I climbed the wooden steps and stopped on the second floor landing to glance inside: nothing, the apartment below Boyd was vacant. That was good. I went on up to the next landing and tried Boyd’s door. Unlocked. That was not so good. I locked the door behind me and walked easily, quietly through the dark apartment, which was three large rooms laid out in a row, like a boxcar: kitchen, bedroom, living room. The place was furnished modestly but well, with a distinctly feminine flair in the colors and even the faintly perfumy smell everything had, especially the bedroom. The walls were pink stucco and the floors were carpeted. A nice, well-above-average apartment, that looked lived in.
I found Boyd in the living room sitting to the side of double windows that looked out onto the street. The neons and such out there kept the room semilit. He was leaned against the wall, the trunk of his body twisted so it faced me, his head turned so he could peer from out the corner of the window; if I sat that way I’d get a crick in my neck that would take that chiro downstairs a month to rid me of, but Boyd always sat that way when he was watching, one pillow between his back and the wall, another snuggled under his butt. At his feet was a paperback folded open, cover-side up, next to a can of beer; the paperback was called Twilight Love and the beer was Budweiser. He was wearing floppy brown slacks and a yellow short-sleeve shirt with a green tie and he needed a haircut. I tossed the sack of tacos at him.
He jumped. He couldn’t have jumped higher if I goosed him. Which was something I wasn’t about to do, considering how he was liable to take it. “Shit! Shit!” he said. “Quarry.”
“You dumb asshole,” I said. “What in hell was that back door doing unlocked?”
His face got squinched up, but before irritation could climb out of him, his nose got scent of the tacos and he smiled. He reached down and picked up the bag and opened it and peeked in and said, “Hey, Quarry, you’re all right. You brought the tacos. Hey.”
“Hey. I brought the tacos. Now what about the damn door?”
He made a farting sound with his lips. “Who else is going to show but you, Quarry? I just unlocked the door about five minutes ago. No sweat.”
“I’m worried about you, Boyd.”
“Aw, can it.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be watching out that window?”
“Hey, who appointed you foreman all of the goddamn sudden?”
“Don’t push me, Boyd.”
The irritation came back and got out: “Bullshit! I been cooped up watching a whole goddamn week, you break your ass watching for a while.’’
“So that’s your trick: you watch with your ass.”
“Oh fuck you. I’m going out to the kitchen and eat my tacos.”
“Do that.”
“I will.”
“But before you do, maybe you might tell me who I’m supposed to be watching.”
“Oh. Sure. Little ginky guy, about five-eight.”
“Three inches taller than you, you mean.”
“God, you’re a fucker.”
“Never mind that. Tell me some more about him.”
“What more? That’s it, just a gink, and a blind gink at that, always wears tinted glasses. Usually wears gray slacks and a cardigan sweater.”
“A cardigan sweater? In the summer?”
“Yeah. It’s got those diamond-shape type of patterns on it, in shades of gray. Damn thing looks like a big argyle sock.” Boyd snickered.
“Shit, it’s eighty degrees out there.”
“Naw, it’s cool tonight, but this guy leaves the sweater on even when it’s hot. It was up to ninety two days ago and he still had the sweater on.”
“Sounds like an oddball.”
“Believe me, we’re doing the world a favor on this one.”
“Is it his apartment you’re watching, or what?”
“Yeah. The building right across from us, but down a floor. There’s a do-it-yourself laundry below him and another apartment, empty, above him.”
I went over to the window, standing to the side against the wall. I looked out. This was a weird commercial district, kind of off to one side of the downtown, on one of the streets running perpendicular to the river and just on the border of a dip where factories and plants took over down to the edge of the slope of East Hill. On the corner, to the right, was a fancy drugstore, taking up a quarter of the block, its tall display windows full of expensive gift-shop-type items. Next to it was an incongruously sleazy bar, and then the VFW hall, and another bar, and the taco joint, and the laundry, and a coin wash.
I said, “The second floor, there? Where the light is on and kind of yellowish?”
“Yeah. His eyes are bad, wears tinted glasses remember, and near as I can tell all the light bulbs in his apartment are yellow like that.”
“You feel you got his pattern down pretty good?”
Boyd nodded, confident. “He won’t be coming out again tonight, until quarter to nine. Then he walks down to that drugstore and has a soda at their fountain. Or at least that’s what he had the two times I followed him in and watched him up close.”
“A soda.”
“Yeah. Thank God I got a refrigerator full of beer here, or I’d go nuts walking by a bar to go into a drugstore for a soda.” Thinking of it, Boyd came over and leaned down and got his can of Bud, then, as an afterthought, picked up his paperback as well He said, “You go ahead and watch a while. Yell if he starts to leave or something.”
I sat down. No need to play contortionist like Boyd: it would be easy watching from here, since this window on the third floor was well above street eye-level, and safely above second-floor level.
“Quarry?”
“Are you still in here?”
“It’s… good to see you.”
“Is it.”
“You’re pissed off, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“What’re you pissed off about?”
“Nothing.”
“You think I let you down last time, don’t you?”
“You didn’t let me down.”
“You think I did. You think I didn’t watch that guy in Toledo as close as I could’ve. You think if I’d done my part you wouldn’t almost’ve got seen leaving when those people showed at the place next door.”
“We been all over that.”
“Have we?”
“We have.”
“I’m telling you, Quarry, you can watch a mark for a week, two weeks, and you can get his life down fairly well, but there’s always going to be a joker or two turn up in the deck, you know? Hell you could watch a year and stuff could still crop up. The unexpected, right? You got to expect it.”
“Your tacos are getting cold.”
“Okay. How much do I owe you?”
“For what?”
“The tacos.”
“Christ!”
“Okay, okay.” He trudged out of the room.
I turned away as he did and watched. A shadow slowly shuffled across the yellow window across the way. Then nothing. I watched.