Quarry in the Middle
by
Max Allan Collins
A HARD CASE CRIME NOVEL
The woman on the small stage had reddish blond widow’s-peaked hair that was up off her high forehead but swept down to her bare shoulders. Her wide-set eyes were green, her face a gentle oval nicely disrupted by prominent cheekbones; her lips were full and ripe and glistening red. She wore a bare-shouldered black dress with a full skirt, the top part putting half of an admirable full bosom on display, no push-up bra, though some would argue she could use one—I would argue she’d never lack for a man to push them up for her.
She had a soft, smoky voice that reminded me of Julie London. She might have made it big in another era.
Rising, she got a nice hand and came down off the stage.
I rose and went over to her. “Excuse me,” I said. “But that was terrific. Can I buy you a drink?”
Her smile tightened, the teeth disappearing. “I never take a drink till after my last set.”
“Coffee, then.”
“Makes me jumpy.”
“Perrier? Not coming on to you. Just liked what I heard.”
The teeth returned. “Nice young man like you, maybe I wouldn’t mind.”
“A Perrier?”
“You coming on to me…”
For Richard Stark
“Feed lettuce to the bunny and eat the bunny.”
DASHIELL HAMMETT
“In a mad world, only the mad are sane.”
AKIRA KUROSAWA
“An assassin can display a sublime altruism.”
SERGIO LEONE
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Excerpt
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Praise
Other Books By
Copyright
Chapter One
I had a body in the trunk of my car.
I hadn’t planned it that way, but then it wasn’t that kind of job. It wasn’t a job at all, really, rather a speculative venture, and now I’d made more of an investment than just my time and a little money.
This was in the summer, and Reagan was still president, early enough that he wasn’t showing his Alzheimer’s yet and late enough that he was keeping a good distance between himself and the Press Corps, waving and smiling and pretending he couldn’t hear them. We’d already had the Chernobyl meltdown, the Challenger explosion, and Pac-Man fever. Disco was dead, which was fine with me, only I wish somebody had paid me to kill the fucker.
I make the above lame joke because I had once upon a time killed people for money—initially for Uncle Sam, but more profitably for a mobbed-up guy called the Broker (more about him later). Right now I was in business for myself, thirty-five years old and looking to make a killing. Financial kind.
Anyway, the body in the trunk of my car. And it was my car, not a rental, a blue ’75 Pontiac with a lighter blue vinyl top, a Sunbird, which was really just a Vega pretending to be a sports car. It had a lot of miles on it and had only cost a grand and change, bought for cash under a phony name in Wisconsin—another investment in this spec job.
I hadn’t known I’d wind up with a body in the trunk, but I was old enough a hand at this to know I didn’t want to use my usual vehicle and a rental would be a bad idea, too. But to tell you the truth, I’d had bodies in my trunk before, so maybe that was a factor, after all.
For around six years in the ’70s I had taken on contracts, and part of why I’d survived and even flourished was my ability to blend in. At five ten, one-hundred-sixty pounds, I’d maintained a fairly boyish look—into my late twenties, I could be been taken for a college student, and now I could pass for twenty-five or -six. I kept my brown hair medium-length because that helped maintain anonymity. I could be a working man in t-shirt and jeans or a salesman in narrow tie and sportcoat or a professional in button-down collar and pinstripe suit.
Tonight, though, I was doing my Don Johnson impression in a white Armani suit with a pastel yellow t-shirt and Italian loafers with no socks. Normally, the Miami Vice schtick was not for me, but I needed to fit in. The Paddlewheel attracted a wealthy crowd, and the over-forty set dressed to the nines, but the twenty-and thirty-somethings were Yuppies and dressed accordingly.
So tonight I was a Yuppie (a Yuppie with a body in the trunk, but a Yuppie).
This was a warm evening cooled by a breeze and the parking lot was nearly full—my used car at least had that vinyl top to help it fit in with the Buicks and Caddies and BMW’s, and was maybe sporty enough to cohabit with the Stingray 280ZX’s and Jags. I parked on the far side of the lot, near where the glimmering black strip of the Mississippi River reflected the lights of the ancient steel toll bridge joining River’s Bluff, Iowa, and Haydee’s Port, Illinois.
Everybody I’d talked to so far, which wasn’t many admittedly, seemed to shorten it to Haydee’s. And from the glimpse I’d got of the little town, they might have been saying Hades, and meaning it.
River’s Bluff itself hadn’t been that impressive, a long-in-the-tooth industrial burg of maybe sixty thousand on rolling hills overlooking the river. Ivy-covered shelves of shale lined the freeway cutting through the old river city, taking me to the bridge and a thirty-cent toll. Going over the rumbling, ancient span was a more frightening ride than a fifty-cent one at any carnival.
And Haydee’s Port itself wasn’t any less frightening. A sign beyond the bridge announced it, a road curving right to eventually deposit me and my Sunbird (no body in the trunk yet—this was early afternoon) in a pocket below the interstate. Here I found myself beholding the open wound that was Haydee’s Port.
