Free Quarry's Choice by Max Allan Collins Page B

will come when gambling is legal here, and until that time I will do business with those who are in a position to protect my present interests while paving the way for me to be a major part of that future. Politicians in Biloxi like their bread buttered on both sides, and my knife works both ways.”
    There wasn’t a hint of Southern accent out of this guy. But then he was from Oklahoma. That was Midwest, sort of.
    “Still, creating a cohesive whole out of this Strip is a challenge, and a difficult one. Expanding my reach beyond this backward state to our neighboring ones is an ongoing struggle. But I’m doing it. And I am up to it.”
    I said nothing.
    He let out smoke in a disgusted sigh. “This Dixie Mafia you hear about is, or at least has been, just an inedible jambalaya of small-time crooks, scrambling for dollars, eking out individual petty existences, fighting among themselves. There needs to be organization and central leadership for what we have started here in Biloxi to flourish beyond state lines. To enjoy real success. Enduring success.”
    Killing this prick was going to be tricky. He was smooth and he was smart, and he had bodyguards hanging off the cypress trees like moss with guns.
    If I’d had my nine millimeter on me, I could have taken him out here and now, and removed the unibrow and the dishwater dude as a lagniappe, as we say down South. But like I said, I wasn’t armed, and now that I’d seen Killian in his castle, with all those guns between me and him, I knew a frontal assault wasn’t going to make it. I had to get close to him and stay close to him and find my window.
    “I need somebody like the man I lost,” he said, and his eyes moved from the Gulf to me and back again. “I need somebody who would like to make some real money.”
    “I like real money.”
    He nodded back to the bodyguards on the sidewalk. They were well out of earshot. “You can be one of my army, Mr. Quarry, and pull down a grand a week. It’ll be mostly tax free. You’ll be on the books working in some negligible capacity for one of the many clubs I own, and pay taxes on ten thousand a year. We both benefit that way.”
    “Cool.”
    “Not as cool as two grand a week and a five-grand bonus any time I have something special for you to do.” Now he looked right at me and gave me a smile turned up at both corners, even offering up a few wolf-like teeth. “Mr. Quarry, you are not from these parts.”
    “You noticed that.”
    “Understand that you are in a swamp. There are snakes and there are gators and there are inbred assholes who will fuck you and kill you and fuck you again. Can you handle yourself in such a place, among such creatures?”
    “Give it a try.”
    He pitched the cig a good distance, though not quite to the water or even its edge. “I have a job for you. It’s the kind of job that requires someone new. Someone that the people I need to deal with have never seen before. A fresh face.”
    That was me all over. Everybody said so.
    He settled a hand on my shoulder. “You pull this off, Mr. Quarry, and you will earn my thanks and a place at my side.”
    That would be a good position to pop him from.
    “Sounds great,” I said. “Details?”
    He gave them to me, but not before asking me my size so he could arrange for some suits and ties for me.
    But where he was sending me tomorrow would not require that kind of “professional attire.”
    Overalls maybe?

SIX
    Early the following afternoon, we flew to Memphis, Luann and I, where I rented a dark blue Mustang. By late afternoon, under a sky full of sunshine, we were following the rambling thing that was U.S. Highway 45 along the Mississippi/Tennessee state line.
    It had been my idea to take Luann along, and I’d asked no one’s permission. She appeared to be in my temporary charge, and from what I understood about the job Jack Killian had assigned me, she might serve several useful purposes.
    After my meeting with Killian, I’d sat with Luann in