QUARRY (no first name) is a laconic hit man who appears in thirteen books, beginning with Quarry (also published as The Broker) in 1976, every one of which is highly readable and less predictable than one might expect of a series of adventures about a man hired to kill people.
After he returns from the Vietnam War, Quarry finds his wife has been cheating on him. When he locates the guy, tinkering under his car, Quarry kicks the jack out, crushing him. Unhappy and largely unemployable, Quarry is hired by a man known only as the Broker to be a contract killer. He is careful, methodical, and conscience-free, regarding the hits as nothing more than jobs. “A paid assassin isn’t a killer, really,” he says. “He’s a weapon. Someone has already decided someone else is going to die, before the paid assassin is even in the picture, let alone on the scene. A paid assassin is no more a killer than a nine millimeter automatic or a bludgeon.”
Although in a successful series, Quarry is not the best-known character created by the versatile Max Allan Collins (1948– ), an honor that falls to Nate Heller, a Chicago private eye whose cases were mainly set in the 1930s and 1940s. Many involve famous people of the era, including Al Capone, Frank Nitta, and Eliot Ness in the first book, True Detective (1983), as well as such famous cases as the kidnapping of Charles and Anne Lindbergh’s baby in Stolen Away (1991), the disappearance of Amelia Earhart in Flying Blind (1998), and the Black Dahlia murder in Angel in Black (2001).
Collins is also the author of the graphic novel Road to Perdition (1998), the basis for the 2002 Tom Hanks film; numerous movie and television tie-in novels; and the Dick Tracy comic strip after Chester Gould retired. He coauthored many books and stories with Mickey Spillane, completing works that were left unfinished when Spillane died.
“Quarry’s Luck” was originally published in Blue Motel (Stone Mountain, Georgia, White Wolf, 1994); it was first collected in Quarry’s Greatest Hits (Unity, Maine, Five Star, 2003).
ONCE UPON A TIME, I killed people for a living.
Now, as I sit in my living quarters looking out at Sylvan Lake, its gently rippling gray-blue surface alive with sunlight, the scent and sight of pines soothing me, I seldom think of those years. With the exception of the occasional memoirs I’ve penned, I have never been very reflective. What’s done is done. What’s over is over.
But occasionally someone or something I see stirs a memory. In the summer, when Sylvan Lodge (of which I’ve been manager for several years now) is hopping with guests, I now and then see a cute blue-eyed blond college girl, and I think of Linda, my late wife. I’d retired from the contract murder profession, lounging on a cottage on a lake not unlike this one, when my past had come looking for me and Linda became a casualty.
What I’d learned from that was two things: the past is not something disconnected from the present—you can’t write off old debts or old enemies (whereas, oddly, friends you can completely forget); and not to enter into long-term relationships.
Linda hadn’t been a very smart human being, but she was pleasant company and she loved me, and I wouldn’t want to cause somebody like her to die again. You know—an innocent.
After all, when I was taking contracts through the man I knew as the Broker, I was dispatching the guilty. I had no idea what these people were guilty of, but it stood to reason that they were guilty of something, or somebody wouldn’t have decided they should be dead.
A paid assassin isn’t a killer, really. He’s a weapon. Someone has already decided someone else is going to die, before the paid assassin is even in the picture, let alone on the scene. A paid assassin is no more a killer than a nine millimeter automatic or a bludgeon. Somebody has to pick up a weapon, to use it.
Anyway, that was my rationalization back in the seventies, when I was a human weapon for hire. I never took pleasure from the job—just money. And when the time came, I got out of it.
So, a few years ago, after Linda’s death, and after I killed the fuckers responsible, I did not allow myself to get pulled back into that profession. I was too old, too tired, my reflexes were not all that good. A friend I ran into, by chance, needed my only other expertise—I had operated a small resort in Wisconsin with Linda—and I now manage Sylvan Lodge.
Something I saw recently—something quite outrageous really, even considering that I have in my time witnessed human behavior of the vilest sort—stirred a distant memory.
