Hardcase jk-1

by Dan Simmons

  Kurtz continued sitting the way he had been, but he was very observant. If there was to be a moment in which he could act, it would come here.

  There was no such moment. The Dane was the consummate professional, the muzzle of the Beretta never wavering even as the Dane moved sideways and moved the pistol to where Sophia could grasp it with both hands. When she had it, still aimed at Kurtz's chest, her finger on the trigger, the Dane took a step back out of the lamplight and out of any line of fire.

  "Any last words, Joe?" said Sophia.

  Joe thought for a second. "You weren't all that great in the sack, baby. I've had sexier encounters with a Hustler magazine and some hand lotion."

  The sound of the unsilenced pistol was very loud. Two shots.

  Sophia smirked. Then she dropped the Beretta and fell forward onto her father's body on the floor.

  The Dane pocketed the.22-caliber Beretta Model 21 Bobcat and stepped forward to retrieve the 9mm Beretta from Sophia's limp hand. Kurtz allowed himself to breathe again when the Dane slipped the larger Beretta into his pocket as well. Kurtz stood up.

  The Dane lifted the valise of cash from its place by Don Farino's wheelchair and then picked up the small audiocassette from Sophia's empty chair. "These are both yours, I believe," said the Dane.

  "Are they?" Kurtz asked.

  The Dane dropped the cassette into the valise and handed the valise to Kurtz. "Yes. I am a hired assassin, not a thief."

  Kurtz took the bag and the two men walked out of the drawing room, Kurtz pausing at the door a second to look back at the five bodies on the floor.

  "The last scene of Hamlet," said the Dane. "I rather liked that."

  The two talked shop as they walked out of the quiet mansion and down the driveway to Kurtz's car.

  "You like Berettas?" asked Kurtz.

  "They have never disappointed me," said the Dane.

  Kurtz nodded. Probably the silliest and most sentimental thing he'd ever done had involved his old Beretta many years earlier.

  They had passed the bodies of two guards in the foyer and another—dressed in black tactical gear—was lying outside near the drive.

  "Extra work for you?" asked Kurtz.

  "I thought it wiser on my way in to see to any possible problems that might hinder our way out," said the Dane. They passed a bush from which two dark legs and a polished pair of loafers protruded.

  "Three," Kurtz said.

  "Seven counting the night maid and the butler."

  "Paid for by someone?"

  The Dane shook his head. "I count it as part of overhead. Although the Gonzaga contribution could be prorated toward them."

  "I'm glad the Gonzagas came through," said Kurtz.

  "I am sure you are." They came to the gate. It had been left open. The Dane put his hand in his topcoat pocket, and Kurtz tensed.

  The Dane removed his gloved hand and shook his head. "You have nothing to worry about from me, Mr. Kurtz. Our arrangement was explicit. Despite rumors to the contrary, one million dollars is quite generous, even in this profession. And even this profession has its code of ethics."

  "You know the money came from Little Skag," said Kurtz.

  "Of course I do. It makes no difference. You were the one who contacted me on the telephone. The contract is between us."

  Kurtz looked around. "I was a little worried that one of the Farinos might have outbid me."

  The Dane shook his head again. "They were notoriously cheap." He lifted his face to the evening air. It was quite dark now and raining very softly. "I know what you're thinking, Mr. Kurtz," said the Dane. "I've seen his face. You haven't. This face is no more mine than Nils is my name."

  "Actually," said Kurtz, hefting the valise higher, "I was thinking about this money and what I was going to do with it."

  The Dane smiled very slightly. "Fifty thousand dollars. Was it worth all of your aggravation, Mr. Kurtz?"

  "Yeah," said Kurtz. "It was." They walked out through the gate and Kurtz hesitated by the Volvo, jingling the keys in his free hand. He would feel better when he had the H&K in his hand. "One question," he said. "Or maybe it isn't a question."

  The Dane waited.

  "Little Skag… Stevie Farino… he's going to get out and take over this mess."

  "It was my understanding," said the Dane, "that this was what the one million dollars was all about."

  "Yeah," said Kurtz. "Little Skag is as penny-pinching as the rest of the family, but this was his one shot at getting back in the driver's seat. But what I meant was that Skag will probably want to tidy up all the loose ends." The Dane nodded.

