The Last Quarry Read online

  Harry and Louis hadn’t shown up yet. Perhaps they were tangled in something down at the bottom of the lake, and were doing me the favor of feeding fish and turning to skeletons. I still felt that if their bloated remains did decide to float to the surface, their mob background would keep any heat off an innocent civilian like me.

  And it was a big lake. Sylvan Lodge was only one little notch on it.

  Of course, staying on at Sylvan at all was itself a risk—Jonah Green had found me here, hadn’t he? Come walking right into my world?

  But Jonah was dead; he wouldn’t be crawling up out of that grave again, not even on Judgement Day. And he had no doubt been discreet in his inquiries about me—he had to be, since he was a selfish sociopath plotting his own daughter’s death, which generally calls for discretion.

  Thing was, I was just too goddamn old to start over.

  And I liked it here. I liked the cabin, and Gary, and the (must I use this word?) lifestyle. In the unlikely event that assholes with guns came looking for me, they would find another asshole with a gun who would kill them.

  A rationalization, sure; but I could live with it.

  You will be relieved, I’m sure, to learn that my problem with insomnia was a thing of the past—I was sleeping long and deep with my only problem that low backache I had on waking, but walking over and swimming and using the Jacuzzi and doing a few stretches got rid of that.

  Still, old habits die hard, and three nights before the Sylvan staff was about to arrive, a sound woke me—a clatter out there that was not fucking Santa Claus, and my waking thought was that somebody had broken in.

  Funny how I can sleep so deep, but the littlest goddamn noise and I’m suddenly wide awake, alert as a butt-fucked sailor; I sat up in bed, the nine millimeter from the nightstand tight in my hand.

  Call it paranoia, if you will. But when you make a career out of killing people, you tend to think the worst.

  And something was definitely rattling around out in my kitchen.

  I crept through the darkened cabin and saw a little light was on in there. Gun in hand, I slipped in and flipped the overhead light switch.

  “Shit!” Janet said, wincing at the flood of illumination.

  As usual, she was wearing one of my shirts, legs bare, her long dark blonde hair fetchingly tousled, and she was bending down, looking in the refrigerator. She straightened like an exclamation point. “Are you trying to scare me to death?”

  I lowered the gun. “No.”

  She shut the refrigerator door and turned to me, her expression innocently apologetic now. “Did I wake you?”

  I sat at the kitchen table and put the nine millimeter down in front of me, like it was a fork or a spoon. Rubbed my face with two hands.

  “I sleep light,” I said.

  “So I’ve noticed.” She stood next to me and touched my shoulder and smiled in that way that meant she wanted something. “There’s not a damn thing in that fridge....Would you do me a favor?”

  “Who do you want me to kill?”

  She gave me a reproving look. One might say, a wifely look.

  Then her expression softened and she asked, “Could you please make a convenience store run?”

  I just looked at her. She had no notion of the significance of her request.

  Janet gestured around the little kitchen, like a disaster survivor talking to a reporter about the damage. “We have cereal here, but no milk. I can make a little list....Would you mind, terribly? And, uh—this is embarrassing, but...”

  And now the poor-pitiful-me look.

  “...would you mind picking up some Tampax?”

  I let out a long sigh, pushed out the chair, stood, and said, “No problem.”

  She touched my face and kissed my cheek. “You are so sweet....”

  Maybe I was.

  But I took the nine millimeter with me.

  Author’s Afterword

  This is the sixth novel about the hitman who calls himself Quarry.

  The first was mostly written around 1973 at the University of Iowa, where I was studying in the Writers Workshop; it was published by Berkley Books in 1975 as The Broker, though my preferred title was Quarry (and it’s been reprinted as such). Three novels followed in quick succession, at the publisher’s request, and that seemed to be it.

  In the mid-’80s, the success of my Nathan Heller series inspired a couple of editors at a couple of houses to ask me to revive Quarry and my other early character, the retired thief Nolan. So I did a Quarry novel called Primary Target for Louis Wilder at Foul Play Press, and a Nolan called Spree for Michael Seidman at TOR. These were not intended as relaunchings of those series, but a revisitation by an author in midstream of the creations that had launched him.

  Over the years, Quarry has built a certain cult following (I always caution enthusiastic readers to remember the Donald E. Westlake definition of a “cult” success: “Seven readers short of the author making a living”) and, more recently, I’ve written an occasional short story about him. Not long ago, those stories and Primary Target were collected by Five Star as Quarry’s Greatest Hits.

