yesterday, so this would just get in my way. I wanted to confront Ash, but not with company around. And I might eventually want to confront Brooks, but not both of them at once.
Shit.
Brooks, by the way, seemed about as happy to be here as I was to have him here. All I got was a glimpse of him, before he ducked inside the motel, but that was all I needed to see how irritated he was. He had the frustrated, defiant gait of a constipated man on his way to complain about an out-of-order toilet, and the pained expression of somebody who just found out where his tax money was going. His frown threatened to put a crack in that Florida tan of his, and when a guy spoke to him in the lobby, old Public Image-conscious Curtis Brooks didn’t reply.
I followed him through the lobby, down a couple of halls, and saw him stop to knock at one of the rooms. I walked on by, rather quickly, not especially wanting Ash to see me when he opened the door to let Brooks in.
I heard Ash say, “Can I fix you a drink, Brooks?” in a tone as embarrassingly chummy as it was contrite, and the door closed before Brooks could answer, if he did answer at all.
So. Brooks was pissed off, and Ash was apologetic. What that added up to was interesting enough to make me take back my negative reaction to the lawyer showing up here today.
Obviously, Brooks was here because Ash and the backup man had fucked up last night, and the man’s irritation was, of course, directly related to that. Which not only connected Brooks to Ash and the backup man and a proposed hit, but seemed to suggest Brooks was higher on the chain of command than Ash, confirming once and for all Ash was not the new Broker, and at the same time supplying a replacement candidate: Curtis Brooks himself.
But then, as an attorney, Brooks was a professional go-between, so by no means was it safe to assume he was the one who had taken over for Broker. Perhaps it was more likely that he had simply stayed along for the ride when the control of the Broker’s operation shifted to someone else.
I went back out to the parking lot, back to my old stand, sitting in the Buick watching and waiting, just one more time. When Brooks came out of there, I’d go in.
And an hour later, Brooks came out, and I started getting out of the Buick, and saw Ash following on the lawyer’s heels. Brooks still seemed irritated, but somewhat cooled down. Ash seemed less than totally subservient, but was obviously still trying to placate the man. They spoke for a few minutes, or rather Ash spoke and Brooks somewhat patiently listened, and then they got in their separate cars and drove out of the lot.
I followed.
Both men headed toward downtown Davenport, and once there, at the bottom of the hill, they split up, Brooks driving off toward the left, Ash to the right. I stayed with Ash, followed him onto Third, a one-way that began commercial and dwindled into residential. Ash stopped in an area where commercial and residential were uncomfortably commingled, and went into a diner, whose neon glowed the words “Chop Suey House” even in the afternoon.
I pulled in behind his LTD, and watched through the smudged windows of the place as he found a booth in the back. Inside the front window, two Oriental men in damp white outfits with aprons as smudged as the windows worked short-order style behind the counter, at a stove where two black metal woks were steaming, while nearby griddle and French-frying setups sizzled and smoked.
I went in, and the heat from cooking in that confined boxcar of a little room was overwhelming. One of the Orientals behind the counter greeted me, but I had no idea what he was trying to say. I greeted him, and he seemed to have no idea what I was trying to say.
It was well after lunch hour, and there were only a few people in the place, which at peak could hold maybe twenty-five. Ash was sitting in his back booth, face buried in the menu. He had taken off the coat of his expensive suit, and his shirt was long-sleeved and pastel yellow and his tie was a stylish brown and blue pattern. Every hair on his head was in place, a sandy red tapestry woven to conceal his bald spot.
He hadn’t seen me yet.
I sat down across from him and said, “Still go for that Chink shit, do you?”
He looked up and blinked and said, “Hello Quarry,” and went back to his menu.
“That’s some car you’re driving,” I said.
He put the menu down, smiled. He seemed a little worn out, probably a combination of fucking up last night, and just having had to go through some sort of song and dance for the lawyer. “It gulps the gas, though,” he said. “Otherwise, you’re right. Some car. You like it, Quarry?”
“The car? LTD’s not my style. I like a sportier number.”
“Like that little fuckin’ Opel of yours, you mean.”
“Like that. Only I traded it in.”
“What you driving, now?”
“That Buick, parked behind you.” I pointed a thumb at the greasy window next to us, through which the two cars could be made out, barely.
“That’s the kind of car you’re partial to driving on a job, Quarry. You on a job?”
“Not exactly.”
“Hey, let me order for you. You don’t know Chinese food like I do. This little dump’s supposed to be the best Chinese joint in town. I checked around. So leave it to me.”
And about then an Oriental woman, who managed to look attractive despite her greasy white outfit and sweating brow, and who was somewhere between twenty and forty in age, asked us what we wanted, and Ash told her.
“So,” Ash said, when she was gone, “you’re not dead, Quarry.’’
“Not that you’d notice.”
“Ha! Well, I want you to know I had nothing to do with that.”
“With what?”
“Those two guys who came around to try and whack you out.”
“That gives me a warm feeling inside, knowing that.”
“Come on. What was I supposed to do? Warn you?”
“That would have been nice.”
“Fuck. Who you tryin’ to kid? In this business, anybody’s a potential victim. You. Me. Those gooks over there, cookin’ their butts off. Anybody. And people like you and me, we do what the guy with the money says to do. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
“But you knew in advance, they’d be coming around? Explain that.”
“I was the one who set it up.”
“You’re sure as hell hard to get information out of.”
“What, do you think I’d fuck around lying to you? I set it up. Somebody hired me to set it up, I mean.”
“Who?”
“That, I can’t tell you. You know that, Quarry.”
“I guess I do.”
“But, like I said, I had nothing to do with it. You know, nothing personal.”
“I know.”
“I knew you weren’t dead, when Lynch and Beatty didn’t call in, afterwards. I figured they were at the bottom of some lake up there. That was no surprise. But I sure didn’t expect you to come around here.”
“What did you expect?”
“I expected you’d take it on the lam, what else? Just get the fuck out, go bury your head in Canada or Mexico or something, take your money, and make a new life or something.”
“What money?”
“The money you saved from all your jobs.”
“I spent most of that.”
“Well, then, the money you made off of killing the Broker.”
“I didn’t kill the Broker.”
“Okay, you didn’t kill him. Whatever you say.”
“Somebody figures I did, though.”
“Right. And if you didn’t kill him, who did?”
