Quarry in the Black Read Online Free Page A

come back in the evenings. So I keep a loose watch on the place. No pattern, though, other than they come in around eight A.M . and stay till six.”
    “What about lunch?”
    “They mostly brown-bag it. I’m not sure about Lloyd himself.”
    I sipped my Coke. “Does he ever leave by the front?”
    “Sure. Lots of times. But, again—no pattern, not even where lunch is concerned. Sometimes a cab pulls up, sometimes one of his people pulls up in one car or another. Nothing helpful.”
    “Bodyguards?”
    “Oh yeah. Always. Big and Negro and tougher-lookin’ than Joe Frazier.”
    “Not Negro. Black.”
    “Quarry, that’s racist.”
    “
Black
is racist?”
    “Right. You better get with it.”
    I rubbed my forehead. He lived out east with his hairdresser “wife,” for Christ’s sake. Didn’t he have what they called an alternate lifestyle? Yet he was about as hip as a dockworker.
    “I’ll watch it,” I assured him.
    “You damn well better. I mean, you’re going undercover with those people, right?”
    I nodded. Those people.
    “You don’t want to get on their bad side.” He shook his head. “Undercover like a damn cop. That’s a new one.”
    “I did it before, just not with you.”
    He gave a little shudder. “Doesn’t it make you nervous?”
    “The money’s better, so I’ll get a grip.”
    Boyd gulped some Bud. “We don’t wanna blow this one, Quarry. I mean, ten grand is one sweet haul.”
    I didn’t know if he meant ten grand that we were splitting or if that was his end, and I didn’t ask.
    I just said, “Very damn sweet.”
    Normally it was an equal split. But the Broker obviously knew my end was higher risk and that it would take real bread to convince me to take on the job. Anyway, Boyd didn’t need to know what I was taking home.
    I asked him, “What do you have so far?”
    Boyd said that he’d played pedestrian several days to witness Lloyd arriving at the HQ alley door via a black Grand Prix complete with driver and paired bodyguards. His exit varied depending on how late they worked, but the Grand Prix pulled in at five-fifty P.M. , ready to pick him up whenever.
    “Not very useful,” I said.
    “Not very. Mornings, they drop him right at the door and evenings he comes out, climbs in and he’s gone.”
    “What about meals?”
    “There are half a dozen restaurants where he takes lunch. I followed him to another half a dozen where he occasionally takes supper. Two soul food joints and several Italian places on the Hill, where he gets dirty looks but served. Plenty of white people in this town don’t like Negroes, let me tell you.”
    “Nothing useful there.”
    “No. I can see why the Broker is sending you in to get close and cuddly, but I don’t envy you.”
    “Don’t you like Negroes, Boyd?”
    Another shudder. “I don’t like them when they weigh two-fifty and pack guns in shoulder holsters, no, sir.”
    “Don’t be a bigot. They say once you go black you never go back.”
    “Fuck you, Quarry. What’s your in with these people?”
    I told him I had I.D. that made me John Blake, a Vietnam War veteran who won a Bronze Star. Seems I’d been active with a number of Nam Vets against the war, and was anxious to help get a peace candidate like George McGovern elected.
    “That gets you in,” Boyd said, nodding. “What gets you in the inner circle?”
    I sipped Coke. “My charm.”
    Teeth blossomed under the dark shaggy mustache. “Well, you
are
one winning son of a bitch.”
    “Thank you.”
    “But you won’t have your nine millimeter with you. I mean, you’re going in looking like a college kid, right? Jeans and shit.”
    “Right. But I brought a suit along. Two in fact. And a few ties and white shirts. And both are cut to conceal a shoulder holster.”
    He grinned again, half-amused, half-impressed. “A stick-it-in-your-waistband type like you? I never remember you wearing one of those.”
    “On one job I did,” I said. “You weren’t there. A solo