Hardrock Stiff

by Thomas Zigal

  “Just a precaution, ma’am. We’ve had some reports. May I come in and check your room?”

  She gazed out the window. It was the middle of the night, maybe four A.M. The moon was down and a light rain speckled the pane. She couldn’t get the damned boot on her bad foot.

  “That won’t be necessary,” she said. “I’ll be all right. I’ve got a gun.”

  The doorknob continued to twist, a faint, menacing tick, and she had the feeling he was jimmying the lock with a tool. If only she did have that LadySmith that Randy had trained her to use.

  “There’s a message here I’m supposed to deliver.”

  “What kind of message?” She was stalling for time, pulling on her sweater, her heart speeding wildly. “Who’s it from?”

  “It’s a note, ma’am. Is there any reason why you won’t open the door?”

  “Yes, there is. I’m undressed and in bed.”

  She unlatched the window, opened it to the night. A strong cold wind hurled the curtains in her face. It was too dark to see what was below. A hedge, a patio table, a spinning central air unit. The drop might be five feet, it might be twenty. She couldn’t remember which floor she was on.

  “Could you please come back in a couple of hours? I’m sure the message can wait.”

  “Not this message,” the man said. “I’m told it’s very urgent. Here, I’ll slip it under the door for you.”

  She heard a soft scraping sound. Something disturbed the wide strip of light under the door. A piece of paper.

  “I’ll check on you a little later, Miss Pfeil. Sorry to bother you.”

  Her eyes had adjusted to the unlit room and she could make out the paper on the floor. Who the hell had sent her a note? She didn’t believe for a second that the man was gone.

  Crossing the room in quiet steps, she knelt down and picked up the paper, then retrieved the cigarette lighter from her pants pocket. The flame revealed the scrawled words. Boom you’re dead bitch.

  “Sooner or later,” said the deep voice on the other side of the door.

  Kat gasped, struggled to catch her breath, leaned all her weight against the door.

  “You’re running out of places to hide, kitty cat.” His voice was an obscene whisper only three inches from her ear.

  She wadded up the note and threw it on the floor. “I’ve got a message for you, too, asshole,” she said, “and for those limp dicks you work for. That little red dot you feel on the back of your neck is my way of playing tag.”

  He shouldered the door hard, cracking wood, knocking Kat to the carpet. She dragged herself to her feet and hobbled as fast as she could to the window. On the third blow the door was forced open and the man stepped into the room, a large silhouette backlit by creamy light from the corridor. Shadow obscured his face.

  “Here, kitty, kitty,” he growled, moving slowly toward her, a bandaged hand hanging like a club at his side. “How many lives you got left, pretty Kat?”

  She hopped up onto the window seat. The curtains were floating around her like gossamer streamers. “Enough to fuck you up real bad,” she said, and then turned and leapt into the darkness.

  Chapter twenty-nine

  Kurt stuck his head under the cold shower stream to shock himself awake. He had had only three hours of sleep but Ned’s funeral was at eight and Meg was bringing the boys here beforehand to try on the two pint-sized suits packed away in a trunk, hand-me-downs from Kurt’s childhood. It was going to be a hard day on everyone. He let the water run awhile longer over his thick hair, then stood back and washed out the cut where the knife had sliced his forearm. When he turned off the faucet and slid aside the shower curtain, someone was waiting for him.

  “I should’ve taken you up on your offer, Kurt,” she said, staring at him across the large bathroom.

  “Jesus Christ, Kat, you scared the shit out of me,” he said, grabbing a towel to cover himself. “What happened?”

  “Some guy broke into my room,” she said, unscrewing the cap on his aftershave, smelling the green liquid. “He knew all about me. Had to be one of the bastards behind the firebomb.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I jumped out a window.”

  He saw now that her jeans and sweater were spattered with mud and that she was leaving a puddle on the tile. Her hair was messy and damp and pulled back behind her ears.

  “Where were the Lamars and their high-priced security people?”

  “A very good question,” she said, toeing off one muddy boot, then the other. “I don’t know how the guy could get in a place like that. Unless…”

  He stepped out of the tub, the towel cinched at his waist. “Unless the fucker was with security,” he said.

