Quarry E-Book

Max Allan Collins

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 301

Beschreibung

THIS IS IT—WHERE QUARRY'S STORY ALL BEGAN. AND ANOTHER LIFE ENDED. The assignment was simple: stake out the man's home and kill him. Easy work for a professional like Quarry. But when things go horribly wrong, Quarry finds himself with a new mission: learn who hired him, and make the bastard pay.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Acclaim for the Work of Max Allan Collins!

Also by Max Allan Collins

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

Afterword

Want More Quarry?

Also Available from Titan Books

Acclaim For the Work of MAX ALLAN COLLINS!

“Crime fiction aficionados are in for a treat…a neo-pulp noir classic.”

—Chicago Tribune

“No one can twist you through a maze with as much intensity and suspense as Max Allan Collins.”

—Clive Cussler

“Collins never misses a beat…All the stand-up pleasures of dime-store pulp with a beguiling level of complexity.”

—Booklist

“Collins has an outwardly artless style that conceals a great deal of art.”

—New York Times Book Review

“Max Allan Collins is the closest thing we have to a 21st-century Mickey Spillane and…will please any fan of old-school, hardboiled crime fiction.”

—This Week

“A suspenseful, wild night’s ride [from] one of the finest writers of crime fiction that the U.S. has produced.”

—Book Reporter

“This book is about as perfect a page turner as you’ll find.”

—Library Journal

“Bristling with suspense and sexuality, this book is a welcome addition to the Hard Case Crime library.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A total delight…fast, surprising, and well-told.”

—Deadly Pleasures

“Strong and compelling reading.”

—Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

“Max Allan Collins [is] like no other writer.”

—Andrew Vachss

“Collins breaks out a really good one, knocking over the hard-boiled competition (Parker and Leonard for sure, maybe even Puzo) with a one-two punch: a feisty storyline told bittersweet and wry…nice and taut…the book is unputdownable. Never done better.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Rippling with brutal violence and surprising sexuality…I savored every turn.”

—Bookgasm

“Masterful.”

—Jeffery Deaver

“Collins has a gift for creating low-life believable characters…a sharply focused action story that keeps the reader guessing till the slam-bang ending. A consummate thriller from one of the new masters of the genre.”

—Atlanta Journal Constitution

“For fans of the hardboiled crime novel…this is powerful and highly enjoyable reading, fast moving and very, very tough.”

—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Entertaining…full of colorful characters…a stirring conclusion.”

—Detroit Free Press

“Collins makes it sound as though it really happened.”

—New York Daily News

“An exceptional storyteller.”

—San Diego Union Tribune

“Nobody does it better than Max Allan Collins.”

—John Lutz

“Father,” I said.

The priest turned and looked at me. He got a little smile going and nodded and looked away.

Oh, he was nobody’s dummy this one, a real college graduate. He was well aware that his role as priest called for acknowledging the respects of the faithful. Brother.

“Father,” I said, and I let him see I was wearing gloves in August. His eyes figured it out.

“Oh God,” he said. Prayer-soft.

“Let’s go to the can.”

“Oh God.”

“All I want’s what you have. Nothing else is going to happen.”

“Oh God.”

“Stay calm, now, don’t say anything…okay. Okay. You settled down?”

He shivered once. Then he nodded.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll walk to the can and we’ll talk about it. Now get up. Now.”

He stood and I stood and I took his arm. We walked in front of the young couple and I said excuse me and smiled and they smiled back. I ushered him down the hall of empty offices and into the can.

I locked the door…

HARD CASE CRIME BOOKSBY MAX ALLAN COLLINS:

QUARRY

QUARRY’S LIST

QUARRY’S DEAL

QUARRY’S CUT

QUARRY’S VOTE

THE LAST QUARRY

THE FIRST QUARRY

QUARRY IN THE MIDDLE

QUARRY’S EX

THE WRONG QUARRY QUARRY’S CHOICE

DEADLY BELOVED

SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT

TWO FOR THE MONEY

THE CONSUMMATA (with Mickey Spillane)

A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK(HCC-S02)First Hard Case Crime edition: October 2015

Published by

Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark StreetLondon SE1 0UP

in collaboration with Winterfall LLC

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should know that it is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

Copyright © 1976 by Max Allan Collins.Originally titled THE BROKER.Afterword © 2010, 2015 by Max Allan Collins.

