Quarry in the Black Read Free Page A

semblance of humanity buried inside there.”
    “I thought I was carved out of rock.”
    He flipped a hand. “My first impression. Now I realize that you have standards. Perhaps even a code of sorts. In a world without meaning, that can come in handy. But it can also get in the way.”
    I raised both hands as if in surrender. “I’m not going to rat you out or anything, Broker. I just want to take a pass. No harm, no foul, remember?”
    He did something then that he had never done before. He called me by my real name, which let’s say is John, which it isn’t.
    “John,” he said. “I respectfully request that you set aside any compunctions about the killing of a good man. Raymond Wesley Lloyd is
not
a good man.”
    Why was it that assassins and their victims so often had three names?
    “Well, he looks pretty goddamn good to me,” I said, nodding toward the envelope. “Kill him if you want, just leave me out of it.”
    Maybe I wouldn’t have been so quick to turn down that kind of money if I hadn’t had a particularly good year. Biloxi had paid off very well, in ways the Broker wasn’t wholly aware of.
    Then something crawled up my spine.
    “Or,” I said, “have I just made myself a loose end? This
is
political, Broker. You fucking lied to me!”
    He shook his head and his voice turned calming. “No, I said there was a political aspect. I made that point quite clearly. Anyway, Reverend Lloyd may
present
himself as the logical replacement for Martin Luther King…and that the public currently perceives him as such certainly complicates matters…but I assure you he is made of more common clay than Reverend King.”
    At least the Broker didn’t add “may he rest in peace” after that.
    I was studying him. “How common a clay are we talking about?”
    A one-shoulder shrug. “His strident condemnations of drug use amongst the poorest of the black populace fall into the area of ‘methinks he doth protest too much.’ ”
    “Speak American.”
    “He retains connections, shall we say, to his roots—he is largely funded by white gangsters who run dope in the city that is his home base, St. Louis, Missouri. It’s a hypocritical front, yes, albeit a rather brilliant one—who would suspect when Raymond Wesley Lloyd takes his anti-drug message on the road, a core group within his organization is moving caches of the poison?”
    I was frowning. “So this is a mob hit?”
    The Broker recoiled. “Quarry, you know I can’t confirm or deny that. This may be an unusual job, but we must retain the compartmentalization that makes all of us safe.”
    “Yeah. Sorry. Okay.”
    One eyebrow went up. “Okay? Does that mean you accept the assignment?”
    “…I’m in.”
    He clapped once, like a pasha summoning a slave. “You’ve viewed the background material. Questions?”
    “Mostly just one,” I said. “What makes you think a white boy like me can just wander into a black activist HQ and pull up a chair? Blackface went out with Eddie Cantor.”
    He was shaking his head again. “You won’t be the only white face in the room. Civil Rights activism has always attracted young guilty liberals, particularly right now.”
    “Why right now?”
    Another smile. “Reverend Lloyd is in the midst of a tour of college campuses, working to get out the vote for George McGovern in the presidential race.”
    I opened my mouth but no words came out. Even a non-political type like me, who only caught the occasional newscast, was aware that Nixon was slaughtering McGovern in the polls, with the election just a few weeks away.
    He could tell what I was thinking and said, “Democrats and assorted left-wing rabble are holding out hope that the polls are wrong, or at least can be
made
to be wrong.”
    “Why? How?”
    He frowned. “Do you ever read a paper, Quarry? This is the first year that the under twenty-ones can vote. Right now various famous bleeding hearts—politicians, movie stars, folk singers, rock and rollers—are