I smiled. That was a rehearsed speech if I ever heard one. I wondered if he’d written it down on paper and memorized it or what. No matter. I had him. He already believed me, was convinced he was set up for a hit. He just needed to make up for the minor humiliations I’d put him through those two times. That is, if any humiliation is minor to an ego like his.
Some tourist types, a couple of near-elderly couples, stopped in front of us and stared at the artifacts on the wall over our heads. People were constantly flowing by, which in a strange sort of way afforded us privacy. The glass wall didn’t hold in all of the echoing pool noise, and the lobby was nearby, and so was the bar. Just enough commotion to make us invisible, and to keep our conversation to ourselves.
When the aging tourist types moved on, Tree picked up where he left off.
“Maybe I haven’t made myself clear,” he said. “I know how this kind of thing works. Hitting people, I mean. I know how much it costs. I know the channels you go through to get it done. I know how many people come in to do the job, and what each one does. I been around, in other words. I know some things that you better know, Mr. Quarry, or you may find out the hard way what getting hit is all about.”
“I know all those things, Frank.”
“Prove it.”
“All right. Ask.”
“How much does it cost?”
“That depends.”
“On?”
“Whether you hire some asshole in a bar for a hundred bucks or something, or you go for real professionals.”
“Real professionals.”
“Two thousand up.”
“How do I get in touch with them?”
“You don’t. There’s a middle man, a broker.”
“I go to him, then.”
“No. He gets fed his clients from mob people.”
“So these are mob killings we’re talking about.”
“Not necessarily. Say some businessman has a problem, a wife, another woman, a competitor, a partner, a problem. Say he has a friend, another businessman, who has links to the mob. He asks his friend to put him in touch with somebody who takes care of problems. That puts the wheels in motion.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Maybe I used to kill people for money.”
“Is that so?”
“Since you already know all this, maybe you hired me once. Who knows?”
But he wasn’t out of questions yet. “How many people involved?”
“Three.”
“Three?” he said. Like he’d caught me.
“There’s somebody to do the stakeout work,” I said. “And somebody to pull the trigger.”
“You said three.”
“Sure. The victim makes three, Frank. That’s where you come in.”
21
The psychopathic hospital at Iowa City was a sprawling one-story brick building on a spacious lawn whose many trees and bushes were apparently tailored to provide a soothing landscape, no matter what the season. Only right now it was no season at all, rather that limbo period between winter and spring, trees gray and skeletal, grass brown as cardboard. Even the few evergreen bushes looked wilted, like a salad that sat out.
We came in separate cars. I had already determined that no one (except me) had followed Tree from Des Moines to the Amana turn-off on Interstate 80. But that didn’t mean somebody, knowing Tree’s patterns, might not drive to Iowa City by some other route and pick up shadowing him there. So Tree parked along the curb of a half-circle drive designed for outpatient pick-up, where you could legally park for thirty minutes or so; and I left my latest rental Ford in a metered stall down the slope of the hill just beyond the hospital. I spent ten minutes trying to see if anybody was here ahead of us, watching, and there didn’t seem to be, but I couldn’t be sure: the University Hospital was across the way, with its large parking lot, where somebody could easily be staked out. My main concern was not wanting to be recognized, not wanting to be seen with Tree, particularly by Lu, who might be sitting in a car in that lot watching right now. Maybe the ten minutes between Tree going in and me following would be enough; that and my rental car and feeble disguise, consisting of glasses and a sweater I’d pulled on over my shirt, hopefully affecting the look of a straight-type college kid. The man of a thousand faces.
Inside was a hallway, with a glassed-in office area off to the left, with a pretty young nurse in it, who Tree was unsuccessfully flirting with when I came in. I was identified as a cousin of the patient; evidently only relatives were admitted. Then the nurse told Tree that Dr. Cash wanted a word with him before the visitation, and Tree went down the hall and knocked on a door on the right and it opened and he went in.
I waited downstairs, in a room full of tables and chairs and vending machines. This room, like the corridor I’d been briefly in upstairs, was as coldly institutional as a tax form. Some lunch room. I’d sooner have a sandwich in the morgue. Which didn’t stop me from feeding some change to a vending machine that sold me a Coke that was all ice and syrup and I drank it anyway.
After that I wandered in the hall a while. This lower floor was apparently in as much use as the upper one, withrooms labeled various functional things. The ceiling was a maze of exposed electrical wiring and pipes, cheerfully painted over in bland pastel, and would have been enough to make your average fire inspector check in as a permanent guest. The only advantage I could see to having the place set up this way, like a two-story building with the first floor under- ground, was it cut down on people jumping out of windows.
I’d never been in a nuthouse before and hoped this wouldn’t start a trend. But there was somebody here Tree wanted me to see, and I’d decided to go along with him, since it seemed to mean a lot to him.. but by now I was half expecting Tree to come through a door with a brace of boys in white coats and point his finger at me and say, “That’s the one.”
We had talked money first. I reminded him that in one of our earlier conversations he’d offered double the price of the contract on him. He reminded me that I’d had a gun on him at the time, which, like trying to get a good-looking woman to do what you want in bed, is a situation where a man will say anything.
And then I told him I didn’t want him to double the price, anyway.
I just wanted him to match it.
“What are they paying?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I can make an educated guess.”
“Make it, then.”
“Five.”
There was a short silence, and then he said, “Five thousand dollars,” slowly, shaking his head, smiling a little. “A man likes to think his life’s worth more than that.”
“It’s not your life we’re talking about, Frank. Just the opposite.”
He wanted to know how I’d be paid, and I told him a thousand up front, which would do little more than cover expenses. The balance would come only after I’d got some results. And it would be paid half in cash, half in check, so I’d have something to pay taxes on and keep the IRS happy. There were some details about how the check was to be handled that I needn’t go into here.
And he wanted to know what he’d be getting for his money.
I told him he’d already got quite a lot, and explained how I’d followed a woman named Glenna Cole from Florida to Des Moines, where she had been staking him out for five days, and figured she’d watch him no longer than two weeks total before the other half of the team stepped in to finish the job. I didn’t mention that Glenna Cole was his lady bartender at the Barn, Lucille. Or that I had tentatively tagged that house dealer of his with the glasses and sullen manner as the trigger. I didn’t want to lay too much on him all at once. Especially when he hadn’t come across with any cash yet.