We did five jobs in six months, Turner and I, which is probably at least one too many. And maybe that had something to do with why Turner fucked up on number five. You can get sloppy, working too many jobs too close together. You can get careless. You can also get dead.
Which is why I resented what happened in Twin Cities, at the carnival.
It was the second week in June, cool, overcast, getting toward dusk; the carnival was on the fair grounds, which lay somewhat uneasily between Minneapolis and St. Paul, in the midst of residential and business areas. A big show, with a score of crazy rides: their bizarre, oversize metallic shapes-the Yo-Yo, the Loop, Zipper, Octopus, Tilt-a-Whirl, Doubledecker Ferris, Death-Wish Roller Coaster-rose out of the city of tents like lunatic skyscrapers. Along the wide, occasionally puke-strewn sawdust streets of this city, people strolled, particularly young people, sometimes couples, often-times packs of three or more of a single sex, middle-class kids in tight jeans and fresh faces, while skinny men with smoldering cigarettes behind ears and dark tee-shirts on and dark complexions or perhaps just in need of baths stood on platforms and spoke into loud, muffled mikes, extolling the desirability of viewing In Person the Fattest Boy In The World, the Smallest Living Man In The World, the Strangest Teenage Women In The World (one of whom had no face, thanks to the radiation color TVs emit) and a woman who before your very eyes turned into a gorilla, and no doubt was the only one of her kind In The World, and other men, not all of them skinny in black tee-shirts but many of them needing baths, coaxed passersby into throwing balls and throwing money away (sometimes literally, in the dime/quarter/dollar toss) in pursuit of prizes of no discernible worth, including stuffed animals of indeterminate species and cigarette lighters with the American flag on them.
The mark was a guy running a game tent, a red canvas cubby-hole where you threw baseballs at milk bottles. You could win anything from a tiny stuffed skunk to a pink stuffed dog the size of a Volkswagen. Odds are you’d win the skunk.
The guy was short, fat and dark, Jewish maybe, or Italian. Could be either one, if he was a mob guy hiding out, which I figured him to be.
Understand, I was never told why this or any mark was getting hit, other than somebody wanted them hit bad enough to pay good money. Much of what I did for Broker was tied to the mob but only in that clients were often referred through mob sources; relatively little of what I or any of us did for Broker was directly Family-related. They had their own people to do that kind of thing, and only in special instances would it prove useful to them to bring in somebody outside, like me…
However sometimes it was pretty obvious a hit was a Family contract, and this time was one of them: the way the guy looked, not just his ethnic look but his vaguely urban speech and his almost polished manner-none of it fit the carny image. Not that everybody connected with the carnival was some kind of lowlife or deadbeat: not at all. But the professional carny men have a look to them, as does the summer help, the kids (including pretty college girls, some of whom work game tents, others of whom work as strippers) who do the carny number as a money-making lark. A guy like our short, fat, dark, somewhat well-bred mark sticks out like a nun at a nightclub.
I went over to his tent and threw some balls.
“Cool day,” I said.
“Cool,” he agreed. His voice was high-pitched, like it hadn’t changed yet.
I seemed to be his first customer in some time, but he wasn’t particularly excited about the prospect.
“How much?” I said, pointing to the pile of baseballs on the counter.
He pointed to the sign that said “3 Balls — 35? Everybody Wins.” His features were bulges in his puffy face. His thinning gray-brown hair was cut short and neatly combed to the side. He was in his early fifties. He wore a Hawaiian print shirt and white pressed slacks. He looked like the host at a country club luau.
I threw three balls and won a skunk.
I threw three more and won another.
“What do I win,” I asked, “if I play again and keep missing?”
“A skunk,” he said.
“I figured. Well. Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
I walked away, passing several other game tents where the pitchmen did everything but reach out and grab me to pull me in for a game.
Shriners were standing around in their fezzes like foreign cops. Some of them were ticket-takers; others just stood and in so doing reminded anyone who cared, that the Shrine was sponsoring all this family entertainment. One of the Shriners was Turner.
He was standing in a small open area between the House of Mirrors and the tent where the Bonnie and Clyde Death Car was being exhibited, and he was watching the pretty young girls in tight jeans go by He was tall, a good three inches taller than my five ten, and while neither of us was overweight, he was leaner looking. His hair was dark brown and shaggy, his complexion pale, almost pasty, with heavy five o’clock shadow; his eyes were dark as his hair and so close set they crowded his nose.
