Quarry's Choice (18 page)

Like her, I was in jeans and a short-sleeve t-shirt. We were both young enough to seem like a couple of sweethearts out for a beachfront stroll. Maybe we went to Ole Miss.

The evening was pleasantly warm and slightly breezy. I sat on the slope of white sand about three feet from where water lazily lapped. Behind us were the lights of the city. Ahead was the Mississippi Sound and a handful of islands and all the Gulf beyond. Not much moon, but clear. Few clouds. Plenty of stars.

She was not sitting next to me. She had taken off her sandals and was wading along the water’s edge. Not in a playful way. Just kind of walking, pacing really, going a few yards, turning, then walking back, making tiny splashes. Turning and starting over.

“This white beach is fake,” she said, still pacing wetly.

“Seems real enough to me.”

“It’s not. They dredge it up from the bottom of the sea and these trucks spray it. Like stucco on a house.”

“That’s weird.”

“Brings in tourists. Like the Strip.” She glanced around the beach as she paced. “Before too long, when the season kicks in? Won’t be so peaceful along here.”

“No?”

She nodded, watched her feet lightly splash in the water. “They’s a lot of drug deals go down on the sand. Girls sell sex or trade for a few lines. No cops around unless they need some arrests to look better.” She sighed. “Pretty here by day, though.”

“What’s on your mind, Luann?”

She stopped pacing. Her stillness was stark against the easy lapping of the water. She was not quite a silhouette.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said.

“Well, I don’t want you to. Come sit by me.”

She thought about that and did, though she kept a little distance between us. She hugged her knees to herself. It was like Sandra Dee in
Gidget
, dreaming about surfing. But somehow I didn’t think that was it.

“I know you’re not evil,” she said.

“That’s good to hear.”

“But I saw what you did the other night.”

So that was what was bugging her. She’d probably been having trouble getting to sleep, thinking about that nightmare at the Dixie Club.

“You said it yourself, Luann,” I said offhandedly. “That awful woman would have killed that little man with her hammer, and—”

“No,” she said sharply, with a glance just as sharp, before looking back out into the surreal shimmer of Gulf water. “I mean
last
night.”

“Last night. . .?”

“When you drowned that man.”

That hit me low in the belly.

“What are you talking about, Luann?”

She swallowed, but her chin came up. She may have looked like a little bird but her face was full of large determination.

“Johnny, I followed you last night.”

“What? Why. . .?”

“Just listen. You said Mr. Killian had a date at the Fantasy Sweets. I walked over there. It’s only a few blocks. I guess you know I know my way around the place. One thing I didn’t show you, when I give you that tour? Was the booth.”

“Booth?” My stomach was tight. “What are you talking about?”

She shrugged. “There’s this booth built in behind the balcony in that suite.”

“Caligula Suite.”

She nodded. “That’s the one that Mr. Killian uses to get the goods on people.”

And I understood her.

I got the whole goddamn picture in a fucking flash—the Caligula Suite was rigged for video recording. It was the most lavish of the theme rooms and the logical one for Killian to provide to politicians—and anyone else he wanted a hold over—for a fun Roman orgy-type evening with a fuck bunny or two. With everything on the house.

But in Biloxi, the house always won.

She was saying, “I been in that room plenty of times. Not the booth, I mean the bed and the hot tub. But I was in it before, too, the booth.” She made a little grunt. “I must be on a dozen of them tapes.”

Trying to keep my voice steady and unthreatening, I said, “Tell me about the booth, Luann.”

“Small. Six by six maybe? A chair and two TVs side-by-side facin’ you, and two big heavy machines on steel racks down below. Videotape machines. They’re not that complicated. You just press ‘record’ and ‘play,’ at the same time. Won’t work with just ‘record.’ ”

“I see.”

“I wish they made them to have at home. I could watch my shows any time I wanted.”

“The booth, Luann.”

She nodded. “There are two cameras out there in the room, tucked away, you know, hidden, like Allen Funt? One sees you on the bed. The other points down at the hot tub.” She turned to me, reached for my hand, then thought better of it. “Johnny, I didn’t go there to catch you, last night. You have to understand. You have to believe me.”

“I believe you. Why
were
you there?”

She swallowed again. Gazed out at the Gulf, even as the gulf between us widened. “Some girls at work have been whisperin’.”

