“Does she live with him out at the plantation? Or maybe up in his Hefner hideout upstairs?”
“No. She’s from River Bluff. Another of these community college girls, if you can believe it.”
I didn’t, actually.
“Excuse me,” I said, and smiled at her, and she gave me a curious look that I let hang.
When I got to the parking lot, Chrissy was pulling out in a red Firebird convertible with a crysee vanity plate- Illinois, not Iowa, where the community college was. I moved toward my lesser Pontiac, but didn’t run or anything.
Pretty sure I knew where she was headed.
Chapter Ten
At a quarter till eight or so, the Lucky Devil parking lot wasn’t close to full. This was a Friday, and one of their big nights, but the Lucky was chiefly an after-hours joint, so Chrissy had no problem finding a parking spot near the building.
I took a space in the row behind her, shut off the engine and sat in the dark watching her, trying to figure out what the fuck to do. Tailing Chrissy’s Firebird to the Lucky hadn’t allowed a stopover at the Wheelhouse motel to grab my spare nine millimeter.
So I didn’t have a gun on me. And I didn’t have a plan. All I had was my brute strength, and we’ve seen how well that had served me in this venue…
Well, maybe I had a vague plan.
The Lucky Devil parking lot was about as handy as a pair of gloves with two lefts-the three doors facing the lot all were exit only: that one off the soundproofed private poker room, another off the casino, and one with FIRE EXIT ONLY written on it for the strip club.
To gain entry, you had to cut over to the sidewalk and walk around the building, or cut through the alley where not long ago I’d had so much fun. I figured to watch Chrissy and follow her on whichever path she chose, and intercept her before she could go in, only fuck me sideways- she was heading for the casino exit!
And now she was knocking on the thing…
It must have taken a while for the bouncer to climb down off his perch and answer her insistent pounding. He was unfamiliar to me, a bushy-brown-bearded bruiser bursting his black Lucky Devil polo with both muscles and fat, and he was not happy to be disturbed.
Finally emerging from her self-absorbed stupor, Chrissy was animated, words and spittle flying out of her. The bearded guy scowled, nodded, but shut the door on her. She dug into her little pink purse and got out some cigarettes and was lighting up when I grabbed her.
“Let’s talk,” I said, and the cigarette hit the gravel as I pulled her by the arm toward my car. The night was unseasonably chill, and her nipples were erect under the t-shirt, but for some reason that just annoyed me. Her expression was a hissing cat’s, but she was too thrown to do much about it.
Still, the parking lot was lighted, if half-heartedly, and my actions were right out there for the world to see. Several patrons, groups of guys, a couple of couples, some girl duos, were laughing and making their way toward the Lucky from their various cars, but nobody thought twice about some jackass dragging a protesting girl along. Again, just that kind of town…
“You fucker! ” she said, her upper lip curling back. “You’re in trouble! ”
We were to the car now, and she started to scream, and I slapped her. The sound rang in the open air like a gunshot. She gave me a look that wondered how I could be such a brute to a beautiful girl like her.
“Shut up,” I told her. “I’d rather kill you than fuck you.”
She had a hand to her red-blossoming cheek, but that statement crinkled her forehead as her brain tried to process it.
I had her wrist in one hand and used my other to work the key in the trunk. The lid opened and I nodded toward the yawning space.
“Get in,” I said.
“Fuck you,” she said. But quietly.
“We need to talk, but here is not good. I won’t hurt you if you behave. Get in.”
By the way, I’d driven the Sunbird over to River Bluff on Wednesday, to give it a thorough cleaning, not that it would have fooled any forensics experts. But at least it wasn’t blood-crustedly awful in there. I’m not that big a monster.
Anyway, she was crawling in, frowning, but more confused than afraid, when a hand grabbed my arm, and it was the bearded bouncer.
“ That’s not nice,” he said, and head-butted me.
If I’d had the time for a thought, it would have been: This is what happens, going around unarmed.
But I didn’t have the time.
When I woke up, I was lying on my back and looking up at ceiling tile.
“Little early for the game, aren’t you, Jack?”
I knew the voice: Jerry G’s.
And by now I knew where I was-supine, with my knees up, on one of the room-length built-in couches in the Lucky Devil’s private poker room with its creamcolor carpeted floor and walls. I could feel the adhesive strip across my mouth, and more of it was around my wrists-silver duct tape-and more yet around my ankles above my running shoes.
“Only it isn’t ‘Jack,’ is it? It’s Quarry. What kind of name is that? Some kind of hired gun, aren’t you? Working for Needle-Dickie Cornell?”
I didn’t answer, because I couldn’t. Anyway, these were rhetorical questions, or at least ones that Jerry G already knew the answers to: his little yellow-permed spy with the red Firebird had told him.
Most conversations between Cornell and me that might have been heard by Chrissy in part, or even in whole, had been somewhat elliptical. Only that had changed this evening with our most recent conversation, which had spelled it out so well that Jerry G didn’t need to hear about it from me.
And, of course, Chrissy’s spying ways explained how Jerry G had known I was an interloper at the Lucky Devil, a Cornell infiltrator at his card game, and arranged to have me beaten and maybe killed, if my mobile-home angel hadn’t come along to save my ass.
Somehow I didn’t think she’d come flying in to whisk me to safety this time.
Jerry G and I were not alone in the room. Two bouncers were also present-the big bald black guy, and the bearded bruiser who had head-butted me. The black guy had an automatic stuffed in his waistband-a nine millimeter, I thought, but not a Browning like mine. Smith and Wesson maybe. The bearded guy had a Mad Max- style sawed-off shotgun in one beefy fist. He had too much belly for a gun to fit in his belt. Did I mention he was wearing amber goggle-type sunglasses? In fucking doors? Should be a capital crime.
As for my host, in a gray silk jacket over a black t-shirt with gold-chain necklaces and stonewashed blue jeans, he didn’t appear to be armed-the jacket was open and no weapon showed in his waistband, nor any telltale bulge under either arm.
So all I had to deal with were a measly nine mil and a sawed-off. And a couple yards of duct tape. Piece of cake.
“You don’t look the part,” Jerry G said.
His horsey features had a dreamy cast, and I figured this was as philosophical a soliloquy as I could ever expect from him, even if I’d had a future.
He was saying, “You don’t look tough. You don’t seem like a psycho. Maybe that’s how you stayed alive this long. But you know what they say-all good things must come to an end, you motherfucking prick.”
He brought his elbow down into my nuts, like a wrestler faking a nasty blow, the kind that misses and jolts the canvas, only he wasn’t faking and he didn’t miss.
The pain was so intense, I saw flashing red and yellow stars, not cute cartoon ones, rather exploding ruptures, like the Fourth of July going off inside your skull. I’d heard Jerry G was a hothead, but he hadn’t shown that side to me, leaving it to his boys to teach me that lesson in the alley the other day.
