Authors: Max Allan Collins
“What does that have to do with the services we perform for him?”
The Broker was facing the lake but his eyes were closed now. “He has decided, Mr. Colton informs me, that he will henceforth handle all necessary liquidations ‘within house.’ That is certainly his privilege. I hold no long-term contracts with anyone.”
It seemed to me that every contract we handled was as about long-term as it got, but I let it go. Honestly, though, “henceforth”?
“I am viewed,” the Broker said, his eyes open now and on me, “as a loose end. The expression, however trite, remains apt: ‘
I know too much.
’ ”
And now so did I.
“So it’s Killian, then,” I said. “Point me.”
He shook his head, frowning. “It’s not that simple, nothing so straightforward. There’s a need for this to seem like something other than a simple hit.”
“I don’t do accidents.”
“No, I know, that requires special training, and gifts that are not among yours.” He had a healthy swig of beer. “No, I have something in mind for how this might be handled, but first it requires that you go. . .well, I suppose the term is ‘undercover.’ ”
“Come again?”
There was a twinkle in the gray eyes as he replied—a fucking twinkle, I swear. “Mr. Colton has agreed to help us remove Mr. Killian.”
“Could we skip the ‘misters’? We are talking about killing this prick. And what makes you think you can trust Colton?”
He batted that away. “I don’t think it’s a matter of the second-in-command wishing to stage a coup—more that Mr. Killian and his roughneck ways. . .no matter how well he may dress, and I understand he is quite the clotheshorse. . .is making enemies in certain Biloxi circles of power. His behavior is so outrageous and so damned grasping that the politicians would very much like to see him retire. Or I should say, ‘retired.’ ”
“A gold watch with a bullet through it.”
“Metaphorically correct.” He twisted toward me in the wooden chair and his hands were folded, resting against an arm of it. “There is an opening on Mr. Killian’s staff of bodyguards that Mr. Colton is in a position to arrange for you to fill. That will put you very close to Mr. Killian. Close enough for you to gain his trust, or at least his laxity.”
“Close enough to put out his lights.”
Short, quick nods. “But he is extremely well-insulated, and this must be accomplished in a manner that won’t embarrass or, worse, implicate Mr. Colton. Are you willing?”
“Like the Pope said on his death bed, why me?”
The Broker gestured in a slow-motion manner. “As it happens, you’ve never done a job in that colorful region. Never done a job emanating from that client. You are, after all, fairly new to the business.”
“Yeah, you can’t beat a fresh face. But what about the guys in the green Caddy the other night? You know, the one with the Mississippi plates?”
Both eyebrows went up, the white caterpillars on their hind legs again. “Well, one of them is quite dead, and the other was occupied, and probably got little more than a glimpse of you, if that, in that under-lit lot. Additionally, you were firing that weapon of yours, and I’m sure the orange flames it was spitting were a distraction.”
“They usually are. I don’t have to use a Southern accent or anything, do I?”
“No! You’ll be a damn Yankee, but one recommended by the Number Two in the organization. You’ll use ‘Quarry,’ and is ‘John’ all right for a first name?”
“Sure. Why not.”
He damn near beamed. Staying in the wooden deck chair, sticking his legs straight out, he dug in a pants pocket and withdrew a fat letter-sized envelope, folded over. “Here’s expense money, and a Michigan driver’s license.”
I took it. Two grand in hundreds, and a license with a picture of me—Broker had plenty of those from various states for this exact purpose.
But I frowned at him. “If you already had this ready, why ask if I was okay with ‘John’?”
“Why,” he asked, frowning back, “aren’t you all right with it?”
“No, that’s not the point. It’s just. . .skip it.”
My saying yes had brightened his mood considerably. “You’ll need to buy some new clothes with some of that. As I said, Killian is a clotheshorse and he expects his people to dress professionally. That money should also be plenty to front a plane ticket. Fly into somewhere other than Biloxi, New Orleans perhaps, and rent a car. You can use any of your current identities for those operations.”
There were many more details and we spoke into dusk. I invited him for a walleye dinner at Wilma’s Welcome Inn, but he passed. He had a long drive home ahead of him.
We shook hands just outside my front door and he was smiling as he walked briskly to the Lincoln. Behind the wheel, Roger gave me a nod. I didn’t return it.
