The Big Book of Rogues and Villains

by Otto Penzler

  “Well, you know what Stevie Wonder says,” I said.

  He squinted. “No, what?”

  Sucker.

  “Nothing,” I said, sliding in.

  A twentyish waitress with a nice shape, a hair net and two pounds of acne took my order, which was for a Coke; the Broker already had coffee and the kid a bottle of Mountain Dew and a glass.

  When she went away, I said, “Well, Broker. Got some work for me? I drove hundreds of miles in a fucking gas shortage, so you sure as shit better have.”

  Adam seemed a little stunned to hear the Broker spoken to so disrespectfully, but the Broker was used to my attitude and merely smiled and patted the air with a benedictory palm.

  “I wouldn’t waste your time otherwise, Quarry. This will pay handsomely. Ten thousand for the two of you.”

  Five grand was good money; three was pretty standard. Money was worth more then. You could buy a Snickers bar for ten cents. Or was it fifteen? I forget.

  But I was still a little irritated.

  “The two of us?” I said. “Adam, here, isn’t my better half on this one, is he?”

  “Yes, he is,” the Broker said. He had his hands folded now, prayerfully. His baritone was calming. Or was meant to be.

  Adam was frowning, playing nervously with a silver skull ring on the little finger of his left hand. “I don’t like your fuckin’ attitude, man….”

  The way he tried to work menace into his voice would have been amusing if I’d given a shit.

  “I don’t like your fuckin’ hippie hair,” I said.

  “What?” He leaned forward, furious, and knocked his water glass over; it spun on its side and fell off my edge of the booth and we heard it shatter. A few eyes looked our way.

  Adam’s tiny bright eyes were wide. “Fuck,” he said.

  “Seven years bad luck, dipshit,” I said.

  “That’s just mirrors!”

  “I think it’s any kind of glass. Isn’t that right, Broker?”

  The Broker was frowning a little. “Quarry…” He sounded so disappointed in me.

  “Hair like that attracts attention,” I said. “You go in for a hit, you got to be the invisible man.”

  “These days everybody wears their hair like this,” the kid said defensively.

  “In Greenwich Village, maybe. But in America, if you want to disappear, you look like a businessman or a college student.”

  That made him laugh. “You ever see a college student lately, asshole?”

  “I mean the kind who belongs to a fraternity. You want to go around killing people, you need to look clean-cut.”

  Adam’s mouth had dropped open; he had crooked lower teeth. He pointed at me with a thumb and turned to look at Broker, indignant. “Is this guy for real?”

  “Yes, indeed,” the Broker said. “He’s also the best active agent I have.”

  By “active,” Broker meant (in his own personal jargon) that I was the half of a hit team that took out the target; the “passive” half was the lookout person, the back-up.

  “And he’s right,” the Broker said, “about your hair.”

  “Far as that’s concerned,” I said, “we look pretty goddamn conspicuous right here—me looking collegiate, you looking like the prez of a country club, and junior here like a roadshow Mick Jagger.”

  Adam looked half bewildered, half outraged.

  “You may have a point,” the Broker allowed me.

  “On the other hand,” I said, “people probably think we’re fags waiting for a fourth.”

  “You’re unbelievable,” Adam said, shaking his greasy Beatle mop. “I don’t want to work with this son of a bitch.”

  “Stay calm,” the Broker said. “I’m not proposing a partnership, not unless this should happen to work out beyond all of our wildest expectations.”

  “I tend to agree with Adam, here,” I said. “We’re not made for each other.”

  “The question is,” the Broker said, “are you made for ten thousand dollars?”

  Adam and I thought about that.

  “I have a job that needs to go down, very soon,” he said, “and very quickly. You’re the only two men available right now. And I know neither of you wants to disappoint me.”

  Half of ten grand did sound good to me. I had a lake-front lot in Wisconsin where I could put up this nifty little A-frame prefab, if I could put a few more thousand together….

  “I’m in,” I said, “if he cuts his hair.”

  The Broker looked at Adam, who scowled and nodded.

