The last quarry q-6

by Max Allan Collins

  Anyway, my target had double windows, too, and she kept the shades up and the sheer, decorative white window dressing blocked almost nothing. She didn’t worry about privacy, because you couldn’t see in from the street, and the apartment across the way was dead.

  But, unlike my swimming-pool surveillance yesterday afternoon, this was no peep show. After the morning of vacuuming, she spent the afternoon sorting and folding laundry, again with the TV on, though I extrapolated that, as my view didn’t show it. She also read and listened to music, a CD player nestled in among the hardcovers in the big bookcase. Her comfy chair was near the two windows with a phone stand between.

  She had a couple calls, one from Connie setting up another evening out, which interrupted the vacuuming, and another while she was reading.

  In both instances, through my binoculars, I saw her checking caller I.D. before picking up-possibly avoiding Rick, although I found it extremely unlikely he’d ever call her again.

  Still, she answered the afternoon call warily, then brightened. “Well, Sis!..Sure…No problem…Well, that’s great!..Cool!..Play it by ear.”

  Well, that was scintillating.

  A dull call in a dull day, but somehow the mundaneness of her existence was getting to me. You shadow some Outfit cocksucker while he’s bouncing between guys he’s extorting money from and strip clubs where he’s getting free blow jobs, you don’t exactly brush a tear away when you remove him from the world. You take out some asshole exec who is embezzling from his bosses to maintain his coke habit, you’re over it before you reload. You rid the world of a criminal lawyer who is more crim than law, you feel pretty damn good about your line of work.

  But what was a nice girl like her doing in a bad place like this?

  I had a Coke habit, too, and half a dozen empty cans were littering my feet by nightfall. This old empty apartment did have a working toilet, which was a nice perk, but I’d overdone the caffeine. When Janet emerged from a street-level door below, between storefronts, I felt damn near jumpy.

  She had disappeared from the living room about an hour and a half before, and the door to the street wasn’t within my range of vision, so her change of appearance was a surprise. Nice one.

  She looked lovely, the dark blonde hair nicely bouncy, brushing the shoulders of her suede jacket which was a darker brown than her slacks but the same color as her high heels. Barely had she stepped onto the sidewalk than a sporty little red Mazda drew up with gal-pal Connie at the wheel.

  Janet got in, they took off, and so did I.

  I wasn’t thrilled when they went back to Sneaky Pete’s-one thing a guy in my trade doesn’t like to become is a regular at a joint in a town where he’s working. The brunette bartendress welcomed me back like old home week, even asked my name now that I was hanging out so often, and I told her Jack. She asked me a few questions as the evening wore on, and I told her jack.

  Janet and Connie had chosen another booth, but the bar was a long one and the mirror behind it, too, so I had no problem setting up reflective watch. I nursed a beer, and did my best not to go over to the jukebox and shoot it-surely there was a limit to how much Toby Keith a reasonable person can endure.

  Again Janet wore a silk blouse, a cream-color one, with a strand of June Cleaver pearls. Her buddy Connie was fetchingly slutty (or did I already have my “beer goggles” on?) in a black-leather motorcycle jacket, red rhinestone-studded Marilyn t-shirt, jeans she wouldn’t have to remove when she next went to the gynecologist, and colorful cowboy boots.

  Janet seemed embarrassed as Connie leaned forward, eyes and teeth gleaming, saying, “Spill! What happened to Rick?”

  “I told you last night I didn’t want to talk about it…” Now Janet sat forward. “Why, what have you heard?”

  Connie’s grin was unkind. “He’s telling his friends he fell down the stairs.”

  “So, he, uh, didn’t…go to the police or anything?”

  Connie’s eyebrows hiked. “Oh, now you have to tell me!”

  Janet shook her head, then froze in mid-shake, and said, “Excuse me, Con…”

  “Why? What…?”

  And something unnerving happened.

  Janet’s eyes caught mine in the mirror.

  Quickly I looked away, and said something inane to the brunette bartender, who complied by saying something equally inane.

