Quarry's Deal Read Free Page A

wouldn’t have taken her suitcases with her unless she was going off on a job. That was my guess, anyway, and it came from experience. Also, the gun was just a little purse thing, a pearl-handled .22 automatic, and I imagined she used something a little heavier than that in her work. A .38, at least. Speaking of which, I did find a box of .38 shells behind some lacy panties in a drawer, and that substantiated my guesswork, as there was no gun here that went with these shells.
    What I didn’t find was evidence of where she’d gone. I went through the wastebaskets, and I even went through a bag of garbage in her kitchen, and found nothing, no plane or bus reservation notice, no nothing. I even played the rubbing a pencil against the top blank sheet of a note pad trick, and while it seems to work on television, all I got for my trouble was dirty fingers.
    I sat on an uncomfortable-looking comfortable couch in her living room and wondered what to do next.
    That was when her boyfriend came in.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    4
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    I SAID, “WHO the hell are you?”
    His mouth dropped open like a trap door.
    “So who the hell are you?” I demanded again.
    He cocked his head like a dog trying to comprehend its master, narrowing his eyes, making them seem more close-set than they really were.
    “Well?” I said.
    That’s the only way I know to handle a situation like that: turn the tables, put the shoe on the other foot, or whatever other cliché you want to use to describe what I was doing to him. It was the only way I knew that might avoid immediate violence. I don’t care for physical violence myself, and try to duck it whenever possible.
    Especially when faced with a guy both bigger and stronger than me, facts made obvious by his standing there in swim trunks and towel, the latter flung casually over a classically muscular shoulder.
    “Well, are you coming in or aren’t you?” I asked.
    He pushed the door shut. His teeth were showing. He wasn’t smiling. But he was too confused to be violent. At the moment.
    “I don’t know you,” he said.
    “If I knew you,” I said, “would I be asking your goddamn name every couple seconds?”
    His eyebrows were as light a blond as the hair on his head. His nose was small, almost feminine. He really was prettier-looking than the dragon lady. But nowhere near as interesting.
    “You got a reason for being in Glenna’s room?” he said. His voice was medium-range, flat, uninteresting.
    “Sure. Do you?”
    “Yeah. Yeah, I do. I live here.”
    “The hell you say.” I knew he did, of course, had seen the men’s clothing in the closet and in dresser drawers, and knew of the female domination of the place which meant any man here was living with whatever woman he served. What I didn’t know was how fast this asshole was, that he’d pull a wham/bam/thank-you-ma’am on that female counterpart of himself he’d gone off into the shadows with. I mean, even at the Beach Shore you spent the night with whoever you banged. Sometimes you stayed the month.
    “Hey,” he said, sitting in a chair across from me, a glass coffee table separating us. “Hey, I’ve seen you someplace. You staying here with somebody? Have I seen you down by the pool?”
    “I’m staying here. You might have seen me.”
    “But we haven’t met.”
    “That’s right.”
    “I’m Norm Morrow.”
    “Burt Thompson.”
    We didn’t shake hands, by the way.
    “Okay, then. Okay, Burt. Now we’re introduced. Now maybe you don’t mind going into what you’re doing in here?”
    “I’m waiting for Glenna.”
    “Glenna’s gone.”
    “She’ll be back.”
    “Not for a while, bud.”
    “I’ll wait a while. And it’s Burt.”
    “I don’t give a fuck it’s Henry Kissinger. I’m starting to get the idea you’re fucking around with me, and I don’t like it.”
    “If