The knock at the front door came at four P.M. He was on my doorstep looking like a bank president who had lost his way to his country club’s golf course. He was tall, six-two, with broad shoulders on a trim frame, his tan making the icy blue eyes stand out, as did the white eyebrows and mustache that went with his prematurely white hair, worn longish like all the old farts were doing.
But was he an old fart? I never could get a fix on his age. He might be forty and he might be sixty. His long, narrow face had few wrinkles, as if he hadn’t used it much for anything but eating and maybe breathing. As for why he might have been on his way to the links, he was wearing a dark brown suede sport coat, bronze turtleneck, gray-and-black-and-brown plaid flares, and brown hush puppies, a matching bronze handkerchief in his breast pocket.
All he lacked was a five-iron to lean on.
“Quarry,” he said, voice radio-announcer resonant, and held his hand out for me to shake.
I did. It was a firm clasp, no moisture, a little cool, like greeting a statue.
Looking past him at my little blacktop driveway, I noted that his latest Cadillac — the same arctic blue as his eyes, a custom color I’d wager — did not have a driver.
“You’re alone?” I asked.
“Yes. Quite alone.”
Is there a difference between “alone” and “quite alone”? You tell me.
I ushered him in.
“Lovely drive up here.” He’d come from the Iowa/Illinois Quad Cities most likely, since his home base was his hotel. “Simply alive with color.”
Well, all those leaves were dying, but I understood what he meant.
He was taking the lead down the short hall and I was following, frowning at his back. He almost never went anywhere without one of his... one of his what? Bodyguards? Protégés? These were young men, Vietnam vets like me mostly, who seemed to be in training for something — possibly the kind of work I did.
Sometimes I suspected a sexual aspect, but I had heard from Boyd that the Broker had a beautiful young wife and also that he was known to fool around with other (to use a Broker-ish phrase) “willing wenches.”
“We could sit on the deck,” I said, gesturing to the sliding glass doors. “But it’ll start getting cold any time now.”
“We’ll stay inside,” he said. He settled onto the sectional couch, facing the black metal fireplace.
“Coors all right?”
“Please.”
I got myself one too and delivered his, and sat on the couch section angled to his left. I sipped the beer, then set it on a coaster on the low-slung glass-topped coffee table.
I asked, “Problem with the job?”
Vegas had been last week.
He raised a hand like a kid in class. “No, no! All the feedback has been positive.”
“A little soon for another contract, isn’t it?”
He seemed distracted. He was staring at the fireplace as if the flames were making particularly interesting patterns and shapes. Only there wasn’t a fire going in it.
“It’s...” Tiny sigh. “...I find myself facing a particularly unusual situation, Quarry.”
He gave me the name “Quarry,” by the way. He said I reminded him of something carved out of rock. It was a kind of code name, but I also sometimes used it as an alias on the job. I had several driver’s licenses with Quarry as a last name. Anyway...
“The last job,” I said, “was unusual enough. You don’t usually pay me not to kill somebody.”
He smiled a little, still distant, not looking at me. Staring at the nonexistent fire.
“Quarry, perhaps you’ve noticed that I’ve come to lean on you when the circumstances are... unusual... unique. When someone with the ability to do more than just bring violence to bear is called for.”
“Yeah,” I said.
And I had noticed that. More than a few times, he’d sent me in undercover, having me gather up-close-and-personal intel, among other (as he said) unusual or unique assignments that went beyond simply hitting some fucker. Like the Vegas gig, for example.
Now he looked at me, head swiveling on his neck but the rest of him still facing forward. His gaze was hard and unblinking, yet somehow it revealed a human being back behind there. Not an exemplary human being perhaps, possibly a sociopath and certainly a twisted and self-interested one. But human.
“You have exceptional instincts, Quarry. You knew at once that my coming unaccompanied bore significance.”
Now he was just blowing smoke up my skirt. Anybody with half a brain — Boyd, say — would have read the Broker’s solo appearance as a red flag.
“Fuckin’ A,” I said. “I’m special. Like the kids on the short bus. What’s this about, anyway?”
He sipped beer. Placed the can on a coaster. Studied the non-fire. Swung the ice blues my way; they tightened, like screws turning.
“I recently declined a contract,” he said.
I thought about that for a second or two, then shrugged. “I’d imagine you do that fairly often.”
“Yes, but this time the reason why I declined the job required obfuscation on my part.”
Every time I talked to this pompous motherfucker, he laid a word on me I’d never heard in conversation before.
“Okay,” I said. “I think that means you lied to whoever offered the job about why you took a pass.”
He nodded. “Precisely. Because the real reason would not have gone over well.”
Jesus! Did I have to drag each thought out of him?
“Why was that, Broker?”
He swallowed. The eyes relaxed, or maybe surrendered. “Because this was a contract on someone I do not wish to see killed.”
Again, I thought for a few moments — maybe more than a few — then said, “I might know where this is going...”
He raised a hand. Collected his thoughts. I’d never seen him like this.
“Quarry, as you might well imagine, I have many dealings and investments that are, let us say, outside the realm of the business in which you and I are engaged. Some are what are colloquially termed ‘money laundries,’ while others are simply profitable concerns. Money-makers.”
“Okay.”
He sighed. “Before I continue with this line of talk, I must ask you to take a deep breath and contemplate. You see, this is outside the agreement we made some years ago in a sleazy apartment in the Skid Row of Los Angeles. This requires you to enter with me into a dangerous domain that carries with it potentially dire consequences.”
“How does it pay?”
That made him smile, just a little, the mustache going along for the ride. “It will pay exceptionally well. Twenty-five thousand now, twenty-five after, and all expenses are mine. I will be able to pave your way along the path...a treacherous path, but one I have confidence that you can navigate.”
I squinted at him, as if seeing him better would bring him into focus. “But if you tell me what this is, I can’t turn it down, right? I have to sign on.”
“Yes. Eyes wide open...but blind, so to speak.”
I thought a while. Shrugged. “It’s good money. Risks don’t bother me, unless they’re stupid. Shoot. So to speak.”
He took in a deep breath and let it out. Now his torso swiveled to me and his expression was faintly, very faintly, smiling. “Are you familiar with a particularly tasteless publication called Climax?”
Of course I was. I read every monthly issue. It had very funny vulgar cartoons, an acid pox-on-all-your-houses political slant, and had broken barriers and taboos by publishing naked beauties with their legs spread and sharing a view of what had heretofore only been available to their gynecologists and maybe their lovers. Lately a bunch of court cases had put Climax in the headlines, the editor/publisher facing obscenity charges.