  “Exactly,” she said, unzipping her jeans and dropping them to the floor with a heavy wet thud.

  “VIProtex,” he said. Neal Staggs. The son of a bitch was always lurking around the edges.

  She came up close to him and pulled the sweater over her head, discarding it in the trail of clothing. “I’m too tired to worry about my vanity,” she said, pressing her scarred chest against him in a long embrace. “So please don’t stare at me. I need a shower bad.”

  He could feel the tension and fear deep down in her bones. “Did he hurt you?” he asked.

  She rested her head against his dripping chest. “I got the worst of it from the rosebushes.”

  He kissed her matted hair. “Do you think you could describe the guy to one of my deputies?” he asked. “Did you get a good look at him?”

  She untied the knot at his waist and the towel slipped to the floor. “Not as good as this,” she said, her hands sliding down his back to rest on his buttocks. “Come in with me.” She took his hand and stepped awkwardly into the tub. “I’m cold and I can’t bend my legs this morning. You’ll have to kneel down and wash them for me.”

  He stayed in the bathroom a few minutes longer to dress the knife wound, and when he opened the door he found her lying on his bed, the sheet wrapped mummylike around her long slender figure. “Meg left a few things behind. They’re in that bottom drawer,” he said, pointing to an old dresser that had belonged to his parents. “I don’t know if anything is your size, but you’re welcome to them.”

  She smiled at him, her wet hair fanned out on the pillow. “Do men always keep the underthings of their ex-wives?”

  Only the ones who are foolish enough to think their wives might be coming back, he thought. But he offered no explanation.

  “How is your arm?” she asked, patting the bed beside her. “Your doctor should have a look at it.”

  “I’m okay,” he said, crawling in next to her.

  She propped herself up on an elbow, ran her finger across the fading tattoo above his bicep. “This is incredible, you know,” she said, placing a gentle kiss there. “Where did you get it?”

  It always embarrassed him to talk about the tattoo when he was sober. “I was a wet-nosed soldier boy stationed in Germany,” he said, cringing at the memory. “Fasching, the winter of sixty-nine. My buddies and I were so wasted we could barely stand up. They got skulls and daggers and ‘Born to raise hell.’ I told the little tattoo man what I wanted and he started to bawl like a baby. Pretty soon everybody in the shop was crying. Can you believe he did this from memory? He’d seen it on television like everybody else in the world. It took him hours. I think I was stone cold sober by the time he was through. My buddies were long gone.”

  “It’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen on a man,” she said, caressing his face. “If I’d been there, I would’ve cried too.”

  She kissed him, and as the kiss lingered on, he began to unfurl the sheet around her. “It’s so bright in here,” she said. “Can we pull the drapes?”

  “Kat,” he said, “you don’t have to hide from me.”

  His hand roamed softly over the cesarean scar on her belly, stroked her damaged knee. “Let’s take it slow and easy, okay?” she whispered. “I haven’t been with anyone in a long time.”r />
  It had been a long time for him as well. He kissed her breast, imagining that they were young again, discovering love’s delicate friction, their blushing bodies strong and flawless and pure.

  “I’m sorry, Kurt,” she said, flinching suddenly, her body tensing beneath him. “It hurts too bad.”

  He pulled away, rolled over on his back.

  “My doctor warned me there might be a problem.” She was panting now, her skin glazed with sweat. Not from arousal but from the shock of intense pain. “He said I might need surgery.”

  Kurt leaned over to kiss her. “We’ll find a way,” he said. “There’s no hurry.”

  They lay side by side, their respiration calming into a single shared cadence, her head floating on his chest. He had closed his eyes and was drifting into a mindless euphoria when he felt her fingers spidering up his thigh. “Do you have another one of these?” she asked, peeling off the condom that still clung to him like the wrinkled digit of a medical glove.

  “Un-hunh,” he said, pointing drowsily to the open drawer of the night table.

  “Lucky for you,” she said, nibbling at his belly button, “they didn’t get my tongue.”

