Two things had kept me alive in those days. First, I acted immediately to threats, no thinking, just response. Even taking a second — a fraction of a second — to process a threat can get you killed. The other thing that had kept me breathing was my sniper duty, which put me in control of such situations.
Made me the threat.
I calmed myself, back still to the wall. Slowed my breathing. Chilled my attitude. This fucker didn’t know I was out here. Or anyway, likely didn’t know.
A slight possibility existed he’d seen me out his window as I came out of the trees and across the parking lot, moving like a shark through still water. He’d have known at once I wasn’t dropping by to check on the inn I owned, at least if he (or whoever hired him) knew much about me at all.
I took time to think things through, to some degree anyway. I had been up most of the night, and what little sleep I’d had was accidental. I was both wired and worn-out, a terrible combination.
Think, Quarry, think.
Hardly any staff on duty in the building, just the college-student gal in the convenience store. Too early for the guy who ran the filling station/garage to be in, and the pumps were all self-serve. No cleaning staff in yet. No other guests in the rooms.
That left me, outside Room 12 about to burst in and kill a guy. Shoot him in bed while he slumbered. Nobody around to hear the cough of the noise-suppressed nine mil, but the sheets would get bloody and the mattress would have an opinion, too. Simmons would almost certainly shit himself on dying — it’s not an emotional reaction, it’s a reflex one.
But a mess, any way you slice it.
Head shot would be messy, too, and, if he heard me and woke and sat up, would splinter the wood of the headboard. While my preference was putting one in his brain, shutting off the switch on his life, I probably needed several body shots, across the chest, to minimize mess.
If I got lucky and didn’t put any bullets in the mattress — if the little killing projectiles stayed inside the guy, somewhat doubtful with a nine, but possible, bones to lodge in and such — I would still have to bundle his dead ass up in sheets and lug him the hell out of here like a rug-wrapped Cleopatra dropping in on Caesar.
Even with the world of Paradise Lake so underpopulated this time of morning, this time of year, somebody noticing such a sight seemed like a real possibility.
Mornin’, Jack! Whatcha got there? Whatcha up to?
Oh, hi, Milt. Just cleanin’ up after a paint job.
That red’s a tad garish, don’tcha think?
And then kill Milt, too. Had he existed.
Did I give a shit about any such concerns? With a contract out on me, by parties unknown but who knew about me and where I lived and Christ knew how much else, could staying in my A-frame and living my little life here be in any way salvageable?
Hard to think how.
But I did have ten grand getaway money stashed at the cottage, and the bulk of my funds were in banks here and there under the various names of my assorted identities. Easy enough to make a new start. Well, not easy, but feasible. Very damn feasible.
To hang on at Paradise Lake, though, I would have to be able to find out who hired this, and get rid of him. Or her. Or them. But just as I had worked through the Broker, Simmons almost certainly worked through an agent, a middleman, too. The purpose of that was to protect the client. Provide a buffer.
So Simmons wasn’t likely to know who was behind the killing. His broker would, of course, and I might be able to get the identity of that middleman from Simmons, and work this from that end. Maybe I needed to talk to my would-be assassin, not kill him.
Or talk to him before killing him.
But did I really want to do that here? At the goddamn Welcome Inn? Could I take him captive and walk him across that parking lot over to the A-frame with my gun in his spine and fake smiles on our faces?
The thinking had calmed me, got me in a rational mode, but it hadn’t given me any answers. I still had my back to the wall, literally and figuratively.
So I went back to basics. What was important now — right now — was surviving. The man in bed on the other side of this door, with its painted-on “12” starting to peel, was the immediate threat.
He had come onto my home ground to kill me. Meaning I needed to kill him. No other possibility presented itself. The fallout would be handled when it came.
The jury in my mind was unanimous: killing Simmons was the first order of business. Maybe I could locate the backup man, the passive prick on this hit, and get the name of their broker out of him. What I needed from the active asshole was for him not to be breathing anymore.
And my breathing? It was calm. Right now, it was calm again.
All I had to do now was work the key in the door. A few feet inside the room would put me at the foot of the double bed where he probably still slept. If he was up and out of bed, the mirrored dresser would be at my left, a closet at the near side of the dresser. The bathroom was off to the right. Number 12, like the rest of the rooms at the Welcome Inn, was modest. Small. Not like the accommodations at the former Playboy Club in Geneva. Vacationers with limited funds stayed here. In season.
Few stayed here now, and even Simmons was about to check out...
While I’m not technically ambidextrous, the various situations I’ve found myself in have given me unusual skills. Lipreading, for one. Using my left hand almost as well as my right is another.
With my left, I worked the key, the lock clicked, that hand was on the knob and twisting, and I was in, fast, kicking the door shut behind me with a heel, staying low, but not so low that I couldn’t put a couple of silenced slugs into the torso of a sleeping man.
Only the bed was empty of anything but slept-in sheets, blankets and pillows.
Nobody at left, by the dresser, either. I rolled to the right, to the open door of the little bathroom, where the tub was empty, the shower curtain back. Nor was anyone taking a shit, dead or alive.
On my hands and knees I checked under the bed, like a husband desperate to prove his wife was cheating on him, and saw nothing but evidence I was paying the woman too much who cleaned here.
That left only the closet at the left of the dresser. I considered putting a few bullets into that door, expense be damned, but had Simmons been hiding (or waiting) in there, surely he would have taken the opportunity to shoot my ass while I was crawling around on the floor checking up on the cleaning staff.
I checked out the guest room thoroughly. No canvas travel bag. Empty dresser drawers. He’d bathed or showered already. No toiletries in the john. Nothing but hangers and a spare pillow in the closet. Nothing at all to show he’d been here, except his room key, left on the dresser top.
I sat on an edge of the unmade bed, the nine mil in my hand draped in my lap like a limp dick.
What the fuck?
Exits at either end of the upstairs hall made it possible he’d slipped out just as I was coming in. But, shit — what was this, a French farce?
What the hell did this mean?
No. Not the right question.
Where is he now?
Better question.
I took the stairs at the opposite end of the hall, which was the quickest way down to the convenience store. This emptied right into the little parking lot at the front of the building, where the station wagon was no longer parked.
Shit!
The gal behind the convenience store counter, a black girl who was cute and a little heavy in a nice way, sat back behind the register and point-of-purchase displays reading a Stephen King paperback. Her name was Carrie, but that wasn’t the title of the book. She looked up pleasantly.