When I signed on with the Broker, this kind of shit was not even in the fine print. Getting close to a target like Killian made me uncomfortable, as did coming into contact with so many people. Never mind the waitresses and patrons back at the Dixie Club—hell, they wouldn’t connect me to anything or remember me at all.
But what about the small army of guys in black suits who worked for Killian? What about the hookers and bartenders and strippers who saw me getting shown around by Mr. Woody? What about the desk clerks at the Tropical, who knew I was connected to the man in the top-floor suite?
And Killian himself was a problem. I didn’t want to get to know a target—their habits, their pattern, sure. But Killian had been decent to me, in his way, and seemed like one of the more admirable players in this foul game. He was trying to drag the Dixie Mafia screaming and kicking into the 1970s, enough so to make his number-two man eager to help remove him.
I had to keep in mind that Killian had ordered a hit on the Broker, a hit that had almost made collateral damage out of me, and that alone was enough to justify getting rid of him. Not that it needed justifying. He was just another contract, right? It wasn’t that I liked him or anything. He was just another one of these Southern fried gangsters—granted, one with ambitions beyond anything that the bottom feeders around him could ever grasp.
Then there was Luann.
Should I have turned down Mr. Woody’s gift of her services, a gift apparently intended for the duration of my stay? Would that have seemed suspicious, or ungrateful? Why look a gift whore in the mouth? Having such a creature handy to provide creature comforts did not suck, even if she did, in a good way.
But things would be heating up and she might become an encumbrance. True, the little hooker would stay in her room if I told her to, and I had no reason to think she’d ever intrude. Only, goddamnit, she was becoming a person to me. Which was the same problem I was having with Killian, but worse. I felt sorry for this kid. Her own damn mother had sold her into the sex trade—even in a world as mean and meaningless as this one, that put a whole new spin on Mother of the Year. I did not have these thoughts while fucking the girl, I admit, but in my more reflective moments, like in the shower or on the can, I did.
Sending her back to Mr. Woody at this point wouldn’t cut it. She was a witness now, and I had to keep an eye on her, keep track of her, in case I had to do something about it.
I couldn’t face The Dockside a second time in one day, even though I could sign meals to my room there, so I drove Luann over to a touristy seafood restaurant on Rue Magnolia, just off Highway 90—Mary Mahoney’s, an old French white-clapboard mansion right out of New Orleans.
The cute little Tonto to my Lone Ranger was in the red U-neck top and red-white-and-light-blue jeans again. Her hair was freshly washed and she smelled like Charlie perfume, very much maintaining that coed look she’d had at the Dixie Club. Underdressed for the room, but what the hell.
“No cheeseburger tonight,” I said. “Not allowed.”
We were at a white-linen-covered table seated on white dining chairs in a room with pale yellow walls with framed pictures of pelicans on them. Business was slow, meaning nice privacy.
“Everythin’s so expensive,” she said.
“I came into some money.”
“Let’s share somethin’.”
We did, a seafood platter. Her table manners were better than you’d think, but she put a lot of food away, including some bread pudding. I wasn’t that hungry.
Back at the Tropical, as we approached our side-by-side rooms, she said, “You want me to come in?”
“Sure. You can watch TV if you want. I’m on call. I could use the company.”
She followed me in and slipped into the bathroom. I went over and turned on the TV for her. Flip Wilson was on, doing his drag character, Geraldine. He said, “The devil made me do it!” and the audience roared.
The only light on was the bedside one. I took off my suitcoat and hung it over the back of a chair, got out of my tie, kicked off my shoes, and flopped onto the bed. She came out the bathroom, naked, and padded over to the TV and turned it off, her dimpled backside to me.
Then she came over and switched off the light and the only illumination was what bled in from the curtained windows onto the parking lot.
She began to unbutton my shirt and I said, “You don’t have to do that.”
She paid no heed. After she’d unbuttoned it, she took it off me, rested it gently on the chair where I’d left the suitcoat, and then began undoing my belt. She unzipped me and tugged the pants off, placed them carefully on the chair, then unceremoniously pulled down my jockey shorts. My dick bobbed at her, interested.
