Quarry's Climax Read online

  There were two acts. First was one of those bawdy busty broads who sang blue song parodies and told jokes that were shocking in 1955 (“Saturday night you girls sow wild oats, and Sunday morning you pray for a crop failure!”). She, the little card on the table said, went on at ten p.m., midnight and two A.M. She was just wrapping up her first show.

  The audience was made up of more women than men, wives cooling their heels while their husbands gambled. The floating smoke was thicker and bluer than the raunchy gal’s act, and the laughs from the well-oiled females were raspy in that aging Lucille Ball way.

  Next up (eleven P.M., one A.M. and three A.M.) was Chicago boy Cliff Anthony, a road-company Sinatra who’d had one hit in the fifties (“Why Don’t You Believe Me,” a Joni James cover). He bounded out wearing a tux and confidence to the backing of a five-piece combo and didn’t loosen his tie till halfway through the second song. He was handsome in a puffy kind of way with hair as black as India ink; a typically small Italian crooner, he was nonetheless sturdy-looking, though his moves were like a compact car trying to get around a truck.

  I guess he wasn’t bad, but it annoyed me that every time he sang somebody else’s song (“The Lady Is a Tramp,” “Beyond the Sea,” “Volare”) he would pause to get the audience to applaud, like it was his goddamn hit. I don’t know which irritated me more, the way he was milking a cow that didn’t belong to him or how the dumb-ass crowd applauded on cue.

  “I got a couple of his albums at home,” Boyd whispered during an instrumental break in “The Candy Man.”

  “That right.”

  He gave me a squinty-eyed look. “Don’t you like this kind of stuff? Or are you strictly into that Beatles shit?”

  Boyd thought the Beatles were the latest thing. If I’d said I liked Blondie, he’d have thought I was talking about the funny papers.

  “Well,” I said magnanimously, “at least it’s not disco.”

  “What’s wrong with disco?”

  That trend he was up on!

  A woman wearing half a tube of lipstick and with more wrinkles than a shar pei shushed us. Boyd made a face and sipped his ginger ale. I sipped my Coke. Anthony was getting credit for “Danke Schoen” now.

  During “Tie a Yellow Ribbon,” Boyd said, “You know, they love him in Chicago.”

  “He’s flat everywhere. Riding the cracks in the piano.”

  “Maybe so, but he works one week a month here, and the rest of the time in little clubs all over the Windy City.”

  “Don’t call it that.”

  “What?”

  “Nobody from Chicago calls it the Windy City.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, well, I’m not from Chicago. Anyway, he does a ton of weddings and bar mitzvahs there, too.”

  The shar pei with lipstick was giving us a dirty look.

  Boyd nodded toward the stage. “See that cauliflower-ear character down front? Table for one?”

  “Yeah. That’s the evening-shift guy?”

  “That’s him. None of them are Outfit. Just guys our boy plucked out of this bar or that one. Bouncers. Think at least one goes back to high school days. Football buddies.”

  “Rah yay team.”

  As if we’d requested it, the lounge lizard started in on “My Kind of Town.” That was enough for me. Had to get out of there before “New York, New York.” I rose, curled my finger at Boyd, who pouted but followed me reluctantly out.

  “What now?”

  I checked my watch. “You need a nap or anything?”

  “What am I, six?”

  “Lose some more money, if you want. I’m gonna go back to the room and relax. Watch some TV.”

  He gave me a silly grin. “They got porn.”

  “What am I, sixteen?”

  Shrug. “I’ll play a while. When you want me back?”

  “Five. It’ll still be dark.”

  He nodded, then strolled off into the midnight sun of a dinging and clanging world that waited to take more of his money. I had a little work to do, spending half an hour checking out the underground parking garage, where I found what I was looking for, right where it was supposed to be.

  In our suite, I put Chinatown on our room tab, and then Young Frankenstein. I’d seen them both before, but they were good. During “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” I fell asleep on the sofa, even though I’d had enough Coca-Cola caffeine to fly back to McCarran.

  What woke me was Boyd coming back in. The night latch was on, so I got up and let him in. I stopped off at the john to get rid of some of that Coke, the pause that really refreshes, and joined him in the living room.

