terribly good one) and she divorced me. Hey, she had grounds.
The first week I was in that little two-room shithole, my old man came out from Ohio and looked me up. We’d had a pretty good relationship over the years; I’d lettered in swimming in high school and that had pleased him (he’d been an athlete in college). I maintained a B average and I didn’t get any girls pregnant, which was the very definition of a good kid. He was out of town on business a lot, so we weren’t maybe as close as some fathers and sons. But we didn’t hate each other, like a lot of my friends and their dads.
He’d hit a bad slump around 1967 in his business-he had a little real estate agency-and that had made putting me through college a non-starter. He advised me to enlist and then I’d have Uncle Sam’s help with college, and that seemed like a good idea at the time.
Anyway, he knew about the trouble I’d been in, even though it didn’t hit the national press, and came to see me with a very special message: “Don’t come home.” He would have been cool with it, but my stepmother (a wealthy widow he’d snagged who’d made his business worries go away) had found me off-putting even before I started kicking jacks out.
“You’re a man,” he’d said. “You understand about women.”
I almost said, Why don’t you reflect on my current situation, Dad, and see if you still think I understand about women. But I didn’t.
“I just want you to know,” he said right before he departed my fleabag Shangri-la, “I’m proud of what you did in the service of your country.”
So killing a bunch of Cong who were strangers to me, squeezing off rounds and shattering and splattering their noggins like melons at target practice back home, that was fine, that made sense. Killing that prick Williams, who had needed killing, who I had a reason for killing, that was wrong.
That may have been when the gears shifted in my skull and made me view things from my own admittedly off-kilter perspective. Society sanctioned killing strangers in war, but didn’t like it when you took out some bastard you knew who richly deserved it. To me that’s hypocritical, but what the hell, that’s just my take on it.
So the Broker.
He knocked on my door. At that stage in my existence, I didn’t even bother to take a gun with me. This joint couldn’t afford peepholes, either, so I just opened the door and there he stood, an apparition of success: six two and broad-shouldered, with stark-white hair made starker by a tropical tan and a gray double-knit suit and a darker stripes of gray tie, as distinguished as a guy in a bourbon ad in Playboy.
He called me “Mister,” and used my real name, which is none of your fucking business. He had the damnedest face, too young for the white hair, long and fleshy but largely unlined, and his eyes were light blue, like arctic waters, or anyway like I figured arctic waters would look.
I do remember he said, “I have an unusual opportunity for you, Mr.. A money-making opportunity.”
And I remember my answer: “Amway’s not my thing, Mac. Try next door. There’s a hooker with some real sales experience.”
But he talked his way in, and we sat at the little scarred-up table where I had my TV dinners and the rum I was mixing with Coca-Cola, a twelve-ounce can of Coke lasting longer than a bottle of Bacardi.
I took him for forty, despite the white hair, but came to find out fifty was more like it. He had the manner of a well-heeled lawyer or maybe a politician, and I do recall he began with a fairly lengthy diatribe on how poorly I’d been treated by, well, just about everybody-my wife, the press, the legal system, even my family, and how the hell did he know that?
Another thing I remember is the chill I felt, when I realized this guy had researched me. Who was I, for anybody to look into me? But the Broker had it all down, chapter and verse, and now it gets vague in my memory. He didn’t come straight out and ask me if I was interested in killing people for hire, of course not; it was more like, How would you like to make real money at home doing what you did for almost no money overseas?
Looking back, I was ripe for the Broker. I might have gone in any direction about then. Maybe if that had been Amway at the door, or the Jehovah’s Witnesses, I’d have gone off into some other form of lunacy. But it was the Broker who caught me at just the right time, thank God.
And, anyway, Amway or the Witnesses wouldn’t have offered me an advance of fifty thousand dollars. That was attractive to a guy living in two dingy rooms. So was the notion that half a dozen jobs a year would bring in another fifteen thousand or so; and when the fifty K had earned out (I’d be getting only half of each fee till it was), I’d be at thirty a year, minimum. The average yearly income for an honest man was under ten grand.
