Hard as Nails

by Dan Simmons

  And the Dodger really wanted to kill this man who'd kept him awake in the rainy ghetto all night.

  But as they approached Neola, he dutifully used his cell phone to call the Boss.

  "Sir, I'm not going into Neola with them for Chrissakes," he told him. "Either let me deal with this Kurtz now or let me go about my business."

  "Go do what you have to do," said the Boss.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  « ^ »

  Neola is about sixty miles south-southeast of Buffalo, but the narrow, two-lane road slowed them enough that they'd been driving almost an hour and a half before they saw signs saying they were close to the little city. The clouds had moved in now, the hills had gotten steeper and the valleys deeper, the October wind had come up stronger and the trees were mostly bare. The few cars that passed going the opposite direction did so with their headlights on and sometimes with their windshield wipers flicking.

  Kurtz pulled the Pinto to the side of the road on a cinder apron in front of an abandoned fruit stand and got out of the car.

  "What is it, Joe?" said Rigby. "You want me to drive?"

  Kurtz shook his head. He watched the traffic going south pass for several silent minutes. Finally, Rigby said, "What is it? You think we're being followed?"

  "No," said Kurtz. The pest control truck had fallen back in the gloom and rain some miles ago, and must have turned off somewhere.

  Rigby got out of the car and came around, lighting a cigarette. She offered one to Kurtz. He shook his head.

  "That's right, you gave up smoking in Bangkok, didn't you? I always thought it was because of that girl's act at Pussies Galore."

  Kurtz said nothing. It wasn't raining, but the highway was wet and a passing truck sent up a hiss and spray. "What are you going to do about the little girl, Joe?"

  He turned a blank stare on her. "What little girl?"

  "Your little girl," said Rigby. "Yours and Samantha's. The fourteen-year-old who's living with your secretary's sister-in-law. What's your daughter's name? Rachel."

  Kurtz stared a second and then took a step toward her. Rigby King's cop instincts reacted to the look in his eyes and her hand came up halfway toward the 9mm dock on her hip before she froze. She had to lean back over the Pinto's hood to avoid physical contact with Kurtz.

  "Get in the car," he said. And turned away from her.

  Fifteen miles before they reached the Pennsylvania line, Highway 16 passed under Interstate 86—the Southern Tier Expressway they called it down here—and ran another seven miles into Neola. The town had absurdly wide streets—more like some small place out west where land had been cheap at its settling than in a village in New York State—and it was nestled amid high hills just north of the Allegheny River. Kurtz noticed the variations in spelling—Allegany State Park was a few miles to the west of them, the town of Allegany was just down the road to the west, but the river that marked the southern boundary of Neola was the Allegheny. He didn't think it was worth investigating.

  They drove the twelve-block length of Main Street, crossed the broad but shallow river, turned around before the road ran into the hills south into Pennsylvania, and drove back up the length of town again, making two detours to explore the side streets where Highway 305 ran into Highway 16 near the downtown. When he reached the north edge of town again, Kurtz made a U-turn through a gas station and said, "Notice anything?"

  "Yeah," said Rigby, still watching Kurtz carefully as if he might get violent at any moment. "There was a Lexus and a Mercedes dealership along the main drag. Not bad for a town of… what did the sign say?"

  "Twenty-one thousand four hundred and twelve," said Kurtz.

  "Yeah. And there's something else about the old downtown…" She paused.

  "No empty stores," said Kurtz. "No boarded-up buildings. No 'for lease' signs. No state employment and unemployment offices in empty buildings." The economy in Buffalo and around Western New York had been hurting long before the recent recession, and residents just got used to defunct businesses, empty buildings, and the omnipresent state unemployment outlets. Downtown Neola had looked prosperous and scrubbed.

  "What the hell is the economy here?" said Rigby.

  "As far as I know, the Major's South-East Asia Trading Company is the biggest employer with about two thousand people working for them," said Kurtz. "But not only the old Victorian homes off Main here were all spruced up and painted, fresh trim colors, but that trailer park down by the river had new F-150 pickups and Silverados parked by the mobile homes. Even the poor people in Neola seem to be doing all right."

  "You don't miss much," said Rigby.