Main Street was almost entirely bars and strip clubs, rough-looking ones—big parking lots in back, empty mid-morning but indicating healthy-sized clientele. Among the few respectable businesses was a Casey’s General Store, which was also the only gas station, on a corner by itself just beyond the two-block strip of sin. No schools, and certainly no churches. Poking up out of the trees that hugged the Mighty Miss emerged grain-elevator towers, which were one legitimate business anyway that had nothing to do with selling beer, except maybe providing out-of-state brewers with some of the makings.
Main Street was paved, but the others weren’t, just narrow hard dirt, with ruts to indicate what happened when it rained. The main drag was built with its back to the river, putting the residences of the little community behind the opposite row of saloons. Mostly Haydee’s Port was a glorified trailer park, minus the glory—shabby mobile homes here and there, as if where the most recent tornado had left them, with an occasional sagging twenties or older vintage clapboard house to add a little undignified variety.
This was a welfare ghetto, with the bars handy for disposal of monthly checks and probably willing to accept food stamps, maybe at 75 cents on the dollar.
All of which made the Paddlewheel (half a mile or so out of town) such an anomaly, at least at first glance. This was a class operation, not an all-night gin mill serving blue-collar out-of-workers or the spillover from River Bluff after the bars closed, rather a high-end entertainment complex that attracted clientele with cash, not food stamps. The reconverted warehouse was a massive affair, home to a restaurant, numerous bars, several lounges with stages, and a casino—a mini-Las Vegas under one roof.
Though when you really thought about it,
the Paddlewheel was not an anomaly at all—some genius entrepreneur had realized that in an environment corrupt enough for downtown Haydee’s Port to openly thrive, erecting a sin palace for Mr. and Mrs. Got-rocks Midwest was also possible. Whatever bent cops and greedy politicos were allowing these lowlife joints to run wide open would be just as for sale to the Paddle-wheel’s backers. Maybe more so.
Anyway, the body in the trunk.
You have to understand that I had no idea I was heading for Haydee’s Port. Hell, I had no idea Haydee’s Port existed. I’d been following a guy named Monahan from Omaha, Nebraska, which had been tricky for a variety of reasons, starting with the difficulty of staking out a guy who lives in a suburban home in an upper middle-class neighborhood.
Monahan was a guy about about forty who lived a very respectable life for a contract killer, which is what he was. He was five seven or eight, in good shape, with short dark hair and the general button-down look of an insurance salesman, which as it happened was his cover.
I had no reason to believe his perky little blonde wife, also about forty, had the faintest notion Monahan was a hit man, to use the TV parlance. Certainly his two kids, a boy around thirteen and a girl of fifteen or sixteen were clueless that their suburban lifestyle was made possible by the man of the house committing commercial carnage.
Monahan’s life with his wife and kids and his split-level in a housing development in Omaha have almost nothing to do with this narrative, so I’ll keep it short. I’d never met him, but he was one of fifty-some guys like me who had worked for the Broker, the middleman who’d provided me with contracts back when I was in the killing game myself. For reasons recorded elsewhere, the Broker wound up dead and I wound up with a database of his worker bees.
“Database” isn’t exactly right, because when I came into possession of that file, it was before home computers, and when I say “file,” I mean literally that—a file, a fat manila folder full of extensive information including real names and aliases alike, addresses past and present, photographs for each name, even specific jobs that had been carried out.
Why the Broker maintained this explosive packet, I couldn’t say—eventual blackmail purposes should someone get out of line, maybe? Or food for the feds or cops should immunity and the Witness Protection Program come into play?
For all his veneer of suburban bliss, Monahan was an assassin whose specialty was particularly nasty: hit-and-run kills. This had made him one of the highest paid names on the Broker’s list—Monahan provided the kind of accidental death that sent official investigations off on the wrong track, and made handsome insurance pay-outs a breeze. As a professional, the guy had real skills, and you had to hand it to him.
But as I believe I already indicated, maintaining surveillance on a guy living in a housing development is a royal pain in the ass. Luckily I was able to rent a house just down the street from him on the opposite side of the block. I spent my time tailing him to the office he maintained in a strip mall, where he read newspapers and watched television and boinked a Chinese girl who worked for the carry-out joint two doors down; sometimes he went home on the lunch hour and boinked his cute wife, too. You know what they say about boinking Chinese girls—an hour later, you’re horny again.
So I smiled at my neighbors and mowed my fucking lawn and attended junior high baseball games and a jazz dance recital (the fifteen year-old blonde daughter looked good in a leotard) and even saw a Beverly Hills Cop movie and generally kept track of the prick.
Here’s the thing—after the Broker bought it, I decided I’d never work for a middleman again. Broker had betrayed me, and seeing his file with my own mug in it with detailed info about two dozen kills I’d been in on made me, let’s say, less than eager to ever work for anybody who wasn’t me. Pretty soon I’d figured out a way to use the file to stay in the same game, but on my own terms.
I would choose a name from the Broker’s list—the name of someone like myself—and go and stake out that party, then follow him or her to their next gig. Once I figured out who the hitter’s target was, I would approach said target and let him or her know he or she was in somebody’s fucking crosshairs.
