Joe Kurtz Omnibus

by Dan Simmons

  Doc, the gun salesman/nightwatchman in Lackawanna, had mentioned the place to Kurtz. Doc had actually guarded the site for a while a year before, when hopes for the return of money and work were higher. Kurtz liked what he heard about it: electrical power had been restored for the upper two floors and the elevator, although the bottom floors were still a lightless, windowless maze of narrow corridors and metal cages walled off from the atrium. A private security service dropped by the place two or three times a week, but only to make sure that the fence was intact and the padlocks and chains secure.

  Kurtz had cut through the fence at the least convenient part of the perimeter—back where the property ran along the rail lines—and had used the combination Doc had provided for the five-number padlock on the rear door. The window on that door had been conveniently broken before Kurtz first arrived, so it was no problem leaning out to click the padlock shut and scramble the combination.

  Kurtz had approved of the place immediately. It wasn’t heated—which would be a problem when the Buffalo winter arrived in earnest—but there was running water on the seventh floor for some of the construction sinks there. One of the three huge service elevators still worked, although Kurtz never took it. The sound it made reminded him of the monster’s roar in the old Godzilla movies. There was a wide staircase off the front hallway that let light through thick glass blocks, a windowless interior stairway in the back, and two sets of rusting fire escapes. A few windows had been carved out on the top two floors, but no glass had been put in.

  The bottom three floors were a lightless, littered mess except for the echoing atrium, which was a skylighted, littered mess. The atrium offered an avenue of retreat if one were bold enough to trust the scaffolding that ran up the interior all the way to the skylight. The consortium had just got to the sandblasting-interior-brick stage when the money ran out.

  This morning, Kurtz shivered a bit in the cold rain as he walked down the rusted tracks, slipped through the cut in the fence and rearranged the wire so that the hole was invisible, let himself in the back way, checked telltales he had left in the lobby hallway, and then jogged up the five flights of the front stairway.

  He had made a nest for himself on the sixth floor. The room was small and windowless—all of the storage rooms had been set up between the outer hall and the atrium wall—but Kurtz had run an extension cord through the crumbling ceiling and rigged a trouble light. He’d set up a cot with a decent sleeping bag—borrowed from Arlene—and had his leaving-Attica gym bag, a flashlight, and a few books on the floor. He kept both weapons oiled and ready and wrapped in oil rags in the gym bag, along with a cheap sweatsuit he’d picked up for pajamas. This particular cubby actually had a bathroom—or at least a toilet added sometime in the 1920s when the place was still an icehouse with offices—and Kurtz sometimes hauled water down from the seventh floor. The plumbing worked, but there was no bam or shower.

  It was a pain in the ass climbing the five flights of stairs day and night, but what Kurtz liked about the place was the acoustics—the hallways amplified sound so that footsteps could be heard two flights above, the elevator—which he had tried—could wake the dead, and the atrium was like a giant echo chamber. It would be very hard for someone new to the space to sneak up on anyone familiar with it.

  Also, Kurtz had discovered, between the century and a half of use and the recent renovations, there were a multitude of nooks, crannies, niches, ladders, walled-off rooms, and other hiding places. He had spent time exploring these with a good flashlight. And—best of all—there was an old tunnel which ran from the basement several hundred yards east to another old warehouse.

  Kurtz looked in the carton he thought of as his refrigerator. Two bottles of water and a few Oreos were left. He ate the Oreos and drank an entire bottle of water. He crawled into his sleeping bag and glanced at his watch: 6:52 A.M. He had planned to go into the office this morning to work with Arlene, but he could be a little late.

  Kurtz clicked off the trouble light, curled up in the near-absolute darkness, waited a bit for his shivering to abate as the bag warmed up, and drifted off to sleep.

  Got him,” said Malcolm Kibunte. He and Cutter were in an AstroVan parked almost two blocks away.

  It had been a long night. When The courthouse cop on the arm informed Miles that someone had made bail for Kurtz, Malcolm let Doo-Rag know that the yard shank was off, gathered Cutter, his Tek-9, and some surveillance gear, stole a van, and staked out the jail. The revised plan was to take out Kurtz in a rock-and-roll drive-by the minute he got out of ricochet range of the city jail, killing him and whoever had made the bail for him. Then Malcolm saw who it was who had posted bail, and went to Plan Three.

