Hard as Nails

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

It was still raining hard as Kurtz drove the Pinto north on Highway 16. Only one of his windshield wipers was working, but it was on the driver's side, so he didn't bother worrying about it. He had a lot of phone calls to make and they weren't the kind you wanted to make on a cell phone, but the pay phones were twenty-five miles apart along this two-lane stretch of road, the nearest gas station was forty minutes ahead, he hadn't stopped in Neola to get change, and, basically, to hell with it.

They'd given everything back—except his.38—when Sheriff Gerey had dumped him out at the Pinto where he and Rigby had left it down the hill from Cloud Nine. He even had the Ray Charles sunglasses back in his jacket pocket, which was good. If Kurtz was lucky enough to survive all this other shit, he didn't want Daddy Bruce killing him for losing the Man's sunglasses.

He fumbled, found the cell phone Gonzaga had given him, and keyed the only preset number.

"Yes?" It was Toma Gonzaga himself.

"We need to meet," said Kurtz. "Today."

"Have you finished the task?" asked Gonzaga. Not "job," but "task." This wasn't your average hoodlum.

"Yeah," said Kurtz. "More or less."

"More or less?" Kurtz could imagine the handsome mob boss's eyebrow rising.

"I have the information you need," said Kurtz, "but it won't do you any good unless we meet in the next couple of hours."

There was a pause. "I'm busy this afternoon. But later tonight…"

"This afternoon or nothing," interrupted Kurtz. "You wait, you lose everything."

A shorter pause. "All right Come by my estate on Grand Island at…"

"No. My office." Kurtz raised his wrist He'd strapped his watch back on as soon as his fingers had begun working again, but now his head hurt so much that he was having some trouble focusing his eyes. "It's just about three P.M. Be in my office at five."

"Who else will be there?"

"Just me and Angelina Farino Ferrara."

"I want some of my associates…"

"Bring an army if you want," said Kurtz. "Just park them outside the door. The meeting will be just the three of us."

There was a long minute of silence, during which Kurtz concentrated on navigating the winding road. The few cars that passed going the opposite way had their headlights on and wipers pumping. Kurtz was driving faster than the rest of the traffic going north.

Kurtz used his phone hand to wipe the moisture out of his eyes again. His fingers and arms still hurt like hell—it had been almost five minutes after they'd dumped him at the Pinto before he regained enough sensation in his hands to be able to drive. The pain of his reawakening arms and hands and fingers had finally been enough to make him throw up in the weeds near the Pinto. Sheriff Gerey and his deputy had been standing by their car, waiting to escort him out of town, and Gerey had said something that had made the deputy chuckle as Kurtz was on his knees in the weeds. Kurtz had put it on the sheriff's bill.

"All right, I'll be there," said Toma Gonzaga and disconnected.

Kurtz threw the phone onto the passenger seat. His hands were still more like gnarled hooks than real hands.

He got his own phone out, managed to punch out Angelina's number, and listened to her voice on an answering machine.

"Pick up, goddammit Pick up." It was as close to a prayer as Joe Kurtz had come this long day.

She did. "Kurtz, where are you? What's…"

"Listen carefully," he said. He explained quickly about the meeting, but told her to get there at 4:45, fifteen minutes before Gonzaga. "It's important you get there on time."

"Kurtz, if this is about last night…"

He hung up on her, started to punch in another number, but then set the phone aside for a minute.

The highway had straightened here, but it still seemed to be bobbing up and down slightly, threatening to shift directions at any moment. Kurtz realized that his inner ear had become screwed up again in the last hour or so, probably on the steps. He shook his head—sending water and blood flying—and concentrated on keeping the Pinto on the undulating, quivering highway. Kurtz's shoes were a tattered mess, his jacket was dripping, his pants and shirt and socks and underwear were sodden.

A pickup truck was ahead of him, kicking up spray, but Kurtz passed it without slowing. The pickup had been doing about fifty m.p.h. on the narrow road; Kurtz's whining, vibrating, protesting Pinto was doing at least eighty.

It had taken Rigby and him more than ninety minutes to drive down to Neola from Buffalo that morning. Kurtz wanted to get back to Buffalo in less than an hour. He'd noted the time when the sheriff's car had turned around at the Neola city limits sign—if he kept up this pace, he should make it.

Kurtz punched another phone number in. A bodyguard answered. Kurtz insisted that he talk to Baby Doc himself, and was finally handed over. Kurtz explained to the Lackawanna boss that it was important that they meet today, soon, in the next hour.

"Important to you, maybe," said Baby Doc, "but maybe not to me. You're not on a cell phone, are you, Kurtz?"

