Quarry's Deal Read Free Page B

you hadn’t gone fucking around with some other piece of ass but Glenna, maybe she wouldn’t have asked me up here.”
    “That’s horseshit, pal.”
    “How so?”
    “Glenna doesn’t give a damn what I do while she’s gone, she’s gone sometimes a month at a time, and she doesn’t expect me to be a fucking priest, you know? It’s an understanding we got. And I’m beginning to understand something else. . . . I had about enough of you. Now what is this really about?”
    “All I know is she asked me up, asked me to stay on, maybe she just figured I’d pass the word onto you your welcome was worn out . . .”
    “Hey. You were just leaving, sport.”
    “I don’t want any trouble. You’re a whole lot stronger than me, I can see that. No need to go proving it.”
    “So get the fuck out of here, then.”
    “Look, why don’t we just ask Glenna which of us she wants to hang around.”
    “What? She split, she’s gone, hasn’t that sunk in yet, you jackass?”
    “We’ll call her and ask her.”
    “I don’t have a number to reach her, and neither do you.”
    “I admit I don’t. I just thought maybe you did. You say you live here.”
    “Well . . . sometimes she leaves a number.”
    “Yeah?”
    “I don’t know why I’m playing along with you on this, I really don’t . . .”
    “We’ll call. Come on.”
    “She won’t be there till tomorrow, at least. She’s driving, and it’s a long way where she’s headed.”
    “Where’s that?”
    “You’re her new boyfriend and you don’t know? Hey. That’s all. That’s all I can take. Just haul your ass off that couch and get outa here. Okay?”
    I was admiring a metallic abstract sculpture on the glass coffee table between us. It was egg-shaped, the sculpture, with an indentation on either side, and about the size of a baseball, a little taller maybe. When I hit him with it, he went down without a sound. He missed the table, landed soft on the tufts of shag carpet. I hit him again, once, in the same spot, and made sure the skull was cracked open.
    One good thing was he landed on his right side and it was his left side I’d hit, the left side of his head I mean, so there wasn’t any blood on the carpet, and wouldn’t be if I moved him quick and careful.
    I left him in the bathtub, after pulling off his trunks, heaving him in, turning on the shower, and leaving him looking like he’d slipped and fallen in there, cracking his head open against the side of the tub.
    The work of art I wrapped in a towel and took with me, for later disposal.
    The telephone number she left him I found under the phone.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    5
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    KILLING PEOPLE WITH blunt objects isn’t really my style, but then style is a luxury I can’t always indulge in. Carrying on a conversation with somebody I know I’m going to have to kill isn’t my style, either. Under ideal conditions I’d just walk in, without a word, use my gun, and go. Hello, goodbye.
    But conditions aren’t always ideal. Sometimes conditions are pure shit. And being able to adapt to an unforeseen, shit situation is what separates the men from the boys, the living from the dead. Being able to adapt and survive.
    That I learned in Vietnam. I learned a lot of things in Vietnam, not the least of which was the meaninglessness of life and death, and the importance of survival. Those may not seem compatible, but they are. Only when you realize how little your life means, and how slender a thread it hangs on, do you begin to know the meaning of the word survival.
    There’s nobody easier to kill than a self-important man, a man who feels the world revolves around him, a man who finds it hard to imagine that maybe things would go on without him. For instance. Political assassinations. Every- body knows they happen every day, but there isn’t a world leader living who