  The pleasure was so intoxicating he nodded off afterward, faintly aware that she had crawled under his arm to nuzzle and rest. When he heard footsteps bounding up the stairwell to his bedroom he knew who they belonged to, the boys arriving to try on suits for the funeral, but he couldn’t rouse himself from the deep, comforting slumber.

  “Hi, Dad, I’m home!” Lennon called out, bursting into the room.

  Hunter was right behind him. “Hey, wake up, Coach!” he shouted. “Time to get a move on!”

  “Oh, lord,” Kurt said, reaching over to shake Kat. His hand groped at empty sheet.

  “Let’s wrestle,” Lennon said, diving on his father, pinning him to the mattress. Hunter piled on top.

  “Some other time, guys,” Meg’s voice rang across the room. She was standing in the doorway, wearing a formal dress he hadn’t seen her wear in ages. “Kurt, do you have any idea what time it is? The funeral is in half an hour.”

  “Okay, boys, run on downstairs till I get dressed,” he said, shooing them off his back. He looked around the room, expecting Kat to emerge from a closet or step out of the bathroom. There was a note lying next to her pillow.

  “Come on now,” Meg said, “let’s give Kurt some privacy.”

  He waited for the boys to race away, then picked up the note. Took your suggestion and borrowed some clothes. I am off. Have to phone Randy’s daughter in Portland. Not looking forward to that. Don’t know when you and I will see each other again, Kurt. Maybe when all the darkness is gone. Love, K.

  “Kurt,” Meg said. He glanced up. She was still at the door, watching him read the note. “I’m sorry I was so bent out of shape last night. I apologize for making a scene.”

  He tucked the sheet around his waist and stood up. “It’s okay, Peaches,” he said. “You had good reason to be upset.”

  He waded toward the bathroom, dragging the sheet behind him like a regal train. In the dresser mirror he saw her eyes following his awkward movement. “Did the boys sleep okay?” he asked, pausing at the door before going in. “Is something wrong?”

  “The room is still the same, isn’t it?” she said, gazing about with a wistful dreaminess. “You haven’t made many changes.”

  The bedroom was a large undivided space, the entire upper floor of the house, glass doors opening onto a narrow sundeck. Most of the furniture had been in place for forty years, lugged here from Chicago and Austria by his parents. Three of Meg’s photographs were hanging on the walls where she’d left them, mountain landscapes from her earlier life as an amateur photographer.

  “I’m one of those guys who likes everything just the way it was,” he said, realizing she hadn’t been in this room since their divorce three years ago.

  She stepped over to a chest of drawers and studied a framed photo of Lennon when he was eleven months old. They had made a special trip to the mall in Glenwood Springs for this, and Kurt remembered the ordeal as if it were last week. The fussy families ahead of them in line, the photographer trying to prop up Lennon with a backrest so he wouldn’t keel over.

  “How involved are you in this thing with Kat Pfeil?” she asked, lifting the photograph, examining it closely.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Trouble seems to follow her around, Kurt.”

  He exhaled deeply. “I’m going to find out who tried to kill her,” he said, “and who almost killed our son. It’s my job. If that kind of talk scares you, Meg, maybe you and the Zen master ought to check in to an ashram till this is over.”

  Whenever she grew angry or frightened, a red rash blotched the skin on her neck. There it was, blooming bright.

  “Lennon loves you very much,” she said. “Please don’t do anything that puts your life at risk. I don’t want him growing up without you.”

  She was telling him he had done a good job raising their son, and her words meant a great deal to him at that moment. “I’ll be careful, Meg,” he said. “I don’t want him to have another father.”

  They stared at each other, understanding what was left unsaid. That no matter how complicated their lives would become, tugged about by other loves, an indelible bond remained between them forever. Their beautiful son.

  “Tell me it’s going to be all right, Kurt,” she said. “Whatever happens, I want to stay good enough friends to hold your hand at his high school graduation.”

  He smiled at the thought. “I’ll be so old you’ll have to push me into the auditorium in a wheelchair.”

  It made her smile too. “You know I will,” she said, and he believed her.

