Quarry in the Black Read Free Page B

beating the campus bushes, hoping the anti-war youth will create a November surprise.”
    “And Lloyd is part of that.”
    “Yes. But he won’t be part of any November surprise.”
    “Probably not. Nixon’s the one.”
    “That’s not what I refer to, Quarry.”
    “What
do
you refer to?”
    “The October surprise you’ll give him.”

TWO
    Getting to St. Louis took a little over seven hours. I left around noon, the day after the Broker came calling, going by way of Route 47, I-55 and Route 66 (no sign of Tod and Buz).
    I’d have made it in maybe an hour less if I hadn’t stopped in Chicago to buy a used cobalt-blue Chevy Impala SS for fifteen hundred cash—a sweet ride with enough muscle for getaway contingencies, and an eight-track to accommodate my Doors, Badfinger and Rolling Stones tapes. My green Opel GT I parked in an extended-stay lot near O’Hare Airport. These things take time, particularly if you catch a meal and take a shit.
    I had an address for Boyd’s lookout on East Euclid in the Central West End of St. Louis, but also a phone number. I called that first from a booth at a gas station on the outskirts. It took only three rings.
    “…yes?” came Boyd’s hesitant, breathy baritone.
    “Me. Fancy. Got a phone and everything, huh?”
    “It’s not a tin can with a string. Man, this is one sweet pad. Wait’ll you see it. Rivals Cleveland, if you can believe that.”
    “I’m maybe fifteen minutes out, but I don’t know St. Louis. Talk me in.”
    “Where you calling from?”
    I told him and he gave me directions.
    In twenty minutes I was on East Euclid in a lively area of bars, restaurants, clubs, boutiques, head shops and what have you. Not surprisingly, St. Louis was warmer than Paradise Lake, Wisconsin. I was in blue jeans and a black Levi’s sweatshirt under a brown corduroy jacket with fake fleece lining and collar, the latter almost too warm here. If so, I had a windbreaker in my suitcase for fallback.
    A brick building, with Boyd on the second of three floors over a hippie-ish dress shop, was across from a storefront with
    ST. LOUIS CIVIL RIGHTS COALITION
    in white letters on windows through which a now-empty warren of desks could be glimpsed between plastered campaign posters: TOGETHER FOR McGOVERN, McGOVERN—TELLS IT LIKE IT IS, COME HOME AMERICA—McGOVERN/SHRIVER , and a red-white-and-blue hand making the two-finger peace symbol above the words McGOVERN ’72 .
    Where were the anti-war candidates when I needed them?
    Tricky Dick was always flashing that two-finger gesture, too—that blue-jawed square was hip enough to figure out that kids would read it as peace and grown-ups as victory. I wouldn’t vote for that prick for dog catcher, but you had to give it to him.
    I left the Impala in a graveled recession behind the building; I might have gone up the stairs to the rear deck, but Boyd had advised coming around front. So my small suitcase and I did that, stopping at a doorway between the hippie dress shop and a bar where a band was playing “Magic Carpet Ride,” badly. The smell of burgers cooking said there’d be food handy. That was good.
    The neighborhood itself appeared to be a white one, but not so white that Reverend Raymond Lloyd couldn’t set up shop here. And I’d bet college kids and young singles of both races were mingling in these bars and clubs. Girls were always trying to prove how unprejudiced they were, and also to see if what they heard about black guys was true.
    I went up carpeted stairs to a landing with a yellow light giving the place jaundice. Only one apartment here, though the stairs went on up, presumably to another. I knocked softly.
    A few seconds and Boyd’s voice came, as soft as my knock. “Yes?”
    “Me,” I said.
    The door had no peephole but it did have a nightlatch, and he cracked the door and peered over the chain, making sure. His flat, scarred face looked up at me—he was maybe five-six, offset by his broad-shouldered frame. His hair