Hard as Nails

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Dodger liked Saturday mornings. Always had. As a kid, he'd hated school, loved weekends, loved playing hooky. Saturdays were the best, even though none of the other kids in the area would play with him. Still, he'd had his Saturday-morning cartoons and then he'd go out alone into the woods adjoining the town. Sometimes he'd take a pet with him into the woods—a neighbor's cat, say, or Tom Herenson's old Labrador that time, or even that pale girl's, Shelley's, green and yellow parakeet. He'd always enjoyed taking the animals into the woods. Although the parakeet hadn't been that much fun.

Now the Dodger was driving slowly through rural residential roads in Orchard Park, the upscale suburb where the Buffalo Bills played their games out at that huge stadium. The Dodger didn't give the slightest damn about football, but sometimes he pretended he did when befriending some guy in a sports bar. Even the women in Buffalo were gaga over football and hockey and assumed everyone else was, too. It was a place to start with people when you were pretending that you were one of them.

Orchard Park was mostly like this street—rural roads masquerading as streets, homes both large and small set back on an acre or less of woods. The house he was looking for was… right here. Just as described in the Boss's briefing to him. This rural street ran along a wooded ridgeline and this house, strangely octagonal, was set thirty or forty yards from the road, all but obscured by the trees.

The Dodger drove his van right up the driveway, not hesitating. There was no car parked outside, but the house had a garage so the car might be in there and she might be home. On the lawn, just as described in the briefing, was a stone Buddha.

He parked the van in the driveway turnaround just outside the garage and jumped out, whistling, carrying a clipboard. The van was painted with a common pest control logo and graphic, and the Dodger was wearing coveralls and an orange vest, had a white hard hat over his Dodger cap, and he was carrying a clipboard. The old joke that you could go almost anywhere unchallenged with work coveralls, a hard hat, and a clipboard wasn't really a joke; those cheap props could get you past most people's radar. The Dodger's 9mm Beretta was on his belt, under the orange highway vest, holstered next to a folding seven-inch combat knife.

Still whistling, the Dodger knocked on the front door, taking a half-step back on the stoop as he'd been taught. He'd take another half step back when the door opened, showing how polite he was, how non-aggressive. It was an old door-to-door salesman's trick.

The woman didn't come to the door. The briefing suggested that she'd be home alone on Saturday, unless her boyfriend had slept over. The Dodger was ready for either contingency. He knocked again, pausing in the whistling to look around at the wooded lot and the view from the ridge as if appreciating both even on such a cold and cloudy October day. The air smelted of wet leaves.

When she didn't answer a third knock, he strolled around the house, pretending to inspect the foundation. In the back, there was a cheap deck and sliding glass doors. He knocked loudly on the glass, taking a step back again and arranging a sincere smile on his face, but again there was no answer. The house had that empty feel that he knew well from experience.

The Dodger pulled a multiple-use tool from his coverall pocket and jimmied the door's lock in ten seconds. He let himself in, called "Hello?" a couple of times into the silence, and then strolled through the octagonally shaped ranch house.

The woman—Randi Ginetta—was in her early forties, a high-school English teacher, divorced, living alone since her only child, a son, had gone to college in Ohio the year before. Still getting alimony payments from her former husband, she was now dating another teacher, a nice Italian man. Randi was also a heroin addict For years Randi—the Dodger wondered what kind of name that was, "Randi," it sounded more like a cocktail waitress's name to him than a teacher's—for years Randi had been into cocaine, explaining her constant runny nose as allergy problems to her co-workers and students, but in the past three years she'd discovered skag and liked it a lot. She always bought from the same source, a black junkie on Gonzaga's payroll in the Allentown section of Buffalo. Randi had gotten to know the junkie-dealer during time she volunteered in an inner-city homeless program. The Dodger hadn't visited the junkie yet, but he was on the list.

He walked from room to room, the combat knife in his hand now, blade still closed. This teacher and skag-addict liked bright colors. All the walls were different colors—blue, red, bright green—and the furniture was heavy oak. There was a giant crystal on the floor near the front door. New Age-type, thought the Dodger. Trips to Sedona to tap into energy sources, commune with Indian spirits, that kind of crap. The Dodger wasn't guessing. It had all been in the Boss's briefing.

There were a lot of books, a work desk, a Mac computer, stacks of papers to be graded. But Ms. Randi wasn't all that neat—there were jeans and sweaters and bras and other underwear lying around her bedroom and on the bathroom floor. The Dodger knew a lot of perverts who would have lifted that silk, sniffed it maybe, but he wasn't a pervert. He was here to do a job. The Dodger went back across the octagonal living room and into the narrow kitchen.

There was a photo of Randi and her son—he recognized her from the photo he'd been shown—on the fridge, as well as a photo of the teacher and her boyfriend. She was a babe, no doubt about it. He hoped she'd come home soon, and alone, but looking at the photo of the boyfriend—all serious and squinty-eyed—the Dodger changed his mind and hoped the two would come back together. He had plans for both of them.

Pulling on latex gloves, the Dodger turned on the coffeemaker, rooted around in the cupboard until he found the coffee—Starbucks—and made himself a cup. She—or they—would smell the coffee brewing when they came in the door, but that didn't matter. They wouldn't have time to react. He tucked away the knife and laid the Beretta Elite II on the round wooden table as he drank his coffee. He'd rinse the cup well to get rid of any DNA when he was done.

The Dodger decided he'd wait thirty minutes. The neighbors couldn't see his van because of the trees and the size of the lot, but a neighbor driving by might see it and call the cops if he stayed here too long. He rose, found the sugar bowl in the cupboard, and stirred some into his coffee.

The phone rang.

The Dodger let the machine pick it up. He thought Randi's voice was sexy, sort of hoarse and sleepy in a sexy junkie way, as it filled the kitchen silence—"Hi, this is Randi. It's Friday and I'll be gone for the weekend, but leave a message and I'll call you back on Sunday night or Monday. Thanks!" The last word was punched with girlish enthusiasm or a heroin-induced high.

Not very smart, Ms. Ginetta, thought the Dodger, telling every Tom, Dick and Harry who calls that you're out of town and your house is empty. Good way to get robbed, ma'am.

The caller hung up without leaving a message. It might be a neighbor calling to see what the pest control van was doing there while Randi was gone. But probably not.

The Dodger sighed, rinsed out the coffee cup and coffeemaker, set the sugar and everything else back the way it had been—putting the mug on its proper hook—and then he let himself out the back door, locked it behind him, slipped off the latex gloves, hefted the clipboard, and whistled his way back to the van.