  "Hell," said Kurtz. "Never mind. If we meet again, we meet again." He got into the Volvo. The Dane remained standing near the car. No bomb. Kurtz started the engine, backed into the empty road, and glanced into his rearview mirror. The Dane was gone.

  Kurtz pulled his pistol out from under the seat and set it on his lap anyway. He put the car in gear and drove away with one hand touching the valise on the passenger seat. Kurtz drove at or under the speed limit. He had no driver's license, and this would be a bad time to be stopped by the Orchard Park sheriff.

  He'd driven less than two miles when a cell phone rang in his backseat.

  CHAPTER 41

  Kurtz slid the Volvo to a stop on a grassy berm and was out the door, rolling in the grass. He didn't own a cell phone.

  The phone kept ringing.

  Semtex, thought Kurtz. C4. The Israelis and Palestinians had specialized in telephone bombs.

  Fuck, thought Kurtz. The money. He went back to the car, removed the valise, and set it a safe distance from the vehicle.

  The phone kept ringing. Kurtz realized that he was pointing his H&K.45 at a cell phone.

  What the hell is wrong with me? He retrieved the valise, slid the pistol into his suit pocket, picked up the phone, and hit the answer button.

  "Kurtz?"

  A man's voice. He didn't recognize it.

  "Kurtz?"

  He listened.

  "Kurtz, I'm sitting outside a little house in Lockport. I can see the little girl through the window. In about ten seconds, I'm going to knock on the door, kill that fucker who's pretending to be her father, and take the teenaged bitch out and have a little fun with her. Goodbye, Kurtz." The man hung up.

  Normally it would have been a thirty-minute drive from Orchard Park to Lockport. Kurtz made it in ten minutes, doing well over a hundred on I-90 and almost that speed on the Lockport streets.

  He slid the Volvo to a screeching stop in front of Rachel's house.

  The gate to the picket fence was open.

  Kurtz jumped the fence, 45 raised and ready. The front door was closed. The lights were out on the first floor. Kurtz decided to go in the back way. He moved around the side of the house—not quite running, paying attention but still in a hurry, his heart pounding wildly.

  One of the goddamned bushes rose up as he passed.

  Kurtz swung the.45 to bear, but too late—a man's arm from the bushes, some sort of camouflage suit, something black and stubby in the man's right hand.

  A great, hot force exploded against Kurtz's chest and God's flashbulbs went off in his skull.

  CHAPTER 42

  Pain.

  Good. He was alive.

  Kurtz came back to consciousness slowly, very painfully, muscle by muscle. His eyes were open and there was no blindfold, but he could see nothing. He was in great pain. His body did not respond to commands. He was having problems breathing.

  It's all right. I may be hurt bad but I'm alive. I'll kill the fucker and get Rachel free before I die. Kurtz concentrated on forcing breath into his lungs and calming his pounding heart and screaming muscles.

  Minutes passed. More minutes. Kurtz slowly became oriented in his body and around it.

  He was in the trunk of a car. Big trunk, big car. Lincoln or Cadillac. The car was moving. Kurtz's body wasn't moving. His muscles were alternating between cramps and involuntary spasms. His chest was on
fire, he was nauseated, and his skull rang like a Buddhist gong. He'd been shot, but not with bullets. Stun gun, thought Kurtz. Taser. Probably rated about 250,000 volts. Even as his muscles and nerves came back on line, he found he could barely move. His wrists were manacled or handcuffed behind him, cruelly, and somehow attached to manacles around his ankles.

  He was naked. The floor of the trunk was covered with crinkled plastic, like a shower curtain.

  Whoever it is had it all planned. Followed me to Farino's. Put the phone in the Volvo. Wanted me, not Rachel. At least Kurtz prayed to whatever dark god that the last was true.

  He was not quite blind. Brake lights glowed red every now and then, illuminating the carpeted interior, the plastic, and Kurtz's bare flesh. The car was moving, not just idling, leaning around turns, going somewhere. Not much traffic. The road was wet beneath the radial tires, and the sibilant hum made Kurtz want to go back to sleep.

  He hasn't killed me yet. Why? Kurtz could come up with a few possible reasons, none very probable. It occurred to him that he had not seen Cutter die.

  The car stopped. Footsteps crunched on gravel. Kurtz closed his eyes.

  Fresh air and a light drizzle when the trunk was opened.

