Quarry's Deal (9 page)

18

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THE CANDLE LITE
Playhouse was a modern brick two- story that looked somewhat cold and even austere from without, but within was decorated in warm golds and greens. The plush floral carpet, subdued lighting, piped-in muzak and cozy tables conspired to make the large room seem intimate. We were seated at the edge of the balcony, at a table barely big enough to hold its glass-enclosed candle (as yet unlit, by the way), and sipped a drink before going down to the stage, where the food was being served, the set and its props having been scooted back to accommodate a generous buffet. It looked a little odd, people parading up the few steps onto the stage, going through the cafeteria line collecting their food, then exiting nervously, awkwardly, balancing the several filled plates, coming off the stage like bit players who had wandered into the wrong scene. The stage, Lucille explained, had been the altar of the place when it had been a church.

“Church?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Some crazy evangelist type thing. They had a young guy who thought he was the Second Coming or something. Or at least the second Billy Graham. He had a big following here, even had his own radio show, but he got an offer to do the same thing for more money someplace in Texas, I think, and once he was gone everything just sort of fizzled, church went bankrupt. Some local people got together and bought and remodeled the place into this.”

“Either way it’s show business,” I said. “For somebody new in town, you sure know all the local gossip.”

“Ruthy just talks a lot, that’s all.”

“Ruthy?”

“I’ve mentioned her before, haven’t I? She’s the friend who got that apartment lined up for me, before I even got here. She’s also the one who got us this good a seat at such short notice. She works here.”

“Am I ever going to meet her?”

“You’ll see her a little later.”

I decided not to pursue that. The way I was playing this allowed me to ask a lot of questions; in fact, pretending ignorance, as I was, required that I ask a lot of questions. But it would be wrong to press, so I waited till our drinks were finished, then rose, pulled out her chair and walked her down a softly carpeted, gently winding stairway to the main floor, where we joined the food line, climbed onto the stage, and came back to our balcony table with our food, which we ate.

As buffets go, it wasn’t bad. The salad bar was unimaginative, just a couple kinds of jello with stuff floating in it, and coleslaw and lettuce salad, apply your own dressing. But the roast beef was rare and tender, and several kinds of potatoes and vegetables and other side dishes made it a very pleasant Sunday dinner.

The company was pleasant, too. She was wearing a dark brown pants suit, perhaps the same one I’d seen her in as she was leaving the Beach Shore, in the middle of the night, not so long ago. If it was, I remember it’d seemed mannish to me, at the time. Perhaps that was because I didn’t know the jacket came off to reveal a yellow-and-tan-striped halter top that caressed her large breasts, cradled them like a child sleeping in a hammock.

Somebody came around and lit our candle. It threw shadows on her face, making her features seem even more exotic than usual. She wasn’t wearing any make-up on her eyes. She didn’t have to.

I was taking a perverse enjoyment in the verbal games we were playing, neither of us aware of what the stakes were, exactly, but both aware we were playing something, maybe nothing more than the sex game, or anyway that was the conclusion I hoped she’d come to, and maybe she had, if I was succeeding at convincing her I really was just a guy who used to sell brassieres.

I knew one thing. I knew I had to be something of a pain in the ass to her, since she was obviously playing the back-up role here, surveilling Tree till her partner (who I assumed was the guy who’d worked me over with the lamp) got ready to make the hit. I was in her way, making it impossible for her to properly keep an eye on Tree, to get his movements, his pattern down; but my presence here was suspicious enough to make it necessary for her to keep track of me, at least until she was sure of who the hell I was or
wasn’t. Otherwise she’d
have to forget the Tree contract entirely; she was a pro, and couldn’t operate any other way. She’d beg off the job, tell her middle man to tell their client to get somebody else because this one just didn’t smell right to her.

The thing that bothered me was, was she getting to me? And something else bothered me even more: I was starting to entertain the probably stupid notion that
I
might be getting to
her
.

Not to mention this nagging feeling I had that one of us was behaving like an idiot, and I was afraid I knew which one of us it was.

Unless it was both of us . . .

We had another drink, and I decided to move another chess piece.

“There’s something I’m having trouble with,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Your name. Lucille. It’s a nice name. I like it. But I’m having a little trouble using it. It’s, I don’t know, too formal or something. And you don’t look like a Lucy to me. Do people call you Lucy?”

“My folks did. I always hated it.”

“So what
do
people call you?”

“Do I have a nickname, you mean? Well. I knew a man who called me Ivy. He seemed to like that name for me.”

Ivy. The Broker’s name for her. I make a tentative little move, just nudge a pawn out for a look around, and she comes down on me with her fucking queen.

