Hard as Nails

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Angelina drove Kurtz and Rigby to the hospital.

They took the extra SUV that Campbell had driven to Gonzaga's compound and tossed his body in the back. Dr. Tafer and Kurtz carried Rigby to it on a litter, sliding her onto the flat floor left after all the seats were folded away. Then Tafer drove off with Baby Doc's men, Gonzaga had driven away with Bobby and his crew, and Baby Doc himself had lifted the Long Ranger off with a roar of turbines amidst a hurricane of Utter.

Kurtz had grabbed the keys and gone around to the SUV's driver's door, but Angelina had swung up first. "I'll drive," she said. "You stay in the back with Ms. Cellulite. I'll send somebody for the other vehicle."

He had jumped in the back, propping Rigby's head on his leg. Tafer had put her on a second unit of plasma and she was unconscious from the morphine. The Yemeni doctor had warned that she was in shock and in bad shape from loss of blood.

They were only a couple of miles from the Erie County Medical Center. For once, Kurtz thought, he'd planned ahead.

"We can't carry her in, you know," called Angelina from the front. She was driving carefully, staying under the speed limit and stopping for lights even when the intersection was dark and empty. Kurtz smiled to himself when he thought of what a haul it would be for the policeman who pulled them over for speeding—a wounded cop, a dead thug, a cache of stolen night-vision gear and automatic weapons, with a bloody, female Mafia don driving.

"I know," said Kurtz. "We'll drop her at emergency. I trust this truck isn't registered and the plates are bogus."

"Totally," said Angelina. "This thing will be in a chop shop before sunrise."

They drove in silence for a block or two. It was about two-forty-five in the morning. The time, Kurtz knew from experience, when human beings held their least firm grip on life. Rigby was cold to the touch and she looked dead. Kurtz used three fingers to find the pulse in her neck—it was hard to find.

"Well," said Angelina, "you sure provided Toma and me with a bonding experience, just like you promised."

Kurtz had nothing to say to that. He looked out at the dark buildings going by—they'd just crossed Delavan and were within a couple of blocks of the hospital.

"This third party that Trinh was talking about before he took a header," said Angelina. "Did you ever consider that it might be Baby Doc? That he's been working both sides against the middle?"

"Yeah."

"If it is, we just paid the son of a bitch three quarters of a million dollars to help him take over a drug ring he's been trying to take over for years."

"Yeah," said Kurtz. "But it's not Baby Doc."

"How do you know?"

"I just know," said Kurtz.

They pulled up the emergency room drive. Kurtz kicked the back doors of the SUV open, pulled the IV needle, lifted Rigby out, and laid her on the wet concrete. Angelina laid on the truck's horn. Kurtz was inside and they were driving off at high speed just as the first nurses and orderlies came out the automatic doors.

"Think she'll make it?" asked Angelina. She swung the truck up onto the Kensington Expressway. No one was giving chase.

"How the fuck do I know?"

The bodyguard's body rolled against Kurtz as the SUV took the turn toward downtown. Kurtz crawled up into the passenger seat. "Where does Campbell go? Another chop shop?"

"More or less."

"Then why bring him back?"

"Leave no man behind or somesuch macho shit, right?" Angelina looked at him. "You in love with the cop, Joe?"

Kurtz rubbed his temples. "You going back to the Towers?"

"Where else?"

"Good. My Pinto's there."

"You're not going back to your Harbor Inn dump, are you?"

"Where else?"

"Do you have any idea what's going to happen when they ID your girlfriend back there?"

"Yeah," Kurtz said tiredly. "Buffalo P.D.'s going to go apeshit. And Rigby's partner, a hard-on named Kemper, is going to go more apeshit than the rest. I'm pretty sure Rigby told him that she was going to be with me yesterday, so he'll send black-and-whites out to pick me up as soon as he hears."

"And you're still going back to your place?" Kurtz shrugged. "I think we've got a few hours. There was no ID on Rigby and she'll either be unconscious for hours or…"

"Dead," said Angelina.

"… or she'll wake but keep her mouth shut for a while."

"But it's a gunshot wound," said Angelina, meaning that the police would be informed straight from the emergency room and that a cop would be sent over to check it out.

"Yeah."

"Come spend the night in the penthouse," said Angelina. "I won't rape you."

"Another time," said Kurtz. He looked at the don's daughter. "Although I have to say, you do look ravishing."

Angelina Farino Ferrara laughed unselfconsciously and pushed her sweaty and gore-matted hair off her bloody forehead.

Kurtz knew as soon as he went through the front door of the Harbor Inn that someone had been there—perhaps was still there. He pulled the Browning. Then he went to one knee, laid the ditty bag on the floor, tugged on the night-vision goggles that he'd conveniently forgotten to give back to Baby Doc in the confusion, and clicked on the power. The glasses whined up and the dark foyer-restaurant glowed bright green and white in his vision.

The telltales were in place by the stairs and in the center of the main room, but that meant nothing. Kurtz could sense a movement of air that shouldn't be there—air that smelled of piss.

He searched all the ground floor rooms before going up the stairs with the Browning extended.

He found the taped circle of missing glass in the front window. Someone had destroyed all three of his video monitors, firing a slug into each of the CRTs. In his bedroom, someone had urinated on his mattress and pillows and thrown his clothing around the room. In his reading room, the same someone had used a knife on his repaired Eames chair, slashing the cushions beyond salvage. Most of the books had been thrown off the shelves and the bookcases had been tumbled over. His visitor had defecated on the Persian carpet.

Kurtz didn't have to wonder who it'd been—this wasn't quite the style of the local kids. He searched the rest of the building and discovered his backup pistol missing. The window to the fire escape was still partially open. He pushed it shut and reset the lock.

"Hope you had a good time, Artful Dodger," muttered Kurtz. He found some clean, dark clothes that hadn't been peed on, went in and took a shower—checking carefully for booby traps before turning on the water. He threw the borrowed clothes into a laundry bag along with the stuff his night visitor had urinated on. Then he cleaned up the poop in the library—feeling like one of those idiots whom he saw walking their big dogs in the park along the river, pooper scooper at the ready—dropped the whole mess—filthy clothes, baggy of feces, mattress, bed clothes, pillows, and Eames chair—into the Dumpster below the rear window. Then Kurtz washed his hands again and, fully dressed except for the Mephisto boots he'd decided to keep, curled up on his weight-press bench in the front second-floor room, set his mental alarm clock for seven A.M., and went instantly to sleep.