Quarry in the Middle - Max Allan Collins [37]
“What do you want to talk to my father about, Jack?”
“I mean no offense not telling you, Jerry G. I don’t mind if you accompany me. But I need to talk to him in person.”
The amber eye of the lighted cigarillo stared at me. “What about, Jack?”
I had a feeling I better take a shot. I took it. “I used to work through a middleman, not directly for your friends in Chicago. There was always insulation. You know about insulation.”
“I know about insulation.”
“So maybe you can figure out what kind of work I used to do.”
The cigarillo looked at me; somewhere behind it, Jerry G was looking at me, too. “You don’t have the size for a strongarm. You’re no pipsqueak, but I wouldn’t hire you on as a bouncer, that’s for fucking sure.”
“I’d get a nosebleed up on those boxes. No, my specialty wasn’t handling problems or convincing people not to be problems.”
“Your business is removing problems.”
“Used to be.” I held my hands up in surrender, my empty hands. “I retired. I made a lot of money, and I retired.”
“So you just happened to be in Haydee’s Port.”
“I heard a good time could be had.”
“Got that right. So, then…you just want to pay my papa your respects? I don’t think so.”
I shook my head. “No. I want to tell him about somebody I saw over at the Paddlewheel. Somebody I recognized.”
He settled a hand on my shoulder. Gently. His smile emerged from the darkness, Cheshire Cat style. “Jack, you’re going to have to tell me. The only path to my pop is through me. I’m the gatekeeper, capeesh?”
I capeeshed.
“I saw a guy I’d worked with once in the old days,” I said. “He was a specialist in hit-and-run. You know, ‘accidents’?”
The hand came off my shoulder, the smile disappeared, and the cigarillo tip stared.
“I believed he was casing that guy Cornell, who runs the Paddlewheel—”
“I know who Cornell is.”
“And I think Cornell was his mark.”
“How do you know, Jack? Did you talk to this old pal of yours?”
Improvising like a jazz solist, I said, “I only worked one job with him, a long time ago, and that was before I had my face worked on.”
“You had a plastic surgery job? That good, was it?”
“My mother wouldn’t know me. Anyway, I didn’t want any part of it. No skin off my ass if my old ‘pal,’ as you put it, takes Cornell out. My experience is, anybody with a target on his back probably mostly put it there himself. Fuck the guy.”
“All right,” Jerry G said.
He’d liked the sound of that, I thought.
“Anyway, last night, or I guess this morning, I was in my car in the Paddlewheel parking lot. I drank too much and fell asleep in the back seat. Something woke me, and I realized it was daylight, and I saw a couple of Cornell’s security guys grabbing Monahan. That’s his name, Monahan, the hit-and-run specialist.”
“What do you mean, grab?”
“Well, more than grab. One of ’em smashed his head into the steering wheel. Then another shoved him over, and took off out of there, and the other Cornell security guy followed in a second car.”
“Disposing of the body…”
“Obviously.”
Silence.
He dropped the cigarillo, crushed it under his heel, and stepped into the light. “And what does this have to do with my father? And me?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I can see who around Haydee’s Port would want rid of Cornell. If a hit on that guy has gone tits up, I figure you guys would want to know about it.”
“Just out of the goodness of your heart.”
“Not really. I thought your papa might think the information was worth a buck. Or maybe…well, I should save this for him.”
He thumped my chest with a finger. Lightly but the threat was there. “No, Jack. Give it to me.”
I shrugged. “I thought you might need somebody else to step in, and take care of Cornell.”
“…But you’re retired, Jack.”
I grinned at him. “Yeah, but I retired early. I’m still healthy enough to pick money up in the street.”
His tan puss split into a white grin. He and Cornell were two fucking peas in one fucking pod.
He slipped an arm around my shoulder and said, “Let’s play cards.”
We played cards. I continued to play conservatively, hanging