“I thought I was carved out of rock.”
He flipped a hand. “My first impression. Now I realize that you have standards. Perhaps even a code of sorts. In a world without meaning, that can come in handy. But it can also get in the way.”
I raised both hands as if in surrender. “I’m not going to rat you out or anything, Broker. I just want to take a pass. No harm, no foul, remember?”
He did something then that he had never done before. He called me by my real name, which let’s say is John, which it isn’t.
“John,” he said. “I respectfully request that you set aside any compunctions about the killing of a good man. Raymond Wesley Lloyd is not a good man.”
Why was it that assassins and their victims so often had three names?
“Well, he looks pretty goddamn good to me,” I said, nodding toward the envelope. “Kill him if you want, just leave me out of it.”
Maybe I wouldn’t have been so quick to turn down that kind of money if I hadn’t had a particularly good year. Biloxi had paid off very well, in ways the Broker wasn’t wholly aware of.
Then something crawled up my spine.
“Or,” I said, “have I just made myself a loose end? This is political, Broker. You fucking lied to me!”
He shook his head and his voice turned calming. “No, I said there was a political aspect. I made that point quite clearly. Anyway, Reverend Lloyd may present himself as the logical replacement for Martin Luther King... and that the public currently perceives him as such certainly complicates matters... but I assure you he is made of more common clay than Reverend King.”
At least the Broker didn’t add “may he rest in peace” after that.
I was studying him. “How common a clay are we talking about?”
A one-shoulder shrug. “His strident condemnations of drug use amongst the poorest of the black populace fall into the area of ‘methinks he doth protest too much.’ ”
“Speak American.”
“He retains connections, shall we say, to his roots — he is largely funded by white gangsters who run dope in the city that is his home base, St. Louis, Missouri. It’s a hypocritical front, yes, albeit a rather brilliant one — who would suspect when Raymond Wesley Lloyd takes his anti-drug message on the road, a core group within his organization is moving caches of the poison?”
I was frowning. “So this is a mob hit?”
The Broker recoiled. “Quarry, you know I can’t confirm or deny that. This may be an unusual job, but we must retain the compartmentalization that makes all of us safe.”
“Yeah. Sorry. Okay.”
One eyebrow went up. “Okay? Does that mean you accept the assignment?”
“...I’m in.”
He clapped once, like a pasha summoning a slave. “You’ve viewed the background material. Questions?”
“Mostly just one,” I said. “What makes you think a white boy like me can just wander into a black activist HQ and pull up a chair? Blackface went out with Eddie Cantor.”
He was shaking his head again. “You won’t be the only white face in the room. Civil Rights activism has always attracted young guilty liberals, particularly right now.”
“Why right now?”
Another smile. “Reverend Lloyd is in the midst of a tour of college campuses, working to get out the vote for George McGovern in the presidential race.”
I opened my mouth but no words came out. Even a non-political type like me, who only caught the occasional newscast, was aware that Nixon was slaughtering McGovern in the polls, with the election just a few weeks away.
He could tell what I was thinking and said, “Democrats and assorted left-wing rabble are holding out hope that the polls are wrong, or at least can be made to be wrong.”
“Why? How?”
He frowned. “Do you ever read a paper, Quarry? This is the first year that the under twenty-ones can vote. Right now various famous bleeding hearts — politicians, movie stars, folk singers, rock and rollers — are beating the campus bushes, hoping the anti-war youth will create a November surprise.”
“And Lloyd is part of that.”
“Yes. But he won’t be part of any November surprise.”
“Probably not. Nixon’s the one.”
“That’s not what I refer to, Quarry.”
“What do you refer to?”
“The October surprise you’ll give him.”
Two
Getting to St. Louis took a little over seven hours. I left around noon, the day after the Broker came calling, going by way of Route 47, I-55 and Route 66 (no sign of Tod and Buz).
I’d have made it in maybe an hour less if I hadn’t stopped in Chicago to buy a used cobalt-blue Chevy Impala SS for fifteen hundred cash — a sweet ride with enough muscle for getaway contingencies, and an eight-track to accommodate my Doors, Badfinger and Rolling Stones tapes. My green Opel GT I parked in an extended-stay lot near O’Hare Airport. These things take time, particularly if you catch a meal and take a shit.
I had an address for Boyd’s lookout on East Euclid in the Central West End of St. Louis, but also a phone number. I called that first from a booth at a gas station on the outskirts. It took only three rings.
“...yes?” came Boyd’s hesitant, breathy baritone.
“Me. Fancy. Got a phone and everything, huh?”
“It’s not a tin can with a string. Man, this is one sweet pad. Wait’ll you see it. Rivals Cleveland, if you can believe that.”
“I’m maybe fifteen minutes out, but I don’t know St. Louis. Talk me in.”
“Where you calling from?”
I told him and he gave me directions.
In twenty minutes I was on East Euclid in a lively area of bars, restaurants, clubs, boutiques, head shops and what have you. Not surprisingly, St. Louis was warmer than Paradise Lake, Wisconsin. I was in blue jeans and a black Levi’s sweatshirt under a brown corduroy jacket with fake fleece lining and collar, the latter almost too warm here. If so, I had a windbreaker in my suitcase for fallback.
A brick building, with Boyd on the second of three floors over a hippie-ish dress shop, was across from a storefront with
in white letters on windows through which a now-empty warren of desks could be glimpsed between plastered campaign posters: TOGETHER FOR McGOVERN, McGOVERN — TELLS IT LIKE IT IS, COME HOME AMERICA — McGOVERN/SHRIVER, and a red-white-and-blue hand making the two-finger peace symbol above the words McGOVERN ’72.
Where were the anti-war candidates when I needed them?
Tricky Dick was always flashing that two-finger gesture, too — that blue-jawed square was hip enough to figure out that kids would read it as peace and grown-ups as victory. I wouldn’t vote for that prick for dog catcher, but you had to give it to him.
I left the Impala in a graveled recession behind the building; I might have gone up the stairs to the rear deck, but Boyd had advised coming around front. So my small suitcase and I did that, stopping at a doorway between the hippie dress shop and a bar where a band was playing “Magic Carpet Ride,” badly. The smell of burgers cooking said there’d be food handy. That was good.
The neighborhood itself appeared to be a white one, but not so white that Reverend Raymond Lloyd couldn’t set up shop here. And I’d bet college kids and young singles of both races were mingling in these bars and clubs. Girls were always trying to prove how unprejudiced they were, and also to see if what they heard about black guys was true.
I went up carpeted stairs to a landing with a yellow light giving the place jaundice. Only one apartment here, though the stairs went on up, presumably to another. I knocked softly.