And he had to know that.
That slit on his face was forming something that was supposed to be a smile. “Wondering why you’re still alive?”
I said nothing. Did nothing. But he was a perceptive son of a bitch, wasn’t he?
And why did he know to call me Quarry?
“You must have so many questions,” he said. “Would you like to pose them? I might miss something, if I just start rattling on.”
Again I glanced at Lu at her fireplace perch. Her eyes widened and she shrugged, just barely, obviously not caring to make any sudden move that might get her shot — or me, either, for that matter.
When I’d glimpsed her from outside through where the drapes didn’t quite meet, she had been turned toward the fire, her profile on display. Now she had slowly swung around so that she could watch the confrontation between me and my guest.
Just sitting there, hands folded in her lap, the half nearer the fire alive with fluctuating flame, the other half in shadow. I’m sure she was as confused as I was about still being alive.
As for Poole, he was no dummy. Where he sat, with his big ray-gun rod pointed at me, he was back away from me far enough that I couldn’t kick the thing out of his hand. And if I jumped him, he could take me down like a skilled hunter does a duck on the fly. Better than that, actually — no distance involved.
Unless I really caught him off-balance.
“Mr. Quarry? Do you have questions, or do you prefer a soliloquy?”
Like To be or not to be? With this guy choosing the second option? I almost asked as much, but smart-ass remarks to guys holding guns on you, particularly individuals who have been indulging in wholesale murder lately, well... that made for less than stellar strategy.
I said, “I do have a few questions.”
He nodded a little, a gracious mini-bow. “Please.”
“That was you back there. At the chalet.”
His eyebrows rose as far as the stretched skin would allow. “Doing the killing? Of course.”
“And at the Vanhorn place? Him and the two watchdogs?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any other hobbies?” Okay, I couldn’t help myself. Once a smart-ass, always a smart-ass.
And maybe it wasn’t even a bad strategy at that, because it made him chuckle. Not laugh. Chuckle.
“I do, actually,” he said. “I’m a collector of sorts.”
“Not stamps, I’m guessing. Old records maybe? Comic books?
Or... how about money?”
He nodded. He seemed loose-limbed, but that gun of mine in his paw stayed steady. “You are a good judge of character, Quarry. Money is my passion, all right. But you are reckless. No. Audacious. What else would you call this business of yours you’ve made a go of, for... what? A decade, or nearly so?”
So he knew.
Still, I had to ask: “What business is that?”
He shrugged. “Frankly, I don’t know exactly. Neither did my friend, Vanhorn.”
“Your friend?”
He nodded. “We weren’t partners, but unlike the other agents... you call us ‘brokers,’ I believe, because you were once the favorite of that pretentious twit out of the Quad Cities — the Broker? Right?”
No reason denying it. And Broker had been pretentious.
So I nodded.
“Anyway,” Poole said, looking like Joan Crawford in a horror movie in her later years when they were taping her skin back, “the agents, the brokers, the Envoy? They didn’t work together. They barely knew each other. But Charles Vanhorn and I got well acquainted, were put in touch by certain Chicago individuals, and would from time to time help each other out. For various reasons, having to do with personnel and sometimes location, I would take on a job for him and he for me.”
Why the hell was he telling me this?
But I said, “I can see how that might come in handy.”
His shoulders went up and down, but again that didn’t cause the gun-in-hand to lose its steadiness.
“It did,” he said. “And we were friendly. After all, we were in the same line, but a line that we couldn’t discuss with just anyone. We both had straight ventures going — successful ones, not just covers — and, well, you don’t go to the Rotary Club and talk over your business woes or even successes, when they have to do with our kind of contracts.”
“I can see that.”
The Asian eyes over by the fireplace widened. Was this guy nuts? she seemed to be asking. I flicked her the barest look that said, Who the hell knows?
“So,” he said, “Charles and I would discuss just what it was we thought was going on, where these periodic disrupted jobs and fallen pros were concerned. The deaths of our hired assassins often seemed accidental. The same was true of the individuals who’d taken out the contracts — occasionally one would die, again under mysterious circumstances. And it was sporadic enough... once or twice a year, out of any number of contracts... that it took time for our suspicion to grow into something more.”
I knew what this was about now, of course. I’d known for a while. I knew why I wasn’t dead, just another corpse with my blood and brains soaking a carpet or my pillow.
Yet.
I asked, “What did you and your friend Charles come up with?”
His gun-in-hand gestured, just a touch. “Well, as you may have gathered, we did know the Broker. Both Charles and I. In the early days, the regional set-up that since developed was in its earliest stages. So we knew about him. We’d even heard about you. You were something of a star in this business, Quarry.”
Who doesn’t like a compliment?
I said, “Not a good business to stand out in, actually.”
The capped teeth flashed in a smile. “True. And when the Broker was killed, you weren’t immediately suspected. Why, that would have been like patricide, wouldn’t it? You being his favorite and all. But then, you dropped out of sight. Dropped out of the business. Which was right around when those contracts and clients and killers of ours started going... what’s a good way to put it?”
“Tits up?”
Poole laughed. Jesus, all this guy needed was a pipe organ and a cackle to go flat-out Phantom.
He said, “That’s as good a way as any. So we deduced you must have laid hands on the Broker’s, what, special address book? And, now and then, followed one of our people to the job at hand, ascertained and approached the intended target, and offered help... for a price? That more or less it?”
“More or less.” Exactly fucking it.
That smile was meant to be pleasant, I thought. Hard to tell. “Other questions, Quarry?”
“Were you really drunk back at the chalet?”
The change of subject stopped him, but for just a second. “Oh, no. Of course not.”
“So that was staged? To get your girlfriend and those other women out of there, before...?”
Before the carnage began.
“Sort of,” he said off-handedly, again gesturing just a tad with the gun-in-hand. “Two people in each murder room, that would have been a lot to deal with. So much more could go wrong.” He shuddered. “Couldn’t have any silly women running around the place screaming. Anyway, killing them wouldn’t accomplish anything that simply sending them away from there wouldn’t. Six people dead, including three beautiful women? What a media circus that would create! And, anyway, please — I’m no monster.”
Oh-kay.
I asked, “So then your Playmate was in on it?”