Quarry's Cut Read online

  Contrary to what you might think, assuming you’ve read some of the bullshit fiction books written on people like me, or seen some of the ridiculous movies or TV things done on us, a paid killer is not usually a person who will be careless about killing, who would go out casually, heed­lessly mowing down anyone who crossed his path in the course of a job. The killing of one person, if it’s handled with some intelligence and care, gen­erally causes little commotion, unless the town is exceptionally small, or the mark exceptionally well-known. A murder is likely to be buried in the back of the papers the day it happens, in a major city, and on the front page and on TV for a day or so in a secondary-size city, and in either case consigned to the unsolved file of the cops after a few weeks of fruitless investigation.

  But kill two people and the shit will hit the fan. Kill an innocent bystander, indiscriminately, without the planning that went into hitting the mark, and suddenly it’s on TV constantly and in the papers continuously and everybody’s holler­ing “Mass murder!” and the cops will have to go after it for however long it takes, because the media and the media-manipulated public will de­mand nothing less.

  Even had I been on a job, out in the field somewhere, keeping all this in mind would have been necessary, important; here, at home, in my literal back yard, it was an overriding concern. Contact with Turner that involved Wilma’s niece would be unfortunate, even if the girl didn’t get killed.

  So I sat, and I waited, and my back started hurting and the sweat started to roll down my face and everywhere else, because it was hot in there and stuffy, the air as stale as a political speech, and then I noticed them talking. Their voices were taking on a tone of normalcy, as opposed to the assorted sounds of sexual craziness that had been playing in the background during my confine­ment, like a pervert’s substitute for Muzak.

  “It’s ten till two,” the girl was saying.

  “Maybe you better go, then,” Turner said.

  Who said chivalry was dead.

  “I know, but . . . I don’t want to go. I want to stay with you. All night.”

  “Nice if you could. But if you think you should go, you better.”

  “I guess I better.”

  “Here, I’ll help you get dressed.”

  He had her dressed and out the door in three minutes; the poor little bitch had to ask for her goodnight kiss.

  And then he stood in the middle of the room, right in my line of vision, stood naked, his sex shrunken like he’d just come out from swimming in very cold water, which wasn’t exactly the case, and he looked at the door the girl had just exited through and said, “Hee hee,” several times, and slapped his belly, as it wasn’t every day Turner got to diddle a sixteen year-old. He scratched his sides and yawned and left my line of vision long enough to switch off the lights and then a few seconds later I heard him crawl into bed.

  Pretty soon he starting snoring, and that’s when I got to my feet, ducking the metal pipe that cut across the closet, the empty hangers presenting a danger, if I bumped into them and rattled them together. But I didn’t, and the closet door eased open soundlessly and none of my bones creaked either, despite the cramped position they’d been in for two hours, and I started across the room.

  Some moonlight was filtering through the trees and in the window, bathing the room in semi-visibility. He was sleeping on his back, naked, on top of the blankets, possibly because the room was nice and warm from the radiator, or maybe he was still aglow from fucking his teenager.

  Sometimes I think stupidity is contagious. I was so used to Turner doing dumbass things that I forgot he was a professional. An asshole, an idiot, but a professional. Which meant don’t underesti­mate him. Which meant you had to expect any­thing could happen. You had to be ready for a snoring man to suddenly whip an arm out at you and knock you over against the wall, and then come diving toward you like a linebacker going for the quarterback.

  He buried his head in my chest and pinned me to the wall and threw some punches into my ribs and stomach and I batted him alongside his head with the Browning, caught some ear and got some blood going, and he stopped pummeling for a second and in that second must’ve realized I had his gun, or anyway a gun, and both his hands went for my gun arm, one hand around my wrist, the other catching me between shoulder and arm, his nails long and cutting the flesh of my wrist, a thumb digging up under into my armpit, and with his two hands he tried for a while to see if he couldn’t convince my right arm to abandon my body.

  But I still had a left hand, and with it I grabbed a handful of wilted, exposed balls and squeezed and squeezed some more and twisted too and he re­leased his grip on my arm and opened his mouth to scream but I put him to sleep with another whap on the head with the Browning before the scream got going.

  He wasn’t out long. He would’ve been, maybe, if I hadn’t kicked him awake when he started in snoring again.

  He looked up at me, hands cupping himself, squinting up in the half-darkness, and said, “Jesus . . . it’s Quarry.”

  “I thought maybe you’d recognize me,” I said.

  6

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  I TOLD HIM to go sit on the couch and he did. I turned on the lights and he asked me if he could put something on. I said no. I said I had something in common with his girl friends: I liked him better naked.

  Actually, he wasn’t much to look at, no matter what sex you were. He was just a narrow-shouldered, skinny man, though he had a spare tire he was working on, and his thick, shaggy head of hair was like a fright wig, his flesh pasty white with occasional dark body hair, and his Nixon-like five o’clock shadow. He looked very worried, and confused, sitting there slump-shouldered, looking up at me like a kid worried about getting grounded by a particularly strict old man.