The indoor swimming pool with hot tub is a short jog across the road from my two-room apartment in the central lodge building (don’t feel sorry for me: it’s a bedroom and spacious living room with kitchenette, plus two baths, with a deck looking out on my storybook view of the lake). We close the pool room at ten P.M., and sometimes I take the keys over and open the place up for a solitary midnight swim.
I was doing that—actually, I’d finished my swim and was letting the hot tub’s jet streams have at my chronically sore lower back—when somebody came knocking at the glass doors.
It was a male figure—portly—and a female figure—slender, shapely, both wrapped in towels. That was all I could see of them through the glass; the lights were off outside.
Sighing, I climbed out of the hot tub, wrapped a towel around myself, and unlocked the glass door and slid it open just enough to deal with these two.
“We want a swim!” the man said. He was probably fifty-five, with a booze-mottled face and a brown toupee that squatted on his round head like a slumbering gopher.
Next to him, the blonde of twenty-something, with huge blue eyes and huge big boobs (her towel, thankfully, was tied around her waist), stood almost behind the man. She looked meek. Even embarrassed.
“Mr. Davis,” I said, cordial enough, “it’s after hours.”
“Fuck that! You’re in here, aren’t you?”
“I’m the manager. I sneak a little time in for myself, after closing, after the guests have had their fun.”
He put his hand on my bare chest. “Well, we’re guests, and we want to have some fun, too!”
His breath was ninety proof.
I removed his hand. Bending the fingers back a little in the process.
He winced, and started to say something, but I said, “I’m sorry. It’s the lodge policy. My apologies to you and your wife.”
Bloodshot eyes widened in the face, and he began to say something, but stopped short. He tucked his tail between his legs (and his towel), and took the girl by the arm, roughly, saying, “Come on, baby. We don’t need this horseshit.”
The blonde looked back at me and gave me a crinkly little chagrined grin, and I smiled back at her, locked the glass door, and climbed back in the hot tub to cool off.
“Asshole,” I said. It echoed in the high-ceilinged steamy room. “Fucking asshole!” I said louder, just because I could, and the echo was enjoyable.
He hadn’t tucked towel ’tween his legs because I’d bent his fingers back: he’d done it because I mentioned his wife, who we both knew the little blond bimbo wasn’t.
That was because (and here’s the outrageous part) he’d been here last month—to this very same resort—with another very attractive blonde, but one about forty, maybe forty-five, who was indeed, and in fact, his lawful wedded wife.
We had guys who came to Sylvan Lodge with their families; we had guys who came with just their wives; and we had guys who came with what used to be called in olden times their mistresses. But we seldom had a son of a bitch so fucking bold as to bring his wife one week, and his mistress the next, to the same goddamn motel, which is what Sylvan Lodge, after all, let’s face it, is a glorified version of.
As I enjoyed the jet stream on my low back, I smiled and then frowned, as the memory stirred…Christ, I’d forgotten about that! You’d think that Sylvan Lodge itself would’ve jogged my memory. But it hadn’t.
Even though the memory in question was of one of my earliest jobs, which took place at a resort not terribly unlike this one….
We met off Interstate 80, at a truck stop outside of the Quad Cities. It was late—almost midnight—a hot, muggy June night; my black T-shirt was sticking to me. My blue jeans, too.
The Broker had taken a booth in back; the restaurant wasn’t particularly busy, except for an area designated for truckers. But it had the war-zone look of a rush hour just past; it was a blindingly white but not terribly clean-looking place and the jukebox—wailing “I Shot the Sheriff” at the moment—combated the clatter of dishes being bused.
Sitting with the Broker was an oval-faced, bright-eyed kid of about twenty-three (which at the time was about my age, too) who wore a Doobie Brothers T-shirt and had shoulder-length brown hair. Mine was cut short—not soldier-cut, but businessman short.
“Quarry,” the Broker said, in his melodious baritone; he gestured with an open hand. “How good to see you. Sit down.” His smile was faint under the wispy mustache, but there was a fatherly air to his manner.