  “Pack your shit,” I told him, “and take mine, too.” My travel bag was ready to go. “Be in your car with the motor running at six-fifteen. I parked up top. It’s a beater, so if we have to haul ass, we can leave it behind.”

  “You wipe the car down for prints?”

  “No, I made sure to leave every clue I could. Your picture’s in the glove compartment with the bill of sale for my nine mil.”

  He laughed at that, said, “Sorry.”

  I took off my suitcoat and got into the shoulder holster with the silenced nine millimeter Browning in it. Rarely did I wear a rig like that, but sticking the bulky gun in my waistband just wouldn’t cut it. Even at this time of night, or morning or whatever, too many people would be around.

  “Gun doesn’t show at all,” Boyd said admiringly, eyes on my right shoulder.

  “The Broker recommended a tailor,” I said. “Paid for it himself.”

  Boyd smirked. “Isn’t this the goddamnedest job?”

  “It is. And I wish it were over.”

  “Will be, soon enough.”

  “Guy ever had a girl in there, this time of day?”

  “No.”

  “Sure about that?”

  “Now who’s asking stupid questions, Quarry? Strictly an afternoon delight type. Too wiped after work for funtime. Quick bite of breakfast at the in-house café, and off to beddy-bye.”

  “And only the one bodyguard?”

  “Well, like I said earlier, there’s three…but they work one at a time. Guy there now does the five A.M. to one P.M. shift. So he just went on—he’ll be alert.”

  “Not for long.”

  I went to the window for a look. Despite the hour, the pool was still doing a good business, more bikini girls parading in the reflective glow. The round umbrellas were like big colorful poker chips and the squat palms lent an exotic vibe.

  In the sprawling Mission-style building on the other side of the pool, mobster Bugsy Siegel and his moll, Virginia Hill, had lived and fought and fucked in the penthouse suite on the top floor of the central four stories. According to Boyd, Siegel haunted the penthouse, now known as the Presidential Suite, where the man who “invented” Las Vegas dwelt while he built the Flamingo.

  “Guests stayin’ in that suite,” Boyd had reported to me over dinner, between bites of rare filet mignon, “tell of strange run-ins with Bugsy’s ghost—and cold spots that give you the shivers… plus, things that were left here and wind up there.”

  “Yeah,” I’d said. “There’s a name for poltergeists like that—housekeeping.”

  He ignored that, caught up in the around-the-campfire moment. “They’ve seen his ghost all around the place—in a bedroom, and in the living room, standing by the pool table.”

  “So how is ol’ Bugsy these days?”

  “Except for being dead, Quarry, apparently not bad! Doesn’t seem unhappy or out of sorts. Must be pleased to still be around the place.”

  “Maybe he’s getting a charge out of seeing how his dream played out.”

  “Maybe! Kinda all came true, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Course, he probably didn’t dream of getting shot full of holes in his girlfriend’s living room.”

  In a corner of the underground parking garage, itself a relic of the early days of the casino/hotel, a door waited that wore its age without dignity, a somewhat warped affair, its face a paint-pe
eling mess worthy of Dorian Gray. The Flamingo, despite occasional signs of its long run here on the Strip, was relatively spiffed up. This was like a big rectangular scab in the corner.

  But the key the Broker provided worked fine. I did not lock the door behind me, since the need for a quick Bugsy-style getaway remained a possibility—like if one bodyguard turned into three. The promised light switch inside the door at right clicked the long cement corridor into a weak state of jaundice, thanks to bare yellow bulbs in the ceiling spotted along every ten feet or so. This was the kind of passageway that led to an electric chair back in the old days. And in some states still did.

  About eight light bulbs down I came to another door, the slightly better-preserved twin of the previous one, and no key was required. Steep stairs awaited, cement again—no creaking to announce me. They led to three landings, the third of which had a ladder—bare wood but of a vintage going back decades—leaned against the wall opposite.

  I was still in the gray suit with the black turtleneck. But the silenced Browning was in my surgical-gloved right hand now, as I scaled the ladder to a panel in the ceiling.

