“Probably,” I admitted.
“No probably about it, Quarry.”
He was right, of course, if for no other reason than a staffer with his throat slit in the alley behind Coalition HQ unquestionably meant cops.
I said, “The thought of walking into that office and having to weather a bunch of questions from some St. Louis Columbo does not give me a warm fuzzy feeling. I admit it. But what if I don’t show up today? Suddenly I’m a suspect. In a day or two, my background story blows up. They bring in sketch artists. My face is on the news. Think of it this way, Boyd — your partner’s face is on the news.”
The swelling had gone down some, but bruising and scrapes still made him look the monster in a Grade Z horror flick — particularly when he made a face, like he was doing now.
“Quarry, we can’t stick. We just can’t. We got five grand each out of what you did last night. Let’s cut our losses and count ourselves lucky.”
I flipped a hand. “Why don’t we hold off till we see how the morning goes down? And then we can call the Broker and get his take.”
He was shaking his head. “His take on you killing some colored drug dealer behind the target’s place? After he hears that, you think you’ll even still be on the Broker’s team?”
That sent my brain a quick image of Boyd and me and others I’d encountered in Broker’s network of damaged goods, all of us in basketball jerseys. With him as frustrated coach, yelling at the refs. But then I immediately realized the coach’s way of benching me in this game would be to have my ass killed.
“No, Boyd. That’s gotta be our little secret. Here’s what we tell him. We woke up this morning, and learned to our dismay about the murder of one of the Reverend’s staffers. An apparent drug deal gone wrong.”
“Yeah,” Boyd said thoughtfully, “Broker would wonder why you went over there last night, when you saw those lights on. Why did you go over there, Quarry?”
“You didn’t question it last night.”
“We didn’t discuss it, really. You just did it.”
How could I explain to Boyd that something in me wanted to make sure our target was part of the dope distribution ring operating out of his domain? How could I make him understand that I needed Reverend Raymond Wesley Lloyd to be dirty, to somehow deserve what we’d been hired to do to him?
How could I explain all that to Boyd if I couldn’t explain it to myself?
“I had to make sure,” I said, “that whatever was happening over there wasn’t a result of what went down at that Klan meeting.”
Which sounded lame even to me, but Boyd let it pass.
Boyd and the sun were up before I was. I’d found him at the window in his half-turned position, one pillow under his ass, the other propped against the wall, as he used the binoculars. The portable radio, turned to the easy-listening station, was softly playing “The Good Life” by Bobby Darin.
“Anything yet?” I’d asked, barely awake.
“Not yet,” he said.
That didn’t surprise me. While André’s body had surely been discovered by now, any cop cars would be along the side street in and near the alley, beyond our sight. And nobody got to the Coalition HQ till eight A.M. Plus, everybody who’d made the weekend trip had been told they could wander in as late as they liked. Even if that meant after lunch.
I’d crawled out of bed after a bracing three hours of sleep, took yet another shower, shaved, shat, and got into some of the few clothes of mine that weren’t stuffed in a garbage bag ready to be dumped somewhere. Then I walked down to the Majestic, got us doughnuts and coffee, and walked back.
Around eight, the worker bees began arriving across the way, the usual mix of black and white, and mostly older staffers who had passed on the road trip. By eight-fifteen, a black Plymouth Fury made a parking place out of a yellow-curbed area near the front of Coalition HQ; it might as well have had UNMARKED POLICE CAR stenciled on the side, and the two lumpy-looking plainclothes cops in rumpled suits canceled any lingering doubt.
Boyd and I passed the binoculars around for half an hour, watching these obvious detectives get greeted first by a staffer and then by Harold Jackson, who took them deeper into the building than could be seen from our perch. Presumably back to his office and — assuming the Reverend had made it in by now — that office, as well.
Lowering the binoculars, Boyd said, “Shit.”
“Nothing we didn’t expect. Put those down. We have things to do.”
“We do?”
“In a little while, you’re going to call the Broker. Tell him our adjusted story about the drug-dealer killing across the way. Explain that I’ll go in the office after lunch and deal with the detectives then, when they’re getting tired of hearing what they’re hearing. He’ll know we can’t skip that step before skipping, if that’s what he wants us to do.”
Boyd nodded. “And you?”
“I’m going downtown to the YMCA and make myself known. I’ll take that swim the Broker recommended. Either before or after that, I’ll find a Dumpster to get rid of that garbage bag of bloody clothes. Probably find a department store to buy a few new clothes, since my wardrobe has been seriously depleted. I’ll return here before I go across the street for a grilling, and see what the Broker advises.”
“Okay,” he said.
“It’s barely possible the detectives will call in more troops to canvass the neighborhood. So don’t answer the door, and turn that radio off. Nobody’s home. Got it?”
“Got it.”
And now I was back, and the Broker had advised that we stay, “if possible.”
We were in the living room, on the couch.
I said, “Stay how long, did he say?”
“Till the job’s done.”
“Jesus, Boyd — they’ve seen me across the street. Everything I said about police sketches and my face getting famous still goes.”
He shrugged, sitting sideways with one leg tucked under the other. “But it always did. Once you went undercover, you risked that, unless you could find a way to take the mark out without raising general suspicion. Accident or suicide or some shit.”
I shook my head. “You should be doing the hit, not me. What I’ve been doing is the recon. You’re still a new face. Fucking Broker. This is so fucked up.”
Boyd swallowed, licked his lips; he really didn’t like taking the active role. “You want me to do it? You see a way we can set this up? I mean, if that’s what it takes—”
I shook my head again. “No. And we only have the rest of the week to bring it off. Dead white Nazis, dead black drug dealers... this is not like anything we’ve dealt with before.”
His eyes were close enough to normal now to widen, though he still looked like Lon Chaney halfway through having his makeup removed. “Fuck the Broker. He’s not on the fucking firing line. You wanna bail, Quarry, I’ll bail.”
“Not yet. We might as well see how this afternoon plays out.”
I went in to Coalition HQ around eleven. The Reverend was in his office, on his phone, looking as cool as ever but for a vertical crease between his eyebrows indicating the pressure he was under. Jackson was out in the bullpen, hovering around, mother-henning his bummed-out staff and keeping an eye on the two lumpy cops, who were split up and moving from desk to desk doing interviews, pads and pencils in hand like carhops taking orders.
When he saw me, Jackson came right over.
“Jack,” he said, “you just got here?”
I nodded.
“Are you aware of last night’s tragedy?”
“What?”
He took me by the arm, walked me all the way back to the office. I glanced over at Ruth’s desk. Empty. Then I was in the chair across from a shell-shocked Jackson, seated in his swivel chair, stroking his thick mustache nervously; even the shaved skull had lost its luster.