Quarry in the Black Read online

  Or a preacher.

  “I’ve seen this guy,” I said, “on the news. Don’t remember his name.”

  “The Reverend Raymond Wesley Lloyd,” the Broker said, enunciating each word as if I were taking notes. Mentally I was.

  “Civil rights activist,” I said, in a thinking-out-loud way. “Kind of getting to be a big deal.”

  “Many think he’s the next Martin Luther King,” the Broker said, nodding, smiling again, pleased that his slow student had some smidgen of knowledge. “But Reverend Lloyd stays unaffiliated with any major activist groups, whether traditional like the NAACP or the more radical SNCC. He’s his own man with his own organization.”

  I flipped through some materials that provided background well beyond what Boyd might have gathered; this was clearly a job that had been in the planning stages long before either Boyd or I had been brought in.

  The Broker sat quietly, sipping his beer, while I skimmed the materials, which included magazine and newspaper clippings. All I knew going in was what I’d picked up from the nightly newscast, when it happened to be on while I ate a TV dinner or something. I vaguely remembered that Lloyd had come up through the St. Louis slums and been involved in drug dealing, but had got religion in prison.

  Upon his release, he became pastor of a small church in St. Louis and built a following; after the church was burned to the ground, Lloyd did not rebuild, at least not the church itself. Instead he struck out as an activist leader.

  According to a Time magazine piece, former dealer Lloyd of all the black leaders of our day was the one who spoke out most forcefully against illegal narcotics on ghetto streets. They were “genocide,” he said. Heroin was “a plague upon our people.”

  I put the materials back in the envelope, and tossed it back on the little table.

  I said, “I know I pressured you into revealing who the subject was…but this isn’t for me.”

  His expression was placid. “Why is that?”

  “It’s just not what I signed on for. You made it clear in our very first meeting, going on two years now, that by the time I’d be called in on a job, the person targeted was already dead, in a way. That when somebody is willing to pay good money to have somebody else taken out, well, out that second somebody goes.”

  He’d begun nodding before I finished. “That’s correct. Another way to look at it is that if you don’t take a job, someone else will. The subject will die, whether you are the means or not.”

  One actor refuses a role, he’d said in that first meeting, and another steps in. Because the show must go on.

  I gestured to the manila envelope. “But you also said that any target in my crosshairs would be there as a result of their own actions. They screwed somebody’s wife, they embezzled money, they were criminals who got on the bad side of other criminals. Not…not somebody decent, for Christ’s sake.”

  He grinned. I finally made him smile. Really smile. In a coochy-coo of a voice he said, “Why, is that a sense of moral outrage I detect, Quarry?”

  The fire felt hot on my face. “I don’t know that I want to kill somebody because a client doesn’t like black people. Somebody in my crosshairs because they’re the wrong color? Not my deal. Even for twenty-five k.”

  The smile was fading but lingered; he leaned toward me. “That’s something I like about you, Quarry. Unlike most of the Vietnam veterans I work with, you returned home with some semblance of humanity buried inside there.”

  “I thought I was carved out of rock.”

  He flipped a hand. “My first impression. Now I realize that you have standards. Perhaps even a code of sorts. In a world without meaning, that can come in handy. But it can also get in the way.”

  I raised both hands as if in surrender. “I’m not going to rat you out or anything, Broker. I just want to take a pass. No harm, no foul, remember?”

  He did something then that he had never done before. He called me by my real name, which let’s say is John, which it isn’t.

  “John,” he said. “I respectfully request that you set aside any compunctions about the killing of a good man. Raymond Wesley Lloyd is not a good man.”

  Why was it that assassins and their victims so often had three names?

  “Well, he looks pretty goddamn good to me,” I said, nodding toward the envelope. “Kill him if you want, just leave me out of it.”

  Maybe I wouldn’t have been so quick to turn down that kind of money if I hadn’t had a particularly good year. Biloxi had paid off very well, in ways the Broker wasn’t wholly aware of.

  Then something crawled up my spine.

  “Or,” I said, “have I just made myself a loose end? This is political, Broker. You fucking lied to me!”