  They waited down the street from Sophia Farino’s condo through the early-morning hours and were almost ready to bag it when Kurtz finally emerged and began strolling the opposite way. There were so few vehicles on the street that Malcolm had to let Kurtz disappear from sight and then drive in long loops to get ahead of him, always parked with other grimy vans and vehicles, always a good two blocks away. It was dark. Only the expensive military night scopes and goggles allowed Cutter and Malcolm to keep tabs on Kurtz.

  For a while they thought they had run him to ground when Kurtz had clambered up under the expressway overpass, but just as Malcolm and Cutter were getting ready to go after him, Kurtz climbed down the embankment and was on the move again. For some reason, the fool had ditched his jacket. Cutter wanted to stop under the overpass and check on that, but Malcolm was too busy driving down toward the river and finding a place to park before Kurtz wandered into sight again. It was getting light. Surveillance would be impossible in half an hour or so: Kurtz would notice the same scabrous green van if it kept reappearing, even a couple of blocks away.

  But luck was with them. From where they had parked in an old railroad salvage-yard, Malcolm watched through the night-vision scope, and Cutter lifted the huge binoculars as Kurtz went through his slice in the wire and let himself into the old icehouse building.

  They waited another hour. Kurtz did not come out.

  “I think we found his hidey-hole,” said Malcolm. He rubbed his beard and lifted the Tek-9 onto his lap. Cutter grunted and clicked open his knife. “I don’t know, C, my man,” said Malcolm. “Big place in there. Probably dark. He know it, we don’t.”

  The two sat in silence for another few minutes. Suddenly Malcolm grinned broadly. “You know what we need for this job, C?”

  Cutter looked at him, his pale eyes empty.

  “That’s right,” said Malcolm. “We gonna need extreme white trash, stupid enough not to know about the Death Mosque bounty, but still be willin’ to go in there to kill Mr. Kurtz for next to nothing.”

  Cutter nodded.

  “Correct,” agreed Malcolm. “We know where Mr. Kurtz live. All we need to do now is bring in the Alabama Beagle Boys.” Malcolm laughed heartily.

  Cutter breathed through his mouth and turned to look at the old icehouse through the rain.

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  Nice couch,” said Kurtz as Arlene came down the back steps and into their basement office. He was half-asleep, sprawled on the sprang, faded floral sofa. “Is it from your house?”

  “Nice of you to drop by and notice,” said Arlene, hanging her coat on a spike driven into the wall. “Of course it’s from the house. Alan slept through many an NFL game on it. I had Will and Bobby help me haul it down here. What is this on my desk?”

  “A video monitor,” said Kurtz.

  “A TV?”

  “Go ahead, turn it on.”

  Arlene flicked it on and looked at the picture for a minute. It was fuzzy and in black and white and cycled through four scenes: counter, stacks, booms, and hallway. “That’s it? I get to watch the perverts in the porn shop upstairs?”

  “That’s it,” agreed Kurtz. “The owners revamped the closed-circuit surveillance system upstairs, and I got Jimmy to run a line down here and sell us one of the
old monitors.”

  “Sell it to us?” Arlene tapped the mouse to bring her computer screen to life. “How much did it cost?”

  “Fifty bucks, wiring thrown in free. I told him I’d pay when I got the money this month…or next…or whenever.”

  “Just so I can watch the dirty old men buying their dirty old magazines and videos.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Kurtz. He swung himself off the sprung couch and walked over to his own desk at the rear of the long room. His desk was empty, except for some files and memos left there by Arlene.

  “Do you really think we need the video security?” she asked. “Both doors stay locked and we’re not exactly advertising that we’re here.”

  Kurtz shrugged. “The outer door’s pretty well jimmy-proof,” he said. “But the door from the porn shop is just a door. And I seem to have a few people hunting for me.” He poured coffee for both of them, even though Arlene had just come in from her lunch break, carried the mugs over, and sat on the edge of her desk. He gave her Pruno’s description of Malcolm Kibunte, Cutter, and Doo-Rag, then remembered Sammy Levine’s brother Manny and described him as well.