He nodded to me as I approached, saying, “How they hangin’, Quarry?”
“Turner,” I said, nodding back. We stood there a few minutes.
“Lots of nice pussy,” he said, smirking. He did a lot of smirking. His voice was like sandpaper rubbing against itself.
I didn’t say anything for a while.
“You won’t see nicer pussy,” he said. “Young pussy. Nice young pussy. You won’t find pussy any tighter. You know what I’m talking about, Quarry?”
“It seems to have something to do with pussy.”
“Bet your ass it does. You hungry?”
“I could eat.”
So we went over to one of the few food stands that had a counter and stools, and ordered knockwurst sandwiches with grilled onions and peppers, and lemonade, and sat at the far end of the counter by ourselves and ate and talked.
“What do you think, Quarry? How’s he look to you?”
“Like a bigger asshole than you.”
“How’m I supposed to take that?”
“Any way you like.”
“I don’t get you, Quarry. Why the fuck you got to be so goddamn hard to get along with? I been trying to get along with you, you know.”
“Sure.”
“Well I am, goddamnit.”
“Drop it, okay?”
This was only our second contact. Turner had been here a week, getting the mark’s pattern down, and I got in last night. Today I was to see if the setup looked kosher enough to go ahead with the hit. We’d had words last night, at Turner’s motel, about the way he was handling his end, his making like a Shriner as a cover. He thought it was a great idea. I thought it sucked. He could’ve picked up any number of menial jobs at the carnival that would’ve given him plenty of opportunity to stake out the mark; his acting the Shriner role was in my opinion idiotic, as the Shriners were local and could spot him as phony.
But the cover had held, apparently, probably because Turner had a good line of bullshit, so what the hell.
“I got to agree with you,” Turner was saying, through a mouthful of knockwurst and onions and what have you, “the guy’s an asshole. You’d think he’d have fucking sense enough to try and blend in. You’d think he’d notice all the noise the other pitchmen are making, and that he’d have sense enough to join in. But no. He just lays back quiet and waits for customers to come see him and when they do, he don’t give a shit. He don’t know much about being inconspicuous.”
“Maybe you could give him some tips.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Guess.”
“Hey, yeah, well and blow it out your ass, Quarry, if you want my opinion. So you going to tell me how it looks to you, or just sit there?”
“It looks okay.”
“I think so, too. How’s tomorrow afternoon sound?”
“Bad. They pull up stakes morning after next. Tomorrow being the last day might make it atypical. Since you went to the trouble of getting his pattern down, we ought to use it.”
“I suppose. Fuck it, anyway.”
“What’s the problem?”
“I had a date tonight. This evening, I mean.”
“A date.”
“Yeah, I was going to get it on between shows with Zamorita.”
“Zamorita.”
“I been humping her. Zamorita. Actually, her name is Hilda something. She’s the woman who turns into a gorilla.”
“You have that effect on all the girls?”
“Funny. I mean, she’s the one with the stage act. She gets in this cage and they dim the lights and do some electrical stuff and she turns into a gorilla. Anyway that’s what it looks like. Actually it’s just a big hoax.”
“Oh, Turner, do you have to spoil everything?”
“You’re a funny guy, Quarry. Funnier than my old man when he takes out his teeth. Anyway, I guess I’ll just have to take a rain check on the bitch. Damn, is she going to be disappointed.”
“I can imagine. Ten o’clock, then?”
“Ten o’clock. I’ll be there.”
“Where exactly?”
He pointed over to a spot near the mark’s tent, between the exhibit with the giant rats and the House of Mirrors. The Winnebago camper was parked behind there, just fifty feet away, among many other such vehicles belonging to the carny people; in the background loomed the truck trailers, the rides, when disassembled, were transported in.
“Okay,” I said. “See you later.”
“See you later.”
I went on some rides, had my weight and age guessed and threw a few balls at a game tent, but not the mark’s. I ended up in Fun World, a king-size arcade in a long, narrow tent. The pinballs and shooting machines held my attention for several hours, and when I finally came out, at nine-thirty, night had replaced dusk; the rides, with their bright neons of every imaginable color, were tracing garish designs against the darkness, like ungodly jewelry or a hand-painted tie.
