Quarry's Choice (7 page)

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After I signed in at the desk in a pastel lobby with potted mini-palms and overstuffed wicker furniture, a guy about my age in a light-blue blazer and yellow tie gave me a smirky smile as he handed me two keys. He was blond, slender and weak-chinned, but the light-blue eyes probably got him laid.

He said, “You’re on ground level with parking and entry from the outside. Drive around back of the building.”

“I don’t need two keys,” I said.

“Two rooms, two keys,” he said, smirking again.

I was just thinking about pasting him one when the girl tugged on my elbow and gave me a mildly impatient look, nodding toward the outside.

We went out and drove around to 117 and 118, parking in the space of the former.

As I got my suitcase from the Chevelle trunk, I said, “One of these rooms is yours, right?”

She gave me a pixie smile, the first real smile I’d seen from her. “Quicker than you look.”

“And I suppose Mr. Woody is sending your things over.”

“Uh-huh. I’m next door, kinda. . .on call. Only in your room when you want me in your room. Only around when you want me around. When you need me for somethin’.”

I gestured to the world around us. “Like showing me around Biloxi. Maybe taking me to see where Jefferson Davis lived.”

“I been there. It’s nothin’. Don’t bother.”

I stared at her. She stared at me. We lived on the same planet. That was about the extent of what we had in common.

“You’re in 117,” she said.

“How do you know I’m not in 118?”

“ ’Cause I been in these rooms before, and 117 is nicer. Bigger. Got a hot tub.”

“Oh. Okay.”

I carried my bag over to the door marked 117 and used the key. She was right behind me. Well, not right behind. Not crowding me or anything.

I held the door open for her and she went in. You couldn’t find a speck of cellulite on the back of those legs if you used a high-power microscope. I closed the door behind us. She was already sitting on the double bed, on the foot, staring at the big 24-inch portable TV on the dresser opposite. Nothing was on, but she seemed to be contemplating watching something, sometime. She was rocking a little.

The room included a mirrored area with the hot tub. There was a full bathroom as well. A few touches said “tropical,” like a framed Hawaiian landscape screwed onto the wall over the bed, and the pastel pink-and-green wallpaper, and the green padded bedspread with pink pillows. Otherwise this could be a room at a Holiday Inn.

I sat next to her on the edge of the bed. “What’s your name?”

She was still looking at the blank TV screen. “You know what it is. Lolita.”

“I’m not calling you Lolita.”

“Nobody does. Everybody says Lo.”

“But that’s still not your name. What’s your name?”

She looked at me as if for the first time, frowning just a little, noticing I was a human being. “You mean my real name?”

“No, the one you use on the Mickey Mouse Club.”

“The what club?”

“Yes, your
real
name.”

“Luann.”

“Luann what?”

“Luann Lloyd.”

“Okay, Luann Lloyd. I don’t want to cause you any trouble. You just go next door and mind your business. Have yourself a little paid vacation. Maybe we’ll go out and have a bite to eat now and then.”

She was frowning at me like a slow student at a calculus problem on a blackboard. “I don’t get you. Somethin’ wrong with me?”

I thought for a moment. I put a hand on her shoulder, like a brother might. “I’m here on business. I understand, I think, that Mr. Woody wants you to. . .entertain me. Keep me company. But I don’t. . .I don’t mean to insult you. But I don’t, uh. . .”

The little-girl voice mingled boredom with patience: “You don’t never pay for it. You don’t never go out with hookers. No sweat. This ain’t costin’ you anythin’.”

She undid the halter top and let loose the breasts. I’d seen breasts before. I’d seen these breasts before, on stage back at the strip club. But they were right here and right now and they were perfect. Plump little handfuls, B cups crowding C, perfectly shaped and with slightly puffy aureoles and pert eraser-tip tips.

I didn’t remember ever being erect and throbbing so fast. This vapid little hooker should have turned me off. She was obviously an ignorant dope. She had likely fucked hundreds of men in her young life and the inside of her was probably diseased like a decayed piece of fruit. The thought of her should sicken me, and maybe the thought did.

But the sight didn’t.

She smiled and cocked her head, the light-blue eyes hooded. “Why, honey, don’t tell me. You got to be in love a little before you can do it, that it? You just an old-fashion boy?”