He was trying to look casual in a yellow Ban-Lon shirt and golf slacks; he had white, styled hair and a long face that managed to look both fleshy and largely unlined. He was a solid-looking man, fairly tall—he looked like a captain of industry, which he was in a way. I took him for fifty, but that was just a guess.
“This is Adam,” the Broker said.
“How are you doin’, man?” Adam said, and grinned, and half-rose; he seemed a little nervous, and in the process—before I’d even had a chance to decide whether to take the hand he offered or not—overturned a salt shaker, which sent him into a minor tizzy.
“Damn!” Adam said, forgetting about the handshake. “I hate fuckin’ bad luck!” He tossed some salt over either shoulder, then grinned at me and said, “I’m afraid I’m one superstitious motherfucker.”
“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 season 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?”
He shrugged; he looked very different in his short hair. “He’s kind of abusive. He don’t yell at her, but just looking at them, you can see him glaring at her all the time, real ugly. Saying things that hurt her.”
“She doesn’t stand up to him?”
He shook his head, no. “They’re very one-sided arguments. He either sits there and ignores her or he’s giving her foul looks and it looks like he’s chewing her out or something.”
“Sounds like a sweet guy.”
“After the drinking and dining and dancing, they head to the bar. Both nights so far, she’s gone off to bed around eleven and he’s stayed and shut the joint down.”
“Good. That means he’s alone when he walks back to their cabin.”
Adam nodded. “But this place is crawlin’ with people.”
“Not at two in the morning. Most of these people are sleeping or fucking by then.”
“Maybe so. He’s got a fancy watch, some heavy gold jewelry.”
“Well that’s very good. Now we got ourselves a motive.”
“But she’s the one with jewels.” He whistled. “You should see the rocks hanging off that dame.”
“Well, we aren’t interested in those.”
“What about the stuff you steal off him? Just toss it somewhere?”
“Hell, no! Broker’ll have it fenced for us. A little extra dough for our trouble.”
He grinned. “Great. This is easy money. Vacation with pay.”
“Don’t ever think that…don’t ever let your guard down.”
“I know that,” he said defensively.
“It’s unlucky to think that way,” I said, and knocked on wood. Real wood.
We met up with Betty and Veronica at the dance; I took Betty because Adam was into knockers and Veronica had them. Betty was pleasant company, but I wasn’t listening to her babble. I was keeping an eye on the Bennedicts, who were seated at a corner table under a Buffalo head.
He really was an asshole. You could tell, by the way he sneered at her and spit sentences out at her, that he’d spent a lifetime—or at least a marriage—making her miserable. His hatred for her was something you could see as well as sense, like steam over asphalt. She was taking it placidly. Cool as Cher while Sonny prattled on.
But I had a hunch she usually took it more personally. Right now she could be placid: she knew the son of a bitch was going to die this weekend.
“Did you ever do Lauderdale?” Betty was saying. “I got so drunk there….”
The band was playing “Crazy” and a decent girl singer was doing a respectable Patsy Cline. What a great song.
I said, “I won a chug-a-lug contest at Boonie’s in ’72.”
Betty was impressed. “Were you even in college then?”
“No. I had a hell of a fake I.D., though.”
“Bitchen!”
Around eleven, the band took a break and we walked the girls to their cabins, hand in hand, like high school sweethearts. Gas lanterns on poles scorched the night orangely; a half-moon threw some silvery light on us, too. Adam disappeared around the side of the cabin with Veronica and I stood and watched Betty beam at me and rock girlishly on her heels. She smelled of perfume and beer, which mingled with the scent of pines; it was more pleasant than it sounds.
She was making with the dimples. “You’re so nice.”
“Well thanks.”
“And I’m a good judge of character.”
“I bet you are.”
Then she put her arms around me and pressed her slim frame to me and put her tongue half-way down my throat.
She pulled herself away and smiled coquetishly and said, “That’s all you get tonight. See you tomorrow.”
As if on cue, Veronica appeared with her lipstick mussed up and her sweater askew.
“Good night, boys,” Veronica said, and they slipped inside, giggling like the school girls they were.
“Fuck,” Adam said, scowling. “All I got was a little bare tit.”