I had a trip ahead of me, too.
I was fine with that—even if it was an unusual job that took me out of my element and meant I had to deal with people, which I didn’t love. But fifty grand was fifty grand. So heading South was no big deal.
As long as the job didn’t go south.
After getting in at New Orleans’ Moisant Field around two, I rented a cobalt-blue Chevelle SS, signing on for a week but guessing I’d need it longer. The brunette Southern belle at the Avis counter wore a jaunty company cap and sported an accent thicker than a bowl of grits. She understood Yankee fluently, however, and helped me out with several maps.
The drive to Biloxi on U.S. Highway 90 should take maybe an hour and a half, I figured. I could go by way of the new Interstate 10, but the Broker had recommended “the parallel scenic view,” which provided the benefit of taking me directly to the Biloxi Strip.
In a burgundy t-shirt and lightweight jeans, I’d braced myself for heat and humidity only to be greeted by a balmy seventy-five. I had a hunch this might be the last nice surprise of my trip. Barely out of the city, I stopped at a funky Cajun joint and chowed down on a plate of crawfish etouffee with a side of red beans and rice—I don’t eat on airplanes. Not
that
damn reckless.
Heading east, I left the windows down, and not just because I was farting—a Gulf breeze was whipping up a heady concoction of magnolias, wild grass and brine. You just knew you were somewhere else. The Chevelle performed fine, or anyway it did after I found a rock station—every radio pre-set was country western. You’d at least think there’d be some fucking Zydeco.
The countryside was lush and green and kudzu-heavy, when I wasn’t cruising through little towns where the major industry seemed to be poverty; new leaves reflected sunlight even as they provided a near tunnel of shade. Gulfport, of course, was no hamlet, offering up sandy-white beaches, fishing fleets, and white-columned antebellum mansions; and Biloxi itself had its share of the latter, too, with grounds arrayed with Spanish-moss-bearded oaks. But then I came upon a startling slice of surrealism: a dusty-looking Air Force jet on a pylon perched on the highway median like the discarded toy of a giant’s spoiled child.
Military boosterism, and a dewy-eyed respect for the Old South—that seemed to be Biloxi all over.
That and a tourist attraction of a narrow strip of white sand separating the four-lane blacktop from the blue-steel vastness of the Gulf of Mexico. No tourists right now, though. Like back home at Paradise Lake, Biloxi’s shore had that lovely lack of people—the smell of coconut butter had not yet impinged upon the salty air, the lawnmower churn of motorboats and jet skis nicely absent. And who needed girls in bikinis with what awaited along the highway?
On either side stood the shabby churches waiting to fleece their flock of sun worshipers—the Biloxi Strip. And so many denominations—bars, striptease clubs, Bonnie & Clyde motels, bars, fast-food franchise joints, striptease clubs, local crab shacks, bars, souvenir stands, and putt-putt golf. Also striptease clubs and bars. Or did I mention that?
On the north side of 90, Mr. Woody’s sat on its own parking lot, looking more like a warehouse than a nightclub, which wasn’t surprising because it had probably started out that way. A black sign on a rooftop pole said
MR. WOODY’S
in white letters with red polka dots in the
OO
’s. I’ll let you work out the symbolism of that. A white plastic marquee with black plastic letters above blacked-out double doors said:
TOPLESS
BOTTOMLESS
DRINKS
which struck me as ambiguous, and
PRIVATE DANCES
NO COVER
and that was ambiguous, too, don’t you think?
I went inside and a big guy on the door looked me over, decided not to card me, and as my eyes adjusted to the smoky dusk of the place, I said, “Appointment with Mr. Colton. Never been here before. Point the way?”
He was maybe six three and pushing three hundred pounds in a black t-shirt and black jeans, which weren’t all that slimming. Trimly brown-bearded with bored dark eyes that had seen everything twice, he had a couple of gold chains around the fat folds of his neck and his features had the blunt look of too much football.
“Stay put,” he said, higher-pitched than you’d think. Behind him on the wall was a house phone and he used it, saying, “Guy here, Mr. Woody. Appointment, he says.” He glanced at me. “Name?”
“Quarry,” I said.
