Quarry in the Black Read Online Free Page B

gig.”
    His voice turned teasing. “Were you lonely without me?”
    “It was terrible. But I thought about you when I beat off at night.”
    He flushed. He didn’t like that.
    I said, “I almost didn’t take this job.”
    “Really? Why?”
    “Well, this Lloyd character didn’t seem to fit the profile.”
    “What do you mean, profile?”
    I shrugged. “Usually we take out people who…well, I don’t want to say ‘have it coming,’ because that’s not it exactly. More like they got themselves in whatever mess they’re in, and they’re already dead, really. They just don’t know it.”
    “Walkin’ obituaries,” Boyd said, and gulped some more Bud. He’d finished the can, and got up and got himself a fresh one. When he sat back down, he asked, “What made you change your mind? The money?”
    “The money was part of it. But then the Broker told me that Reverend Lloyd was dirty. A phony preaching one thing and doing another.”
    He was nodding. “Yeah, that black bastard’s moving dope, Broker says, although not out of that storefront. I bet it’s these rallies he’s off doing, two or three a week now.”
    “You follow him to any?”
    He shook his head, once. “No. Broker said stay put. Said you’d be doing that, once you wormed your way inside.”
    “I guess that’s right. You’d start being a familiar face popping up once too often. That means you’ve had some days off with pay. Not bad.”
    “Not bad,” he admitted. “I’ve seen
Lady Sings the Blues
three times.”
    Lucky him.
    “Boyd, tell me—what if he was straight, this Lloyd?”
    Boyd frowned. “Well,
isn’t
he straight? I mean, he’s married, though that doesn’t always—”
    “Not that kind of straight. What if that wasn’t a front across the way, and the Rev was for real?”
    “What if he was?”
    “Would you still take the contract?”
    He crinkled his chin and shrugged. “Why not?”
    “Well, they say…a lot of people think…he’s the new Martin Luther King.”
    “Yeah. And?”
    “Would you have done
that
job?”
    “What job?”
    “Martin Luther King, dummy! Or JFK or Bobby?”
    Boyd waved that off. “Nutballs did the two Kennedy brothers.”
    “Maybe not. Plenty of people say they were contract jobs, fitted up with fall guys.”
    He almost choked on his beer. “Now
you’re
the nutball! Quarry the conspiracy nutball, that’s a good one.”
    I drank some Coke. “I asked the Broker about the Kennedys once and he said something interesting.”
    “What?”
    “ ‘Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.’ ”
    He was frowning. “If they were really contracts, those kills, so what?”
    I locked eyes with him, something I rarely did. “So would you have taken them on? King, for example.”
    Squinting one eye, he said, “Well, that one probably
was
a contract. That James Earl Jones guy.”
    “James Earl Ray.”
    “Whoever. Some dude that got paid to do it.”
    “Would you have done it, Boyd?”
    “Not for the kind of money
we
usually get. Not even for ten grand.”
    “But if the money were right?”
    “…I think so. Retirement money, yeah, you bet.”
    “Martin Luther King. How about Bobby Kennedy? Or Jack?”
    He thought for a few moments. “High six figures. Political hits are high risk in lots of ways, but sure, I’d take a flier.”
    I finished my Coke.
    “What about you, Quarry?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
    That seemed to annoy him. “Why not? Yeah, yeah, I get you, they’re good people, decent men, maybe great men. But they’re like anybody else we take out—they
put
themselves there. They made enemies. They became walkin’ obits like everybody we hit. So if somebody’s gonna get rich, why shouldn’t it be us? You? Me?”
    Rich like Oswald? Or Sirhan Sirhan? Or James Earl Ray?
    Boyd said, “What makes you so holier than thou, all of a sudden?”
    “Nothing. I just didn’t sign on for anything political.”
    Boyd said nothing. But I’d got him