Authors: Max Allan Collins
“Thank you,” he said, getting up unsteadily. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.. . .”
And he scrambled to his feet and careened off toward the parking lot. It’s hard getting your footing after somebody has hit you in the head with a hammer three times.
Dixie was wasting no time mourning her husband. All her energy was focused on hating me. Her hands were fists now.
“
Killian
sent you,” she said.
“Well, it wasn’t Kilroy.”
A car engine started. Wheels spat gravel. The little salesman was on his way somewhere else.
Without taking my eyes off her, I picked up the hammer.
That gave her a start. She may not have known the term, but she was clearly thinking poetic justice might be about to come her way.
“What are you going to do?” she spat. But there was fear in her bloodshot eyes. “
Kill
me with it?”
“What am I, a psychopath?”
And shot her in the head.
By eleven-thirty the next morning, I was back in Biloxi at the Tropical.
The three very sharp lightweight black suits and six silk ties had been delivered, the latter on the dresser, the former neatly hanging in the closet in a garment bag. After a shit and a shower, I was a new man, particularly once I’d tried on one of the suits. No shirts had been provided, but a light-blue one I’d brought with me worked well with a tie alternating two darker shades of blue.
The shoulder-holstered nine millimeter under my left arm did not bulge at all. I hadn’t worn it for the fitting at Godchaux’s, where apparently the tailor knew ahead to allow for it. Impressive a couple of ways.
In addition to the new threads, a message was waiting for me, indicated by the bedside phone’s flashing light. The hotel switchboard operator read it to me: “Welcome home. Report in at one o’clock. JK.”
At the connecting door between my room and Luann’s, I knocked. She spoke through it: “Yes?”
“Need you for a second.”
She opened the door and stood framed there. She’d been showering, too, and had a towel tied around her waist, leaving her bare-breasted like a native girl in a
National Geographic
.
“Well, look at you,” she said, her hands on her hips, her perfect bare B cups staring at me as intently as the baby blues.
“Same back at you,” I said. “You want lunch? I don’t have to go to work till one.”
“Sure. I should put somethin’ on.”
“Why not?”
We took the same booth at The Dockside, where business was a little better than the last time we’d been here, thanks to businessmen having multiple-martini lunches. Luann was wearing her back-up coed clothes from Gayfer’s—a white shirt-style top with a floral explosion of colors, yellow short-shorts, plus the open-toed cork-heeled shoes again.
She ordered a pulled-pork sandwich and iced tea, and I had a fish sandwich basket. I was drinking Coke but she’d got a Tab, a nod toward the stripper’s regimen I’d talked her into otherwise ignoring.
“I haven’t seen you drink,” I said, hunching over to make sure I didn’t get tartar sauce on my fancy suit.
She sipped the Tab. She had barbecue sauce on her pretty face. “Sure you have.”
“I mean, anything alcoholic. Or is that part of your diet?”
The sunlight from the window did nice things to her hair. “I never touch anythin’ like that.”
“Why?”
“That shit killed my mother.”
“Oh. So how about drugs?”
“No thanks.”
“No, I mean, do you smoke at all?”
“Cigarettes cause cancer.”
“I mean the
other
smoke.”
She shook her head and the blondeness shimmered. “My girlfriends, my roommates? They do grass all the time. I don’t like the smell.”
“I’m not a smoker or drinker either. I guess we’re just a couple of health nuts.”
She shrugged, spoke through a mouthful of pork. “I guess.”
“What do you do for fun, Luann?”
“TV. Movies.”
“You got a boyfriend?”
She made a face. “I get enough of that at work.”
“So. . .do you and your girlfriends. . .?”
“Get it on? No. Well,
they
do. They’re lezzies. Each his own.”
“How long have you been working?”
She frowned in thought, finally cleaning barbecue sauce off her face with a cloth napkin. “Hookin’ or strippin’?”
“Hooking.”
“Since I was thirteen. No. . .twelve.”
“Twelve.” I had encountered my share of fucked-up shit, but this was right in there.
She shrugged. “My boobies come in early. Never got much
bigger
, but I got ’em.”
Whoever had turned her out at that age could use a beating and a bullet. But that was a long time ago, and not my business.
