He sighed and shook his head. “You have to. This is a key client.”
“From Chicago, right?”
He blanched. “How do you know that?”
“When people talk to me, I pay attention.”
The Broker said nothing. His spooky blue eyes were half-lidded. He slid out of the booth, went over and tapped the denim midget on the shoulder, and he and Roger came over. Broker slid back into the booth and Roger sat next to him.
Broker said, “Quietly tell Roger what to expect.”
I considered telling Roger that what he could expect was a life of getting turned away at various amusement park rides for not meeting the height requirement. But I thought better of it.
“Hi, Roger.” I threw Charlie’s car keys onto the booth’s tabletop. Then I nodded out the window at the car parked just beyond where we sat. “You can expect to find a dead man in the trunk of that green Chevelle. Pre-wrapped in plastic, like a picnic sandwich.”
Roger said, “Anything else?”
“A duffel bag of his shit. There’s some skin magazines in the back seat you can help yourself to. My suggestion? Get rid of everything-the whole damn car.”
Roger turned toward the Broker.
Broker said, “I concur.”
Roger nodded.
Then Charlie’s new chauffeur exited the booth and stopped by the counter where he’d been in the middle of his own cheeseburger and fries, and requested of the thousand-year-old waitress a to-go sack, and got back a Lot’s Wife look but eventual cooperation.
By the time the Broker had paid our check, Roger and Charlie and the Chevelle were gone. We stepped into the cold air and the Broker pulled on his leather gloves. I didn’t have to be told which ride was the Broker’s-that silver Cadillac Fleetwood Eldorado.
I’d never been inside one before, let alone sat behind the wheel. But Broker entrusted it to me.
God, it was all leather and padded dashboard with a cassette player and still had the new car smell, and no tobacco stench at all. I felt like I was sitting in a penthouse, not a car. But I hid my reaction from Broker, who I handed Charlie’s wallet.
I drove toward Iowa City, keeping it at seventy, and filled Broker in on what had happened, including Charlie’s elliptical references to the girl’s father and his not so-elliptical references to the professor’s wife.
“He was an untrustworthy man,” the Broker said of Charlie. “You made the right decision.”
“But it’s collateral damage.”
“Ah, and you don’t like collateral damage.”
“No, I don’t, but this guy was a sleazy prick, so I’m over it. But do we need to pull out? Scrap the contract? We have all kinds of players in this that your surveillance guy didn’t pick up on.”
“True. But this is a vital contract.”
“Right. Because that brunette’s father is a Chicago Outfit guy.”
Broker didn’t like hearing me say that.
“And,” I went on, “he wants the prof snuffed because he doesn’t like daddy’s little girl taking entrance exams from a faculty member’s member.”
He sighed heavily. “Something like that. The ‘why’ is not your concern. It’s not even my concern.”
“When assholes like Charlie come waltzing into my life…into our life…it is. So, then, I stay?”
“You stay. But get this thing done.”
“Look, Broker.” My eyes were on the ivory world we were gliding through. “Bumping off a Charlie Who’s-it is one thing. Putting that brunette at risk is another.”
He straightened as much as his seat belt would allow. “Well, under no circumstances take her out. My God, she’s the client’s daughter.”
“Even if she wanders in on me in the process?”
“Wear a ski mask if you have to.”
“Oh, this just gets classier.”
“Quarry…there’s nothing classy about murder.”
“Says the guy in the camel’s hair coat with the Fleetwood Caddy.”
He didn’t have anything to say to that.
Then the Broker turned on a little light on his side of the vast vehicle and went through all that I.D. I’d handed over.
“You’ve looked at this,” he said.
“Yeah. Like I said, he was a PI.”
Broker nodded and went through the credit cards and various papers tucked in with the cash in the fold.
“What does this mean?” he asked, reading aloud from a slip of paper, “ ‘We’ll meet on Monday night at the Holiday Inn lounge. 7 p.m. D.B.’ ”
I shrugged. “Could be this case-could be something else of Charlie’s, something old.”
He frowned at me. “Is that what you think?”
“It’s possible that ‘B’ stands for ‘Byron,’ and that this note is from Charlie’s client.”
“The wife.”
“The wife.”
I glanced over at the Broker and his expression was stricken.
“That means,” he said, “we could have the professor’s wife added to your stateroom scene.”
“If that memo does mean what I speculated it might, yes. And of course it might not.”
“Christ. Hell.”
“So then we do pull out?”
“Can you think of another alternative? I would be grateful, Quarry, if you could.”
I shrugged, feeling powerful behind the wheel of the majestic buggy. “If she hasn’t ever met this guy she hired? Then I could be him. I could be Charlie, the PI. It covers why I’m shadowing her husband. I handle her, get rid of her, and-”
“What do you mean,” he said, giving me a sharp glance, “ ‘get rid of her’?”
“I hope I mean, I talk to her and she goes on her way.”
He was staring at the memo. “What if she’s already met Charlie?”
“Then maybe…well, there’s other ways of getting rid of people.”
The Broker sighed; his expression was one of extreme distaste. “Yes. Yes there are.” He looked over at me, eyes half-lidded again. “I will have this Charlie character looked into. I’ll have information available by late Monday afternoon. Call me before five at the same number. Don’t do anything till then-don’t return to your surveillance post, just stay in your hotel.”
“The Holiday Inn.”
His eyes and nostrils flared. “Hell, I hadn’t thought of that. You’re already in the hotel where the woman would be meeting you…”
“What’s wrong with that? It’s convenient.”
He shook his head. “This world in Iowa City-it’s too small, it’s too cluttered.”
“Tell me about it.”
Broker’s icy blue eyes bore down on me. “If I can confirm that our late friend Charlie was a single operative, and that he did not work out of the same city where Mrs. Byron lives, then there is a good chance that, A, she has never met him in person and dealt with him only over the phone, and, B, he will not immediately be missed, since he has no associates to miss him.”
“You’re assuming he worked alone-wasn’t part of an agency.”
“His business card implies a one-man operation. It’s worth checking out.”
I let some air out. “That would buy us a couple of days.”
“Yes.”
We rode along in silence for a while.
Then: “So what’s in the manuscript, Broker?”
“What manuscript?”
“Don’t play dumb. You don’t play dumb at all well. The manuscript I’m expected to find and burn, after killing this philandering fucker.”
“…It’s a so-called non-fiction novel he’s been working on.”
“Well, that’s his specialty, right? He’s the Collateral Damage guy.”
The Broker chuckled dryly. “Yes, in more ways than one, now. He’s writing what he’s described to others as his magnum opus-a non-fiction novel about a Mafia kingpin.”
“Fuck,” I said. “The girl’s father?”
“Yes,” the Broker said. “But ask me nothing more about it.”
I didn’t need to. But you had to hand it to the prof-not everybody can do research and get a blowjob at the same time.
SIX
The Holiday Inn’s pool room was free of screaming kiddies on this Monday after Christmas. Families were homeward bound, and even my redheaded whirlpool partner was nowhere in sight-if she’d gone home, too, that would be a shame. I had worked up some pretty good fantasies about my thirty-something pick-up-I had a rough draft of a Penthouse Forum letter well under way in my mind.