Hardcase

CHAPTER 33

Suddenly someone began pounding on the locked door. A section of ceiling actually collapsed above Malcolm's desk.

Kurtz's gaze shifted for only a second, but the distraction gave Cutter time to flick open a switchblade and lunge for Kurtz's heart. Kurtz had to swing the pistol out of line of fire as he jumped back. Cutter leaped closer. Kurtz brought down the ax while he jumped away, but the ax was heavy and it was clumsy handling it with just one hand. It only deflected the blow. Cutter had the blade swinging again, and he came in fast.

Kurtz dropped the ax, tossed the pistol into his right hand, and tried to bring the H&K to bear, but Cutter had grabbed his right wrist. Kurtz kneed the stocky man in the balls—it didn't seem to have any effect—and then Cutter's blade was ripping through the left side of Kurtz's heavy coat.

Asbestos and metal fibers sewed into the coat slowed the blade and gave Kurtz a chance to bat away Cutter's right wrist before the knife cut through anything but shirt and skin. Cutter slashed again. Kurtz and Cutter staggered around the room in a clumsy dance, both men breathing hard, Kurtz's plastic mask fogging up. The blade rose and came up fast enough to slash Kurtz's face, but the heavy respirator plastic took the cut. Kurtz tried desperately to free his right hand and the pistol, but the simple truth was that Cutter was stronger than he was.

Cutter's feet came down on Doo-Rag's face; he just dug his boots in for traction. Kurtz slammed into the edge of Malcolm's desk, numbing his thigh. He couldn't see well through the respirator mask, and he didn't have any way to get it off with both hands engaged. Cutter was forcing him back over the desk.

Cutter lunged, trying to gain more leverage for the blade. Instead of fighting the attack, Kurtz went with it. Both men went sprawling, the heavy oxygen tank on Kurtz's back ringing hollowly. The H&K.45 went bouncing across the floor, ending up against Malcolm's arm. Malcolm groaned but did not stir. Smoke was beginning to fill the room and firefighters were shouting in the room next door. The pounding had stopped but someone was chopping at the reinforced door with an ax.

Cutter pivoted the switchblade and slashed the blade across Kurtz's left wrist through the jacket, sending blood spraying.

Kurtz gritted his teeth and threw himself on his back, the oxygen tank ripping at his spine. Cutter lunged, blade swinging.

Kurtz let his heavy firefighter boots take the blows. Cutter pulled the blade back just as Kurtz kicked out once—hard—catching Cutter on the chest and sending him tumbling down the rear stairway and slamming into the door at the bottom. Kurtz had locked the door behind him as he came up the stairs.

Kurtz ripped the mask off. Instead of lunging after the gun and turning his back on the stairway, he pulled the half-liter bottle of gasoline from his coat pocket and lit the short fuse with the cheap Bic lighter. Cutter was already pounding back up the steps.

The Molotov cocktail exploded against Cutter's chest, filling me enclosed stairway with flame and driving Kurtz back from the heat. The office door splintered and gave way. A firefighter's arm appeared, the hand releasing the bolt and turning the knob.

Cutter screamed and tumbled down the steps again, battering at the closed door, trying to get out, but men began climbing the steps again, slowly, inexorably. When the flaming human figure reached the top of the stairs, Kurtz tugged the heavy oxygen tank off his back, handed it to Cutter, and kicked him back down the stairs. Kurtz stepped aside a second before the explosion.

Kurtz picked up the.45, stuck it in his pocket, set his old.38 snub-nose into Doo-Rag's dead hand—it wouldn't pass a paraffin test, but fuck it—swung Malcolm up over his shoulder in a fireman's carry, and got to the doorway just as a real firefighter came into the smoke and confusion. Kurtz pulled the useless respirator back up over his face as more firefighters and cops rushed into the little room.

"Two men down!" Kurtz shouted, pointing to Doo-Rag's corpse and to the flaming rear stairway. The firefighters rushed toward the flame while the two cops knelt next to Doo-Rag.

Kurtz carried Malcolm through the smoky outer room, down the stairs against a tide of shouting firefighters coming up, through the poolroom, out the front door, and past the fire engines and gawking crowd. He avoided the ambulance and the clumps of Bloods being corralled by cops and went down the alley on the opposite side of the street. When he got to the Buick—its trunk already open and waiting—he dropped Malcolm in, took the man's Magnum, and frisked him quickly.

Kurtz slammed the trunk shut and looked around. The Seneca Social Club was in full blaze now, and all attention was focused on it. Kurtz found his.45 and tossed it onto the front seat and then threw the respirator, coat, boots, 357 Magnum, and coveralls into the bushes. Then he got into Arlene's car and drove the opposite way down the alley, coming out on the next boulevard and swinging north.

They had probably already discovered that Doo-Rag had been shot. They would eventually discover one of the responding firefighters tied up and unconscious in the shrubbery near the back alley. It had been Kurtz, of course, who had called 911 a few minutes before he lit the gas-doused rags running into the two cars' fuel tanks.

Kurtz noted that despite his dislike of German guns, polymer guns, and silencers, the H&K.45 had worked just fine. It had taken Kurtz just a few minutes after dealing with Hathaway to return to Doc's back room, shoot the lock off, and help himself to the weapons he knew were untraceable.

Kurtz had not gotten the idea for the diversion from The Iliad. But Pruno's suggestion of referring to books had reminded Kurtz of a trashy espionage paperback that had made the cellblock rounds at Attica. Something about Ernest Hemingway running around playing spy in Cuba during World War II. There had been a false-alarm fire ploy in that book. Kurtz wasn't proud. He'd steal from the classics some other day.

Wrapping a rag around the bloody but shallow cut on the back of his left wrist, Kurtz drove north.