Okay, I thought, this is really getting fucked up.
If this was what my new career was going to be like, I might want to consider signing on with Air America instead: there was always room for another mercenary in this shithole of a world.
Here’s the thing: this little prick in sunglasses, with a cool ride that made my Opel GT back home look like a kiddy car, did not match up with any of the surveillance info the Broker had given me. I had a list of names and descriptions that included four guys who were staying in Iowa City over winter break, who the prof was the advisor of or some shit, and who might stop by his pad for an hour or two of legitimate college work, as opposed to coeds stopping by to polish his professorial knob. I had cars and license plates on this quartet (none of whom had shown as yet) and addresses and even goddamn phone numbers, like that would come in handy.
“Hi. My name’s Quarry. I’m in town to blow your favorite professor’s brains out. Can you tell me whether you’re planning to stop by his place this afternoon, so I can pick a time when I wouldn’t have to spray your fucking brains against the wall, too? Thanks!”
So who the hell was this little bastard?
“Let It Be” was on the radio now, doing its endless thing; apparently the DJ had to take a dump. I watched the GTO. Here I was, supposedly keeping an eye on the cobblestone cottage, and now I had this green machine on my mind. Further, he was seated in front of my split-level, inadvertently calling attention to me, or anyway my post.
The front door of the cottage opened.
For a moment, I thought the brunette was finally leaving, and doing so coincidental to the GTO’s arrival; but I’d been right before, when I figured the sleek Pontiac on this quiet street would attract attention. She appeared on the porch, breath pluming, holding her arms to herself in the cold-she did not have the fur-collar coat on, just a black sweater and the same black-and-white geometric-pattern bell bottoms as yesterday.
She trotted down the sidewalk, long legs pumping, and was heading across the street as the kid in the GTO got out, his breath pluming, too. He was of medium height and on the slight side.
“ Tom!” Her teeth were bared and her eyes large. She loomed, at least an inch taller than the kid. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Then it’s true?”
She stood there, hugging her arms to her body, shivering. “Then what is true?”
“You are shacked with that creep!”
Even at this distance, from the meager crack of my window, I could hear her sharp, indignant draw of breath.
“Professor Byron is my advisor! I told you I couldn’t see you over break. We are working on a very, very important project.”
“I bet you are! I just bet you are!”
This guy sure had some snappy responses.
She was shaking her head, the brunette locks bouncing every which way. “I told you. I told you he was helping me with my book. It’s the most important thing in my life right now.”
“More important than me?”
“Yes! Right now, yes. I don’t have time to see you right now, and you know yourself things aren’t the same, anyway, not with the distance between us.”
He was waving his arms a little, not in a threatening way. Just desperate. “We could see each other probably twice a month, if you wanted to. If you weren’t so intent on this stupid project of yours…”
“That’s what you think of me, isn’t it?”
“What…?”
“I’m nothing to you but your ‘girl’-I’m not a serious writer doing serious work!”
I wondered if a serious writer would use the word “serious” twice in the same sentence. But what did I know about it?
Her arm went out straight from her side and she pointed toward the main drag that Country Vista bisected-the gesture of a parent ordering a child to its room.
“ Go, Tom! Go back to your frat brothers. Or go home to Mommy and Daddy, I don’t give a damn. Maybe you can work at the bank over break!”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “Annette, please-come with me. Spend the afternoon with me.
You’ll freeze out here. Your teeth are chattering. Come on, baby, give me a chance. Give us a chance.”
I wish I could tell you the radio was playing “Give Peace a Chance,” but I can’t. Actually, “Let It Be” was still going, though I’d turned it down very low, to hear this little soap opera.
She shook off his hands from her shoulders. “ Go! Tommy-go! Right now. And don’t bother us.”
“Us?”
“We are working, K.J. and me.”
“K.J.” The kid shook his head. “First name basis now, you and the prof.”
Actually, initials aren’t really a first name, but I got his point.
“Tommy…”
“Listen, babe, I asked around about him. I talked to people.”
“You don’t even go to Iowa. How would you know?”
“I have friends. I know people. He was at Columbia two years ago, and-”
She shoved him against his car. The sound was loud enough to really carry, a substantial whump.
“Get the fuck out of my life,” she said, teeth bared again, and she turned and strode toward the cottage.
Tom went right after her, and that was when, finally, the prof came out. He was in a beige sweater and tan chinos and sandals, but he charged right out into the winter weather and caught Tom by the arm and hauled him across the street and flung him against the car again. Byron, his dark yellow hair a straw-like tangle, had a wild-eyed look as he leaned in to Tom, whose back was to me,
pushed up against the GTO.
“You are leaving now,” Byron said, some oratory in the baritone. “Of your own volition. Otherwise, get back in your car and wait for the police to arrive, because that’s the call I’m making when I get back inside, if your vehicle is still here. Do I make myself clear?”
Tom scrambled into the car and got behind the wheel and drove off in a cloud of exhaust fumes. Byron walked back and positioned himself, arms folded, about halfway up the walk and watched as his unwanted guest had to go through the humiliation of pulling into the no-name lane the split-levels were on, backing out, and turning around. Poor little bastard couldn’t even make a quick getaway.
But I could.
I headed to the back of the house where I could exit unseen and scrambled like hell to get my rental Ford out of the split-level-next-door’s garage. I was moving fast, damn near running, because if I didn’t shake it, Tom would be long gone.
And I needed to follow Tom. He was a new player in this game and, unlike the blonde yesterday, might turn back up in the middle of things and at a very inconvenient time. If the Broker’s trusty surveillance expert wasn’t going to give me all the dope I needed, and I don’t mean hash, I had to do the job myself.
By the time I came out of the lane and turned onto Country Vista, the professor was back in his cottage, but Tom was visible up ahead three blocks or so. I thought the kid might go tearing out of there, but instead he was crawling. We were almost to the main drag when he pulled over, and gave me a real start.
I had to go on by him and glimpsed him, hunkered over the wheel, crying.
Poor bastard.
I waited for an opening, then cut across the main drag into the parking lot of a medical clinic and waited there for the green GTO to appear at the mouth of Country Vista. Within minutes, it did, Tommy getting himself under control enough to drive, and I fell in behind him. His car had Illinois license plates; interesting. Also, a PEACE NOW bumper sticker, the O of NOW the familiar peace symbol; a second sticker said, REMEMBER KENT STATE.
They didn’t make frat boys like they used to.
Before long I had followed Tom into the Iowa City business district, a ghost town on this Sunday afternoon; parking places were usually at a premium, but neither Tom nor I had trouble finding one. This was Clinton Street and the buildings of the university sprawled to my right, as I sat in my rental, and a street of bookstores, boutiques and bars was at my left. I watched Tom angle across to the Airliner, a long-in-the-tooth brick-fronted establishment whose sign bragged about its 1944 origin. Customers were sitting in a big front window eating slices of pizza and drinking beer and looking across at the snowy campus as if something were going on.