I narrowed my eyes at her. “You expect me to buy that the rest of it... from the trip to Wilmette on through the seminar stay...”
She shrugged. “Was all legit. I was just your trusty sidekick. Tonto and the Lone Ranger, only with bedroom privileges. No more, no less.”
She moved away from me, in her bare feet, and returned to that ottoman by the fire, which was still going, maybe not as strong, but snapping and crackling and popping, just like Rice Krispies when the milk hits. She perched there, on a piece of furniture where there’d been no way for her to conceal one of her little .25s or .22s, and I came over and sat opposite her.
Her hands were on her knees, rather primly, but part of that was to show she wasn’t playing any tricks.
“I apologize,” she said.
“What for?” I asked. Still training the automatic on her, but not so... intensely.
She made an embarrassed face. “Holding you at gunpoint. Wasn’t right. I should have had more faith in you.”
“Should you?”
She nodded. “Look. We shared some lovely pipe dreams about going off together, you maybe joining me in St. Paul, me maybe even staying here with you, or possibly something completely different, like the Pythons say. Something new. After all, who besides you and me could understand the life we’ve been leading for so long? We wouldn’t have to keep anything from each other. No apologies. It’s nice, to think of that.”
“Is it?”
“You know it is, Jack. But here’s the thing. Here’s why I thought it would take a gun to make you listen. To cooperate. I do want that list. I want out of the killing game, sure, but in a way it’s all I know. My antiques business, much as I love it, is just a front. A money laundry. I don’t have much put away, really. I live fairly high on the hog, you might say. I like nice things. Sue me.”
“Your point being?”
“My point being, I do want to be a new broker in this business. Getting older makes field work hard. And riskier — how many scrapes have I narrowly slipped out of, over the years? Recently, especially? But if I spend ten years or so booking such gigs, let’s call it, I could amass some real savings. Could retire to that life of leisure you hear so much about.”
“That’s your dream, Lu? Becoming regional murder sales manager?”
“No. My dream is actually smaller, Jack. I don’t have the contacts that Bruce did, through the Envoy, to put a team of pros together. So your list... the names that don’t belong to those you’ve dispatched, anyway... would be my assets starting out. And I’d gather more talent, likely through the Outfit, who if they see I’m doing a good job, would hand me some of the business those seminar attendees used to handle. Somebody would have to cover that, after all. So. I guess I’m no better than Bruce or Poole. I want the list to use it. To make money from it.”
I tossed the gun on the couch next to me. “You should have just asked.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t want or need the fucking thing. It’s all yours.”
She was goggling at me. “You’re serious.”
“I am too tired to be anything but. It is in a safe deposit box, though. We’ll have to go get it, later today. After we catch some sleep, okay?”
“You really are serious.”
“As a heart attack. I have one demand, though. Well, request.”
She frowned. “So there is a catch?”
“There’s a catch. You need to help me get rid of this latest body.”
She started to laugh and then we were hugging and smiling.
Don’t you just love a happy ending?
Dawn finally arrived, the horizon over the lake as orange as Lu’s undies, turning the few clouds in the deep blue sky the same near-fire color, which was also shimmering on the ebony water. The beauty of it only lasted a few moments, but so many good things are fleeting.
I headed out in the Jag with Lu following in the Camaro. We left the sports car along the side of a back road, with Poole jammed in its trunk, a bullet hole pocking the driver’s side door. Another mystery for the county sheriff not to unravel, or for the Chicago boys to cover up.
That was when I shoved Lu into the front seat and said, “Good riddance, bitch,” and shot her.
Of course I didn’t.
Jesus, I’m not a monster, either.
What she and I did was spend much of the day in bed, mostly sleeping but also forgiving each other for that sad awkward scene this morning by frantically humping... but only after we’d caught some Z’s.
I had an arm around her, on my back with my head against a pillow, her snuggling close.
“I have three grand,” she said, “that was my share of the down payment for killing you, Quarry.”
“God, how much was the overall contract?”
“Twelve g’s.”
Dan Clark had said I rated.
She said, “I feel weird about that money.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know. How to spend it. Kind of blood money, isn’t it? I mean, we don’t kill friends, right?”
I shrugged. “Money doesn’t know where it comes from. Of course, I put a real effort in, these past few days, and all I got out of it was not getting killed.”
Her hand slipped under the covers and found what she was looking for. “That’s all you got out of it?”
“Maybe not all.”
“I have an idea.”
I was getting one myself, but I said, “Yeah?”
“Twenty-five hundred would go a long way toward a little getaway. Bunch of places in the Caribbean don’t require a passport. We can just hop a plane at O’Hare. Sun and fun and food and fucking and we can gamble a little. Some incredible casinos. You’d love it.”
I smiled and considered that. “Take a vacation on the money you got paid for killing Quarry? Yeah. That sounds about perfect. As long as it isn’t the Cayman Islands.”
So Lu got the list, and I got her sweet companionship in St. Croix, a fair trade if there ever was one. I could write it up for you, but there’s no violence at all. Just a bunch of sex.
And you’re better than that.
Author’s Note
Despite its period setting, Killing Quarry is not exactly an historical novel, and does not intend to suggest actual people or events, other than passing references to newsmakers and celebrities.
While the Lake Geneva Playboy Club Hotel, which opened in 1968 and was hugely successful for years, did close down in the early 1980s, it was not re-opened by Chicago-based organized crime interests — my suggestion of that in this novel is, like the rest of it, wholly fictional. Also, the geography of the actual facility is not strictly as it is depicted here. Much remodeled and updated, the former Playboy Club Hotel re-opened in 1994 as the Grand Geneva Resort and Spa, a highly regarded AAA Four-Diamond resort.
Information about the Cayman Islands and their banking system was culled from a number of Internet sources, as were any other number of topics from popular music to fashion, from automobiles to Solo cups. I lived through the 1970s and ’80s, but based upon how frequently I have to research just about everything about those years, I was definitely not paying attention.