I hung up.
Thirty seconds later the phone rang again and I picked it up.
Broker said, “What do you intend to do?”
“I’m going to find out who hired me, Broker. If you won’t tell me, I’ll find out on my own.”
“Jesus Christ! You’re insane, man!”
“Impossible. You only work with stable personalities.”
“Listen. Listen to me. Get out of that town. Get out. Now.”
“I think I’ll stay a while.”
“Have you cracked up? You can’t hang around after a job, especially one that’s gone sour like this one has.”
“Watch me.”
“I’m going to tell you only one more time…”
“Good. Then I won’t have to hear it anymore after that.”
“… get out of Port City, Quarry.”
“This isn’t Chicago, Broker. This is a hick town and I’m not going to have any trouble.”
“You’re right, Port City isn’t Chicago, you could hide in Chicago. In Port City you’ll be conspicuous as hell.”
“Good-bye, Broker.”
“Wait!”
I waited.
“Isn’t there anything I can say?”
“Sure.”
“What?”
“The name of the guy who wanted Albert Leroy dead.”
“Quarry, I’m not going to stand for this.”
“Yes you are.”
“All right. All right, all right, all right make a fool of yourself, but Quarry… make damn sure none of it touches me. If you do that, if you even come close to endangering me, you know what I’ll do.”
“I know what you’ll try to do.”
“You aren’t the only assassin in the world, Quarry.”
“No. But how many do you have better?”
I hung up.
I sat there for thirty seconds and when the phone rang again I picked it up and said, “Hello, Broker.”
“Quarry!”
“What, Broker?”
“Uh, what about Boyd’s car?”
“What about it?”
“You’ve got to get rid of it.”
“How?”
“Bring it up here and we’ll get rid of it for you.”
“I’m not sure I want to do that, Broker. I’m going to be kind of busy today.”
“I tell you what… let me do some checking. I’ll contact the man you’re looking to find, I’ll talk to him and try to find out if he knows anything. Give me till tonight and if I haven’t got anything for you, go ahead, go ahead tomorrow and snoop all you want.”
“I don’t know, Broker.”
“Trust me.”
“Trust you. Kind of a sacred trust, huh, Broker?”
“Do you know the river road?”
“That old road that runs along the Mississippi, up to Davenport.”
“Yes. There’s a limestone quarry about ten miles outside of Davenport on the river road. Carl and I will be pulled alongside there at, say, midnight. Bring Boyd’s car and at that time I’ll tell you how I’ve done with… the man you want to find.”
“How will I get back to Port City, Broker?”
“I’ll have Carl drive you back. We’ll bring two cars.”
“Okay.”
“Tonight, then? At the stone quarry?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll see you tonight, then.”
“Sure.”
“At midnight.”
“Sure. See you then.”
“See you then. Quarry?”
“Yeah?”
“Take care of yourself, will you? Lie low today and just take it easy.”
“That’s sweet, Broker. Your concern is goddamn fucking touching.”
He hung up.
So did I.
18
The sign said “Coke” and underneath, in only slightly larger letters, “Port City Taxi Service,” but the place was more than that: it was an all-night grocery of sorts, as well as restaurant and bookstore. The groceries ran to pretzels, pop and milk, and the books ran to porno paperbacks and skin mags, and the restaurant was little more than a couple of tables stuck next to a stand that had on it a coffeepot and napkins and plastic spoons and an infrared mini-oven for the heating of cellophane-wrapped sandwiches which were for sale at the counter as you came in.
Behind the glassed counter, which was long and full of candy and cigarettes, was a heavyset woman of indeterminate age with frowzy gray-brown hair and a curiously friendly face. She was wearing a red and white checkered dress that looked like a tablecloth left over from a 1957 picnic and was sitting in the corner with her back to an ancient black metal sender-receiver, a squared hand mike leading out from it on a worn spiral rubber cord and resting in one of her hands, a mostly smoked cigarette in the other. From somewhere out of the radio outfit came muffled static which she apparently understood, as she responded to it now and then.
When she and the static had finished talking to each other, she grinned at me and said, “Howdy, mister. Little early yet, ain’t it?”
“Sure is,” I said.
“It gets early every morning round this time.” She rasped out a little laugh and pointed a finger down toward the end of the counter. “Fresh rolls down there, dime a piece. You get first pick today, sonny. Early bird catches the worm. The coffee’s still perking, shouldn’t be more’n a couple of minutes and it’ll be ready. There’s a dish on the stand, by the napkin container. Drop a nickel in the dish for every cup of coffee you drink.”
“Thanks.”
I lifted the sheet of white paper on the box and looked in at rows of fresh, well-iced danish rolls and picked several out and left the old lady a quarter on the counter. I walked back and sat down at one of the tables and nibbled at a roll while I waited for the coffee.
The place was all length and little width, the groceries crowded on shelves on one side of the room, a few tall skinny glass-doored refrigeration units backed up flat against the wall like men in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, and the paperbacks and magazines were thick on the other side of the room, various sorts of racks rubbing shoulders with one another. The ceiling was high and had all the room’s breathing space to itself; the ceiling edges were curved, ornately sculpted with little nude cupids and such and vines and flowers, and I wondered how old the building was and what it once had been.
I sat and stared at the tarnished aluminum coffeepot and listened to it perking. My mind was doing the same thing: perking, playing with thoughts, trying to get ready.
I didn’t understand, yet, what exactly the occurrences of this still early morning added up to. My mind was fuzzy, the events floating around inside my head like the synthetic snow in a wintery paperweight. I didn’t know what would happen next. I wasn’t sure what had happened so far. But I did know what I was going to do.
I was going to find the man.
The man who had paid to have Albert Leroy killed.
Who else in Port City knew Boyd and I were in town? Who else in Port City knew Boyd would have thousands of dollars in a suitcase in that particular apartment on this particular morning?
Motivation? I had no idea of what motivation lurked behind all of this. In the first place, it was still a mystery to me how anyone could feel it necessary to have Albert Leroy killed. He wasn’t my idea of the kind of man who posed a threat. Motivation, I didn’t know about that. Yet.
The coffee was ready and I got myself a cup. I sipped it slowly and thought some more.
What about Broker? He knew about Albert Leroy and Port City and all of it; hell, he set it up. Was this some kind of Broker Machiavellian kiss-off?
Unlikely. If Broker wanted to get rid of a man he wouldn’t do so in so sloppy a fashion, and in Broker’s home territory. There are plenty of methods, far better ones, for weeding out your bad stock. If Broker wanted me dead, he’d send someone up to see me between jobs, when I was sitting on my ass, fishing in Wisconsin or something. I’d be found floating in the lake up there, if I was found at all, not in an apartment in Port City, across the street from where I’d just hit a man.
Of course I was well aware that Broker meant to stop me, at all costs, from playing Sherlock Holmes in Port City. I knew that the meeting tonight at that stone quarry (which could’ve been the very place that provided Broker the inspiration for the name he’d bestowed on me years back) would be in one way or another designed to get me out of this, out of the area, out of the situation, out. Just what extent of violence he had in mind for me, if any, I didn’t know. I doubted Broker would try to have me killed, but it was possible. Possible.