“I know. That time I was being cute.”
And I told him everything I’d shared with Boyd, even the ten grand we split. It was no skin off his nose or money out of his pocket, either.
“I’m assuming you want us out,” I said.
“Not just yet.”
“Not yet? What if the cops come around the Coalition office and do background checks?”
“They won’t likely, but should they, yours will hold.”
“My address won’t. I gave them the YMCA, like you said, but I haven’t set foot in there.”
His voice radiated patience; you’d never know I got him out of bed. “I made the reservation and paid by credit card over the phone. A credit card as secure as this line. You will be fine. Oh, you might want to go to the Y and drop by your room. One of those rare times it might pay to be seen. Maybe take a swim there. You like to swim.”
“Yeah, I know I like to swim. I’m the one doing the swimming. But swimming in shit I don’t like. Or blood.”
“Understood. But there’s no need for melodramatic overstatement. You boys stay on for a while. Again, if things look compromised, follow your own judgment — I won’t second-guess. You’re the ones on the scene.”
“That’s right. Don’t forget that. So. Was that Starkweather character our client or not?”
“Obviously not, or I would indeed advise you to pull up stakes.”
Did anybody else on the fucking planet use “indeed” in conversation like that?
“Last time we spoke,” I said, “you implied he might be connected to our client.”
“It’s possible. Perhaps not directly, but... possible.”
“It’s a secure line, Broker. You needn’t be coy.”
“I do, if I’m to maintain the role that I play in our relationship, which is as a buffer, as insulation, as a middleman.”
As a redundant prick.
“Your role,” he was saying, “is fairly well defined. I won’t insult your intelligence by reminding you what the boundaries are.”
“Well, I’d be glad to insult yours. Where should I start?”
“Now, Quarry, I understand you’ve had a very full and taxing evening. I can tell you, with utter sincerity, that I am very pleased that you survived the unpleasant circumstances you happened upon this evening.”
“Circumstances like getting attacked by a KKK Klavern, you mean?”
He chuckled. “You do have a knack for getting yourself into the most outlandish jams.”
I held the receiver out and looked at it. Shook my head. I wasn’t going to win with this guy. Or maybe I was just too beat to try.
I said we’d talk tomorrow and he said that was a good idea, and we exchanged goodbyes and hung up.
I tried to sleep but couldn’t. I tossed, I turned, back, sides, belly, and still my brain refused to stop buzzing, the sheets getting more and more tangled. I kept turning things over in my mind, getting nowhere, but always coming back to the same conclusion.
Boyd and I should not hang around.
Tonight I’d killed two people who were not on my dance card. Yes, I picked up ten grand for my trouble, five after splitting with Boyd, but this job had really gone off the rails.
I turned on the nightstand light and read. Half an hour later, I finished the Louis L’Amour paperback and climbed out of bed, in my underwear. Light edged under the door between my bedroom and Boyd’s, so he was probably awake, too. I knocked lightly and announced myself. He said come on in.
He was reading a paperback called Gay Safari. Both his hands were showing, which was a relief.
“Just passing through,” I said. “Too wired to sleep.”
“No problem,” he said, still looking like the victim of a beekeeping accident, and returned to bettering his mind through literature.
I shut the door to his bedroom and crossed to the recliner that faced the television. It was after two A.M., and not much was on, but I found an old Charlie Chan movie. It was terrible, and just what I was looking for — something that would put me to sleep. Thing was, Mantan Moreland was so damn funny, I never did get drowsy, though I was well aware that my Coalition friends across the street probably wouldn’t find this wonderful black comedian at all amusing. Their loss.
Every time Mantan said something that made me laugh (“Murder’s okay, Mr. Chan, but you wholesale it!”), I would look over at the nearby window toward the Coalition HQ, sort of reflexively. I was finally just getting drowsy when Mantan said, “Move over troubles, here we come again!” and I glanced over and there were lights on over there.
I got up and went to the windows. Knelt and looked out and lights were on in the rear of the place. At close to three A.M. on a Sunday night or anyway Monday morning, lights going. I used the binoculars but saw no one moving inside, though a storeroom door seemed to be partway open at the rear by the restrooms, between the two glassed-in offices. The light was coming from back there.
I knocked at Boyd’s bedroom door and said, “Me,” and found him still reading.
I said, “Something’s going on across the street.”
He blinked swollen eyes at me. He looked like a fish you’d throw back. “At Lloyd’s headquarters?”
“Yeah.”
“What the hell for?”
“Well, that’s what I’m going to check out. Do you have anything I could take that isn’t that .38 of yours? It’s louder than an elephant fart.”
“What’s wrong with your Browning?”
“I’d need to switch out barrels and I don’t want to take the time.”
He nodded and got into a drawer of his nightstand and handed me a six-inch item with an ebony handle and metal trim.
“A switchblade? What are you, Boyd — James fucking Dean?”
“Do you want it or not?”
“I want it.”
“Just be careful with it — cutting edge is razor sharp. Don’t hurt yourself. Try the switch.”
The stiletto blade popped out with a snap. Like a robot erection.
“Okay, thanks. Can I ask you one thing, Boyd?”
“Sure.”
“Are you a Shark or a Jet?”
I quickly climbed into a dark sweatshirt and black jeans and black sneakers and went out the back way, coming around the building. The street was dead. No traffic at all, stoplights in flashing mode; pavement was wet and shiny from street cleaning, reflecting the now lower-hanging Hunter’s Moon.
I crossed to the HQ side of the street, but didn’t bother trying the front door, going around to the alley instead. Parked back there along the building was a late-model Oldsmobile Toronado, army-green with a black vinyl top. Powerful ride, not inexpensive.
Nobody behind the wheel.
Nobody in the alley, either. With the unopened switchblade tight in my fist, I moved down to and around the parked Olds. Near the rear door to Coalition HQ, I paused. The door was closed, but its edges were bleeding light. I could hear muffled male voices. I drew closer and plastered my ear to the wood, but the door was thick and heavy and all I got for my effort was louder muffled talk.
But then the talk got even louder, and closer, and I darted away, slipping into the recess of a doorway behind the adjacent building.
Peeking carefully around the corner of my hiding place, I saw two white men emerge, one big in width and height both, the other slender and not tall but not small either. They wore topcoats and hats like it was 1952 but had a timeless gangster look — the big man had a face plump from pasta and hard from hurting people; and the slender one was mustached with a narrow face that was intelligent in a racetrack tout way. They might have looked corny to me if I couldn’t read how fucking dangerous they were. The slender one was counting money in an envelope, quickly, just giving it a second check, having no doubt already done so inside. The bigger guy was just watching. He liked money. Well, we had that in common.