  He glanced at her. "You don't either. Did you notice a place we could grab an early lunch or late breakfast?"

  "There was that fancy Victorian house called The Library on the hill before the river," said Rigby. "Families in church clothes and ladies in hats going in."

  "I was thinking a greasy spoon where people might talk to us," said Kurtz. "Or a bar."

  Rigby sighed. "It's Sunday, so the bars are closed. But there was a diner next to the train tracks back there."

  The locals didn't rush over to talk to them, or even seem to take notice of them, during their late-breakfast, early-lunch diner meal—except for some kids in a nearby booth who kept staring at Kurtz's bruised eyes and bandaged head and giggling—but the coffee and food helped his headache and Rigby quit looking at him as if worried he was about to strangle her.

  "Why did you really want to come to Neola?" the detective said at last. She was eating lunch; Kurtz was eating a big breakfast. "Are you planning to visit Major O'Toole at his home here? You want me along to make sure it doesn't get out of control? He used to be Special Forces in Vietnam, you know. He may be almost seventy and in a wheelchair, but he probably could still kick your ass."

  "I don't even know where he lives," said Kurtz. It was true. He hadn't taken time to look it up.

  "I do," said Rigby. "But I'm not going to tell you, and I doubt if any of these good people would either." She nodded toward the people eating in the loud diner and others hurrying by outside. The wind was blowing light rain. "Most of them probably get their paychecks from the Major's and Colonel's SEATCO in one way or the other."

  Kurtz shrugged. "The Major isn't why I'm here. At least not directly." He told her about Peg O'Toole's question about amusement parks, described the photographs of the abandoned park on a hilltop, and shared Arlene's information about Cloud Nine, and about the Major's kid shooting up the local high school thirty years earlier.

  "Yeah, when I learned about the kid dying in the Rochester asylum fire, I had some people look into it," said Rigby. "I thought that might be why you're down here. Do you seriously think the Major might have had someone shoot his own niece?" Kurtz shrugged again.

  "What would the motive be?" asked Rigby. Her brown eyes held a steady gaze on him over her coffee cup. "Drugs? Heroin?"

  Kurtz worked hard not to react, even by so much as a blink. "Why do you say that? What do drugs have to do with anything here?"

  It was Rigby King's turn to shrug. "Parole Officer O'Toole's old man, the cop, was killed in a drug bust a few years ago, you know."

  "Yeah. So?"

  "And Major O'Toole's company, SEATCO, has been under suspicion from the Feds for several years as being a Southern New York, western Pennsylvania heroin supplier. The DEA and FBI think that he and his old Vietnamese buddies have been shipping more than Buddha statues and objects of art from Vietnam and Thailand and Cambodia the last twenty-five years or so."

  Bingo, thought Kurtz. He couldn't believe he'd found the connection this easily. And he couldn't believe that Gonzaga and Farino Ferrara didn't know about this. He squinted at Rigby. "Why are you telling me this?"

  She smiled her Cathy Rigby smile at him. "It's classified information, Joe. Only a handful of us at the department knows anything about it. Kemper and I were briefed by the Feds only last week, because of the O'Toole shooting.
"

  "All the more reason to ask you why you're telling me this," said Kurtz. "You suddenly on my side here, Rigby?"

  "Fuck your side," she said and set down the coffee cup. "I'm a cop, remember? Believe it or not, I want to solve Peg O'Toole's shooting as much as you do. Especially if it ties in with rumors we're hearing of junkies and heroin users disappearing in Lackawanna and elsewhere."

  Again, Kurtz didn't blink or allow a facial muscle to twitch. He said, "Well, for now, I just want to find whether this Cloud Nine is real or not. Any suggestions?"

  "We could drive through the hills around town," said Rigby. "Look for roller coasters or Ferris wheels or something sticking up above the bare trees."

  "I have to be back in Buffalo tonight," said Kurtz. To meet a woman coming across the Canadian border and ask her why her fiancé shot me . "Have any smarter suggestions?"

  "We could go to the library," said Rigby. "Small town librarians know everything."

  "It's Sunday," said Kurtz. "Library's closed."

  "Well, I could wander into the Neola police department or sheriff's office, flash my badge, and say I was following up on a tip and ask them about Cloud Nine," said Rigby.

