too, Harry asking another question with his face: What now?

  “Go on, Harry.”

  Harry frowned. “Go on? What the fuck, ‘go on?’z”

  “Keep walking.”

  “ Where? ”

  I gestured with the shotgun, toward the lake.

  Harry followed the gesture, eyes tight, and it took a few seconds for him to absorb the meaning. Somehow, though, he couldn’t turn his confusion and apprehension into words.

  So I said, “When you sense the ice getting thin, give Louis a toss…let the lake have him. Then head back here, and we’ll talk.”

  Harry looked at the lake, then at me; the lake, me.

  His voice seemed even higher pitched than before, almost childish, his wide eyes buggy behind the lenses. “What…what if the ice gives, under me? I mean…it’s gonna get thin, farther out I get…”

  “We’ll keep the stress to a minimum.”

  “ How? ”

  “I’ll stay put.”