  He waited a long time for me to talk. When I didn’t, he said, “I . . . I don’t understand, Quar­ry. What are you doing here? What’s this all about?”

  I went over by the window, leaned against the ledge in front of it, the Browning at my side. I looked out the window, toward my cottage.

  “Quarry? Why don’t you say something?”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “What the fuck you think I been doing?”

  “Stalling. Play-acting. Something.”

  “Nothing. Nothing like that. I honest to Christ don’t know what this is about. Is it . . .”

  “Is it what?”

  “A contract? Somebody took a contract out on me? And . . . you’re here to fill it? Is . . . is that it?”

  I said nothing.

  “Who’d want to kill me? I don’t have an enemy in the world.”

  “How about that sixteen-year-old’s aunt?”

  “What’s the game, Quarry? I’m not actually supposed to believe you’re morally outraged by me humping some little piece of jail-bait, am I?”

  “Am I here making a citizen’s arrest, you mean? No.”

  “Then . . . why . . . what . . . ?”

  I said nothing.

  “Jesus, Quarry. I . . . I mean. I haven’t thought of you in years. I haven’t seen you since that carnival thing.”

  I said nothing.

  “Are you listening to what I’m saying, Quar­ry? I am saying I honest to Christ don’t know what this is about. I don’t see you in five years and you show up in my hotel room and tear my fucking nuts half off, Jesus. It’s crazy. You’re crazy.”

  “What are you doing here, Turner?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I said nothing.

  “I’m here on business.”

  “On what?”

  “Business. I’m here on a job.”

  “What sort of job.”

  “Same. Same as when you and me worked together. What about you, Quarry? I heard you left the business.”

  “And here I thought you hadn’t heard about me in five years.”

  “I didn’t say that, exactly.
I did hear about you.”

  “Who from?”

  “Guy I work with.”

  “Name of?”

  “Burden.”

  “Don’t think I know him.”

  “Short guy, balding, on the heavy side. In his late forties, early fifties.”

  “Don’t know him.”

  “He doesn’t know you, either.”

  “He just tells people about me.”

  “We were talking one time, we were talking about people we worked with. Your name come up. He heard about you from some other guy he worked with.”

  “Name of?”

  “Ash.”

  “Ash I know.”

  “Sure. You worked with Ash, right after Broker split you and me up, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s funny, what happened with the Broker, isn’t it.”

  “A stitch.”

  “I mean . . . I heard you was there.”

  “I was.”

  “Did you, uh, kill him or what?”

  “Why not ask Burden?”

  “I already did. He said Ash said maybe you killed Broker, maybe not. Probably not, he said.’’

  “I was there when Broker bought it.”

  “You were there.”

  “I didn’t pull the trigger.”

  “Oh. Who did? Anybody I know?”

  “Kid named Carl. Bodyguard of Broker’s.”

  “Don’t know him.”

  “You won’t get the pleasure. Him I did kill.”

  “Oh. Well. What line you in these days, anyway?”

  “I’m the house dick here.”

  “Funny. You’re still funny as a crutch, Quarry.”

  “Well I’m not naked and stupid, which I admit makes it tougher to get the laughs. But then I have the gun. So I get to ask the questions, now that the small talk is out of the way. Once again. Why are you here?”

  “On a job, I said.”

  “Tell me about the mark.”

  “The mark?”

  “It’s a term meaning the poor son of a bitch you’re here to help snuff.”

  “You don’t want to know about that.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You know you don’t. You know that’s some­thing I can’t tell you. You know that better than me, that somebody in our line don’t go around spreading the mark’s name around.”

  “Somebody in our line doesn’t fuck teenagers when he’s out on a job, when he’s supposed to be inconspicuously getting his work done.”

  “Where do you think I was tonight for three hours? I was working.”

  “Be more specific.”

  “Quarry, be reasonable!”

  “The mark, Turner. Tell me about him. Or her.”

  “Him.”

  “Okay. Him.”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Then I’ll ask the inside of your head, after it slides down the wall behind you.”

  “You wouldn’t do that. You’re too careful for that kind of thing, Quarry. You don’t go around killing people without . . .”

  “You have five seconds.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “One.”

  “His name is Castile.”

  “As in Spain.”

  “Yeah. As in Spain. As in Captain from Castile. That’s an old movie you may have seen.”

  “I’ve seen it. Tyrone Power’s in it. He’s dead. In a few seconds you can ask him what he thought of the film.”

  “What, do you think I’m stalling?”

  “Two.”

  “Anyway, his name is Jerry Castile.”

  “I heard that name some place.”

  “Probably have. He makes movies.”

  “What kind of movies?”

  “The kind you’re thinking. Porno.”

  “Go on.”

  “He’s up here working on a film. A porno flick.”

  “And?”

  “And he’s here with some people who are staying at this ski lodge or hunting lodge or some­thing. It’s off in the boonies.”