  Kurtz was getting more and more suspicious about all this helpful assistance. He said, "Who will I be? Your partner?"

  "You'll be absent," said Rigby. She dug out money for the check. "You go into the local sheriff's office with those raccoon eyes or wearing those sunglasses, with your scalp all carved up like that, they'll throw us both in jail on general principles."

  "All right. Shall I meet you back at the car in an hour?"

  "Give me ninety minutes," said Rigby. "I have to go find a doughnut place open. You don't go ask local cops for help, even on directions, without bearing gifts."

  They'd noticed the green signs for the police station, only a block east of Main, and Rigby decided to walk. She said that she didn't want to lose all credibility by having someone see her being dropped off in that rusted piece of Ford crap Kurtz was driving. Kurtz watched her disappear around the corner, her short hair still being stirred by the strong wind from the west and her corduroy jacket blowing, and then he opened the Pinto's trunk. The .38 was there, hidden under the spare tire, but that wasn't what he wanted. He pulled the still-sealed pint of Jack Daniel's out of its hiding place and slipped it in the pocket of his leather jacket. Then, pulling his collar up against the gusting wind, he headed off down Main Street in search of a park.

  Even in an absurdly prosperous town like Neola, there had to be a place where the winos hung out, and Kurtz found it after about fifteen minutes of walking. The two old men and the stoned boy with long, greasy hair were sitting down by the river on a stretch of dirt and grass out of sight of the park's jogging path. The men were working on a bottle of Thunderbird and they squinted suspiciously as Kurtz settled himself on a nearby stump. Their eyes grew a film of greediness over the suspicion when he took out the sealed pint. Only the greediness disappeared when Kurtz said that he wanted to talk and .passed the pint over.

  The oldest man—and the only one who talked—was named Adam. The other old man, according to Adam, was Jake. The stoned boy—who was focusing on something just below the treetops—evidently didn't deserve an introduction. And although Jake did not speak, at every question and before every answer, old Adam looked to Jake—who made no visible sign but who seemed to pass along permission or denial telepathically—before Adam spoke.

  Kurtz shot the shit for fifteen minutes or so. He confirmed Rigby's assumption that everyone in Neola either worked for the Major's South-East Asia Trading Company or benefitted from the money from it or was afraid of someone who did work for it. He also confirmed the details of the 1977 shooting at the high school that had put eighteen-year-old Sean Michael O'Toole in the state asylum.

  "That fucking Sean was a crazy fucking kid," said Adam. He wiped the mouth of the bottle and handed the pint to Kurtz, who took a small sip, wiped the mouth, and handed it to Jake.

  "Did you know him?"

  "Everybody in the fucking town fucking knew him," said Adam, taking the bottle back from Jake. "Fucking Major's fucking kid—like a fucking prince. Little fucking bastard shot and killed my Ellen."

  "Ellen?" said Kurtz. Arlene's research had reported that the O'Toole kid had gone to the high school with a .30-.06 one morning and killed two fellow students—both male—a gym teacher, and an assistant principal.

  "Fucking Ellen Stevens," slurred the old man. "My fucking girlfriend. She was the fucking girl's gym teacher. Best fucking lay I ever had."

  Kurtz nodded, sipped some of the disappearing whiskey, wiped the mouth, and handed it on to Jake. The stoned boy's eyes were glazed and fixed.

  "Anybody ever say why he did it? This Sean Michael O'Toole?"

  "Because he fucking wanted to," said Adam. "Because he fucking knew that he was the fucking Major's fucking son. Because he'd fucking got away with everything—until Ellen gave him fucking detention that fucking week because the little fuck had drilled a hole in the wall of the girl's locker room and was fucking peeping at Ellen's fucking girls. That fucking old bastard the Major has run Neola since fuck knows when, and his fucking kid didn't know that he couldn't shoot and kill four fucking people and fucking get away with it You got another fucking pint, Joe?"

  "No, sorry."

  "That's all right. We got another fucking bottle." Adam showed a smile consisting of three teeth on top and two on the bottom and pulled the Thunderbird wine out from behind his stump.

  "Whatever happened to the kid?" said Kurtz. "Sean Michael?"