Cover painting by Robert McGinnis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

Print edition ISBN 978-1-78329-883-9E-book ISBN 978-1-78329-884-6

Design direction by Max Phillipswww.maxphillips.net

The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.

Visit us on the web at www.HardCaseCrime.com

To Donald E. Westlakethanks for writing

“Violence is as American as cherry pie.”H. RAP BROWN

“I had gotten a taste of death and found it palatable to the extent that I could never again eat the fruits of a normal civilization.”MICKEY SPILLANE

1

I closed my eyes and saw the face of the man I would kill. Back at the Howard Johnson’s, in the restroom, the Broker had showed me the photograph and asked me if I wanted to take it with me; I said no, just let me look at it for a minute. Now, ten minutes later, I thought of the face: a soft fleshy oval with a fat Jewish nose sticking out of it.

I opened my eyes and saw the complex of brown brick buildings up ahead. The main building was a pair of long two-stories that joined a central tower. From where I was walking I could just make out the words “Quad City Airport” on the tower. The afternoon was just trailing into dusk and they hadn’t turned on the lights yet.

Before I’d started across the grassy field between the Howard Johnson’s and the airport, the group of buildings with the several hangars looked good-size, no O’Hare, but good-size. By the time I approached the parking lot, the place looked smaller, as if I’d been walking toward a scale model. Tiny gardens of red and white and purple flowers were stuck here and there around the parking lot, lip service paid to nature in the midst of bricks and cement and jet fumes. The flowers didn’t belong here, and neither did I; I wanted to be in a T-shirt instead of a suit, and I wanted to be relaxing in the sun somewhere instead of on a job.

Especially this job, this pain-in-the-ass job.

Going in I almost got my briefcase knocked out of my hand as two guys in dark suits came rushing out the front door like their luggage had bombs inside and they were the Bomb Squad. Which was airport-typical: half the people in a hurry rushing around acting important; half the people in no hurry strolling around acting important. Assholes.

Inside was wine-color marble and blue-green plaster. There was a sweep to the way the building was put together that probably seemed futuristic in 1950. Now it was a fucking dinosaur. Like that elevator stuck in the middle of everything, housed in a cylinder with a staircase curved around, the cylinder covered in garish red plastic that had bubbled in places.

The first thing I did was check the downstairs cans. They were all pretty big (four stalls—three pay and a free) but even with the airport in a kind of lull right now, it was clear none of them would do. Then I climbed the staircase that circled the elevator and before I got started in on the upstairs cans, I saw him.

There was a priest and a young couple in their twenties and a soldier and a sailor and two old ladies and a businessman, all sitting around the indoor observation deck on the black-cushioned seats, looking out the big picture window at the runway. He was the priest.

All in black, of course, except for the white clerical collar. And a gray putty face, gray except for where some burst veins roadmapped his nose. He was wearing a black toupee that looked like one. He had on dark sunglasses.

A priest. With that Jewish nose and sunglasses at dusk, no less, he’s going to pass for a priest. With some guys you might just as well stand to the side and wait for them to kill themselves, they’re that stupid.

He didn’t catch me looking at him so I went on ahead and checked out the cans on this floor. I took in both halls that branched off the central tower building and found a can apiece and a lot of empty offices. One hall had activity in the end office, so I settled for the can down the other, completely deserted hall. That was fine because it was the best in the building, the other one on this floor being like the downstairs johns, big and designed with airport cattle in mind. Mine was for the paid help, with a single free one-seater but lots of room to stand and smoke. Also, every other can in the airport had a push door with no lock; this one had a firmly closing door with locking knob.