And at nine-forty, after going to the rental Ford for my silenced nine-millimeter and a light jacket, I had wandered over by the mark’s stall, where he was closing down. The rest of the carnival stayed open till one, but not this clown. He always closed up early, sometimes as early as ten o’clock. Tonight was a new record.
Which was a little disturbing. It’s always disturbing when a mark varies his pattern, even just a little. But even more disturbing when I looked over where Turner was supposed to be and he wasn’t. Well, it was early. He’d be along soon.
By nine fifty-five the mark’s tent was shut down.
Still no Turner.
And the guy was heading back toward his Winnebago.
I hesitated.
Shit.
Turner would be here momentarily.
I went ahead and followed the guy to the camper. It was dark back there, and deserted, except for the mark and me. I took the silenced gun from out of my belt, where the light jacket had covered it, and went in right behind the guy, shutting the camper door behind us, flicking on the light and showing him the nine-millimeter.
And it should have been over just that fast. I should have squeezed the trigger, sent him on his way and me on mine.
But I was still pretty new at the game. I hadn’t learned the desirability of doing it fast, not yet. In fact I was just in the process of learning.
Because in the split second I wasted, the fat little Jew or Italian or whatever the fuck he was reached over to the little built-in stove and got hold of a frying pan and laid it across the side of my face, and I fired but the silenced gun thudded a shot into the cushion of a chair, and there was grease in the pan, not hot thank God, but grease, and some of it got in my eyes and the little fucker had pushed me aside and was scrambling past me, out the door, before I could get my eyes working and my gun hand around to make up for my mistake.
I put the gun back in my belt. I had to: from the doorway of the camper I could see the mark heading into the carnival, that Hawaiian shirt flashing into the crowd, and I had to pursue him. And that could hardly be done with the nine-millimeter hanging out. I zipped the jacket up a third of the way and went after him.
One good thing, though: he’d angled toward the space of open ground between the giant rat exhibit and the House of Mirrors. Right into Turner’s arms.
Only as I reached that point myself I saw the guy going into the House of Mirrors, nodding at the ticket-taker who knew him as a fellow carny and waved him by without a ticket.
And Turner was nowhere to be seen.
So I bought a ticket to the House of Mirrors.
It wasn’t very busy right now, but I wouldn’t be alone in there with him. I didn’t know what compelled him to enter that place, but chances were he didn’t know, either. It’s easy to be critical of the behavior of people in tense situations: not everybody functions well under stress.
Or maybe he’d seen some movies with arty funhouse shootout scenes, and figured I’d be distracted by all those reflections of myself and he could maybe somehow lose me in there. Which was a possibility. Maybe it would have been smarter to just wait for him to come out.
But he might also know his way around in there; maybe he was a pretty good friend of the guy who ran the house, and knew where an office was or a back exit or something. Or maybe he figured he knew the place well enough to hide somewhere and jump me as I came by.
Who could tell what he thought.
At any rate, I found him, in an enclosed area of perhaps sixteen mirrors, none of them distorting, and nobody else was around at the moment, and if he thought hiding in the House of Mirrors would be to his advantage, he was wrong-unless he enjoyed watching all those images of himself getting shot through the sternum.
I found my way out with little trouble. Behind me I heard somebody finding him, and making a fuss, going into a screaming panic. That was too bad. Had everything gone as it should, the mark would have been found no sooner than morning, in all probability.
I found Turner in the trailer behind the Gorilla Girl’s tent.
I knocked and, finally, was answered by a pretty brunette of about twenty, though her face was an easy ten years harder.
“Tell Cheetah Tarzan’s here to see him,” I said.
“Go away,” she said, starting to push shut the door.
I pushed it open and found Turner naked in bed and pulled him out by the arm and threw him on the floor.
“What the hell…?” he said.
I kicked his balls up in him.
That kept him busy for a few minutes, during which time I told Zamorita to get him his clothes.
“I’ll fix you, fucker,” he said, after a while, still holding himself. “I’ll fix you.”
“Never mind that,” I said. “You better just get your pants on so we can both get the hell out of here.”
Now, five years later, going through Turner’s room at Wilma’s Welcome Inn, I wondered why I bothered going back for him at all.