“Not so little.”
“I thought I was gonna get laid.”
I shrugged. “Instead you got screwed.”
We walked. We passed a cabin that was getting some remodeling and repairs; I’d noticed it earlier. A ladder was leaned up against the side, for some re-roofing. Adam made a wide circle around the ladder. I walked under it just to watch him squirm.
When I fell back in step with him, he said, “You gonna do the hit tonight?”
“No.”
“Bar closes at midnight on Sundays. Gonna do it then?”
“Yes.”
He sighed. “Good.”
We walked, and it was the place where one path went toward my cabin, and another toward his.
“Well,” he said, “maybe I’ll get lucky tomorrow night.”
“No pick-ups the night of the hit. I need back-up more than either of us needs an alibi, or an easy fuck, either.”
“Oh. Of course. You’re right. Sorry. ‘Night.”
“ ’Night, Bill.”
Then I went back and picked up the waitress cowgirl and took her to my cabin; she had some dope in her purse, and I smoked a little with her, just to be nice, and apologized for not having a rubber, and she said, Don’t sweat it, pardner, I’m on the pill, and she rode me in her cowboy boots until my dick said yahoo.
The next morning I had breakfast in the cafe with Adam and he seemed preoccupied as I ate my scrambled eggs and bacon, and he poked at his French toast.
“Bill,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m worried.”
“What about?”
We were seated in a rough-wood booth and had plenty of privacy; we kept our voices down. Our conversation, after all, wasn’t really proper breakfast conversation.
“I don’t think you should hit him like that.”
“Like what?”
He frowned. “On his way back to his cabin after the bar closes.”
“Oh? Why?”
“He might not be drunk enough. Bar closes early Sunday night, remember? ”
“Jesus,” I said. “The fucker starts drinking at noon. What more do you want?”
“But there could be people around.”
“At midnight?”
“It’s a resort. People get romantic at resorts. Moonlight strolls…”
“You got a better idea?”
He nodded. “Do it in his room. Take the wife’s jewels and it’s a robbery got out of hand. In and out. No fuss, no muss.”
“Are you high? What about the wife?”
“She won’t be there.”
“What are you talking about?”
He started gesturing, earnestly. “She gets worried about him, see. It’s midnight, and she goes looking for him. While she’s gone, he gets back, flops on the bed, you come in, bing bang boom.”
I just looked at him. “Are you psychic now? How do we know she’ll do that?”
He swallowed; took a nibble at a forkful of syrup-dripping French toast. Smiled kind of nervously.
“She told me so,” he said.
We were walking now. The sun was filtering through the trees and birds were chirping and the sounds of children laughing wafted through the air.
“Are you fucking nuts? Making contact with the client?”
“Quarry—she contacted me! I swear!”
“Then she’s fucking nuts. Jesus!” I sat on a bench by a flower bed. “It’s off. I’m calling the Broker. It’s over.”
“Listen to me! Listen. She was waiting for me at my cabin last night. After we struck out with the college girls? She was fuckin’ waitin’ for me! She told me she knew who I was.”
“How did she know that?”
“She said she saw me watching them. She figured it out. She guessed.”
“And, of course, you confirmed her suspicions.”
He swallowed. “Yeah.”
“You dumb-ass dickhead. Who said it first?”
“Who said what first?”
“Who mentioned ‘killing.’ Who mentioned ‘murder.’ ”
His cheek twitched. “Well…me, I guess. She kept saying she knew why I was here. And then she said, I’m why you’re here. I hired you.”
“And you copped to it. God. I’m on the next bus.”
“Quarry! Listen…this is better this way. This is much better.”
“What did she do, fuck you?”
He blanched; looked at his feet.
“Oh God,” I said. “You did get lucky last night. Fuck. You fucked the client. Did you tell her there were two of us?”
“No.”
“She’s seen us together.”
“I told her you’re just a guy I latched onto here to look less conspicuous.”
“Did she buy it?”
“Why shouldn’t she? I say we scrap Plan A and move to Plan B. It’s better.”
“Plan B being…?”