I went back downstairs without even glancing at the priest. I walked to the Hertz desk and asked the pretty blonde who did I see about luggage lockers. She said they’re just around the corner, sir, and I said, no, who’s in charge of them. She smiled and picked up her phone and dialed and a moment later a young guy in a blue blazer asked if he could help and I told him what I wanted and he said fine and took some money from me. We went to where two walls of bright steel luggage lockers faced each other tight and I put my briefcase in one of the compartments and he marked down the locker number and asked for a name and I gave him one. He said thanks and I said thanks and he went away.

With him gone, I reopened the locker, snapped the briefcase open and got out the pair of gray gloves and slipped them on. From the briefcase I took my folded raincoat, which I draped over my arm, and the nine-millimeter silenced automatic, which I gripped in my right hand, the draped raincoat covering my whole right forearm and hand. I shut the briefcase and sealed it back up in the locker.

Upstairs I walked over to the priest and sat next to him. He was looking out at the big silver jet, a 737 trimmed in United Airlines red-white-and-blue. The sky was slate-color with big brushstrokes of orange cloud. I wondered if he could see all that in those goddamn sunglasses.

“Father,” I said.

The priest turned and looked at me. He got a little smile going and nodded and looked away.

Oh, he was nobody’s dummy this one, a real college graduate. He was well aware that his role as priest called for acknowledging the respects of the faithful. Brother.

“Father,” I said, and I let him see I was wearing gloves in August. His eyes figured it out.

“Oh God,” he said. Prayer-soft.

“Let’s go to the can.”

“Oh God.”

“All I want’s what you have. Nothing else is going to happen.”

“Oh God.”

“Stay calm, now, don’t say anything…okay. Okay. You settled down?”

He shivered once. Then he nodded.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll walk to the can and we’ll talk about it. Now get up. Now.”

He stood and I stood and I took his arm. We walked in front of the young couple and I said excuse me and smiled and they smiled back. I ushered him down the hall of empty offices and into the can.

I locked the door.

He ran ahead and opened up the stall and puked in the stool, with the speed and ease of a runner passing a baton in a relay.

When he was through, I said, “Flush it and come out here.”

He did.

The whole damn room stank, now. Like the job itself stank. All I could think was, this isn’t what I do, this isn’t my style. What am I, some kind of shakedown artist? That goddamn Broker’s going to pay for this breach of contract. I work a certain kind of job, and shit like this isn’t part of it.

I said, “Where?”

He was shaking; his cheeks were trying to crawl off his face.

I repeated myself.

He said nothing. He did nothing. He looked at me out of glazed eyes and just stood there.

“Look,” I said. “Nobody’s going to do anything to you if you’re sensible. You took something from some people and they want it back. Return what you took, and you can catch your plane as long as from now on you stay away from these people and theirs. It’s that simple. Hell, you’ll just be out a job you’re out anyway.”

He said, “Please.”

“Stay cool, now. Look at it this way: you’re in possession of a valuable commodity. Hand that commodity over to me and you can walk out of here. An even swap.”

He patted his cheeks and tried to coax them to stay. His face over the clerical collar turned from ash gray to reddish gray. He was thinking about crying.

Shit.

“Look,” I said, “I don’t like to hurt people. I’m not into that at all. Why don’t you just cooperate?”

“It’s in my baggage.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I tell you it’s in my baggage.”

“I don’t believe you, I don’t believe you’d let this off your person.”

“I don’t care what you believe, it’s in my baggage, I checked my baggage already and it’s already been taken out to the plane.”

“If you’re telling the truth…”

“I am!”

“If you’re telling the truth, get out your rosary.”

“You said…”

“I said I’m not into hurting people. I’m not. It won’t hurt, Father, it’ll just be black. All of a sudden. Real black.”

“But, please, please, listen to me, I checked the bags…the stuff’s in my bags and that’s the truth, I’m sorry, Christ knows I’d give it to you and be done but I’m sorry.”

I let the automatic peek out from under the draped raincoat. “Is that still the truth?”

He closed his eyes and shook his head no.

“Where?” I said.

He started to take off his coat.

I brought the gun up and said, “Watch it, Father!”

“No, no! Wait!” He eased out of the coat and handed it toward me. Offered it. “It’s the coat. The lining. In the lining.”

