Obviously, Harry and Louis had nothing sexual in mind for this girl; the reason for her nudity was to help prevent her fleeing. The bed was heavy with blankets, and she’d obviously been keeping under the covers, but right now she was sitting and crying. That time of the month.
I stood in the dark in my dark clothes with a gun in my hand and my back to the log cabin and smiled. When I’d come out into the night, armed like this, it wasn’t to effect a rescue. Whatever else they were, Harry and Louis were dangerous men. If I was going to spend my sleepless night satisfying my curiosity and assuaging my boredom by poking into their business, I had to be ready to pay for my thrills.
But the thing was, I recognized this young woman. Like Harry, I spent a lot of hours during cold nights like this with my eyes frozen to a TV screen. And that’s where I’d seen her: on the tube.
Not an actress, no – an heiress. The daughter of a Chicago media magnate whose name you’d recognize, a guy who inherited money and wheeled-and-dealed his way into more, including one of the satellite super-stations I’d been wasting my eyes on lately. The Windy City’s answer to Ted Turner, right down to boating and womanizing.
His daughter was a little wild, frequently seen in the company of rock stars (she had a tattoo of a star – not Mick Jagger, a five-pointed star star – on her white left breast, which I could see from the window) and was a Betty Ford clinic drop-out. Nonetheless, she was said to be the apple of her daddy’s eye, even if that apple was a tad wormy.
So Harry and Louis had put the snatch on the snatch; fair enough. Question was, was it their own idea, or something the Outfit put them up to?
I sat in the cold and dark and decided, finally, that it just didn’t matter who or what was behind it. My options were to go home, and forget about it, and try (probably without any luck) to get some sleep; or to rescue this somewhat soiled damsel in distress.
What the hell. I had nothing better to do.
I went to the front door and knocked.
No answer.
Shit, I knew somebody was home, so I knocked again.
Louis cracked open the door and peered out and said, “What is it?” and I shot him in the eye.
There was the harsh, shrill sound of a scream – not Louis, who hadn’t had time for that, but the girl in the next room, scared shitless at hearing a gunshot, one would suppose.
I paid no attention to her and pushed the door open – there was no night latch or anything – and stepped over Louis, and pointed the nine millimeter at Harry, whose orange-ringed mouth was frozen open and whose bag of barbecue potato chips dropped to the floor, much as Louis had.
“Don’t, Harry,” I said.
I could see in Harry’s tiny dark eyes behind his thick black-rimmed glasses that he was thinking about the sawed-off shotgun on the couch next to him.
“Who the fuck . . .”
I walked slowly across the rustic living room toward the couch; in the background, an old colorized movie was playing on their captive’s daddy’s super-station. I plucked the shotgun off the couch with my left hand and tucked it under my arm.
“Hi, Harry,” I said. “Been a while.”
His orange-ringed mouth slowly began to work and his eyes began to blink and he said, “Quarry?”
That was the name he’d known me by.
“Taking the girl your idea, or are you still working for the boys?”
“We . . . we retired, couple years ago. God. You killed Louis. Louis. You killed Louis . . .”
“Right. What were you going to put the girl’s body in?”
“Huh?”
“She’s obviously seen you. You were obviously going to kill her, once you got the money. So. What was the plan?”
Harry wiped off his orange barbecue ring. “Got a roll of plastic in the closet. Gonna roll her up in it and dump her in one of the gravel pits around here.”
“I see. Do that number with the plastic right now, for Louis, why don’t you? Okay?”
Tears were rolling down Harry’s stubbly pockmarked cheeks. I didn’t know whether he was crying for Louis or himself or the pair of them, and I wasn’t interested enough to ask.
“Okay,” he said thickly.
I watched him roll his partner up in the sheet of plastic, using duct tape to secure the package; he sobbed as he did it, but he did it. He got blood on his Hawaiian shirt; it didn’t particularly show, though.
“Now I want you to clean up the mess. Go on. You’ll find what you need in the kitchen.”
Dutifully, Harry shuffled over, got a pan of warm water and some rags, and got on his knees and cleaned up the brains and blood. He wasn’t crying anymore. He moved slow but steady, a fat zombie in a colorful shirt.
“Stick the rags in the end of Louis’ plastic home, would you? Thank you.”
Harry did that, then the big man lumbered to his feet, hands in the air, and said, “Now me, huh?”
“I might let you go, Harry. I got nothing against you.”
“Not . . . not how I remember it.”
I laughed. “You girls leaned on me once. You think I’d kill a person over something that trivial? What kind of guy do you think I am, Harry?”
Harry had sense enough not to answer.
“Come with me,” I said, and with the nine millimeter’s nose to Harry’s temple, I walked him to the door of the bedroom.
“Open it,” I said.
He did.
We went in, Harry first.
The girl was under the covers, holding the blankets and sheets up around her in a combination of illogical modesty and legitimate fear.
Her expression melted into one of confusion mingled with the beginnings of hope and relief when she saw me.
“I’ve already taken care of the skinny one,” I said. “Now Harry and me are going for a walk. You stay here. I’m going to get you back to your father.”
Her confusion didn’t leave, but she began to smile, wide, like a kid Christmas morning seeing her gifts. Her gift to me was dropping the blankets and sheets to her waist.
“Remember,” I said. “Stay right there.”
I walked Harry out, pulling the bedroom door shut behind me.
“Where are her clothes?”
He nodded to a closet. Same one he’d gotten the plastic out of.
“Good,” I said. “Now let’s go for a walk. Just you and me and Louis.”
“Loo . . . Louis?”
“Better give Louis a hand, Harry.”
Harry held the plastic-wrapped corpse in his arms like a B-movie monster carrying a starlet. The plastic was spattered with blood, but on the inside. Harry looked like he was going to cry again.
I still had the sawed-off shotgun under my arm, so it was awkward, getting the front door open, but I managed.
“Out on the lake,” I said.
Harry looked at me, his eyes behind the glasses wary, glancing from me to his plastic-wrapped burden and back again.
“We’re going to bury Louis at sea,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Just walk, Harry. Okay? Just walk.”
He walked. I followed behind, nine millimeter in one hand, sawed-off in the other. Harry in his Hawaiian shirt was an oddly comic sight, but I was too busy to be amused. Our feet crunched slightly on the ice. No danger of falling in. Frozen solid. Kids ice-skated out here. But not right now.
We walked a long way. We said not a word, until I halted him about mid-way. The black starry sky was our only witness.
“Put him down, Harry,” I said. The nine millimeter was in my waistband; the shotgun was pointed right at him.
He set his cargo gently down. He stood looking gloomily down at the plastic shroud, like a bear contemplating its own foot caught in a trap.