Of course nothing about her life was my business, except that in a way it was. I was trying to size her up. To understand her. If she’d seen what I did last night, that would have made her a witness. Which really sucked. What had I been thinking?
I heard myself ask, “You a runaway?”
She shook her head and the blonde hair danced on her shoulders. “No.”
“Then how did you come in contact with a pimp?”
“Didn’t.”
“How
did
you start?”
“You’re awful curious today.”
I had another bite of my sandwich. “Just interested, Luann. Who put you on the game?”
“I been with Mr. Woody for like. . .forever.”
“
He
turned you out?”
She thought about that. Nibbled a French fry dipped in barbecue sauce. “Not really. See, my mom sold me to Mr. Woody.”
“Sold you?”
“Yeah. She was running a house for him. He paid big money for me.” Then she did the damnedest thing: she grinned at me. First time. “I guess they never heard of Abe Lincoln.”
I put my half-eaten sandwich down. Takes something special to get to me, but this one turned my stomach.
I pretended it hadn’t, and sipped Coke. “What do you do with your money? Mr. Woody
does
pay you. . .?”
“Sure he does. I’m not that big a slave. He’s paid me all along.”
“So what do you do with your money?”
“Save it.”
“What for?”
“Tomorrow.” She frowned in thought again. “Not
tomorrow
tomorrow, but for. . .sometime.”
I signed the check to my room, and as we walked back, she did something even odder than grin at me: she slipped her hand in mine.
“You’re nice,” she said. “Or am I over the line?”
“Not at all.”
I guessed if blowing me within an hour of meeting me hadn’t been over the line, neither was this.
I said, “Well, I like you, too, Luann.”
“I don’t mean anythin’ drippy.”
She even
sounded
young.
She went on: “I just think you’re nice. Because, what you did last night? That was totally awesome.”
I didn’t know what she meant, or maybe I was afraid I did. After what went down at the Dixie Club, I’d joined her in the car, from which she shouldn’t have been able to see anything. We had driven back to Memphis and she’d been very quiet, sitting with her seat belt off and hugging her legs, heels of her feet on the Mustang’s bucket seat. No radio, but also no conversation. The ninety-minute drive had been surreal, as we wove through a ghostly moon-swept night haunted by kudzu beasts. If that weren’t frightening enough, we’d stayed at the airport Motel 6. There we’d shared a bed, but no conversation.
In the morning, I’d used a rubber (as was my habit with her) for some missionary sex, which proved fast, athletic and draining. She had a way of extracting a fuck out of a guy the way a dentist does a tooth.
Still, she’d seemed fine on the plane coming back. Or anyway she’d seemed that same painfully pretty shapely little thing with a hidden interior life.
We were at my motel room door. I had to ask. “What was so ‘awesome’ about it?”
She glanced to her right and her hair swung left. She glanced to her left and her hair swung right. Then she looked up at me and there was life in the eyes and she was smiling. “The way you saved that poor little man.
That
was awesome.”
Then she got on her toes and kissed me lightly on the mouth. We’d had various kinds of sex any number of times, but this was the first kiss. She dropped back down on the soles of her feet, or anyway those cork heels, got her room key from a little leather purse, dangled it at me, and hustled to the next door down and went in, tossing me a little smile first.
Shit.
* * *
Once again, I was ushered into Jack Killian’s office in his top-floor Tropical living quarters. This time he got up behind his aircraft-carrier desk and extended a hand for me to shake. I did so, and settled into one of two comfy waiting visitors’ chairs as he returned to his swivel one.
His smile was an angular thing that emphasized the oddly Asian cast of the eyes in that pale handsome oblong oval. Black hair brushed back, in a fresh dark Italian suit with a pale yellow shirt and gold tie, he looked like something from a European issue of
GQ
.
Or maybe the Asp in
Little Orphan Annie
.
“The suit suits you,” he said, nodding toward my new duds.
“Your other guys,” I said, risking a smile, “seem to be in off-the-rack numbers. Why do I rate tailoring?”
The remark pleased him. He rocked gently, elbows close to his sides, fingers tented. “Because I have big things in mind for you, Mr. Quarry. One meeting with you and I
knew
I had found just the man I needed.”
“Hope I don’t disappoint.”
He stopped rocking and his eyes met mine head-on. “You have already handily proven yourself. Since you’ve been in transit, you may not have seen or read any of the news.”
