Hardcase jk-1

by Dan Simmons

  CHAPTER 9

  It was raining hard when Kurtz walked up to the sprawling brick home just a few blocks from Delaware Park. Malcolm and Cutter watched from Malcolm's yellow SLK, its top up, half a block back from where Kurtz had just parked his Buick. Malcolm had noticed how careful Kurtz had been, driving by once to case the place, checking several times that he had not been followed before parking. But Malcolm and Cutter had arrived first and had hunkered down when Kurtz drove past. The driving rain helped conceal them in the car, but Malcolm had turned the engine off anyway. He knew that nothing gave away the presence of a watcher faster than the exhaust from an idling engine.

  Cutter made a soft noise from the passenger seat.

  "In a minute, C, my man," said Malcolm. "In a minute."

  Kurtz had not known many accountants over the years—he'd had a couple as divorce-case clients and had seen a few more adventurous types serving time in Attica for whatever white-collar crimes accountants commit—but Mrs. Richardson hardly seemed like an accountant's wife to him. She seemed more like one of the expensive call girls who plied their trade near the fancier Niagara Falls resort hotels. Kurtz had seen pictures of Buell Richardson and heard descriptions from Little Skag. The accountant had been short, bald, in his fifties, peering out at the world through thick glasses like a myopic, arrogant chipmunk. His wife was in her late twenties, very blond, very built, and—it seemed to Kurtz—very chipper for a probable widow.

  "Please sit down, Mr. Kurtz. Just don't move that chair out of its place, please. The furniture placement is part of the general ambience."

  "Sure," said Kurtz, having not the slightest clue as to what she was talking about. Buell Richardson had been rich enough to own a Frank Lloyd Wright home near Delaware Park. "Not the Frank Lloyd Wright house near Delaware Park," Arlene had said after making the interview appointment for him. "Not the Dewey D. Martin house. The other one."

  "Right," Kurtz had said. Kurtz didn't know the Dewey D. Martin house from a housing project, but he had found the address easily enough. Thought the home was nice enough looking if you liked all that brick and the overhanging eaves, but the straight-backed chairs near the fireplace were a literal pain in the butt. He had no idea if Frank Lloyd Wright had designed the chairs and he certainly did not care, but he was certain that the chair had not been built with any regard for the human body. The chair back was as stiff and upright as an ironing board and the seat was too small for a midget's ass. If they had designed an electric chair this way, Kurtz thought, the condemned man would bitch about it in his last seconds before they threw the switch.

  "It's nice of you to agree to talk to me, Mrs. Richardson."

  "Anything to help in the investigation, Mr…"

  "Kurtz."

  "Yes. But you're not with the police, you say. A private investigator?"

  "An investigator, yes, ma'am," said Kurtz. When he had been a real P.I., he had owned one good suit and two decent ties for such interviews, and now he felt foolish in his Eddie Bauer windbreaker and chinos. Arlene had given him one of Alan's old ties, but Kurtz was two inches taller and forty pounds heavier than his secretary's dead husband, so there would be no suit from that source. Kurtz looked forward to earning some money. After purchasing the two pistols, giving Arlene $300 toward equipment, and paying for his food and lodging, Kurtz was down to about $35.

  "Who else is interested in finding Buell?" asked the accountant's wife.

  "I'm not at liberty to reveal my client's identity, ma'am. But I can assure you that it's someone who wishes your husband well and wants to help find him."

  Mrs. Richardson nodded. Her hair was tied up in an elaborate bun and Kurtz found himself noticing the artfully loose wisps of blond hair touching her perfect neck. "Is there anything that you might tell me about the circumstances of Mr. Richardson's disappearance?"

  She shook her head slowly. "I've reported everything to the police, of course. But there's honestly nothing out of the ordinary that I can recall. It was just a month ago this Thursday. Buell left at his usual time that morning… eight-fifteen… and said that he was going straight to his office."

  "His secretary told us that he didn't have any meetings scheduled for that day," said Kurtz. "Isn't that unusual for an accountant?"

  "Not at all," said Mrs. Richardson. "Buell had a very few private clients and much of his business with them was conducted over the telephone."

  "You know the names of those clients?"

