Hard as Nails

CHAPTER THREE

The two men came in the night, entering his room sometime after three A.M.

Kurtz had nothing to defend himself with—he would have stolen a knife and hidden it under his pillows if the hospital had provided him with a dinner, but they hadn't fed him, so he was still handcuffed and defenseless. He readied himself the only way be could think of—sliding the long intravenous needle on its flexible tube down into his left hand and focusing his energy to swing it into an attacker's eye if he got close enough. But if one or both of these men pulled a gun, Kurtz's only hope was to throw himself to his left and try to tip the entire hospital bed onto himself while screaming bloody murder.

Squinting through his headache pain at the two shadows in the doorway, Kurtz wasn't sure he'd have the strength to tip the bed over. Besides, mattresses, even hospital mattresses, were notoriously poor armor against bullets.

There was a nurse-call button clipped to his pillow above Kurtz's head, but his right hand couldn't reach it because of the handcuffs and he wasn't about to release or reveal the IV needle in his left hand.

Kurtz could see the two men silhouetted in the doorway in the minute before they entered the room, and then the dim glow from medical monitors illuminated them. One man was tall, very thin, and Asian; his black hair was combed straight back and he was wearing an expensive dark suit. His hands were empty. The closer man was in a wheelchair, wheeling himself toward Kurtz's bed with thrusts of his powerful arms.

Kurtz didn't pretend he was asleep. He watched the man in the wheelchair come in. Any hopes that it was an errant hospital patient out of his bed at three A.M. disappeared as Kurtz saw that this man was also wearing a suit and tie. He was old—Kurtz saw the thinning gray hair cut in a buzz cut and the lines and scars on the man's tanned face, but his eyebrows were jet black, his chin strong, and his expression fierce. The old man's upper body looked large and powerful, his hands huge, but even in the dim light, Kurtz could see that his trousers were covering wasted sticks.

The Asian man's expression was neutral and he stayed two feet behind the big man in the chair.

The wheels of the chair squeeked on tile until the wasted legs bumped into Kurtz's bed. Working to focus, Kurtz stared past his own handcuffed wrist and into the old man's cold, blue eyes. All Kurtz could do now was hope that the visit was a friendly one.

"You miserable low-life useless scumbag piece of shit," hissed the old man. "It should've been you who got the bullet in the brain."

So much for the friendly visit theory.

The big man in the wheelchair raised his huge hand and slapped Kurtz in the side of the head, right where the bandages and tape were massed above the wound.

Riding the pain for the next few seconds was probably a lot like riding the old roller coaster at Crystal Beach while standing up. Kurtz wanted to throw up and pass out, in that order, but he forced himself to do neither. He opened his eyes and slipped the long IV needle between the third and fourth fingers of his left hand the way he'd learned how to grip a handleless shank-blade in Attica.

"You worthless fuck," said the man in the chair, his voice loud now. "If she dies, I'll kill you with my bare hands." He slapped Kurtz again, a powerful, open-handed smash across the mouth, but this wasn't nearly so painful. Kurtz turned his head back and watched the old man's eyes and the Asian's hands.

"Major," the Asian said softly. The tall man gently put his hands on the grips of the wheelchair and pulled the old man three feet back. "We have to go."

The Major's mad, blue-eyed stare never left Kurtz's face. Kurtz didn't mind this. He'd been hate-stared at by experts. But he had to admit that this old man was a finalist in that contest.

"Major," whispered the tall man and the man in the chair finally broke the gaze, but not before lifting his huge, blunt forefinger and shaking it at Kurtz as if to make a promise. Kurtz saw that the finger was bloody a second before he felt the blood flowing down his right temple.

The Asian wheeled the old man around and pushed him out the door into the dimly lighted hallway. Neither man looked back.

Kurtz didn't think he'd go to sleep after that—or, rather, lose consciousness, since real sleep wasn't an option above this baseline of pain—but he must have, because he woke up with James Bond looking down at him in the early morning light.

This wasn't the real James Bond—Sean Connery—but that newest guy: dark hair blowdried and combed back, sardonic smile, impeccable suit from Saville Row or somewhere—Kurtz had no idea what a Saville Row suit looked like—plus a gleaming white shirt with spread collar, tasteful paisley tie sporting a Windsor knot, pocket square ruffled perfectly and not so gauche as to match the tie, tasteful Rolex just visible beneath the perfectly shot starched cuff.

"Mr. Kurtz?" said James Bond, "My name is Kennedy. Brian Kennedy."

Kurtz thought that he did also look a bit like that Kennedy scion who'd flown his plane and passengers upside-down into the sea.

Brian Kennedy started to offer Kurtz a heavy cream business card, noticed the handcuffs, and without interrupting his motion, set the card on the bedside table.

"How are you feeling, Mr. Kurtz?" asked Kennedy.

"Who are you?" managed Kurtz. He thought he must be feeling better. These three syllables had made his vision dance with pain, but hadn't made him want to puke.