“About what?”

“About how Mr. Killian is fuckin’ Mr. Woody’s wife.
Was
fuckin’ Mrs. Woody’s wife. I mean, he’s dead now, right? Anyway, that suite was Mr. Killian’s favorite. It’s the nicest one. He must not have thought about how it was rigged to catch people. You know, that he could get caught in his own trap.”

Keeping my voice nice and calm, I said, “Bet he never did. Why did you want to trap him, Luann?”

Her eyes were on the water. “I thought maybe if I had a tape of him fuckin’ Mrs. Woody, then I could use it to get out of here. Biloxi sucks in case you didn’t notice, and my life sucks worse than that. I could use that tape to make Mr. Woody let me go.”

“Why not just
go
? You have money saved.”

She shook her head and the ponytail swung. For a moment I was reminded of Kelly in the back room of the Bottoms Up. “I
do
have money saved, but it goes into an account with Mr. Woody’s name on it.
And
mine, but I can’t get at it unless he signs off.”

Working at not showing anything, I said, “Okay. So you were going to sell him the tape? All right. But why not just
tell
him what you knew?”

“He wouldn’t believe it. Not without that tape. He thinks his wife is a damn saint.”

“He’s wrong.”

“Seems like. But I don’t know her that well. She don’t come around to the club much. But also I thought about maybe goin’ to Mr. Killian instead. I hadn’t made my mind up, which one. I just knew if I had that tape. . .I mean, tapes. . .one of the bed, one of the hot tub? I would have somethin’ to hold over people.”

“Something to use to blackmail Killian.”

“That’s an ugly word.”

The sound of a small-craft motor echoed across the water. But you couldn’t see anything moving out there.

“Yeah, it is,” I said. “But that’s the word for it, Luann—blackmail. And it would’ve been risky. Killian was a dangerous guy.”

“So is Mr. Woody! You have no idea.” She hugged herself, as if it had gotten suddenly chilly. I was feeling a kind of a chill myself. “Either way was risky. But I saw an opportunity and I took it. I’m. . .I’m sorry, Johnny.”

I made myself smile a little. “You got nothing to be sorry about. You want out of this life. I understand that. You were, uh. . .in that booth last night when. . .?”

She nodded and the ponytail bobbed. “I saw what you did.”

Five more words that never boded well.

She added, “On the TV.”

That was so much of her life, wasn’t it? What she saw on the TV. Had
Hawaii Five-O
and fucking
Ironside
taught her about blackmail? Hadn’t she noticed how those shows turned out for the blackmailers?

She was saying, “I wasn’t there to get you on tape. I didn’t mean to. You
know
that’s true—I didn’t know you was goin’ there to do. . .what you did.”

I said, “I guess I’m not your knight in shiny armor anymore.”

She gave me a smile with some warmth in it. Actual warmth, and this time she did touch my hand. She was so damn small, I could have taken her by the waist and walked her into the water and very quickly she’d be as dead as Killian.

But that wouldn’t solve the problem of the tapes.

Because she surely had them, and they weren’t in her motel room. She’d gone to work this afternoon. She could have given them to a girlfriend or hidden them there or slipped home to her nearby apartment and stowed them somewhere and. . .shit. Maybe I could find them.

Maybe.

“That man was evil,” she said. “That Mr. Killian. I’m
glad
he’s dead. He done terrible things.”

I wondered if some of those terrible things had been done to her. Maybe in that goddamn Caligula Suite. Ancient Rome had nothing on modern-day Biloxi.

Now she squeezed my hand, and those light-blue eyes were large with urgency. “Johnny, I want out. Of here, of my life, of this town. You may
think
Mr. Woody is a nice man. . .”

“I don’t.”

“. . .but he’s just as bad as Mr. Killian. Maybe worse.” She looked away, eyes on the water again. “When I was thirteen, he took me home with him and. . .broke me in. That’s what he called it. Broke me in. For a month he fucked me every way there is to be fucked. I was bleedin’ out my backside for weeks.”

She shook her head, the pendulum of the ponytail swinging.

