Anyway, that reflection might have been off somebody else’s binoculars. And I knew just which cabin that would be. Might need to make a visit, past midnight, if I hadn’t already had a visitor myself before then.
Time crawled by. I was not compulsive about checking my watch — a good fifteen minutes between glances, maybe. The light at the window of Room 12 through the trees and across the parking lot stayed on.
I glanced around at my largely darkness-shrouded surroundings. Would hate to have to leave this place. Not out of sentiment, but comfort. In a life of limited security, what I had here was pretty fucking comforting. My mind bounced between staying alert for every tiny sound and thinking about the nice, quiet life I led here. Only a few weeks a year took me away from this Fortress of Solitude, providing an influx of money and a jolt of activity.
Nearby Lake Geneva gave me access to nice restaurants, a movie multiplex and a health club, where I could swim during the winter months. Swimming is more than just exercise to me — it’s a kind of zen activity, or probably would be if I for sure know what “zen” meant. I just know that swimming relaxes me — it’s think or swim, a bad joke but a reality, the occasional need I had to really think something through, and the frequent times I didn’t want to think at all.
For a lot of years I was a member of the Playboy Club at Geneva, a very nice lodge where I could take in some really good Vegas-style entertainment and see if I could hump more Bunnies than Hefner. I’m sure I failed at the latter, though I bet I came closer than you might think. The place closed down a few years ago, but soon came back to life as the Lake Geneva Golf and Ski Resort, a name that oddly suggested doing both at once. No Bunny costumes for the waitresses now, but plenty of bunnies just the same.
Friend of mine, Dan Clark, ran the place — one of my poker buddies for the monthly game, which always met here. At forty-something he was the oldest of the group. We had a dentist, a doctor, a video-store owner, and a seller of veterinary medicine who had to travel occasionally. That was me. A few others came in and out of the game — some were off-season, others year-round locals like yours truly.
The poker buddies were as close as I’d got to having any actual friends, other than staff at the Welcome Inn, where I was only around as needed. Odds and ends like repairs, helping out the mechanic in the little garage, banging the sour Brenda once a month or so.
I was a loner, anyway. Only child. My idea of a good time was an old movie on TV (I had a satellite dish), a paperback western to hold my interest and not tax my mind, or music dating to my high school days courtesy of my CD stereo — everything from Bobby Darin and the Beatles to the Animals and Rascals. I had an uncle who got me into Sinatra and Tony Bennett and Peggy Lee.
Just an average guy with simple tastes. I was no trouble to anybody. So who was it wanted me dead, anyway? I’d always tried not to leave any loose ends behind.
My mind wandered around like that, and that light at the Room 12 window finally winked off, around midnight.
For an hour I waited, coiled like a steel spring, nervous as a cat, and a hundred other cliches wrapped up into one big What the fuck is going on?
Then dawn came, and I wish that were a capital “D” dawn, a waitress at Dan Clark’s Lodge who never made me wonder if she might bite my dick off when she had it in her mouth.
But no such luck. Here came the sun, as George Harrison would say in the present tense. And the sky got pink and so did the lake. Maybe in these early morning hours my prince would come. I sat up on the couch in my loft and turned off the TV, Today Show getting started, and thought about the warm welcome I had in mind, nine millimeter at the ready. Nobody was getting past Quarry.
Then I jerked awake.
I’d nodded off. My watch indicated I’d lost maybe an hour. An hour where I could have been snuffed or the cottage invaded.
Shit!
That’s what I got for thinking of myself in the third person. I started over, making sure the entire place was clear. And it was. It was. Then, finally, my brain kicked in.
What the hell, Quarry!
The guy just got to Paradise Lake. If Simmons is on surveillance, he’s only getting started, and he’s staying in the right room to do that. If he’s here to kill me, the surveillance half of the team has been here a while, maybe in that cabin on the lake, collecting info, and Simmons has to check in with him first before making any move on me.
I was, understandably after my long night, frazzled. I’d already gotten punchy and dropped off once. I could use some real sleep. Or at least some time to get myself centered and thinking straight.
Instead, I walked up to Wilma’s Welcome Inn, cutting through the trees behind the cottage, striding across the parking lot, with my hand on the nine millimeter in my deep bomber-coat jacket pocket. The early morning light was a pinkish blue. The window of Room 12 still dark.
Time for your wake-up call, motherfucker.
Four
First order of business was to check the small front parking lot to see if the Mercury station wagon was still there.
It was.
Seemed my friend had not yet checked out of his room. With any luck he was tucked in his beddy bye consorting with Wynken, Blynken and Nod. So far so good.
I headed around to the side entrance. Off-season, no breakfast was served at Wilma’s Welcome Inn, and for that matter neither was lunch. The bar’s food service kicked in at four PM.
This meant, when I came in loaded for bear, the front register was closed, and the only part of the place open for business was the convenience store. So the outer area — the restaurant at left, the check-out area for both hotel and bar bills at right — was underlit and unattended.
The unnumbered master key to the rooms hung on the wall of keys behind the counter, intentionally mismarked “Storage” — yes, the security at the Welcome Inn was state of the art. And only the key to Room 12 was gone.
With my left hand, I snatched the master key off its perch and headed up the flight of stairs between the closed restaurant and the front counter. My right hand, of course, remained in the pocket of the bomber jacket around the grip of the silenced nine millimeter.
The top of the stairs opened onto a hallway with doors on either side — to the guest rooms plus a couple of oversized closets for actual storage, supplies and linens and such. We only had one woman on staff, off-season, for making up rooms; and she wouldn’t be in yet.
Down to the right, at the end of the hallway — the dead-end appropriately — was Room 12. I plastered my back to the wall to the left of the door and listened. For movement. For snoring. For a phone call in progress. For fucking anything.
And heard nothing.
But his fake woodie was still parked out front, so he had to still be here. Now, normally I am fairly cool — no, goddamn cool — in tense situations. But keep in mind I was accustomed to being in control of such situations — hell, I was usually the cause of them.
But for once my heart was pounding. I was trembling a little. Goddamnit! I was used to being in jams. I had been in plenty and talked or shot my way out. I had even dealt with threats on my home turf before — after I took the Broker out, people came looking for me, to kill me, and none of them are writing this book, are they?
Only this was different. This time I was not only the target, I was the mark. Someone had paid to have me killed. And I didn’t like it one bit. I resented it, and it had me shaking. With rage, I think, but maybe... all right, fear. I hadn’t really experienced fear like this since the earliest days in Vietnam, where I’d got numb to it fairly fast.