  Well, sort of in the ceiling. Actually in the floor of the room above. And that room was the penthouse, the front closet of which I pulled myself up and into. Only a few coats hung—the climate required a raincoat or two, one topcoat reserved for weird weather, but mostly just empty hangers for me not to bump into.

  With the lid leaned against a side wall, I sat there in the opening, legs dangling like a kid in a high chair, and braced myself in case my minimal noise had roused anybody.

  Apparently it hadn’t.

  Straddling the square hole in the floor, I used my left hand to work the doohickey on this side of the closet-opening knob. Turning that worked just fine, and I got the door open quickly, ready to deal with the bodyguard in the front room.

  The fairly narrow but very long living room had, as promised, a pool table taking up a good third of it. I was facing the table now. At my left, at the far end, was a wet bar. A wall of windows, straight ahead, looked out onto the pool, curtains back, night not having given in to morning yet, dawn not even a threat.

  But the expected bodyguard was nowhere to be seen in this considerable space.

  Then, from behind a door next to me, came a flush. I positioned myself with my back to the wall next to that door. Next came the sound of running water. He was a good employee, washing his hands like that. Probably made drinks and handled food for his boss. He deserved a gold star.

  He got it. When he came lumbering out—another cauliflower-eared ex-bouncer with eyes peering out of slits and an open mouth waiting for a thought to form—I clubbed him along the right side of his head with the noise-suppressed nine mil. He immediately transformed into a useless pile of protoplasm, and I caught him with my free arm, to lower him gently to the pink pile carpet.

  His heavy breathing meant the blow hadn’t killed him, at least not just yet, and I used the duct tape in my suitcoat pocket to secure his wrists behind him and his ankles together, and just for good measure slapped some across his mouth, getting a little drool on my hand that I wiped off on his leisure suit jacket—a plaid number from the Who Shot the Couch collection. No gun. Some bodyguard.

  I checked the place, knowing the layout well from the provided materials. The two bathrooms off the living room were unpopulated. The guest bedroom, too. The living room had painted plaster walls, but the first bedroom I checked sported pink-and-black vertical-striped wallpaper, the pink parts shiny, the stripes wide. The bed was a king with a pink spread and matching fluffy pillows.

  The master bedroom was larger but similar, the main differences being black-and-shiny-gold-striped wallpaper and a big round bed.

  Cliff Anthony, in black silk pajamas, the top unbuttoned onto a hairless, pudgy chest, was on his back on top of the black-and-gold spread, snoring, dead to the world.

  I sat on the bed and bumped up and down a little, till it woke him up.

  Feminine eyelashes in the masculine face fluttered like spooked butterflies. “ Huh! Huh?”

  “Good morning, Starshine. That’s from Hair—the hit’s by a guy named Oliver, not that you’d ever mention that.”

  He propped himself on his elbows. “Who the fuck…?”

  “Think of me as Jiminy Cricket with a gun.” I pressed the nose of the silenced automatic against his forehead, some greasy black locks fringing down. I gave it some muscle, dimpling his deeply tanned flesh.

  “What the fuck…?”

  “Sam is unhappy.”

  “Oh, fuck…”

  “Been banging his teenage daughter, haven’t you, Cliff? Oh, she’s of age, but he’s still not pleased.”

  “Oh Jesus…”

  “You have friends in Chicago who asked Sam if he might reconsider sending someone like me.”

  Shaking his head, as if trying to clear it, he said, “I’ll never touch her again! I swear on my Mama’s grave. Never, never touch her again!”

  I shot the pillow next to him, which even noise-suppressed made it plump up some and spit feathers, the sound a substantial pop/click.

  Anthony’s eyes were wide, his hands up, palms out. The front of his pajama bottoms was damp.

  “If I come back here,” I said, and pushed the nose of the weapon under his chin for a little emphasis, “my aim will improve.”

  He was shivering and crying as I left him.

  I thought about going out the front way but, just in case I did have to come back here one of these days, I took the closet route, using the ladder and replacing the panel.

  When I emerged from the corner doorway in the underground garage, Boyd was behind the wheel of his car, a Chevy Caprice convertible; he almost always rented, a risk I never took.