The handsome man touched his card. "I own and run Empire State Security and Executive Protection. Our Buffalo branch provided security cameras for the parking garage in which yesterday's shooting took place."

Every other light had been knocked out when we came into the garage, thought Kurtz. That tipped me. The memory of the shooting was seeping back into his bruised brain like sludge under a closed door.

He said nothing to Kennedy-Bond. Was the man here because of some lawsuit potential to his company? Kurtz was having trouble working this out through the pain so he stared and let Kennedy keep talking.

"We've given the police the original surveillance tape from the garage," continued Kennedy. "The footage doesn't show the shooters, but it's obvious that your actions—and Officer O'Toole's—are visible and clearly above suspicion."

Then why am I still cuffed? thought Kurtz. Instead, he managed to say, "How is she? O'Toole?"

Brian Kennedy's face was James-Bond cool as he said, "She was hit three times. All twenty-two slugs. One broke a left rib. Another passed through her upper arm, ricocheted, and hit you. But one caught her in the temple and lodged in her brain, left frontal lobe. They got it out after five hours of surgery and had to take some of the damaged brain tissue out as well. She's in a partially induced coma—whatever that means—but it looks as if she has a chance for survival, none for total recovery."

"I want to see the tape," said Kurtz. "You said you gave the cops the original, which means you made a copy."

Kennedy cocked his head. "Why do you… oh, you don't remember the attack, do you? You were telling the detectives the truth."

Kurtz waited.

"All right," said Kennedy. "Give me a call at the Buffalo number on the card whenever you're ready to…"

"Today," said Kurtz. "This afternoon."

Kennedy paused at the door and smiled that cynical, bemused James Bond smile. "I don't think you'll be…" he began and then paused to look at Kurtz. "All right, Mr. Kurtz," he said, "it certainly won't please the investigating officers if they ever discover I've done this, but we'll have the tape ready to show you when you stop by our offices this afternoon. I guess you've earned the right to see it."

Kennedy started through the door but then stopped and turned back again. "Peg and I are engaged," he said softly. "We'd planned to get married in April."

Then he was gone and a nurse was bustling in with a bedpan jug and something that might be breakfast.

It's bloody Grand Central Station here, thought Kurtz. Dr. Singh came in—after Kurtz had ignored everything on the breakfast tray except the knife—to shine a penlight in his eyes, check under the bandages, tut-tut at all the bleeding visible—Kurtz didn't mention the cuff in the head from Mr. Wheelchair—to direct the nurse in replacing the gauze and tape, to tell Kurtz that they'd be keeping him another twenty-four hours for observation, and to order more X rays of his skull. And finally Singh said that the officer who had been guarding this end of the hall was gone.

"When did he leave?" asked Kurtz. Sitting propped up against the pillows, he found it was easier to focus his eyes this morning. The pain in his head continued like a heavy sleet-storm against a metal roof, but that was better than the steel spikes being driven into his skull the night before. Red and yellow circles of pain from the penlight exercise still danced in his vision.

"I wasn't on duty," said Singh, "but I believe around midnight."

Before Wheelchair and Bruce Lee showed up, thought Kurtz. He said, "Any chance of getting these cuffs off? I wasn't able to eat my breakfast left-handed."

Singh looked physically pained, his brown eyes sad behind the glasses. "I'm truly sorry, Mr. Kurtz. I believe that one of the detectives is already downstairs. I'm sure they will release you."

She was and she did.

Ten minutes after Singh bustled out into the now-busy hospital corridor, Rigby King showed up. She was wearing a blue linen blazer, white t-shirt, new jeans, and running shoes. She carried a 9-mm dock on her belt on the right side, concealed under the blazer until she leaned forward. She said nothing while she unlocked his cuffs, snapping them onto the back of her belt like the veteran cop she was. Kurtz didn't want to speak first, but he needed information.

"I had visitors during the night," he said. "After you pulled your uniform off hallway guard."

Rigby folded her arms and frowned slightly. "Who?"

"You tell me," said Kurtz. "Old guy in a wheelchair and a tall Asian."

Rigby nodded but said nothing.

"You going to tell me who they are?" asked Kurtz. "The old man in the wheelchair slapped me up the side of the head. Considering the circumstances, I should know who's mad at me."

"The man in the wheelchair must have been Major O'Toole, retired," said Rigby King. "The Vietnamese man is probably his business colleague, Vinh or Trinh or something."

"Major O'Toole," said Kurtz. "The parole officer's father?"

"Uncle. The famous Big John O'Toole's older brother, Michael."

"Big John?" said Kurtz.

"Peg O'Toole's old man was a hero cop in this city, Joe. He died in the line of duty about four years ago, not long before he would've retired. I guess you didn't hear about it up in Attica."

"I guess not."

"You say he hit you?"

"Slapped," said Kurtz.

"He must think you had something to do with his niece getting shot in the head."

