Quarry in the Black (7 page)

“Well, in that case you go up to them, identify yourself and shake hands and go, ‘Right on, brother.’ That cool with you, Jack?”

“Cool, Mr. Jackson.”

We talked for another fifteen minutes, and just before Ruth and I went out to get started on developing my phone spiel, Jackson said, “We’ll get you some quality time with the Reverend. I think he’s going to take to you, Jack. Take to you just fine.”

I said, “Thank you, sir.”

“No ‘sir’ necessary.” He lifted the big mustache with a small half-smile. “I was an enlisted man myself. Korea.”

As we exited the office, I heard muffled arguing across the way. A very handsome black woman in a fall coat and hat was standing in front of Lloyd’s desk, leaning toward him, gloved hands on the desktop. Now and then she thrust a finger out at the bullpen of staffers. He wasn’t saying much, though I had a hunch when he did, it was, “Now, dear…” You couldn’t pick out what she was saying, but you didn’t have to.

She was pissed.

“What’s that all about?” I asked Ruth.

“That’s Mrs. Lloyd,” she said. “Marianne.”

“Trouble in paradise?”

She shook her head. “Don’t ask. Please don’t ask.”

But there was an interesting quaver to her voice.

A different band was on stage at the Euclid Bar and Grill, a better one. Right now they were playing “Down by the River,” a nice job of it, though I could have done without the lead singer’s over-the-top Neil Young impression. It was closing time—two
A.M.
, according to the bar clock, really one-forty.

I’d spent the afternoon working out my phone spiel with Ruth, which had taken about an hour, the rest of the time at a desk making calls, going through a list of registered Democratic voters. A lot of the time nobody was home, but those who were—usually housewives or college kids in apartments—were mostly friendly. A handful just hung up on me. A few insisted Nixon was getting out of Vietnam, and I pointed out it was taking him better than his four years in office getting that done, reminding them he’d got elected on his “secret plan” to get out of the Nam soup. A plan, yes, but the secret was four more years of war. And now he wanted four more years in the White House.

The whole Nixon thing actually came out of my brain, astounding me. I guess I knew more about what was going on than I thought I did. Thanks, John Chancellor. And here I’d thought the NBC nightly news was just background noise while I ate something off a TV tray.

I’d arranged to pick Becky up at the bar after she got off work, then spent the earlier evening watching television with Boyd. I picked up a pepperoni pizza at a place called Culpepper’s and we were eating slices off napkins—no TV trays—while
The Odd Couple
was on.

He grinned at me during one commercial. “I’m starting to feel like
we’re
the Odd Couple.”

“Me, too. You be the ‘odd.’ ”

Remarks like that usually made him laugh. This time his half-hearted “ha” barely qualified.

Next commercial, he said, “You’re going out with that little jig-hating twat, huh?”

“Yeah. I want to see what’s she up to. Also maybe fuck her again.”

“Well, at least you have a plan.”

Me and Nixon.

After Johnny Carson, I’d gone down to the bar and found a place to stand and lean. No booth tonight—it was more crowded than last night, chatter, laughter, packed dance floor. I went wild and had a draw Falstaff. I was in the same clothes I’d worn earlier, when I volunteered at the Coalition HQ, including the windbreaker. The only change in my wardrobe was the nine millimeter in my waistband in back.

I’d brought it along for two reasons. First, those knuckleheads from last night might be back to get even, and of course all they’d get was more of the same. Second, I wasn’t sure what to make of Becky, beyond her bedroom skills, and till I found out what she was up to, I needed something hard and long in my pants that wasn’t doing my thinking for me.

Now and then she would stop and say something cute or sexy and go on about her business. The smokiness and neon lighting gave a guy alone at the bar a nice anonymity. Shocking as it seems, no girl hit on me. I just drank my beer—well, actually two of them—and mostly enjoyed the band. After they played “Ohio,” about the college kids getting killed by the National Guard, a bunch of applause rang out. I assumed these kids weren’t applauding the Guard, but in this town who could say.

By a quarter after two (really five till), the patrons had filed out, and the trio of waitresses had cleaned up—tabletops wiped down, chairs on tables—and cashed out with the bartender. Becky came over and looped her arm in mine. Beaming up at me as we stepped out onto the sidewalk. Cool night but not quite cold.

