“Jerry?” I said. I didn’t use his last name, because I doubted he’d be using that name here, and anyway what I knew him by wasn’t his real one. Just like Quarry wasn’t mine.

Quarry was a name very few people ever called me by-and then only occasionally, in business-related situations. Now and then I used it myself, as a last name, because I grew kind of used to it. It had been given to me by the Broker, over ten years ago now, more a code word than an alias; he’d laid it on me when I first went to work for him, taking on contracts he arranged. The Broker, who was a pretentious Brooks Brothers type, found the “appellation” amusing-a quarry was hollowed-out rock, he said.

And maybe an irony was in there somewhere, since what I did was seek quarries myself-people I’d been hired to kill. That kind of contract.

So, anyway, Jerry.

He looked like an old hippie, and the Jerry fit him, since the first thing you thought of was Jerry Garcia, right down to the granny glasses. Not that his clothes were overtly hippie-ish-he had on a green plaid button-down shirt, open at the throat, and nice blue jeans, his salt-and-pepper facial hair full but nicely trimmed. Gabby Hayes spruced up for the prom. Since I’d seen him, maybe nine years ago, he’d lost some hair up top and had a sidesaddle comb-over going.

Without asking, he joined me, sliding in across the way in the booth. “Sorry,” he said, almost whispering, and made an “eek” face. “You aren’t on a job, are you?”

I shook my head. “Just a tourist. How you been, Jerry?”

He had very light blue eyes that would have looked great on a sixteen-year-old baby-doll blonde. This assumes the blonde wasn’t a heavy drinker and her baby blues hadn’t gone bleary and spidery red behind granny glasses. His face was pale and splotchy, like he had radiation poisoning, his nose a bulbous vein-shot affair.