  “You’re both going to like this,” the Broker said, sitting forward, withdrawing a travel brochure from his back pocket.

  “A resort?” I asked.

  “Near Chicago. A wooded area. There’s a man-made lake, two indoor swimming pools and one outdoor, an ‘old town’ gift shop area, several restaurants, bowling alley, tennis courts, horse-back riding…”

  “If they have archery,” I said, “maybe we could arrange a little accident.”

  That made the Broker chuckle. “You’re not far off the mark. We need either an accident, or a robbery. It’s an insurance situation.”

  Broker would tell us no more than that: part of his function was to shield the client from us, and us from the client, for that matter. He was sort of a combination agent and buffer; he could tell us only this much: the target was going down so that someone could collect insurance. The double indemnity kind that comes from accidental death, and of course getting killed by thieves counts in that regard.

  “This is him,” Broker said, carefully showing us a photograph of a thin, handsome, tanned man of possibly sixty with black hair that was probably dyed; he wore dark sunglasses and tennis togs and had an arm around a dark-haired woman of about forty, a tanned slim busty woman also in dark glasses and tennis togs.

  “Who’s the babe?” Adam said.

  “The wife,” the Broker said.

  The client.

  “The client?” Adam asked.

  “I didn’t say that,” Broker said edgily, “and you mustn’t ask stupid questions. Your target is this man—Baxter Bennedict.”

  “I hope his wife isn’t named Bunny,” I said.

  The Broker chuckled again, but Adam didn’t see the joke.

  “Close. Her name is Bernice, actually.”

  I groaned. “One more ‘B’ and I’ll kill ’em both—for free.”

  The Broker took out a silver cigarette case. “Actually, that’s going to be one of the…delicate aspects of this job.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  He offered me a cigarette from the case and I waved it off; he offered one to Adam, and he took it.

  The Broker said, “They’ll be on vacation. Together, at the Wistful Wagon Lodge. She’s not to be harmed. You must wait and watch until you can get him alone.”

  “And then make it look like an accident,” I said.

  “Or a robbery. Correct.” The Broker struck a match, lighted his cigarette. He tried to light Adam’s, but Adam gestured no, frantically.

  “Two on a match,” he said. Then got a lighter out and lit himself up.

  “Two on a match?” I asked.

  “Haven’t you ever heard that?” the kid asked, almost wild-eyed. “Two on a match. It’s unlucky!”

  “Three on a match is unlucky,” I said.

  Adam squinted at me. “Are you superstitious, too?”

  I looked hard at Broker, who merely shrugged.

  “I gotta pee,” the kid said suddenly, and had the Broker let him slide out. Standing, he wasn’t very big: probably five seven. Skinny. His jeans were tattered.

  When we were alone, I said, “What are you doing, hooking me up with that dumb-ass jerk?”

  “Give him a chance. He was in Vietnam. Like you. He’s not completely inexperienced.”

  “Most of the guys I knew in Vietnam were stoned twenty-four hours a day. That’s not what I’m looking for in a partner.”

  “He’s just a little green. You’ll seas
on him.”

  “I’ll ice him if he fucks up. Understood?”

  The Broker shrugged. “Understood.”

  When Adam came back, Broker let him in and said, “The hardest part is, you have a window of only four days.”

  “That’s bad,” I said, frowning. “I like to maintain a surveillance, get a pattern down….”

  Broker shrugged again. “It’s a different situation. They’re on vacation. They won’t have much of a pattern.”

  “Great.”

  Now the Broker frowned. “Why in hell do you think it pays so well? Think of it as hazardous duty pay.”

  Adam sneered and said, “What’s the matter, Quarry? Didn’t you never take no fuckin’ risks?”

  “I think I’m about to,” I said.

  “It’ll go well,” the Broker said.

  “Knock on wood,” the kid said, and rapped on the table.

  “That’s formica,” I said.

