She gave me a tentative smile. She said, “Will you, Quarry?”
“Yes I will,” I said.
She was quiet for a moment; she was thinking. Then she made her decision. She said, “Okay. So you’re a bastard. You’re a son of a bitch and a bastard but I can live with it.” She grinned. “Who knows? Maybe I just got a thing for men with guns.”
“Maybe so.”
“Quarry?”
“Yes, Peg?”
“Have you given up on finding the man responsible?”
“Pretty much.”
“You don’t want to give up, though, do you?”
“No. I’m close to him. I’m very close.”
“Can I help you?”
“I don’t want to involve you any deeper in this.”
“Aren’t there any questions you could ask me? That isn’t involvement, not really. There’s no risk in me answering a few questions.”
“Well…”
“Please.”
I stopped. Then I said, “Do you know anybody named Vince?”
She gave me an odd look, cocking her head to one side.
“Vince,” I repeated. “A guy named Vince.”
“He wouldn’t be a cab driver, would he?”
I thought for a moment. What was it Springborn had said? Something about Vince driving a hack and making a lot of money? “He might be,” I said.
“That’d be Carol’s brother, then.”
Carol’s brother? Carol? That was the other name Springborn had mentioned! And was that the name Boyd had used, the name of the woman he was “subletting” the apartment from?
“Who is Carol?” I said. Knowing the answer.
“The girl I told you about this morning. My friend. The one Ray Springborn was shacking up with, then all of a sudden sent packing to Florida.”
It was making sense. It was starting to make a lot of sense. I said, “Tell me about Vince.”
She shrugged. “He’s a deadbeat, and that’s the whole story. He drives a cab, thanks to Ray. Carol asked Ray to fix him up with a good job and Ray agreed. Besides, it keeps Vince’s mouth shut about Ray and Carol. Matter of fact, I think Vince might’ve been putting the squeeze on Ray just lately, maybe that’s why Ray sent Carol down to Florida for a while.” She shook her head. “Why Carol cares about that brother of hers is a mystery to me, but I suppose it’s because he’s all the family she’s got around here. You see, their parents are split up, divorced, and moved away long ago. That Vince is a real shit, Quarry. He’s queer as hell, too.”
“What?”
“He’s queer. They even had him in jail for it.”
I remembered what Springborn had said, the implication in his words… hasn’t he tried anything? Springborn had said. You don’t go for that stuff, do you?
“Actually,” Peg was saying, “I guess he wasn’t jailed for being a queer exactly, it was something worse than that. Much worse, because Christ knows as far as I’m concerned a person’s sex life is his own business, but this Vince… he’s a pervert in the true sense of the word. You know why he got thrown in jail? He was propositioning other homosexuals, especially guys passing through town, you know? He’d take them out in the country in his cab and roll them. Take every cent they had, even their clothes sometimes, and beat the crap out of them for the sheer pleasure of it.”
I understood.
I understood it all.
Boyd, I said silently, Boyd wherever you are, you son of a lesbian bitch, wherever you are, you’re an asshole. A dead one, but an asshole. Why hadn’t it occurred to me? The obvious! The dead obvious fact that Boyd had been slipping lately, that Boyd was getting sloppy in his work, so sloppy bad I was thinking serious of quitting him. But he had been even more stupid than I’d given him credit for. He’d been stupid enough, asshole-dumb enough, out-of-his-fucking-mind crazy enough to get involved in one of his gay flings while on a job!
That broken heart he’d been nursing, that busted heart he’d been carrying around with him as a souvenir of his disintegrating personal life, that torn valentine he wore in his chest he’d tried to paste back together with a new love, a love he found for himself right here in Port City.
And Boyd had picked himself a dandy lover. I could picture the first meeting in my mind. Because I knew what Vince looked like, I was sure of it. I was sure he was that clown in the taxi stand this morning, the guy who’d sidled up to me in the Port City Taxi Service this very damn morning! I could see him in my mind, a skinny guy in a white T-shirt (though in the apartment it had been a black one, hadn’t it?) dark complexioned, his hair oily and curly and black, his smile leering with the tooth in front chipped, his voice tough one second, effeminate the next. I could see him talking to Boyd, while Boyd thumbed through Twilight Love at the paperback rack.
I’d been right about one thing: it was an inside job. Vince was the brother of Carol, the girl who’d been staying in the apartment where Boyd was doing lookout, meaning Vince knew enough about the situation to know that Boyd and I had been brought to town to do some kind of Springborn dirty work; it was unlikely he’d have it figured right down to the murder of Albert Leroy, but he knew that Boyd and I were in town to do something-under-the-table for one of the Springborns, though he no doubt assumed Raymond, but never mind that. Vince had probably been able to gather from Boyd that a large amount of money was involved, and Boyd had probably promised Vince some of that money. Might even have indicated when the money would become available. Might even have arranged one last rendezvous with the chipped-tooth charmer before leaving town.
I had the sudden urge to go back to that alley where I’d left Boyd behind a wall of garbage cans and see if the body was still there. If it was, I’d kick it in the ass.
Peg was staring at me, watching my eyes move with thought. When I came out of my near-trance, she said, “Is Vince the man… responsible?”
The man responsible? The man with the wrench? The man who killed Boyd? Who took my money? Who tried to murder me? Yes. Yes he was.
“Never mind,’’ I said.
“Do you want to know where he lives?” she said.
I nodded.
“Above the cab stand,” she said “There’s a wooden stairway in back. It’s the only apartment up there. He’s got the whole floor to himself. He makes good money driving a cab. Thanks to Ray.”
“Thank you, Peg.”
“It’s okay.”
“Now forget all about it.”
“I already have.”
“Good.”
“Quarry?”
“Yes?”
“Are you going now?’’
“I better.”
“Are you leaving Port City?”
“Yes.”
“Right now?”
“Soon.”
“Will I see you again?”
“Not tonight.”
“When?”
“Not tonight.”
“I’ll… hear from you, then?”
“You’ll hear from me.”
“Quarry.”
“Yes, Peg.”
“Come with me for a minute.”
“Yes, Peg.”
27
The same woman was sitting behind the glass counter, but she was wearing a different dress; she had traded in the red and white check for a blue and white, which was draped over her heavy-set frame like a pup tent without poles. Her hair didn’t look quite so frowzy this time, which probably meant she’d just come on during the past hour or so, whereas on my last visit to the Port City Taxi Service I must’ve caught her at the tail end of her tour of duty.
“How’s she goin’, mister?” she said, her smile a fold in the layered flesh of her face. She puffed at the last inch of a cigarette and flashed a brown grin and said, “What can I do you for?”
“Hi,” I said. “Hell of a night.”
“Hell of a night is right. Miserable as hell.”
“Yeah, all that damn rain. Listen, is Vince working tonight?’’
“Vince? Sure, he went on an hour ago. You want me to get him on the squawker for you?”
“No, don’t bother. Just wondered what shift he was working.”
“He don’t get done till early this mornin’ after dawn.”