“I don’t have to be in love forever,” I said. “But it helps to be in love at the moment.”

She laughed a little. First time I heard her do that. “You should tell your pecker, pal.”

She gave the tent pole in my pants a little spring action with a finger. This is where the
b-o-i-n-g
sound effect goes.

She bounced off the bed and grabbed a pink pillow and tossed it at my feet and knelt on it. Small deft hands wearing pink fingernail polish undid my pants and tugged them around my ankles.

“Stop,” I said. Or maybe I just thought it.

She had me in her mouth and she was goddamn good at it, lots of saliva, sliding, gliding up and down the shaft, using mostly her mouth, but occasionally her hand when she was catching a breath. She suckled, she licked, she fucked with her mouth, rarely looking up at me. When she did, her expression wasn’t bored exactly, more that of a skilled craftsmen using a lathe.

When I got very close, I put my hand on her shoulder, not like a brother (well, maybe like a brother—this
was
Mississippi) and then she paused, knowing I was seconds away, and said, “You want me to swallow, honey? I don’t mind. Some guys like to see it all over my pretty little face. What’s your pleasure?”

“Dealer’s choice,” I managed.

Just that much of a gentleman.

Around seven, already in the navy leisure suit and lighter blue shirt for the Killian meeting, I took Luann to the Tropical’s restaurant on the lobby floor. The Dockside, which despite its name served plenty of fare other than fish, had a pink-and-blue color scheme broken up by mounted shells and starfish and swordfish riding the walls, or maybe swimming them, plus a few framed photos of local shrimping boats. A dark-wood nautical-theme bar was at left with dining everywhere else, tables with white linen and plenty of wall- and window-hugging booths.

We took one of the latter, where the view was less dockside than highway-side, street lamps and headlights of the four-lane blacktop disrupting the dusk enough to make the Gulf’s blue waters a barely discernible blur. We had the place almost to ourselves, the other off-season diners including an older couple and a foursome of businessmen.

My companion had changed into a shades-of-orange-and-yellow tie-dye sleeveless mini with a plunging neckline and a matching fabric belt, knotted at her little waist. With slightly more clothes on, how pretty she was somehow became more obvious. She looked young as hell, but then she
was
young as hell, and might have been taken for a college girl, unless you had a conversation with her.

She’d freshened her make-up, too, a little heavy-handed job of it—she was, after all, a stripper who hooked on the side—but her features nonetheless showed a surprising delicacy. Her red-lipsticked mouth was plump in the middle and thin on the sides, and the big blue eyes were accentuated by matching eye shadow.

The girl was gazing blankly out the window at the blur of highway and white beach and blue water beyond. She hadn’t cracked open the menu. I guess she’d been here often enough to memorize it. After much study, I ordered fried green tomatoes with crab cakes—when in Rome.

I asked her what she was going to have.

“Salad.”

“Just salad, Luann?”

“Little dressin’.”

“Listen, I’m on expense account. Have whatever you like.”

“I’m suppose to have salad.”

“Why? Your boss trying to save money?”

“No. I got to stay under one-hundred-ten or I’m in trouble.”

I frowned at her. “How much do you weigh now?”

“One-oh-one.”

“Oh Jesus. Eat what you want. Go nuts.”

“Shouldn’t.”

“I won’t tell.”

“Won’t say nothin’ to Mr. Woody?”

“Hell no. Screw Mr. Woody.”

She made a face. “Not unless I have to.” Then she studied me, taking a good look. “
Really
I can have what I want?”

“Go for it.”

There was lobster on that menu and all kinds of pricey seafood and cuts of steak, but she had a cheeseburger and fries and gobbled them down like there was no tomorrow. It was amusing. Even cute. Also a little sad.

Wasn’t it bad enough she had to fuck strangers? Couldn’t she have the kind of meal she wanted once in a while? Did she have to take a guy’s drawers down to get any fucking meat in her diet?

I was taking my time with the fried green tomatoes and crab cakes. The latter I dug, the former I wasn’t sure about. “Where do you live, Luann?”

She frowned just a tad. “I don’t give out my address. No offense.”