“Shall we?” she asked, leading me to the door between hippie dress shop and bar.

I paused. “Isn’t there somewhere after-hours I can take you? If not a club, Denny’s, or a Sambo’s maybe?”

She shook her head and all that red cotton candy bounced, her hand on the door handle. “No thanks, honey, I’m too sweaty and smoky for that. But I could fix us a little somethin’.”

“Haven’t you done enough waiting on people for one night?”

“I don’t mind. I’ll take a shower and wash the crud off, and then maybe, I don’t know…maybe see what comes up?”

I laughed like I hadn’t heard that a thousand times and followed her up the stairs, not pausing at all on the little landing at the door to the stakeout pad. Up on her landing, she used her key and I followed her in and they jumped me.

Two of them, a tall skinny one and a tall not-skinny one, one on either side, grabbing me by the arms and hauling me in, then hurling me to the carpet. I rolled over and looked up at them.

They were in tan workshirts, tan chinos and brown work boots; short hair, no sideburns. Blank oval faces, though the skinny one’s was more narrow, his hair dark brown, while the other guy, who might have been a linebacker, had a Kirk Douglas cleft chin and the blond hair to go with it.

Neither one had a gun, but the linebacker had a blackjack in his right hand, having grabbed me with his left. Now he was tapping it against his leg, gently.

“We’re taking you to talk to somebody, mister,” he said.

He was maybe twenty-three. The skinny one, no older, was going over to the couch where several loops of rope were waiting, also some duct tape. Becky was standing at the open doorway to her bedroom, looking like she might cry, hugging herself like it was cold in here.

“Taking me where?” I asked, sitting up. “For what?”

He lifted the blackjack and waggled it like a finger. “Just stay put. We’re gonna tie you up. You might could live through this.”

He had that same faint Southern twang as Becky.

I said, “That’s might encouraging.”

He frowned, smart enough to know I was mocking him. But I had a hunch that was the extent of his smarts.

“Just you cooperate,” he said. “Somebody wants to talk to you.”

“You said that before. Becky! Honey. This your way of paying me back for sticking up for you last night?”

She said nothing, looked away.

“Becky is with us,” the linebacker said, like I didn’t know that. “She told us how you roughed up them creeps last night, and she’s grateful. But we got to be careful. If you’re who you might be, you’ll understand.”

Only I didn’t understand.

The skinny one had collected the rope and was coming over to me.

That was enough. I whipped out the nine millimeter, now that they were close enough together to get them both without half-trying.

They froze, goggling at me. The linebacker dropped the blackjack and I hadn’t even asked him to. The skinny one, his jaw dangling, let go of the coils of rope and they hit the carpet like dead snakes.

Becky turned to bolt through the bedroom and to her back I said, “You can give that a try, honey. I
might
not shoot you.”

And in truth I might not—a gunshot would put an end to this job before it began, and I was still somewhat enamored with the idea of making twenty-five grand.

In any case, she froze, and turned toward me, putting her hands up like a cashier in a convenience store robbery.

My reluctance to shoot at all in these circumstances was the reason these two clean-cut assholes were still breathing. It would really piss me off to come all the way to St. Louis and take out two or three people and not get anything out of it but a minimal kill fee from the Broker.

I was on my feet now. Like Becky, these two had their hands up, unbidden. The skinny one was shaking like Jerry Lewis in
Scared Stiff
.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said. “Becky, sweetie—over here….That’s right. Don’t be nervous. Just come over. That’s fine, right there. Now, take those coils of rope, one at a time, and tie your friends’ hands behind their backs.”

She squinted at me like I was speaking Latvian.

“You heard me,” I said, not nasty. “I need really good strong knots, tight enough that your boyfriends can’t slip out of them. I’ll be
checking
now.”

She swallowed, nodding.

I waited while she followed orders.

“Good,” I said. “Now, give them each a duct-tape gag. Just a decent strip to cover the mouth.”

She did that, too.

“Fellas,” I said, “sit on the couch. Leave some space between you.”

They went over and did that. Those ropes had been intended to tie both my hands and feet, but I’d had to settle just for their hands.

