Hardcase

  "Coffee?" said the old man. "Sure."

  The bald man poured, but it was obvious that he was no lackey. An expensive metal briefcase lay on the table near him.

  "I am Byron Tatrick Farino," said the old man.

  "I know who you are," said Kurtz.

  The old man smiled slightly. "Do you have a first name, Mr. Kurtz?"

  "Are we going to be on a first-name basis, Byron?"

  The smile faded.

  "Watch your mouth, Kurtz," said the bald man.

  "Shut up, consigliere." Kurtz's eyes never left the old man. "This meeting's between Mr. Farino and me."

  "Quite right," said Farino. "But you understand that the meeting is a courtesy and that it would not be taking place at all if you had not… ah… provided a service to us with regard to my son."

  "By keeping Little Skag from being raped up the ass in the showers by Ali and his gang," said Kurtz. "Yeah. You're welcome. But this meeting is business."

  "You want compensation for helping young Stephen?" said the lawyer. He clicked open the briefcase.

  Kurtz shook his head. He was still looking at Farino. "Maybe Skag told you what I had to offer."

  Farino sipped his coffee. The old man's hands were almost as translucent as the expensive china. "Yes, Stephen sent word via his lawyer that you wanted to offer your services. But what services can you possibly provide us that we do not already have, Mr. Kurtz?"

  "Investigations."

  Farino nodded but the lawyer showed an unpleasant smile. "You were a private investigator once, Kurtz, but you'll never have a license again. You're on parole, for chrissakes. Why on earth would you think that we need a killer ex-con washed-up P.I. on our payroll?"

  Kurtz turned his gaze on the lawyer. "You're Miles," he said. "Skag talked about you. He said you like young boys and that the older and limper you get, the younger they get."

  The lawyer blinked. His left cheek blazed with blood, as if Kurtz had slapped him. "Carl," he said. The goon in the straining polo shirt opened his hands and took a step forward.

  "If you want Carl around, you'd better jerk his leash," said Kurtz.

  Mr. Farino held up one hand. Carl stopped. Farino put his other veined hand on the lawyer's forearm. "Leonard," he said. "Patience. Why do you provoke us, Mr. Kurtz?"

  Kurtz shrugged. "I haven't had my morning coffee yet." He drank some.

  "We are willing to reimburse you for your help with Stephen," said Farino. "Please accept it as a…"

  "I don't want to be paid for that," said Kurtz. "But I'm willing to help you with your real problem."

  "What problem?" said Attorney Miles.

  Kurtz looked at him again. "Your accountant, a guy named Buell Richardson, is missing. That's not good news at the best of times for a family like yours; but since Mr. Farino's been forced out… retired… you don't know what the fuck is going on. The FBI could have turned Richardson and have him stashed in a safe house somewhere, singing his guts out. Or the Gonzagas, the other Western New York family, could have whacked him. Or maybe Richardson is going freelance and will be sending you a note and demands any day now. It might be nice to know ahead of time."

  "What makes you think—" Miles began.

  "Plus, the only part of the action they left you was the contraband being brought in from La Guardia, up from Florida, and down from Canada," Kurtz said to Farino. "And even before Richardson disappeared, someone had been knocking over your trucks."

  "What makes you think that we can't deal with this?" Miles's voice was strained, but under control.

  Kurtz turned his gaze back on the old man. "You used to," he said. "But who do you trust now?"

  Farino's hand was shaking as he set his cup down in its saucer. "What is your proposal, Mr. Kurtz?"

  "I investigate for you. I find Richardson. I bring him back to you if possible. I find out if the truck hijacking is linked with his disappearance."

  "And your fees?" said Farino.

  "Four hundred dollars a day plus my expenses."

  Attorney Miles made a rude sound.

  "I don't have too many expenses," continued Kurtz. "A thousand up front for a stake. A bonus if I drag your CPA back in good time."

  "How large a bonus?" said Farino.

  Kurtz drank the last of the coffee. It was black and rich. He stood up. "I'll leave that to you, Mr. Farino. Now I've got to get going. What do you say?"

  Farino rubbed his liver-colored lower lip. "Write the check, Leonard."

  "Sir, I don't think—"

  "Write the check, Leonard. A thousand dollars advance, you said, Mr. Kurtz?"

