The last quarry q-6

by Max Allan Collins

  I opened the front of her robe and saw the creamy skin and lovely breasts and the wonderful Old School muff.

  “That’s illegal in most states,” I said. “Pubic nakedness.”

  “That’s public nakedness. And, anyway, this is private.”

  I slipped the robe off her shoulders and let it slip down her narrow-waisted, full-hipped frame to puddle on the floor at her bare feet.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

  In the Winters Family Rec Room, I took the time to get a fire going in the big rough-stone fireplace while Janet waited, naked underneath an Indian blanket. Then I joined her and we necked a while, romantically. When I finally kissed her breasts, the nipples were erect, damn near an inch long and hard, so hard. I kissed her neck, she kissed mine. I put my hand between her legs and the moistness there wanted attention. I buried my head down there and licked and sucked; then her head was in my lap and she licked and sucked. Things were getting serious.

  “On top of me,” she whispered, her face looking up at me half-lidded, mouth open in terrible, exquisite pain. “On top…”

  For all the moistness, she was tight-a little hand might have been gripping me down there-and she shuddered and cried in pain and delight as I entered her and slid myself slowly in and out. I cupped the full firm globes of her ass and nuzzled her breasts as she moved her hips in ways she hadn’t learned in the library, the inside of her sucking out the inside of me. The blanket had fallen away, and our flesh was reflecting the licking flames, one body with many limbs and so much skin, blushed orange, and after a while her eyes rolled up in her head so that barely anything but white showed as I plunged in and out of her with the blade of flesh.

  We hadn’t talked about protection-we were just naked and together and the lust ran away with us and I’d been in her. And now my seed was in her, too. Some detached voice in my head said, She’s already dead, she doesn’t need protection…

  Then we were on top of the blanket. The fire had dwindled to a nice comfort level, and we were wrapped up in a post-coital embrace, sleepy, at ease with each other, so much so that we could just laugh as we picked pubic hairs off our respective tongues. My efforts to cough one up off the back of my throat almost made her hysterical.

  After while she had quieted down enough to ask, “Were you a soldier?”

  “How did you know that? Surveillance?”

  Her smile was sweet for a girl who’d just given me a royal fucking. She shook her head. “I just feel it, know it, somehow…My grandfather was in Korea. You remind me of him.”

  “Well, that’s made my day.”

  She laughed and her face crinkled apologetically. “No, no, no, I didn’t mean… that.”

  She studied me; touched my face with a finger. Examining me. Like I was an old tree, cut in half, whose rings you could count.

  Finally, over the sound of a crackling fireplace, she asked, “Vietnam? Are you that old? You couldn’t be that old.”

  “But I am.”

  “How is that possible?”

  I shrugged. “I was a baby when I went in.”

  She nodded wisely. “But not when you came out.”

  “…I was stupid.”

  Her brow tensed. “ ‘Stupid,’ how?”

  I shook my head. “ Real stupid. Married a girl on leave, in San Diego? When I got home, she was fucking this guy.”

  “Oh dear,” she said, as if reacting to my harsh language, which in part maybe she was. Her fingertips came to her lips, a dainty gesture for a girl who’d had my cock in her mouth not long ago. “I’m so sorry…What did you do?”

  I shrugged again. “I went over to talk to him. Just reason with him. He was working under his car.”

  Her brow tightened further. “What did you do?”

  “Kicked the jack out.”

  She didn’t draw away or anything. Didn’t even blink. Just asked, “…You got in trouble?”

  One more shrug. “I didn’t do much time. But I was a kid, and didn’t understand.”

  Nodding, Janet said, “You mean, how your wife could do that to you?”

  “I mean, why killing people I didn’t know, in some other country, people who didn’t deserve it particularly, was cool. But kill one jackass back home who earned it, and I get shit.”

  Her look of compassion, of sympathy, was so sincere, I could barely stand it.

  She said, “I’m so sorry…You don’t have to talk about it.”

  Surprised, I said, “I almost never do.”