  “You made an enemy out of Danny DeVito?” said Arlene.

  “Sounds like it,” said Kurtz. “Anyway, if you see anyone on the monitor who looks like any of these four guys upstairs, you leave by one of the other doors.”

  “Those descriptions apply to about half of the losers who patronize the shop upstairs,” said Arlene.

  “All right,” said Kurtz. “Amend it to—if you see anyone trying to bust through the front door up there, you head out the back. If any of them look like one of the guys I described, move even faster.”

  Arlene nodded. “Any other gifts for me?”

  Kurtz pulled the Kimber Custom .45 ACP from the holster at the small of his back. He set it on her desk. “Couldn’t afford a Doberman,” he said.

  Arlene shook her head and reached under her desk, pulling out a hammerless, short-barreled .32 Magnum Ruger revolver.

  “Hey,” said Kurtz, “an old friend!”

  “I thought that if it was going to be like the old days, I’d better act as if it was the old days.” She hefted the weapon. “The last few years, the only reason I’ve had to go out is my weekly mah-jongg at Bernice’s and the twice-weekly evenings at the shooting range.” She slid the Ruger back into the holstered box screwed to the underside of her desk drawer.

  “They didn’t let us practice much target shooting inside,” said Kurtz. “You’re probably a better shot than I am these days.”

  “I always was,” said Arlene.

  Hiding his relief at not having to give up the Kimber .45, Kurtz set the semiautomatic back in its concealed carry holster, removed the holster, and flopped back on the couch.

  “Are you interested in how Sweetheart Search, Inc., is doing?” said Arlene. “It is your business, after all. And all the skip-trace sites and services you told me about are working out fine. We pay them, charge the sweetheart wannabe twenty percent more, and everyone’s happy. Want to see it in action?”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Kurtz. “But right now I’m thinking about something I’m working on. You could use it to look up Malcolm Kibunte for me, though. Usual sources—court appearances, warrants, back taxes due, whatever. I know he won’t have a real home address, but I’ll take whatever you find.”

  Arlene tapped away at her computer keys for a while, checking that day’s hits, processing encrypted credit-card orders for searches, transferring the money to the new account, filing data into her search engines, and then beginning the search for Malcolm Kibunte. Finally she said, “I know you never talk about your cases, but do you want to tell me about what’s going on now? There’s some scary stuff in here about your Mr. Kibunte.”

  When Kurtz did not reply, she glanced his way. Sprawled on the couch, the holstered .45 clutched to his chest like a teddy bear, he was beginning to snore.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  Blue Franklin was an old blues bar that had only gotten better with age. Young up-and-coming blues stars had played in the smoke haze and platter rattle of the little place on Franklin Street for six decades, gone on to national prominence, and then come back to play to packed houses in their prime and old age. The two playing this night were in their prime: Pearl Wilson, a vocalist in her late thirties who combined a Billie Holiday-like poignancy with a growing Koko Taylor rough edge, and Big Beau Turner, one of the best tenor-sax men since Warne Marsh.

  Kurtz came for the late set, nursed a beer, and enjoyed Pearl’s interpretation of “Hell Hound on My Trail,” “Sweet Home Chicago,” “Come in My Kitchen,” “Willow, Weep for Me,” “Big-Legged Mamas Are Back in Style,” and “Run the Voodoo Down,” followed by Big Beau doing solo riffs on a series of Billy Strayhorn pieces: “Blood Count,” “Lush Life,” “Drawing-Room Blues,” and “U.M.M.G.”

  Kurtz could not remember a time, even as a boy, when he had not loved jazz and blues. It was the closest thing to religion he knew. In jail, even when he’d been allowed access to a Discman or cassette player, which wasn’t that much of the time, even a perfect recorded performance such as Miles Davis’s remastered “Kind of Blue” had been no substitute for a live performance with its ebb and flow of tidal forces, like a well-played baseball game gone deep into extra innings, now all lethargy and distance, transformed in an instant into a blur of motion and purposefulness, and with its cocaine glow of unlimited, interlocked, immortal energy. Kurtz loved jazz and the blues.