  "In cash."

  Miles counted out the money, all in crisp fifties, and put it in a white envelope.

  "You realize, Mr. Kurtz," said the old man, his voice suddenly flat and cold, "that the penalties for failure in situations such as this are rarely restricted to simple loss of payment." Kurtz nodded.

  The old man took a pen from the lawyer's briefcase and jotted on a blank business card. "Contact these numbers if you have information or questions," said Farino. "You are never to come back to this house. You are never again to call me or contact me directly in any way."

  Kurtz took the card.

  "David, Charles, and Carl will run you down the drive to your car," said Farino.

  Kurtz looked Carl in the eye and smiled for the first time that morning. "Your bitches can follow me if they want," he said. "But I'll walk. And they'll stay at least ten paces behind me."

  * * *

  CHAPTER 4

  « ^ »

  There was a Ted's in Orchard Park now and another one in Cheektowaga, but Kurtz drove downtown to the old Ted's Hot Dogs on Porter, near the Peace Bridge. He ordered three of the Jumbos with everything on them, including hot sauce, an order of onion rings, and coffee, and took the cardboard carton to a picnic table near the fence overlooking the river. A few families, some business types and a couple of street people were also having lunch. Leaves fell silently from the big old maple tree. The traffic on the Peace Bridge hummed softly.

  There hadn't been many things that you couldn't get in Attica. A Ted's Hot Dog had been one of them. Kurtz remembered Buffalo winter nights in the years before the Ted's on Sheridan had put on its inside dining room: midnight, ten below, three feet of snow, and thirty people lined up outside for dogs.

  Finished, he drove north on the Scajaquada Expressway to the Youngman, east to Millersport Highway, and then northeast the fifteen miles or so to Lockport. It did not take him long to find the little house on Lilly Street. Kurtz parked across the street for a few minutes. The house was fairly common for Lockport: a basic white-brick house in a nice old neighborhood. Trees overarched the street; yellow leaves fell. Kurtz looked at the dormer windows on the second floor and wondered which one was her room.

  He drove to the nearest middle school. He did not park there, but drove by slowly. Cops were edgy around public schools and wouldn't be especially generous with a recently paroled killer who hadn't even checked in with his P.O. yet.

  It was just a building. Kurtz didn't know what he had expected. Middle-school kids didn't go outside for recess. He glanced at his watch and drove back to town, taking the 990 back to save some time.

  Arlene led the way into the X-rated video store. The place was half a block from the bus station. Glass from countless broken crack bottles crunched underfoot. A used hypodermic syringe lay in the corner of the doorway vestibule. Most of the storefront window had been painted over, but the unpainted part above eye level was so filthy that no one could have seen into the store even if there had been no paint.

  Inside it was every X-rated video store Kurtz had ever seen: a bored, acne-scarred man reading a racing form behind the counter, three or four furtive men pouring over the magazines and videos on the shelves, one junkie female in black leather eyeing the customers, and an assortment of dildos, vibrators, and other sex toys in the glass display case. The only difference was that a lot of the videos were now
on DVD.

  "Hey, Tommy," Arlene said to the man behind the counter.

  "Hey, Arlene," said Tommy.

  Kurtz looked around. "Nice," he said. "We doing our Christmas shopping early?"

  Arlene led the way down a narrow hall past the peep-show booths, past a toilet with a hand-lettered sign reading DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT DOING IT IN HERE, ASSHOLES, through a bead curtain, through an unmarked door, and down a steep flight of stairs.

  The basement was long and musty and smelled of rat droppings, but the place had been partitioned into two areas with a low railing separating them. Empty bookcases still lined three of the walls. There were long, nicked tables in the outer area and a metal desk in the far space.

  "Exits?" said Kurtz.

  "That's the good part," said Arlene.

  She showed him a rear entrance, separate from the video store, steep stone steps, a steel-reinforced door opening onto the alley. Back in the basement, she went over and swung a bookcase out, revealing another door. She took a key out of her purse and unlocked the padlock on the door. It opened onto an empty underground parking garage.

  "When this place was a real bookstore, they sold heroin out of the sci-fi section down here. They liked to have several exits."

