Hardcase

  "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, "there 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?"

  "Yes," said Kurtz. When the P.O. said nothing, he went on, "It's a legally registered business—'Sweetheart Search.'"

  Ms. O'Toole did not quite smile. "'Sweetheart Search'? Is it some sort of skip-trace service?"

  "In a way," said Kurtz. "It's a Web-based locator service. My secretary and I do ninety-nine percent of the work on computers."

  The P.O. tapped her white teeth with the capped pen. "There are about a hundred services like that on the Net," she said.

  "That's what Arlene, my secretary, said."

  "And why do you think yours will make money?"

  "First, it's my feeling that there are about a hundred million baby boomers out there approaching retirement who are ready to dump their current spouses and probably still have the hots for old boyfriends or girlfriends from high school." said Kurtz. "You know, memories of first lust in the backseat of the '66 Mustang, that sort of thing."

  Ms. O'Toole smiled. "Not much of a backseat in the '66 Mustang," she said. She was not being coy, Kurtz thought, merely observant.

  Kurtz nodded. "You like old Mustangs?"

  "We're not here to discuss my preference in muscle cars," she said. "Why are these aging baby boomers going to turn to your service? Since there are all these other cheap classmate-tracing sites on the Web?"

  "Yes," said Kurtz, "but Arlene and I are being more proactive." He paused. "Did I say 'proactive'? Christ, I hate that word. Arlene and I are being more… imaginative."

  Ms. O'Toole looked mildly surprised for the second time.

  "Anyway, we go through old high-school yearbooks," said Kurtz, "find someone who might have been popular in his or her class way back when—we're starting in the sixties—and then send the information to former classmates. You know—'Have you ever wondered what happened to Billy Benderbix? Find out through Sweetheart Search'—that sort of garbage."

  "You're aware of privacy laws?"

  "Yep," said Kurtz. "There aren't enough of them for the Net. But we just look up these former classmates via the usual people finders and send them this bulk E-mail query."

  "Is it working?"

  Kurtz shrugged. "It's only been a few days, but we've had several hundred hits." He paused. He knew that the P.O. didn't want to make small talk any more than he did; but he wanted to share a story with someone, and there certainly was no one else in his life. "Want to hear about our first try?"

  "Sure," said the P.O.

  "Well, Arlene has been gathering yearbooks for the past few days. We've accessed back issues from all over the country and ordered more through the mail, but we're starting with the Buffalo area—real yearbooks—until we get a database started."

  "Makes sense."

  "So yesterday we're ready to start. I say, 'Let's pick someone at random here to be our first Mr. or Miss Lonely Heart… sorry, Ms. Lonely Heart."

  "That sounds stupid," said O'Toole. "Miss Lonely Heart is right."

  Kurtz nodded. "So Arlene takes this high-school yearbook from the stack—Kenmore West, 1966—and flips it open. I poke my finger down and choose someone at random. He had a weird name, but I figure, what the hell. Arlene starts laughing…"

  O'Toole's expression was neutral, but she was listening.

  "Wolf Blitzer," said Kurtz. "'I think maybe his classmates will know about him,' says Arlene. 'Why?' I say. So Arlene starts laughing at me…"

  "You don't know Wolf Blitzer?" said P.O. O'Toole.

  Kurtz shrugged again. "I guess he became well known way back when my trial was going on, and I haven't watched much CNN since."

  O'Toole was smiling.

  "Anyway," continued Kurtz, "Arlene quits laughing, explains who Wolf Blitzer is and why he wouldn't be our best choice, and then pulls down a West Seneca High School yearbook. Flips it open. Stabs at a picture. Another guy. Tim Russert."

  O'Toole laughed softly. "NBC," she said.

  "Yeah. I'd never heard of him, either. By this point, Arlene's busting a gut."

  "Quite a coincidence."

  Kurtz shook his head. "I don't believe in coincidence. It was Arlene setting me up. She has a weird sense of humor. Anyway, finally we find someone from a Buffalo-area high school who's not a well-kn
own correspondent, and—"

  The phone rang. As O'Toole answered it, Kurtz felt some relief at the interruption. He'd been deliberately babbling.

  "Yeah… yeah… okay," O'Toole was saying. "I understand. All right. Good." When she hung up, her gaze seemed cooler to Kurtz.

  The door burst open. A homicide cop named Jimmy Hathaway and a younger cop whom Kurtz had never seen before came in with 9mm Glocks aimed, badges visible on their belts. Kurtz looked back to see that Peg O'Toole had pulled a Sig Pro from her purse on the floor and was aiming it at his face.