  Mrs. Richardson pursed her perfect pink lips. "I'm sure that's confidential, Mr…"

  "Kurtz."

  "… but I can assure you that all of his clients were important people… serious people… and all above reproach."

  "Of course," said Kurtz. "And he was driving the Mercedes E300 on the day of his disappearance?"

  Mrs. Richardson cocked her head. "Yes. Haven't you read the police report, Mr…"

  "Kurtz. Yes, ma'am, I have. Just double-checking."

  "Well, he was. Driving the smaller Mercedes, I mean. I had some shopping to do that day so I had the larger one. The police found the little one the next day. The little Mercedes, I mean."

  Kurtz nodded. Little Skag had said that the accountant's E300 had been left in Lackawanna, where it had been stripped within hours. There had been hundreds of fingerprints on the shell of the vehicle, all those identified so far belonging to the gangbangers and civilians who had helped themselves to parts.

  "Can you think of any reason for Mr. Richardson to want to drop out of sight?" said Kurtz.

  The statuesque blonde snapped her head back as if Kurtz had slapped her. "Do you mean, for instance, another woman, Mr…"

  "Kurtz," said Kurtz and waited.

  "I resent that question and its implications."

  I don't blame you, Kurtz wanted to say aloud. If your husband was stalking poon on the side, he was a moron. He waited.

  "No, there was no reason for Buell to want to… how did you put it, Mr. Katz? To drop out of sight. He was happy. We were happy. We have a good life. Buell was considering retiring in a year or so, we have the place in Maui where we were going to spend time, and we recently bought a boat… a little sixty-foot catamaran…" Mrs. Richardson paused. "We planned to spend the next few years sailing around the world."

  Kurtz nodded. A little sixty-foot catamaran. What the hell would a big boat be like? He tried to imagine a year on a sixty-foot yacht with this woman, tropical ports, long nights at sea. It wasn't too difficult. "Well, you've been very helpful, Mrs. Richardson," Kurtz said, rose, and headed for the door.

  Mrs. Richardson hurried to keep up. "I don't see how my answering these few questions can help find my husband, Mr…"

  Kurtz had given up on the name thing. He'd known Sterno sniffers with better short-term memories than this woman.

  "Actually, you've been very helpful," he said again. And she had been. Kurtz's only real reason for interviewing her was to see if she might have been involved in the accountant's disappearance. She hadn't been. Mrs. Richardson was beautiful—striking, even—but she obviously wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. Her ignorance had not been feigned. Kurtz doubted if she was even aware that her husband was almost certainly decomposing in a shallow grave or being nibbled on by bottom feeders in Lake Erie as they spoke.

  "Thanks again," he said and walked out to Arlene's Buick.

  "Shit," said Malcolm. He and Cutter were just getting out of the SLK. Malcolm put his hand out as if to grab Cutter, but stopped with his fingers an inch short of the man's arm. He would never touch Cutter without permission, and Cutter would never give such permission. "Wait," said Malcolm, and both men slid back into the car.

  Kurtz was coming out of the house. Now that Malcolm could see him more clearly, he realized that Kurtz still looked pretty much like his mug shot: a little older, a little leaner, a little meaner.

  "I thought he be in there a while," Malcolm said. "What kind of fucking 'vestigator is he, five minutes with the widow?"

  Cut
ter had taken his gravity knife out of his sweatshirt pocket and now seemed absorbed in the knobby contours of its handle.

  "We wait a minute, maybe he'll go back in," said Malcolm.

  Kurtz did not go back in. He got in the Buick and drove off.

  "Shit," Malcolm said again. Then, "Okay, Miles the mouthpiece say pick up both packages. Which package you think we should pick up first, Cutter, my man?"

  Cutter looked at the mansion. His hand twitched and both blades flicked out. The knife was made by a famous riflemaker, and it had two blades. Now Cutter folded one of the blades away and kept the other open and locked. It was a curved blade—razor sharp for four inches, and then sharp but fully hooked at the end. This was known as a gut hook.

  Cutter's eyes gleamed.

  "Yeah, you right as always," agreed Malcolm. "I know a way we can find Mr. Kurtz again later when we want him. Now we got business here."

  The two men got out of the SLK. Malcolm beeped it locked, paused, and then beeped it open again.

