Hard as Nails

by Dan Simmons

  The Dodger parked his AstroVan, beeped it locked, and strolled jauntily to the front door. His fatigue jacket hid his erection, but the jacket was open so that he could get to the pocket of his pants.

  A little girl answered on his third knock. She looked to be five or six or seven… Dodger had no idea. He didn't really pay attention to kids.

  "Hi," he said happily. "Is Terrence Williams home?"

  "Daddy's upstairs in the shower," said the little one. She didn't comment on the Dodger's unusual face, but turned on her heel and walked away from him, back into the house, obviously expecting him to follow.

  The Dodger came in, smiling, and closed the door behind him.

  A woman came out of the kitchen at the end of the hallway. She was wiping her hands on a dishtowel and her face was slightly flushed, as if she'd been cooking over a hot stove. Unlike the little girl, she did react to the sight of his face, although she tried to hide it.

  "Can I help you?" she asked She was a big woman, broad in the hips. Not the Dodger's type. He liked spinners—the kind of little woman you could sit down, place on your cock, and spin like a top.

  "Yes, ma'am," said the Dodger. He was always polite. He'd been taught to be polite as a boy. "I've got a package for Terrence."

  The big woman's frown grew deeper. She didn't really have friendly eyes, the Dodger decided. He liked women with friendly eyes. The little girl was running from the dining room through the little living room, past them both in the hallway, and then back around again. The house was tiny. The Dodger decided that the place smelled of mildew and cabbage and that the big woman with the unfriendly eyes probably did, too. But there was a good smell in the air as well, as if she'd been baking.

  "Did Bolo send you?" she asked suspiciously.

  "Yes, ma'am," said the Dodger. The kid ran past them both again, flapping her arms and making airplane noises. "Bolo sent me."

  "Where's the package?"

  The Dodger patted the lower right pocket on his fatigue jacket, feeling the steel in the cargo pocket of his pants.

  "You'll have to wait," said the woman. She nodded toward the crappy little living room with its sprung couch and uncomfortable La-Z-Boy recliner. "You can sit in there." She frowned at the Dodger's baseball cap as if he should take it off in the house. The Dodger never took off his Dodger cap.

  "No problem," he said, smiling and bobbing his head slightly.

  He walked into the little living room, removed the Beretta with the supressor, shot the kid when she came buzzing in from the dining room again, shot the wide-hipped woman on the stairway, stepped over her body, and went up to the sound of the water.

  The fat man pulled the shower curtain aside and stared at the Dodger as he came in with the gun. The fat man's white, hairy skin and bulges were really repulsive to the Dodger. He hated looking at naked men.

  "Hi, Terry," the Dodger said and raised the pistol.

  The fat man jerked the shower curtain closed as if that would protect him. The Dodger laughed—that was really funny—and fired five times through the curtain. It had blue, red, and yellow fish on it, and they were swimming in clusters. The Dodger didn't think that blue, red, and yellow fish swam together like that.

  The fat man pulled the curtain off its rod as he fell heavily outward. It wasn't even a real shower, just a tub with a rod and curtain and a jerry-rigged sprayer. Now the fat man was sprawled over the edge of the tub. The Dodger didn't understand how people could live this way.

  Terry was humped over the edge of the tub, his fat, hairy ass sticking up, his arms and head and upper torso all tangled up in the stupid fish-curtain. Blood was swirling around his toes and running down the drain. The Dodger didn't want to touch that wet, clammy flesh—at least two exit wounds were visible and bubbling in Terry's back—so he patted the curtain until he found the fat man's head, grabbed his hair through the cheap plastic, lifted the head, set the silencer against the man's forehead—the Dodger could see wide, staring eyes through the plastic—and pulled the trigger.

  The Dodger picked up his brass, went downstairs again, stepping over the woman, and searched every room, starting from the cellar and working his way back up to the second floor, policing the last two ejected cartridges as be went. He'd fired eight rounds but there were still two live ones left in case there was another kid or invalid aunt or somebody in the house. And he had his survival knife.

  There was nobody else. The only sound was the water still running in the shower and the sudden scream of a tea kettle in the kitchen.

