Quarry in the Middle - Max Allan Collins [3]
This is, incidentally, why somebody like me—a guy who is no more twisted than you or your brother or sister or wife—is able to commit murder for money, and sleep just fine. It’s down to this: anybody targeted for a hit is somebody who is already dead. They have done something or some things that have made them eligible for being on the wrong end of a bullet or a speeding car or what-have-you, and they are due to die for it. Yes, they are still up and walking around, but that’s just a temporary technicality. They are dead already. Obits waiting to be written.
Back when I was doing hits, I was no more unethical than any guy working for a collection agency. I just collected a different kind of payment due. A repo man after something other than appliances, boats or cars.
No denying, though, that murder is illegal and if you’re caught doing or having done it, you can earn a cell or a rope or a firing squad or a gas pellet. That meant that the other “collection agency guys” I was now turning the tables on were just as dead as any other designated target.
Anyway, it had mostly worked out well so far—I’d used the Broker’s list and taken this approach ten times with occasional glitches but enough success that I was still above ground and with a healthy bank balance to boot.
The downside of my innovative business plan had always been two unpredictable factors…
First, standard operation procedure for hired killings, at least among Broker’s crew, meant a two-person team—Passive and Active.
Passive Guy went in to watch the target for at least a week and sometimes up to a month, getting the patterns down. Active Guy would come in a couple days before the hit and get filled in by the Passive partner, often doing his own short-term surveillance to get a feel for what he’s up against.
I’d been paired with a number of guys, and usually worked the Active side. I preferred it, but the Broker had insisted I work surveillance one out of four jobs, saying both guys on a team needed to keep their hand in on both roles.
My current approach meant that not only did I have to perform my own surveillance, I had to do so with no knowledge of when my subject’s next hit would go down. It was entirely open-ended, and a guy as specialized (and well-paid) as Monahan might only do three or four jobs in a given year.
Meaning I could grin at neighbors, cut grass, watch junior high sports, grow hard-ons over teenage girls in leotards, and take in lousy Eddie Murphy movies for months on end before the real action kicked in.
But this time I got lucky. I only did Suburban Male duty for a little over two weeks before I was on the road, following Monahan to Fuck Knew Where.
Not that this wasn’t also tricky—a lot of the driving was on godforsaken flat heartland interstate that made tailing a guy no more obvious than walking into a restaurant with no shoes and no shirt and no pants, either. Luckily turn-offs and rest stops were rare, and I could lay back ten or even twenty miles, and still stay with him.
So this afternoon, Monahan had led me to Haydee’s Port, and I had trailed him to the Wheelhouse Motel, which was just outside the cruddy little town, on a curve before you got to the Paddlewheel.
There was nothing cruddy about the Wheelhouse Motel, though, which boasted outdoor pool and satellite TV and a 24-hour truck-stop type restaurant, although there were no gas pumps. I didn’t know it yet, but this was the Paddlewheel’s official lodgings. The only other motel in town was the Eezer Inn, a dump used for sleeping it off or getting it on, or combinations thereof.
The motel office and the attached restaurant faced the highway and the rooms were along either side of the long, wide structure, with an additional wing down at