“Get it out of the lining.”

“You, you said you’d let me catch my plane. I’m gonna miss my plane.”

“Maybe. Get it out of the lining.”

“It’s sewn in, uh, under, I mean…”

“Rip it out.”

He did. He tugged free the lining and reached inside the gutted coat and pulled out two plastic bags, stapled at their tops, a lump of white powder in each.

Inside my head, I shit my pants.

Okay, Broker. Is this what you got me into? Okay. He gave me the bags and I slipped them in my suitcoat pocket.

“What now?” he said.

“Throw that lining away,” I said.

He balled it up and shoved it into the canister for used paper towels. I motioned to him to put the coat back on and he did.

“Well?” he said.

“You can go,” I said. “But not till I’m gone. I’m going to have to knock you out.”

“My, my plane! You said…but now I’ll miss my plane…”

“You’re under the gun and you worry about your plane. Christ. Just be thankful you’re getting out of this with your ass in one piece.”

“Please, I’ll wait in here, I can wait ten minutes and still make it.”

I rubbed my chin. “Suppose I could tie you up and by the time you got loose I’d be gone…”

“Sure, sure, you could do that! Here, I’ll untie my shoelaces, you can use that to tie me.”

“No, never mind,” I said. “I got some rope in my pocket.”

“Oh. Oh well, fine.”

“First you get in that stall there.”

“In there?”

“In there.”

“It stinks in there.”

“That’s because you puked.” Christ, this guy.

He opened the stall.

“Put the seat down,” I said.

He did.

“Now sit.” He did.

“Put your hands together.”

As he was doing that, I shot him in the chest.

2

The water was all around me and cold. I bobbed back up to the surface, grabbed a breath, and breast-stroked over to the side of the pool, pulled myself up and out, and then went to the board and dove back in.

Five minutes later I stood in the shallow and the water lapped up against my thighs and I heard a voice say, “So here you are.”

I looked up and she was in a black bikini. She was very tan, brown-black tan, and she was slender, with hardly any breasts and a ribby rib cage but if she’d been facing the other way I would’ve been reminded what a fine round little ass she had.

“Didn’t think I’d be seeing you again,” she said, “didn’t think you’d still be around.”

“Come on in,” I said.

“No. You come out. I’m not getting my hair wet, I just want some air.”

I climbed out and went after my towel. When I was dry I looked around and saw she’d taken a lounge chair well back from the pool’s edge to keep her from getting wet if some clown like me dove in. She leaned back, her longish black hair hanging away from her face, and it was like she was sunbathing only she was just sitting there staring up at the clouds and the moon. I joined her, pulling up another lounge chair and sitting.

“I fell asleep,” she said.

“You were asleep when I left,” I said.

“Were you coming back?”

“Sure.”

“I didn’t figure on seeing you. I thought it was hit and run.”

“No. I slept there with you a little, then came out for a swim.”

“Where’d you change?”

“Went up to my room for my trunks. When’s your husband going to be back?”

“Not till late. He’ll be interviewing all evening.”

I didn’t say anything for a while. I was trying to remember her name. Helen, I think she said it was.

“How’s the water?” she said.

“Cold. Fine.”

“You refreshed?”

“Sure. You rested up?”

“Sure. Want to go in and fuck?”

“Why not?”

I followed her from the swimming area across some grass to the little cement patio to her room and then in the sliding glass doors. My room was up on the second floor and didn’t have such convenient pool access. She slid shut the window-door behind us and drew the curtain. She undid the bikini bra-top and let it drop; her breasts were small and her nipples large and dark, so with all that tan only a small circle of white separated dark texture from dark. It was a sexy effect. She lowered her bikini bottoms and she was dark and hairy down there against white skin. All this made up for her skinniness. I got my trunks off and we lay on the bed.

She was all technique and no passion, like she lost that part of it somewhere along the line and spent lots of time since looking for it. She told me her husband hired people for industry and went around interviewing applicants all the time and when he discovered she was cheating while he was off on business, he started taking her along. The husband always did his interviews at downtown hotels wherever they happened to be, but she insisted that they stay at motels so she could be near pool and sunshine. That was as far as her explanation went, but the rest was obvious enough: while her husband interviewed at the downtown hotel, she picked up traveling salesmen and the like at the motel, mostly by sitting around the pool in her black bikini.

