Quarry in the Middle - Max Allan Collins [23]
No, I wasn’t on the prick’s radar. I’d bet my life on it. Not a figure of a speech.
Pretty soon, if Richard Cornell was staying true to his pattern, he would be exiting the Paddlewheel and loping all the way across the lot to his Corvette, making long shadows as dawn presented itself. Monahan would hit the gas, work up some speed, and pretend to be heading for the exit down by the building, but would swerve and smack Cornell like a bug on a windshield. If this didn’t clearly kill Cornell, Monahan would back up and make sure a wheel crushed the mark’s head.
Then Monahan would be gone, headed somewhere to dump the vehicle.
But Cornell wouldn’t be coming out of that building, not any time soon, at least. And I knew that if I didn’t make my move soon—before it got suspicious that the Paddlewheel’s impresario wasn’t sticking to his pattern—then the Vehicular Homicide specialist would hightail.
This wasn’t a science. I could only predict so much. But Monahan wouldn’t be here if he’d checked in with his blond back-up man, or I should say tried to check in with him. As far as Monahan likely knew, the blond kid was somewhere over near that farmhouse, watching his partner’s back. My sense was that I was on top of this thing.
So I went into my act.
I played at waking up in the back seat, yawning and blinking and rubbing my face, like a drunk who’d crawled back there to sober up and had just come around, now that rosy-fingered dawn had slapped him awake.
I got out of the Sunbird’s back seat with all the subtlety of a street mime, making sure the nine millimeter Browning nudging my spine didn’t show. I came around as if to get in front, behind the wheel, then paused and looked right at Monahan, seated behind his own wheel, and squinted, and grinned, as if noticing an old, dear friend.
Staggering some, I headed right for him, not quickly; his window was down and his bland insurance salesman’s face was turned my way, the expression blank but the eyes tight with irritation and perhaps, yes, suspicion.
“My pool buddy!” I said, sloppily, holding out my arms and hands like Jolson singing “Mammy.” “Pal! You got a sec?”
He said, “What?” Seldom in the history of mankind has that word been uttered with less enthusiasm.
I leaned against his car like a drive-in waitress. “I tried to sleep it off, dude, but I am still drunker than shit. Can I hitch a ride to the motel? Pretty please?”
This was delivered in an imitation drunk fashion, not as broad as Foster Brooks, but I was pushing it.
He looked up at me coldly, then turned his face toward his windshield. He nodded toward the road. “I’m waiting for somebody. It’s not that far. You can—”
He was probably going to say, “Walk it,” but we’ll never know, because I reached a hand in behind his head and slammed his forehead into his steering wheel. It didn’t knock him out, much less kill him, but stunned him enough to give me time to take the nine millimeter out of my back waistband, gripped by the barrel, and swing it around like a hammer.
It was a good swing. The butt crushed bone like crisp fresh celery snapping and sank in deep enough to bring back blood and brains. He flopped onto the rider’s seat, which put him out of view except for me and maybe God, and was a good thing.
I leaned in the window and wiped the gun off on his green polo shirt, gore and prints, then opened his rear door and tossed the weapon on the floor.
Then I went back over to my Sunbird, got in and started it up, and backed it around so that the two cars made an L putting my tail as close as possible to his, which made for a quick transfer of the dead stiff (and the blond kid was very stiff now) from my trunk into his.
I moved my Sunbird back to where it had been, then (in black leather