Quarry in the Middle - Max Allan Collins [59]
“This is the Verve album you made,” I said, smiling. “Will you sign it?”
“I already have. I…didn’t use your name, since I know Jack isn’t really it.”
I popped the jewel case open and read what she had signed, in black felt-tip, across a song list of Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer and Frank Loesser: “To my favorite one-morning stand. Yours always, Angie.” Then, pro that she was, she had signed her full signature below: Angela Dell.
“This means a lot,” I said. “I don’t treasure much, but I’ll treasure this.”
“Least I could do.”
“Probably, considering I didn’t tell your husband you’re the one who hired his murder.”
She dropped her coffee cup, but it was mostly empty and didn’t spill, didn’t even break.
We had that section to ourselves, and our voices were low, so I wasn’t making a scene. Her dropping the coffee cup was as close to making a scene as either of us came.
She said, her voice as throaty as if she were singing“Cry Me A River,” “You can’t be serious, Jack…”
“Dead serious. Jerry G’s father is so out of it, he gives senility a bad name—he couldn’t organize a fart in the bathtub, let alone set up a hit. And as for Jerry G? He was going to the trouble of having Dickie spied on—baby Madonna, remember?”
“That…that girl Chrissy? She was working for Jerry G?”
“Yeah. Oh, he’s dead, by the way. Somebody shot him about…not quite an hour ago. I believe it was a robbery, but it’ll probably wind up officially some kind of tragic accident. Powers-that-be wouldn’t want Haydee’s Port to go to hell.”
“Jerry G is dead?”
“I’m not going to repeat myself. Your husband or whatever the hell he is hired me to deal with Jerry G, and I did. He was also considering having the old boy taken out, till I gave him the latest medical update.”
“Just because that girl was spying on—”
“You don’t bother gathering intel on somebody you’ve already hired someone else to eliminate. Period. Anyway, look at his behavior—Jerry G knew, from Chrissy, that I was working for your husband…but if he knew or suspected I was here to take him out, he wouldn’t simply have had me beaten up—he would have had me killed. Last night he did try to have me killed, after he heard enough from Chrissy to gather I probably did have a contract from Dickie to remove his ass. But Jerry G stupidly sent a couple of bouncers to deal with me, who were in over their heads, or anyway are now.”
She said nothing. A waitress strolled over, filled Angela’s coffee from a container in one hand, and my iced tea from a pitcher in the other. Then we were alone again, us and our freshened liquids.
“What makes you think,” Angela said very quietly, looking at her wedding-ring-free hands, folded neatly near the coffee cup, steam rising from it like ghosts, “that I took out the contract?”
“No other candidate makes sense. You are still the wife, separated or not, and that puts you in a position to inherit everything. You are by birth a Giardelli, and female or not, would be in a good position to, first, utilize your connections to set up a hit, and second, take over the Paddlewheel with Chicago’s blessing. With your show biz background and expertise, all those years in Vegas, who better to run the Paddlewheel and its expanded operation? Especially when riverboat gambling comes in, and everything gets more respectable…Also, as a wife, you’d be more likely to have an accident staged than a simple drive-by hit. Hell, maybe there was double indemnity! Didn’t work for Barbara Stanwyck, but that’s just an old Hollywood movie, where crime doesn’t pay. Anyway, I don’t see Jerry G as the kind of guy who’d go to the trouble of disguising a killing as an automobile accident.”
Her lips trembled a little. Her voice, too: “What if…what if I told you I love my husband. That I still love my husband.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. Your motivation may be greed, or it may be love or anyway the kind of love that curdles into hate when your guy gives you table