The Last Quarry (9 page)

Nothing good could come from it—and if this thing went to hell, I’d deserve it. That’s what you get for being nice.

I put the photo on the nightstand, image side down. The nine millimeter I shoved under the pillow next to me on the double bed—easier to get to than under your own pillow, plus more comfortable.

Naked, I got between the sheets, shut off the light, but I’d be a fucking liar if I said I went to sleep right away. For a long goddamn time I thought about this young woman, and about what a sweetheart she seemed to be, but that she was dead already, just didn’t know it yet, and I shouldn’t go all soft in the center or anything, just because she had nice knockers and frilly pink panties.

A long goddamn time.

Five minutes, anyway.

Janet Wright’s apartment—judging by the living room, which was all I could see from my vantage point—indicated an interesting woman lived there: funky ’30s deco antiques, a big bookcase of hardcovers, a few striking modern art prints on light green plaster walls. This was a second-floor apartment over a beauty shop, in downtown Homewood, in the last business block before residential kicked in.

She slept in till nine-thirty, and by ten was sitting in a blue terrycloth robe on a big comfy-looking chair with her feet in bunny slippers up on a matching footrest (matching the chair, not the bunny slippers), drinking a cup of what I presumed to be coffee, taking her time, watching television absently.

Finally she got up and went into the next room and quickly came back in a state-college sweatshirt and jeans and went out to run a few errands and have breakfast.

I shadowed her.

Nothing happened.

She returned.

So did I.

The rest of the morning into the early afternoon, hair pinned up, she vacuumed and dusted the living room. At times she disappeared, presumably to have lunch and do laundry somewhere, probably her kitchen area—the apartment seemed to be laid out box-car style, how many rooms I couldn’t be sure. The double windows gave me a generous view, but only of the living room.

Judging by my similar apartment, directly across the way, hers would have three big rooms, one after the other, back to the alley. Like hers, my apartment indicated someone interesting lived there—the complicated kind of guy whose decor runs to a metal folding chair with a cushioned seat, a crate near the double window serving as a table (my nine millimeter resting there, and sometimes my binoculars) and a cooler on the bare floor, where already several Coke cans, a wadded-up napkin and a sandwich wrapper lurked.

Unlike Janet’s building, this one hadn’t been renovated yet, or anyway the upper floors hadn’t—the lower floor had been half-heartedly redone but a computer store filling the space was out of business. Homewood had one of those funky downtowns getting gradually rehabilitated, and this empty apartment was, as I said, “similar” to hers...in its positioning and layout.

But there were differences. Her apartment, for
example, was not a hellhole unfit for the foodstamp crowd who’d not long ago been consigned here.

My surveillance roost stank of old food and new ratshit, but it was free, and it was safe—some company of Jonah Green’s owned the building and had it earmarked for eventual Yuppification. I’d been provided a key to the back door and an assurance that no nightwatchmen would be checking.

The building across the way mirrored this one, had probably been designed by the same architect and built by the same outfit somewhere after the turn of the century—19th century, that is. Fuck, I was old, having to keep track of goddamn centuries....

Anyway, my target had double windows, too, and she kept the shades up and the sheer, decorative white window dressing blocked almost nothing. She didn’t worry about privacy, because you couldn’t see in from the street, and the apartment across the way was dead.

But, unlike my swimming-pool surveillance yesterday afternoon, this was no peep show. After the morning of vacuuming, she spent the afternoon sorting and folding laundry, again with the TV on, though I extrapolated that, as my view didn’t show it. She also read and listened to music, a CD player nestled in among the hardcovers in the big bookcase. Her comfy chair was near the two windows with a phone stand between.

She had a couple calls, one from Connie setting up another evening out, which interrupted the vacuuming, and another while she was reading.

In both instances, through my binoculars, I saw her checking caller I.D. before picking up—possibly avoiding Rick, although I found it extremely unlikely he’d ever call her again.

Still, she answered the afternoon call warily, then brightened. “Well, Sis!...Sure....No problem....Well, that’s great!....Cool!...Play it by ear.”

Well, that was scintillating.

