“Quarry.”
“What kind of name is that?”
“A false one.” I glanced at Julie. “You seem overjoyed to see your daughter, alive and well.”
Prompted, he leaned forward and sent his eyes to her. “Are you all right, Julie?”
“Fuck you,” she said.
Her list of responses was limited, but got the job done.
Her father sighed and looked at me as if seeking support or sympathy or something the fuck he wasn’t going to get.
He asked, “Do you have any children, Mr. Quarry?”
“Besides your daughter? No.”
He shook his head. “I fly through the goddamn night in a goddamn private jet to deliver this goddamn money, and this…”
“Mr. Green,” I interrupted tightly. “Some discretion, please?”
“…is the thanks I get. The appreciation.” Another sigh, a world-weary shrug. “But that’s the modern world, isn’t it, Mr. Quarry? Values. They’re nonexistent these days, aren’t they?”
I shifted in the booth. “You really don’t want to stall me, Mr. Green. Your daughter will tell you how little compunction I have about making people who annoy me go away.”
He studied me for perhaps five seconds-it seemed longer; and he smiled a little, as he did, which would have been unnerving if I impressed easily.
“An intelligent man,” Green said softly. “Possibly educated.”
“Flattery is probably not the approach you want to take, Mr. Green.”
“…How did you happen to, uh…intercept my daughter from those people?”
I shook my head. “That information is not included in the purchase price-shall we get on with business?”
His eyes tightened and he nodded. “Yes. Why don’t we?…And let me assure you, sir, that’s how I view this transaction-strictly business.”
Julie said, “Jesus Christ-now I’m a transaction. Can I get some fucking apple pie or something?”
Her long-suffering parent closed his eyes.
“Charm school didn’t take?” I asked him.
The millionaire flagged down a waitress, and said, “Apple pie for my daughter, please. And coffee. She likes it black.”
The waitress, a redhead who’d been beautiful fifteen years ago, scribbled, then looked at me over her pad. “Anything for you, honey?”
“No. Thanks.”
She disappeared.
Julie was sitting forward and grinning nastily at her old man. “Wow-I’m blown the fuck away!” Then she looked at me. “Son of a bitch knows how I like my coffee! ” And back at him: “How old am I, Jonah? What’s my boyfriend’s name?”
Her father gave her an expression as blank as brick. “You don’t have a boyfriend, not since I paid Martin Luther Van Dross to take a hike. He loved you a whole ten grand worth, angel. So, yes, I know you like it black.”
“You bastard,” she said, and her eyes were tearing. “You heartless fucking bastard…”
I said, “This is touching, and would make great reality TV; but if you two don’t mind-business?”
Julie glared out the window.
Green shifted his weight, his eyes unblinking but not exactly cold as they settled on me. “I just want you to know, Mr. Quarry, that there will be no efforts made against you. Not with the law, not privately-and a man with my resources could easily do that, either way. But you saved my daughter’s life…and I value that. I do value that.”
Julie’s jaw tightened but her eyes didn’t leave the window.
“Swell,” I said. “I value money. Where is it?”
Green lifted an eyebrow, offered up a half-smile that was wholly conspiratorial. “If you’ll reach under the table…I trust you prefer that I not reach under there myself…you will find a briefcase.”
My left hand found it easily. I hauled the brownleather attache up beside me, near the aisle, away from the girl.
I said, “I’d be annoyed if this contained pepper spray or dye or some such shit.”
“I’m sure you would be,” Green said, reasonably. “But you’ll find it’s all there-just as you asked…” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Small bills. Unmarked.”
“Is this case locked?”
“No.”
“Well, your daughter’s handcuffs are,” I said, a foot in the aisle. “I’m going to the men’s room to count this. I’ll be back with the cuff key.”
Julie, eyes finally leaving the window, chimed in: “Good. That way I won’t have to stick my face in my pie… Mr. Quarry here loves it when I talk dirty, Daddy.”
Green ignored her, saying to me, “You really trust me, trust us, to be here when you get back?”
All sarcasm and attitude gone, serious as a heart attack, Julie leaned forward and gave her father the following advice: “Don’t fuck with this guy, Daddy…”
The magnate lost his cool momentarily: “Why-didn’t you?”
Her upper lip peeled back over teeth as white as they were feral: “No…but not for lack of trying.”
Green heaved his largest sigh yet, gathered his dignity and said to me, “You’ll have to forgive our little family bickering, Mr. Quarry, but-”
“If this isn’t money,” I told him, hefting the briefcase, already half out of the booth, “I’ll find you in hell.”
Green summoned another half-smile but his eyes were narrow. “Isn’t that a little melodramatic, coming from you, Mr. Quarry?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “But from what I see, melodrama is what you people understand…If you’ll excuse me.”
I could feel the millionaire’s eyes on my back as I headed to the men’s room, passing the redheaded waitress bearing Julie’s pie and coffee as I did.
And before I took the turn toward the restrooms, I could hear the handcuffed girl blurt, “Ah shit,” behind me. Maybe she’d have to stick her face in that pie, after all.
The men’s room (“Pointers”) was another small single-stool affair, but I knew that. I was not a regular here by any means, having only stopped at the Log Cabin twice since coming to the area; but I remembered the window, and the briefcase and I went out it.
DeWayne was behind the wheel, keeping loyal if pointless watch when I slipped in on the passenger side, the briefcase handle in my left hand and the nine millimeter in my right.
The gun was low, in my lap, as I pointed it up at the oval, unformed face.
His eyes were light blue and wide as hell when he looked at me, and then down into the dark unfathomable eye of the automatic’s snout.
“Fuck a duck,” he said.
His voice was on the high side, about a second tenor; but at least he didn’t squeak.
I asked him, “Are you going to make me kill you, DeWayne?”
His eyelashes, which were long and oddly feminine, fluttered. “No. Hell no!”
He put his hands up, shoulder high.
“Put those down,” I told him.
He did.
He seemed a little hurt-here he’d been trying to cooperate and voluntarily raised his hands, and all he got for it was a sharp rebuke. It’s a tough world, DeWayne.
I gestured with the nine. “Now put your weapon and your cell phone, pager, keys, anything in your pockets, on the seat here between us.”
DeWayne carried that out-his gun was a glock-and he was about done when I asked, “What branch?”
He frowned, parsing that, then said, “Marines.”
That got a dry chuckle out of me. “Semper fi, Mac.”