  Adam hesitated and looked to Jake. Jake did not so much as blink. Adam evidently got the message. "Fucking psycho went up to that big fucking nuthouse in Rochester. They say he got fucking burned up a few years later, but we don't fucking believe it."

  "No?"

  "Fuck no," grinned Adam, checking with Jake before going on. "Little kids in the town've seen him—seen him wandering the woods and backyards at night, all scarred up from his burns, wearing a fucking baseball cap. And Jake here seen him, too."

  "No shit?" Kurtz said conversationally. He turned expectantly to Jake, but the other old man just stared unblinkingly, took the Thunderbird from Adam, and helped himself to a swig.

  Adam turned his head as if he was listening to Jake, but Jake's expression was as gray and expressionless as the October sky.

  "Oh, yeah," added Adam, "Jake reminds me that the kids in town used to see the Artful Dodger's ghost mostly around Halloween. That's when the Dodger would bring Cloud Nine alive again—at least for one night—All Hallow's Eve. I ain't never seen it myself, but kids I knew over the years used to say that the Dodger come back with a bunch of other ghosts from the other side and would ride all them dead rides up Cloud Nine one last time."

  "The Dodger?" said Kurtz. "Cloud Nine?"

  "When they was all kids, according to my dead Ellen, they used to fucking call that fucking O'Toole kid 'the Artful Dodger.'" replied Adam. "You know, from that fucking Charles Dickens book. Fucking Oliver Twist."

  "The Artful Dodger," repeated Kurtz.

  "Fucking aye," said Adam. "Or sometimes just 'Dodger,' you know, 'cause he was all the time wearing that fucking Dodger cap… not the L.A. cap, but the old fucking Brooklyn one."

  Kurtz nodded. "What was that you were saying about something called Cloud Nine?"

  Adam lowered the bottle and looked at Jake for a long minute. Finally Adam said, not to Kurtz but to the silent old man, "Why the fuck not? Why should we do that fucking Major a favor?"

  Jake said nothing, showed nothing.

  Adam turned and shrugged. "Jake don't want me to tell you, Joe. Sorry."

  "Why not?"

  "'Cause Jake knows that everyone who fucking goes up there in the last twenty fucking years or so to fucking find Cloud Nine gets their ass shot off, and Jake fucking likes you."

  "I'll take my chances," said Kurtz. He took two twenties out of his billfold.

  "Fuc
king liquor stores ain't open today," Adam said mournfully.

  "But I bet you know somewhere else you could get some good stuff," said Kurtz.

  Adam looked at Jake. "Yeah," be said at last.

  He told Kurtz about the Major building an amusement park in the hills and gave Kurtz the directions. He warned him to stay away until after Halloween, after the ghost of the Artful Dodger and his pals had their last rides on the abandoned Ferris wheel and little train and dodge-em cars up there. "Wait 'til mid-November," said old Adam. "The Dodger ghost don't come around much in November according to the kids. And the other ghosts only join him on Halloween."

  Kurtz stood to go, but then asked. "Do you know why just on Halloween?"

  "Fuck yes I know," said old Adam. "Back when the Major was still running fucking Cloud Nine, Halloween was the last night it was open before shutting down all fucking winter. The last night was fucking free. It was the one time when everyone in the fucking town went up to that fucking amusement park—sometimes it was almost too fucking cold to ride the fucking rides—and the Major always had a big fucking parade with his fucking son on a fucking float—that little weasel, the Artful Dodger, riding up there and waving like the fucking queen of fucking England. Halloween. It was the fucking brat's birthday."

  Kurtz looked over to see if the stoned kid was paying any attention, and noticed for the first time that the boy had gone, slipped away into the trees along the river. It was as if he'd never been there.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  « ^ »

  Kurtz's plan was to take the Pinto, check out Cloud Nine, and get back to downtown Neola before Rigby King finished her schmoozing with the local sheriff's department. But she was sitting in the car when he walked back to the downtown block where he'd left it.

  Shit, he thought. "Hey, Boo," he said. It was an old joke and he'd almost—not quite—forgotten the origin of it back at Father Baker's Friday Movie Night.

  "Hey, Boo," she said back. She didn't sound happy. "You find your talkative drunks?"