  The Dodger went to the kitchen and turned off the heat under the kettle. It was an old-fashioned gas-type stove. There were fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookies on the counter. The Dodger ate three of the cookies and then drank from a milk bottle in the fridge. The milk bottle was glass, but he still had his gloves on.

  He unscrewed the silencer, slipped the Berretta and silencer back into his trouser cargo pocket, unlocked the kitchen door, then walked to the front of the house and checked the street through the little slivers of window glass in the front door, the street was as empty and gray-looking as when he'd arrived. He went out the front, pulling it locked behind him.

  The Dodger went out to his AstroVan and backed it up the narrow driveway. The van filled the drive. Neighbors wouldn't see a damned thing with his van blocking the view like that The Dodger chose three big mail sacks the right size and went into the house again. He made three trips, dropping each sacked body into the back of the van with an oddly hollow thump from the metal floor. He saved the kid for last, savoring the ease of effort after hauling Mr. and Mrs. Lard-Ass.

  Fifteen minutes later, on I-90 headed out of town, he punched in WBFO, 88.7 on his radio. It was Buffalo's coolest jazz station and the Dodger liked jazz. He whistled and patted the steering wheel as he drove.

  * * *

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  « ^ »

  Kurtz was listening to jazz at Blues Franklin. He hadn't come to listen to jazz—the place wouldn't be open for another five hours—but when he'd come through the door, one of Daddy Bruce's granddaughters—not Ruby, the waitress, but a little one, perhaps Laticia—had taken one look at Kurtz's face under the hat brim and had run out through the back to fetch Daddy. A young black man was on the low performance platform, noodling at the Steinway that Daddy Bruce kept for the visiting top jazz pianists, so Kurtz found his favorite table against the back wall and tipped his chair back while he listened.

  Daddy Bruce came out of the back, wiping his hands off on a white apron. The old man never sat with customers, but he gripped the back of the chair next to Kurtz and shook his head several times, tut-tutting.

  "I hope the other guy looks even worse."

  "I don't know who the other guy is," said Kurtz. "That's why I came by. Anyone been in here asking for me over the last few days?"

  "This very morning," said Daddy Bruce. He scratched his short, white beard. "They so many white people in here this morning asking for you, I considered hanging out a sign saying 'Joe Kurtz ain't here—go away.'"

  Kurtz waited for the details.

  "First was this woman cop. I remember you in here with her a long, long time ago, Joe, when you was both kids. She identified herself today as Detective King, but you used to call her Rigby. I should've thrown both your asses out back then, being underage and all, but you always loved the music so much and I saw that you were teaching her all about it, plus trying to get in her pants."

  "Who else?"

  "Three guineas this morning. Button men maybe. Very polite. Said they had some money for you. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Gotta find Joe Kurtz to give him a big bag of money. Lot of that goin' round."

  Kurtz didn't have to ask if Daddy Bruce had told them anything. "Were they well-dressed? Blowdried hair?"

  The old man laughed a rich, phlegmy laugh. "Maybe in a guinea idea of well-dressed. You know the type—those long, pointy, white collars that don't match their shirts. Off-the-back-of-the-truck suits that they never had tailored. A
nd blowdried? Those three comb their hair with buttered toast."

  Gonzaga's people, thought Kurtz. Not Farino Ferrara's.

  "Anyone else?"

  Daddy Bruce laughed again. "How many people you need after your ass before you feel popular? You want an aspirin?"

  "No, thanks. So you haven't heard anything about anyone wanting to cap me?"

  "Well, you didn't ask that. Sure I do. Last one I heard was about three weeks ago—big halfbreed Indian with a limp. He got real drunk and was telling a couple of A.B. types he was going to do you."

  "How'd you know the others were A.B.?"

  Daddy Bruce sighed. "You think I don't know Aryan Brotherhood when I smell them?"

  "What were they doing in here?" Blues Franklin had never made the mistake of going upscale—despite the Steinway and the occasional headliners—and it still had a largely black clientele.

  "How the fuck am I supposed to know why they came in? I just know why and how they went out."

  "Lester?"

  "And Raphael, his Samoan friend. Your Indian and his pals got real 'noxious about one A.M. We helped them leave through the alley."

  "Did Big Bore—the Indian—put up a fight?"

