Hard as Nails jk-3

by Dan Simmons

  The shock, ran up through his spine and exploded in fireworks in his head. His vision blurred.

  Not yet. Not yet. He'd do a deal with this fucking headache; it could make him throw up, or even faint, once he was all the way down—or even on any of the bottom three steps. But not here. Not here.

  Another three steps down. He tried just stepping down the mere twenty-eight inches or so. That was better. But the pain still jagged up his back to his skull and exited through the crack in his skull on the right side every time he dropped the other leg and foot. And it was harder to keep his balance that way with his arms behind him. The overly tight flexcuffs had long since cut off circulation to his wrists and hands, and now his forearms were going numb, with a line of pain moving up above the pins and needles of numbness advancing like little forest creatures running from a forest fire.

  What? Stay focused, Joe. He paused on the narrow concrete shelf, his toes hanging over, panting, sweat in his eyes—sweat he couldn't blink or rub away—and looked up the near-vertical ziggurat steps at the dark forms looking down at him. The Major wasn't there, but Colonel Trinh was. He wasn't smiling. The other Vietnamese men were. They were enjoying this, probably betting on when he'd fall. Trinh looked like he was enjoying it as well, just too much so to smile.

  Stay focused. The cliffside here on either side of the steps was slippery limestone with some granite mixed in—a steep mish-mash of slabs and dirt, with some lichen and low plants and the occasional scrub oak. But getting off the steps would be suicide here; even if his hands were free and circulation flowing, it would take a mountain climber to deal with that slippery slope.

  Kurtz hopped down another step, waited for the fireworks to quit going off behind his eyes, and dropped another.

  I don't think Dr. Singh would recommend this as therapy for the concussion.

  Who was Dr. Singh? Kurtz wondered dully. It was interesting how the headache pain flowed in like breakers along the surf, never stopping, never pausing, just rising and falling and then crashing down.

  He dropped to another step, teetered, caught himself, stepped to the edge, and dropped to the next. Was it his imagination or were the horizontal parts of each step getting narrower? The backs of his heels scraped when he tried to put his feet down solidly, even with his toes hanging out over space. Kurtz had started down being glad that he'd worn his sneakers today, but now he wished he had his old combat boots on. His ankles felt splintered. His heels were already bloody.

  He dropped again. Again. The sweat stung his eyes and burned in counterpoint to the real pain.

  It can't get no worse … ran a line from some old army song. Kurtz didn't believe that, of course. If life had taught him one thing, it was that things could always get worse.

  It started to rain. Hard.

  Kurtz's hair immediately matted to his head. He tasted the rain and realized that blood from his scalp wound was mixing in. He couldn't blink away the water in his eyes and on his lashes, so he paused on a step. He didn't know if he was halfway down, two-thirds the way down, or a fourth the way down. His head and neck hurt far too much for him to crane his neck to look up again. And he didn't want to look down anymore.

  It can always get worse.

  Lightning flashed so close he was blinded. The thunder almost knocked him down. The world was filled with the stink of ozone. Kurtz's wet and bloody hair tried to rise off his head as the hillside around him glowed white from the blast.

  Kurtz sat down heavily, his legs flying up. He was panting, disoriented, and so dizzy that he doubted if he could stand again without falling.

  The rain pelted him like fists pounding his shoulders and neck. It was cold as hail fell and hurt his head. Cold as hail, he thought again, trying it out with a Texas accent Everything hurt his head. Why the fuck didn't that Yemeni kid aim better? Get it over with? Only it hadn't been the Yemeni kid, had it? He'd already shot the Yemeni kid by then. Then someone else shot him, Kurtz knew. The someone else who had brought the Yemeni kid there to kill… who? Peg O'Toole, he thought. Pretty Peg O'Toole, who just one year earlier had risked her job as PO to stand up for him, hell, to save his life, when a detective on the Farino's payroll had ramrodded him into county lockup on a bogus charge in preparation to send him back to prison where the D-block Mosque and a hundred other guys were waiting to get the bounty on him… Focus, Joe.

