Hardcase

by Dan Simmons

  Well, Kurtz judged, he had gotten pretty good at sitting and waiting.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 13

  « ^ »

  "You understand, my man?" said Malcolm Kibunte to Doo-Rag for the fourth time. "He go up to 'raignment tomorrow sometime, they probably transfer him tomorrow late or next day morning, and he go into general population out at County."

  "I unnerstand," said Doo-Rag, beginning to nod a bit, his heavy-lidded gaze becoming a bit more unfocused, but still there enough for Malcolm's purposes.

  "Good," said Malcolm and patted the banger on the back.

  "What I don't unnerstand, you know, what I need to axe you," said Doo-Rag, squinting through his nod, "is how come, you know, you be getting so fucking generous in your ol' age, Malcolm? You know what I mean? How come you turn over the whole D-Mosque ten bills to me and mine when we do this, you know, this pasty honky fucker for you? You hear what I'm saying?"

  Malcolm opened his palms. "It's not for me, Doo. It the Block D-Mosque brothers who want him shanked. No way I can get in there after the dude, so I just pass the word to you, my man. You want to give me some of the reward, that's cool, but no way I can get myself in there after the fucker, hear me? So if your people do the job—" Malcolm shrugged—"fucker's dead, Mosque brothers happy, everything cool."

  Doo-Rag was still frowning, working the thing through his drugged mind, but he obviously could not find a catch. "Tomorrow visiting day at County," he said. "Get in early, like ten, pass the word to Lloyd and Small Pee and Daryll, your whiteboy be dead meat before lockdown."

  "He may not be transferred until day after tomorrow," Malcolm reminded him. "But probably tomorrow. Arraigned tomorrow, probably bussed tomorrow."

  "Whenever," said Doo-Rag.

  "You got his mug shot, my man?"

  Doo-Rag patted the chest pocket of his filthy Desert Storm camouflage jacket.

  "You remember his name, my man?"

  "Curtis."

  "Kurtz," said Malcolm, tapping Doo-Rag's nodding head right on the red do-rag. "Kurtz."

  "Whatever," said Doo-Rag, shaking his head and climbing out of the SLK. He sauntered down the avenue, several of his fellow gangbangers falling into the same ambling pace with him. Doo-Rag reached into his baggy trousers, pulled out some of the crack bottles Malcolm had given him, and distributed them to his pals like candy.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 14

  « ^ »

  Kurtz had almost forgotten how chaotically insane the city holding pens were compared to the regimented insanity of real cellblock life. The lights were on all night and new prisoners were being dragged through in greater numbers as the night grew later; there were already a dozen men in his cell by midnight, and the noise and stink were enough to drive a Buddhist monk bugfuck. One of the junkies was shouting and crying and vomiting and shouting some more until Kurtz went over and helped him relax with two fingers to the nerve that ran along his carotid artery. None of the guards came by to clean up the vomit.

  There were three whites in the cell, counting the now-unconscious junkie, and the blacks were doing their usual territorial filings and shooting cutting stares and glances Kurtz's way. If any of them recognized him, he knew, they would also know about the D-Mosque fatwah and it could mean a long night. There was nothing that Kurtz could use as a weapon—no spring, paper clip, ballpoint—nothing sharp at all, so he decided to just set up an early-warning system and try to get some sleep. Kurtz tossed the slumped junkie off one of the four small benches and used the side of his palm to convince the other white prisoner to sleep on the floor as well. Then Kurtz stacked up their slumped forms as a sort of fence about a yard from the bench. It wouldn't take much effort for the blacks to get over his little roadblock, but it would certainly slow them down a bit. Of course, Kurtz was not discriminating against the African-American prisoners, it was just that there were more of them, and they were more likely to have heard of the bounty.

  Cockroaches skittered across the floor, feasted on the pool of vomit in no-man's-land, and then explored the folds of the junkie's clothes and crawled across the other white guy's exposed ankle.