  Chapter thirty

  The remains of Ned Carr were laid to rest, according to his wishes, in the overgrown cemetery at the foot of Ute Trail. A light rain drizzled on the handful of mourners tromping through the cottonwood thicket scattered with fallen tombstones, forgotten miners who had perished in outbreaks of cholera and diphtheria, their markers quarried out of Colorado marble and returning slowly to the elements. On the way to the grave site Lennon and Hunter stopped to scrape mud from a crumbling headstone, deciphering the inscription like excited archaeologists in a Greek necropolis.

  “Look at this one, Dad!” Lennon waved. “It says, ‘Sleep now, angel.’”

  Hunter sounded out the rest of the sentence: “‘You…are in…God’s…hands.’”

  “Let’s go, boys,” Kurt said. “You’re getting your suits dirty.”

  He and his brother had roamed through this cemetery when they were kids, searching the brush for ornate stones and the rusty spike fences that enclosed families of means. Too many children were buried here, their tiny graves outlined with creek rocks. It had been a hard life, the winters long and unforgiving. Foolish dreamers pursuing deep veins of silver.

  “This place is great!” Lennon announced. “This is where I want to be buried!”

  “Not me,” said Hunter, his jacket sleeves soaked to the elbows. “I want to be buried next to my mom.”

  Kurt worried about him. The child hadn’t shown any emotion since the initial shock of hearing that his grandfather was dead. He had asked only one question: Is my grandpa in heaven with my mother? Kurt had told him, Yes, you bet he is, and that seemed to satisfy him, erase all his doubts. He was a contented boy again, cared for, safe, lost in childhood adventures with a best friend. His grandpa was in God’s hands. The monsters hadn’t yet stirred under the bed.

  Father McCabe led the gathering in prayer and sprinkled the casket. Lennon and Hunter looked like handsome little gentlemen in their white summer suits and clip-on ties, vintage relics from the Muller brothers, circa 1953. The Lamars were present, well dressed and stoic, and Tyler’s parents, ashen from grief and fatigue. Corky Marcus wore his last remaining three-piece lawyer suit and stood holding an umbrella over his son Joshua. Halfway through the ceremony there was a loud rustling in the
tall green bushes and Tink Tarver materialized out of the foliage like a wild-eyed Caliban, his Radio Flyer wagon in tow. He doffed his beret and bowed his head, and after the final prayer was uttered, and the mountain columbines were placed on the casket by the two boys, the old man lifted the tongue of his red wagon and disappeared into the thicket.

  The rain had finally stopped. Kurt made his way over to Meredith Stone, who was standing off by herself near a cottonwood tree, waiting for her husband to finish his conversation with Corky Marcus.

  “Hello, Meredith,” he said. “Maybe Lee ought to spend his money on security a little closer to home.”

  She was wearing makeup and matching Navajo jewelry that ornamented her neck, wrists, and earlobes. This was the way she had always appeared in magazines, effortlessly beautiful, exuding intelligence and a casual elegance.

  “I want to see Katrina,” Meredith said. “I feel horrible about what happened. Tell me where she is.”

  “I don’t know where she is. She left me a note and then disappeared.”

  Her look was cool and probing. “You’ll hear from her again.”

  He hoped she was right, but Kat Pfeil was proving to be as elusive as her brother the drug lord. “She and I have a truckload of unfinished police business to tie up,” he said. “You hear from her first, tell her I’m looking for her. I hear from her, I’ll make sure she gives you a call. Deal?”

  She gave him that heartbreaking smile from her old publicity photos. Every now and then she did something like that to remind him who she was. Who she had been. “Deal,” she said.

  Chapter thirty-one

  He arrived at the courthouse before the shift change and walked into the department’s squad room, a remodeled basement space of cluttered cubicles and soft-humming computers. The room always smelled like scorched coffee crusted at the bottom of a glass pot. Sitting at Gill Dotson’s desk, Kurt pecked at the keyboard, searching through state files for the police record on one J.J. Chilcutt. Within seconds he’d found him. James Joseph Chilcutt had two priors, a dui five years ago and a recent assault-and-battery against his wife, who had subsequently dropped the charges. His address and phone number were listed in Grand Junction, and the name of his employer. VIProtex International.