  "Almost forgot," he said. He pulled out the Polaroid camera and both men walked across the empty street in the rain.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Erie County Medical Center was a gigantic complex close enough to the Kensington Expressway for the patients to hear the hum of traffic if they wanted. Few did. Most of them were too preoccupied with living and dying and trying to sleep to notice the distant sound of traffic over the whisper of heating or air conditioning, the chimes and announcements, and the chatter in the hallways and rooms. Visiting hours ended officially at 9:00 p.m., but the last of the visitors were usually filtering out around 10:00 p.m.

  At 10:15 on this October night, a tall, thin gentleman in a simple tan raincoat and a Bavarian-style hat with a red feather in it stepped off the elevator into the West Wing Intensive Care area. The man was carrying a small bouquet of flowers. He looked to be in his mid-fifties, with sad eyes, a slightly distracted expression, and a faint smile under a well-groomed ginger mustache. He wore expensive black gloves.

  "I'm sorry, sir, visiting hours are over," said the station nurse, intercepting him with her gaze before he took three steps from the elevator.

  The tall man paused and looked even more lost. "Yes… I am sorry." He had a slight European accent. "I just arrived from Stuttgart. My mother…"

  "You can visit her in the morning, sir. Visiting hours begin at 10:00 a.m."

  The man nodded, began to turn away, then turned back with the flowers extended. "Mrs. Haupt. She is on your chart, yes? I just arrived from Stuttgart, and my brother says that Mumi is in very serious condition."

  At the mention of the name, the nurse glanced at her computer screen. Whatever she saw there made her bite her lip. "Mrs. Haupt is your mother, sir?"

  "Yes." The tall man in the raincoat shuffled his feet and looked at the flowers. "It has been too many years since I saw her last. I should have come sooner, but work… and I must fly home tomorrow."

  The station nurse hesitated. Nurses and orderlies were bustling back and forth, bringing the bedtime meds to the patients. "You understand, Mr… Haupt?"

  "Yes."

  "You understand, Mr. Haupt, that your mother has been in a coma for several weeks now. She won't know you're here."

  The sad-eyed man nodded. "But I would know that I had been there with her."

  The nurse's eyes actually glistened. "Down the hall there, sir. Mrs. Haupt is in one of the private rooms, eleven-oh-eight. I'll have one of the nurses come down and check on you in a few minutes."

  "Thank you very much," said the man in the raincoat and shuffled through the whirlwind of purposeful movement and all of its attendant chaos.

  Mrs. Haupt was in a coma. Various tubes flowed in and out of her. On the nightstand next to her, her dentures grinned out from a glass of water. The man in the raincoat and the feathered hat took the paper off the stems of the flowers and set them in the glass with the old woman's teeth. Then he glanced out into the corridor, saw no one, and walked quietly down to Room 1123.

  There were no guards. Carl was asleep, medicated, when the man entered the room. Carl's head was bandaged, his face was a mass of bruises coalescing into a raccoon mask, and his jaw was wired shut. Both legs were in casts and connected to an elaborate structure of guy wires, counterweights, and a metal frame. Carl's right arm was restrained with a thick strap, and his left arm was taped down to a board so that an IV drip could do its work. He had numerous tubes connected to him. The tall man quietly unlooped the nurse's call button from the headboard and moved it out of Carl's reach. Then he took a capped syringe from his raincoat pocket and held it in his right hand while he used his other hand to squeeze Carl's heavily wired jaw.

  "Carl? Carl?" The man's voice was soft and solicitous.

  Carl moaned, groaned, tried to turn over, was restrained by all of the straps and wires, and opened his one good eye. It was obvious that he did not recognize the man in the raincoat.

  The man in the raincoat removed the cover from the needle with his teeth and drew the plunger back, filling the empty syringe with air. He softly spat the plastic cover from his mouth and caught it in the same hand as the syringe. "Are you awake, Carl?"

  Carl's one eye showed groggy confusion fading into horror as he watched the strange man remove his IV drip from the monitor, click off the alarm, and slip the tip of the needle into the drip. Carl tried to roll over toward the call button. The stranger grasped his IV-attached arm and held him fast.

