Quarry's Choice Read Free Page A

okay.”
    I’d spotted a waiter with a dessert tray.
    The Broker gave a little bow and did that Arab hand roll thing like he was approaching a pasha. Jesus, this guy. “It would be my pleasure, Quarry. There is a quite delicious little hot-fudge sundae we make here, with local ice cream. Courtesy of the Lagomarcino family.”
    “Didn’t I do one of them in Chicago last September?”
    “Uh, no. Different family. Similar name.”
    “Rose by any other.”
    Knowing I planned to book it after the meal, I had already stowed my little suitcase in the back seat of my Green Opel GT out in the parking lot.
    So in fifteen minutes more or less, the Broker—after signing for the meal—walked me out into a cool spring night, the full moon casting a nice ivory glow on the nearby Mississippi, its surface of gentle ripples making the kind of interesting texture you find on an alligator.
    The Concort Inn was a ten-story slab of glass and steel, angled to provide a better river view for the lucky guests on that side. The hotel resided on about half a city block’s worth of cement, surrounded by parking. The lights of cars on the nearby government bridge, an ancient structure dating back to when nobody skimped on steel, were not enough to fend off the gloom of the nearby seedy warehouse area that made a less than scenic vista for the unlucky guests on the hotel’s far side. The hotel’s sign didn’t do much to help matters, either, just a rooftop billboard with some underlighting. Four lanes of traffic cutting under the bridge separated the parking lot from the riverfront, but on a Tuesday night at a quarter till nine, “traffic” was an overstatement.
    We paused outside the double doors we’d just exited. No doorman was on duty. Which was to say, no doorman was ever on duty: this was Iowa. The Broker was lighting up a cheroot, and for the first time I realized what he most reminded me of: an old riverboat gambler. It took standing here on the Mississippi riverfront to finally get that across to me. All he needed one of those Rhett Butler hats and Bret Maverick string ties. And he should probably lose the yellow pants.
    “Broker,” I said, “you knew Boyd was gay.”
    “Did I?” He smiled a little, his eyebrows rising just a touch, his face turned a flickery orange by the kitchen match he was applying to the tip of the slender cigar.
    “Of course you did,” I said. “You research all of us down to how many fillings we have, what our fathers did for a living, and what church we stopped going to.”
    He waved the match out. “Why would I pretend not to have known that Boyd is a practicing homosexual? Perhaps it’s just something I missed.”
    “Christ, Broker, he lives in Albany with a hairdresser. And I doubt at this point he needs any practice.”
    He gave me a grandiloquent shrug. “Perhaps I thought you might have been offended had I mentioned the fact.”
    “I told you. He can sleep with sheep if he wants. Boy sheep, girl sheep, I don’t give a fuck. But why hold that back?”
    He let out some cheroot smoke. He seemed vaguely embarrassed. “One of my boys strongly objected to Boyd. But somehow my instincts told me that you would not. That you would be—”
    “Broad-minded.”
    “I was going to say forward-thinking.” He folded his arms and gave me a professorly look. “It’s important we not be judgmental individuals, Quarry. That we be open-minded, unprejudiced, so that our professionalism will hold sway.”
    “Right the fuck on,” I said.
    He frowned at that, crudity never pleasing him, and the big two-tone green Fleetwood swung into the lot from the four-lane with the suddenness and speed of a boat that had gone terribly off course. The Caddy slowed as it cut across our path, the window on the rider’s side down. The face looking out at us was almost demonic but that was because its Brillo-haired owner was grimacing as he leaned the big automatic against the rolled-down window and aimed it at us, like