Hardcase

CHAPTER 14

Kurtz had almost forgotten how chaotically insane the city holding pens were compared to the regimented insanity of real cellblock life. The lights were on all night and new prisoners were being dragged through in greater numbers as the night grew later; there were already a dozen men in his cell by midnight, and the noise and stink were enough to drive a Buddhist monk bugfuck. One of the junkies was shouting and crying and vomiting and shouting some more until Kurtz went over and helped him relax with two fingers to the nerve that ran along his carotid artery. None of the guards came by to clean up the vomit.

There were three whites in the cell, counting the now-unconscious junkie, and the blacks were doing their usual territorial filings and shooting cutting stares and glances Kurtz's way. If any of them recognized him, he knew, they would also know about the D-Mosque fatwah and it could mean a long night. There was nothing that Kurtz could use as a weapon—no spring, paper clip, ballpoint—nothing sharp at all, so he decided to just set up an early-warning system and try to get some sleep. Kurtz tossed the slumped junkie off one of the four small benches and used the side of his palm to convince the other white prisoner to sleep on the floor as well. Then Kurtz stacked up their slumped forms as a sort of fence about a yard from the bench. It wouldn't take much effort for the blacks to get over his little roadblock, but it would certainly slow them down a bit. Of course, Kurtz was not discriminating against the African-American prisoners, it was just that there were more of them, and they were more likely to have heard of the bounty.

Cockroaches skittered across the floor, feasted on the pool of vomit in no-man's-land, and then explored the folds of the junkie's clothes and crawled across the other white guy's exposed ankle.

Kurtz curled up on the unpadded bench and went into a half doze, eyes closed, but his face toward the mass of other men. After a while, their murmuring died down, and most of them dozed or sat cursing. Cops dragged whores and junkies past the cell toward the next corridor of pens. Evidently, this inn had not yet put out its No Vacancy sign for the night.

Sometime around 2:00 a.m., Kurtz snapped fully awake and pulled his fist far back in a killing mode. Movement. It was only a uniformed cop unlocking the cell door.

"Joe Kurtz."

Kurtz went out warily, not turning his back on either the other prisoners or the cop. This might be Hathaway's plan—the throwdown was certainly still around somewhere. Or maybe one of the cops had seen the paperwork on his arrest and connected him with the Death Mosque bounty.

The uniformed cop was fat and sleepy looking and—like all of the cops in the cell corridor—had left his weapon on the other side of the main sliding grate. The cop carried a baton in his hand and a can of Mace on his belt. Video cameras followed their movement. Kurtz decided that if Hathaway or anyone else was waiting around the bend in the corridor, about all he could do was take the baton away from the fat cop, use him as a shield during any shooting, and try to get in close. It was a shitty plan, but the best he could improvise without access to another weapon.

No one was waiting around the corridor. They passed through the doors and grates without incident. In the booking room another sleepy sergeant returned his wallet, keys, and change in a brown envelope and then led him up the back stairs to the main hall. There they unlocked the cage and let him walk.

A beautiful brunette—full-breasted, long-haired, with lovely skin and alluring eyes—was sitting on a long bench in the filthy waiting area. She got up when he came out. Kurtz wondered idly how anyone could look so fresh and put together at two in the morning.

"Mr. Kurtz, you look like shit," said the brunette.

Kurtz nodded.

"Mr. Kurtz, my name is—"

"Sophia Farino," said Kurtz. "Little Skag showed me a picture of you."

She smiled slightly. "The family calls him 'Stephen. "

"Everyone else who's met him calls him 'Little Skag' or just 'Skag, " said Kurtz.

Sophia Farino nodded. "Shall we go?"

Kurtz stood where he was. "You're telling me that you made bail for me?"

She nodded.

"Why you?" said Kurtz. "If the family wanted it done, why not send Miles the lawyer down? And why in the middle of the night? Why not wait for the arraignment?"

"There never was going to be any arraignment," said Sophia. "You were going to be charged with parole violations—carrying a firearm—and sent over to County in the morning."

Kurtz rubbed his chin and heard the stubble rasp. "Parole violation?"

Sophia smiled and began walking. Kurtz followed her down the echoing stairway and out into the night. He was very alert, his nerves pulled very tight. Without being obvious about it, he was checking every shadow, responding to every movement.

"The Richardson murder has lots of clues," said Sophia, "but none of them lead to you. They already have a blood type from the semen they found on the woman. Not yours."

"How do you know?"

Instead of answering, she said, "Someone made an anonymous call that you were at the Richardson place yesterday. If they told you that the woman had your name in her Day-Timer, they lied. She'd scribbled something about meeting a Mr. Quotes."

"The lady was never very good with names," said Kurtz.

Sophia led the way out into the cold but brilliantly lighted parking lot and beeped a black Porsche Boxster open. "Want a ride?" she said.

"I'll walk," said Kurtz.

"Not wise," said the woman. "You know why someone went to all this work to get you to County?"

Kurtz did, of course. At least now he did. A yard hit. A shank job. He was lucky that it hadn't happened in interrogation or the holding pen. Hathaway almost certainly had been part of the setup. What had kept the homicide cop from going ahead with it, using the throwdown and the Glock, and collecting the ten grand? His young partner? Kurtz would probably never know. But he was sure that someone else would have been waiting downstream and that Hathaway would still have gotten his cut.

"You'd better ride with me," said Sophia.

"How do I know you're not the one?" said Kurtz.

Don Farino's daughter laughed. It was a rich, unselfconscious laugh, her head thrown back, a totally sincere laugh from a grown-up woman. "You flatter me," she said. "I have something to talk to you about, Kurtz, and this would be a good time. I think I can help you figure out who's setting you up for this hit and why. Last offer. Want a ride?"

Kurtz went around and got in the passenger side of the low, muscular Boxster.