I had got to the Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge about an hour before I was supposed to meet the Broker in the restaurant part, so I checked in and managed to get picked up and laid by Helen or whatever-her-name-was before I was due to confab with Broker. Well, I did end up a little late but how was I to know the Broker had something last-minute urgent on his mind. I mean, he never pulled anything like that on me before.

And never again. I was glad I’d thought to arrange for a month rental on one of those lockers at the airport.

I figured Broker might be putting me onto something big and maybe I’d want to cache some or all of whatever it was for myself. So one of the lockers, which was good for only two days, had one of the little plastic bags of white powder in it; and another locker, good for a whole month, had the other. And I had both keys and Broker by the balls.

Of course this thing with Helen or whoever had worked out pretty nice, since the bitch provided me an alibi of sorts, not that I’d use it. As far as she knew, I’d screwed her, slept a while, then gone out for a swim. She didn’t know I stepped out to give last rites to a priest.

She sat up in bed, leaned back against the headboard and got a cigarette going. Her breasts were droopy and didn’t look so sexy anymore and I saw she had some lines in her face and all of a sudden she looked like a middle-aged housewife who slept around a lot, which is what she was. After a while it occurred to her she ought to offer me a cigarette too, and I told her I didn’t use them.

“Clean liver, huh?”

“That shit can kill you,” I said, fanning her smoke out of my face. “But it’s your life, do what you want.”

“You like to play at being hard, don’t you.”

“You don’t seem to mind me hard.”

She grinned and reached a hand down and played with me but neither it nor I was having any.

So she gave up and a few seconds went by and she said, “I got some booze, you thirsty?”

I was thinking that one over when outside, sirens cut the air.

“What the hell was that?” she said.

“Sirens.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought it was. Sounded like they went by here. Something happen at the airport, you suppose?”

“Somebody had a heart attack maybe.”

“Yeah. Ambulance, then, not police.”

“Who knows.”

“Yeah. Hey, should I build us some drinks or not?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Come on.”

“Look,” I said, “this has been pleasant, but I got no desire to do a number with your husband should he come back early or something. I’ll just put my trunks on and go swimming again, okay?”

“Aw, stick around.”

“No thanks.”

“Prick.”

I shrugged and got my trunks on and slid the glass door open. I strolled out to the pool and walked over to the diving board. Up on the board I bounced and looked across the grassy field toward the airport. It was all lit up, but no more than usual, and I couldn’t make out whether there were any ambulance or cop car lights up there. Not that it mattered. I dove in. The water was cold.

3

The best part of the meal was the skillet of mushrooms. The Chablis was okay, but I don’t know enough about wine to tell good from bad. But I do know mushrooms, I’ve gone picking them before, and know enough to take the sponge and leave the button top be. You never can tell about button top, unless you get commercial grown. Like these were. Big and round as half dollars and plump and juicy and fine.

The steak was just fair, being grainy like maybe it was injected with something to make it tender while it was still a cow, but you got to remember too that I was full on bread and salad and mushrooms before I even got to the steak. Finishing the wine seemed a good top priority, and the last of it was just trickling down my throat when the Broker and his wife walked past my table, neither one of them showing a trace of recognition.

Which made sense with the wife, since she never saw me before. She was an aristocratic-looking, icy ice-blonde of maybe thirty-five who probably came out of one of those exclusive girl’s schools with a name like a winter resort, where a nun or some other kind of old maid had taught her how to be a proper little glacier.

She was good-looking enough to make you wonder if Broker picked her like he would any front or maybe there was some sex or love in it somewhere.

A girl in a short-skirted barmaid outfit seated the Broker and his missus in a secluded corner where two wine-rack walls met. She took their drink order and then a kid in a rust-color puffy-sleeve cavalier shirt waited on them. The outfits fitted in with the glorified old-English pub atmosphere of the place: high ceiling, rough wood, a central roaring fireplace (gas), and huge wrought-iron chandeliers above pouring out coppery semilight from candles (electric).