  —

  The Wistful Wagon Lodge sprawled out over numerous wooded acres, just off the outskirts of Wistful Vista, Illinois. According to the Broker’s brochure, back in the late ’40s, the hamlet had taken the name of Fibber McGee and Molly’s fictional hometown, for purposes of attracting tourists; apparently one of the secondary stars of the radio show had been born nearby. This marketing ploy had been just in time for television making radio passe, and the little farm community’s only remaining sign of having at all successfully tapped into the tourist trade was the Wistful Wagon Lodge itself.

  A cobblestone drive wound through the scattering of log cabins, and several larger buildings—including the main lodge where the check-in and restaurants were—were similarly rustic structures, but of gray weathered wood. Trees clustered everywhere, turning warm sunlight into cool pools of shade; wood-burned signs showed the way to this building or that path, and decorative wagon wheels, often with flower beds in and around them, were scattered about as if some long-ago pioneer mishap had been beautified by nature and time. Of course that wasn’t the case: this was the hokey hand of man.

  We arrived separately, Adam and I, each having reserved rooms in advance, each paying cash up front upon registration; no credit cards. We each had log-cabin cottages, not terribly close to one another.

  As the back-up and surveillance man, Adam went in early. The target and his wife were taking a long weekend—arriving Thursday, leaving Monday. I didn’t arrive until Saturday morning.

  I went to Adam’s cabin and knocked, but got no answer. Which just meant he was trailing Mr. and Mrs. Target around the grounds. After I dropped my stuff off at my own cabin, I wandered, trying to get the general layout of the place, checking out the lodge itself, where about half of the rooms were, as well as two restaurants. Everything had a pine smell, which was partially the many trees, and partially Pinesol. Wistful Wagon was Hollywood rustic—there was a dated quality about it, from the cowboy/cowgirl attire of the waiters and waitresses in the Wistful Chuckwagon Cafe to the wood-and-leather furnishings to the barnwood-framed Remington prints.

  I got myself some lunch and traded smiles with a giggly tableful of college girls who were on a weekend scouting expedition of their own. Good, I thought. If I can connect with one of them tonight, that’ll provide nice cover.

  As I was finishing up, my cowgirl waitress, a curly-haired blonde pushing thirty who was pretty cute herself, said, “Looks like you might get lucky tonight.”

  She was re-filling my coffee cup.

  “With them or with you?” I asked.

  She had big washed-out blue eyes and heavy eye make-up, more ’60s than ’70s. She was wearing a 1950s style cowboy hat cinched under her chin. “I’m not supposed to fraternize with the guests.”

  “How did you know I was a fraternity man?”

  She laughed a little; her chin crinkled. Her face was kind of round and she was a little pudgy, nicely so in the bosom.

  “Wild stab,” she said. “Anyway, there’s an open dance in the ballroom. Of the Wagontrain Dining Room? Country swing band. You’ll like it.”

  “You inviting me?”

  “No,” she said; she narrowed her eyes and cocked her head, her expression one of mild scolding. “Those little girls’ll be there, and plenty of others. You won’t have any trouble finding what you want.”

  “I bet I will.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I was hoping for a girl wearing cowboy boots like yours.”

  “Oh, there’ll be girls in cowboys boots there tonight.”

  “I meant, just cowboy boots.”

  She laughed at that, shook her head; under her Dale Evans hat, her blonde curls bounced off her shoulders.

  She went away and let me finish my coffee, and I smiled at the college girls some more, but when I paid for my check, at the register, it was my plump little cowgirl again.

  “I work late tonight,” she said.

  “How late?”

  “I get off at midnight,” she said.

  “That’s only the first time,” I said.

  “First time what?”

  “That you’ll get off tonight.”

  She liked that. Times were different, then. The only way you could die from fucking was if a husband or boyfriend caught you at it. She told me where to meet her, later.

  I strolled back up a winding path to my cabin. A few groups of college girls and college guys, not paired off together yet, were buzzing around; some couples in their twenties up into their sixties were walking, often hand-in-hand, around the sun-dappled, lushly shaded grounds. The sound of a gentle breeze in the trees made a faint shimmering music. Getting laid here was no trick.

  I got my swim trunks on and grabbed a towel and headed for the nearest pool, which was the outdoor one. That’s where I found Adam.