  Kurtz looked around and nodded. "Phone lines?"

  "Five of them. I guess they had a lot of queries about their sci-fi."

  "We won't need five," said Kurtz. "But three would be nice." He checked the electrical outlets in the floor and walls. "Yeah, tell Tommy this will do nicely."

  "No view."

  "That doesn't matter," said Kurtz.

  "Not to you," said Arlene. "You won't be here much if it's like the old days. But I'll be looking at these basement walls nine hours a day. I won't even know what season it is."

  "This is Buffalo," said Kurtz. "Assume it's winter."

  He drove her to her townhouse and helped carry in the cardboard boxes with all of her personal stuff from the Kwik-Mart law offices. There wasn't much. A framed photo of her and Alan. Another photo of their dead son. A hairbrush and some other junk.

  "Tomorrow we lease the computers and buy some phones," said Kurtz.

  "Oh? With what money?"

  Kurtz removed the white envelope from his jacket pocket and gave her $300 in fifties.

  "Wow," said Arlene. "That'll buy the handset part of the phone. Maybe."

  "You must have some money saved up," said Kurtz.

  "You making me a partner?"

  "No," said Kurtz. "But I'll pay the usual vig on the loan."

  Arlene sighed and nodded.

  "And I need to use your car tonight."

  Arlene got a beer out of the refrigerator. She did not offer him one. She poured some beer into a clean glass and lit a cigarette. "Joe, you know what all this car borrowing is going to do to my social life?"

  "No," said Kurtz, pausing by the door. "What?"

  "Not one damned thing."

  * * *

  CHAPTER 5

  « ^ »

  As lawyer Leonard Miles watched the millions of tons of water flowing hypnotically over the blue-green edge of infinity, he thought of what Oscar Wilde had said about Niagara Falls: "For most people, it's the second biggest disappointment of their honeymoon." Or something like that. Miles was no expert on Wilde.

  Miles was watching the falls from the American side—decidedly inferior viewing to the Canadian side—but necessary, since the two men Miles was meeting here probably could not cross into Canada legally. As with most native Buffalonians, Miles rarely paid attention to Niagara Falls, but this was the kind of public place where a lawyer might run into one of his clients—Malcolm Kibunte had been his client—and it was not too far from Miles's home on Grand Island. And Miles had little worry about running into any of the Farino Family or, more important to Miles, into any of his professional or social peers at the Falls on a workday afternoon.

  "Thinking about jumping, Counselor?" came a deep voice from behind him as a heavy hand fell on his shoulder.

  Miles started. He turned slowly to look at the grinning face and gleaming diamond tooth of Malcolm Kibunte. Malcolm still had a firm grip on Miles's shoulder, as if considering whether or not to lift the lawyer and throw him over the railing.

  He would have, too, Miles knew. Malcolm Kibunte gave him the creeps, and his buddy Cutter actively scared him. Since Leonard Miles had spent much of the last three decades of his life around made men, professional killers, and psychotic drug dealers, he paid some attention to these anxieties. Looking at them both now, Miles did not know which man was stranger looking—Malcolm, the athletic six-foot-three black man with his shaved head, wrestler's body, eight gold rings, six diamond earrings, one diamond-studded front tooth, and ubiquitous black leather outfit, or Cutter, the silent, anorectic-looking near-albino, with his junkie eyes looking like holes melted through white plastic and long, greasy hair hanging down over his grubby sweatshirt.

  "What the fuck you want, Miles, calling our asses all the way out here to this fucking place?" said Malcolm, releasing the lawyer.

  Miles grinned affably, thinking, Jesus Christ, I defend the scum of the earth. In truth, he had never really represented Cutter. He had no idea if Cutter had ever been arrested. He had no idea what Cutter's real name was. Malcolm Kibunte was obviously an acquired name, but Miles had represented the big man—successfully, thank God—in two murder raps (one involving Malcolm's strangling of his wife), a cop shooting, a drug-ring bust, a statutory-rape case, a regular rape case, four aggravated-assault cases, two grand-larceny trials, and some parking violations. The lawyer knew that this did not make them good buddies. In fact, he thought again that Malcolm was precisely the type who would have tossed him over the falls on a whim if it weren't for two factors: (1) Miles worked for the Farino Family, and although the family was a pale shadow of its former self, they still commanded some respect on the street, and (2) Malcolm Kibunte knew that he would need Miles's legal skills again.