I poked at my steak and waited for Broker to make a move. He made an effort not to look my way. I stared at him. At his brown double-knit pinstripe suit. At his distinguished white hair. At the prissy expression under the wispy mustache.

He stood, excused himself with his wife, who didn’t seem to notice he was getting up to go. He was a tall man, six-two and well-built, but he walked like he was gelded.

I watched him go past me and round the fireplace and head toward the restrooms. I waited a minute or two—I was willing to play his game that far—and then went after him.

He was washing his hands. A guy was taking a leak and one of the crappers was occupied. I walked over to one of the urinals and got busy.

After a while everybody left, except Broker and me, and I joined him at the sinks. Broker stopped washing his hands, but he kept the water running.

“Well?” he said.

“Don’t ever try pulling anything like this on me again, Broker.”

“How did it go?”

“It went.”

“Did you get what he had?”

I looked at the Broker’s double-knit brown suit. He was wearing a blue shirt and a white tie and his cheeks were rosy. He was fifty and he looked forty and his face was long and fleshy without many lines.

“I got it,” I said.

Somebody came in and Broker started washing his hands again. I joined him. The guy did what he had to and left.

“Seems like when I work with you,” I said, “all my time’s spent in toilets.”

“Is that where you took care of him? In a restroom?”

“No. I walked him out to the runway and threw him in front of a Boeing.”

A little dark guy with a little dark son came in and stood at the urinals, like a big salt shaker and a smaller pepper. When they were done they seemed to want to wash their hands, but Broker and me had the sink concession, so the pair gave up quick and left.

“What are you upset about, Quarry?”

“Horse.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about H, Broker. Smack. Heroin, horse, shit, horseshit!”

“Will you please keep your voice down?”

“Christ, Broker. That’s all I need is to get found with a bundle of that on me. I got enough fucking risk going for me as it is.”

“You disappoint me, Quarry.”

“I disappoint you.”

“You were told your man had a valuable package which did not belong to him. You weren’t told to examine the contents of the package.”

“It was a lump of snow in a plastic bag, Broker, it didn’t take a goddamn chemist to tell.”

“Since when are you so God almighty precautious? You complain of risk. Yet you use the same gun from job to job, don’t you? That would seem a dangerous habit to me.”

“That is one thing. This other today is something else.”

“I’m not going to stand here and argue with you, Quarry. My hands are getting puckered from washing.”

“Your hands are getting puckered. My ass is getting puckered! Look, I work one kind of thing, and I work it one kind of way, you know that better than anyone else, but what do you do? You bring me in for a half-ass deal like this one.”

“This was last minute, Quarry, I called you in for something else entirely, and…”

“I don’t like getting brought to town for one job and doing another. I don’t like playing courier with a load of H. You want to play with smack, get a pusher. And this humiliating people, I got no stomach for that. You got somebody who’s going to die, fine, I’ll be the means. You want strong-arm, get a goon.”

“Are you quite finished?”

“Don’t pull that pompous bullshit tone on me, Broker. I’ve known you too long. I know what you are.”

“If you don’t like working for me, Quarry, why don’t you just quit?”

“What? What did you say?”

“I said if you don’t like working for me you can always quit.”

“Now that tears it. Now that really fucking tears it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You work for me, Broker, don’t forget that…I work for you like Richard Burton works for his agent.”

Broker sighed. “Where’s the stuff, Quarry?”

“Never do this to me again, Broker. Understand? Nothing else like this. Or you’re going to see the side of this business you don’t like seeing.”

“Where’s the stuff?”

“Do you get my meaning, Broker?”

“Yes. Where’s the stuff?”

“Where’s my money?”

Broker turned off the faucet and wiped his hands on a paper towel. He took an envelope from his inside jacket pocket. He handed the envelope to me and I looked inside: three thousand in hundreds. I put the envelope in my inside pocket.

