Quarry in the Middle - Max Allan Collins [5]
Then their food came, and I let them eat it. I was done with my Famous Bacon Cheeseburger and lesser known fries, and paid at the counter and got the fuck out. I had an idea I knew what they’d been talking about, but I wanted to check it out.
Without even speeding, it was almost exactly three minutes from the Paddlewheel parking lot to the Interstate bridge ramp. I pulled into the restaurant/casino’s lot—it was blacktop and half the size of a football field, rows and rows of white-outlined parking spaces. The entrance was near the building, the exit all the way down—only that one way in and one way out. Just seeing the geography told me how Monahan would do it.
Across from the Paddlewheel was a field of corn that wasn’t as high as an elephant’s eye, but this was only June. A metal gate was across a gravel driveway that angled up to a rundown farmhouse in a small oasis of overgrown grass in the middle of all that corn.
I drove half a mile south and pulled my Sunbird into an access inlet, which enabled tractors and other big farm rigs to get in and out of the cornfield, with the added benefit of slowing down traffic. This time of year nobody was planting or harvesting and I could leave the car there.
The sun hadn’t gone down, the temp about eighty-five, so my dark-blue windbreaker wasn’t really necessary, and yet it was, because I had my nine millimeter Browning in my waistband and the windbreaker covered it. I was otherwise in black jeans, a light blue Ralph Lauren t-shirt and black running shoes.
Weather aside, the windbreaker also proved invaluable in moving through that cornfield. The blades of those fucking stalks were like nature’s razors, and I was glad my head was above them, albeit just above. I was headed for that ramshackle two-story farmhouse.
Which, when I got there, showed no signs of life. I could see from some oil on the gravel where the drive came around back that the blond kid (or somebody, but likely the blond kid) had been parking here. He would still be over at the motel for now, though he’d long since finished his own Famous Bacon Cheeseburger and there was no telling at what point he’d return.
That was assuming, of course, that I’d figured right, and that this was where he’d been keeping watch on the target, who was clearly somebody who worked at (or more likely ran) the Paddlewheel.
Anyway, I needed to get inside but not in a way the kid would notice. He’d have been going in the back way, but that door, which was up a few paint-peeling wooden steps to the kitchen, was locked. I’d have been surprised to find otherwise.
What did surprise me was how sloppy the kid was—though the same could be true for whatever real estate agency represented the property—as I discovered the slanted cellar doors unlocked. I went down in and found sunlight sneaking in stubby windows onto a mostly empty cement area with a broken-down washer and dryer and not much else but exposed beams. There were pools of moisture here and there, but I could skirt them. I heard some mice or rats scurry, but they stayed out of my way and I did them the same favor.
The chance of anybody being upstairs was minimal. But I got the nine millimeter out anyway, and took the creaky wooden stairs as quietly as I could manage—shit, probably took me two or three minutes to get to the top. All the way up I was wondering what I’d do if that door was locked. Forcing it would be no problem, but it might leave a visual record of my entry, plus if anybody was up there, I’d be announcing myself more obnoxiously than I cared to…
But it wasn’t locked.
I eased the thing open, and it didn’t make any more noise than the Crypt Keeper’s vault, though it didn’t matter a damn. Nobody was in the kitchen, which was where I came out. Nothing was in the kitchen, except a dead refrigerator that dated back to Betty Furness days, no kitchen table, nothing except a counter and sink and empty