  “How far off?”

  “Just a few miles from here, actually. But it’s off the main roads. Back deep in a wooded place. They’re all staying there, cast and crew and everybody. At first they weren’t. They were at the Playboy Club, at Lake Geneva, that hotel or what­ever the fuck over there. That was a week ago. Last five days they been at this lodge.”

  “And the mark is Jerry Castile.”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s not a bad story. Try again.”

  “Try again? Quarry, you crazy fuc­ker . . . you wave that goddamn Browning at me all night and count to five and count to five hundred and I won’t be able to give you any other story, except a lie, Quarry, and what good would that do you?”

  The hell of it was I believed him. He simply wasn’t that good an actor, not that good a liar, either, to bluff this way, so thoroughly and so well. I’d been standing by the window, looking now and then toward my A-frame, and not a flicker, not a thing was going on in Turner’s face by way of reaction, and while his life depended on the quality of his acting, I knew from past experience he wasn’t up to this kind of performance. Unless he’d improved a hell of a lot in five years . . .

  “I suppose you have notes,” I said.

  “Little notebook in my jacket pocket,” he said.

  The jacket was on the couch, nearby.

  “Get it out.”

  “Really?”

  “Go ahead and get it.”

  “I mean . . . aren’t you a little leery about me trying something?”

  “Not at all. I’d like it.”

  “I think maybe you would, Quarry. Here it is. Should I toss it?”

  “No,” I said, and came and got it. I flipped through it, one-handed; the notes were sparse and not particularly thorough, making use of a number system I didn’t quite follow, though it obviously recorded the times of activities carried out by somebody. “I don’t see the name of Castile, anywhere.”

  “It’s there. In code.”

  “Code.”

  “Yeah. He’s in there as ten dash three.”

  I looked and saw “10-3” throughout.

  “Any special reason for choosing that?”

  “J is the tenth letter of the alphabet, C is the third. J.C. Jerry Castile.”

  “Or Jesus Christ.”

  “Ain’t you heard, Quarry? That sucker’s al­ready dead.”

  “Yeah, him and Tyrone Power both. It’s a goddamn epidemic. That’s some code. It’d prob­ably take a Boy Scout a good two minutes to crack.”

  “I had to explain it to you, didn’t I?”

  “Well that’s true. You have me there. But I seem to have you.”

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  “That’s a problem.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think I maybe believe you.”

  “About Castile, you mean? Of course you believe me. I’m telling you the truth.”

  “Maybe. Maybe.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “I’m going to knock you out.”

  “Do you have to?”

  “You’re going to wake up again. What more do you want?”

  “I want to reverse this situation sometime.”

  “Maybe you will. Do me one favor.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t mess around with that little girl anymore.”

  “Why? What’s it to you?”

  “Boring.”

  And I hit him with his Browning, and left the gun in his lap, empty, the clip in my pocket, but the box of slugs still in the dresser.

  7

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  WILMA WAS WAITING downstairs, at the bar. She looked especially big, poised on the barstool like a magician’s balancing act. She also looked tired and not a little old, the oddly pretty blue eyes barely visibl
e under heavy lids, the rows of chins hanging limp and loose, a cigarette drooping from her mouth like another tired appendage. The bar­tender, Charley, was putting glasses away near­by. He was bald and friendly looking but a hard-ass old guy who was also bouncer for the place. He and Wilma apparently had a thing, though nothing was ever said about it.

  “About gave up on you,” Wilma said.

  “I talked to him,” I said, taking a stool.

  “And?”

  “He’ll stay away from her.”

  “I think the son of a bitch was with her tonight.”

  “I know he was. But I think it’ll be the last night.”

  “Well. I owe you.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “Shit if I don’t. Have Charley pour you one.”

  “No thanks. I’d take coffee, though.”

  “Sure. Charley?”

  He went after some coffee.

  “I do appreciate what you done. That pecker-head looked shifty to me, forty or better and her only sixteen, Jesus.”

  “The guy is shifty. Does he stay in his room most of the time?”

  “Not really. Comes and goes. Why?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Wilma. Just curious.”

  “Think he might be up to something on the shady side?”

  “Could be. I don’t know.”

  Charley came with a pot of coffee and poured Wilma and me a cup, and went back to wiping the glasses. He hovered nearby, listening, but not participating.

  “Let me give you some advice, Wilma.”

  “Sure.”

  “Stay away from the guy. I got him straight­ened out, I think. But at the same time keep an eye on him. And if he messes around with your niece anymore, you can let me know and I’ll talk to him again.”

  “You really think he’s some kind of crook or something, is that it?”

  “No, no. But keep your distance from him.”

  “And my eyes open?”

  “That’d be smart, I think.”

  “Okay.”

  “Thanks for the coffee.”

  “Stop by for lunch tomorrow. It’ll be on the house.”

  “I just might take you up on that.”

  “You better.”

  “Goodnight, Wilma. Charley.”

  And I went home.