Hard as Nails

CHAPTER TEN

It wasn't a long ride. Kurtz pulled the little brown-paper package of his clothes and shoes out of the backseat, checked his wallet—everything was there—and settled back, feeling the reloaded.38 against the small of his back.

"You know, Joe," said Rigby King, "if I searched you right now and found a weapon, you'd go in for parole violation."

Kurtz had nothing to say about that. The unmarked detective's car was like every other unmarked police car in the world—ugly paint, rumbling cop engine, radio half hidden below the dashboard, a portable bubble light on the floor ready to be clamped onto the roof, and city-bought blackwall tires that no civilian anywhere would put on his vehicle. Any inner-city kid over the age of three could spot this as a cop car five blocks away on a rainy night.

"But I'm not going to search you," said Rigby. "You wouldn't last a week back in Attica."

"I lasted more than eleven years there."

"I'll never understand how," she said. "Between the Aryan Nation and the black power types, loners aren't supposed to be able to make it a month inside. You never were a joiner, Joe."

Kurtz watched the pedestrians cross in front of them as they stopped at a red light They were only a few blocks from the civic center. He could have walked it if he wasn't feeling so damned dizzy. Leaving the portfolio on the floor back at Kennedy's office showed Kurtz how much he needed some sleep. And maybe some pain medication. The pedestrians and the street beyond them seemed to shimmer from heat waves, even though it was only about sixty degrees outside today.

"When my husband left me," said Rigby, "I moved back to Buffalo and joined the force. That was about four years ago."

"I heard you had a little boy," said Kurtz.

"I guess you heard wrong," said Rigby, her voice fierce.

Kurtz held up both hands. "Sorry. I heard wrong."

"I never knew my father, did you?" said Rigby.

"You know I didn't," said Kurtz.

"But you told me once that your mother told you that your father was a professional thief or something."

Kurtz shrugged. "My mother was a whore. I didn't see much of her even before the orphanage. Once when she was drunk, she told me that she thought my old man was a thief, some guy with just one name and that not even his own. Not a second-story guy, but a real hardcase who would set up serious jobs with a bunch of other pros and then blow town forever. She said he and she were together for just a week in the late sixties."

"Must have been preparing for some heist," said Rigby.

Kurtz smiled. "She said that he never wanted sex except right after a successful job."

"Your old man may have been a professional thief but you never steal anything, Joe," said Rigby King. "At least you never used to. Every other kid at Father Baker's, including me, would lift whatever we could, but you never stole a damned thing."

Kurtz said nothing to that. When he'd first known Rigby—when they'd had sex in the choir loft of the Basilica of Our Lady of Victory—he was fourteen, she was seventeen, and they were both part of the Father Baker Orphanage system. They didn't know their fathers, and Kurtz didn't think either one of them gave a shit.

"You never met your old man either, did you?" he asked now.

"I didn't then," said Rigby, pulling up to the curb by the Civic Center parking lot entrance. "I tracked him down after Thailand. He was already dead. Coronary. But I think he might have been an all right guy. I don't think he ever knew I existed. My mother was a heroin addict."

Kurtz, never the best at social niceties, guessed that there was probably a sensitive and proper response to this bit of news as well, but he had no interest in spending the effort to find it. "Thanks for the ride," he said. "You have my Pinto keys?"

Rigby nodded and took them out of her jeans pocket. But she held onto them. "Do you ever think about those days, Joe?"

"Which days?"

"Father Baker days. The catacombs? That first night in the choir loft? Blues Franklin? Or even the ten months in Thailand?"

"Not much," said Kurtz.

She handed him the keys. "When I came back to Buffalo, I tried to look you up. Found out my second day on the job that you were in Attica."

"Modern place," said Kurtz. "They have visiting hours, mail, everything."

"That same day," continued Rigby, "I found out that you murdered that guy—tossed him onto the roof of a black and white from the sixth floor—the guy who killed your agency partner and girlfriend, Samantha something."

"Fielding," said Kurtz, stepping out of the vehicle.

The passenger window was down halfway, and Rigby leaned over and said, "We'll have to talk again about this shooting. Kemper wanted to brace you today, but I said let the poor bastard get some sleep."

"Kemper has a hard-on for me," said Kurtz. "You could have come and uncuffed me last night You both knew I didn't shoot O'Toole."

"Kemper's a good cop," said Rigby. Kurtz let that go. He felt stupid standing there holding his little brown-wrapped bundle of clothes like a con getting sent back out into the world.

But Rigby wasn't done. "He's a good cop and he feels—he knows—that you're on the wrong side of the law these days, Joe."

Kurtz should have just walked away—he even turned to do so—but then he turned back. "Do you know that, Rigby?"

"I don't know anything, Joe." She set the unmarked car in gear and drove off, leaving him standing there holding is brown-wrapped bundle.