Becky was standing four or five feet from me, by now looking more embarrassed than afraid. I directed her to an easy chair near the couch. Then I stomped on the floor three times, hard. My seated company reacted with popping eyes, and the ungagged Becky made a kind of yelp. Nothing that would attract attention.

I went over to the door and opened it. I could hear footsteps pounding up the carpeted stairs. My curly-headed, mustached partner and his long-barreled S & W .38 rolled in. He was in a paisley sportshirt and brown trousers and nicely shined shoes—he’d known he might have to come visiting, and he wasn’t about to do that in his underwear or jammies, despite the hour.

“You rang?” he said, shutting the door behind him. Three foot stomps had been the signal.

“She sold me out,” I said, nodding to Becky, whose expression turned hurt, and then gestured with my nine mil to the duct-tape twins and said, “Those two grabbed me and were going to take me somewhere.”

“Where?”

“We haven’t got to that.”

“Then why gag the fuckers?”

“Because my sweetie here will be more talkative. And she’s coming with me.”

Her eyebrows went up.

Then, at my direction, all us went out to go down the stairs to the apartment below, the two denim-clad dopes in front with me (and the nine mil); next, Boyd squeezing down side by side with Becky, holding her by an arm while he shoved the .38 in her tummy.

The guy in the lead, the road company Kirk Douglas, tried to make a break for it, thinking his buddy would take any bullet. Might have worked if he’d have waited till we got to the landing of our apartment below, but he panicked and tried it halfway there, and as soon as he made his move, I kicked his pal in the ass and sent him tumbling to knock into the linebacker and they got tangled up in each other rolling down, winding up in a comical pile on the landing.

Boyd handed the girl off to me—she had a deer-in-headlights expression—and stepped around the two interwoven idiots who were moaning through their duct-tape, and pushed open the door he’d left ajar. He dragged them inside by the ankles, one at a time, and we followed, Becky first.

I shut us in.

The two boys weren’t unconscious from the fall—it was only a half a floor’s worth of carpeted stairs—but both were moaning and whimpering, in their muffled way, on their backs now like upturned bugs. Boyd patted each man down, came up with nothing much—no I.D. or gun or knife, and of course the blackjack had been left behind—though some car keys turned up in the skinny one’s pants.

I took those, and said to Becky, whose arm I was still holding onto, “They wanted to take me to see somebody. Do you know who?”

She nodded.

“Do you know where?”

She nodded.

“Can you drive me there?”

That she had to think about.

“Becky. Can you drive me there?”

She swallowed. Tears were welling. But she nodded.

Our living room was set up the same as theirs—I’d instructed Boyd to disassemble his lookout perch, anticipating this company—so soon the blond linebacker and his skinny friend were both seated on the couch, tied hands behind them, with Becky in the nearby easy chair.

I stood before them like we were playing charades and it was my turn. Boyd and his .38 were behind me, a little to my right, where he had a straight-on shot at the duct-tape duo.

I said to all three, “Like somebody said earlier, cooperate and you ‘might could live through this.’ My friend here is going to keep you company. Assuming you don’t get stupid—that is
more
stupid, or in dipshit-ese, ‘stupider’—he won’t do anything but keep an eye on you until I get back….What happens
then
, you’re wondering?”

Both of the duct-taped clowns nodded. It was so much in tandem that I had to laugh.

“Assuming I come back in good shape—and judging by your boss sending you fools to get me, that should be no problem—I’ll let you fellas go back to whatever hayloft or outhouse you crawled out of. After that, I won’t kill you unless I see you. Fair enough?”

They actually nodded. Not quite in tandem, though, so it fell short of chuckle-worthy.

Boyd went over and turned on his radio to that easy listening station, where Buddy Greco was singing “The Lady is a Tramp,” and turned it up fairly loud. Not loud enough to cover a gunshot, maybe, but helpful if that came up; besides, the bar below was empty and so, obviously, was the apartment above. He pulled a chair around and sat facing them, crossing his legs, wiggling his right foot to the rhythm.

I nodded to Becky to get up and she did, then walked her through the boxcar room layout.

In the kitchen, I dangled the keys and said, “You know what wheels these go to?”