  I heard Connie yelling, good-naturedly, “You are definitely not excused! Janet-you come back here and dish, or else! ”

  I felt the finger tap my shoulder.

  I winced, then swung easily around on the bar stool and glanced at her as casually as I could.

  “Oh hi,” I said.

  “Oh hi?” Her smile went up a little more on one side than the other, creating a nice dimpled effect. “I guess I owe you a drink.”

  “You don’t. Really.”

  “I do. Really.”

  The stool next to me was vacant; it would be. She took it. We looked at each other in the mirror again, this time on purpose.

  She said, “Why do I think you’re checking up on me?”

  “Why do you?”

  For several long seconds she studied me in the mirror, then she said to my reflection, “Well…I imagined I saw you in a booth at Denny’s this morning.”

  “Some imagination you have.”

  Her eyes were smiling, too. “ Wasn’t it you?”

  “That was me. But I wasn’t looking for you.”

  She raised one eyebrow. “You were just there for that delicious Grand Slam breakfast, right?…And now you’re here, Guardian Angel, seeing if Rick’s had the good sense to…”

  “Take a hint?”

  Her smile went up on both sides, this time, and ushered in some laughter. Shaking her head, she said, “I really do owe you one…Have a drink with us.”

  I didn’t want to join her and Connie, and give the other librarian a closer look at me. But I was cornered. Turning Janet down would have been suspicious. Or so I told myself.

  Whatever the case, I was soon sitting on Janet’s side of the booth as she and bubbly Connie chitchatted, both of them nicely at ease around me, Janet revealing a new self-confidence.

  Connie licked some beer foam from her upper lip and, just the tiniest bit drunk, said, “That little prick Rick? He’s been a bully since grade school. But he always gets away with it, ’cause his family has money.”

  “Fuck him,” I said. “His family hasn’t given me any money.”

  They both laughed at my naughty talk.

  Making reluctant eye contact with Connie, I joined in on the chitchat. “You’re from here?”

  “Born and raised, and too dumb and untalented to get out.” She smirked at Janet, good-naturedly. “What’s your excuse?”

  Janet shrugged and said, “Destiny. Which is to say, answering an ad.”

  Connie, suddenly quite serious, locked eyes with me. “This little girl’s gonna be head librarian one of these days. Just you wait and see.”

  “Really,” I said, and narrowed my eyes and nodded.

  Amused, Janet said, “Don’t pretend to be impressed-doesn’t suit you…And, so, Jack-what is it you do?”

  “I’m in sales and service,” I said.

  Janet, apparently the designated driver, was drinking a Diet Coke. “What kind of sales and service?”

  “Veterinary medicine.”

  “That sounds…interesting.”

  I smiled a little. “No it doesn’t.”

  Connie, frowning, asked, “Do you sell vets that stuff they use to put animals to sleep?”

  “Afraid so,” I said.

  Connie made a face. “Dirty job but…”

  “I’m sure,” Janet says, “he sells plenty of things that make the animals feel better.”

  “I try,” I said.

  Janet and Connie exchanged looks. Connie’s smile at her friend told me I’d passed the test-for at least one night. Saturday at Sneaky Pete’s, the options were limited.

  Janet gave Connie
a glance that I didn’t at first understand, until Connie straightened herself, her breasts distorting Marilyn Monroe’s image but not in a bad way, and said, “You know…I see a guy over there who’s just cute enough to interest me, and drunk enough to think likewise…”

  She got up and out of the booth less graceful than a ballet dancer, but more fun to watch.

  Janet gave me a sideways look. “Now you’ll think that’s how I spend my weekends.”

  “What is?”

  “You know. Picking guys up.”

  I offered half a smile. “Have I been?”

  Her hands were draped around the Coke glass like it was the Silver Chalice. “It’s just…I never had anybody do anything so… sweet for me, before.”

  “Sweet like pound the piss out of your boyfriend?”

  I expected a laugh, but what I got was: “Exactly…I’m not really the type to, I don’t know…hit the bars on a Saturday night.”

  “I know.”