“Ivy,” I said. “I don’t think it fits you.”

“My friends in high school called me Lu. Nobody’s called me that in years though.”

“Lu.” I lifted my gimlet. “Here’s to you. Lu.”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to have so many drinks so early in the day? I’m a bartender. I know.”

“Are you going to accept the damn toast, or not?”

“All right.” She clinked her glass against mine. “Here’s to Lu.”

The house lights dimmed. We looked down and the stage had been cleared, the set put back in place, and the play was beginning.

And that was when I found out who her friend Ruthy was.

She was the lead. Playing the Judy Holliday role in
Born Yesterday
, which they were doing in ’40s dress and trappings, since that’s when the play first came out, and because people like nostalgia, I guess. She was no Judy Holliday, but she was blond, and well-built, and not a bad little actress, for Des Moines.

She was also Frank Tree’s girl friend.

But then was that so surprising?

After all, Tree himself was sitting at a ringside table. I saw him there when the house lights went up for intermission.

The bitch had brought me along on her goddamn stakeout.

19

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SUNDAY EVENING WAS INTERESTING.

I won a hundred some bucks playing draw poker, but that in itself wasn’t particularly interesting. What was was the dealer, the kid with the worried expression and closed mouth and glasses, the one who played stupid every time I sat down at his table, which was every night I’d been there.

So winning a few bucks from him was nothing special. In fact I usually won a little bigger.

But it was unusual to see him wearing make-up.

I don’t mean to imply he was queer or anything (though you never know). I don’t mean he was wearing lipstick or mascara or rouge. It was makeup, flesh-colored stuff, the theatrical-type liquid some women use in place of powder these days. He’d applied it along one cheek, across the cheekbone and down a ways. That side of his face was a little fucked up, a little puffy. The make-up did a fair job of disguising it, and the somewhat dim lighting in the room helped, too. But his face was fucked up, no question, like maybe he’d been in a fight.

Like maybe somebody had given him an elbow in the face.

He didn’t say much that night. He didn’t say much any night. He let his cards speak for him, and they didn’t say much either, except that he was lousy.

I listened to what little he did say, though. You can’t play poker and not let out a few words, now and then, especially sitting in the dealer’s chair. So I listened and tried to match the voice with the voice behind the light that had shined in my eyes last night.

At one point one of the other players commented casually on the bandages on my face. I still had five of them, covering little cuts I’d got from where the lamp caught me. I gave a small speech about how people who use electric razors shouldn’t switch all of a sudden to a straight razor unless they don’t mind looking like chopped meat for a couple days: The various players laughed politely at that. Everybody but the dealer. He just shuffled his cards and said to the man at his left, “Cut them.”

It was the same voice, all right.

I made a mental appointment with him, and returned to my cards.

The other interesting thing that happened Sunday night was Lu (as I was beginning to feel comfortable calling her) had invited me to move in with her.

“Why keep paying for that bed at the Holiday Inn?” she said. “You haven’t been using it.”

“Your apartment’s pretty small. We’re going to be tripping over each other.”

“That sounds kind of nice.”

It did at that.

So I moved in with her, wondering how she was going to manage to watch Tree with me around, knowing that if anyone could find a way it was Lu.

Glenna.

Ivy.

20

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WHEN I GOT
there Tree was almost finished with his lunch. He was sitting alone, in a booth, eating a bratwurst sandwich. It was eleven and the lull between breakfast and lunch was just about over; soon the coffee shop would be crowded again, and I wanted to talk to him in private.

I went over and smiled and said, “The swimming pool, when you’re done.”

Tree looked up and his mouth was full but his china blue eyes were empty. He just nodded, looked down again, picked a pickle off his plate and went right ahead eating.

He was a poker player, all right.

The place was a Holiday Inn, but not a typical one. It was situated on the turn-off for the Amana Colonies, which was where some Amish-type settlers had experimented with a crude communistic life style a hundred years ago or so, and the place had affected a rustic look, not unlike Tree’s own Red Barn, though somewhat more authentic. The barnwood walls were decorated with framed photographs of somber, bearded pioneers in heavy dark clothing, their wives in bonnets and drab formless dresses, faces full of hard work and well-earned unhappiness.

Some of the pictures showed children, who hadn’t been around long enough to get glum, though the teenagers in the pictures were well on their way. There were also some examples of authentic pioneer clothing, under glass, and some old farm equipment and, in little roped-off alcoves, antique furniture was visible, with modern versions of similar furniture displayed here and there, with tags telling where in the Amanas the stuff could be bought.

