Cliff Anthony, in black silk pajamas, the top unbuttoned onto a hairless, pudgy chest, was on his back on top of the black-and-gold spread, snoring, dead to the world.
I sat on the bed and bumped up and down a little, till it woke him up.
Feminine eyelashes in the masculine face fluttered like spooked butterflies. “Huh! Huh?”
“Good morning, Starshine. That’s from Hair — the hit’s by a guy named Oliver, not that you’d ever mention that.”
He propped himself on his elbows. “Who the fuck...?”
“Think of me as Jiminy Cricket with a gun.” I pressed the nose of the silenced automatic against his forehead, some greasy black locks fringing down. I gave it some muscle, dimpling his deeply tanned flesh.
“What the fuck...?”
“Sam is unhappy.”
“Oh, fuck...”
“Been banging his teenage daughter, haven’t you, Cliff? Oh, she’s of age, but he’s still not pleased.”
“Oh Jesus...”
“You have friends in Chicago who asked Sam if he might reconsider sending someone like me.”
Shaking his head, as if trying to clear it, he said, “I’ll never touch her again! I swear on my Mama’s grave. Never, never touch her again!”
I shot the pillow next to him, which even noise-suppressed made it plump up some and spit feathers, the sound a substantial pop/click.
Anthony’s eyes were wide, his hands up, palms out. The front of his pajama bottoms was damp.
“If I come back here,” I said, and pushed the nose of the weapon under his chin for a little emphasis, “my aim will improve.”
He was shivering and crying as I left him.
I thought about going out the front way but, just in case I did have to come back here one of these days, I took the closet route, using the ladder and replacing the panel.
When I emerged from the corner doorway in the underground garage, Boyd was behind the wheel of his car, a Chevy Caprice convertible; he almost always rented, a risk I never took.
“Well?” he asked, bright-eyed as a deer about to get run down.
Getting in on the rider’s side, I said, “No rush. We’re fine. But I almost killed the motherfucker, despite Broker’s orders.”
“What? Why?”
“Prick wouldn’t sign an album to you!”
Boyd laughed out loud at that. “Quarry, you’re a card. A regular joker.”
“This is the town for it,” I said. “Drive.”
Two
Paradise Lake in October really lives up to its name.
First, God or Mother Nature or whoever-the-fuck-is-incharge does a bang-up job on the fall colors — red, gold, yellow, amber, a forest fire that never gets out of hand. The trees, fat with leaves in their colorful death throes, crowd the placid blue of the lake to reflect back at themselves in strange but lovely abstract shapes, the sky adding streaks of white to its own blue reflection.
Second, there are no tourists. For me having a minimum number of people around is about as close to heaven as Wisconsin gets. I don’t mind the spring and summer, when the hordes invade, because a good number of those are female and young and looking for fun and no commitment. And have they found the right guy.
But mindless sex gets old after four or five months, and when the outsiders give way and I’m only dealing with the handful of locals who tolerate me much as I tolerate them, lack of pussy becomes almost a relief. I have some pretty good friends in nearby Lake Geneva who, like me, are professionals, though their professions are rather more dull, like being a lawyer or a doctor or a successful merchant. We play poker for low stakes — quarter, fifty-cents, a buck — and give each other a good-natured hard time. They envy me because I am a little younger and they’re aware of that young pussy I mentioned.
Still, every one of them has a loving wife, each quite attractive, and kids who don’t hate them, which is novel. There’s much to be envied about their boring lives. And anyway who am I to talk? Much of my life is more boring than theirs. I only do half a dozen jobs a year, tops, and the rest of the time I just loaf around my lakeside A-frame watching television and reading paperback westerns and spy novels. When the weather isn’t right for swimming in the lake, I go to a health club in Lake Geneva and swim there. And in college-girl off-season, I hang out at the Playboy Club in Geneva, where I’ve gotten to know a number of waitresses very well. That’s Bunnies to you. In case you were wondering what kind of man reads Playboy.
My poker buddies think I’m a lingerie salesman (which leads to considerable joshing) alternating travel with supervising other salesmen from home.
So it’s a quiet life, dull and out of the way, but on the rare instances where the Broker drops by, life seems suddenly lively.
Not that the Broker is a terribly lively individual. Nor does he actually “drop by” — on my weekly touch-base calls, from a pay phone, he very occasionally announces that he would “like to arrange a visit on your premises.” Yes, he really does talk that way. And by “occasionally,” I would say his visits to my “premises” numbered maybe five times in as many years. Usually we met at restaurants, often truck stops, and sometimes at the hotel he owned in Davenport, Iowa.
I first met him a few months after I came home from the Nam, as we called that hellhole. Despite all the carnage I’d endured and delivered, I had returned to the Good Ol’ U.S. of A. with a streak of naivete still in my genes, and for that matter my jeans. I had married a lovely little California type who an Ohio kid like me had thought existed only in my own mind when I listened to the Beach Boys crooning “Surfer Girl.” A quick courtship before I went overseas, and an exchange of many tender letters between us, did not prepare me for (yeah, I know, you’re way ahead of me) finding Joni in bed with some other guy.
A quick tip to returning-home military men: never show up a day early.
Maybe you’ve also guessed I didn’t take it well, but you might be surprised to learn that I restrained myself. I didn’t kill either one of them, right then. But after a long soul-searching night, I went over to the guy’s house in La Mirada to talk it out. But right off the bat, he called me a bunghole and — he was working under his little sports car at the time — I kicked out the fucking jack.
Ultimately the death was declared accidental, though they almost tried me and the papers got some real play out of it. Maybe it got some national coverage too, because I figure that’s how the Broker tracked me down. He found me in a nasty part of L.A., feeling sorry for myself, the only time in my relatively young life that I was ever on a bender. I normally drink in moderation. That’s not sarcasm. Coca-Cola’s my chief vice.
The Broker, for all his pomp, knew how to take advantage of my circumstance. He understood that I resented having been paid and even honored by my country for killing a bunch of yellow people for no fucking reason in particular and then getting vili-fucking-fied for murdering a single goddamn white son of a bitch who had it coming. I guess I hadn’t figured out the life-isn’t-fair part.
This was my home turf — my premises, right? — so I did not make any effort to make myself presentable to the Broker. He was due to arrive late afternoon and he would have to accept me in the Wisconsin sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers I’d been wearing all day. I lived alone — my little blue heeler, Pooch, had died last year, something I’m not really over to this day — and I was not about to suck up to the guy. Not that I ever had.
On the other hand, the A-frame was as neat as a Marine’s footlocker. I don’t like to live in a mess. There’s a big central room with a fireplace and some sectional couches, a loft overlooking it where the 25” TV and a Barcalounger live, and a kitchenette with a long counter and new appliances. Several bedrooms are down the hall and there’s one bathroom.