  Kurtz curled up on the unpadded bench and went into a half doze, eyes closed, but his face toward the mass of other men. After a while, their murmuring died down, and most of them dozed or sat cursing. Cops dragged whores and junkies past the cell toward the next corridor of pens. Evidently, this inn had not yet put out its No Vacancy sign for the night.

  Sometime around 2:00 a.m., Kurtz snapped fully awake and pulled his fist far back in a killing mode. Movement. It was only a uniformed cop unlocking the cell door.

  "Joe Kurtz."

  Kurtz went out warily, not turning his back on either the other prisoners or the cop. This might be Hathaway's plan—the throwdown was certainly still around somewhere. Or maybe one of the cops had seen the paperwork on his arrest and connected him with the Death Mosque bounty.

  The uniformed cop was fat and sleepy looking and—like all of the cops in the cell corridor—had left his weapon on the other side of the main sliding grate. The cop carried a baton in his hand and a can of Mace on his belt. Video cameras followed their movement. Kurtz decided that if Hathaway or anyone else was waiting around the bend in the corridor, about all he could do was take the baton away from the fat cop, use him as a shield during any shooting, and try to get in close. It was a shitty plan, but the best he could improvise without access to another weapon.

  No one was waiting around the corridor. They passed through the doors and grates without incident. In the booking room another sleepy sergeant returned his wallet, keys, and change in a brown envelope and then led him up the back stairs to the main hall. There they unlocked the cage and let him walk.

  A beautiful brunette—full-breasted, long-haired, with lovely skin and alluring eyes—was sitting on a long bench in the filthy waiting area. She got up when he came out. Kurtz wondered idly how anyone could look so fresh and put together at two in the morning.

  "Mr. Kurtz, you look like shit," said the brunette.

  Kurtz nodded.

  "Mr. Kurtz, my name is—"

  "Sophia Farino," said Kurtz. "Little Skag showed me a picture of you."

  She smiled slightly. "The family calls him 'Stephen.'"

  "Everyone else who's met him calls him 'Little Skag' or just 'Skag,'" said Kurtz.

  Sophia Farino nodded. "Shall we go?"

  Kurtz stood where he was. "You're telling me that you made bail for me?"

  She nodded.

  "Why you?" said Kurtz. "If the family wanted it done, why not send Miles the lawyer down? And why in the middle of the night? Why not wait for the arraignment?"

  "There never was going to be any arraignment," said Sophia. "You were going to be charged with parole violations—carrying a firearm—and sent over to County in the morning."

  Kurtz rubbed his chin and heard the stubble rasp. "Parole violation?"

  Sophia smiled and began walking. Kurtz followed her down the echoing stairway and out into the night. He was very alert, his nerves pulled very tight. Without being obvious about it, he was checking every shadow, responding to every movement.

  "The Richardson murder has lots of clues," said Sophia, "but none of them lead to you. They already have a blood type from the semen they found on the woman. Not yours."

  "How do you know?"

  Instead of answering, she said, "Someone made an anonymous call that you were at the Richardson place yesterday. If they told you that the woman had your name in her Day-Timer, they lied. She'd scribbled something about meeting a Mr. Quotes."

  "The lady was never very good with names," said Kurtz.

  Sophia led the way out into the cold but brilliantly lighted parking lot and beeped a black Porsche Boxster open. "Want a ride?" she said.

  "I'll walk," said Kurtz.

  "Not wise," said the woman. "You know why someone went to all this work to get you to County?"

  Kurtz did, of course.
At least now he did. A yard hit. A shank job. He was lucky that it hadn't happened in interrogation or the holding pen. Hathaway almost certainly had been part of the setup. What had kept the homicide cop from going ahead with it, using the throwdown and the Glock, and collecting the ten grand? His young partner? Kurtz would probably never know. But he was sure that someone else would have been waiting downstream and that Hathaway would still have gotten his cut.

  "You'd better ride with me," said Sophia.

  "How do I know you're not the one?" said Kurtz.

  Don Farino's daughter laughed. It was a rich, unselfconscious laugh, her head thrown back, a totally sincere laugh from a grown-up woman. "You flatter me," she said. "I have something to talk to you about, Kurtz, and this would be a good time. I think I can help you figure out who's setting you up for this hit and why. Last offer. Want a ride?"

