Somebody came in and Broker started washing his hands again. I joined him. The guy did what he had to and left.
“Seems like when I work with you,” I said, “all my time’s spent in toilets.”
“Is that where you took care of him? In a restroom?”
“No. I walked him out to the runway and threw him in front of a Boeing.”
A little dark guy with a little dark son came in and stood at the urinals, like a big salt shaker and a smaller pepper. When they were done they seemed to want to wash their hands, but Broker and me had the sink concession, so the pair gave up quick and left.
“What are you upset about, Quarry?”
“Horse.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about H, Broker. Smack. Heroin, horse, shit, horseshit!”
“Will you please keep your voice down?”
“Christ, Broker. That’s all I need is to get found with a bundle of that on me. I got enough fucking risk going for me as it is.”
“You disappoint me, Quarry.”
“I disappoint you.”
“You were told your man had a valuable package which did not belong to him. You weren’t told to examine the contents of the package.”
“It was a lump of snow in a plastic bag, Broker, it didn’t take a goddamn chemist to tell.”
“Since when are you so God almighty precautious? You complain of risk. Yet you use the same gun from job to job, don’t you? That would seem a dangerous habit to me.”
“That is one thing. This other today is something else.”
“I’m not going to stand here and argue with you, Quarry. My hands are getting puckered from washing.”
“Your hands are getting puckered. My ass is getting puckered! Look, I work one kind of thing, and I work it one kind of way, you know that better than anyone else, but what do you do? You bring me in for a half-ass deal like this one.”
“This was last minute, Quarry, I called you in for something else entirely, and…”
“I don’t like getting brought to town for one job and doing another. I don’t like playing courier with a load of H. You want to play with smack, get a pusher. And this humiliating people, I got no stomach for that. You got somebody who’s going to die, fine, I’ll be the means. You want strong-arm, get a goon.”
“Are you quite finished?”
“Don’t pull that pompous bullshit tone on me, Broker. I’ve known you too long. I know what you are.”
“If you don’t like working for me, Quarry, why don’t you just quit?”
“What? What did you say?”
“I said if you don’t like working for me you can always quit.”
“Now that tears it. Now that really fucking tears it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“ You work for me, Broker, don’t forget that… I work for you like Richard Burton works for his agent.”
Broker sighed. “Where’s the stuff, Quarry?”
“Never do this to me again, Broker. Understand? Nothing else like this. Or you’re going to see the side of this business you don’t like seeing.”
“Where’s the stuff?”
“Do you get my meaning, Broker?”
“Yes. Where’s the stuff?”
“Where’s my money?”
Broker turned off the faucet and wiped his hands on a paper towel. He took an envelope from his inside jacket pocket. He handed the envelope to me and I looked inside: three thousand in hundreds. I put the envelope in my inside pocket.
“I’m still at the Howard Johnson’s,” I said. “You come talk to me there. You know what room I’m in. I’m sick of using cans for my office.”
“What?”
“And don’t send anybody around to see me, Broker, or I’ll do bad things to them. You come. We got talking to do.”
“Don’t play with me, Quarry.”
“Who’s playing? Better zip up, Broker.”
“Quarry…”
I dried my hands and left.
4
I suppose at this point I should be filling you in on my background and telling you how I got into such a specialized line of work. Don’t count on it. There are two things you won’t get from me and that’s details about my past and my real name. The closest you’ll get to a name is Quarry, which is an alias suggested by the Broker and I always kind of liked it, as aliases go. Or I did until I asked Broker why he suggested an offbeat name like that one and he chuckled and said, “Know what a quarry is, don’t you? It’s rock and it’s hollowed out.” Broker isn’t known for his sense of humor.
I will sketch in some of my background, in case you feel the need to try to understand me. I’m a veteran of the Vietnam fuckup, which was where I learned about the meaninglessness of life and death, though the point wasn’t really driven home until I arrived back in the states and found my wife shacked up with a guy named Williams who had a bungalow in La Mirada and a job in a garage. I was going to shoot the son of a bitch, but waited till I cooled down enough to think rationally. Then I went to his house where he was in his driveway on his back working under his car and kicked the jack out… once in a movie I heard death referred to as “the big crushout,” and for that poor bastard the phrase couldn’t have been more apropos. I didn’t shoot my wife, or drop a car on her either. I just divorced her. Or rather she divorced me.
Of course no court in the world would have touched me, a cuckolded serviceman fresh home from the fight. But no one wanted me for an overnight house guest either. I couldn’t find work, even though I was a fully qualified mechanic… and it wasn’t like there weren’t any openings. The garage where Williams worked could’ve used a man, that was for sure.
The only relative I had who would even look me in the face was my old man, who came out to L.A. to see me after I had my little marital problem. He told me not to come home, said I’d made my stepmother nervous even before I started murdering people and God only knew how I’d affect her now. I never did ask the old man which murders he was talking about, the dozen or so in Vietnam or the one in California.
Since I couldn’t go home to Ohio with my father, I just hung around L.A. for a month or so, spending my money as fast as I could, going to movies during the days and bars at night. That got old fast. California got old fast. It was where I was stationed before going overseas and was where I fell into the star-crossed romance that ended in marriage, among other things, with that brown-haired bitch whose face is fuzzy in my memory now.
I don’t know how the Broker got a line on me. Maybe it’s like pro football teams recruiting players; maybe Broker sends scouts around to bars to look for guys with faces full of no morality. Or maybe Broker and his people pay attention to certain of us who get back from service and have problems. I know mine was in the papers and got enough publicity to keep me from getting jobs when I applied. You know I never did figure out how everybody could be so goddamn back-patting sympathetic and still not be willing to risk giving me a job.
Everybody but Broker. He had a job for me. I don’t remember the conversation. I know it was elliptical. You don’t come right out and ask somebody if he’d like to kill people for money. Even Uncle Sugar is more subtle than that.
Anyway, Broker showed up one day at what could best be described as my fleabag one-room apartment in L.A. and somehow or other got across to me what he was talking about… that I could make top dollar continuing to
