Free Quarry's Deal by Max Allan Collins Page A

the food line, climbed onto the stage, and came back to our balcony table with our food, which we ate.
    As buffets go, it wasn’t bad. The salad bar was unimaginative, just a couple kinds of jello with stuff floating in it, and coleslaw and lettuce salad, apply your own dressing. But the roast beef was rare and tender, and several kinds of potatoes and vegetables and other side dishes made it a very pleasant Sunday dinner.
    The company was pleasant, too. She was wearing a dark brown pants suit, perhaps the same one I’d seen her in as she was leaving the Beach Shore, in the middle of the night, not so long ago. If it was, I remember it’d seemed mannish to me, at the time. Perhaps that was because I didn’t know the jacket came off to reveal a yellow-and-tan-striped halter top that caressed her large breasts, cradled them like a child sleeping in a hammock.
    Somebody came around and lit our candle. It threw shadows on her face, making her features seem even more exotic than usual. She wasn’t wearing any make-up on her eyes. She didn’t have to.
    I was taking a perverse enjoyment in the verbal games we were playing, neither of us aware of what the stakes were, exactly, but both aware we were playing something, maybe nothing more than the sex game, or anyway that was the conclusion I hoped she’d come to, and maybe she had, if I was succeeding at convincing her I really was just a guy who used to sell brassieres.
    I knew one thing. I knew I had to be something of a pain in the ass to her, since she was obviously playing the back-up role here, surveilling Tree till her partner (who I assumed was the guy who’d worked me over with the lamp) got ready to make the hit. I was in her way, making it impossible for her to properly keep an eye on Tree, to get his movements, his pattern down; but my presence here was suspicious enough to make it necessary for her to keep track of me, at least until she was sure of who the hell I was or wasn’t. Otherwise she’d have to forget the Tree contract entirely; she was a pro, and couldn’t operate any other way. She’d beg off the job, tell her middle man to tell their client to get somebody else because this one just didn’t smell right to her.
    The thing that bothered me was, was she getting to me? And something else bothered me even more: I was starting to entertain the probably stupid notion that I might be getting to her .
    Not to mention this nagging feeling I had that one of us was behaving like an idiot, and I was afraid I knew which one of us it was.
    Unless it was both of us . . .
    We had another drink, and I decided to move another chess piece.
    “There’s something I’m having trouble with,” I said.
    “What’s that?”
    “Your name. Lucille. It’s a nice name. I like it. But I’m having a little trouble using it. It’s, I don’t know, too formal or something. And you don’t look like a Lucy to me. Do people call you Lucy?”
    “My folks did. I always hated it.”
    “So what do people call you?”
    “Do I have a nickname, you mean? Well. I knew a man who called me Ivy. He seemed to like that name for me.”
    Ivy. The Broker’s name for her. I make a tentative little move, just nudge a pawn out for a look around, and she comes down on me with her fucking queen.
    “Ivy,” I said. “I don’t think it fits you.”
    “My friends in high school called me Lu. Nobody’s called me that in years though.”
    “Lu.” I lifted my gimlet. “Here’s to you. Lu.”
    “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to have so many drinks so early in the day? I’m a bartender. I know.”
    “Are you going to accept the damn toast, or not?”
    “All right.” She clinked her glass against mine. “Here’s to Lu.”
    The house lights dimmed. We looked down and the stage had been cleared, the set put back in place, and the play was beginning.
    And that was when I found out who her friend Ruthy was.
    She was the lead. Playing the Judy Holliday role in Born Yesterday , which