Dan Simmons - Hardcase

"So where are you living, Mr. Kurtz?"

"Here and there." Kurtz noticed that she had not condescended to him by calling him by his first name.

"You'll need a fixed address." Her tone was neither familiar nor cold, merely professional. "I have to visit your place of residence in the next month and make sure that it's acceptable under terms of parole."

Kurtz nodded. "I've been staying in a Motel 6, but I'm looking for something more permanent." He didn't think it would be wise to tell her about the abandoned icehouse and the borrowed sleeping bag he currently called home.

Ms. O'Toole made a note. "Have you begun looking for employment yet?"

"Found a job," said Kurtz.

She raised her eyebrows slightly. Kurtz noticed that they were thick and the same color as her hair.

"Self-employed," he said.

"That won't do," said Peg O'Toole. "We'll need to know the details."

Kurtz nodded. "I've set up an investigatory agency."

The P.O. tapped her lower lip with her pen. "You realize, Mr. Kurtz, that you won't be licensed as a private investigator in the state of New York again, and that it's illegal for you to own or carry a firearm or to associate with known felons?"

"Yes," said Kurtz. When the P.O. said nothing, he went on, "It's a legally registered business—'Sweetheart Search. "

Ms. O'Toole did not quite smile. "'Sweetheart Search'? Is it some sort of skip-trace service?"

"In a way," said Kurtz. "It's a Web-based locator service. My secretary and I do ninety-nine percent of the work on computers."

The P.O. tapped her white teeth with the capped pen. "There are about a hundred services like that on the Net," she said.

"That's what Arlene, my secretary, said."

"And why do you think yours will make money?"

"First, it's my feeling that there are about a hundred million baby boomers out there approaching retirement who are ready to dump their current spouses and probably still have the hots for old boyfriends or girlfriends from high school." said Kurtz. "You know, memories of first lust in the backseat of the 66 Mustang, that sort of thing."

Ms. O'Toole smiled. "Not much of a backseat in the 66 Mustang," she said. She was not being coy, Kurtz thought, merely observant.

Kurtz nodded. "You like old Mustangs?"

"We're not here to discuss my preference in muscle cars," she said. "Why are these aging baby boomers going to turn to your service? Since there are all these other cheap classmate-tracing sites on the Web?"

"Yes," said Kurtz, "but Arlene and I are being more proactive." He paused. "Did I say 'proactive'? Christ, I hate that word. Arlene and I are being more… imaginative."

Ms. O'Toole looked mildly surprised for the second time.

"Anyway, we go through old high-school yearbooks," said Kurtz, "find someone who might have been popular in his or her class way back when—we're starting in the sixties—and then send the information to former classmates. You know—'Have you ever wondered what happened to Billy Benderbix? Find out through Sweetheart Search'—that sort of garbage."

"You're aware of privacy laws?"

"Yep," said Kurtz. "There aren't enough of them for the Net. But we just look up these former classmates via the usual people finders and send them this bulk E-mail query."

"Is it working?"

Kurtz shrugged. "It's only been a few days, but we've had several hundred hits." He paused. He knew that the P.O. didn't want to make small talk any more than he did; but he wanted to share a story with someone, and there certainly was no one else in his life. "Want to hear about our first try?"

"Sure," said the P.O.

"Well, Arlene has been gathering yearbooks for the past few days. We've accessed back issues from all over the country and ordered more through the mail, but we're starting with the Buffalo area—real yearbooks—until we get a database started."

"Makes sense."

"So yesterday we're ready to start. I say, 'Let's pick someone at random here to be our first Mr. or Miss Lonely Heart… sorry, Ms. Lonely Heart."

"That sounds stupid," said O'Toole. " Miss Lonely Heart is right."

Kurtz nodded. "So Arlene takes this high-school yearbook from the stack—Kenmore West, 1966—and flips it open. I poke my finger down and choose someone at random. He had a weird name, but I figure, what the hell. Arlene starts laughing…"

O'Toole's expression was neutral, but she was listening.

"Wolf Blitzer," said Kurtz. "'I think maybe his classmates will know about him, says Arlene. 'Why? I say. So Arlene starts laughing at me…"

"You don't know Wolf Blitzer?" said P.O. O'Toole.

Kurtz shrugged again. "I guess he became well known way back when my trial was going on, and I haven't watched much CNN since."

O'Toole was smiling.

"Anyway," continued Kurtz, "Arlene quits laughing, explains who Wolf Blitzer is and why he wouldn't be our best choice, and then pulls down a West Seneca High School yearbook. Flips it open. Stabs at a picture. Another guy. Tim Russert."

O'Toole laughed softly. "NBC," she said.

"Yeah. I'd never heard of him, either. By this point, Arlene's busting a gut."

"Quite a coincidence."

Kurtz shook his head. "I don't believe in coincidence. It was Arlene setting me up. She has a weird sense of humor. Anyway, finally we find someone from a Buffalo-area high school who's not a well-known correspondent, and—"

The phone rang. As O'Toole answered it, Kurtz felt some relief at the interruption. He'd been deliberately babbling.

"Yeah… yeah… okay," O'Toole was saying. "I understand. All right. Good." When she hung up, her gaze seemed cooler to Kurtz.

The door burst open. A homicide cop named Jimmy Hathaway and a younger cop whom Kurtz had never seen before came in with 9mm Glocks aimed, badges visible on their belts. Kurtz looked back to see that Peg O'Toole had pulled a Sig Pro from her purse on the floor and was aiming it at his face.

"Hands behind your head, asshole," shouted Hathaway.

They cuffed Kurtz, frisked him—he was clean, of course, since it hadn't seemed a good idea to pack heat to the first meeting with his P.O. — and then shoved him up against the wall while the younger cop emptied his pockets of change, car keys, and mints.

"You won't be seeing this fucking loser again," Hathaway said to O'Toole as he shoved Kurtz out the door. "He's going back to Attica, and this time he's never coming out."

Kurtz glanced back once at Peg O'Toole before another shove sent him down the hallway. She had set her gun away. Her expression was unreadable.

Kurtz knew that it was not going to be an easy interrogation when Hathaway, the homicide cop, lowered some louvered blinds over the one-way mirror lining one wall of the interrogation room and then ripped the recording-microphone wire out of its jack on the floor. A second bad omen was that Kurtz was handcuffed behind his back to a straight-back metal chair which was, in turn, bolted to the floor. The third clue came from some dark stains on the battered wooden table and more stains spattered on the linoleum floor near the bolted chair, although Kurtz told himself that these could have been from spilled coffee. But perhaps the strongest hint was the fact that Hathaway was pulling on a pair of those latex gloves paramedics use to keep from getting AIDS.

"Welcome back, Kurtz, you fuck," Hathaway said when the blinds were down. He took three quick steps closer and backhanded Kurtz across the face.

Kurtz shook his head and spat blood onto the linoleum. The good news was that Hathaway wasn't wearing the heavy gold ring that he used to wear on his right hand, possibly because it would tear the latex gloves. Kurtz's cheek still bore a faint scar from his ear to the corner of his mouth resulting from a similar chat with Hathaway almost twelve years earlier.