“You got forty minutes. Broker doesn’t live all that far from here. I’ll wait forty minutes. Now go.”
“Go?”
“Go.”
“Sure,” Carl said, humoring me, “fine. I’ll bring him back in forty minutes.”
“I know you will. Just tell him one thing for me. You tell him I only gave him half that load of heroin from the airport job. You tell him I kept back a bag. Tell him I got it hid safely away, and if he wants the key to where I hid it, he should come back here within forty minutes and bring twenty thousand in hundreds with him.”
Carl didn’t argue with me. He didn’t try to tell me Broker wouldn’t be able to raise the money or other similar lies. Twenty thousand was a low figure for the stuff, very low, and I only picked that figure because I knew Broker would have that much on hand at home.
Carl said, “I’ll be back in forty minutes with the Broker.” Carl knew the Broker would come; for the heroin, Broker would come.
“Go, Carl.”
Carl nodded. Very carefully, very slowly, he sloshed back to the Charger, its motor still running. He waited at the door for any last instructions I might have I said, “You come back with him, Carl. Don’t bring anyone else. Come unarmed.”
Carl nodded again, got in the car and pulled out. I watched the Charger disappear into the rain and seconds later the road was deserted again.
Behind me, Vince said, weakly, “What… what’s this about? Who
… who the hell are you?”
I turned and looked at him. He looked pitiful. A skinny shot-up kid in my raincoat, leaning against the Ford and clutching his side. His long hair was hanging in thick wet streaks across his forehead, making a stark contrast with his pale white face. His mouth was slack open, the chipped tooth giving him a look of naive idiocy.
I said, “You don’t know, do you?”
Vince said nothing.
I said nothing.
We waited.
Vince said, “In Christ’s name, do something… help me… I’ll fucking bleed to death if you don’t do something…”
I just looked at him.
He said, “You got to, got to… please… oh, please, please, do something…”
He was right. It was time to do something.
I said, “All right. I got a first-aid kit in the trunk of my car. I’ll go get it.”
He made a strange sound, a cross between a whimper and a sigh. He whispered, “Thanks… thanks, Jack.”
I walked the eighth of a mile back to the Mustang and opened the trunk.
I got out the wrench.
29
“Shit,” Carl said. He paced awkwardly back and forth, like he was trying to make fun of himself. He’d been fifty minutes bringing Broker out here and I’d told him forty. He’d come back and found the area deserted and for a full minute now he’d been pacing and saying shit. He didn’t know I’d moved the two cars to where they couldn’t be seen. The rental Ford was at the mouth of the gravel access road to the quarry, the car just barely out of view, where I could get to it quick if I had to. Boyd’s Mustang was down in the quarry itself, not far from what was left of Vince.
Carl looked at Broker, whose face was visible in the back side window of the car. Carl held out the palms of his hands as if to say, “What can I do?” Broker pursed his lips and shrugged with his eyebrows. Carl shook his head as if to say, “I’m sorry.” Broker eased the irritation from his face and nodded forgiveness.
Just the same, Carl went back to his pacing alongside the car, which this trip was not the shiny dark blue Charger, but a big brown Buick with a vinyl top. Broker’s car, obviously. An executive’s car.
“Shit,” Carl said again, “shit, shit, shit.”
“Oh stop crying,” I said. I stepped out from the bushes and let Carl see I was still keeping company with the nine-millimeter.
Relief flooded Carl’s face, and then anger. Carl spoke and his voice dripped venom, but his words were contrite: “I’m… I’m sorry I was late.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Open your coat.”
He unbuttoned the black raincoat and held it open. I walked over to him and gave him a quick, one-handed frisk. He was unarmed. “Good boy,” I said. “That fake leg of yours isn’t hollowed out and full of firecrackers, now is it?”
Carl pouted. His eyes told me to go to hell. But he said nothing.
“You can close your coat now,” I said.
“Where’s your friend,” Carl asked.
He meant Vince.
At the bottom of this limestone pit, Carl, where he landed when I shoved his remains over the edge.
“I patched him up,” I said, “and he’s doing fine. Walking up and down the road here, keeping his eyes open. Making sure you and Broker didn’t bring any of your friends along.”
Carl said, “Broker wants you to get in the car and talk with him in there.”
I waved the gun toward Broker, whose face in the window of the Buick was bland and emotionless and practically bored. “Broker,” I said, loud, “get your ass out here!”
The back door opened. Broker didn’t come out, but his voice did. He said, “Climb in here with me, Quarry. No need to stand out in the rain and catch pneumonia.”
“Why don’t you come out here and join me, Broker. I been in the rain so long it’s gotten to be my natural state.”
“Please,” the Broker said. With solemn patience.
“Why not,” I said. I looked at Carl and said, “You get in the front. Sit on the rider’s side and don’t cause any trouble.”
Carl did as he was told.
Broker was wearing a charcoal double-knit suit and a dark blue shirt and a wide tie colored robin’s egg blue. He moved over to make room for me, which put him directly behind Carl. There was plenty of room in the Buick’s back seat-headroom, legroom, everything. I laid the nine- millimeter on my lap and folded my gloved hands. It was cold in the car. The damn airconditioner was on, which was stupid on a rainy and not particularly warm night like this one, and between its coldness and size, that Buick could’ve been used as a meat locker.
“Excuse the delay,” Broker said. “My wife and I were entertaining a houseful of guests, and it was most difficult getting away.”
“Having a party, huh, Broker? Well that’s one way to establish an alibi.”
“Please, Quarry.” His mustache quivered.
“You and your pretty wife are eating caviar and sipping cocktails and I’m out here in the rain getting my nuts shot off by a cripple.”
I could see Carl in the rearview mirror. I could see his face get tense. But he didn’t say anything.
I said, “You might be interested to know that my business in Port City has been settled, and without rousing the police or causing J. Edgar Hoover to rise from the dead.”
Broker’s expression turned grim. He nodded slowly and said, “I received a call from the party who contracted your services…”
“Mrs. Springborn, you mean.”
Broker couldn’t keep back the sharp look this time. But it passed quickly. He said, “The party informed me of your visit, and that you had promised to leave Port City.”
