Quarry's Deal by Max Allan Collins Page B

around the block to watch her come down from her apartment, out the door by the rundown storefront, get in her Corvette across the street at the curb, and take off.
    I hadn’t been surprised. I’d spotted her watching Tree that first night at the Barn, and figured she wasn’t watching him because she had the hots for him, either, though he was handsome enough. I knew even then he was her target, but I needed more.
    Friday night I got it. She was watching him even closer now, didn’t miss a move he made. What she was doing wouldn’t begin to show to the casual observer, but I’ve done that kind of watching myself, and had no trouble picking up on it. In fact I was watching her that way; I could risk it, since she knew I had the hots for her.
    She had begged off that night, saying she had promised that girl friend of hers they’d get together for a drink at one of their apartments, after the Barn closed, and I’d be bored silly by all that girl talk anyway, so . . .
    So I complied. It was fine with me. I was planning to beg off myself. I had other things to do.
    Such as keep watching her. I still had that rental Ford, and followed her from the Barn to a place on University in Des Moines, not far from the Holiday Inn where I was staying. It was a dinner theater, a big brick two-story building with a block of parking lot and a billboard of a sign saying Candle Lite Playhouse, with the name of the current production ( Born Yesterday ) beneath. The parking lot was nearly empty; one of the handful of cars was Tree’s LTD. Soon Tree could be seen coming out of the theater in the company of a stacked little blonde in work clothes, who kissed his cheek and scurried back in the building, while Tree reluctantly headed for his LTD and drove to the Town Crest.
    Today, in the morning, I repeated my parking lot vigil, but only long enough to determine those binoculars were still poised in her window; and then I drove back to the car rental people and let them have their Ford back.
    “You want to tell me about it?” she said.
    “About what?”
    “About what. About what happened to you. About the fucking glass I picked out of your face.”
    “Somebody hit me with a lamp. And before that they hit me with something else. Feel the top of my head if you don’t believe me.”
    “That’s some goose egg you got there, pardner.”
    “You’re telling me. Got any aspirin?”
    “Yeah. But I also got better than that.”
    And she sat in my lap and put her tongue in my mouth.
    “They always tell you to take two,” I said.
    “Sometimes three.”
    And we necked for a while, and she said, “So tell me.”
    “I came upstairs and it was dark on the landing and a guy jumped me. When I came to they shined light in my face and hit me with the lamp. They asked me some questions, too, I think.”
    “They?”
    “Two of ’em. I only heard one talk, though.”
    “Any idea who they were?”
    “No.”
    “Any idea why they did it?”
    “No.”
    “Your wallet’s empty. Maybe that’s why.”
    “Yeah. Could be. I been winning at the Barn.”
    “How much?”
    “Couple hundred a night, on the average.”
    “Three nights. Six hundred bucks. Where’d you have it?”
    “In the wallet.”
    “All of it.”
    “All of it.”
    “You’re not the smartest guy I ever met.”
    “Really? Name somebody smarter.”
    “The retarded kid in the plumbing joint downstairs.”
    “Name another.”
    “You got me. Hey. Who are you, anyway, Jack?”
    “Nobody. I used to be a salesman. I’m unemployed right now.”
    “What did you used to sell?”
    “Ladies underwear. The bottom fell out of the bra market.”
    “Aren’t you good at anything but selling underwear?”
    “Good at cards.”
    “You aren’t trying to land a seat at the Barn, are you?”
    “I don’t know. You think maybe I should hit that guy Tree for one?”
    There wasn’t a flicker of anything in those almond eyes of hers. You think maybe I should hit that guy Tree . . . but not a