  "Hands behind your head, asshole," shouted Hathaway.

  They cuffed Kurtz, frisked him—he was clean, of course, since it hadn't seemed a good idea to pack heat to the first meeting with his P.O.—and then shoved him up against the wall while the younger cop emptied his pockets of change, car keys, and mints.

  "You won't be seeing this fucking loser again," Hathaway said to O'Toole as he shoved Kurtz out the door. "He's going back to Attica, and this time he's never coming out."

  Kurtz glanced back once at Peg O'Toole before another shove sent him down the hallway. She had set her gun away. Her expression was unreadable.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 12

  « ^ »

  Kurtz knew that it was not going to be an easy interrogation when Hathaway, the homicide cop, lowered some louvered blinds over the one-way mirror lining one wall of the interrogation room and then ripped the recording-microphone wire out of its jack on the floor. A second bad omen was that Kurtz was handcuffed behind his back to a straight-back metal chair which was, in turn, bolted to the floor. The third clue came from some dark stains on the battered wooden table and more stains spattered on the linoleum floor near the bolted chair, although Kurtz told himself that these could have been from spilled coffee. But perhaps the strongest hint was the fact that Hathaway was pulling on a pair of those latex gloves paramedics use to keep from getting AIDS.

  "Welcome back, Kurtz, you fuck," Hathaway said when the blinds were down. He took three quick steps closer and backhanded Kurtz across the face.

  Kurtz shook his head and spat blood onto the linoleum. The good news was that Hathaway wasn't wearing the heavy gold ring that he used to wear on his right hand, possibly because it would tear the latex gloves. Kurtz's cheek still bore a faint scar from his ear to the corner of his mouth resulting from a similar chat with Hathaway almost twelve years earlier.

  "Nice to see you, too, Lieutenant," said Kurtz.

  "It's Detective," said Hathaway.

  Kurtz shrugged as much as he could while handcuffed. "More than eleven years," he said and spat blood again, "I figured maybe you'd finally been able to pass the lieutenant's exam. Or at least the sergeant's."

  Hathaway came forward and hit Kurtz again, this time with his fist closed.

  Kurtz faded a bit and came back as the younger cop was saying, "… for chrissakes, Jimmy."

  "Shut up," said Detective Hathaway. He paced around the table, glancing at his watch. Kurtz guessed that the detective had only so much time for the private part of this interrogation. That's good, thought Kurtz, his head still ringing.

  "Where were you yesterday morning, Kurtz?" barked Hathaway.

  Kurtz shook his head. Mistake. The room pitched and yawed. Only the handcuffs kept him upright in the chair.

  "I said, Where were you yesterday?" said Hathaway, walking closer.

  "Lawyer," said Kurtz. He still had blood in his mouth, but all of his teeth seemed solid.

  "What?"

  "I want a lawyer."

  "Your lawyer's dead, scumbag," said Hathaway. "That ambulance-chasing pimp Murrell had a coronary four years ago."

  Kurtz knew that. "Lawyer," he said again.

  Hathaway's response was to remove his Glock 9mm from a shoulder holster and a tiny Smith and Wesson .32 from his suit pocket. He tossed the .32 onto the table near Kurtz. A classic plant-it-on-the-perp throw-down.

  "Jimmy, for God's sake!" said the younger, shorter cop. Kurtz could not tell if it was part of their choreography or if the younger homicide detective was actually concerned. If it was the standard good-cop, bad-cop farce, then the kid was a pretty good actor.

  "Maybe we didn't frisk you well enough coming in," said Hathaway, staring into Kurtz with his pale blue eyes. Kurtz had always thought that Hathaway had flies in his eyes, and a decade later, the cop was crazier than ever.

  Hathaway racked a round into the chamber of his Glock. "Where were you yesterday morning, Joey-boy?"

  Kurtz was getting bored with this. Over the past decade, he'd had a few conversations with other cons about the Prime Directive of "never kill a cop." Kurtz's point of view, for conversation's sake, had been "Why not?" He had often had Hathaway in mind during these talks.

  Kurtz looked away from the red-faced homicide cop and thought about other things.

  "You miserable asshole," said Hathaway. He holstered the Glock, disappeared the .32 with a sweep of his hand, and hit Kurtz on the collarbone with a blackjack quite similar to the one that Kurtz had used on Carl. Immediately, Kurtz's entire shoulder and left arm went numb, then raged with pain.

  The other detective plugged in the microphone and opened the blinds. Hathaway had peeled off the paramedic gloves. The throwdown and blackjack were out of sight. The Glock was holstered.

  Well, thought Kurtz, that went all right.