  Can't get no worse…

  The rain was coming down in a torrent and the hillside was turning into a thousand rivulets, but the main flood was pouring down this ziggurat stairway. The water struck Kurtz's shoulder blades and butt and threatened to wash him right off the step.

  If I stand up, I'm screwed. If I keep sitting here, I'm screwed.

  Kurtz stood up. The water flowed around and through his legs, geysering out in an almost comical jet Kurtz resisted the impulse to laugh.

  He stepped down another step. His arms were completely dead to sensation now, just long sticks he was hauling down the hill with him like so much firewood on his back.

  He dropped another step. Then another. He resisted the temptation to sit down again and let the waterfall carry him away. Maybe he'd just ride down on it like all the people in all the movies who leap a thousand feet off a cliff and then ride the rapids out of sight of the enemy, who shoot uselessly at them… Focus, Joe.

  They're going to kill her anyway. Rigby. No matter what I do or don't do, they're going to kill her with my gun and blame it on me. She may be dead already if that bullet even nicked an artery. Leg wounds that high hurt like hell until you go all cold and numb at the end.

  He blinked away water and blood. It was hard to see the edge of each step now. Every step was a mini-Niagara, the concrete invisible under swirling water.

  Malcolm Kibunte was the name of the drug dealer and killer he'd dangled over the edge of Niagara Palls one wintry night just under a year ago. He was just asking the gang leader a few questions. Kurtz had a rope on the man—it was Kibunte who'd thought that his best chance was to drop the rope and swim for it right at the brink of North America's mightiest waterfall.

  Joke him if he can't take a fuck, thought Kurtz. He stepped over the edge of this waterfall, dropped, fought the pain to stay conscious, teetered on the ever narrower step, found his balance against the flood, and stepped down again.

  Again.

  Again.

  Again.

  He finally fell. The step seemed to shift under him and Kurtz fell forward, unable to find the next step or throw himself backward.

  So he leaped instead. He leaped out into space, legs as high as he could get them. Leaped away from the waterfall and into the rain. Mouth contorted in a silent scream, Joe Kurtz leaped.

  And hit solid ground and crumpled forward, just twisting in time to keep from smashing his face on the wet asphalt. His shoulder struck instead, sending a blinding bolt of pain up the right side of his head.

  He blinked, twisted around as he lay prone on the drive, and looked behind him. He'd been on the third or fourth step from the bottom when he'd fallen. The ziggurat stairway was invisible under the waterfall of water. The rain kept coming down hard and the flood washed around his torn sneakers, trying to push his body out along the asphalt.

  "Get up," said Sheriff Gerey.

  Kurtz tried.

  "Grab an arm, Smitty," said the sheriff.

  They grabbed Kurtz's unfeeling arms, hauled him to his feet, and half-dragged him to the sheriff's car parked there. The deputy held the rear door open.

  "Watch your head," said the sheriff and then pressed Kurtz's head down with that move they'd all learned in cop school but also had seen in too many movies and TV shows. The man's fingers on Kurtz's bloody, battered skull hurt like hell and made him want to vomit, but he resisted the urge. He knew from experience that few things prompted cops to use their batons on your kidneys faster than puking in the backseats of their cars.

  "Watch your head," the deputy repeated, and Kurtz finally had to laugh as they shoved him int
o the backseat of the cruiser.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  It was still raining hard as Kurtz drove the Pinto north on Highway 16. Only one of his windshield wipers was working, but it was on the driver's side, so he didn't bother worrying about it. He had a lot of phone calls to make and they weren't the kind you wanted to make on a cell phone, but the pay phones were twenty-five miles apart along this two-lane stretch of road, the nearest gas station was forty minutes ahead, he hadn't stopped in Neola to get change, and, basically, to hell with it.

  They'd given everything back—except his.38—when Sheriff Gerey had dumped him out at the Pinto where he and Rigby had left it down the hill from Cloud Nine. He even had the Ray Charles sunglasses back in his jacket pocket, which was good. If Kurtz was lucky enough to survive all this other shit, he didn't want Daddy Bruce killing him for losing the Man's sunglasses.

  He fumbled, found the cell phone Gonzaga had given him, and keyed the only preset number.

  "Yes?" It was Toma Gonzaga himself.