  After the last set, Pearl, Beau, and the pianist—a white kid named Coe Pierce—came over to join him for a drink before closing. Kurtz had known Beau and Pearl years ago. He wanted to buy them a drink, but he barely had enough money to pay for his beer. They chatted about old music, new jobs, and old times—tactfully ignoring the past decade or so of Kurtz’s absence, since even the piano kid seemed cued in on that—and eventually Blue Franklin’s owner, Daddy Bruce Woles, a hearty, heavyset man so black that his skin glowed almost eggplant in the smoke-hazy spotlights, came over to join them. Kurtz had never seen Woles without the stub of a cigar in his mouth, and had never seen the cigar lighted.

  “Joe, you got an admirer,” said Daddy Bruce. He waved over more drinks for everyone, on the house.

  Kurtz sipped his fresh beer and waited.

  “Little runty guy in a grubby raincoat came in here three nights ago and again last night. Didn’t pay any attention to the music. First time, Ruby was tending bar, and this dwarf lugs this big, like legal briefcase over and props it on the bar, asks about you. Ruby, she knows you’re out, of course, and doesn’t say anything. Says she never heard of you. The dwarf leaves. Ruby tells me. Last night, same dwarf in a dirty raincoat, same battered briefcase, only I’m at the bar. I never heard of you, either. I tried to get the dwarfs name, but he just left his beer and went out. Haven’t seen him tonight. Friend of yours?”

  Kurtz shrugged. “Does he look something like Danny DeVito?”

  “Yeah,” said Daddy Bruce. “Only not cute and cuddly like that, you know? Just turd-ugly all the way down.”

  “Someone told me that Sammy Levine’s brother Manny’s looking for me,” said Kurtz. “Probably him.”

  “Oh, God,” said Pearl. “Sammy Levine was a mean little dwarf, too.”

  “Used to use wood blocks on the pedals to drive that damn giant Pontiac he and Eddie Falco bombed around in,” said Big Beau. Then, “Sorry, Joe, didn’t mean to bring up sad times.”

  “That’s okay,” said Kurtz. “Anything sad, I got out of my system a long time ago.”

  “Doesn’t sound like this Manny Levine dwarf has,” said Daddy Bruce.

  Kurtz nodded.

  Pearl took his hand. “It seems like just yesterday that you and Sam were in here every night, all of us catching a late dinner and drinks after the last set, and then Sam not drinking because…”

  “Because she was pregnant,” finished Kurtz. “Yeah. Only I guess it seems like a whi
le ago to me.”

  The vocalist and the tenor sax player glanced at each other and nodded.

  “Rachel?” Beau said.

  “With Sam’s ex-husband,” said Kurtz.

  “She must be…what—eleven, twelve now?”

  “Almost fourteen,” said Kurtz.

  “To good times again,” said Pearl in that wonderful smoke-and-whiskey voice of hers. She lifted her glass.

  They all lifted their glasses.

  It was getting cold at night. As Kurtz walked back through alleys and parking lots to his warehouse, wearing the corduroy trousers and denim shirt Sophia Farino had given him—the shirt worn untucked to conceal the little .38 in his waistband—he briefly considered heading back to the office to sleep. At least the basement of the porno shop was heated. But he decided not to. What was the old maxim? Don’t shit where you eat? Something like that. He wanted to keep business and business separate.

  He was taking a shortcut down a long alley between warehouses, less than six blocks from his own warehouse, when a car pulled in at the end of the alley behind him. Headlights threw his shadow ahead of him on the potholed lane.

  Kurtz glanced around. No doorways deep enough to hide in. A loading dock, but solid concrete—he could roll up onto it if the car accelerated toward him, but he could not slip under it. No fire escapes. Too far to run to me next street if the car came at him.

  Not looking back, staggering slightly as if drunk, Kurtz pulled the .38 from his belt and palmed it.

  The car moved slowly down the long alley behind him. From the sound of the V-8 engine, the thing was big—at least a Lincoln Town Car, possibly a real limo—and it was in no hurry. It stopped about fifty feet behind him.