  "Don't give me that shit," said a man's voice with a slight Brooklyn accent. The man set the Taser against Kurtz's heel. Even with the voltage lowered, it was like having a long, hot wire inserted directly under the flesh. Kurtz spasmed, kicked, lost consciousness for a second or two, and then opened his eyes.

  In the red light, looming over Kurtz, a Taser in his left hand and a huge.44 Magnum Ruger Redhawk in his right hand, stood a meaner-looking version of Danny DeVito. "You fake being out again," said Manny Levine, "and I'll shove this stun gun up your hairy ass."

  Kurtz kept his eyes open. "You know why you're still alive, fuckhead?" Kurtz hated rhetorical questions at the best of times. This wasn't the best of times.

  "You're alive because my people value burial," said Levine. "And you're going to lead me to my brother for a real burial before I blow your motherfucking head off." He cocked the heavy.44 Magnum and aimed the long barrel at Kurtz's exposed testicles. "But I don't have any reason to keep you in one piece, fucker. We'll start with these."

  "Letchworth," gasped Kurtz. Even if he'd been unmanacled, he couldn't have grabbed for Levine at that moment. His arms and legs were still spasming. He needed time.

  "What?"

  "Letchworth Park," panted Kurtz. "I buried Sammy near Letchworth."

  "Where, cocksucker?" Manny Levine was so enraged that his entire dwarf body was shaking. The long steel barrel shook but the muzzle never moved off target… targets.

  Kurtz shook his head. Before Manny pulled the trigger, he managed to gasp, "Outside the park… off Alternate twenty… south of Perry Center… in the woods… have to show you."

  Letchworth was more than sixty-five miles from Lockport. It would give Kurtz time to recover control of his body, clear his head.

  Manny Levine's teeth were grinding audibly. He shook with fury while his finger tightened on the trigger. Finally he lowered the hammer on the big Ruger and hit Kurtz on the side of the head with the long barrel, once, twice, three times.

  Kurtz felt his scalp rip loose. Blood ran salty into his eyes and pattered on the plastic liner. Good. Nothing serious. Probably looks worse than it is. Maybe it'll satisfy him for now.

  Levine slammed the trunk shut, made a U-turn, and drove away with Kurtz rocking and bleeding heavily in back.

  CHAPTER 43

  Kurtz had little sense of time other than the slight ebbing of pain and the even slighter return of muscle control, but it might have been about an hour later when the big car pulled over. The trunk opened and Kurtz breathed deeply of the cold night air, even though he had been shivering almost uncontrollably during the ride.

  "All right," said Manny Levine, "we're south of Perry Center. It's all county roads and gravel roads around here. Where the fuck do we go next?"

  "I'll have to sit up front and guide you," said Kurtz.

  The dwarf laughed. He had small yellow teeth. "No fucking way, Houdini."

  "You want to give your brother a decent burial."

  "Yeah," said Levine. "But that's Job Two. Job One is killing your ass, and I'm not going to let sentiment get in the way of that. Where do we go next?"

  Kurtz took a second to think and try to flex his arms. He'd found during the ride that his handcuffs and ankle manacles were chained to each other and to something solid behind him.

  "Time's up," said Manny Levine. He leaned forward with the Taser. The ugly little stun gun had electrodes about three inches apart. He set those metal studs on either side of Kurtz's right ear and pressed the trigger for an instant.

  Kurtz screamed. He had no choice. His vision, already impeded by the loose scalp and dried blood, popped orange, bled red, and faded for a while. When he could see and think again, Levine was grinning down at him.

  "Half a mile past County Road 93," gasped Kurtz. "Gravel road. Take it west toward the woods until it stops."

  Levine reached down, set the electrodes against Kurtz's testicles, and zapped him again. Kurtz's scream lasted long after Levine had slammed the trunk shut and begun driving again.

  Levine slammed the trunk up. Snow fell past him in the red glow of the brake lights. "Ready to show me?" said the dwarf.

  Kurtz nodded carefully. Even the slightest movement hurt, but he wanted to look more injured than he was. "Help me out," he croaked. This was Plan A. If he was going to lead, Levine would have to unchain him from whatever bolt held him in and undo his ankle manacles. Perhaps he would have to uncuff him while the miserable midget was close enough to grab. It wasn't much of a plan, but it was the best he'd come up with so far.