  “Well?” he asked, bright-eyed as a deer about to get run down.

  Getting in on the rider’s side, I said, “No rush. We’re fine. But I almost killed the motherfucker, despite Broker’s orders.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Prick wouldn’t sign an album to you!”

  Boyd laughed out loud at that. “Quarry, you’re a card. A regular joker.”

  “This is the town for it,” I said. “Drive.”

  TWO

  Paradise Lake in October really lives up to its name.

  First, God or Mother Nature or whoever-the-fuck-is-incharge does a bang-up job on the fall colors—red, gold, yellow, amber, a forest fire that never gets out of hand. The trees, fat with leaves in their colorful death throes, crowd the placid blue of the lake to reflect back at themselves in strange but lovely abstract shapes, the sky adding streaks of white to its own blue reflection.

  Second, there are no tourists. For me having a minimum number of people around is about as close to heaven as Wisconsin gets. I don’t mind the spring and summer, when the hordes invade, because a good number of those are female and young and looking for fun and no commitment. And have they found the right guy.

  But mindless sex gets old after four or five months, and when the outsiders give way and I’m only dealing with the handful of locals who tolerate me much as I tolerate them, lack of pussy becomes almost a relief. I have some pretty good friends in nearby Lake Geneva who, like me, are professionals, though their professions are rather more dull, like being a lawyer or a doctor or a successful merchant. We play poker for low stakes—quarter, fifty-cents, a buck—and give each other a good-natured hard time. They envy me because I am a little younger and they’re aware of that young pussy I mentioned.

  Still, every one of them has a loving wife, each quite attractive, and kids who don’t hate them, which is novel. There’s much to be envied about their boring lives. And anyway who am I to talk? Much of my life is more boring than theirs. I only do half a dozen jobs a year, tops, and the rest of the time I just loaf around my lakeside A-frame watching television and reading paperback westerns and spy novels. When the weather isn’t right for swimming in the lake, I go to a health club in Lake Geneva and
swim there. And in college-girl off-season, I hang out at the Playboy Club in Geneva, where I’ve gotten to know a number of waitresses very well. That’s Bunnies to you. In case you were wondering what kind of man reads Playboy.

  My poker buddies think I’m a lingerie salesman (which leads to considerable joshing) alternating travel with supervising other salesmen from home.

  So it’s a quiet life, dull and out of the way, but on the rare instances where the Broker drops by, life seems suddenly lively.

  Not that the Broker is a terribly lively individual. Nor does he actually “drop by”—on my weekly touch-base calls, from a pay phone, he very occasionally announces that he would “like to arrange a visit on your premises.” Yes, he really does talk that way. And by “occasionally,” I would say his visits to my “premises” numbered maybe five times in as many years. Usually we met at restaurants, often truck stops, and sometimes at the hotel he owned in Davenport, Iowa.

  I first met him a few months after I came home from the Nam, as we called that hellhole. Despite all the carnage I’d endured and delivered, I had returned to the Good Ol’ U.S. of A. with a streak of naivete still in my genes, and for that matter my jeans. I had married a lovely little California type who an Ohio kid like me had thought existed only in my own mind when I listened to the Beach Boys crooning “Surfer Girl.” A quick courtship before I went overseas, and an exchange of many tender letters between us, did not prepare me for (yeah, I know, you’re way ahead of me) finding Joni in bed with some other guy.

  A quick tip to returning-home military men: never show up a day early.

  Maybe you’ve also guessed I didn’t take it well, but you might be surprised to learn that I restrained myself. I didn’t kill either one of them, right then. But after a long soul-searching night, I went over to the guy’s house in La Mirada to talk it out. But right off the bat, he called me a bunghole and—he was working under his little sports car at the time—I kicked out the fucking jack.

  Ultimately the death was declared accidental, though they almost tried me and the papers got some real play out of it. Maybe it got some national coverage too, because I figure that’s how the Broker tracked me down. He found me in a nasty part of L.A., feeling sorry for myself, the only time in my relatively young life that I was ever on a bender. I normally drink in moderation. That’s not sarcasm. Coca-Cola’s my chief vice.