in the wooded area behind, united by a gravel road that curved around like a drunken snake, through trees that had to look better than this during some season. It was cold again this morning, and the snow that hadn’t melted yesterday was clumped and misshapen and hard-crusted, looking like chunks of Styrofoam randomly scattered around the gray ground the cabins overlooked.
Ash was in number two.
I’d left him a note on the dresser saying, “I lied. Wait for me and I’ll tell you all about it. It’s too late for you to do anything else, anyway.”
He was waiting. Sitting on the lumpy bed in the dreary little cabin, whose wallpaper walls were peeling to reveal other, even uglier wallpaper.
“Oh, it’s you, Quarry,” he said. He gestured to the four tight walls around him. “I was expecting Bonnie and Clyde.”
“Brooks is dead.”
“Yeah, well, I figured. Where you got the broad hid?”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s all over.”
“Not if you really got the list, it isn’t. We can go in together. I didn’t trust Brooks that much, anyway.”
“That was smart. He tried to get me to kill you and take your place.”
“That fuckin’ little pimp shyster. What’d you do to him?”
“Tossed him out the window.”
“Good for you. He wanted a fall guy, well, he got one. Hey, not a bad sensa humor on the kid, huh? So what about the list?”
“I had it. I burned it.”
“Burned it! Je-sus Christ! You got any idea what that mother was worth?”
“I don’t care. I got no desire to play Broker.”
“Well, fuck, I do!”
“Anyway, I didn’t like all the stuff about me that was down in black and white. And about you, and a lot of guys like us.”
“Quarry! That was like burning money.”
“Well, it’s gone now.”
“Jesus, Quarry.”
“You should thank me. That list fell into the wrong hands, your ass and mine and a lot of people would’ve been in one fine sling.”
“I suppose. But shit.”
“You want your gun back?”
“My. 45, you mean? Please.”
I gave it to him.
“Bulky son of a bitch, ain’t it?” he said. “That federal fucker had one, you know, with a silencer too, even. Silencers are illegal as shit, what’s a federal fucker doing with one, I mean, what’s the goddamn country coming to. You know… you could’ve killed Brooks with this, and set me up for it.”
“I know. I didn’t.”
“Well, while I’m not exactly thrilled you burned my future up for me, you bastard, I got to thank you for giving me an out.”
“What are friends for.”
“Right. Looks like I owe you another one.”
“Let’s just say this one’s on me and leave it go at that.”
“Anything you say. I suppose you made it look like suicide?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll let on like I figure that’s what it was, if the mob guys ask me, and they will. Well. Nothing to hang around this dump for. Shit. First thing, I’m going to have to unload that fuckin’ LTD on somebody and get something cheaper to drive.”
“Got any other plans?”
‘‘No. I don’t know. What the hell. There’s other Brokers around, you know. I suppose I’ll find one and stay in the business. What about you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe I’ll see you sometime.”
“Maybe.”
I watched him walk out to his car. He waved before he got in. I waved as he left. Maybe I would see him again. I hadn’t burned the list, of course. Those ashes I dumped on Brooks’s desk were just some papers I burned in the wood-burning stove down at the cottage. But I wanted it to filter back to Chicago, through Ash, that the list was gone. I didn’t want anyone thinking I had it, because I had plans for it.
And I knew why Ash and Curtis Brooks hadn’t been able to find the list. It wasn’t a list at all, really. Certain people on the payrolls of Broker’s businesses (the mail-order ones, like the lingerie company I “worked” for) were coded in a way that matched up with certain slides in little yellow boxes that otherwise contained memories of various vacations Broker had been on. There was a whole pine chest packed with these boxes of slides, and only by going through every one of thousands of slides would you be able to find the less than fifty that counted, which were not really slides at all, though mounted like the rest; they were a type of microfilm, a single panel of microfilm with photographs and document- ary material on forty-eight individuals, of which I was one, and Ash another. On the cardboard-mounting material were the number/letter combinations that coincided with names on master payroll lists from the mail-order businesses. I’d been up almost all night, piecing this together. I wasn’t about to burn any of it, except for my own card.
But I really didn’t want to be the Broker, and I wasn’t going to blackmail anybody, either… professional killers aren’t the best people to try to blackmail. What I had in mind was something different. A one-man operation.
Life is a precious commodity. People will pay a lot to have one taken. But they will pay even more to hang onto one… if it’s their own. This was the profit angle Ash hadn’t been able to see. All he could see (and Brooks, too) was the killers. I could see the victims. People like Carrie, who without help were going to die.
As Ash pointed out, there were other Brokers. Most of the hit men (and women) named here would be working again, soon, if not already, for new Brokers. If I picked a name from the list, followed whoever it was to a job, found out who the potential victim was, I could go to that potential victim and offer my services. If my offer was rejected, no skin off my ass; let the asshole die, it’s up to him. Some might prefer to go to the cops, though in most cases people lined up to be hit can’t go to the cops, because the hit usually has something to do with some less than legal activities the victim’s been mixed up in.
But some would take me up on my offer, and be willing to pay my fee, in which case I’d prevent the hit, killing those sent to do it and doing my best in the process to find out who hired them, and possibly take care of whoever that was, too.
At least it was something to think about. An idea, anyway, something to consider while I sat staring at the frozen lake in Wisconsin this winter, waiting to see if the federal snoopers would trace those Concort killings to me, which would cause me to have to start from scratch: new name, new residence, new face maybe, the works. That was a bridge I’d cross if I came to it.
In the meantime, I’d consider this new idea, an idea I liked a lot better than that of working for somebody else. I’d had it with that scene. I didn’t want to work for anybody, and I didn’t want anybody working for me. Of course, I’d still be killing people, but for the most part it would just be other hitmen, like myself, and that seemed a step up, somehow.
26
Carrie was in number 9.
“Jack,” she said. “The strangest thing… my father called me.. here!”
“I know,” I said.