Now all I had on was black socks, like a guy in a stag film. If this had been the Fantasy Sweets, maybe I’d have been making an unwitting one.
Usually she got on top, my theory being that she had more control that way and could squeeze the come out of you with that tight child’s fist of a little snatch of hers, and sort of get it over with. This time she came around the bed and got beside me and was on her back, her legs spread wide, pink flower petals peeking out as they hid in the bush.
I reached for the bedside drawer where the Trojans were and she gripped my arm.
“No,” she said.
“No?”
“No. I want to feel you in me.”
“Honey, no offense, but. . .that’s just not safe.”
“I’m on the pill.”
“But. . .it’s not safe other ways. . .”
She shook her head and the blonde hair went a bunch of places, all nice ones. “No man’s ever been in me without a rubber.”
“No man?”
“Nope. It’s not good business.”
“You said you were on the pill.”
“Keeps my periods short and regular. You gonna fuck me or what?”
But I didn’t exactly fuck her. I’d done that three or four times over the past few days, but this was something else. This was sweet and tender and she was registering emotion, which was a first, her mouth open, her eyes rolled back, her cheeks red, her chest too, the aureoles wrinkled tight and their tips hard, blue veins pulsing in the pale whiteness of her breasts. She was tight, as always, but wet, too, and I plunged into her slowly and she ground her hips slowly, right with me, both of us building gradually to an explosion that wrenched loud, shuddering moans out of both of us.
I held her, trying not to put all of my weight on her, and she was hugging me, hugging me, hugging me.
Then she slipped out from under me and ran to the bathroom, like she’d seen a mouse.
I flopped back on the bed, feeling like I’d just fallen down the best flight of steps ever, and when my breath was normal, I noticed a sound from the bathroom. Well, I’d already heard water running and then a shower starting. But this was some other sound. I could use some washing off myself, so I got up and knocked at the almost-shut door.
“Luann?”
She was crying in there!
I went quickly in and she was sitting in the tub, at the back but with the shower on, the nozzle aimed away from her, hugging her legs to herself, her hair wet, her face wet, too, streaked with tears, mascara making a break for it.
“Are you all right, honey?”
She nodded, but she was still crying, her little chin all crinkled, her thin arms hugging her shapely legs to her.
I knelt beside the tub and put a hand on her head, got my fingers entwined in the wet hair. “What’s wrong, kid?”
“Your. . .your name is John, right?”
Well, it was supposed to be, so I nodded.
“I never called you that,” she said. “I never called you anythin’.”
I shrugged. I hadn’t noticed, but I guessed that was true.
“You know what a john is,” she said.
“Sure.”
“Well, I didn’t want to call you that.”
“Oh?”
“I. . .liked the way you look right away.”
“You didn’t show it.”
“I try not to show things.”
“Me, too. You don’t want to call me ‘John’ because maybe I’m not just a john to you. Is that it?”
She nodded six times. Maybe seven.
She said, “Can I call you ‘Johnny’?”
“Sure.”
“I like the way you didn’t want to call me ‘Lolita.’ ”
It had just struck me as corny, but I said, “Luann’s a pretty name.”
Neither of us said anything for a while.
Then the light-blue eyes were on me and she said, “Johnny?”
I could barely hear her over the shower water drumming down nearby.
“Yes?” I said.
“I’m not cryin’ ’cause I’m sad.”
“No. Well, are you happy?”
And she laughed—I swear she did—and nodded four times. Maybe five.
She wiped tears, shower water and snot off her face, then asked, “You know why I’m cryin’?”
“Why?”
“I never did before.”
“You never what before?”
“I never came before.”
“You never. . .?”
She shook her head. Still squeezing her legs to her, water streaming from her damp hair like oversize tears. “I didn’t think I could. I never liked sex. I just. . .did it.”
“I get that.”
“I liked it tonight, Johnny.”
“Well. . .cool.”
She nodded. “Cool. Really cool.”
“You’re crying. Didn’t you like. . .coming?”
“Man! It was totally awesome.”