  "You acknowledge, Joe Kurtz, that you've been advised of your rights?" said Detective Hathaway.

  Kurtz grunted. He didn't think his collarbone was broken, but it would be a few hours before he could use his left arm.

  "Where were you yesterday morning between the hours of 9:00 and 11:00 a.m.?" said Hathaway.

  "I'd like to speak to an attorney," said Kurtz, enunciating as carefully as he could.

  "A public defender is being notified as we speak," Hathaway said to the microphone. "It should be noted that this conversation is being held with the agreement and at the request of Mr. Kurtz."

  Kurtz leaned closer to the mike. "Your mother used to suck dick on South Delaware, Detective Hathaway. I was a regular customer."

  Hathaway forgot that he was not wearing gloves and backhanded Kurtz so hard that the bloody spray from his nose splattered the wall six feet away. That was smart of me, he thought. They edit these tapes, anyway. He shook his head. He had flicked his head away from the blow fast enough to avoid a broken nose.

  "Do you recognize this woman?" said the other detective, sliding a white folder across the table. He opened the folder.

  "Don't drip on the pictures, Kurtz!" warned Hathaway.

  Kurtz tried to comply, although there was so much blood visible in the black-and-white photos that a little of the real stuff shouldn't be a problem.

  "Do you recognize this woman?" repeated the other detective.

  Kurtz said nothing. From the photographs, it was just possible to tell that it had been a woman. Kurtz knew who it was, of course. He recognized the straight-backed chairs around the Frank Lloyd Wright table.

  "Do you deny that you were in this woman's home yesterday morning?" demanded the younger detective. And then, to the microphone, he added, "Let the record show that Mr. Kurtz refuses to identify the photograph of Mary Anne Richardson, a woman with whom he met yesterday."

  She had a nose, eyes, breasts, and all of her skin yesterday, Kurtz was tempted to say aloud. He did study the photos spread out on the tabletop. The murderer had been an edged-weapons freak, powerful, a full-blown psycho, but good with the blade. For all the slaughterhouse aspect of the vivisection, it had been administered efficiently. Kurtz doubted if Mrs. Richardson would have appreciated that distinction, since it looked as if the cutter had kept her alive for quite a while during the proceedings. Kurtz studied the background, trying to guess the time of the murder from the arrangement of the furniture. The furniture was exactly as he and the lady had left it. There had been no real struggle—or the knife man had been big enough that the struggle had been localized to th
at small patch of soaked carpet just outside the dining room. Or, most likely, there had been more than one man—one to hold and one to carve.

  "Is that semen on her dress?" asked Kurtz.

  "Shut up," said Detective Hathaway. He stepped closer, put one hand over the microphone, and gripped Kurtz's shoulder with his other hand. Kurtz's moan was brief, but the detective kept his hand over the mike. "You're going to go all the way down for this, Kurtz. We have your name in her appointment book. We have a caller who ID'd you at the scene."

  Kurtz sighed. "You know I didn't do this, Hathaway. Not my style. When I want to butcher housewives, I always use a Mac 10."

  Hathaway showed his big teeth and squeezed harder. This time, Kurtz knew that it was coming and did not moan aloud, even when it seemed that his collarbones were clicking like castanets.

  "Take this piece of shit out of here," said Hathaway.

  On cue, two huge uniformed officers entered the room, unlocked Kurtz's cuffs, recuffed him with his hands behind his back, and led him out of the room.

  One of the uniformed cops had brought a wad of paper towels to dab at the blood dripping from Kurtz's cheek and chin.

  Kurtz looked down at his blue oxford-cloth shirt—his only shirt. Damn.

  The uniforms led him down the hall, through various green corridors, through security checkpoints, downstairs to the basement area where he was fingerprinted, searched again, and digitally photographed.

  Kurtz knew the drill. With the backlog, it would probably be late the next day before they got around to arraigning him. Kurtz shook his head—Hathaway couldn't be serious about going for Murder One. At the arraignment, for whatever the hell he was actually going to be charged with, Kurtz could post bail and go free until his preliminary hearing.

  "What are you smiling at, scumbag?" asked the cop busy trying hard to throw away the huge wad of bloody paper towels without getting any blood on his bare hands.

  Kurtz assumed his normal expression. The thought of bail had amused him. Everything he had in the world was in his billfold—a little less than $20. Arlene had been stretched pretty thin, what with fronting the money for the computers and office junk. No, he'd have to sit this one out—first here at the courthouse holding pen, and then down out at the Erie County Jail—until someone in the district attorney's office noticed that there was no case here, that Hathaway was just blowing smoke.