"Yeah. I'm coming into Lackawanna from the south in about thirty minutes. Are you at Curly's?"

"It doesn't matter where the fuck I am. What do you want?"

"You know that payment I promised you in return for the favore?"

"Yeah."

"You meet with me in the next hour, and you get a serious payment I mean, serious. Put me off—nothing."

The silence lasted long enough that Kurtz was sure that the cell phone had lost service here in the hills approaching East Aurora.

"I'm at Curly's," said Baby Doc. "But get here fast They want to open up for Sunday night dinner in ninety minutes."

Highway 16 became four-lanes wide and renamed itself Highway 400 as it turned east toward Buffalo. Kurtz took the East Aurora exit and drove the six miles to and through Orchard Park at high speed, swinging north again on 219 past the Thruway into Lackawanna.

He called Arlene's home number. No answer. He called her cell phone. No answer. He called the office. She picked up on the second ring.

"What are you doing there this late on a Sunday afternoon?" said Kurtz.

"Following up some things," said his secretary. "I finally got the home phone number of the former director of the Rochester Psychiatric Institute. He's retired now and lives in Ontario on the Lake. And I've been trying other ways to get into the military records so…"

"Get out of the office," said Kurtz. "I'm going to need it for a few hours and I don't want you anywhere near it. Go home. Now."

"All right, Joe." A pause and he could hear Arlene stubbing out a cigarette. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I just want you out of there. And if there are any files or anything on the desks, shove them out of sight somewhere."

"Do you want O'Toole's e-mail printouts in your main drawer?"

"O'Toole's…" began Kurtz. Then he remembered the call that morning about someone using Peg O'Toole's computer to log on to her e-mail account. Arlene had been able to download the PO's filing cabinet before whoever it was had time to delete it all. "Yeah, fine," said Kurtz. "In the top center drawer is fine."

"And what about Aysha?"

Kurtz had to pause again. Aysha. Yasein Goba's fiancée who was being smuggled across the Canadian border tonight at midnight. Shit. "Can you pick her up, Arlene? Keep her at your house until tomorrow and… no, wait."

Would it be dangerous to pick the girl up? Who knew about her? Would the Major or whoever was killing people for the Major know about Goba fiancée and go after her? Kurtz didn't know.

"No, never mind," he said. "Never mind. Let her get picked up by the Niagara Falls police. They'll take care of her."

"But she may have some important information," said Arlene. "And I got the translator from church, Nicky, all set up to…"

"Just fucking forget about it," snapped Kurtz. He took a bream. He never shouted at Arlene. He almost never shouted, period. "Sorry," he said. He was into the industrial wasteland of Lackawanna now, coming at the Basilica and Ridge Road and Curly's Restaurant from the south.

"All right, Joe. But you know I'm going to go pick up that girl tonight."

"Yeah." He thumbed the phone off.

It was the same drill of being taken into the men's room at Curly's and searched head to foot One of the bodyguards shifted a toothpick in his mouth and said, "Jesus, fuck, man—you're so wet your skin is wrinkly. You been swimming with your clothes on?"

Kurtz ignored him.

When he was seated across from Baby Doc in the same rear booth, he said, "This is private."

Baby Doc looked at his three bodyguards and at the waiters bustling around getting the place ready for the heavy Sunday evening' dinner traffic. "They all have my confidence," said the big man with the flag tattoo on his massive forearm.

"It doesn't matter," said Kurtz. "This is private."

Baby Doc snapped his fingers and the bodyguards left, herding the waiters and bartender ahead of them into the backroom.

"For your sake," said Baby Doc, "this had better not be a waste of my time."

"It won't be," said Kurtz.

Speaking as economically as he could, he told Baby Doc about the Major, about the heroin ring, about the «war» that seemed to be claiming only casualties in the Farino and Gonzaga camps, about Rigby being shot and her role in this mess.

"Weird story," said Baby Doc, his hands folded in front of him and his flag tattoo visible under the rolled-back sleeves of his white shirt. "What the hell does it have to do with me?"

Kurtz told him.

Baby Doc sat back in the boom. "You have to be kidding." He looked at Kurtz's face. "No, you're not kidding, are you? What on earth could compel me to take part in this?"

Kurtz told him.

Baby Doc didn't so much as blink for almost a full minute. Finally, he said, "You speak for Gonzaga and the Farino woman?"

"Yes."

"Do they know you speak for them?"

"Not yet."

"What arc you going to need from me?"

"A helicopter," said Kurtz. "Big enough to haul six or eight people. And you to pilot it."

Baby Doc started to laugh and then stopped. "You're serious."

"As a heart attack," said Kurtz.