“Quarry, she’s going to leave the door unlocked. She’ll wait for him to get back from the bar, and when he’s asleep, she’ll unlock the door, go out and pretend to be looking for him, and come back and find him dead, and her jewels gone. Help-police-I-been-robbed-my-husband’s-been-shot. You know.”
“She’s being pretty fucking helpful, you ask me.”
His face clenched like a fist. “The bastard has beat her for years. And he’s got a girl friend a third his age. He’s been threatening to divorce her, and since they signed a pre-marital agreement, she gets jackshit, if they divorce. The bastard.”
“Quite a sob story.”
“I told you: we’re doing the world a favor. And now she’s doing us one. Why shoot him right out in the open, when we can walk in his room and do it? You got to stick this out, Quarry. Shit, man, it’s five grand apiece, and change!”
I thought about it.
“Quarry?”
I’d been thinking a long time.
“Okay,” I said. “Give her the high sign. We’ll do it her way.”
The Bar W Bar was a cozy rustic room decorated with framed photos of movie cowboys from Ken Maynard to John Wayne, from Audie Murphy to the Man with No Name. On a brown mock-leather stool up at the bar, Baxter Bennedict sat, a thin handsome drunk in a pale blue polyester sportcoat and pale yellow Ban-Lon sportshirt, gulping martinis and telling anyone who’d listen his sad story.
I didn’t sit near enough to be part of the conversation, but I could hear him.
“Milking me fucking dry,” he was saying. “You’d think with sixteen goddamn locations, I’d be sitting pretty. I was the first guy in the Chicago area to offer a paint job under thirty dollars—$29.95! That’s a good fucking deal—isn’t it?”
The bartender—a young fellow in a buckskin vest, polishing a glass—nodded sympathetically.
“Now this competition. Killing me. What the fuck kind of paint job can you get for $19.99? Will you answer me that one? And now that bitch has the nerve…”
Now he was muttering. The bartender began to move away, but Baxter started in again.
“She wants me to sell! My life’s work. Started from nothing. And she wants me to sell! Pitiful fucking money they offered. Pitiful…”
“Last call, Mr. Bennedict,” the bartender said. Then he repeated it, louder, without the “Mr. Bennedict.” The place was only moderately busy. A few couples. A solitary drinker or two. The Wistful Wagon Lodge had emptied out, largely, this afternoon—even Betty and Veronica were gone. Sunday. People had to go to work tomorrow. Except, of course, for those who owned their own businesses, like Baxter here.
Or had unusual professions, like mine.
I waited until the slender figure had stumbled half-way home before I approached him. No one was around. The nearest cabin was dark.
“Mr. Bennedict,” I said.
“Yeah?” He turned, trying to focus his bleary eyes.
“I couldn’t help but hear what you said. I think I have a solution for your problems.”
“Yeah?” He grinned. “And what the hell would that be?”
He walked, on the unsteadiest of legs, up to me.
I showed him the nine millimeter with its bulky sound suppresser. It probably looked like a ray gun to him.
“Fuck! What is this, a fucking hold-up?”
“Yes. Keep your voice down or it’ll turn into a fucking homicide. Got me?”
That turned him sober. “Got you. What do you want?”
“What do you think? Your watch and your rings.”
He smirked disgustedly and removed them; handed them over.
“Now your sports coat.”
“My what?”
“Your sports coat. I just can’t get enough polyester.”
He snorted a laugh. “You’re out of your gourd, pal.”
He slipped off the sports coat and handed it out toward me with two fingers; he was weaving a little, smirking drunkenly.
I took the coat with my left hand, and the silenced nine millimeter went thup thup thup; three small, brilliant blossoms of red appeared on his light yellow Ban-Lon. He was dead before he had time to think about it.
I dragged his body behind a clump of trees and left him there, his worries behind him.
I watched from behind a tree as Bernice Bennedict slipped out of their cabin; she was wearing a dark halter top and dark slacks that almost blended with her burnt-black skin, making a wraith of her. She had a big white handbag on a shoulder strap. She was so dark the white bag seemed to float in space as she headed toward the lodge.