I’d offer to discreetly eliminate the hired killer (sometimes, killers) for a fee that was in no way nominal. Further, I’d offer to look into who had hired the hit, and remove them, for the kind of bonus that meant I wouldn’t have to do this more than once a year or so.
You might find this risky—what if the target freaked out, being approached by a stranger with a wild story, a stranger who claims to be a kind of professional killer himself, and called the cops or otherwise went apeshit. But the thing is, anyone who has been designated for a hit is somebody who almost certainly has done something worth getting killed over. These tend not to be shining, solid citizens. You don’t inspire somebody to kill your ass by behaving yourself.
This is, incidentally, why somebody like me—a guy who is no more twisted than you or your brother or sister or wife—is able to commit murder for money, and sleep just fine. It’s down to this: anybody targeted for a hit is somebody who is already dead. They have done something or some things that have made them eligible for being on the wrong end of a bullet or a speeding car or what-have-you, and they are due to die for it. Yes, they are still up and walking around, but that’s just a temporary technicality. They are dead already. Obits waiting to be written.
Back when I was doing hits, I was no more unethical than any guy working for a collection agency. I just collected a different kind of payment due. A repo man after something other than appliances, boats or cars.
No denying, though, that murder is illegal and if you’re caught doing or having done it, you can earn a cell or a rope or a firing squad or a gas pellet. That meant that the other “collection agency guys” I was now turning the tables on were just as dead as any other designated target.
Anyway, it had mostly worked out well so far—I’d used the Broker’s list and taken this approach ten times with occasional glitches but enough success that I was still above ground and with a healthy bank balance to boot.
The downside of my innovative business plan had always been two unpredictable factors…
First, standard operation procedure for hired killings, at least among Broker’s crew, meant a two-person team—Passive and Active.
Passive Guy went in to watch the target for at least a week and sometimes up to a month, getting the patterns down. Active Guy would come in a couple days before the hit and get filled in by the Passive partner, often doing his own short-term surveillance to get a feel for what he’s up against.
I’d been paired with a number of guys, and usually worked the Active side. I preferred it, but the Broker had insisted I work surveillance one out of four jobs, saying both guys on a team needed to keep their hand in on both roles.
My current approach meant that not only did I have to perform my own surveillance, I had to do so with no knowledge of when my subject’s next hit would go down. It was entirely open-ended, and a guy as specialized (and well-paid) as Monahan might only do three or four jobs in a given year.
Meaning I could grin at neighbors, cut grass, watch junior high sports, grow hard-ons over teenage girls in leotards, and take in lousy Eddie Murphy movies for months on end before the real action kicked in.
But this time I got lucky. I only did Suburban Male duty for a little over two weeks before I was on the road, following Monahan to Fuck Knew Where.
Not that this wasn’t also tricky—a lot of the driving was on godforsaken flat heartland interstate that made tailing a guy no more obvious than walking into a restaurant with no shoes and no shirt and no pants, either. Luckily turn-offs and rest stops were rare, and I could lay back ten or even twenty miles, and still stay with him.
So this afternoon, Monahan had led me to Haydee’s Port, and I had trailed him to the Wheelhouse Motel, which was just outside the cruddy little town, on a curve before you got to the Paddlewheel.
There was n
othing cruddy about the Wheelhouse Motel, though, which boasted outdoor pool and satellite TV and a 24-hour truck-stop type restaurant, although there were no gas pumps. I didn’t know it yet, but this was the Paddlewheel’s official lodgings. The only other motel in town was the Eezer Inn, a dump used for sleeping it off or getting it on, or combinations thereof.
The motel office and the attached restaurant faced the highway and the rooms were along either side of the long, wide structure, with an additional wing down at the end making a right angle beyond the pool. Monahan pulled in on the right and drove down to the last unit of the wing.
I pulled the Sunbird into a spot for restaurant patrons and went in. The place had a three-sided counter and booths along the windows; riverboat prints rode the rough-wood walls, and a big brown metal jukebox squatted near the entryway, with “Proud Mary” playing (the Creedence version).
A booth was waiting from which I could see the unit (Number 36) where Monahan’s green Buick Regal was pulled into the adjacent space. The Buick was a car he’d bought in Des Moines, by the way, leaving his own Oldsmobile Cutlass in long-term parking at the airport, though he hadn’t been flying anywhere.
I had a good view of that unit, and staring out the window wasn’t suspicious, because some good-looking women in their early twenties and skimpy bikinis were using the diving board and splashing around in the pool when they weren’t sunning themselves.
I hadn’t eaten for a while, so I ordered a Diet Coke and the Famous Wheelhouse Bacon Cheeseburger, which somehow I’d managed never to hear of. Just didn’t get around enough, I guess. The famous burger came with fries, which were worthy of fame, because they were hand-cut, not frozen.
These I fearlessly salted and dragged through ketchup and nibbled while I watched the unit; Dionne Warwick was singing “That’s What Friends Are For.” I’d felt lucky getting hand-cut french fries, but I got luckier yet: Monahan and a skinny blond kid I didn’t recognize (not a face in the Broker’s file, new blood) exited the motel room and they were walking and talking, casually, and heading my way.
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