"You look like you've had a heart attack," said Baby Doc. "You're a fucking mess, Kurtz."

Kurtz waited.

"I don't own a goddamned helicopter," Baby Doc said at last. "And I haven't flown one for more than a dozen years. I'd get us all killed even if there was a reason for me to try this stupid stunt."

"But you know where to get one," said Kurtz.

Baby Doc thought a minute. "There's that big heliport up near the Falls. Hauls tourists around. I know the guy who does charter work up there. They might lease one to me for a day."

Kurtz nodded. He'd hired one of the smaller sightseeing choppers there to fly him over Emilio Gonzaga's Grand Island compound about a year ago. His plan then had been to chart the place before killing Emilio. Kurtz didn't see any compelling reason to share that factoid with Baby Doc.

"They have a Bell Long Ranger there that doesn't get a lot of duty this time of year," continued Baby Doc, speaking more to himself than to Kurtz.

"How many does that carry?" said Kurtz.

Baby Doc shrugged. "Usually seven. You can get eight people in it if you rip out the center jump seats and put a couple on the floor. Nine if you don't bother with a copilot."

"We don't need a copilot," said Kurtz.

Baby Doc barked a laugh. "I have about twenty minutes logged on a Long Ranger. I don't even qualify to sit in the copilot seat."

"Good," said Kurtz, "because we don't need a copilot."

"What else will you be needing?"

"Weapons," said Kurtz.

Baby Doc shook his head. "I'm sure the Gonzagas and Farinos have a few weapons between them."

"I'm talking military-spec here."

The other man looked around. The restaurant was still empty. "What kind?"

Kurtz shrugged. "I don't know. Firepower. Some full-auto weapons, probably."

"M-16s."

"Maybe smaller. Uzis or Mac-10s. We don't want anyone getting an eye poked out in the slick."

"You don't find Uzis and Mac-10s in a National Guard arsenal," whispered Baby Doc.

Kurtz shrugged again. Truth be told, he'd seen some examples of the old Seneca Street Social Club's little private arsenal—the weapons had been aimed at him—so he knew what was probably available.

"Anything else?" said Baby Doc, sounding bemused now.

"Body armor."

"Cop style or military grade?"

"Kevlar should work."

"Anything else?"

"Night vision goggles," said Kurtz. "I suspect the Major's men have them."

"Would Russian surplus do?" said Baby Doc. "I can get them discount."

"No," said Kurtz. "The good stuff."

"Anything else?"

"Yeah," said Kurtz. "We'll need some light anti-armor stuff. Shoulder launched."

Baby Doc Skrzpczyk leaned back against the back of the booth. "You're not really amusing me any longer, Kurtz."

"I'm not trying to. You didn't see the Major's freehold down there today. I did. The sheriff drove slow to give me a good look at it all. They wanted me to bring the word back to Gonzaga and Farino in case they considered a preemptive strike. The house itself is on top of that damned mountain. They have maybe nine, ten men there, and I saw the automatic weapons. But down the hill, they have at least three reinforced gates along the drive—each one of them with steel posts sunk deep into concrete. There are two guardhouses, each with four or five 'security guards, and each guardhouse has a perfect field of fire down the hill. There are armored SUVs—those Panoz things—parked in defilade sites up and down the hill, and two sheriff's cars that seem to be parked outside the lowest gate on a permanent basis."

"You don't need a shoulder-launched missile," said Baby Doc. "You need a fucking tank."

"If we were trying to fight our way up the drive or along the cliff, yeah," said Kurtz. "But we're not We just need one or two deterrents to block the drive if anyone tries to drive up it."

Baby Doc leaned forward, folded his hands on the tabletop, and whispered, "Do you have any idea how much a shoulder-launched antiaircraft missile costs?"

"Yeah," said Kurtz. "About a hundred grand for cheap shit sold-in-the-bazaar piece of Russian crap. Four or five times that for a Stinger."

Baby Doc stared at him.

"But I'm not talking about buying an antiaircraft missile," said Kurtz. "Just something to stop an SUV if we have to. A cheap RPG should do it."

"Who's paying for this?"

"Guess," said Kurtz.

"But they don't know it yet?"

"Not yet."

"You know you're talking about upwards of three-quarters of a million dollars here, not counting the lease of the Long Ranger."

Kurtz nodded.

"And how soon do you want all this—including me and the Long Ranger, if my terms are agreed upon?" said Baby Doc. "A week? Ten days?"

"Tonight," said Kurtz. "Midnight if we can do it. But departing here no later than two A.M."

Baby Doc opened his mouth as if to laugh but then did not. He closed his mouth and just stared at Joe Kurtz. "You're serious," he said at last.

"As a heart attack."