  He shook his head and his voice turned calming. “No, I said there was a political aspect. I made that point quite clearly. Anyway, Reverend Lloyd may present himself as the logical replacement for Martin Luther King…and that the public currently perceives him as such certainly complicates matters…but I assure you he is made of more common clay than Reverend King.”

  At least the Broker didn’t add “may he rest in peace” after that.

  I was studying him. “How common a clay are we talking about?”

  A one-shoulder shrug. “His strident condemnations of drug use amongst the poorest of the black populace fall into the area of ‘methinks he doth protest too much.’ ”

  “Speak American.”

  “He retains connections, shall we say, to his roots—he is largely funded by white gangsters who run dope in the city that is his home base, St. Louis, Missouri. It’s a hypocritical front, yes, albeit a rather brilliant one—who would suspect when Raymond Wesley Lloyd takes his anti-drug message on the road, a core group within his organization is moving caches of the poison?”

  I was frowning. “So this is a mob hit?”

  The Broker recoiled. “Quarry, you know I can’t confirm or deny that. This may be an unusual job, but we must retain the compartmentalization that makes all of us safe.”

  “Yeah. Sorry. Okay.”

  One eyebrow went up. “Okay? Does that mean you accept the assignment?”

  “…I’m in.”

  He clapped once, like a pasha summoning a slave. “You’ve viewed the background material. Questions?”

  “Mostly just one,” I said. “What makes you think a white boy like me can just wander into a black activist HQ and pull up a chair? Blackface went out with Eddie Cantor.”

  He was shaking his head again. “You won’t be the only white face in the room. Civil Rights activism has always attracted young guilty liberals, particularly right now.”

  “Why right now?”

  Another smile. “Reverend Lloyd is in the midst of a tour of college campuses, working to get out the vote for George McGovern in the presidential race.”

  I opened my mouth but no words came out. Even a non-political type like me, who only caught the occasional newscast, was aware that Nixon was slaughtering McGovern in the polls, with the election just a few weeks away.

  He could tell what I was thinking and said, “Democrats and assorted left-wing rabble are holding out hope that the polls are wrong, or at least can be made to be wrong.”

  “Why? How?”

  He frowned. “Do you ever read a paper, Quarry? This is the first year that the under twenty-ones can vote. Right now various famous bleeding hearts—politicians, movie stars, folk singers, rock and rollers—are beating the campus bushes, hoping the anti-war youth will create a November surprise.”

  “And Lloyd is part of that.”

  “Yes. But he won’t be part of any November surprise.”

  “Probably not. Nixon’s the one.”

  “That’s not what I refer to, Quarry.”

  “What do you refer to?”

  “The October surprise you’ll give him.”

  TWO

  Getting to St. Louis took a little over seven hours. I left around noon, the day after the Broker came calling, going
by way of Route 47, I-55 and Route 66 (no sign of Tod and Buz).

  I’d have made it in maybe an hour less if I hadn’t stopped in Chicago to buy a used cobalt-blue Chevy Impala SS for fifteen hundred cash—a sweet ride with enough muscle for getaway contingencies, and an eight-track to accommodate my Doors, Badfinger and Rolling Stones tapes. My green Opel GT I parked in an extended-stay lot near O’Hare Airport. These things take time, particularly if you catch a meal and take a shit.

  I had an address for Boyd’s lookout on East Euclid in the Central West End of St. Louis, but also a phone number. I called that first from a booth at a gas station on the outskirts. It took only three rings.

  “…yes?” came Boyd’s hesitant, breathy baritone.

  “Me. Fancy. Got a phone and everything, huh?”

  “It’s not a tin can with a string. Man, this is one sweet pad. Wait’ll you see it. Rivals Cleveland, if you can believe that.”

  “I’m maybe fifteen minutes out, but I don’t know St. Louis. Talk me in.”

  “Where you calling from?”

  I told him and he gave me directions.

