The Last Quarry (11 page)

“Wait on men?”

She laughed a little. “No...you know.” She sat next to me again, sipped the coffee, raised an eyebrow. “I mean, I hardly know you. I just don’t usually...”

“Kiss on the first date?”

She smiled over the coffee cup’s lip. “Kiss on the first date.”

I pushed my plate away. Sipped coffee. Said, “I live alone, too.”

Her brow tensed. “Sorry. I...I don’t follow you.”

“Sometimes you just...need something.”

She thought about that, and nodded. It was a sort of admission.

“There really haven’t been a lot of ‘Ricks,’ ” she said. “Some. But mostly, the last eight, ten years...I’ve kept to myself.”

“Safer that way,” I said.

“You, too?”

“...It’s the easiest way to get hurt.”

“Also the most painful,” she said quickly. “When I was younger, I went with older guys...?”

I hiked an eyebrow. “And things have changed?”

“Well, you’re the first...‘older guy’...in some time. A shrink once told me I have some kind of ‘daddy’ complex.”

I shifted in my seat.

I shrugged. “Every little girl wants to fuck her daddy. And lots of daddies want to fuck their little girls. It only counts against you when you go through with it.”

She thought about that, then said, “You...scare me a little.”

I gave her half a smile. “Just a little?”

She studied me and something devilish got into her eyes. “You might not be so scary, naked.”

“You’ve seen me naked.”

She shook her head. “Oh no, I haven’t....”

Soon we were seated on the edge of the pool in our borrowed swimsuits, the place muggy as hell, a virtual steamroom, and she was about to apply a straight razor to my well-lathered beard.

“Be gentle,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” she said, and kept her word, starting to shave me gently, tenderly, sliding, gliding the blade, taking whiskers, leaving smooth flesh. Occasionally she would dip the razor in the pool, getting rid of whiskery lather.

It took a while, my beard not terribly long but full, and it felt good, being the object of such care and attention; but when the blade pressed against my throat, I caught her wrist, stopping her.

For all the heat, we froze, my eyes locked with hers, and I wasn’t smiling as I stared at her—she seemed quietly amused, if a bit taken aback by the clutch of my hand.

“What’s wrong, Jack?” She seemed wholly serious, but for a pixie gleam in the eyes. “Don’t you trust me?”

Now I studied her, tried to look inside—
did she know why I was here?
—and her amusement faded to concern.

I said, “Little tender there. Let me.”

“Sure.”

She gave me the razor.

As I finished the shave, she sat next to me, slightly shaken, holding her arms to herself as if feeling a sudden chill.

We did not make love again. Janet had to work today—it was Sunday, but the Homewood Library was open from eleven till four—and she needed to go to her apartment to shower and change. I dropped her in front of the beauty shop she lived over, and—before she got out—she said, “I’ll never forget last night, Jack.”

“Good,” I said, and managed to smile.

Her eyes stayed on me a beat too long before she got out of the car. I thought I detected something hurt in the expression, but wasn’t sure.

Maybe I decided to take Sunday off. Maybe that was it. But that afternoon, as Janet no doubt did routine work at the library and maybe did her story-hour shtick with another third-grade audience, I wasn’t around to see it.

I was in my motel room, feeling bare with my freshly shaved face, on my back on the bed, elbows winged out, staring at the ceiling, lights off, sun filtering in a little through closed drapes. Janet’s picture on the nightstand, face down. Nine millimeter on the nightstand.

By late afternoon, with the library closing so early,
she’d be back at her apartment. And somehow I hauled my dead ass off that bed and made it to my surveillance roost across the way from her.

She beat me home. There she was, already, in a bathrobe again (not the blue borrowed one, but a similar green one of her own), sitting in that comfy chair, bunny-slippered tootsies on the footrest, reading a book (
Memoirs of a Geisha
), nibbling a sandwich, sipping at a Diet Coke.

But I was having trouble watching her.

Mostly I just sat there, staring at the blank wall in the rattrap vacant apartment, not even dipping into the cooler for my own sandwich and Coke, not fucking hungry at all. The nine millimeter and the binoculars were on the crate, looking like decorative items as opposed to anything practical a person might actually use.

