Hard as Nails

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

It was only a little after four P.M. and the Dodger didn't have any task assigned to him until midnight, when he was supposed to meet and kill that Aysha woman who was coming across the border from Canada, and he was feeling a little frustrated and at loose ends. Tomorrow was his birthday and the Boss, as he always did, had given him the day off—well, technically, he realized, his birthday began at midnight, and he'd still be working then, killing this foreigner, but that shouldn't take long.

But the day's events had frustrated the Dodger. He didn't like going back to Neola—except on Halloween, of course—and he didn't like being thwarted while stalking someone. It was twice now that he'd decided to kill this ex-P.I., twice that he'd prepared himself to kill a woman with the P.I. as well, and twice he'd been thwarted. The Artful Dodger didn't like to be thwarted—especially when it was by the Major or his men. Even seeing and hearing the old Huey helicopter again had given the Dodger an acid stomach.

So now he had to hang around Buffalo for a full eight hours before he could do his job and get out. And it was raining and cold. It always seemed to be rainy and cold in this damned town—when it wasn't snowy and cold. The Dodger's joints ached—he was getting older, would officially be a year older in a few hours—and his many burn scars always itched when it rained for a long time.

Essentially, he was in a lousy mood. He considered going to a titty bar, but it was the night before his birthday night and he wanted to save the excitement, let it build.

So as the evening began to darken in the rain and the streetlights were coming on and the light Sunday traffic had all but disappeared, the Dodger drove south of downtown, under the elevated interstate, across the narrow bridge onto the island, through the empty area of grain elevators where the air smelled of burned Cheerios, then south to where the triangular intersection of Ohio and Chicago Streets ended with the abandoned Harbor Inn—the P.I.'s hideaway, the little love nest where the Dodger had watched and waited all of last night for Kurtz and the Farino woman.

Odds were that the Major had terminated this minor irritation this afternoon, but if not, if the P.I. and his big-boobed girlfriend were back here, then the Dodger was going to do a little freelancing, and if the Boss didn't like it, well… the Boss didn't have to know about it.

The Harbor Inn was dark. The Dodger drove by slowly three times, noting again the almost-but-not-quite-hidden video cameras—one on the rear wall of the triangular building overlooking where Kurtz had parked his Pinto before (the space was empty now), another high above the front door, one under a rain gutter on the Chicago Street side, the last one above the fire escapes on the Ohio Street approach. A lot of security for an abandoned flophouse.

The Dodger parked his truck a block or so from where he'd had to deal with the two black kids. Then he took a small backpack from between the seats, locked the vehicle, and walked back through the rain.

There was a blind spot for the camera covering the front of the Harbor Inn. If he crossed the street from the abandoned gas station just so, and didn't walk more than six feet to either side of a certain line, then the front camera would be blocked by the old metal lighthouse on the sign itself.

Once under the overhang—and presumably not yet on any monitor or videotape—the Dodger ignored the front door since the P.I. would certainly have telltales there. Securing the backpack, the Dodger crouched low, jumped straight up, caught the sharp edge of the old hotel sign over him, swung twice back and forth, his legs kicking higher each time—continuing to keep the metal lighthouse between him and the surveillance camera a floor above—and then swung all the way up, doing a complete flip and coming to rest on top of the sign, with his back to the metal lighthouse.

The old sign structure creaked and groaned, but did not collapse. The rusted lighthouse with "Harbor Inn" painted on it was about seven feet tall, was hollow and was made of cheap metal. The Dodger kept his hands on it while he worked his way around it, under the camera's field of view now, and crouched outside one of the three big windows looking out on the intersection of Chicago and Ohio.

It was dark inside, but the glow of monitors in there showed the Dodger that the room was empty.

He propped the backpack by his knee, removed a suction cup and glass cutter on a compass, cut a six-centimeter hole in the glass, carefully laid the circle of glass on the sign base, returned the equipment to his pack, and listened—no audible alarm sounded—and then reached in, unlatched the old window, and shoved it up. The ancient sash groaned and protested, but the window slowly rose.

The Dodger—as agile as Spiderman—swung in and pulled the backpack in after him. He hoisted the pack to his back again, carefully lowered the window, held the silenced 9-millimeter Beretta in his hand, and moved into the darkness to find or wait for Mr. Kurtz, the elusive P.I.