Hardcase

CHAPTER 43

Kurtz had little sense of time other than the slight ebbing of pain and the even slighter return of muscle control, but it might have been about an hour later when the big car pulled over. The trunk opened and Kurtz breathed deeply of the cold night air, even though he had been shivering almost uncontrollably during the ride.

"All right," said Manny Levine, "we're south of Perry Center. It's all county roads and gravel roads around here. Where the fuck do we go next?"

"I'll have to sit up front and guide you," said Kurtz.

The dwarf laughed. He had small yellow teeth. "No fucking way, Houdini."

"You want to give your brother a decent burial."

"Yeah," said Levine. "But that's Job Two. Job One is killing your ass, and I'm not going to let sentiment get in the way of that. Where do we go next?"

Kurtz took a second to think and try to flex his arms. He'd found during the ride that his handcuffs and ankle manacles were chained to each other and to something solid behind him.

"Time's up," said Manny Levine. He leaned forward with the Taser. The ugly little stun gun had electrodes about three inches apart. He set those metal studs on either side of Kurtz's right ear and pressed the trigger for an instant.

Kurtz screamed. He had no choice. His vision, already impeded by the loose scalp and dried blood, popped orange, bled red, and faded for a while. When he could see and think again, Levine was grinning down at him.

"Half a mile past County Road 93," gasped Kurtz. "Gravel road. Take it west toward the woods until it stops."

Levine reached down, set the electrodes against Kurtz's testicles, and zapped him again. Kurtz's scream lasted long after Levine had slammed the trunk shut and begun driving again.

Levine slammed the trunk up. Snow fell past him in the red glow of the brake lights. "Ready to show me?" said the dwarf.

Kurtz nodded carefully. Even the slightest movement hurt, but he wanted to look more injured than he was. "Help me out," he croaked. This was Plan A. If he was going to lead, Levine would have to unchain him from whatever bolt held him in and undo his ankle manacles. Perhaps he would have to uncuff him while the miserable midget was close enough to grab. It wasn't much of a plan, but it was the best he'd come up with so far.

"Sure, sure." Levine's voice was amiable. He reached over with the Taser and pressed it into Kurtz's arm.

Flashbulbs. Blackness.

Kurtz came to lying on his side on the frozen earth. He blinked his one good eye, trying to figure out how much time had passed. Not much, he felt.

After Levine had zapped him, he'd obviously dragged Kurtz out of the trunk—not carefully, Kurtz thought, feeling a new broken tooth in the side of his mouth—and reworked the bondage arrangements. Kurtz's hands were cuffed in front of him now. Normally this would be good news, but the cuffs were attached by a chain to ankle manacles in state-prison manner, and a longer, fine-link steel chain—perhaps fifteen feet long—ran to a leather loop in Levine's hand.

Levine was wearing a wool cap with earflaps, a bulky goosedown vest, a small candy-orange rucksack, and one of those night-hiking headsets with a battery-powered miner's lamp attached to colorful straps around his forehead. On a normal person, this would have looked absurd: on this dwarf, it looked strangely obscene. Perhaps it was the Taser in his left hand, the dog chain in his right hand, or the huge Ruger tucked in his belt that dulled the humor of it.

"Get up," said Levine. He touched the Taser to the.steel dog chain. Kurtz spasmed, twitched, and almost wet himself.

Levine put the Taser in his down-vest pocket and aimed the Ruger while Kurtz slowly, painfully, got to his knees and then to his feet. He stood swaying. Kurtz could rush Levine, but «rush» would mean shuffling and staggering the ten feet while the dwarf emptied the Ruger into him. Meanwhile, although the frozen ground was free of snow this far from the lake, flakes were beginning to fall through bare branches above. Kurtz began shivering violently and could not stop. He wondered idly if hypothermia was going to kill him before Levine did.

"Let's go." Levine rattled Kurtz's chain.

Kurtz looked around to get his bearings and began shuffling into the dark woods.