The Last Quarry Read Online Free PDF Page A

hero?”
    “Kind of a bad time, isn’t it?”
    Her eyes flashed. “I think it’s exciting.”
    “I mean...of the month.”
    That made her laugh. She raised an eyebrow. “Other ports in a storm...?”
    “Maybe later,” I said, and smiled.
    She looked like AIDS-bait to me. I could be reckless, but not that reckless.
    Disappointed, she took a step away and accepted the cell phone, and within seconds was saying, “Daddy?...I’m fine, I’m fine...yes!...Daddy, you know that man you sent...what?”
    She frowned up at me in confusion. “He says...he says he didn’t send anybody.”
    I gestured impatiently for the phone and she gave it to me.
    “Good evening, sir. I have your daughter. As you can hear, she’s just fine....Get together one hundred thousand dollars in unmarked, non-sequential tens, twenties and fifties, and wait for the next call.”
    I hung up.
    She looked at me with wide eyes and wide-open mouth.
    “Relax,” I told her. “I’m not going to kill you—just turning a buck.”
    “You bastard! You prick! ”
    She spit in my face.
    I wiped it off with a hand and gave her a look.
    She started backing up, her eyes wild, and I got hold of her, carried the squirming creature back to her bed and dumped her there.
    I thrust a stern finger in that cute face. “Look! I gotta get some sleep. Pipe down, or I’ll duct-tape your little trap.”
    She behaved after that, though she cried and sniffled and tried to make me feel as sorry for her as she did for herself, which would have been impossible; on the other hand, some of it was genuine—she did have cramps. I cuffed her to the bedpost and she was able to recline. I even covered her up.
    Then I went over and curled up on the other bed, nine millimeter in my waistband.
    I’d taken some risks tonight.
    I lived and worked on this lake, after all. But it was winter, and the bodies wouldn’t turn up for a long time, if ever, and the Outfit had used this part of the world to dump its corpses since Capone was just amean street kid. Very little chance any of this would come back at me. And killing Harry and Louis had, at least, killed my insomnia.
    For the first time in a long time...
    ...I slept like a baby.

Four
    The Log Cabin, true to its name, was a log cabin, a roadside gas station and latter-day diner a good hundred miles from Lake Sylvan, a minor intrusion of civilization into a world of snowy pines. At eleven A.M., breakfast was a memory and lunch the future, so the graveled parking lot was home to only a couple of cars and two trucks.
    I was keeping watch through binoculars on the slope across the two-lane highway, sheltered and concealed by more of those snowy pines; the ground had only a dusting of snow but the air was brittle with cold. I’d left the ninja-black wardrobe home—in daylight, it would have only made me stand out against the winter whiteness—and was in work boots and jeans and a brown corduroy fleece-lined jacket that were comfortable enough. I’d been keeping tabs on this ransom drop for half an hour already, and it took that long for the girl to speak.
    “He won’t come himself, you know.”
    Julie Green was seated like an Indian, leaning back against a big nearby tree, looking utterly bored, an old brown leather jacket of mine loose over her shoulders, her nipples perked under the blackhip-hop t-shirt that peeked out, her designer jeans brushed with snow, her handcuffed hands in her lap.
    Basically, she looked like a surly high school student waiting outside the principal’s office.
    “Well, Daddy should come,” I said, “if he has any use for you. Those were the terms.”
    She shrugged and smirked. Her teeth chattered now and then. “He doesn’t have much use for me. Plus, don’t ever forget—he’s a lying untrustworthy shit.”
    I lifted the binoculars again. “Good to know.”
    A money-green Lexus was pulling in, taking one of half a dozen stalls next to the restaurant. I re-focused the binoculars and watched millions