Free The Last Quarry by Max Allan Collins Page B

having to keep track of goddamn centuries....
    Anyway, my target had double windows, too, and she kept the shades up and the sheer, decorative white window dressing blocked almost nothing. She didn’t worry about privacy, because you couldn’t see in from the street, and the apartment across the way was dead.
    But, unlike my swimming-pool surveillance yesterday afternoon, this was no peep show. After the morning of vacuuming, she spent the afternoon sorting and folding laundry, again with the TV on, though I extrapolated that, as my view didn’t show it. She also read and listened to music, a CD player nestled in among the hardcovers in the big bookcase. Her comfy chair was near the two windows with a phone stand between.
    She had a couple calls, one from Connie setting up another evening out, which interrupted the vacuuming, and another while she was reading.
    In both instances, through my binoculars, I saw her checking caller I.D. before picking up—possibly avoiding Rick, although I found it extremely unlikely he’d ever call her again.
    Still, she answered the afternoon call warily, then brightened. “Well, Sis!...Sure....No problem....Well, that’s great!....Cool!...Play it by ear.”
    Well, that was scintillating.
    A dull call in a dull day, but somehow the mundaneness of her existence was getting to me. You shadow some Outfit cocksucker while he’s bouncing between guys he’s extorting money from and strip clubs where he’s getting free blow jobs, you don’t exactly brush a tear away when you remove him from the world. You take out some asshole exec who is embezzling from his bosses to maintain his coke habit, you’re over it before you reload. You rid the world of a criminal lawyer who is more crim than law, you feel pretty damn good about your line of work.
    But what was a nice girl like her doing in a bad place like this?
    I had a Coke habit, too, and half a dozen empty cans were littering my feet by nightfall. This old empty apartment did have a working toilet, which was a nice perk, but I’d overdone the caffeine.When Janet emerged from a street-level door below, between storefronts, I felt damn near jumpy.
    She had disappeared from the living room about an hour and a half before, and the door to the street wasn’t within my range of vision, so her change of appearance was a surprise. Nice one.
    She looked lovely, the dark blonde hair nicely bouncy, brushing the shoulders of her suede jacket which was a darker brown than her slacks but the same color as her high heels. Barely had she stepped onto the sidewalk than a sporty little red Mazda drew up with gal-pal Connie at the wheel.
    Janet got in, they took off, and so did I.
    I wasn’t thrilled when they went back to Sneaky Pete’s—one thing a guy in my trade doesn’t like to become is a regular at a joint in a town where he’s working. The brunette bartendress welcomed me back like old home week, even asked my name now that I was hanging out so often, and I told her Jack. She asked me a few questions as the evening wore on, and I told her jack.
    Janet and Connie had chosen another booth, but the bar was a long one and the mirror behind it, too, so I had no problem setting up reflective watch. I nursed a beer, and did my best not to go over to the jukebox and shoot it—surely there was a limit to how much Toby Keith a reasonable person can endure.
    Again Janet wore a silk blouse, a cream-color one,with a strand of June Cleaver pearls. Her buddy Connie was fetchingly slutty (or did I already have my “beer goggles” on?) in a black-leather motorcycle jacket, red rhinestone-studded Marilyn t-shirt, jeans she wouldn’t have to remove when she next went to the gynecologist, and colorful cowboy boots.
    Janet seemed embarrassed as Connie leaned forward, eyes and teeth gleaming, saying, “Spill! What happened to Rick?”
    “I told you last night I didn’t want to talk about it....” Now Janet sat forward. “Why, what have you