I did at dusk, at a good distance, follow her Geo to Sneaky Pete’s, which was open Sunday nights, where she and Connie met in the parking lot. I drove past, then pulled a U-turn and headed back.

Inside, the place wasn’t very busy, the meat-market aspect given over to a modest family night, where pizza was served from a small kitchen that usually only offered up burgers and fries. The same country-pop was playing, but overlaid with the squeal of kiddies, and it occurred to me it might do the Sneaky Pete singles crowd of Friday and Saturday
night some good, stopping by here Sunday, just to see what kind of trouble they might be getting themselves into.

Janet and Connie had a booth, both young women dressed not to the nines now, just sweatshirts and jeans; this was about dinner and dishing, Connie pumping Janet for what had happened between her and “that big scary handsome guy.”

That was the only thing I picked up, from my position at the bar. I couldn’t risk sitting any closer, and I was conspicuous as hell in this family crowd. Even the bartender, not my familiar brunette but a potbellied guy with a mustache, was giving me a hinky look. So unless I wanted to be spotted and invited over to sit with the girls, I had better split.

I split.

Back at the motel, the room was nicely dark, just a little neon sign blush finding its way through the curtains. I deposited the nine on the nightstand and flopped onto the bed, fully clothed, curled up on my side and tried to go to sleep.

But it soon became clear sleep wouldn’t come, and before long I found myself seated on the edge of the bed, slumped, hands loosely interlaced.

What were my fucking options?

Piss and poor, with maybe a couple stops in between. This was what I got, allowing myself to be talked out of retirement for “one last job.” Fuck!
There are reasons why you quit the killing business, and going soft is one of them, because then it’s you getting killed, which is no way to run a business.

They were my Achilles’ heel, women. I had no goddamn sense where they were concerned. And it wasn’t the fucking, the fucking was great, but a woman—not just any woman, but a woman like, say, Janet—could touch something inside of me that I liked to think had died a long time ago. Something human that could only put a dipshit like me in a jam.

I sat there, brooding, mentally listing the mistakes I’d made, but the list was so long, I got bored—being seen by the target was one thing, eating her pussy was another. That kind of up-close-and-personal contact can lead a guy to making bad calls.

So I could walk away. You can always walk away.

And someone else would kill her, and Jonah Green would, understandably, be miffed with me, and likely send people to kill me, loose end that I would become, people like me but not old and gone-soft ones, and then I’d be dead, too...or at least up to my asshole in dead assholes.

That didn’t sound like any fun.

I could go after the guy who hired me. I had full confidence that I could make Jonah Green’s death happen; but Green was an important guy, connected enough in Outfit circles to find out about my past,
and with the wherewithal to find me at Sylvan Lake in short order. I killed him, who could say what the fuck I’d unleash?

And I’d be dead, and Janet Wright would be dead, too.

That left only one alternative: go ahead and do the job I’d been hired for. There was that little matter of a quarter of a million dollars, the kind of money that meant I’d never have to put myself in a situation like this again.

And if I accepted that Janet Wright was really dead already, just didn’t know it yet—a premise I had expressed to Jonah Wright at the outset, a concept I knew to be true when any party had been marked for elimination—perhaps the only humane thing to do under the circumstances was kill her myself.

I could figure out some way that would be quick and painless. If I left her to the devices of some amoral monster who killed people for money, Christ knew
what
shit she would be put through....

I had always taken great pride in my lack of sadism, that I had never taken any sick pleasure or joy out of turning life into death. Mine had been a profession, and like a doctor with a patient or a lawyer with a client, I represented a person with a problem, and I just made that problem go away. Nothing fun about it. Nothing mean about it, either.

Such were my thoughts, threading through my
brain and the motel-room darkness, and I don’t honestly remember going to Janet’s. In my mind, I’m in the motel room one second, sitting on the bed, trying to figure this shit out, and the next second, I’m at the top of the stairs out on the small landing, staring at her apartment door, with the nine millimeter in one hand and working the doorbell with the other.

She didn’t answer.