  "No one really puts up a fight against Lester. You want me to give you a call if and when Mr. Big Bore come back?"

  "Yeah. Thanks, Daddy."

  Kurtz stood to leave, swaying only slightly, but the old man said, "You can't go out there lookin' like that, eyes all bloody and with them big bruises under them. You scare the little ones. Stand there. Don't move."

  Kurtz stood there while Daddy Bruce hustled into the back room and returned with a pair of oversized sunglasses. Kurtz put them on gingerly. The right stem rubbed against his bandages, but by fiddling, he got them to stay on without hurting.

  "Thanks, Daddy. I feel like Ray Charles."

  "You should feel like Ray Charles," said the old man with a throaty chuckle. "Those be his glasses."

  "You stole Ray Charles's sunglasses?"

  "Hell, no," said Daddy Bruce. "I don't steal any more than you do. You remember when he come through here about two years ago last December with… no, you wouldn't, Joe. You was still up in Attica then. It was a good show. We didn't announce nothing, no warning he was coming, and we had six hundred folks trying to get in."

  "And he gave you his sunglasses?"

  Daddy shrugged. "Lester and me done him a favor and he give me his pair as a sort of 'mento is all. He travels with extra pairs. But those are the only Ray Charles sunglasses I got, so I'd appreciate them back when you're done with them. Thought I'd use 'em myself when my eyes go bad."

  Pruno was on sabbatical, but his homeless roommate, Soul Dad, was at his usual daytime spot—playing chess on the Mil above the old switching yards. Soul Dad said that he hadn't heard anything, but promised Kurtz he'd get in touch if he heard anything—the two old men shared a laptop computer in their shack down by the rails and Soul Dad would e-mail in his tip. Kurtz had to smile at that; even the snitches and street informants had gone high-tech.

  A cab driver named Enselmo, whom Kurtz had helped with a couple of things, said that he hadn't heard anyone in the back of his cab talking about whacking Kurtz or a parole officer. He had heard rumors though that Toma Gonzaga was looking for Kurtz the last few days. Kurtz thanked Enselmo and paid him two hundred dollars to drive him around the rest of the afternoon.

  Mrs. Tuella Dean, a bag lady who favored a grate on the corner of Elmwood and Market—even in the summer—said that she'd heard rumors that some crazy Arab down in Lackawanna had been bragging about planning to shoot someone, but had never heard Kurtz's name mentioned. She didn't know the crazy Arab's name. She couldn't remember where she'd heard the rumor. She thought maybe she was mixing it up with all this al-Qaida news that kept coming over her portable radio.

  It wasn't noon yet, but Kurtz began trolling the bars, looking for old contacts and talkative people. He had a couple of hours to kill before heading for Brian Kennedy's security service offices. He welcomed the wait because he wanted his vision to clear a bit before he watched the garage tape.

  First he hit the strip bars that catered to the businessman's lunch special—Rick's Tally-Ho on Genessee with its tattered row of recliners, Club Chit Chat on Hertel where, Kurtz had heard, the ass-bruise factor was high and the woody potential was low. His source had been correct, although Kurtz privately judged his current woody potential as negative-five-hundred. On top of that, the music and smell in these places made his head hurt worse.

  Kurtz would have liked to check out the higher-class Canadian strip clubs like Pure Platinum just across the river, but cons on probation don't have the option of leaving the country, no matter how close the Peace Bridge might be. So he concentrated on that oxymoron of oxymorons—the greater Buffalo area.

  He hit some of the sports bars like Mac's City Bar and Papa Joe's, but the noise was louder there and it just made his headache pound, so he decided to save sports bars for another day. Besides, the kind of snitches or street contacts he was looking for weren't usually the sports-bar types—they preferred dark bars with dubious clientele.

  Enselmo was giving him a discount—not charging him for the waiting time—so Kurtz hit some clubs like the Queen City Lounge and the Bradford, just down the street from his office, and the re-opened Cobblestones near the HSBC arena. It was the wrong time of day and the wrong clientele. He was almost certainly wasting his time.

