Hardcase

CHAPTER 35

Arlene woke at her usual time—shortly before the gray Buffalo night brightened into gray Buffalo dawn—and was halfway through her morning paper and cup of coffee before she looked out her kitchen window and noticed that her Buick was in the driveway.

She went outside in her bathrobe. The car was locked and the keys were in the mailbox. There was no sign of Joe.

Later, after parking her car and going in through the alley entrance to their basement office, she noticed the white envelope on her tidy desk. Three thousand dollars in cash. November's pay.

Joe came in the back door around noon. His hair had been stylishly razor-cut. He had shaved closely and smelled slightly of an outdoorsy cologne. He was wearing a gray Perry Ellis suit—double-breasted—a white shirt, a conservative green-and-gold patterned tie, and soft, highly polished new brown dress shoes. Joe had always liked the Prince of Wales combination of gray suit and brown shoes, Arlene knew.

"Someone die and leave you money?" she said.

Kurtz smiled. "You might say that."

"How did you get into town from my place this morning?"

"They have these things called taxicabs," said Kurtz.

"You don't see them much in Cheektowaga," said Arlene. "It's more a bus kind of town."

"There are a lot of things one doesn't see much of in Cheektowaga, but I drove to the office just now."

Arlene raised one penciled eyebrow. "Drove? You're driving your own vehicle now?"

"It's a beater," said Kurtz. "An 88 Volvo sedan from Cheaper Charlie's out in Amherst. But it runs."

Arlene had to smile. "I'll never understand your affection for Volvos."

"They're safe," said Kurtz.

"Unlike everything else in your life."

He made a face. "They're boring. And ubiquitous. No one ever paid attention to a Volvo that was following them. They're like Chinamen; they all look alike."

Arlene could not argue with that. She stayed silent while Kurtz carefully removed his jacket and trousers, hung them on hangers on the wall rack, loosened his tie, and lay down on the sprung sofa against the wall. "Wake me about three, would you?" he said. "I've got an important business meeting at four." Kurtz folded his hands on his chest and was snoring softly within a minute.

Arlene tapped the keys and opened file drawers softly, careful not to wake Joe, but he slept on. She knew that he would not need the wake-up call—he always awakened exactly when he wanted to—and, sure enough, a few minutes before 3:00, his eyes snapped open and he looked around with that instant comprehension upon awakening, which had always amazed and mystified Arlene.

He dressed quickly, adjusting the suit jacket just so, buttoning his collar button, and making sure that his tie was knotted perfectly and that his cuffs shot properly.

"You need a snap-brim fedora," said Arlene as Joe headed for the back door, his car keys in his hand. She did not ask him about the meeting, and he did not offer any information before he left. Arlene knew from experience that it might be something as mundane as a request for a bank loan or something else altogether—something that Joe might not return from. She never asked. He almost never told.

Arlene finished a few e-mails to clients and wondered if she should tell Joe that their sweetheart-search business looked as if it was going to show a profit of eight or ten thousand dollars by the end of the first month. She decided to wait.

It was almost 5:00, she was finished with the day's Web searches and notices, and she was about ready to call it a day when unusual movement on the small security monitor caught her eye.

A monster had come in the front door of the porn store. The man's face was half burned away, one eye was swollen shut under inflamed tissue, and only a few white clumps of hair remained on a skull that had been cracked and cooked. The man wore a raincoat open and even through the black-and-white monitor, Arlene could see that his chest was covered with makeshift bandages and raw burns.

The clerk, Tommy, went for the shotgun he kept on the lowest shelf behind the counter.

The monster grabbed Tommy by his ponytail, pulled his head back, and cut his throat from ear to ear with one vicious sweep of his arm.

There were only two customers in the store. One ran for the front door, trying to squeeze past the monster, but the burned man spun quickly and ripped the man from his pubic bone to his throat. The man went down in the entrance and collapsed against the glass counter.

The other customer clutched his dirty magazines to his chest and ran between shelves to hide. The monster followed in three huge steps. The camera showed the mirror in the corner reflecting the monster stabbing downward—three, four, five times.

Arlene's breath had frozen in her chest. Now she lifted the telephone and dialed 911. A voice answered, but Arlene could not speak. She could not tear her eyes from the security-camera monitor.

The monster, raincoat open and bandages flying like a mummy's wrappings, burned face distorted into a snarl, was rushing down the short corridor toward the door to the basement… toward her.