A dull call in a dull day, but somehow the mundaneness of her existence was getting to me. You shadow some Outfit cocksucker while he’s bouncing between guys he’s extorting money from and strip clubs where he’s getting free blow jobs, you don’t exactly brush a tear away when you remove him from the world. You take out some asshole exec who is embezzling from his bosses to maintain his coke habit, you’re over it before you reload. You rid the world of a criminal lawyer who is more crim than law, you feel pretty damn good about your line of work.

But what was a nice girl like her doing in a bad place like this?

I had a Coke habit, too, and half a dozen empty cans were littering my feet by nightfall. This old empty apartment did have a working toilet, which was a nice perk, but I’d overdone the caffeine.
When Janet emerged from a street-level door below, between storefronts, I felt damn near jumpy.

She had disappeared from the living room about an hour and a half before, and the door to the street wasn’t within my range of vision, so her change of appearance was a surprise. Nice one.

She looked lovely, the dark blonde hair nicely bouncy, brushing the shoulders of her suede jacket which was a darker brown than her slacks but the same color as her high heels. Barely had she stepped onto the sidewalk than a sporty little red Mazda drew up with gal-pal Connie at the wheel.

Janet got in, they took off, and so did I.

I wasn’t thrilled when they went back to Sneaky Pete’s—one thing a guy in my trade doesn’t like to become is a regular at a joint in a town where he’s working. The brunette bartendress welcomed me back like old home week, even asked my name now that I was hanging out so often, and I told her Jack. She asked me a few questions as the evening wore on, and I told her jack.

Janet and Connie had chosen another booth, but the bar was a long one and the mirror behind it, too, so I had no problem setting up reflective watch. I nursed a beer, and did my best not to go over to the jukebox and shoot it—surely there was a limit to how much Toby Keith a reasonable person can endure.

Again Janet wore a silk blouse, a cream-color one,
with a strand of June Cleaver pearls. Her buddy Connie was fetchingly slutty (or did I already have my “beer goggles” on?) in a black-leather motorcycle jacket, red rhinestone-studded Marilyn t-shirt, jeans she wouldn’t have to remove when she next went to the gynecologist, and colorful cowboy boots.

Janet seemed embarrassed as Connie leaned forward, eyes and teeth gleaming, saying, “Spill! What happened to Rick?”

“I told you last night I didn’t want to talk about it....” Now Janet sat forward. “Why, what have you heard?”

Connie’s grin was unkind. “He’s telling his friends he fell down the stairs.”

“So, he, uh, didn’t...go to the police or anything?”

Connie’s eyebrows hiked. “Oh, now you
have
to tell me!”

Janet shook her head, then froze in mid-shake, and said, “Excuse me, Con...”

“Why? What...?”

And something unnerving happened.

Janet’s eyes caught mine in the mirror.

Quickly I looked away, and said something inane to the brunette bartender, who complied by saying something equally inane.

I heard Connie yelling, good-naturedly, “You are definitely
not
excused! Janet—you come back here and dish, or
else!
”

I felt the finger tap my shoulder.

I winced, then swung easily around on the bar stool and glanced at her as casually as I could.

“Oh hi,” I said.

“Oh hi?” Her smile went up a little more on one side than the other, creating a nice dimpled effect. “I guess I owe you a drink.”

“You don’t. Really.”

“I do. Really.”

The stool next to me was vacant; it would be. She took it. We looked at each other in the mirror again, this time on purpose.

She said, “Why do I think you’re checking up on me?”

“Why do you?”

For several long seconds she studied me in the mirror, then she said to my reflection, “Well...I imagined I saw you in a booth at Denny’s this morning.”

“Some imagination you have.”

Her eyes were smiling, too. “
Wasn’t
it you?”

“That was me. But I wasn’t looking for you.”

She raised one eyebrow. “You were just there for that delicious Grand Slam breakfast, right?...And now you’re here, Guardian Angel, seeing if Rick’s had the good sense to...”

“Take a hint?”

Her smile went up on both sides, this time, and
ushered in some laughter. Shaking her head, she said, “I really do owe you one....Have a drink with us.”

I didn’t want to join her and Connie, and give the other librarian a closer look at me. But I was cornered. Turning Janet down would have been suspicious. Or so I told myself.