So I helped her out of the shower, and started toweling her off, till she took over. Not crying anymore. Smiling. Happy.
And for all of you out there keeping track, add to my list of accomplishments the ability to make a girl of nineteen who’d been having sex since she was twelve finally experience an orgasm. I’ll wait for the applause to die down before moving on.
The closet had a terry cloth robe with TROPICAL on the breast pocket—why a terry cloth robe needs a breast pocket is beyond me—but I bundled her in that, and we went back to the bed and cuddled there, on the bedspread, watching Flip Wilson and Bobby Darin sing, “It’s Just One of Those Songs.”
She was such a little thing, fitting snugly to me with my arm around her, that when a stray thought entered my mind, I tensed enough that she looked up at me.
I answered her look with, “Luann, I need to ask you something.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t be upset.”
“Okay.”
“Did Mr. Woody ask you to keep tabs on me?”
I thought she might be hurt. That she might start to cry in a whole other way.
But instead she shook her head at the notion of being sent to my side as a spy, saying, “He wouldn’t trust me with that. He thinks I’m just a dumb little cunt.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t think that, do you?”
“No.”
“You believe me? You trust me?”
“Sure.”
“I’d never do anythin’ bad to my knight in shiny armor.”
“What?”
“That’s what you are.” She was beaming but looking past me. “The way you went to that little man’s rescue last night. . .like a knight in shiny armor.”
Christ, she would have to remind me that she’d witnessed that.
The nightstand phone rang.
I answered it.
“You’re needed,” Killian’s voice said. “Now.”
* * *
That the sprawling Keesler Air Force Base was located a mere three blocks north of much of the Biloxi Strip was no coincidence. The roughly three miles of sin palaces between Camelia Street and Rodenberg Avenue depended on the business of young airmen, particularly in off-season.
All I’d gathered was that a problem involving one of those airmen was bad enough to bring Jack Killian out of his (as he put it) well-armed cocoon. I was with Killian in back of a white Cadillac Coupe de Ville with red leather seats; a driver and one of the Tropical watchdogs, both in those trademark black suits, were up front.
The Caddy pulled into a mostly empty graveled parking lot on the south side of Highway 90. A one-and-a-half-story brown-brick building with darker-brown shingled roof squatted there, the white beach at its back. A small window in front could accommodate only a single beer neon, HAMM’s, which seemed fitting; the entrance was recessed, a windowless heavy-looking dark brown door, above which a plastic marquee said
BOTTOMS UP
GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS
NO COVER NO MINIMUM
OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK
HAPPY HOUR 4 PM.
Even among an array of joints with such elegant names as the Titty Ho, the Wits Inn, the Landing Strip and the Climax, this was one sleazy-looking dump.
The driver stayed with the car. The bodyguard, the unibrow guy from the vestibule, went in first. We were greeted by stale beer smell, cigarette fog, and Tom Jones blaring “She’s a Lady,” while—on a plywood stage with a stripper pole and green carpet (same stuff was on the walls)—a tall skinny brunette with fake tits did a topless/bottomless bump-and-grind that contradicted Mr. Jones. College boys, airmen and seamen (do your own joke) sat around the stage, contributing wadded-up dollars to the cause when the stripper came around to give them a closer look at the mystery of life. The small round tables on either side were empty. The hard-looking handful of waitresses, in halter tops and minis, looked bored, and the six feet of bar with a six-foot bartender behind it was otherwise unattended.
Seated on a stool just inside the door, a mustached bruiser in a black t-shirt and black jeans stood with his arms crossed in a way that made his biceps bulge even more. The scowl that was his reflex when anybody entered wiped itself off when Killian came in.
The bouncer said thickly, “Expectin’ you, Mr. Killian. Boss is waitin’ in back.”
Killian nodded and took the lead. I fell in behind him with the unibrow bodyguard trailing; we cut past the backs of patrons seated at the stripper stage and the empty tables on the periphery.
