“I’d like to talk to you, Mr. Springborn,” I said.
I startled him. I heard him choke on his swallow of bourbon and he swiveled, his face intensely surprised and angered; the moment was close to a comic one, as though he were a comedian doing a double take. Was there recognition in that look? Was this the man who earlier today had tried to take me apart with a wrench?
“Who the hell are you?” His voice was an even baritone. He’d been edgy there at first, but he calmed down fast.
I couldn’t be sure if this was the man with the wrench, couldn’t be sure at all: the struggle had been in near-dark, I’d been caught off guard and had been concerned with survival, not with remembering a detailed observation for later. A black T-shirt and a wrench, that was all I could clearly remember about my assailant. Springborn was wearing black, all right, a conservative gray-black suit, out of respect for the deceased, I assumed. That morning when Albert’s body was being hauled away, I’d seen Springborn from across the street and had pegged him as tall, but not this tall, not damn near six-four. And I couldn’t remember that man with the wrench as being so tall. But then I hadn’t stopped to weigh and measure him, either.
I said, “My name’s Quarry.”
If he recognized the name, he didn’t show it. If he was the man who’d hired me, and if the Broker had called him today to tell him about my staying around Port City, then Springborn might have gotten my name from Broker. At any rate, what he would have gotten for sure from Broker was a description, a good detailed description like the one I wished I had of the man with the wrench.
As for Springborn’s description, well, he looked like what he was: a successful businessman, the proper lean, hard look of a man who got to the top and stayed there. His hair was the color of ashes, his eyes a similar gray. Otherwise his features were bland, ordinary. But those eyes, with shaggy, hawkish eyebrows, those translucent gray eyes seemed to take everything in let nothing out.
“Have we met?” He finished his bourbon in one gulp, put the glass down on the cart top.
“Maybe. That’s something I want to find out.”
“Do you have any particular reason for talking in circles?”
“I didn’t come to answer questions,” I said, “I came to ask.”
“Now look, I don’t know who you are, or who you imagine yourself to be, Mr. whatever-the-hell-yousaid- your-name-was, but…”
“Quarry.”
“… but I suggest you and your goddamn overbearing manner leave immediately.”
“I suggest we talk.”
“You’re a madman,” he said, teetering between irritation and amusement.
“I’m a businessman. Like yourself.”
“We’ve had business in the past?”
“That’s something else I intend to find out.”
“People who talk in riddles annoy hell out of me.”
“People who act like riddles annoy hell out of me.”
“Your nerve is amazing, I’ll say that for you. Just how did you manage to get in here, anyway?”
“I came with Peg Baker.”
“Peg…?”
“You can forget trying to blame her for me. She’s just a little indiscriminate about who she sleeps with, that’s all.”
“Oh, so you picked her up, got into her confidence and her pants, not necessarily in that order, and used her to get inside my house.”
“Something like that.”
“You must manipulate people well.”
“As a successful businessman you should know all about that.”
“I do. I know all the subtleties of the art. But with you I’ll dispense with subtlety. With you I’ll be blunt. Leave, Mr. Quarry. Leave my house. Now.”
“We have business.”
“I have an office for such matters. This is my home, and my brother-in-law died this morning and this is no time for business.”
“Even when your brother-in-law’s death is the business I want to discuss?”
“What?”
“My business involves his death. His murder.”
“In that case, you won’t mind if I walk over to the desk, pick up the phone and get my good friend Chief of Police Kurriger over here and you can share your business with him. If you do mind, I again must suggest you leave my house.”
“Go ahead and call. Your good friend Chief Kurriger might be interested in hearing about some of the things I know. A lot of people might be interested in hearing about some of the things I know. Your wife, for instance.”
Springborn calmly refilled his glass of bourbon. He poured me a glass and I drank it while I watched him drink his. His gray eyes were unfathomable. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go where we can talk and not be disturbed.”
“Okay.”
He led me out of the den and up the winding stairway. The second floor was dark, shapeless; it was like walking through a cave. Finally Springborn opened a door and flicked a light switch and started up some narrow stairs and I followed him, coming out onto the upper floor of the house, the little box-tower third floor.
In the middle of the room sat a pool table, massive, ageless, its mahogany wood polished and worn and beautiful, and it was as if this table had been here forever and this room built around it only recently. There was indeed a recent look to the room, its walls covered in commercial brown wood paneling of the sort you might see in a remodeled basement; the modern, characterless paneling surrounded the old table anachronistically, the accouterments of the room as timeless as the table: high-backed, leather-seated chairs; long, yellow-shaded windows with the original woodworking; a tall rack with a dozen cues standing like rifles in a case; and an old map of Port City, as faded as parchment, covering most of one end wall, huge but unimpressive in comparison to the table. Only the white ceiling tile and tubular lighting went along with the paneling; the rest of the room belonged to the table, a relic of days when a man had four and a half by nine feet of room to play a game of pool. The colorful balls were racked and waiting for a game, the expanse of cloth stretching out like a green sea.
Springborn took a cue off the rack, chalked it up. He nodded to me to help myself. I chose one and walked to the table and lifted the wooden frame from around the bright balls, walked down to the other end of the table and fired cue into ball into multicolor triangle, shattering it, scattering balls all over the table, two dropping in, one each in both corner pockets down on the far end. I sank another ball, then missed a tough shot; I was having trouble getting used to the table. It was a good table, it was the mother of tables, but the size was bigger than I had played, and the rails were softer and the nap of the cloth smoother than I was accustomed to.
We didn’t play a game, really. We just took turns, shooting till we missed. He would run three or four or five, then miss when the only open shot was too difficult; he played a simple but competent game, a workmanlike game. Our styles were similar; I was workmanlike, too, though I could run the balls longer, up to six or eight. But we were an even match, and a money game would’ve been close.
Neither of us were pool-hall men. He played with friends, I guessed, up here probably, other businessmen he’d invite over, among whom he was likely considered a top-grade player. I played at home, back at Twin Lakes, at tables in a penny-arcade shop across the street from the beach; I played rotation, mostly, with college kids, most of whom could beat the pants off me.
But it was a way to get acquainted, for Springborn and I, and after half an hour of aimless nonplaying, we knew each other well enough to talk.
I sat down in one of the high-backed chairs, laying the cue across my lap. He continued to shoot, leaning over the table, stroking balls into pockets, stopping now and then to line up a complex shot which he would invariably miss.
He finally sank one of his complex set-ups after several attempts, looked over his shoulder at me and said, “Are you a blackmailer, Mr. Quarry?”
“Not in the conventional sense.”
“Then what are you?”