  "We need to meet," said Kurtz. "Today."

  "Have you finished the task?" asked Gonzaga. Not "job," but "task." This wasn't your average hoodlum.

  "Yeah," said Kurtz. "More or less."

  "More or less?" Kurtz could imagine the handsome mob boss's eyebrow rising.

  "I have the information you need," said Kurtz, "but it won't do you any good unless we meet in the next couple of hours."

  There was a pause. "I'm busy this afternoon. But later tonight…"

  "This afternoon or nothing," interrupted Kurtz. "You wait, you lose everything."

  A shorter pause. "All right Come by my estate on Grand Island at…"

  "No. My office." Kurtz raised his wrist He'd strapped his watch back on as soon as his fingers had begun working again, but now his head hurt so much that he was having some trouble focusing his eyes. "It's just about three P.M. Be in my office at five."

  "Who else will be there?"

  "Just me and Angelina Farino Ferrara."

  "I want some of my associates…"

  "Bring an army if you want," said Kurtz. "Just park them outside the door. The meeting will be just the three of us."

  There was a long minute of silence, during which Kurtz concentrated on navigating the winding road. The few cars that passed going the opposite way had their headlights on and wipers pumping. Kurtz was driving faster than the rest of the traffic going north.

  Kurtz used his phone hand to wipe the moisture out of his eyes again. His fingers and arms still hurt like hell—it had been almost five minutes after they'd dumped him at the Pinto before he regained enough sensation in his hands to be able to drive. The pain of his reawakening arms and hands and fingers had finally been enough to make him throw up in the weeds near the Pinto. Sheriff Gerey and his deputy had been standing by their car, waiting to escort him out of town, and Gerey had said something that had made the deputy chuckle as Kurtz was on his knees in the weeds. Kurtz had put it on the sheriff's bill.

  "All right, I'll be there," said Toma Gonzaga and disconnected.

  Kurtz threw the phone onto the passenger seat. His hands were still more like gnarled hooks than real hands.

  He got his own phone out, managed to punch out Angelina's number, and listened to her voice on an answering machine.

  "Pick up, goddammit Pick up." It was as close to a prayer as Joe Kurtz had come this long day.

  She did. "Kurtz, where are you? What's…"

  "Listen carefully," he said. He explained quickly about the meeting, but told her to get there at 4:45, fifteen minutes before Gonzaga. "It's important you get there on time."

  "Kurtz, if this is about last night…"

  He hung up on her, started to punch in another number, but then set the phone aside for a minute.

  The highway had straightened here, but it still seemed to be bobbing up and down slightly, threatening to shift directions at any moment. Kurtz realized that his inner ear had become screwed up again in the last hour or so, probably on the steps. He shook his head—sending water and blood flying—and concentrated on keeping the Pinto on the undulating, quivering highway. Kurtz's shoes were a tattered mess, his jacket was dripping, his pants and shirt and socks and underwear were sodden.

  A pickup truck was ahead of him, kicking up spray, but Kurtz passed it without slowing. The pickup had been doing about fifty m.p.h. on the narrow road; Kurtz's whining, vibrating, protesting Pinto was doing at least eighty.

  It had taken Rigby and him more than ninety minutes to drive down to Neola from Buffalo that morning. Kurtz wanted to get back to Buffalo in less than an hour. He'd noted the time when the sheriff's car had turned around at the Neola city limits sign—if he kept up this pace, he should make it.

  Kurtz punched another phone number in. A bodyguard answered. Kurtz insisted that he talk to Baby Doc himself, and was finally handed over. Kurtz explained to the Lackawanna boss that it was important that they meet today, soon, in the next hour.

  "Important to you, maybe," said Baby Doc, "but maybe not to me. You're not on a cell phone, are you, Kurtz?"

  "Yeah. I'm coming into Lackawanna from the south in about thirty minutes. Are you at Curly's?"

  "It doesn't matter where the fuck I am. What do you want?"

  "You know that payment I promised you in return for the favore?"

  "Yeah."

  "You meet with me in the next hour, and you get a serious payment I mean, serious. Put me off—nothing."