Soon we were in a smallish storeroom where boxes of liquor and beer were piled up along several walls, leaving an open area where right now a slender red-headed ponytail stripper in a skimpy pink cotton robe was seated on a wooden chair, slumped, knees primly together, crying or anyway she had been crying.
Pacing behind her was a medium-sized, round-faced guy about forty with black-framed glasses, a lot of greasy black hair and too much sideburn, with a paunch that threatened to pop the lower buttons on his short-sleeve white shirt. His tie was wide and dark green. His pants were green plaid flared polyester.
Killian said, in a perfectly measured manner, “Morrie—I take it this is the young lady.”
Morrie had frozen in his pacing upon noticing Killian’s presence. Without joining us, he nervously pushed his glasses up on his nose and nodded, saying, “This is her. This is Kelly.”
Killian walked to the girl. In his black suit and dark blue tie, this knife-blade of a man might have seemed threatening. But his voice was almost gentle.
“Kelly,” he said. “You’re not in trouble. Do you understand? You’re not in trouble.”
She swallowed and nodded, but did not look up at him.
He put his hand under her chin, forcing her gently to look up. “Not in trouble. Just tell me what happened.”
She glanced back at Morrie, but Killian took her by the chin and, again not with any particular force, turned her narrow, almost pretty face his way. Big green eyes looked up at him, bloodshot and mascara smeary.
“His name is Tommy,” she said. “He’s been comin’ in for. . . three weeks, I guess. Three or four times a week. He always wants to do coke.”
Killian glanced past her at Morrie, who frowned and shrugged, in a what-are-you-gonna-do-with-these-kids manner.
“So I sold him some,” she said, shrugging. “He always bought enough for me to have some, too.”
“Did he come alone?”
She nodded. “Always.”
“Did he drive over from the base?”
She shook her head. “Walked.”
“Where did you get the coke, Kelly?”
She glanced back at Morrie, who gave her a look to kill.
Killian patted her on the head, like a dog who had piddled but still was loved, and walked to where Morrie was standing. As for me and the unibrow, we were near the door we’d come in, in front of some stacked boxes, watching this like a play.
“Morrie,” Killian said, slipping an arm around the smaller man’s shoulder, “you know how we operate. Our is a strictly wholesale business.”
“I know that, Mr. Killian. She’s lying her little cunt off! She never got that stuff from me.”
“I don’t recall her saying she did.”
Kelly was crying again. Fear crying.
“You see, Morrie,” Killian said, arm still around the trembling man’s shoulder, “because we’re moving quantities, and dealing with an established distribution system, we don’t sell ourselves here at any of the clubs. That’s strict policy.”
“I know that, I really do, I know.”
“We can look the other way when someone makes a transaction in a bathroom or out on the beach. That’s commerce. That’s capitalism. But if we do the selling, and something bad happens, like a bust. . .or like whatever happened to Tommy here. . .it can reflect badly on us.”
“Absolutely,” Morrie said, shaking his head, “it won’t happen again.”
“Where is the boy?”
Morrie swallowed and nodded. “Still in the Honeymoon Suite.”
The Honeymoon Suite, it turned out, was a cubicle with a mattress and some dirty sheets behind the stripper’s stage; the thump thump thump of the bass line of “Temptation Eyes” was bleeding through a plywood wall.
Killian, apparently wanting to instruct his new charge, had taken me along for a look. There wasn’t room for us in that cubicle, so we viewed it from the doorless doorway.
On that mattress, on his back with his mouth open and his eyes closed, was a kid a couple years younger than me, maybe five-ten with a fit-looking build and a blond butch haircut. His nose looked red around the nostrils. He wore a light yellow t-shirt and orange flared trousers and he was dead as shit.
Suddenly the little stripper was at Killian’s side, clutching his arm, desperate. “Mr. Killian, I didn’t give him that much. I swear! It can’t be an overdose. He was on top of me dry humping and then he rolled off and was clutching his chest. Really hurting, trying to catch his breath and stuff.”
He patted her shoulder. “Go sit down, Kelly. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
She nodded and went back to her chair. Behind her, Morrie was pacing again.
“Mr. Quarry,” Killian said, “fetch Mr. Henderson, would you?”