  "The Farinos wanted to thank you for all of your faithful service, Carl, and to say that they are sorry that you were such an idiot." The tall man's voice was soft. He fitted the syringe needle deeper into the needle port on the IV-drip attachment. Carl made terrible noises through his wired-shut jaw and thrashed around on the bed like some huge fish.

  "Shhh," the man said soothingly and pushed the plunger all the way down. The air bubble was actually visible in the clear IV tube as it flowed down toward Carl's forearm.

  The tall man expertly recapped the syringe with one hand and set it back in his raincoat pocket. Holding Carl's left wrist as he was, studying the watch on his own right wrist, someone passing by would assume that this was a doctor on late rounds, taking a patient's pulse.

  Carl's broken jaw cracked audibly and wire actually snapped. The sound he made was not quite human.

  "Another four or five seconds," the man in the raincoat said softly. "Ahhh, there we are."

  The air bubble had hit Carl's heart, essentially exploding it. Carl arched so wildly that two of the metal guy wires strummed like high-tension wires in a high wind. The bodyguard's eyes grew so wide that they seemed ready to burst, but then they glazed over into sightlessness. Blood poured from both of Carl's nostrils.

  The man released Carl's wrist, left the room, walked down the short hall in the opposite direction from the nurse's central station, and took the back stairway down to the basement and the ambulance ramp up and out of the hospital.

  Sophia Farino was waiting outside in her black Porsche Boxster. The hardtop was up against the rain that continued to fall. The tall man slid into the seat next to her. She did not ask him how things had gone.

  "The airport?" she said.

  "Yes, please," said the man in the same soft, pleasant tones he had used with Carl.

  They drove east on the Kensington for several minutes. "The weather in Buffalo always pleases me," the man said, breaking the silence. "It reminds me of Copenhagen."

  Sophia smiled and then said, "Oh, I almost forgot." She unlocked the small center console and brought out a thick white envelope.

  The man smiled slightly and put the envelope in his raincoat pocket without counting the money. "Please give my warmest regards to your father," he said.

  "I will."

  "And if there is any other service I could possibly perform for your family…"

  Sophia looked away from the tak-tak of the windshield wipers. It was just a few more miles to the airport. "Well, actually," she said, "t
here is something else…"

  CHAPTER 11

  Kurtz sat in the tiny Civic Center office, looked across the cluttered desk at his parole officer, and realized that she was cute as a bug.

  The P.O.'s name was Peg O'Toole. P.O. for P.O., thought Kurtz. He rarely thought in terms such as "cute as a bug," but that's what Ms. O'Toole was. In her early thirties, probably, but with a fresh, freckled face and clear blue eyes. Red hair—not the astounding, pure red like Sam's, but a complex auburn-red—that fell down to her shoulders in natural waves. A bit overweight by modern standards, which pleased Kurtz to no end. One of the best phrases he had ever encountered was the writer Tom Wolfe's description of New York anorectic socialites as "social X-rays." Kurtz idly wondered what P.O. Peg O'Toole would think of him if he mentioned that he had read Tom Wolfe. Then Kurtz wondered what was wrong with himself for wondering that.

  "So where are you living, Mr. Kurtz?"

  "Here and there." Kurtz noticed that she had not condescended to him by calling him by his first name.

  "You'll need a fixed address." Her tone was neither familiar nor cold, merely professional. "I have to visit your place of residence in the next month and make sure that it's acceptable under terms of parole."

  Kurtz nodded. "I've been staying in a Motel 6, but I'm looking for something more permanent." He didn't think it would be wise to tell her about the abandoned icehouse and the borrowed sleeping bag he currently called home.

  Ms. O'Toole made a note. "Have you begun looking for employment yet?"

  "Found a job," said Kurtz.

  She raised her eyebrows slightly. Kurtz noticed that they were thick and the same color as her hair.

  "Self-employed," he said.

  "That won't do," said Peg O'Toole. "We'll need to know the details."

  Kurtz nodded. "I've set up an investigatory agency."

  The P.O. tapped her lower lip with her pen. "You realize, Mr. Kurtz, that you won't be licensed as a private investigator in the state of New York again, and that it's illegal for you to own or carry a firearm or to associate with known felons?"