Quarry in the Middle - Max Allan Collins [52]
Also, I’d been left my wristwatch, which was nothing expensive, just a Timex, and yes the sucker was still ticking—it was ten after midnight. Tonight’s poker game at the Lucky Devil hadn’t even started yet.
I’d given thought to pulling the jon boat in at the Paddlewheel’s little dock, but my Sunbird was in the Lucky Devil lot, and I decided to see if I could risk docking at Jerry G’s landing. That pier was more elaborate than the Paddlewheel’s, with a few other jon boats tied up, plus a brick boathouse for the cabin cruisers that were part of the “recreational boating” fleet that was actually used for drug-, gun-, and who-the-fuck-knew-running.
Fairly adept with the Evinrude by now—my little outing with the two bouncers had taken me maybe twenty miles downriver—I slowed and had a look at the dock, where the only lighting was one yellow security lamp on the boathouse itself. I could see nobody standing watch, the jon boats bobbing at an empty expanse of pier. I glided in and tied up there, and crawled up on the spongy dock.
I had no weapon other than the sawed-off, and I’d used one of its two shells—any reloads had gone down with its previous owner. But it was a formidable-looking weapon and I could still do one blast’s worth of damage, so it was worth hauling along.
A gravel path wider than a sidewalk and narrower than a one-lane road made its way up the slope through trees to the edge of the Lucky Devil parking lot, which was full now. Post-midnight Friday was prime time for the Lucky. The security lighting was subdued, with the handful of lamp poles outshone by the occasionally opening doors of the hooker trailers lining the lot at right and left.
I moved toward where I’d left the Sunbird, with the sawed-off at my side, staying close to cars so that the weapon couldn’t be easily seen. Parking places were rare enough that arriving vehicles were trolling for them, and when a car found a space, it swung in to disgorge drivers and passengers who had already long since passed any legal drinking limit. Dumb loud remarks and drunken louder laughter made dissonant music in the open air.
When I got to where I’d left the Sunbird, I at first thought I’d miscalculated, and was off a row, because the Pontiac wasn’t there. Then I leaned against the Dodge in its space and thought it through: my car keys hadn’t been on me, so that meant Jerry G’s minions had located the Sunbird and moved it, dumped it some-where.
You’re a dead man, I reminded myself. They couldn’t have left your wheels just hanging around their parking lot…
Up a row, however, another Pontiac caught my attention—a familiar cherry-red vehicle that was still in its place: Chrissy’s Firebird convertible, with the top down.
I was maybe twenty feet from the building now, so I lowered my head as I made my way to the Firebird, then knelt beside it, and got the lay of the land. A single bouncer, situated near the casino, was walking the line, keeping an eye on the lot. He didn’t seem to have spotted me, and his only brothers were walking the perimeters where the hooker trailers perched.
Three bodyguards, then…with the ones babysitting the hookers way too busy to be overly bothered with the parking lot.
I hadn’t expected to see any increased security—after all, had everything gone peachy for the boys dumping me downriver, they would just be getting back. They might not even be expected to check in with the boss, who soon would be playing his precious poker game, and disliked being interrupted.
Speaking of which, after I’d kept watch for possibly fifteen minutes, the door to the private poker room abruptly opened, and a familiar yellow-permed