Dan Simmons: Hard as Nails

"A mob guy named Colin," said Arlene. "That head injury made you delusional, Joe."

"Pick me up at nine-thirty at the Harbor Inn," said Kurtz. "We'll go to the Civic Center together."

"Nine-thirty. You going to last that long?"

Kurtz touched his hat brim in farewell and went out and down the long stairway. There were thirty-nine steps and every one of them hurt.

The Dodger knew their names and where they lived. The Dodger had a picture. The Dodger had a 9mm Beretta Elite II threaded with a silencer in the cargo pocket of his fatigue pants and he could smell the oil. The Dodger had a hard-on.

The guy's address was in the old suburb called Lackawanna and the guy's place was a shithole—a tall, narrow house with gray siding in a long row of tall, narrow houses with gray siding. The guy had a driveway but no garage. Nobody had a garage. The guy had a front stoop four steps up rather than a porch. The whole neighborhood was dreary and gray, even on this sunny day, as if the coal dust from the old mills had painted everything with a coating of dullness.

The Dodger parked his AstroVan, beeped it locked, and strolled jauntily to the front door. His fatigue jacket hid his erection, but the jacket was open so that he could get to the pocket of his pants.

A little girl answered on his third knock. She looked to be five or six or seven… Dodger had no idea. He didn't really pay attention to kids.

"Hi," he said happily. "Is Terrence Williams home?"

"Daddy's upstairs in the shower," said the little one. She didn't comment on the Dodger's unusual face, but turned on her heel and walked away from him, back into the house, obviously expecting him to follow.

The Dodger came in, smiling, and closed the door behind him.

A woman came out of the kitchen at the end of the hallway. She was wiping her hands on a dishtowel and her face was slightly flushed, as if she'd been cooking over a hot stove. Unlike the little girl, she did react to the sight of his face, although she tried to hide it.

"Can I help you?" she asked She was a big woman, broad in the hips. Not the Dodger's type. He liked spinners—the kind of little woman you could sit down, place on your cock, and spin like a top.

"Yes, ma'am," said the Dodger. He was always polite. He'd been taught to be polite as a boy. "I've got a package for Terrence."

The big woman's frown grew deeper. She didn't really have friendly eyes, the Dodger decided. He liked women with friendly eyes. The little girl was running from the dining room through the little living room, past them both in the hallway, and then back around again. The house was tiny. The Dodger decided that the place smelled of mildew and cabbage and that the big woman with the unfriendly eyes probably did, too. But there was a good smell in the air as well, as if she'd been baking.

"Did Bolo send you?" she asked suspiciously.

"Yes, ma'am," said the Dodger. The kid ran past them both again, flapping her arms and making airplane noises. "Bolo sent me."

"Where's the package?"

The Dodger patted the lower right pocket on his fatigue jacket, feeling the steel in the cargo pocket of his pants.

"You'll have to wait," said the woman. She nodded toward the crappy little living room with its sprung couch and uncomfortable La-Z-Boy recliner. "You can sit in there." She frowned at the Dodger's baseball cap as if he should take it off in the house. The Dodger never took off his Dodger cap.

"No problem," he said, smiling and bobbing his head slightly.

He walked into the little living room, removed the Beretta with the supressor, shot the kid when she came buzzing in from the dining room again, shot the wide-hipped woman on the stairway, stepped over her body, and went up to the sound of the water.

The fat man pulled the shower curtain aside and stared at the Dodger as he came in with the gun. The fat man's white, hairy skin and bulges were really repulsive to the Dodger. He hated looking at naked men.

"Hi, Terry," the Dodger said and raised the pistol.

The fat man jerked the shower curtain closed as if that would protect him. The Dodger laughed—that was really funny—and fired five times through the curtain. It had blue, red, and yellow fish on it, and they were swimming in clusters. The Dodger didn't think that blue, red, and yellow fish swam together like that.

The fat man pulled the curtain off its rod as he fell heavily outward. It wasn't even a real shower, just a tub with a rod and curtain and a jerry-rigged sprayer. Now the fat man was sprawled over the edge of the tub. The Dodger didn't understand how people could live this way.

Terry was humped over the edge of the tub, his fat, hairy ass sticking up, his arms and head and upper torso all tangled up in the stupid fish-curtain. Blood was swirling around his toes and running down the drain. The Dodger didn't want to touch that wet, clammy flesh—at least two exit wounds were visible and bubbling in Terry's back—so he patted the curtain until he found the fat man's head, grabbed his hair through the cheap plastic, lifted the head, set the silencer against the man's forehead—the Dodger could see wide, staring eyes through the plastic—and pulled the trigger.

The Dodger picked up his brass, went downstairs again, stepping over the woman, and searched every room, starting from the cellar and working his way back up to the second floor, policing the last two ejected cartridges as be went. He'd fired eight rounds but there were still two live ones left in case there was another kid or invalid aunt or somebody in the house. And he had his survival knife.

There was nobody else. The only sound was the water still running in the shower and the sudden scream of a tea kettle in the kitchen.

The Dodger went to the kitchen and turned off the heat under the kettle. It was an old-fashioned gas-type stove. There were fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookies on the counter. The Dodger ate three of the cookies and then drank from a milk bottle in the fridge. The milk bottle was glass, but he still had his gloves on.

He unscrewed the silencer, slipped the Berretta and silencer back into his trouser cargo pocket, unlocked the kitchen door, then walked to the front of the house and checked the street through the little slivers of window glass in the front door, the street was as empty and gray-looking as when he'd arrived. He went out the front, pulling it locked behind him.

The Dodger went out to his AstroVan and backed it up the narrow driveway. The van filled the drive. Neighbors wouldn't see a damned thing with his van blocking the view like that The Dodger chose three big mail sacks the right size and went into the house again. He made three trips, dropping each sacked body into the back of the van with an oddly hollow thump from the metal floor. He saved the kid for last, savoring the ease of effort after hauling Mr. and Mrs. Lard-Ass.

Fifteen minutes later, on I-90 headed out of town, he punched in WBFO, 88.7 on his radio. It was Buffalo's coolest jazz station and the Dodger liked jazz. He whistled and patted the steering wheel as he drove.

Kurtz was listening to jazz at Blues Franklin. He hadn't come to listen to jazz—the place wouldn't be open for another five hours—but when he'd come through the door, one of Daddy Bruce's granddaughters—not Ruby, the waitress, but a little one, perhaps Laticia—had taken one look at Kurtz's face under the hat brim and had run out through the back to fetch Daddy. A young black man was on the low performance platform, noodling at the Steinway that Daddy Bruce kept for the visiting top jazz pianists, so Kurtz found his favorite table against the back wall and tipped his chair back while he listened.

Daddy Bruce came out of the back, wiping his hands off on a white apron. The old man never sat with customers, but he gripped the back of the chair next to Kurtz and shook his head several times, tut-tutting.