  But since he was in the neighborhood, he figured that he might as well check out some of the gay bars. Enselmo obviously didn't approve, based on the number of frowns and glowers he was shooting in the rearview mirror, but Joe Kurtz could care less what Enselmo approved or disapproved of. Buddies on Johnson Park was full of old men who smiled at Kurtz's sunglasses, inspected his bomber jacket, and offered to buy him a drink. None of them seemed to know anything. A sign in the urinal at Cabaret on Allen Street read, "Men who pee on electric fences receive shocking news," and an ad on the wall of the bar offered, "Don't stay home with the same old dildo." But the place was dead.

  Kurtz collapsed in the back seat of the cab and said, "KG's. Then we'll call it a day."

  "No, no, boss, you don't wanna go to Knob Gobbler's."

  "KG's," said Kurtz.

  His reaction coming through the door was that he should have followed Enselmo's advice. KG's wasn't all that enthusiastic about straight patrons at the best of times, and they obviously didn't want a bandaged, bruised straight guy in sunglasses there in mid-day during what they advertised as their Wrinkle Club Hour. Kurtz didn't even want to know what a Wrinkle Club was.

  The bartender called for the huge bouncer—unimaginatively called "Tiny"—and Tiny flicked a finger the size of a bull pizzle at Kurtz to show him out.

  Kurtz nodded passively, pulled the .38, and pressed it into Tiny's face, hammer back, until Tiny's nose mushed flat under the muzzle. It may not have been the best thing to do in the circumstances, but Kurtz wasn't in the best of moods.

  The bartender didn't call the cops—Wrinkle Hour was in full wrinkle and he probably didn't want the patrons disturbed by a gunshot—and the man just shifted the toothpick in his mouth, jerked his head, and sent Tiny knuckling back to his grotto.

  Kurtz considered this a pretty useless victory since there was nobody to talk to here anyway, unless Kurtz wanted to interrupt something he didn't want to see, much less interrupt. At least in the strip clubs he'd known some of the girls. He was headed out, .38 back in his belt, when a man half again larger than Tiny filled the door. The monster wore a baggy suit and blue shirt with a pointy white collar. It looked like he combed his hair with buttered toast.

  "You Kurtz?" grunted the big man.

  "Ah, shit," said Kurtz. Gonzaga's people had found him.

  The big man jerked his thumb toward the door behind him.

  Kurtz stepped backward into the bar. The monster shook his head once, almost sadly, and followed Kurtz into the dark, open space. The Wrinkle Club
activities were flailing away in a side room. The goon didn't even glance that way.

  "You coming the easy way or the hard way?" asked the big man.

  "Hard way's fine," said Kurtz. He took off the sunglasses and set them in his coat pocket.

  Gonzaga's man smiled. He obviously preferred the hard way as well. He slipped brass knuckles on and began moving toward Kurtz, arms spread like a gorilla's, eyes on Kurtz's bandages. His strategy was fairly apparent.

  "Hey, hey!" shouted the bartender. "Take it outside!"

  The ape's gaze shifted for just a fraction of a second at the sound, but it gave Kurtz time to pull the .38 and swing it around full force into the side of the man's head.

  Gonzaga's man looked surprised but stayed standing. The bartender was pulling a sawed-off shotgun from under the bar.

  "Drop it!" snapped Kurtz, aiming the .38 at the bartender. The bartender dropped it.

  "Kick it," said Kurtz. The bartender kicked the weapon away.

  The huge man was still standing there, smiling slightly, a quizzical, almost introspective expression on his face. Kurtz kicked him in the balls, waited a minute for the slow neurons to pass the message to the monster's brain, and then kneed him in the face when the mass of flesh slowly bent at the waist.

  The man stood straight up, shook his bead once, and hit the floor with the sound of a jukebox falling over.

  Probably because his head hurt and he was tired, Kurtz kicked the Gonzaga goon in the side of the head and then again in the ribs. It was like kicking a bowling ball and then trying to punt a three-hundred-pound sack of suet.

  Kurtz went out the back door, limping slightly, the .38 still in his right hand.

  The alley smelled of hops and urine and, without the glasses, the sunlight was way too bright for Kurtz's eyes. He had to blink to clear his vision and by the time he had, it was too late to do anything else. A huge limousine idled fifty feet away on Delaware Street, its black bulk blocking the alley entrance on that side, while a Lincoln Town Car blocked the opposite end.