“No. I don’t suppose the war is over.” Or maybe they’d finally cancelled
Gunsmoke
.
“If you mean Vietnam, no. But I think you may have averted a potential
other
war. Josie ‘Dixie’ Dixon and her husband Randolph, and one of their employees, whose name escapes me, were shot and killed last night outside their club near Selmer, Tennessee. Nothing much more has been made public thus far, other than a recap of their colorful history and the various charges and rumors that have swirled about their notorious enterprise.”
“Did you want details of. . .?”
“No. I don’t want to know.”
“Okay.”
“But I’m taking back-to-back meetings this afternoon, Mr. Quarry—the first will begin any moment now—and your presence may be helpful. . .to you and me both. These individuals are quite used to my having a bodyguard at such meetings, so you being here will raise no questions. Or hackles.”
I shrugged a well-tailored shoulder. “Okay. Do you mind my asking what my usual duties will be?”
He nodded, and now his hands were folded on his desk, as if he were about to say grace. “I don’t mind at all, but understand—you won’t be joining my staff here in the suite.”
“No?”
“No. Oh, you’ll stay here at the Tropical, for now at least, and be on call for special instances that may, that
will
, come up.”
“Fine.”
“You see, whenever I leave this well-armed cocoon of mine to go out—whether for business or relaxation—I don’t carry a large retinue. It sends the wrong signals.”
“I get that.”
He flipped a hand. “But I always travel with a driver and a bodyguard. Since you aren’t familiar with this area, you are obviously not suited for chauffeur service. You’ll act as my bodyguard. I need a deadly individual for that.”
“Cool.”
“My life, Mr. Quarry, will be in your capable hands.”
“I’m up for that.”
He twitched a smile. “There’s a manila envelope waiting for you at the desk. Be sure to pick it up.”
“I will.”
What was that about?
A knock came and Killian said, “Yes?”
The door cracked open and the watchdog with the close-set eyes stuck his head in, like a jack-in-the-box. “The sheriff is here.”
That got my attention.
“Send him in,” Killian said, almost cheerfully. He gestured for me to move my chair and myself off to one side, which I did.
The man who entered was not in uniform, although he did have a big automatic on his hip and a Stetson-with-badge in his right hand. A tan heavyset six footer in a crisp brown suit with dark brown tie, he looked the part, uniform or no. His bucket head was home to short, neatly combed steel-gray hair, prominent ears, a broad flattened nose, and a wide, fleshy mouth.
“Jack,” the sheriff said, in a raspy tenor that did not suit the rest of the picture, nodding, smiling, to his host.
“Jeff,” Killian acknowledged, then gestured toward me. “This is my new man, John Quarry. Mr. Quarry, this is our good friend Sheriff Jefferson Davis Delmar.”
I didn’t know whether that “our” was editorial or if I was being included in this friendship.
Already on my feet, I said, “Sheriff,” and offered my hand, which he shook and squeezed, trying too hard.
He took the remaining visitor’s chair opposite Killian, then jerked a thumb my way. “Am I free to talk in front of Mr. Quarry here?”
“You are. He’s a direct referral from Woodrow.”
“Ah.” The sheriff turned to give me a nod. Then back to Killian: “I suppose you’ve heard about the trouble up at the state line.”
Killian’s face registered nothing. “Yes. Tragic. But who was it said, ‘Whatever one sows, so shall he reap?’ ”
“God or some shit,” the sheriff said with a shrug. He was turning his Stetson in big blunt hands. “I have to ask you, Jack, in my official capacity—did you have anything to do with this thing?”
“I did not.”
“And you don’t know who did?”
“No idea.”
The big head nodded twice. The Stetson kept turning like a wheel in the thick hands. “Now. I am gonna ask again, off the record, as a friend and business associate. Jack, did you have anything to do with this?”
“No.”
“Any idea who did?”
“None.” Killian’s slash of a mouth did its imitation of a smile as he opened a palm in the direction of the liquor cart. “Could I interest you in a drink, Jeff? I think you could stand to relax some.”
The sheriff gave the army of bottles a greedy look, then shook his head, saying, “Appreciate the offer, but I best keep the old noggin clear today. Lot of pressure comin’ down, Jack, from press and citizenry. . .and do I have to tell you? The mayor’s office.”