  In twenty minutes I was on East Euclid in a lively area of bars, restaurants, clubs, boutiques, head shops and what have you. Not surprisingly, St. Louis was warmer than Paradise Lake, Wisconsin. I was in blue jeans and a black Levi’s sweatshirt under a brown corduroy jacket with fake fleece lining and collar, the latter almost too warm here. If so, I had a windbreaker in my suitcase for fallback.

  A brick building, with Boyd on the second of three floors over a hippie-ish dress shop, was across from a storefront with

  ST. LOUIS CIVIL RIGHTS COALITION

  in white letters on windows through which a now-empty warren of desks could be glimpsed between plastered campaign posters: TOGETHER FOR McGOVERN, McGOVERN—TELLS IT LIKE IT IS, COME HOME AMERICA—McGOVERN/SHRIVER, and a red-white-and-blue hand making the two-finger peace symbol above the words McGOVERN ’72.

  Where were the anti-war candidates when I needed them?

  Tricky Dick was always flashing that two-finger gesture, too—that blue-jawed square was hip enough to figure out that kids would read it as peace and grown-ups as victory. I wouldn’t vote for that prick for dog catcher, but you had to give it to him.

  I left the Impala in a graveled recession behind the building; I might have gone up the stairs to the rear deck, but Boyd had advised coming around front. So my small suitcase and I did that, stopping at a doorway between the hippie dress shop and a bar where a band was playing “Magic Carpet Ride,” badly. The smell of burgers cooking said there’d be food handy. That was good.

  The neighborhood itself appeared to be a white one, but not so white that Reverend Raymond Lloyd couldn’t set up shop here. And I’d bet college kids and young singles of both races were mingling in these bars and clubs. Girls were always trying to prove how unprejudiced they were, and also to see if what they heard about black guys was true.

  I went up carpeted stairs to a landing with a yellow light giving the place jaundice. Only one apartment here, though the stairs went on up, presumably to another. I knocked softly.

  A few seconds and Boyd’s voice came, as soft as my knock. “Yes?”

  “Me,” I said.

  The door had no peephole but it did have a nightlatch, and he cracked the door and peered over the chain, making sure. His flat, scarred face looked up at me—he was maybe five-six, offset by his broad-shouldered frame. His hair was thick, curly and brown, with eyebrows and mustache to match; he looked like a cross between a boxer and an Italian organ grinder.

  “Quarry,” he said, a smile in his voice as well as on his face. “Missed you, man.”

  We hadn’t done a job in several months.

  “Swordfish,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “That’s the password. Let me the fuck in. I been driving all day.”

  “Sure, sure, sure,” the slice of his face said, and he unlatched the door and opened it for me.

  I stepped inside and put my suitcase down and found myself in a decent apartment.

  This was a spacious living room, furnished—Sears or Montgomery Ward stuff, dating to the early ’60s—with a row of windows on the street that made a perfect lookout post. A cushion appropriated from the couch made a seat for him by the window at farthest right, like a sultan might sit on, with a bedroom pillow propped against the wall, so he could lean back there and stare out sideways.

  Near the cushion were binoculars, for closer looks at those coming and going. A .38 long-barreled Smith and Wesson Model 29 revolver was on the floor near his cushion—a good weapon, but you can’t silence revolvers, so I stick to nine millimeters, despite occasional jamming.

  A console TV (Kung Fu on screen now, sound low) was against the wall at left, near the windows, so he could have it on while he worked, if he kept his eyes on the street. Probably he didn’t turn it on while he was on the job, though, as he’d placed a portable radio near his post. He’d have the radio on an easy-listening station, no doubt—he was a good ten years older than me, though his age never came up.

  I had a look around. The layout was boxcar—a bedroom, another bedroom, and a small kitchen, each opening onto the other. Boyd had taken the first bedroom—the bed unmade, a paperback on the nightstand called Midtown Queen with a bodybuilder on the cover (your job is to figure out Boyd’s sexual preference and then get back to me)—which left the adjacent bedroom for me. Each bedroom had a dresser and a double bed. Nothing fancy, but relatively speaking the Ritz, since more commonly we got stuck with unfurnished shitholes and had to sleep on the floor in sleeping bags, like fucking Boy Scouts.

