“You’ll hear from me.”
“Quarry.”
“Yes, Peg.”
“Come with me for a minute.”
“Yes, Peg.”
27
The same woman was sitting behind the glass counter, but she was wearing a different dress; she had traded in the red and white check for a blue and white, which was draped over her heavy-set frame like a pup tent without poles. Her hair didn’t look quite so frowzy this time, which probably meant she’d just come on during the past hour or so, whereas on my last visit to the Port City Taxi Service I must’ve caught her at the tail end of her tour of duty.
“How’s she goin’, mister?” she said, her smile a fold in the layered flesh of her face. She puffed at the last inch of a cigarette and flashed a brown grin and said, “What can I do you for?”
“Hi,” I said. “Hell of a night.”
“Hell of a night is right. Miserable as hell.”
“Yeah, all that damn rain. Listen, is Vince working tonight?’’
“Vince? Sure, he went on an hour ago. You want me to get him on the squawker for you?”
“No, don’t bother. Just wondered what shift he was working.”
“He don’t get done till early this mornin’ after dawn.”
“He very busy tonight?”
“She comes in spurts. Right now he is. He’s backed up four or five calls. But if you want to see him, just take a load off and wait. He stops in for coffee every hour or so, when he gets a slow spell. He’ll be along as soon as these calls is done, give him a half hour, forty-five minutes.”
“Well, I’ll come back in a little while.”
“Suit yourself.”
I bought a package of gum from her and swapped her smiles and went out the door and stood in the soaking rain. The night was particularly dark, the street lamps like flashlights in a huge dark warehouse. The street was full of rain and empty of cars. Only in the taverns a block down (Albert Leroy’s block) were there signs of life, but even the drinking crowd seemed intimidated by the dreary weather, the noise and jukebox music of the bars seeming muted, half-hearted. Up here, by the taxi stand, all was quiet, deserted.
I walked around to the back, passing Boyd’s green Mustang, and put on my gloves and got the nine- millimeter automatic firmly in hand. I climbed the open wooden stairway up to where Vince kept his apartment and got to work on his door. It had a new-style lock that might have been designed by a moonlighting burglar, the type of lock you can use a credit card to open. Once inside I pulled the shades in the kitchen and switched on the light and for a moment I was startled. For that moment I thought I was back where Boyd had stayed, back in that apartment I’d since found out belonged to somebody named Carol-the same pink stucco walls, the same new but cheap furniture like something you’d see in a middle-grade mobile home; the wall-to-wall carpeting was even the same color, a murky green. The layout of the apartment was identical to the other one and it was obvious the renovations of both had been handled by the same contractor. Which wasn’t surprising considering Vince and his sister Carol shared the same landlord in Raymond Springborn.
Vince was not a neat housekeeper. Any fears I might have had about coming in from the rain and leaving a tell-tale mess behind were quickly dispelled. The kitchen table was a sea of empty beer bottles and cans (mostly Budweiser) with more of the same littered around the edges of the room; the sink was full of several days dishes and the smell of garbage was so strong I wanted to wrap the whole room in brown paper and put it out for the trash. The bedroom’s focal point was its unmade bed, its sheets soiled and smelly and sticky-damp. Underwear and dirty socks and colored T-shirts and jeans were wadded and tossed here and there, as though Vince took off his clothes like a greedy kid unwrapping a Christmas present. On the bedroom walls were stuck various clipped-out pictures from porno mags, though nothing outright obscene: muscle men parading around in jocks, and lots of women showing lots, but nothing frontal below the waist. Vince’s taste did seem evenly divided between men and women, so the boy wasn’t strictly gay, and he wasn’t particularly kinky either, from the look of the pics on the wall; no whips or chains or that. Vince seemed to like his perversion kept within certain limits of good taste, and there was no real indication of a penchant for violence, though I later found some karate books in his closet, mixed in with automotive magazines, books and magazines on body-building and some “swinging singles” publications. The living room was better ordered than the rest of the place, probably because the only furniture was a sofa and a color television, the rest of the room being as empty as I imagined Vince’s mind and personality to be. Oh there were a few, just a few, scattered beer cans and bottles, and a half-eaten sack of corn curls and mostly eaten cup of clam dip on the floor by the sofa. A very mild, unimpressive mess after the kitchen and bedroom, which were the work of a virtuoso slob. The only other room in the apartment was the bathroom, which I’d rather not go into.
In the bedroom, in the closet behind the double sliding doors, under the stack of books and magazines, I found a spot in the comer where the carpeting could be pulled back and two loose boards easily lifted up and out and a cubbyhole revealed, and down in the cubbyhole, wrapped in a black T-shirt, was the money and the wrench.
I counted the money and it was all there. I examined the wrench. He’d scrubbed it down clean, but had kept it, and kept it hidden, like the moronic amateur he was. I looked at the T-shirt. I set the nine-millimeter on the floor so I could take the shirt in my hands and rip it in half. After that I felt better.
And then I put the money down into the deep raincoat pocket. The wrench I stuck in my belt and I put the torn T-shirt back down in the cubbyhole, replaced the boards, patted the carpet back in place, restacked the books and magazines, picked up the automatic and left the apartment.
Out on the landing I took off my gloves, found room in the deep pocket for both money and automatic, and walked down the wooden steps and into the taxi stand parking lot, where I transferred the money and wrench to the trunk of Boyd’s car. Then I went back into the taxi stand to wait for Vince.
Fifteen minutes later he came in. Strutted in. He liked himself. A lot. His jeans were tight and worn down around the hips, his skinny arms tattooed and wiry-muscled, hanging from his short-sleeve red T-shirt like plastic tubing, his hair was greased back like he just heard of James Dean and if I’d had a motorcycle I could have sold it to him. He said, “Shitty night,” to the woman behind the counter.
“Shitty weather, you mean?” she asked him, working on another stub of a cigarette. “Or shitty fares?”
“Shitty everything,” he said.
“Guy at the back table wants to see you. Been waiting, acts like he knows you.”
“Yeah?” He leaned over to whisper, though he knew I could still hear him. “Who the hell is the bastard?”
“Oh, he’s been around here before. Just this mornin’ he rented some parking space from me.”
Vince shrugged and strolled over and got himself a cup of coffee and leaned against the counter and watched me. When he’d finished his coffee, he rooster-walked up to where I was sitting and sat next to me, close, and gave me his best chipped-tooth smile. He said, “Do I know you, Jack?”
My guess was he didn’t. We’d met twice before: once in that apartment, when he introduced me to his wrench; and again early this morning, when he approached me in his girlie voice. When he’d gone into that swish number this morning, I hadn’t recognized him; I didn’t figure he’d recognized me, either. It had been dark scuffling in that apartment, very dark, and my guess was he hadn’t seen me any better than I’d seen him.
“I was in here this morning,” I said, “remember? You were acting kind of cute.” I kept a hard edge in my voice to let him know I wasn’t back to see him because I found his body attractive.
He remembered. He got suddenly nervous, squirming in his seat, and he laughed, a coughing sort of laugh, and scratched his head. Waving his hands, avoiding direct eye contact with me, he said, “I was just putting you on, Jack. Do I look like some kind of goddamn fag?”
“No,” I said. “No you don’t.”
“So what do you want, anyhow?”
“I want to know if you’re interested in making some money.”