Only she stopped and found her own tree to duck behind. I smiled to myself.
Then, wearing the pale blue polyester sports coat, I entered their cabin, through the door she’d left open. The room was completely dark but for some minor filtering in of light through curtained windows. I quickly arranged some pillows under sheets and covers, to create the impression of a person in the bed.
And I called Adam’s cabin.
“Hey, Bill,” I said. “It’s Jim.”
His voice was breathless. “Is it done?”
“No. I got cornered coming out of the bar by that waitress I was out with last night. She latched onto me—she’s in my john.”
“What, are you in your room?”
“Yeah. I saw Bennedict leave the bar at midnight, and his wife passed us, heading for the lodge, just minutes ago. You’ve got a clear shot at him.”
“What? Me? I’m the fucking lookout!”
“Tonight’s the night and we go to Plan C.”
“I didn’t know there was a Plan C.”
“Listen, asshole—it was you who wanted to switch plans. You’ve got a piece, don’t you?”
“Of course…”
“Well, you’re elected. Go!”
And I hung up.
I stood in the doorway of the bathroom, which faced the bed. I sure as hell didn’t turn any lights on, although my left hand hovered by the switch. The nine millimeter with the silencer was heavy in my right hand. But I didn’t mind.
Adam came in quickly and didn’t do too bad a job of it: four silenced slugs. He should have checked the body—it never occurred to him he’d just slaughtered a bunch of pillows—but if somebody had been in that bed, they’d have been dead.
He went to the dresser where he knew the jewels would be, and was picking up the jewelry box when the door opened and she came in, the little revolver already in her hand.
Before she could fire, I turned on the bathroom light and said, “If I don’t hear the gun hit the floor immediately, you’re fucking dead.”
She was just a black shape, except for the white handbag; but I saw the flash of silver as the gun bounced to the carpeted floor.
“What…?” Adam was saying. It was too dark to see any expression, but he was obviously as confused as he was spooked.
“Shut the door, lady,” I said, “and turn on the lights.”
She did.
She really was a beautiful woman, or had been, dark eyes and scarlet-painted mouth in that finely carved model’s face, but it was just a leathery mask to me.
“What…” Adam said. He looked shocked as hell, which made sense; the gun was in his waistband, the jewelry box in his hands.
“You didn’t know there were two of us, did you, Mrs. Bennedict?”
She was sneering faintly; she shook her head, no.
“You see, kid,” I told Adam, “she wanted her husband hit, but she wanted the hitman dead, too. Cleaner. Tidier. Right?”
“Fuck you,” she said.
“I’m not much for sloppy seconds, thanks. Bet you got a nice legal license for that little purse pea-shooter of yours, don’t you? Perfect protection for when you stumble in on an intruder who’s just killed your loving husband. Who is dead, by the way. Somebody’ll run across him in the morning, probably.”
“You bitch!” Adam said. He raised his own gun, which was a .38 Browning with a home-made suppresser.
“Don’t you know it’s bad luck to kill a woman?” I said.
She was frozen, one eye twitching.
Adam was trembling. He swallowed; nodded. “Okay,” he said, lowering the gun. “Okay.”
“Go,” I told him.
She stepped aside as he slipped out the door, shutting it behind him.
“Thank you,” she said, and I shot her twice in the chest.
I slipped the bulky silenced automatic in my waistband; grabbed the jewel box off the dresser.
“I make my own luck,” I told her, but she didn’t hear me, as I stepped over her.
I never worked with Adam again. I think he was disturbed, when he read the papers and realized I’d iced the woman after all. Maybe he got out of the business. Or maybe he wound up dead in a ditch, his lucky skull ring still on his little finger. Broker never said, and I was never interested enough to ask.
Now, years later, lounging in the hot tub at Sylvan Lodge, I look back on my actions and wonder how I could have ever have been so young, and so rash.
Killing the woman was understandable. She’d double-crossed us; she would’ve killed us both without batting a false lash.
But sleeping with that cowgirl waitress, on the job. Smoking dope. Not using a rubber.
I was really pushing my luck that time.