“That does sound like Max.”
“But you’re his business partner, the guy with a head for a different kind of figures than the editor of Climax. My guess is that you have systematically looted your cousin’s company and plowed that dough somewhere safe, overseas maybe. This probably started when Mavis started sticking her nose in, and when Max started talking about expansion that was coming too early, adding new non-porn magazine titles and talking movie studio, and buying that Germantown mansion, wow — that must have been a bite.”
“You can prove this?”
“Hell no! What do you think a security consultant does, anyway? Yale locks and security systems is about it. Of course, I’m not really a security consultant.”
He was studying me now. “What are you, Mr. Quarry?”
And now I had to take a chance.
As long as I had that nine millimeter in my pocket, it was a chance I could risk taking. But if Vernon had received a phone call today from the Broker-like middleman he’d been dealing with, he might know about the two gay killers who died across from George’s Truck Stop and Drag Bar last night.
Which would make the play I was about to make a very dangerous one.
Even fatal.
“I am going to assume,” I said, “that Max told you about the kidnap attempt here at this cabin the night before last.”
Vernon nodded somberly. “He did. But no details. He said only that you had handled things, and well. I had the impression that it was better for me not to know.”
Just what I wanted to hear.
“That’s probably so,” I admitted. “But I need to fill in some details for you. You see, I am one of a team of three who were hired to remove Max Climer.”
The chin lifted again. “By ‘remove’ you mean...?”
“Kill him, yes. My job was to infiltrate his business and offer myself in the security consultant role that you’re familiar with. It’s a kind of up-close-and-personal surveillance. I determined that staging a kidnapping would be an effective way to remove Max Climer — that it would be child’s play to make it appear Max had been killed either because the kidnapping had gone wrong, or simply because the abductors had gotten their money and decided to kill their main witness.”
He was just taking it in, eyes wide behind the tortoiseshell glasses.
I pressed on: “It was a botch. My associates staged the kidnapping, but in the process, Max’s chauffeur killed them both, dying in the process himself. That left me to clean up afterward, dumping their van with their bodies in it on a backroad.”
“Jesus,” he said.
Did I have him? Was he buying it?
“What I have figured out,” I said, “is that you and Mrs. Max Climer are the ones who hired this done.”
His eyes flashed but he said nothing.
“Have you heard from our middleman about this?” I pressed.
“Has he advised you of a Plan B?”
“No. No!”
I had him.
I finished the ploy. “Then I have a proposition for you,” I said. “Tomorrow, call your contact and say the contract is off.”
“Off? Why...?”
“You don’t need to do business now with anybody but me. Your cousin trusts and accepts me. I have full access, and can bypass all of the new security measures, since I’m the one who had them installed. In addition, I will make it look like an accident, which will prevent this from ever coming back on you.”
His eyes tensed. “You can do that?”
“I can and I will. That is... for twenty-five thousand dollars.”
“But I already...”
“No worries on that score. With my late associates botching the kidnap scheme, you’ll be able to cancel the contract and get a full refund. And I’m guessing twenty-five is less than you agreed to pay. That’s probably what you put down.”
“It... it is.”
I nodded. “Let’s walk back.”
We did.
I sat in a rocking chair on the porch, and he sat in one next to me.
Gently rocking, I said, “I’m not asking for an answer right now. I’m aware I’m giving you a lot to think about. So sleep on it. Maybe talk about it with your little friend inside...”
He didn’t react to that one way or the other.
“...and we’ll talk tomorrow. And if we’re in agreement, the Max Climer problem will be solved by the middle of the coming week.”
He was rocking, too, not so gently. “I have to think about it. I have to think about it.”
“I want you to. You mind if I ask you something?”
Hie eyebrows climbed over the big frames. “What is there left to ask?”
“Aren’t you killing the golden goose? Isn’t Max to Climax what Hefner is to Playboy, or Guccione to Penthouse?”
The rocking slowed and Vernon said, “He still would be. He’ll become a tragic, mythic figure — who died for all our sins. But with him would also die his excesses and his bad judgment, and Climax Enterprises would be run as a real business... a business that can become an empire.”
“You’d be the new face of Climax?”
He shook his head fairly vigorously. “No. Not me. Dorrie. A beautiful woman. The beautiful woman who was at Max Climer’s side when it all began. Imagine it, Mr. Quarry — a men’s magazine built on sex... let’s face it, based on pussy... but with a woman ostensibly running it? A man, myself, of course, would really be behind the curtain... but think of the publicity, and the cover that we’d have any time the feminists come at us with pitchforks and torches!”
He’d almost answered my remaining question.
Almost.
I stopped rocking and stood. He did the same. I extended my hand.
“We’ll call it a tentative deal,” I said, as we shook hands. “And I’ll wait for your confirmation tomorrow. Say, at the club right after opening?”
“At the club,” he repeated, the thin lips smiling, “right after opening.”
I went to the Mustang and glanced back, saying, “My apologies to your lovely friend. Tell her I’ll take a rain check on that drink.”
He lifted a hand in half wave, half benediction. “I’ll let her know. We’ll all look forward to a victory drink soon.”
I got in, started it up, backed off, and pulled around to head back down the lane, watching in my rearview mirror as he stepped back inside.
Halfway down, I pulled over and got out, and headed back through the trees, not worrying about my feet crunching leaves. I made my way past the gas tank to peer into the kitchen window. Because there was one more thing I had to know.
They weren’t at the kitchen table. But I could see that they were in the living room area, standing in front of the couches that surrounded the fireplace. She was listening intently and he was talking mile-a-minute, gesturing.
Still not enough.
I went to the window onto the living room area, at an angle where I hoped my peeping wouldn’t be perceived. His back was largely to me, and he was blocking her.
Damn! Get the fuck out of the way...
As if he’d heard me, he moved just enough that I could see the pretty, pretty hard face with the bright red mouth and the blue-eye-shadowed brown eyes. She was listening, face alive with attention and thought, but only listening.