“I don’t want your address. Just generally where. And who with.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I’m interested.”

“Why?”

“Honey, I’m just making conversation. If we’re going to spend time together, let’s get to know each other a little bit.”

She was chewing and thinking and that contorted her face. It kind of made her even prettier—less like a manikin and more like a female.

Still chewing, she said, “Apartment with some girls from work. Buildin’ around the corner from the club. Comes with the job.”

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” I sipped some iced tea—sickeningly sweet. I’d forgotten to ask for no sugar. You had to do that down South.

She shook her head, swallowed. “You don’t have to be so nice.”

She’d almost quoted the Lovin’ Spoonful.

“Why,” I said, “you like it some other way?”

“No. Nice is. . .nice. We can be friendly. Not good to get attached, though. I’m nobody you need to know. Just company when you’re in the mood. That’s how Mr. Woody wants it.”

“Yeah, yeah. Do you like working for Mr. Woody?”

“It’s okay.” Her upper lip curled at one side, glistening wetly with the red lipstick, the world’s smallest sneer. “I never worked for nobody else.”

“What about Jack Killian?”

She paired up a couple of French fries, collected some ketchup off her plate. “What about him?”

“What kind of guy is he?”

She shook her head. “Don’t ask.”

“Then, not a nice man?”

She choked on her French fries for a few seconds, then got them down, and said, “No. Not a nice man.”

“Anything I should know about him?”

She thought about that as she dragged two more French fries through a glob of Heinz as red as her lipstick. “Don’t get on his bad side.”

“And how do I avoid doing that?”

“Agree with him.”

“Okay. I’ll keep that in mind.” I dipped a forkful of crab cake into remoulade.

“He talks a lot,” she said with a shrug. “Just listen.”

She was a cute kid for somebody whose life was shit.

“Luann, I might want your company later tonight. I have a meeting with Mr. Killian at nine and don’t know exactly when I’ll be back. Should I knock on your door, or. . .?”

“Could I wait in your room?” The light-blue eyes suddenly had life in them.

“Well, sure. I don’t see why not.”

“You have that really nice big TV. My room’s TV is smaller than the piece of shit at the apartment.
Hawaii Five-O
is on tonight.”

Of course. What else would you watch at the Tropical?

“Fine by me,” I said.

So after some key lime pie, I walked her back to the room and when I left, she was on her tummy with her head toward the foot of the bed where I’d sat when she blew me. The famous Ventures theme song was coming on and she was smiling like Christmas. The mini was up over her bottom and her bikini pants were that same tie-dye. If her ass had looked any sweeter I’d have bust out crying.

I’d been told to report to the eighth floor but hadn’t been given a room number. I stopped at the desk and asked the blue-blazer blond guy what number Mr. Killian’s room was, and he said, “Just go up, Mr. Quarry.” No smirks this time around. Apparently Mr. Killian was somebody you didn’t smirk about even when he wasn’t around.

When the elevator doors dinged open onto the eighth floor, I knew at once why a room number hadn’t been required: Killian had this whole goddamn level.

I faced a wood-paneled vestibule where two big guys in black suits with white shirts and black ties were seated on either side of a dark-wood door that bore no numerals. They looked like greeters at a mortuary. Each had a small table next to him where they tossed magazines they’d been reading—
Penthouse
for the guy at left,
Sports Illustrated
for the guy at right.

By the time I stepped off, they were on their feet.

Those tables of theirs also had ashtrays with packs of cigarettes and lighters as well as a few more magazines and Styrofoam cups. Down at one end of the vestibule was a table with a coffee-maker and a few snacks. Cigarette smoke smell hung heavy. These fellas were on duty here for good long stretches.

“Quarry,” I said, looking from one to the other. “I’m expected.”

The one at left was maybe six-two with a dishwater butch and nearly invisible eyebrows. The one at right was a little shorter but broader in the shoulders with similarly short-cropped hair, jet black with matching unibrow.

Though bruisers, they were not the brawny bouncer types seen at Mr. Woody’s; I made them ex-military, and not just because of their burr haircuts. The dark suits were high-end off-the-rack—had they been tailored, the bulges under their left arms wouldn’t show, which they did even with their suit-coats unbuttoned. For easy access.