That was the unibrow guy.
I brought him over and stepped away as Killian gave him some whispered, rather detailed instructions, eliciting nods. Then Henderson quickly went back out through the club.
Killian went over to Morrie and said, “Shut down for the night. Announce a gas leak. Get everybody out of here.”
No discussion of that. Morrie just nodded and rushed off to fill the order.
That left Kelly on her chair. Killian walked casually over to her. I positioned myself near the door back into the club.
“Now, Kelly, you understand you can’t speak of this to anyone.”
“No, sir. I mean yes, sir.”
“If you are questioned, you have to stay strong and just deny that you know anything about what happened to Tommy.”
“I understand, sir.”
“You could cause your family a lot of embarrassment and grief.”
“I’m not local, sir. My family don’t know where I am or care.”
“I’m sorry. But you don’t want to go to jail on a manslaughter charge, do you?”
“No!”
“Or for selling drugs?”
“No!”
“That’s a good girl,” he said.
I was impressed with the way Killian was handling this. I’d been told he was violent and a loose cannon, but what I’d observed the last few days was a self-controlled businessman who knew what he was doing.
He slipped behind her, withdrew something from his pocket that made a snik and grabbed her by the ponytail, yanking her head back, and slit her throat. A spray of blood painted the wall behind which Tommy’s body lay on a dirty mattress.
She stayed slumped in the chair somehow, with her head tilted at a crazy angle, like it might break off and fall on the floor. Some blood had run down and soaked her pink robe, but not so much. Blood stops flowing when you’re dead.
Well, then. That had been impressive, in a different way. Perhaps I’d misjudged Killian.
He wiped the blade off on a shoulder of the girl’s pink robe, clicked the switchblade shut and slipped it in his pocket. He strolled over to me.
“Now Mr. Henderson and a couple of other comrades of ours will be rounding up a boat so we can dispose of the bodies.”
“That kid is an airman. . .won’t there be—?”
“Tommy is going AWOL tonight. And no one will look for him at the bottom of the Mississippi Sound.”
“Ah. And Kelly’s going with him?”
“Yes. Now, I need you to wait here until Mr. Henderson returns. There will be several others with him who will give this area a thorough cleansing. All I need from you is to keep watch here till they return. They’ll come in through the rear. . .see there?”
I nodded.
“You don’t need to participate further. Catch a cab. But in the meantime, I need not to be here. Mr. Phillips will take me back to the Tropical.”
I gathered Mr. Phillips was his driver.
“Okay,” I said.
“May I borrow your gun?”
I didn’t love the sound of that.
“Certainly,” I said, and got the nine millimeter out from under my arm and handed it to him. The safety was on, so that should give me time to react, if he was planning to make a dead witness out of me.
“Do you understand the concept of trust, Mr. Quarry?”
“I think I do.”
“Perhaps you don’t. Trust is based on secrets. Mutual secrets. Secrets that one individual could reveal to expose the other, but does not, because that individual could reveal similarly damaging secrets about the other.”
“Makes sense.”
The door from the club opened and Morrie came in. There was a jog around some boxes that kept him from immediately seeing Kelly in her chair, and he was talking as he came: “We’re all clear. Gas leak sent everybody running. Two of my girls ran bare-ass out into the. . .shit!”
Morrie moved like the mummy through a swamp as he approached Kelly. “What the fuck happened here?” He turned to look at Killian, who shot him in the head.
Morrie’s surprised expression was his reaction to Kelly, not to getting killed, because he didn’t have time to process that before going down on his back and splashing in some of Kelly’s blood.
Killian handed me the nine millimeter.
“Trust, Mr. Quarry,” he said.
And he was gone before I realized that I’d just missed the perfect opportunity to ice his ass.
That left me with two corpses in the storeroom of the Bottoms Up, three counting Tommy on his grungy mattress beyond the plywood wall. I went out into the empty club, where the lights were down. Behind the bar, I got myself a glass of Coke and sat at one of the tables, as if I were waiting for a stripper to come out.
And not a clean-up crew with bleach and a boat.