  Her eyebrows tensed with curiosity. “You do?”

  “Today was your day off, right?”

  Mildly surprised, Janet said, “Right.”

  I shrugged. “You cleaned all morning, did laundry all afternoon, and then you listened to music or maybe read, a while. You fell asleep and were almost late to go out with your girlfriend.”

  Astonished, she said, “My God-are you psychic?”

  “No.” I toasted her with my beer glass. “I’m shadowing you.”

  That got a smile and a laugh out of her. The truth will do that.

  She was shaking her head. “I’m just not good at this. The game. The ritual. The small talk’s all so…”

  “Small,” I said.

  “I guess…I’ve always been kind of shy, frankly. A loner.”

  “Me, I’m a people person.”

  Another smile. “Oh, yeah, I can see that,” she said.

  “You often…gravitate toward people like Rick?”

  Her smile was gone and a smirk took its place. “Connie says it’s low self-esteem. I say it’s bait and switch…guys on their best behavior when they meet you, but who aren’t really, you know…”

  “What they seem?”

  Suddenly she sat up, something obviously occurring to her. She checked her watch.

  “Shit,” she said.

  “Was it something I said?”

  “No! No, no, there’s just…Look, there’s something I have to do, something that slipped my mind, I should’ve done earlier.”

  “You need a lift somewhere? Your friend seems busy.”

  Connie was flirting with a guy over by the jukebox, which was having the good if rare sense to play a Patsy Cline song, “Crazy.”

  Janet was shaking her head, saying, “Well, you see, I’m sort of semi-housesitting…for some friends of mine? Anyway, I need to bring in their mail, and their dog’s probably half-starved…Somehow after last night, with Rick, I just…spaced out on it, today.”

  “I see.”

  She gave me a look that had some pleading in it. “I don’t want to bother Con. Would you mind…driving me out there?”

  “Sure,” I said, getting out of the booth, and helping her do so, too. “But you’ll have to show me the way.”

  Nine

  She was a tad over-dressed, in that silk blouse, for watering the plants, but the plants didn’t seem to mind, and I certainly didn’t.

  I followed her around as dutifully as a dog-she’d already fed the real dog, and put it on a leash and walked it, and I’d kept her company on those chores, too-and we’d already worked through a lot of small talk about the library and her friend Connie and a little bit about Rick, who she actually sort of felt sorry for (I let her get away with that) (for now) and currently she was filling me in on this beautiful house itself, which was as wood and stone inside as out, including a hall fountain that was like water rushing over mountain rocks.

  I asked when the place was built, and she said, “In the fifties some time, by my friend’s father…my friend, Dave Winters-he owns the office furniture plant, that keeps Homewood going? This is his house now, his and Lisa’s…I met Dave at college.”

  Following her to the next plant, I said, “I thought you weren’t a local girl.”

  “I’m not,” she said, taking care not to over-water. She was using a little red watering can from the kitchen. “Dave’s on the library board-when my application came in, he recognized the name of course, and helped me get the job. His wife is great, too.”

  “Lisa,” I said.

  She frowned at me. “How do you know Lisa?”

  “I don’t. You mentioned her, before.”

  “Oh.”

  And on to the next plant.

  “Where are the Winters?”

  She flicked me a longing little glance. “Nassau. A little month-long getaway.”

  “Must be nice.”

  Sighing, she moved to a corner where a palm-treelike number waited; from the size of it, this triffid could have walked to the kitchen to get its own goddamn water.

  She was saying, “Hard not to envy Lisa and Dave- swimming and sunning and swimming and sunning and eating wonderful food and swimming and sunning some more.”

  “Wouldn’t that suck,” I said.

  She finished her rounds and I followed her to the kitchen, where she replaced the watering can under the sink. Turning to me with a lilting smile, she asked, “I bet you like to swim. You’re a swimmer, aren’t you?”

  I frowned with my forehead and smiled with my mouth. “What are you, psychic?”

  “No.” Her smile turned mischievous. “Maybe I’ve got you under surveillance…”

  The swimming pool room seemed even larger when you were in there, an echoey cavernous dark-wood space with the lighted swimming pool a blue shimmering centerpiece.