  The silence lasted long enough that Kurtz was sure that the cell phone had lost service here in the hills approaching East Aurora.

  "I'm at Curly's," said Baby Doc. "But get here fast They want to open up for Sunday night dinner in ninety minutes."

  Highway 16 became four-lanes wide and renamed itself Highway 400 as it turned east toward Buffalo. Kurtz took the East Aurora exit and drove the six miles to and through Orchard Park at high speed, swinging north again on 219 past the Thruway into Lackawanna.

  He called Arlene's home number. No answer. He called her cell phone. No answer. He called the office. She picked up on the second ring.

  "What are you doing there this late on a Sunday afternoon?" said Kurtz.

  "Following up some things," said his secretary. "I finally got the home phone number of the former director of the Rochester Psychiatric Institute. He's retired now and lives in Ontario on the Lake. And I've been trying other ways to get into the military records so…"

  "Get out of the office," said Kurtz. "I'm going to need it for a few hours and I don't want you anywhere near it. Go home. Now."

  "All right, Joe." A pause and he could hear Arlene stubbing out a cigarette. "Are you all right?"

  "Yeah, I'm fine. I just want you out of there. And if there are any files or anything on the desks, shove them out of sight somewhere."

  "Do you want O'Toole's e-mail printouts in your main drawer?"

  "O'Toole's…" began Kurtz. Then he remembered the call that morning about someone using Peg O'Toole's computer to log on to her e-mail account. Arlene had been able to download the PO's filing cabinet before whoever it was had time to delete it all. "Yeah, fine," said Kurtz. "In the top center drawer is fine."

  "And what about Aysha?"

  Kurtz had to pause again. Aysha. Yasein Goba's fiancée who was being smuggled across the Canadian border tonight at midnight. Shit. "Can you pick her up, Arlene? Keep her at your house until tomorrow and… no, wait."

  Would it be dangerous to pick the girl up? Who knew about her? Would the Major or whoever was killing people for the Major know about Goba fiancée and go after her? Kurtz didn't know.

  "No, never mind," he said. "Never mind. Let her get picked up by the Niagara Falls police. They'll take care of her."

  "But she may have some important information," said Arlene. "And I got the translator from church, Nicky, all set up to…"

  "Just fucking forget about it," snapped Kurtz. He took a bream. He never shouted at Arlene. He almost never shouted, period.
"Sorry," he said. He was into the industrial wasteland of Lackawanna now, coming at the Basilica and Ridge Road and Curly's Restaurant from the south.

  "All right, Joe. But you know I'm going to go pick up that girl tonight."

  "Yeah." He thumbed the phone off.

  It was the same drill of being taken into the men's room at Curly's and searched head to foot One of the bodyguards shifted a toothpick in his mouth and said, "Jesus, fuck, man—you're so wet your skin is wrinkly. You been swimming with your clothes on?"

  Kurtz ignored him.

  When he was seated across from Baby Doc in the same rear booth, he said, "This is private."

  Baby Doc looked at his three bodyguards and at the waiters bustling around getting the place ready for the heavy Sunday evening' dinner traffic. "They all have my confidence," said the big man with the flag tattoo on his massive forearm.

  "It doesn't matter," said Kurtz. "This is private."

  Baby Doc snapped his fingers and the bodyguards left, herding the waiters and bartender ahead of them into the backroom.

  "For your sake," said Baby Doc, "this had better not be a waste of my time."

  "It won't be," said Kurtz.

  Speaking as economically as he could, he told Baby Doc about the Major, about the heroin ring, about the «war» that seemed to be claiming only casualties in the Farino and Gonzaga camps, about Rigby being shot and her role in this mess.

  "Weird story," said Baby Doc, his hands folded in front of him and his flag tattoo visible under the rolled-back sleeves of his white shirt. "What the hell does it have to do with me?"

  Kurtz told him.

  Baby Doc sat back in the boom. "You have to be kidding." He looked at Kurtz's face. "No, you're not kidding, are you? What on earth could compel me to take part in this?"

  Kurtz told him.

  Baby Doc didn't so much as blink for almost a full minute. Finally, he said, "You speak for Gonzaga and the Farino woman?"