"I didn't."

"So you remember things now?"

Her voice still did strange things to him—that mixture of softness and rasp. Or maybe it was the concussion acting on him.

"No," said Kurtz. "I don't remember anything clearly after leaving the P.O.'s office after the interview. But I know that whatever happened to O'Toole in the garage, I didn't make it happen."

"How do you know that?"

Kurtz held up his freed right hand.

Rigby smiled ever so slightly at that and he remembered why they'd nicknamed her Rigby. Her smile was like sunlight.

"Did you have any problems with Agent Peg O'Toole?" she asked.

Kurtz shook his head and then had to hold it with both hands.

"You in a lot of pain, Joe?" Her tone was neutral enough, but seemed to carry a slight subtext of concern.

"Remember that guy you had to use your baton on in Patpong in the alley behind Pussies Galore?" he said.

"Bangkok?" said Rigby. "You mean the guy who stole the sex performer's razor blades and tried to use them on me?"

"Yeah."

He could see her remembering. "I got written up for that by that REMF loot… whatshisname, the asshole…"

"Sheridan."

"Yeah," said Rigby. "Excessive force. Just because the guy I brought in had a little tiny bit of brains leaking out his ear."

"Well, that guy had nothing on how I feel today," said Kurtz.

"Tough situation," said Rigby. There was no undercurrent of concern audible now. Kurtz knew that the words could be abbreviated "T.S." She walked to the door. "If you can remember Lieutenant Sheridan, you can remember yesterday, Joe."

He shrugged.

"When you do, you call us. Kemper or me. Got it?"

"I want to go home and take an aspirin," said Kurtz. Trying to put just a bit of whine in his voice.

"Sorry. The docs want to keep you here another day. Your clothes and wallet have been… stored… until you're ready to travel." She started to leave.

"Rig?" he said.

She paused, but frowned, as if not pleased to hear him use the diminutive of her old nickname.

"I didn't shoot O'Toole and I don't know who did."

"All right, Joe," she said. "But you know, don't you, that Kemper and I are going on the assumption that she wasn't the target That someone was trying to kill you in that garage and poor O'Toole just got in the way."

"Yeah," Kurtz said wearily. "I know."

She left without another word. Kurtz waited a few minutes, got laboriously out of bed—hanging onto the metal railing a minute to get his balance—and then padded around the room and bathroom looking for his clothes, even though he knew they wouldn't be there. Since he'd ignored Nurse Ratchet's bedpan jar, he paused in the toilet long enough to take a leak. Even that hurt his head.

Then Kurtz got the IV stand on wheels and pushed it out ahead of him into the hallway. Nothing in the universe looked so pathetic and harmless as a man in a hospital gown, ass showing through the opening in the back, shuffling along shoving an IV stand. One nurse, not his, stopped to ask him where he was going.

"X ray," said Kurtz. "They said to take the elevator."

"Heavens, you shouldn't be walking," said the nurse, a young blonde. "I'll get an orderly and a gurney. You go back to your room and lie down."

"Sure," said Kurtz.

The first room he looked in had two old ladies in the two beds. The second had a young boy. The father, sitting in a chair next to the bed, obviously awaiting the doctor's early rounds, looked up at Kurtz with the gaze of a deer in a hunter's flashlight beam—alarmed, hopeful, resigned, waiting for the shot.

"Sorry," said Kurtz and shuffled off to the next room.

The old man in the third room was obviously dying. The curtain was pulled as far out as it could be, he was the only occupant of the double room, and the chart on the foot of his bed had a small blue slip of paper with the letters DNR on it. The old man's breathing, even on a respirator, was very close to a Cheyne-Stokes death rattle.

Kurtz found the clothes folded and stored neatly on the bottom shelf of the small closet—an old man's outfit—corded trousers that were only a little too small, plaid shirt, socks, scuffed Florsheims that were slightly too large for Kurtz, and a raincoat that looked like a castoff from Peter Falk's closet. Luckily, the old guy had also brought a hat—a Bogey fedora with authentic sweat stains and the brim already snapped down in a perfect crease. Kurtz wondered what relative would be cleaning this closet out in a day or so and if they'd miss the hat.

He walked to the elevators with much more spring in his stride than he was really capable of, glancing neither left nor right. Rather than stopping at the lobby, he took the elevator all the way to the parking garage and then followed the open ramp up and out into brisk air and sunlight.

There was a cab near the emergency entrance and Kurtz got the door opened before the cabbie saw him coming and then collapsed into the back seat He gave the driver his home address.

The cabbie turned, squinted, and said around his toothpick. "I was supposed to pick up Mr. Goldstein and his daughter."

"I'm Goldstein," said Kurtz. "My daughter's visiting someone else in the hospital for a while. Go on."

"Mr. Goldstein's supposed to be an old man in his eighties. Only one leg."

"The miracles of modern medicine," said Kurtz. He looked the cabbie in the eye. "Drive."