  Kurtz went around and got in the passenger side of the low, muscular Boxster.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 15

  « ^ »

  Kurtz had expected either just a ride and a talk or a trip out to the Farino family manse in Orchard Park, but Sophia drove him to her loft in the old section of downtown Buffalo.

  He knew that she'd had to pass through a metal detector even to get into the waiting area of the city jail, so there was no weapon in the purse she tossed on the floor of the Boxster's passenger side. That meant the center console. If the woman had unclicked that console during the short drive, it would have been an interesting few seconds of activity for Kurtz, but she went nowhere near it.

  Her loft was in an old warehouse that had been gentrified, given huge windows and metal terraces that looked out toward the downtown or the harbor, had a secure parking lot dug out under the building, and sported security guards in the lobby and basement entrance. Sort of like my current place, thought Kurtz with a hint of irony.

  Sophia used a security card to get into the parking basement, exchanged pleasantries with the uniformed guard at the door to the elevators, and took Kurtz up to the sixth—and top—floor.

  "I'll get us drinks," she said after entering the loft, locking the door behind her, and tossing her keys into an enameled vase on a red-lacquer side table. "Scotch do?"

  "Sure," said Kurtz. He had not eaten since a slice of toast that morning—yesterday morning now—about twenty hours earlier.

  The don's daughter had a nice place: exposed brick, modern furniture that still looked comfortable, a wide-screen HDTV in one corner with the usual gaggle of stereo equipment—DVD players, VCR, surround-sound receivers, pre-amps. There were tall, framed French minimalist posters that looked original—and which were probably as expensive as hell—a mezzanine under skylights with hundreds of books set in black lacquer shelves, and a huge, semicircular window dominating the west wall with a view of the river, the harbor, and the bridge lights.

  She handed him the Scotch. He sipped some. Chivas.

  "Aren't you going to compliment me on my place?" she said.

  Kurtz shrugged. It would be a great place to hit if he were into robbery, but he doubted if she would take that as a compliment. "You were going to tell me your theories," he said.

  Sophia sipped her Scotch and sighed. "Come here, Kurtz," she said, not actually touching him on the arm, but leading him over to a full-length mirror near the door. "What do you see?" she asked after she stepped back.

  "Me," said Kurtz. In truth, he saw a hollow-eyed man with matted hair, a torn, bloodied shirt, a fresh scratch along one cheek, and rivulets of dried blood on his face and neck.

  "You stink, Kurtz."

  He nodded, taking the comment in the spirit it was meant—a statement of fact.

  "You need to take a shower," she said. "Get into some clean clothes."

  "Later," he said. There was no warm water and no clean clothes at his warehouse flop.

  "Now," said Sophia and took his Scotch glass and set it on the counter. She went into a bathroom in the short hall between the living room and what looked like a bedroom. Kurtz heard water running. She poked her head out into the hall. "Coming?"

  "No," said Kurtz.

  "Jesus, you're paranoid."

  Yeah, thought Kurtz, but am I paranoid enough?

  Sophia had kicked off her shoes and now was pulling off her blouse and skirt. She wore only white underpants and a white bra. With a motion that Kurtz had not seen in person in more than eleven years, she unhooked the bra and tossed it out of sight. She stood there in her white, lacy but not trampy underpants, cut high on the sides. "Well?" she said.

  Kurtz checked the door. Bolted and police locked. He checked the small kitchen. Another door, bolted and chained. He slid open the door to the terrace and walked out onto the metal structure. It was cold and beginning to rain. There was no way to gain access to the terrace short of rappelling from the rooftop. He went back in, walked past Sophia—who had her arms crossed in front of her full breasts but who was still goose-bumpy from the sudden blast of cold air—and checked the bedroom, looking into the closets and under the bed.

  Then he came back to the bathroom.

  Sophia was naked now, standing under the warm water, her long, curly hair already wet. "My God," she said through the open shower door, "you are paranoid."

