Quarry in the Middle Read Online Free PDF Page A

couple dozen yellow melons to splatter and send their bearers into whatever their idea of the afterlife was. In sniper workparticularly, you find yourself picking off people like a game of Galaga, but with better effects.
    None of that got me in trouble. In fact, it got me some medals. What got me in trouble was coming home, finding my wife in bed with a guy and killing the son of a bitch. Actually, that’s wrong—I didn’t kill him till the next day when I went over to the prick’s house to have it out with him, and he was under his car working on it, and said, “What the fuck do you want now , bunghole?”
    And I kicked the jack out.
    This made it look premeditated (if it had been premeditated, I’d have taken a gun) and made it harder for the unwritten law to kick in. But the papers took my side and I ended up not getting prosecuted, at which point the papers did not take my side. This is the only time I got any publicity for anybody I ever killed, incidentally, and it’s apparently what inspired the Broker to look me up.
    I haven’t given you my name, and won’t, but Broker knew it all right (it was in his file), though he immediately gave me a one-name alias—Quarry—which he insisted on using. He had these kind of corny code names for all of us—Monahan was “Driver” in the file, I would later learn.
    Anyway, I got comfortable with “Quarry,” and other people in the business called me that, too. Sometimes I even used it on the job with a first name stuck on. Right now, though, at the Wheelhouse, I was checked in as Jack Gibson.
    I sensed someone had joined me, not in the pool but taking a deck chair alongside, and I stopped swimming except to stroke over and climb out and sit on the edge, water dripping off, catching my breath.
    Across the pool, in the chair next to the one that had my towel draped over it (and my towel-wrapped gun under it), Monahan was sitting. Beyond him, just over his right shoulder, I could see the Sunbird.
    “Lovely night,” I said.
    He was smoking. On his left was a little glass table with his Chesterfields and room key on it and a folded towel. He was in a pair of navy swim trunks and a red t-shirt. His legs and arms were hairless, and he looked much younger than his forty or so years. He had dark eyes and pale skin and looked relaxed, head back, blowing smoke rings for his own amusement. He had the kind of nasty, smirky face that fraternity boys never grow out of.
    “A little humid,” he said.
    His voice echoed across the water.
    “Could rain,” I admitted, mine echoing similarly. “But you can’t bitch about the temperature.”
    “Sure I can.” He lowered his chin and grinned at me.
    Was it just a dumb remark, or was there something in it?
    I stretched, then walked around the pool—diving board was at the other end—and knelt to retrieve the two towels under my chair. One, of course, was rolled up like an ice cream cake with a nine millimeter center. I sat down, placed the bundle as inconspicuously aspossible on the cement to my right—Monahan was seated at my left—and began toweling off casually.
    “Looks like all the sweet pussy took a walk,” he said with a sneer.
    I wasn’t sure I got that, but figuring he meant the bikini girls, I tried this: “Lotta nice stuff gettin’ strutted this afternoon, all right. I guess they’re all over at the Paddlewheel.”
    He nodded. Smoked some more. No more rings. “This motel’s the loneliest place in town, after dark.”
    “Rough little burg,” I noted.
    “Paddlewheel’s safe enough. Games are straight. Good food. Decent entertainment.” He shook his head. Blew dragon smoke out his nostrils. “But you can get your ass handed to you downtown, brother.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Joint called the Lucky Devil, especially.”
    “Rough?”
    “Rougher than a cob.” He extended a hand. “Sam Mason. Insurance game.”
    I shook it. “Jack Gibson. Veterinary medicine.”
    “Really? Pets or farm animals?”
    “Know much