Well, it was the middle of the night; or rather, really, really early Monday morning....

So I rang it again.

And again.

Finally I could hear her moving in there.

I checked the action on the nine.

The sound of the night latch unlatching prompted me to slip the nine back in my jacket pocket, and then her face, pale and severe without makeup, was visible in the cracked-open door.

She frowned just a little. “...Jack?”

“I have to see you.”

She frowned more than just a little. “You know, even
Rick
used to call the day after. Even
Rick
never showed up at three in the morning, demanding—”

“Please?”

She sighed.

She let me in.

Wrapped up in the green robe, which was feminine but not particularly sexy, Janet seemed embarrassed
by my intrusion, self-consciously straightening her hair.

“Sit down,” she said, leading me into a living room that I’d never been in before, though was entirely familiar with. “Give me a minute...freshen up.” She turned toward me, not mad at all, now. “You want coffee or something? Jesus, what time
is
it?”

I took her into my arms, firmly but not roughly, and asked, “What time does it have to be?”

And I kissed her.

The kiss was a little over the top, zero-to-sixty kind of thing, and it surprised her; but she got into it, soon enough.

I lowered her to the floor, and I drew open the robe and she was almost afraid, looking up at me, and her throat was red, her face white, her breasts full and staring at me.

Then my pants were around my ankles and I was fucking her. Her knees were up and she was saying, “Oh, oh, oh,” really liking it; but halfway through I slowed it down and kissed her neck and breasts and ears and shoulders and face, and she was crying, and maybe I was crying, what the fuck are you going to do about it?

The finish was slow and gentle and, again, I don’t remember going there, but we were in bed, Janet sleeping contentedly next to me, snuggling to me. Killing her in her sleep would have been so easy. Not
the accident Green had requested, but painless and she would never know a thing.

But I wasn’t about to kill her.

She was coming alive, this woman, she’d been sleepwalking through a coma of a life, and now she was alive, and killing her would have been a goddamn crime. I had a new agenda I was working on, but a wonderful tiredness had me suddenly, and then I was asleep, too.

The next thing I felt was a hand gently caressing my neck, and then I heard Janet, saying, “Hey, Samson—wake up a second.”

My eyes somehow opened, and she was sitting on the edge of the bed, in a white blouse and dark skirt, smelling great, but ready for work, not for me.

I sat bolt upright, startling her a little, though she laughed.

“Hey! Hey, relax....I’m leaving for the library. Thought I’d better see if you have anywhere to be.”

I tasted my mouth; it wasn’t worth the effort. “No. No appointments....Can I just crash here?”

“Sure.” She stood, smoothed herself, looking professional and adult, whereas I felt like a kid sleeping in instead of going to school. “I’ll leave the extra key on the kitchen table, if you wanna go in or out.”

“When’ll you be home?”

“I get off at five, today. Don’t
you
fix supper—I will!”

“Listen—Janet....”

She was poised at the door to the kitchen, and turned to me, eyebrows arched. “Yes?”

“Tonight....We have to talk.”

Her mouth twitched with amusement. “Isn’t that usually the
woman’s
line?...Or maybe you just want to explain why a guy selling veterinary medicine carries a gun.”

That sucker-punched me, and I glanced over at the chair where my corduroy jacket was draped and saw the nine mil’s butt sticking up out of the pocket.

When I turned back to Janet, she’d gone.

I ran after her, bare-ass, but she was already out the kitchen door and on her way across the alley to the lot were she parked her Geo.

Over the next hour or so, I showered and made myself a little breakfast, and tried to get my thoughts together. How much did she know about me? When had she noticed the nine millimeter—just now? She sure didn’t seem worked up about it....

All the days of surveillance, and being on top of her in more ways than one, I still had no idea why anyone on the planet, much less a mogul like Jonah fucking Green, would want this sexy little librarian wasted. The only thing she was guilty of was shitty taste in men.

By late morning, I was pacing in her living room, the nine stuffed in my waistband. I’d come to a decision—I
would tell Janet some kind of story that stopped well short of the truth, but would be enough to motivate her; and I would grab her and haul her ass out of here, to safety somewhere.