Quarry in the Middle - Max Allan Collins [47]
The forehead creased again. “What goods are those?”
“Making sure Jerry G took out the hit. How do you know this didn’t emanate straight from Chicago?”
He waved that off. “No. No, it’s Jerry G. Has to be.”
“Dickie bird, I think he knew I was working for you, when he had me taken out to the woodshed. He could have had them kill me, but he didn’t. Why?”
His shrug was elaborate. “Perhaps Jerry G thought it would backfire on him—he’d get his ass in a wringer with the Chicago family, killing one of my people.”
“He’d fear that, but take you out? Does that really make sense?”
He smiled on half his face, his expression as patronizing as his tone. “Of course it does. One killing of a subordinate can lead to more such killings, which can lead to a battle here in Haydee’s Port that could become an all-out war in Chicago.”
“Whereas removing you would be the kind of single stroke that could change everything all at once?”
“Right-o. That’s how I see it, at least.”
I sipped my Diet Coke. Shrugged. “So the job is, take care of Jerry G?”
“Yes. Are we agreed as to price?”
“Considering the work I did eliminating the old man from the equation, let’s call it thirty.”
He considered that. Then he shrugged. “All right. For all the grief it’ll save me, it’s a goddamn bloody bargain.”
Soon I was downstairs on the main floor, heading past the dining room toward the Paddlewheel exit when a husky female voice called from the bar: “Jack! Come say hello.”
In a little black dress that exposed a nice amount of bosom, redheaded Angela was in her favorite booth, sitting with a yellow pad in front of her, smoking a cigarette as she made notes.
I joined her. “You go on this early?”
“No. This is just the closest thing I have to an office. Going over my set list. Making a few changes.” She turned the wide-set green eyes loose on me, and they quickly tightened in concern, as she took in my colorful face. “My God! What happened to you?”
“Couple of Jerry G’s guys took me through the Jane Fonda workout. Do I look slimmer?”
She touched my hand. “You take awful chances, don’t you? I thought…nothing.”
“What?”
“I hoped to hear from you. I…the other day, morning I mean, at your room…rather sweet. On the…special side, I thought.”
“A lot more pleasant workout, I’ll grant you. Hey, I’m sorry, I really did get my ass handed to me, and I’ve been recuperating.”
She gave me a smirky kiss of a smile. “Then you weren’t shacked up with some sweet young thing?”
“Yeah, right. I was cheating on you, screwing a twenty-year-old stripper.”
That made her laugh. I love telling the truth; often the best way not to be believed…
“You wouldn’t want to stop by and catch my last set? Maybe buy me breakfast?”
“I better take a rain check. I’m on the clock.”
The green eyes widened. “On the clock, around the clock?”
“Right now I am.”
Out that hallway, where the private elevator emptied, trotted Cornell’s little squeeze, Chrissy, yellow permed curls held by a hot-pink sweatband, making her head look like a ginger ale bottle that fizzed over. She was in tight jeans and a hot-pink shirt tied in a big knot under her pert boobs, and her feet were shod in sandals that showed off red toenails, to match the fingernails she’d been painting. All freshened up, pink lip gloss, blue eye shadow, and no white powder on her nose at all…
“What’s the story on baby Madonna?” I asked.
“She’s just the latest little lay on Dickie’s roster,” Angela said, light but with a bitter edge, letting smoke out her nose like a lovely dragon. “One little blow-up doll’s pretty much like any other.”
“Does she live with him out at the plantation? Or maybe up in his Hefner hideout upstairs?”
“No. She’s from River Bluff. Another of these community college girls, if you can believe it.”
I didn’t, actually.
“Excuse me,” I said, and smiled at her, and she gave me a curious look that I let hang.
When I got to the parking lot, Chrissy was pulling out in a red Firebird convertible with a crysee vanity plate—Illinois, not Iowa, where the community college was. I moved toward my lesser Pontiac, but