  I had opened up to her as I had my Vietnam pal Gary, who was the only other human about whom that could be said; even my late wife, the second one-the nice, stupid one-I’d never shared it with. Why the fuck had I tonight? Couldn’t be the little head controlling me, because it was all tuckered out down there.

  Or anyway I thought it was.

  Because all of a sudden Janet was crawling up on top of me, kissing me on the chest and the neck and then on the face, and the view of her, all that pale flesh, those breasts hanging down so full and beautifully shaped and gently swaying with those long tips sticking out at me accusingly, well, it woke the little head up, all right.

  This time, however, having climbed on top, she stayed there. She was ready to take a little control.

  And I was ready for somebody to take it.

  Ten

  Having been up and dressed a while, I was in the kitchen, at the stove scrambling eggs (bacon already made), when she drifted in in the blue terrycloth robe, hair looking nicely tousled.

  Sleepily sexy, she paused to lean in the doorway and sniff the cooking smells approvingly.

  “Wow,” she said. “You’re a surprise.”

  “Coffee’s ready,” I said.

  She made her way over to the counter where the Cuisinart coffee-maker dripped and helped herself to a cup.

  The dog was penned up, and-despite the cooking smells-sleeping in its bed.

  “What did you do?” she asked, nodding toward the dog, the mug of coffee in both hands, blowing at it a little. “Drug the mutt?”

  “No. Just fed it. All it wanted.”

  She laughed and risked a sip.

  “Been walked, too,” I said. “But I draw the line at that pooper-scooper crap.”

  “Even so,” she said, “you definitely pass the audition.” She settled on a stool at the counter as I served her up eggs and bacon and toasted, buttered English muffins.

  “Eggs are good,” she said.

  “Thanks,” I said, serving myself, then joining her. “Everybody has to learn something from their mother.”

  We ate a while, then between bites she asked, “How long you been awake?”

  I shrugged. “Two, three hours.”

  She blinked at me; her eyes were puffy-but on her, it looked good. “It’s only seven-something now.”

  “Went for groceries. Had a swim.”

  She gave me a sideways look. “You really like to swim…Helps you think?”

  “Helps me not to think.”

  We ate in silence for a while, and somehow it became a little awkward or maybe pregnant. Which served me right, not using a rubber last night…

  Finally, she pushed her almost-cleaned plate away, and got up and got herself some more coffee and refilled my cup, saying, “I, uh…really don’t do this kind of thing.”

  “Wait on men?”

  She laughed a little. “No…you know.” She sat next to me again, sipped the coffee, raised an eyebrow. “I mean, I hardly know you. I just don’t usually…”

  “Kiss on the first date?”

  She smiled over the coffee cup’s lip. “Kiss on the first date.”

  I pushed my plate away. Sipped coffee. Said, “I live alone, too.”

  Her brow tensed. “Sorry. I…I don’t follow you.”

  “Sometimes you just…need something.”

  She thought about that, and nodded. It was a sort of admission.

  “There really haven’t been a lot of ‘Ricks,’ ” she said. “
Some. But mostly, the last eight, ten years…I’ve kept to myself.”

  “Safer that way,” I said.

  “You, too?”

  “…It’s the easiest way to get hurt.”

  “Also the most painful,” she said quickly. “When I was younger, I went with older guys…?”

  I hiked an eyebrow. “And things have changed?”

  “Well, you’re the first…‘older guy’…in some time. A shrink once told me I have some kind of ‘daddy’ complex.”

  I shifted in my seat.

  I shrugged. “Every little girl wants to fuck her daddy. And lots of daddies want to fuck their little girls. It only counts against you when you go through with it.”

  She thought about that, then said, “You…scare me a little.”

  I gave her half a smile. “Just a little?”

  She studied me and something devilish got into her eyes. “You might not be so scary, naked.”

  “You’ve seen me naked.”