“I’m still at the Howard Johnson’s,” I said. “You come talk to me there. You know what room I’m in. I’m sick of using cans for my office.”

“What?”

“And don’t send anybody around to see me, Broker, or I’ll do bad things to them. You come. We got talking to do.”

“Don’t play with me, Quarry.”

“Who’s playing? Better zip up, Broker.”

“Quarry…”

I dried my hands and left.

4

I suppose at this point I should be filling you in on my background and telling you how I got into such a specialized line of work. Don’t count on it. There are two things you won’t get from me and that’s details about my past and my real name. The closest you’ll get to a name is Quarry, which is an alias suggested by the Broker and I always kind of liked it, as aliases go. Or I did until I asked Broker why he suggested an offbeat name like that one and he chuckled and said, “Know what a quarry is, don’t you? It’s rock and it’s hollowed out.” Broker isn’t known for his sense of humor.

I will sketch in some of my background, in case you feel the need to try to understand me. I’m a veteran of the Vietnam fuckup, which was where I learned about the meaninglessness of life and death, though the point wasn’t really driven home until I arrived back in the states and found my wife shacked up with a guy named Williams who had a bungalow in La Mirada and a job in a garage. I was going to shoot the son of a bitch, but waited till I cooled down enough to think rationally. Then I went to his house where he was in his driveway on his back working under his car and kicked the jack out…once in a movie I heard death referred to as “the big crushout,” and for that poor bastard the phrase couldn’t have been more apropos. I didn’t shoot my wife, or drop a car on her either. I just divorced her. Or rather she divorced me.

Of course no court in the world would have touched me, a cuckolded serviceman fresh home from the fight. But no one wanted me for an overnight house guest either. I couldn’t find work, even though I was a fully qualified mechanic…and it wasn’t like there weren’t any openings. The garage where Williams worked could’ve used a man, that was for sure.

The only relative I had who would even look me in the face was my old man, who came out to L.A. to see me after I had my little marital problem. He told me not to come home, said I’d made my stepmother nervous even before I started murdering people and God only knew how I’d affect her now. I never did ask the old man which murders he was talking about, the dozen or so in Vietnam or the one in California.

Since I couldn’t go home to Ohio with my father, I just hung around L.A. for a month or so, spending my money as fast as I could, going to movies during the days and bars at night. That got old fast. California got old fast. It was where I was stationed before going overseas and was where I fell into the star-crossed romance that ended in marriage, among other things, with that brown-haired bitch whose face is fuzzy in my memory now.

I don’t know how the Broker got a line on me. Maybe it’s like pro football teams recruiting players; maybe Broker sends scouts around to bars to look for guys with faces full of no morality. Or maybe Broker and his people pay attention to certain of us who get back from service and have problems. I know mine was in the papers and got enough publicity to keep me from getting jobs when I applied. You know I never did figure out how everybody could be so goddamn back-patting sympathetic and still not be willing to risk giving me a job.

Everybody but Broker. He had a job for me. I don’t remember the conversation. I know it was elliptical. You don’t come right out and ask somebody if he’d like to kill people for money. Even Uncle Sugar is more subtle than that.

Anyway, Broker showed up one day at what could best be described as my fleabag one-room apartment in L.A. and somehow or other got across to me what he was talking about…that I could make top dollar continuing to do what I had just finished doing for peanuts and, in one case, for free. Killing people, that is.

I accepted without hesitation. My eager but unemotional “yes” must’ve nearly scared the Broker off. He told me later he was usually wary of a fast yes; he didn’t want anyone working with him who might be the type who drooled for a chance to shoot anything that breathed: madmen don’t make the world’s most reliable, efficient employees. But my lack of emotion counterbalanced any such fear Broker might’ve harbored, especially on top of the thorough researching he’d had done on me.

Why did I say yes? Why did I say yes so quickly? I guess I was hungry for the chance to do something, anything, especially a high-paying something or anything. Though I’d learned in Nam to accept life and death as meaningless, I’d also learned the importance of survival. Maybe that’s inconsistent, holding life and death void of meaning while valuing survival. All I know is it’s how I think and feel and live, so I don’t care.