  "Sure, sure." Levine's voice was amiable. He reached over with the Taser and pressed it into Kurtz's arm.

  Flashbulbs. Blackness.

  Kurtz came to lying on his side on the frozen earth. He blinked his one good eye, trying to figure out how much time had passed. Not much, he felt.

  After Levine had zapped him, he'd obviously dragged Kurtz out of the trunk—not carefully, Kurtz thought, feeling a new broken tooth in the side of his mouth—and reworked the bondage arrangements. Kurtz's hands were cuffed in front of him now. Normally this would be good news, but the cuffs were attached by a chain to ankle manacles in state-prison manner, and a longer, fine-link steel chain—perhaps fifteen feet long—ran to a leather loop in Levine's hand.

  Levine was wearing a wool cap with earflaps, a bulky goosedown vest, a small candy-orange rucksack, and one of those night-hiking headsets with a battery-powered miner's lamp attached to colorful straps around his forehead. On a normal person, this would have looked absurd: on this dwarf, it looked strangely obscene. Perhaps it was the Taser in his left hand, the dog chain in his right hand, or the huge Ruger tucked in his belt that dulled the humor of it.

  "Get up," said Levine. He touched the Taser to the.steel dog chain. Kurtz spasmed, twitched, and almost wet himself.

  Levine put the Taser in his down-vest pocket and aimed the Ruger while Kurtz slowly, painfully, got to his knees and then to his feet. He stood swaying. Kurtz could rush Levine, but «rush» would mean shuffling and staggering the ten feet while the dwarf emptied the Ruger into him. Meanwhile, although the frozen ground was free of snow this far from the lake, flakes were beginning to fall through bare branches above. Kurtz began shivering violently and could not stop. He wondered idly if hypothermia was going to kill him before Levine did.

  "Let's go." Levine rattled Kurtz's chain.

  Kurtz looked around to get his bearings and began shuffling into the dark woods.

  CHAPTER 44

  "You know that Sammy raped and murdered the woman who was my partner," said Kurtz about fifteen minutes later. They had come into a wide, dark clearing, illuminated only by the beam of the lamp on Manny Levine's head.

  "Shut the fuck up." Levine was very careful, never coming closer tha
n ten feet from Kurtz, never letting the chain go taut, and never dropping the aim of the big-bore Magnum.

  Kurtz shuffled across the clearing, looked at the huge elm tree at the far side, looked at another tree, crossed to a stump, and looked around again.

  "What if I can't find the place?" said Kurtz. "It's been twelve years."

  "Then you die here," said Levine.

  "What if I remember it was another place?"

  "You die here anyway," said Levine.

  "What if this is the place?"

  "You die here anyway, asshole." Levine sounded bored. "You know that. The only question now, Kurtz, is how you're going to die. I've got six rounds in the cylinder and a whole box of cartridges in my pocket. I can use one or I can use a dozen. Your choice."

  Kurtz nodded and crossed to a big tree, looking up at a twisted branch for orientation. "Where's the little girl… Rachel?" he said.

  Levine showed his teeth. "She's upstairs in her house, all tucked in," said the little man. "She's warm enough, but her legal daddy's pretty cold, lying facedown drunk in that fancy-schmancy kitchen of theirs. But not nearly as cold as her real daddy's going to be in about ten seconds if he doesn't shut the fuck up."

  Kurtz shuffled ten paces out from the tree. "Here," he said.

  Keeping the Ruger Redhawk leveled, Levine took off his backpack, unzipped it, and tossed Kurtz a stubby but heavy metal object.

  Kurtz's frozen fingers fumbled unfolding the dung. A folding shovel—an "entrenching tool," the army called it. It was the closest Kurtz would come to having a weapon in his hand, but it couldn't be used as a weapon in Kurtz's condition unless Manny Levine decided to walk five steps closer and offer his head as a target. Even then, Kurtz knew, he might not have the strength to hurt Levine. And chained and manacled as he was, there was absolutely no chance of throwing the shovel at the dwarf.

  "Dig," said Levine.

  The ground was frozen and for a few desperate moments, Kurtz was sure that he would not be able to break through the icy crust of old leaves and tight soil. He got on his knees and tried to put his weight behind the small shovel. Then he got the first few divots up and managed to start a small hole.