I would have a bogus job to pay taxes for, though I wouldn’t have to record my real income, the bulk of which would be in cash. I would be a salesman with a sample case and could even call on clients if need be, to establish a cover. My wares? Lingerie. That made the Broker smile, and I smiled, too, but just to be nice.
The Broker, you see, was “a sort of an agent,” a middleman in the murder business, insulation between client and killer. I would not know the client’s name, and the client would not know mine.
That had been two months ago. In the meantime I had bought a house, a little pre-fab A-frame cottage on a small lake in Wisconsin. When summer rolled around, that lake would be nice to swim in, but in the meantime I joined the YMCA at nearby Lake Geneva, and swam every day. It was my only exercise and perhaps my only passion. It relaxed me, and helped me think, when I was so inclined, but didn’t demand it of me, if I wasn’t.
The A-frame was perfect for my needs. This particular lake was underdeveloped and I had a lot of privacy, though I anticipated the warm months would be anything but private. On the other hand, that Lake Geneva was a vacation area suited me. I liked the idea of having access to good-looking college girls who could come and go. I got a kick out of the Playboy Club, and would dress up a little and get that James Bond vibe on, Bunnies dipping to serve up a drink and a view of the hills of heaven, name entertainers taking the stage, and the food a big step up from what I could rustle up for myself.
Life at the A-frame was dull and that suited me fine. I had television, although the reception was poor and I would eventually have to put in an antenna half the size of the place, and I liked to read, Harold Robbins and paperback westerns and science fiction, mostly, nothing heavy. I was living a life of leisure and started thinking the Broker was just this crazy asshole who went around spreading demented stories and piles of cash. Like that guy on TV when I was a kid-the Millionaire. Writes you a check and then disappears. Cool.
But the Broker didn’t disappear. He called and summoned me; I felt like I’d been tapped for jury duty.
I had a little green Opel GT that had cost me about four grand of that fifty Broker had given me, and I drove it to the Iowa/Illinois Quad Cities, specifically Davenport, where as per instructions I checked into a ten-story hotel called the Concort Inn near the government bridge. The Broker either owned the place or had a piece of the action-at least that was my theory. Because he seemed to feel perfectly comfortable meeting with me openly at the hotel, even housing me there.
I liked the hotel. The room I’d been provided was spacious, nicely furnished in an anonymous modern way, with a view of the Mississippi River where you could see the other cities across the way. The television reception was outstanding, and the room service wasn’t bad, either. The swimming pool was medium-size and the water was too warm, but nice to have, anyway.
You might think the Broker would come to my room to confab, but on this occasion, at least, he had me meet him in the lounge downstairs, a Gay ‘90s-theme bar with a modest nightclub-style dance floor and stage. At 3:30 p.m., the place was closed and we had the whole room to ourselves, just us and the gaudy San Francisco whorehouse decor. Broker was already ensconced in a red faux-leather button-tufted booth, his double-knit suit tan, his wide silk tie shades of tan and brown.
He was organized, the Broker. A pot of coffee for him and a glass of ice with two bottles of Coke waiting at my seat. The bottles were unopened, but of course an opener on a napkin was nearby. On Broker’s side of the table, a pack of Viceroys and a gold Zippo and an ashtray were poised for his use.
The baritone was warm and mellow: “Accommodations suit you, Quarry?”
That was the name Broker had started calling me. Whether it was a first name or last never came up- but the Broker was usually polite, so the absence of a “mister” in front of it may have indicated first. I had a feeling it was a sort of code name for the Broker, who did have a cute streak-a single-o, like Liberace or Tarzan or Cher.
Or Broker.
“Swell,” I said. “Pretty nice hotel, considering the neighborhood.”
A seedy warehouse district was nearby.
The Broker shrugged. “The traffic flow is ideal, and with the bridge right here? People who come to the Cities with business to do at the Arsenal find it most convenient.”