Whatever the case, I was soon sitting on Janet’s side of the booth as she and bubbly Connie chitchatted, both of them nicely at ease around me, Janet revealing a new self-confidence.

Connie licked some beer foam from her upper lip and, just the tiniest bit drunk, said, “That little prick Rick? He’s been a bully since grade school. But he always gets away with it, ’cause his family has money.”

“Fuck him,” I said. “His family hasn’t given me any money.”

They both laughed at my naughty talk.

Making reluctant eye contact with Connie, I joined in on the chitchat. “You’re from here?”

“Born and raised, and too dumb and untalented to get out.” She smirked at Janet, good-naturedly. “What’s
your
excuse?”

Janet shrugged and said, “Destiny. Which is to say, answering an ad.”

Connie, suddenly quite serious, locked eyes with me. “This little girl’s gonna be head librarian one of these days. Just you wait and see.”

“Really,” I said, and narrowed my eyes and nodded.

Amused, Janet said, “Don’t pretend to be impressed—doesn’t suit you....And, so, Jack—what is it
you
do?”

“I’m in sales and service,” I said.

Janet, apparently the designated driver, was drinking a Diet Coke. “What kind of sales and service?”

“Veterinary medicine.”

“That sounds...interesting.”

I smiled a little. “No it doesn’t.”

Connie, frowning, asked, “Do you sell vets that stuff they use to put animals to sleep?”

“Afraid so,” I said.

Connie made a face. “Dirty job but....”

“I’m sure,” Janet says, “he sells plenty of things that make the animals feel better.”

“I try,” I said.

Janet and Connie exchanged looks. Connie’s smile at her friend told me I’d passed the test—for at least one night. Saturday at Sneaky Pete’s, the options were limited.

Janet gave Connie a glance that I didn’t at first understand, until Connie straightened herself, her breasts distorting Marilyn Monroe’s image but not in a bad way, and said, “You know...I see a guy over there who’s just cute enough to interest me, and drunk enough to think likewise....”

She got up and out of the booth less graceful than a ballet dancer, but more fun to watch.

Janet gave me a sideways look. “Now you’ll think that’s how I spend my weekends.”

“What is?”

“You know. Picking guys up.”

I offered half a smile. “Have I been?”

Her hands were draped around the Coke glass like it was the Silver Chalice. “It’s just...I never had anybody do anything so...
sweet
for me, before.”

“Sweet like pound the piss out of your boyfriend?”

I expected a laugh, but what I got was: “Exactly....I’m not really the type to, I don’t know...hit the bars on a Saturday night.”

“I know.”

Her eyebrows tensed with curiosity. “You do?”

“Today was your day off, right?”

Mildly surprised, Janet said, “Right.”

I shrugged. “You cleaned all morning, did laundry all afternoon, and then you listened to music or maybe read, a while. You fell asleep and were almost late to go out with your girlfriend.”

Astonished, she said, “My God—are you psychic?”

“No.” I toasted her with my beer glass. “I’m shadowing you.”

That got a smile and a laugh out of her. The truth will do that.

She was shaking her head. “I’m just not good at this. The game. The ritual. The small talk’s all so...”

“Small,” I said.

“I guess....I’ve always been kind of shy, frankly. A loner.”

“Me, I’m a people person.”

Another smile. “Oh, yeah, I can see that,” she said.

“You often...gravitate toward people like Rick?”

Her smile was gone and a smirk took its place. “Connie says it’s low self-esteem. I say it’s bait and switch...guys on their best behavior when they meet you, but who aren’t really, you know...”

“What they seem?”

Suddenly she sat up, something obviously occurring to her. She checked her watch.

“Shit,” she said.

“Was it something I said?”

“No! No, no, there’s just....Look, there’s something I have to do, something that slipped my mind, I should’ve done earlier.”

“You need a lift somewhere? Your friend seems busy.”

Connie was flirting with a guy over by the jukebox, which was having the good if rare sense to play a Patsy Cline song, “Crazy.”

Janet was shaking her head, saying, “Well, you see, I’m sort of semi-housesitting...for some friends of mine? Anyway, I need to bring in their mail, and their dog’s probably half-starved....Somehow after last night, with Rick, I just...spaced out on it, today.”