  She shook her head. “Oh no, I haven’t…”

  Soon we were seated on the edge of the pool in our borrowed swimsuits, the place muggy as hell, a virtual steamroom, and she was about to apply a straight razor to my well-lathered beard.

  “Be gentle,” I said.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, and kept her word, starting to shave me gently, tenderly, sliding, gliding the blade, taking whiskers, leaving smooth flesh. Occasionally she would dip the razor in the pool, getting rid of whiskery lather.

  It took a while, my beard not terribly long but full, and it felt good, being the object of such care and attention; but when the blade pressed against my throat, I caught her wrist, stopping her.

  For all the heat, we froze, my eyes locked with hers, and I wasn’t smiling as I stared at her-she seemed quietly amused, if a bit taken aback by the clutch of my hand.

  “What’s wrong, Jack?” She seemed wholly serious, but for a pixie gleam in the eyes. “Don’t you trust me?”

  Now I studied her, tried to look inside- did she know why I was here? — and her amusement faded to concern.

  I said, “Little tender there. Let me.”

  “Sure.”

  She gave me the razor.

  As I finished the shave, she sat next to me, slightly shaken, holding her arms to herself as if feeling a sudden chill.

  We did not make love again. Janet had to work today-it was Sunday, but the Homewood Library was open from eleven till four-and she needed to go to her apartment to shower and change. I dropped her in front of the beauty shop she lived over, and-before she got out-she said, “I’ll never forget last night, Jack.”

  “Good,” I said, and managed to smile.

  Her eyes stayed on me a beat too long before she got out of the car. I thought I detected something hurt in the expression, but wasn’t sure.

  Maybe I decided to take Sunday off. Maybe that was it. But that afternoon, as Janet no doubt did routine work at the library and maybe did her story-hour shtick with another third-grade audience, I wasn’t around to see it.

  I was in my motel room, feeling bare with my freshly shaved face, on my back on the bed, elbows winged out, staring at the ceiling, lights off, sun filtering in a little through closed drapes. Janet’s picture on the nightstand, face down. Nine millimeter on the nightstand.

  By late afternoon, with the library closing so early, she’d be back at her apartment. And somehow I hauled my dead ass off that bed and made it to my surveillance roost across the way from her.

  She beat me home. There she was, already, in a bathrobe again (not the blue borrowed one, but a similar green one of her own), sitting in that comfy chair, bunny-slippered tootsies on the footrest, reading a book (Memoirs of a Geisha), nibbling a sandwich, sipping at a Diet Coke.

  But I was having trouble watching her.

  Mostly I just sat there, staring at the blank wall in the rattrap vacant apartment, not even dipping into the cooler for my own sandwich and Coke, not fucking hungry at all. The nine millimeter and the binoculars were on the crate, looking like decorative items as opposed to anything practical a person might actually use.

  I did at dusk, at a good distance, follow her Geo to Sneaky Pete’s, which was open Sunday nights, where she and Connie met in the parking lot. I drove past, then pulled a U-turn and headed back.

  Inside, the place wasn’t very busy, the meat-market aspect given over to a modest family night, where pizza was served from a small kitchen that usually only offered up burgers and fries. The same country-pop was playing, but overlaid with the squeal of kiddies, and it occurred to me it might do the Sneaky Pete singles crowd of Friday and Saturday night some good, stopping by here Sunday, just to see what kind of trouble they might be getting themselves into.

  Janet and Connie had a booth, both young women dressed not to the nines now, just sweatshirts and jeans; this was about dinner and dishing, Connie pumping Janet for what had happened between her and “that big scary handsome guy.”

  That was the only thing I picked up, from my position at the bar. I couldn’t risk sitting any closer, and I was conspicuous as hell in this family crowd. Even the bartender, not my familiar brunette but a potbellied guy with a mustache, was giving me a hinky look. So unless I wanted to be spotted and invited over to sit with the girls, I had better split.

  I split.

  Back at the motel, the room was nicely dark, just a little neon sign blush finding its way through the curtains. I deposited the nine on the nightstand and flopped onto the bed, fully clothed, curled up on my side and tried to go to sleep.