“Johnny, I’ve had girlfriends at the club just. . .disappear. Last year, one had a bad habit, you know, heroin? And she started lookin’ bad, real skinny, and she fell down a couple times on stage, dancin’, and then one night Mr. Woody, he walked her out into the parking lot and after that, she was just gone. I asked the other girls and they said don’t ask. I asked Mr. Woody and he smiled with those big teeth and said, ‘You really want to know, Sugar Tits?’ ”

This outburst, this outpouring of words and emotion, was not accompanied by tears. On the contrary, her pretty face was tight with anger. Some tremor in her voice, but contained. Controlled.

She was saying, “When I turned eighteen, I told Mr. Woody I wanted my money and wanted to go out on my own. It was after hours and he took me and threw me down on the stage and he had all the bouncers come over and they fuckin’
gang-banged
me, Johnny. It was just awful! I was on my back with come on my face and used rubbers all around. And when it was over, and I was cryin’ my heart out, Mr. Woody himself come over and beat me till I was black and blue all over. I couldn’t dance for two weeks. You may
think
he’s nice. . .”

“I
don’t
.”

“. . .but he
is
evil. That’s what I mean when I say, even knowin’ that you
do
bad things, Johnny, that. . .that you aren’t evil.”

Gently, touching her hand, I said, “Luann. I need those tapes. You know I need those tapes.”

“I know.” She nodded reassuringly. “I do know. And I’ll give them to you.”

Relief flooded through me.

“Thank you, Luann. That means a lot to me.”

“Oh I know. They got the gas chamber in Mississippi.”

Another sucker punch to the belly.

She clutched my arm. “Johnny, I’m gonna give you them tapes. I
am
. But I have to ask you to do me a favor. It’s kind of a big favor, but it’s what I need.”

“What favor?”

“And don’t you
dare
use that word.”

“What word?”

“Blackmail. This is a
favor
you’ll do me, and then I’ll give them to you as a gift, those tapes. You don’t have to worry about copies, ’cause I don’t know how to make them. If there’s a way to hook up them two clunky tape machines, I don’t know what it is.”

She could have been fucking with me. She was smart enough to know that making copies was an issue. But I didn’t think she was lying. I think she’d spent all day rationalizing how she was going to approach me about this, and the favor/gift thing was what she came up with.

I asked, “What’s the favor?”

“I need you to kill somebody for me.”

“Jesus, Luann. . .”

She held up a “stop” hand. “I
know
you do that. I think maybe you was brought here to do that to Mr. Killian. Maybe by Mr. Woody. I think that’s why we went to the Dixie Club, too. For you to kill those people.”

Said the little witness who I had thought it a good idea to bring along on the outing.

“So,” she said, “I know you’re a killer.”

“Luann. . .”

“I don’t think you
like
it. You kill like I fuck. It’s a job, right? And maybe you only kill bad people. That would be nice. I mean, the four people I seen you kill all kind of deserved it.”

“Listen to me now,” I began, though I had no idea what I would say next.

“I know what you are. What you do.” She frowned as she thought, and then she found the
Hawaii Five-O
word: “You’re a hitman.”

“Luann, please. . .”

She clenched both fists, steadied herself to say the last of the things she’d wanted to get me off alone to say.

“Johnny, I want you to do a hit for me. And then you can have those tapes. You can throw ’em out in the Gulf or you can break ’em up with a hammer, I don’t care. They’re yours. For doin’ me a favor.”

“What favor, Luann?”

“Johnny, you know what I need. Don’t you already know?”

I did.

She said, “I need you to kill Mr. Woody for me.”

Just after ten the next morning, I knocked on the door of what had been Killian’s suite. No vestibule watchdogs on duty today, and the guy who answered—the one with the wide face, close-set eyes and butch haircut—was not in one of his late employer’s standard-issue black suits. Instead he wore a red plaid sportcoat, dark red shirt with pointy collar, no tie and white slacks-socks-shoes. Was he going fucking golfing?

I wasn’t in my black suit, either, with a dark brown sportcoat over the rust-color turtleneck and dark brown jeans I’d worn to the Dixie Club. The sportcoat, which I’d picked up at Gayfers before that same trip, was a little big and did a decent job of concealing the nine millimeter in its shoulder holster.

I was greeted with none of the formality of the previous administration’s approach. The guy with the close-set eyes just nodded, said, “Quarry,” and went off to do something else as I wandered into the suite. No other staff around. I headed toward what had been Killian’s office and found the door open.