He repeated it into the phone, hung up and pointed a thick finger into the darkness, where way across the cavernous red-carpeted room a black door could be made out with white letters saying
PRIVATE—NO ENTRY
. Another big guy in black was standing next to it, arms folded like a bored genie.
It was 4:35 in the afternoon but not really—I’d entered into the Vegas-like endless midnight of the strip-club world. Big as it was, Mr. Woody’s seemed bigger because of mirrored walls, which bounced around flashing blue and red lights from above, a pair of unblinking klieg lights at left and right crossing each other to hit the stage like a prison escape was in progress. The tables (black) were small but the chairs (red) were good-size with curving cushioned backs. A full bar at right sported several cute young female bartenders in tuxedo shirts and string ties and too much make-up, and weaving through the room were a couple of fetching waitresses in the same uniform, which included a black mini and black nylons.
Backed by a black curtain with the
MR. WOODY’S
logo, the main stage was just deep enough for a dancer to work the stripper pole, with a wide center runway into the audience, seating on either side, edged with flashing lights and a ledge for drinks. A smaller secondary stage, really just a platform with a stripper pole, was tucked away at left, not currently in use. The audience was entirely male, stopping off after work, both blue- and white-collar, and some young enlisted men from the Air Force base, still in uniform. The atmosphere could only have been smokier if the place was on fire. Gray and white tobacco-bred tendrils floated across the red and blue and white lighting like sleepy ghosts.
On stage was a small girl—and she was a girl, not a woman yet, possibly eighteen, though her hour-glass figure was timeless—with straight honey-blonde hair center-parted and cut off at her shoulders. Not really dancing, she was strutting around in clear plastic heels and moving her hands to “Fortunate Son” as it blared from high-mounted speakers. Out of the heels, she was probably five one or two at most, and her expression included a glazed smile and big glazed light-blue eyes as she gazed past her admirers into God knew what.
She was naked as the day she was born, but she hadn’t been born with those perfect tip-tilted handfuls or that generous golden-brown tuft. She did not seem at all self-conscious, though it was still somehow surprising when she began to sit in front of each ringside-seater to smile and spread her legs like “make a wish” and use plenty of fingers to show off the pink place where life begins.
The little blonde had gathered some wadded-up green and moved on to the next lover of modern dance when I approached the big guy in black at the door marked
PRIVATE
, who was expecting me. He had a shaved head and Tony Orlando’s mustache on loan.
“End of the hall,” he said.
He opened the door for me. I wouldn’t have expected less in such a classy place.
Several doors were on either side of the cream-color cement-block hallway. The one at the end said
MR. WOODY
. It also said:
PLEASE KNOCK
. Genteel way to put it.
So I knocked once, then said over the muffled sound of “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” out in the club, “Quarry, Mr. Colton!”
“Come on in!” came a jovial, husky mid-range voice.
I went in and found myself in a surprisingly small office, no bigger than a supermarket manager’s stuck on one side of his warehouse facilities. Maybe that’s what it had been once.
Right now the modest space was dominated by a big steel desk bookended by set-back steel file cabinets, with comfy-looking black-leather chairs for visitors and a matching couch squeezed in along the wall to my right and a small refrigerator and well-stocked liquor cart to my left. The walls were home to framed
MR. WOODY’S
posters featuring star strippers—Carol Doda, Candy Barr, Evelyn West, Chesty Morgan, Fanne Foxe—each warmly autographed to Mr. Woody (“You’re the best!” “Wotta man!” “I’m yours any ole time!”).
Speaking of Mr. Woody, he was rising behind that desk to offer me a hand to shake, grinning at me like I was an old war buddy suddenly dropped by. The effect of him was all eyes and teeth, the former magnified by the lenses of his big goggle-style tortoise-shell frames, the latter big and white and perfect, meaning he kept them in a glass at night. The eyes were hooded and hazel, his longish salt-and-pepper hair sprayed in place. A combover, I thought. He had sideburns, but nothing wacky.
Maybe fifty-five, he was around five-nine, darkly tan, stoop-shouldered with a paunch, in a pale pink short-sleeve shirt, a red-and-pink paisley tie, and red suspenders; his trousers were gray—had they been some other shade of red or pink, I might have bailed—and he looked like a used-car salesman or maybe a local politician.