  But it soon became clear sleep wouldn’t come, and before long I found myself seated on the edge of the bed, slumped, hands loosely interlaced.

  What were my fucking options?

  Piss and poor, with maybe a couple stops in between. This was what I got, allowing myself to be talked out of retirement for “one last job.” Fuck! There are reasons why you quit the killing business, and going soft is one of them, because then it’s you getting killed, which is no way to run a business.

  They were my Achilles’ heel, women. I had no goddamn sense where they were concerned. And it wasn’t the fucking, the fucking was great, but a woman-not just any woman, but a woman like, say, Janet-could touch something inside of me that I liked to think had died a long time ago. Something human that could only put a dipshit like me in a jam.

  I sat there, brooding, mentally listing the mistakes I’d made, but the list was so long, I got bored-being seen by the target was one thing, eating her pussy was another. That kind of up-close-and-personal contact can lead a guy to making bad calls.

  So I could walk away. You can always walk away.

  And someone else would kill her, and Jonah Green would, understandably, be miffed with me, and likely send people to kill me, loose end that I would become, people like me but not old and gone-soft ones, and then I’d be dead, too…or at least up to my asshole in dead assholes.

  That didn’t sound like any fun.

  I could go after the guy who hired me. I had full confidence that I could make Jonah Green’s death happen; but Green was an important guy, connected enough in Outfit circles to find out about my past, and with the wherewithal to find me at Sylvan Lake in short order. I killed him, who could say what the fuck I’d unleash?

  And I’d be dead, and Janet Wright would be dead, too.

  That left only one alternative: go ahead and do the job I’d been hired for. There was that little matter of a quarter of a million dollars, the kind of money that meant I’d never have to put myself in a situation like this again.

  And if I accepted that Janet Wright was really dead already, just didn’t know it yet-a premise I had expressed to Jonah Wright at the outset, a concept I knew to be true when any party had been marked for elimination-perhaps the only humane thing to do under the circumstances was kill her myself.

  I could figure out some way that would be quick and painless. If I left her to the devices of some amoral monster who killed people
for money, Christ knew what shit she would be put through…

  I had always taken great pride in my lack of sadism, that I had never taken any sick pleasure or joy out of turning life into death. Mine had been a profession, and like a doctor with a patient or a lawyer with a client, I represented a person with a problem, and I just made that problem go away. Nothing fun about it. Nothing mean about it, either.

  Such were my thoughts, threading through my brain and the motel-room darkness, and I don’t honestly remember going to Janet’s. In my mind, I’m in the motel room one second, sitting on the bed, trying to figure this shit out, and the next second, I’m at the top of the stairs out on the small landing, staring at her apartment door, with the nine millimeter in one hand and working the doorbell with the other.

  She didn’t answer.

  Well, it was the middle of the night; or rather, really, really early Monday morning…

  So I rang it again.

  And again.

  Finally I could hear her moving in there.

  I checked the action on the nine.

  The sound of the night latch unlatching prompted me to slip the nine back in my jacket pocket, and then her face, pale and severe without makeup, was visible in the cracked-open door.

  She frowned just a little. “…Jack?”

  “I have to see you.”

  She frowned more than just a little. “You know, even Rick used to call the day after. Even Rick never showed up at three in the morning, demanding-”

  “Please?”

  She sighed.

  She let me in.

  Wrapped up in the green robe, which was feminine but not particularly sexy, Janet seemed embarrassed by my intrusion, self-consciously straightening her hair.

  “Sit down,” she said, leading me into a living room that I’d never been in before, though was entirely familiar with. “Give me a minute…freshen up.” She turned toward me, not mad at all, now. “You want coffee or something? Jesus, what time is it?”

  I took her into my arms, firmly but not roughly, and asked, “What time does it have to be?”

  And I kissed her.

  The kiss was a little over the top, zero-to-sixty kind of thing, and it surprised her; but she got into it, soon enough.