  Janet, in a light blue one-piece bathing suit, balanced at the tip of the diving board, bouncing a little, dark-blonde locks flouncing when I came in from the dressing room in a suit two sizes two small for me. Well, it made the package look bigger, anyway, even if it did cut off my circulation. Of course, cutting off the circulation would eventually not do the package any favors, either.

  She didn’t say anything just grinned and bounced and laughed and bounced and laughed and grinned.

  “Glad you’re having such a good time,” I said.

  “Sorry…Dave’s not…not a big man.”

  “Just in business,” I said, eyeing the vast chamber. I was standing at the edge of the pool like a guy on a building ledge contemplating suicide. I pointed casually toward her. “That Dave’s wife’s suit?”

  “Yes. Lisa and me, we’re about the same size.”

  “She has a nice figure.”

  “Lisa thanks you, I’m sure.”

  With this, she dove in, an admirable, even elegant dive.

  Even so, she splashed me some, doing it; but I didn’t mind. The flecks of water were quite warm, really, even inviting.

  I dove in.

  The pool was as warm as a bath, lulling-actually, I prefer it a little crisper, but this was nice. Very nice.

  For a while we swam, doing a few laps together, sometimes underwater or on our backs, and splashed and clowned around, the kind of capering kids get in trouble for from the lifeguard, only there was no lifeguard present. We laughed and teased and talked, enjoying the usual pleasing swimming-chamber hollow effect.

  We were treading water, facing each other, when I said, “Nice perk, for semi-housesitting.”

  “Swimming’s the best.”

  “Oh yeah,” I agreed sincerely.

  A little out of breath, face droplet-pearled, she could hardly have looked more lovely, even though the long hair was matted down with moisture, the makeup mostly gone from her heart-shaped face, an indicator of just what a striking woman this was.

  Paddling there, blinking the big brown eyes, she said, “Nothing quite relaxes you like a nice swim. Really takes you somewhere else.”

  “Couldn’t agree more.�
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  Treading doggedly, maybe a little tired now and having to work at it some, she said, “I mean, I don’t envy Dave and Lisa much, but to have this handy, right in your own house? To be able to-de-stress any time you like, and just feel…really free…”

  “You know,” I said, a tiny bit out of breath myself, “you shouldn’t swim here by yourself. Dangerous.”

  She laughed, treading water, more and more an effort. “What? You think I’m gonna dive in and klunk my stupid head?”

  I plunge her head under water, my hand gripping the top of her skull and shoving her down, and holding her there; she struggles but can’t get anywhere, arms and legs flailing with fading force.

  Finally, she is limp, dead weight, and I release her, and let her float to the surface, arms spread, reaching for nothing, tendrils of hair spreading like seaweed.

  “Hey!” she said, bobbing there. “Aren’t you listening? Where did you go?”

  “Somewhere else,” I admitted. “For a second.”

  “I was just saying, I can fix you something, if you like. Have you eaten?”

  Soon we were in the Winters’ kitchen, sitting on stools at the counter in our respective robes (hers blue and fitting nice, mine white and, again, two sizes too small, my shoulders straining the seams), eating microwave dinners and drinking Diet Cokes. Nearby, the penned-up dog, although fully fed not forty-five minutes ago, was whining pitifully, as if it hadn’t had a meal since summer.

  Janet, gnawing a leg of Swanson chicken, said, “Toss her a scrap, why don’t you?”

  I speared a bite of Salisbury steak. “What, and spoil the bitch?”

  “You’re evil.”

  I didn’t feel like contradicting her.

  We had cleaned up after ourselves, and were standing at the sink like an old married couple when I asked, “What do you have on under that robe?”

  Her smile was pixie-ish. “Wouldn’t you like to know?…What do you have under yours?”

  I opened mine and showed her. It was a good thing I wasn’t wearing David’s tiny trunks.

  “You can get arrested in some states for that,” she said, but her eyes were big and pleased.