  I tossed my suitcase on the bed and went on into the kitchen.

  “Jesus,” I said, looking in the refrigerator, which was stocked with cold cuts, sliced cheese and Budweiser, “this really isn’t bad.”

  Boyd had tagged after. He was in his undershirt and brown bellbottoms and bare feet, a solidly built guy who could take care of himself in a brawl. But his dark eyes had long lashes that were almost pretty and made women love him. For what good it did them.

  “We can cook here,” he said.

  I gestured to the Wonder Bread on the counter. “Stick with sandwiches. Please don’t stink the place with your cooking. This place has the ventilation of a coffin.”

  “Okay. Plenty of places around here to grab a bite, starting with that bar-and-grill next-door below. And all my stakeout work is by day.”

  He’d been nice enough to buy some cans of Coke. I took one and popped the top. I shut the fridge door and asked him, “You’re not staking out the mark’s residence?”

  He shook his head. “No. Broker said don’t bother. We’re talking a colored neighborhood. Pretty nice. But my white mug would stand out.”

  I gave him a look. “Boyd, they don’t say ‘colored’ anymore.”

  A shrug. “Okay, then. Negro.”

  “Welcome to 1956.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing.”

  I sat at the Formica-topped table. It dated at least to the year I’d just mentioned, though the appliances had come in with the furniture a decade or so ago. He joined me, sitting across, leaning forward eagerly. He had been working this job for three weeks and he was starved for human company. Technically I qualified.

  I asked, “You’re just working days, then?”

  He nodded toward the front of the apartment. “Sometimes they come back in the evenings. So I keep a loose watch on the place. No pattern, though, other than they come in around eight A.M. and stay till six.”

  “What about lunch?”

  “They mostly brown-bag it. I’m not sure about Lloyd himself.”

  I sipped my Coke. “Does he ever leave by the front?”

  “Sure. Lots of times. But, again—no pattern, not even where lunch is concerned. Sometimes a cab pulls up, sometimes one of his people pulls up in one car or another. Nothing helpful.”

  “Bodyguards?”

  “Oh
yeah. Always. Big and Negro and tougher-lookin’ than Joe Frazier.”

  “Not Negro. Black.”

  “Quarry, that’s racist.”

  “Black is racist?”

  “Right. You better get with it.”

  I rubbed my forehead. He lived out east with his hairdresser “wife,” for Christ’s sake. Didn’t he have what they called an alternate lifestyle? Yet he was about as hip as a dockworker.

  “I’ll watch it,” I assured him.

  “You damn well better. I mean, you’re going undercover with those people, right?”

  I nodded. Those people.

  “You don’t want to get on their bad side.” He shook his head. “Undercover like a damn cop. That’s a new one.”

  “I did it before, just not with you.”

  He gave a little shudder. “Doesn’t it make you nervous?”

  “The money’s better, so I’ll get a grip.”

  Boyd gulped some Bud. “We don’t wanna blow this one, Quarry. I mean, ten grand is one sweet haul.”

  I didn’t know if he meant ten grand that we were splitting or if that was his end, and I didn’t ask.

  I just said, “Very damn sweet.”

  Normally it was an equal split. But the Broker obviously knew my end was higher risk and that it would take real bread to convince me to take on the job. Anyway, Boyd didn’t need to know what I was taking home.

  I asked him, “What do you have so far?”

  Boyd said that he’d played pedestrian several days to witness Lloyd arriving at the HQ alley door via a black Grand Prix complete with driver and paired bodyguards. His exit varied depending on how late they worked, but the Grand Prix pulled in at five-fifty P.M., ready to pick him up whenever.

  “Not very useful,” I said.

  “Not very. Mornings, they drop him right at the door and evenings he comes out, climbs in and he’s gone.”

  “What about meals?”

  “There are half a dozen restaurants where he takes lunch. I followed him to another half a dozen where he occasionally takes supper. Two soul food joints and several Italian places on the Hill, where he gets dirty looks but served. Plenty of white people in this town don’t like Negroes, let me tell you.”