Three

The still night was cut by the harsh, shrill sound of a scream-not Louis, who hadn’t had time for that, but the girl in the next room, scared shitless at hearing a gunshot, one would suppose.

I paid no attention to her and shouldered the door open-no night latch or anything-and stepped over Louis, kicked aside the. 38 revolver he’d been hiding behind him when he answered the door, and moved into the claustrophobic living room, pointing the nine millimeter at Harry, whose orange-ringed mouth was frozen open and whose bag of barbecue potato chips dropped to the floor, much as Louis had.

“Don’t, Harry,” I said.

I could see in Harry’s tiny dark eyes behind his thick black-rimmed glasses that he was thinking about the sawed-off shotgun under the pillow on the couch next to him.

“Who the fuck…?”

I moved slowly to the couch; behind me, an old colorized movie was playing on their captive’s daddy’s superstation. With my left hand, I plucked the shotgun from under the cushion next to Harry and tucked it under my arm.

“Hi, Harry,” I said. “Been a while.”

His orange-ringed mouth slowly began to work and his eyes began to blink and he said, “Quarry?”

That was the name he’d known me by.

His eyes showed white all around and he pointed at me. “You’re that fucker Quarry! ”

I dipped down to pluck the. 38 from the floor. “Taking the girl your idea, or are you still working for the boys?”

His words came to him from some remote part of his brain, a response not unlike the kick from a doctor-applied mallet to a knee. “We…we retired, couple years ago. God.”

He looked past me, wide-eyed, at the thing on the floor and pointed again, this time like a kid in the backseat who just spotted a Dairy Queen. But not as happy.

“You…you killed…Jesus Christ, you killed Louis…!”

I sat on the arm of the sofa and kept the gun on him, casually but on him. “Right. What were you going to put the girl’s body in?”