There was a comfortable sofa along the wall, across from the glass wall through which the large indoor pool could be seen. I sat and watched a middle-aged lady doing laps, and wished there were some younger female swimmers to watch. A nice looking woman of about twenty-five, dark hair, two-piece yellow suit, was down at the far end making use of the sun lamp. A man about sixty sat directly across from me on the other side of the pool, his bloated belly like a beach ball on his lap, a thick cigar in one hand, martini in the other, features of his face lost in a wealth of wrinkles. The middle-aged lady had two kids, or grandkids, I don’t know which. One was a boy about ten, the other a girl about eight. They were apparently trying to drown each other. In the glass I could also see my own vague reflection, and that of the wall behind me, with its several framed tintypes of Amana settlers, and various hanging artifacts, ox yoke, pitchfork, wagon wheel, superimposed on the guests enjoying the Holiday Inn pool. Maybe I would have made something profound out of all that, but then Tree was there, sitting down next to me.

He was wearing a stylish sportsjacket, about the color of cigarette smoke, with a dark blue open-collar shirt and white slacks. He smelled of musk cologne and his short white hair was brushed down flat on his head, a butch that had been made to behave. He had the suspiciously sincere smile and hard cool eyes you find in any self-made man. His business could be used cars or gambling, real estate or women, construction or heroin. Whatever. The look is the same.

“I don’t believe I caught your name,” he said, not looking at me, except maybe in the reflection on the glass wall.

“Quarry,” I said.

“That a last name or a first name?”

“It’s just something you can call me.”

“All right, Mr. Quarry. Convince me.”

“Of what?”

“Of all the danger I’m in.”

“You’re here, aren’t you? Doesn’t that mean you’re already convinced?”

“Maybe so. Let’s say I was convinced when you had a gun on me. What I don’t know, yet, is how convincing you are unarmed.”

“If that’s the way you feel,” I said, getting up, “I’ll just be running along . . .”

He caught my arm. Brought me back down with a strong grip. “One moment. You’re a poker player, Mr. Quarry. I’ve seen you indulging at the Barn, the last week or so. You know, you might have introduced yourself.”

“I’m shy.”

“Let me make my point. In playing poker, as you well know, there are bets made, and raises, and more raises, and then finally one player calls and gets to look at the other man’s hand, before showing his own. Well, we’ve played our little games, Mr. Quarry. In the dark. And me, I’m always sitting under the gun, it seems, keep having to check to your pat hand. Well this time I’m calling.”

I smiled. That was a rehearsed speech if I ever heard one. I wondered if he’d written it down on paper and memorized it or what. No matter. I had him. He already believed me, was convinced he was set up for a hit. He just needed to make up for the minor humiliations I’d put him through those two times. That is, if any humiliation is minor to an ego like his.

Some tourist types, a couple of near-elderly couples, stopped in front of us and stared at the artifacts on the wall over our heads. People were constantly flowing by, which in a strange sort of way afforded us privacy. The glass wall didn’t hold in all of the echoing pool noise, and the lobby was nearby, and so was the bar. Just enough commotion to make us invisible, and to keep our conversation to ourselves.

When the aging tourist types moved on, Tree picked up where he left off.

“Maybe I haven’t made myself clear,” he said. “I know how this kind of thing works. Hitting people, I mean. I know how much it costs. I know the channels you go through to get it done. I know how many people come in to do the job, and what each one does. I been around, in other words. I know some things that you better know, Mr. Quarry, or you may find out the hard way what getting hit is all about.”

“I know all those things, Frank.”

“Prove it.”

“All right. Ask.”

“How much does it cost?”

“That depends.”

“On?”

“Whether you hire some asshole in a bar for a hundred bucks or something, or you go for real professionals.”

“Real professionals.”

“Two thousand up.”

“How do I get in touch with them?”

“You don’t. There’s a middle man, a broker.”

“I go to him, then.”

“No. He gets fed his clients from mob people.”

“So these are mob killings we’re talking about.”

“Not necessarily. Say some businessman has a problem, a wife, another woman, a competitor, a partner, a problem. Say he has a friend, another businessman, who has links to the mob. He asks his friend to put him in touch with somebody who takes care of problems. That puts the wheels in motion.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Maybe I used to kill people for money.”

“Is that so?”

“Since you already know all this, maybe you hired me once. Who knows?”

But he wasn’t out of questions yet. “How many people involved?”

“Three.”

“Three?”
he said. Like he’d caught me.

“There’s somebody to do the stakeout work,” I said. “And somebody to pull the trigger.”

“You said three.”

“Sure. The victim makes three, Frank. That’s where you come in.”