  Kurtz took off his bloody clothes.

  Kurtz was excited, but not crazy excited. After the first couple of years without sex, he had realized, the need for it stayed the same but the obsession for it either drove men crazy—he had seen plenty of that in Attica—or leveled off to a sort of metaphysical hunger. Kurtz had read Epictetus and the other Stoics while serving his time and found their philosophy admirable but boring. The trick, he thought, was to enjoy the hard-on but not be led around by it.

  Sophia soaped him all over, not neglecting his erection. She was very gentle when cleaning his face, making sure not to get soap into the cuts there.

  "I don't think you'll need stitches," she said and then her eyes widened a bit as he began soaping her—not just her breasts and pubic hair, but her neck, face, back, shoulders, arms, and legs. Evidently, she had expected a bit more straightforward approach.

  She reached up to what looked like a covered soap dish on the tile ledge, removed a condom packet, tore it open with her teeth, and slid the rubber onto Kurtz's stiffened penis. He smiled at her efficiency but wasn't in need of the protection quite yet. Kurtz pulled the shampoo off the same ledge and lathered it into the woman's long hair, rubbing her skull and temples with strong fingers. Sophia closed her eyes a minute and then found the shampoo bottle, rubbing the liquid into his short hair. The top of her head came just about to nose level on Kurtz and she raised her face to kiss him after they rinsed the shampoo off and let it flow down their bodies. His penis rubbed against the soft curve of her belly and she held the back of his neck with her left hand while her right hand went lower to grip and massage him.

  She pushed against him, raising one leg high as she leaned back against the tile. Kurtz rinsed the soap and shampoo from her breasts and tasted her nipples. His right hand was set against the small of her back while his left hand gently massaged her vulva. He felt her thighs tremble and then open wider and then the heat from her poured into his cupped palm. His fingers probed gently. It was still amazing to Kurtz that they could be in a pounding shower and that a woman could be palpably wetter there than anywhere else.

  "Please, now," she whispered, her mouth wet and open against his cheek. "Now."

  They moved together hard. Kurtz made his right hand a saddle and lifted her higher against the tiles while she wrapped her legs around his hips and leaned back, her hands cusped behind his neck, her arm and thigh muscles straining.

  When she came it was with a low moan and a fluttering of eyelids, but also with a spasm that he could feel through the head of his cock, his thighs, and splayed fingers of his supporting hand.

  "Jesus Christ," she whispered in a moment, still being held against the tile in the warm spray. Kurtz wondered just how capacious this
loft's hot water tank was. After another moment, she kissed him, began moving again, and said, "I didn't feel you come. Don't you want to come?"

  "Later," said Kurtz and lifted her slightly. She moaned again when he slid out of her and she cupped his balls while his erection throbbed against her pubic hair.

  "My God," she said, smiling now, "you'd think it was me who'd been in jail for a dozen years."

  "Eleven and a half," said Kurtz. He turned off the shower and they toweled each other off. The towels were thick and fluffy.

  As she rubbed between his legs, she said, "You're still hard as ever. How can you stand it?"

  In answer, Kurtz lifted her and carried her into her bedroom.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 16

  « ^ »

  It was after 5:00 a.m. when they finally separated and lay next to each other on the bed that Kurtz had decided was exactly the size of his former cell.

  Sophia lit a cigarette and offered him one. Kurtz shook his head.

  "A con who doesn't smoke," she said. "Unheard of."

  "Watching TV from the inside," he said, "you get the impression that everyone on the outside has given up smoking and is busy suing the tobacco companies. Guess it ain't so."

  "Say it ain't so, Joe," said Sophia. She set a small enamel ashtray on her sheeted belly and flicked ashes. "So, Joe Kurtz," she said, "why did you come to my father with this private-investigation bullshit?"

  "It wasn't bullshit. It's what I do."

  Sophia exhaled smoke and shook her head. "I mean the offer to find Buell Richardson. You must know as well as I do that he's in Lake Erie or under four feet of loam somewhere."

  "Yeah."