nodding severe thanks with that square head with its square jaw, the shortcut bristly haircut giving him a vaguely military cast.
And now Green was a solitary figure at his daughter’s graveside, standing with hands figleafed before him, head lowered, making a mournful picture that maybe, maybe not, had some real feeling in it.
Who knows-could be there was some humanity left in this son of a bitch. Could be he felt a pang about killing his oldest daughter to gain more of his late wife’s money. He certainly seemed truly mournful as he bent to collect a handful of piled graveside dirt, then standing and tossing it in. Even from where I was tucked back watching, I could hear the soil shower the casket like hard, brief rain.
The final cars drew away, leaving only the Cadillac hearse and a second vehicle, a BMW. The mourners, other than Green himself, were gone. The only company remaining was keeping a respectful distance, but staying alert: half a dozen scattered security men in dark raincoats and sunglasses, peppered here and there on the periphery, keeping in touch via headsets.
Not that I’d give them high marks, since I’d easily kept out of their sight when they did their advance sweep of the cemetery, early this morning. Nor were they aware that the uniformed chauffeur assigned to drive the hearse was currently tossed in the back of the vehicle wrapped in more duct tape than a leaky drainpipe.
Which was why-when the liveried “chauffeur” in cap and sunglasses approached Jonah Green at the graveside-neither the millionaire nor any of his six security boys thought anything of it.
I stepped to Green’s side and, head still lowered, he said, “Just a few more minutes, Roger-I’m…I’m not ready just yet.”
“My final payment hasn’t reached my off-shore account,” I said, removing the sunglasses and tucking them in a breast pocket. “Why the delay?”
Green looked at me sharply with those money-color eyes, but he’d been to the rodeo a few times himself, so his surprise and alarm quickly faded to a weary bitter smile.
“Quarry. Nice of you to come.”
My cap was in hand now, respectfully. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
He turned back to the grave, looked down into it.
“As for your payment, well…you didn’t do the work, did you?”
“You interfered with the job. Or, anyway, that dope of yours did.”
The square head swung toward me again, his forehead creased with a frown but his mouth a straight line. “Was that really necessary? What you did to DeWayne?”
“Not as necessary as you killing your daughter…Nice turnout today.”
He stared down into the grave again. “Not many of them knew Janet-they were kind to pay their respects.”
“Where was her sister? Was Julie at the funeral? Didn’t spot her at the graveside service.”
He was maintaining an admirable cool; on the other hand, he knew we had that security crew of his, all around us. Still, he was well aware what I was capable of, and a certain tension, even nervousness, flicked in and around his eyes.
“I thought maybe you knew where Julie was,” he said. His tone was surface cordial, underlying contemptuous. “Hell, I thought I might get another phone call from you, wanting more unmarked money.”
“That hurts.”
He lifted his shoulders and set them down again. “All I know is, Julie’s dropped out of sight.”
“Well, maybe she’s afraid Daddy might be thinking of doubling up on the trust fund action.”
Green glared at me. “I would never harm that girl.”
“Sorry. How could I ever think such a thing?”
“I adore that child!”
“I was just thinking maybe it was a set-up all along-that maybe you engineered that snatch… After all, you said yourself you had certain business connections, in those circles.”
He sneered. “Don’t be an ass.”
“Makes sense-the wild child dies, Daddy inherits. But I came along and screwed it up for you. So Plan B was daughter number one.”
He was shaking his head, looking out past the gravestone, at the world beyond; mostly all you could see of that world was more gravestones, some trees, and the gray tombstones of suburban Oak Brook’s business buildings.
“You’re wrong, Quarry-though why I should care what a creature like you thinks is beyond me.”
“There I agree with you.”
He swung toward me with his eyes slits, his face grooved grimly. “I was not responsible for that kidnapping- no. Julie has potential. She has fire. Spirit. She’s just…going through a phase.”
I nodded toward the hole in the ground. “So is your other daughter-it’s called decomposition.”
He leaned toward me, eyes furious, face otherwise blank; he’d been keeping his voice down, and his movements small, obviously not anxious to start a fracas between his boys and me, out here in front of God and everybody, with himself in the middle.
“What the hell do you want, Quarry? The rest of your money?”
“That would be a start.”
He shook his head, quietly disgusted. “Well, I don’t want a scene, here. Can you understand that? Can you have a little respect for the dead?”
“Did you really say that, or am I hallucinating?”
“Fuck you. Just go. Go, and I’ll make your goddamn money happen.”
I said nothing. Now I was the one looking down into that hole in the ground. “…You warned me that she didn’t deserve it.”
He winced. “What-Janet?…No, she was a nice enough young woman. Harmless. Silly, naive, in how she viewed the world, but…anyway. She was lost to me. Lost to me long ago.”
“Oh?”
He had a distant expression now. For the first time I detected a genuine sense of loss in him, if edged with a bitter anger. “To her…to her I represented everything bad about this country.”
I shrugged. “Kids.”
He glared at me again. “She had a nothing life, Quarry-a librarian.”
He said “librarian” the way another disappointed father might have said “shoplifter” or “prostitute.”
He was saying, “I have a small empire to maintain- thousands of employees, with families, depending on me for their paychecks.”
“Hey,” I said. “You sacrificed a child. Worked for God.”
He winced again. Sighed grandly. Said, “Go-just fucking go. Do that, cause no more trouble, and there’ll be a nice bonus for you-not that you deserve shit.”
“Oh,” I said, “I deserve shit…but your daughter didn’t. Mr. Green…Jonah? Okay I call you ‘Jonah’? I feel a certain closeness to you.”
“Are you insane?”
“Is that a rhetorical question? See, I always assumed the people I killed were marked for death, anyway, and I was a means to a predetermined end.”
Green-studying me now, clearly wondering where this was going-said, “I gathered as much.”
“People I put down probably did deserve it…or anyway put themselves in the gunsights, one way or another. By something they’d done.”
“Of course.”
“But Janet…” I smiled at him, only it didn’t really have much to do with smiling. “…she was a good person. A decent person. She didn’t deserve to die.”
He bit the words off acidly: “I told you that going in.”
“Yeah. My bad.” I shook my head, laughed a little. “You know, Mr. Green, in a long and varied career in the killing business, I’ve never encountered anyone quite like you-ready to kill your own daughter for another chunk of the family fortune.”
The security guys had started getting suspicious, taking notice of this unlikely long conversation between chauffeur and boss. From the corners of my eyes, I saw them talking into their headsets; it was like being stalked