  Miles led the way apart from the other tourists, motioned the other two to a park bench. Miles and Malcolm sat. Cutter remained standing, staring at nothing. Miles clicked open his briefcase and handed Malcolm a file folder.

  Malcolm opened the folder and looked at the mug shots clipped to the top sheet.

  "Recognize him?" said Miles.

  "Uh-uh," said Malcolm. "But the fucking name sounds sort of familiar."

  "Cutter?" said Miles.

  "Cutter don't recognize him neither," said Malcolm. Cutter had not even looked in the general direction of the photographs. He hadn't yet looked at Miles. He wasn't even looking at the roaring falls. "You bring us out here so early in the fucking day to look at a picture of some motherfucking honky?" said Malcolm.

  "He just got out of—"

  "Kurtz," interrupted Malcolm. "That German for 'short,' Miles, my man. This fucker short?"

  "Not especially," said Miles. "How'd you know that 'kurtz' was German for 'short'?"

  Malcolm gave him a look that would have made a lesser man wet his pants. "I drive me a fucking Mercedes SLK, man. That's what the fucking 'K' in fucking 'SLK' stand for, asshole… 'short.' You think I'm a fucking illiterate, you bald college-boy asshole guinea-ass-licking piece-a-shit mouthpiece?" All of this was said without heat or emphasis.

  "No, no," said Miles, waving his hands in the air as if shooing away insects. He glanced at Cutter. Cutter did not appear to be listening! "No, I was just impressed," Miles said to Malcolm. "SLK is a great car. Wish I had one."

  "No wonder," Malcolm said conversationally. "Drivin' around that fucking piece of American pig-iron Cadillac shit you got."

  Miles nodded and shrugged at the same time. "Yes, well, anyway, this Kurtz showed up at Mr. Farino's place with an introduction from Little Skag—"

  "Yeah, that's where I hear the fucking name," said Malcolm. "Attica. Motherfucker named Kurtz wasted Ali, leader of the Death Mosque brothers up in Cell-block D, 'bout a year ago. Mosque brothers put ten thousand out for w
hoever kill the white motherfucker, every nigger motherfucker in Attica sharpening shanks out of fucking spoons and angle irons. Even some of the fucking guards hot for the payoff, but somehow nobody get to this Kurtz motherfucker. If that the same Kurtz. You think it the same, Cutter?"

  Cutter turned his grub white face in Malcolm's general direction, but said nothing. Miles looked at Cutter's pale gray eyes in that dead face and shuddered.

  "Yeah, I think so, too," said Malcolm. "Why you showin' us this shit, Miles?"

  "Kurtz is going to work for Mr. Farino."

  "Mr. Farino," parroted Malcolm in a mincing falsetto. He flashed his diamond tooth at Cutter as if he had made a profound witticism. Malcolm's laugh was deep, low, and unnerving. "Mr. Farino be a dried-up piece of wop shit with shriveled-up balls. Don't deserve no 'Mister' no more, Miles, my man."

  "Be that as it may," said Miles, "this Kurtz—"

  "Tell me where Kurtz lives, and Cutter and me will collect the Death Mosque ten thousand."

  The lawyer shook his head. "I don't know where he lives. He's only been out of Attica for about forty-eight hours. But he wants to investigate some things for Mr… for the Farino family."

  "'Vestigate?" said Malcolm. "What the fucker think he is, Sherlock Motherfucking Holmes?"

  "He used to be a private investigator," said Miles, nodding toward the folder as if urging Malcolm to read the few pages in it. When Malcolm didn't, Miles went on, "Anyway, he's looking into Buell Richardson's disappearance and also into some of the truck hijackings."

  Malcolm flashed his diamond tooth again. "Whoa! Now I see why you want us way up here in Honky Tourist World so early in the day. Miles, my man, you must've shit your three-pleats when you heard that."

  This was the second time that Malcolm had mentioned how early in the day it was, Miles noted. He did not point out that it was after 3:00 p.m. He said, "We don't want this Kurtz to be messing with these things, do we, Malcolm?"