  One of the stories, “A Matter of Principal,” has taken on a kind of life of its own. Of any short story of mine, over my thirty-some-year career, it has been reprinted most often, and was even selected by Jeff Deaver as one of the best noir short stories of the 20th century. I have no idea why. I wrote it on assignment, one afternoon, with no plot outline—just working from something that had happened the night before when I made a midnight run to a convenience store and saw a burly guy buying tampons.

  Perhaps half a dozen years ago, a young filmmaker in California, Jeffrey Goodman, discovered the short story and began getting after me to give him permission to make a film out of it. For a while I kind of shrugged this off, but eventually he wore me down—I liked the short films Jeffrey sent me by way of samples, and I liked his persistence, too. Coincidentally, I’d begun working as an independent filmmaker myself here in my native Iowa. This I’d done out of frustration about having so many things optioned by Hollywood but seeing nothing made (this was before “Road to Perdition,” obviously).

  So I finally told Jeffrey “yes,” on two conditions.

  The first condition was that I would write the screenplay for the short film, which Jeffrey intended to be a showcase piece for the festival circuit. The second was that I would be the executive producer and would have input in post-production (I did not want to be on set, because I knew I would interfere). Jeffrey was as good as his word, and in particular my suggestions on editing the piece had a nice effect on the final cut.

  Jeffrey’s short film “A Matter of Principal” became quite successful in the festival world, winning several and an official selection of several others. A year later, I combined Jeffrey’s film into an anthology of short films written (and otherwise directed) by me, entitled “Shades of Noir,” and that did well in several festivals, also. That anthology film eventually expanded to include my documentary “Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane,” and this novel is officially a tie-in to the Neo-Noir DVD release of the feature-length version of “Shades of Noir.”

  But this book would not exist if Hard Case Crime editor Charles Ardai hadn’t been kind enough to contact me about contributing to his first slate of books—he specifically wanted to reprint my Nolan novel Blood Money, which was the direct sequel to another of my Iowa City college-era books, Bait Money (both were published in 1973 by the now long-defunct Curtis Books). I suggested the two novels be published as one longer book, Two for the Money, and Charles generously agreed to put it out in that form.

  Then Charles asked me to do an original novel for Hard Case—specifically, a Quarry. My previous commitments made that tough, but—knowing that Charles had lured the master of paperback painters, Robert McGinnis, into doing a cover or two for Hard Case—I said, “Sure, I’ll do an original book, Charles... if you get me McGinnis for the cover.”

  It was a typical flip, kidding-on-the-sq
uare remark of mine—after all, McGinnis is the artist behind the classic Sean Connery “James Bond” movie posters!—but I’ll be damned if Charles didn’t call me up and say, yes, he had lined “Bob McGinnis” up for the cover of the new Quarry.

  Having Mr. McGinnis’s brilliant work adorning a book of mine is one of the happiest events of my career—the Mickey Spillane/Gold Medal Books era during which Robert McGinnis first flourished had everything to do with the perditious road I chose to spend my life going down. I thank Charles, and Bob, for their kindness and generosity.

  The book itself is an expansion of that much-anthologized short story, “A Matter of Principal,” with a dab from another Quarry tale, “Guest Services.” The reason behind this approach is twofold. For various personal agendas, both Charles and I wanted to make this book a tie-in to the release of “Shades of Noir” on DVD. But, also, filmmaker Jeffrey Goodman had decided he wanted to make a feature-length film version of “A Matter of Principal.”

  So the combined result of Charles’s request for a new Quarry novel, and Jeffrey’s request for an expanded version of “A Matter of Principal,” was this novel (and a screenplay version). Whether Jeffrey and I are fortunate enough to see this story brought in its entirety to the screen remains to be seen—well, I hope it will be seen; in any case, I feel fortunate that Jeffrey created a wonderful short film that led to this one last Quarry adventure.

  Editor Ardai, by the way, is responsible for the title, The Last Quarry. (The title of the short story was just a silly pun on “principle,” and has confused readers, editors and viewers of the short film ever since. Not every writer can lay claim to causing so much confusion with so casual a stroke of the word processor.) Thanks for that, too, Charles.

  Is this the last Quarry?

  Well, Quarry and I are whores at heart, so anything is possible. But should I ever write any more stories about this man—who ties with Nate Heller as my favorite among my characters—the action will in all likelihood pre-date this novel. This, in my mind, is indeed the last story about him. He is, after all, retired and in the care of a good woman.

  The most perverse conclusion I can envision for Quarry, you see, is a happy ending.

  Max Allan Collins

  Muscatine, Iowa

  September 2005

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