  He did look like a college frat rat, with his shorter hair; his skinny pale body reddening, he was sitting in a deck chair, sipping a Coke, in sunglasses and racing trunks, chatting with a couple of bikinied college cuties, also in sunglasses.

  “Bill?” I said.

  “Jim?” he said, taking off his sunglasses to get a better look at me. He grinned, extended his hand. I took it, shook it, as he stood. “I haven’t seen you since spring break!”

  We’d agreed to be old high-school buddies from Peoria who had gone to separate colleges; I was attending the University of Iowa, he was at Michigan. We avoided using Illinois schools because Illinois kids were who we’d most likely run into here.

  Adam introduced me to the girls—I don’t remember their names, but one was a busty brunette Veronica, the other a flat-chested blond Betty. The sound of splashing and running screaming kids—though this was a couples hideaway, there was a share of families here, as well—kept the conversation to a blessed minimum. The girls were nursing majors. We were engineering majors. We all liked Credence Clearwater. We all hoped Nixon would get the book thrown at him. We were all going to the dance tonight.

  Across the way, Baxter Bennedict was sitting in a deck chair under an umbrella reading Jaws. Every page or so, he’d sip his martini; every ten pages or so, he’d wave a waitress in cowgirl vest and white plastic hot pants over for another one. His wife was swimming, her dark arms cutting the water like knives. It seemed methodical, an exercise work-out in the midst of a pool filled with water babies of various ages.

  When she pulled herself out of the water, her suit a stark, startling white against her almost burned black skin, she revealed a slender, rather tall figure; tight ass, high, full breasts. Her rather lined leathery face was the only tip-off to her age, and that had the blessing of a model’s beauty to get it by.

  She pulled off a white swim cap and unfurled a mane of dark, blond-tipped hair. Toweling herself off, she bent to kiss her husband on the cheek, but he only scowled at her. She stretched out on her colorful beach towel beside him, to further blacken herself.

  “Oooo,” said Veronica. “What’s that ring?”

  “That’s my lucky ring,” Adam said.

 
; That fucking skull ring of his! Had he been dumb enough to wear that? Yes.

  “Bought that at a Grateful Dead concert, didn’t you, Bill?” I asked.

  “Uh, yeah,” he said.

  “Ick,” said Betty. “I don’t like the Dead. Their hair is greasy. They’re so…druggie.”

  “Drugs aren’t so bad,” Veronica said boldly, thrusting out her admirably thrustworthy bosom.

  “Bill and I had our wild days back in high school,” I said. “You shoulda seen our hair—down to our asses, right Bill?”

  “Right.”

  “But we don’t do that anymore,” I said. “Kinda put that behind us.”

  “Well I for one don’t approve of drugs,” Betty said.

  “Don’t blame you,” I said.

  “Except for grass, of course,” she said.

  “Of course.”

  “And coke. Scientific studies prove coke isn’t bad for you.”

  “Well, you’re in nursing,” I said. “You’d know.”

  We made informal dates with the girls for the dance, and I wandered off with “Bill” to his cabin.

  “The skull ring was a nice touch,” I said.

  He frowned at me. “Fuck you—it’s my lucky ring!”

  A black gardener on a rider mower rumbled by us.

  “Now we’re really in trouble,” I said.

  He looked genuinely concerned. “What do you mean?”

  “A black cat crossed our path.”

  In Adam’s cabin, I sat on the brown, fake-leather sofa while he sat on the nubby yellow bedspread and spread his hands.

  “They actually do have a sorta pattern,” he said, “vacation or not.”

  Adam had arrived on Wednesday; the Bennedicts had arrived Thursday around two P.M., which was check-in time.

  “They drink and swim all afternoon,” Adam said, “and they go dining and dancing—and drinking—in the evening.”

  “What about mornings?”

  “Tennis. He doesn’t start drinking till lunch.”

  “Doesn’t she drink?”

  “Not as much. He’s an asshole. We’re doing the world a favor, here.”

  “How do you mean?”