Dan Simmons - Hard as Nails

"KG's," said Kurtz.

His reaction coming through the door was that he should have followed Enselmo's advice. KG's wasn't all that enthusiastic about straight patrons at the best of times, and they obviously didn't want a bandaged, bruised straight guy in sunglasses there in mid-day during what they advertised as their Wrinkle Club Hour. Kurtz didn't even want to know what a Wrinkle Club was.

The bartender called for the huge bouncer—unimaginatively called "Tiny" — and Tiny flicked a finger the size of a bull pizzle at Kurtz to show him out.

Kurtz nodded passively, pulled the.38, and pressed it into Tiny's face, hammer back, until Tiny's nose mushed flat under the muzzle. It may not have been the best thing to do in the circumstances, but Kurtz wasn't in the best of moods.

The bartender didn't call the cops—Wrinkle Hour was in full wrinkle and he probably didn't want the patrons disturbed by a gunshot—and the man just shifted the toothpick in his mouth, jerked his head, and sent Tiny knuckling back to his grotto.

Kurtz considered this a pretty useless victory since there was nobody to talk to here anyway, unless Kurtz wanted to interrupt something he didn't want to see, much less interrupt. At least in the strip clubs he'd known some of the girls. He was headed out, 38 back in his belt, when a man half again larger than Tiny filled the door. The monster wore a baggy suit and blue shirt with a pointy white collar. It looked like he combed his hair with buttered toast.

"You Kurtz?" grunted the big man.

"Ah, shit," said Kurtz. Gonzaga's people had found him.

The big man jerked his thumb toward the door behind him.

Kurtz stepped backward into the bar. The monster shook his head once, almost sadly, and followed Kurtz into the dark, open space. The Wrinkle Club activities were flailing away in a side room. The goon didn't even glance that way.

"You coming the easy way or the hard way?" asked the big man.

"Hard way's fine," said Kurtz. He took off the sunglasses and set them in his coat pocket.

Gonzaga's man smiled. He obviously preferred the hard way as well. He slipped brass knuckles on and began moving toward Kurtz, arms spread like a gorilla's, eyes on Kurtz's bandages. His strategy was fairly apparent.

"Hey, hey!" shouted the bartender. "Take it outside!"

The ape's gaze shifted for just a fraction of a second at the sound, but it gave Kurtz time to pull the.38 and swing it around full force into the side of the man's head.

Gonzaga's man looked surprised but stayed standing. The bartender was pulling a sawed-off shotgun from under the bar.

"Drop it!" snapped Kurtz, aiming the.38 at the bartender. The bartender dropped it.

"Kick it," said Kurtz. The bartender kicked the weapon away.

The huge man was still standing there, smiling slightly, a quizzical, almost introspective expression on his face. Kurtz kicked him in the balls, waited a minute for the slow neurons to pass the message to the monster's brain, and then kneed him in the face when the mass of flesh slowly bent at the waist.

The man stood straight up, shook his bead once, and hit the floor with the sound of a jukebox falling over.

Probably because his head hurt and he was tired, Kurtz kicked the Gonzaga goon in the side of the head and then again in the ribs. It was like kicking a bowling ball and then trying to punt a three-hundred-pound sack of suet.

Kurtz went out the back door, limping slightly, the.38 still in his right hand.

The alley smelled of hops and urine and, without the glasses, the sunlight was way too bright for Kurtz's eyes. He had to blink to clear his vision and by the time he had, it was too late to do anything else. A huge limousine idled fifty feet away on Delaware Street, its black bulk blocking the alley entrance on that side, while a Lincoln Town Car blocked the opposite end.

Two men in dark topcoats totally inappropriate for such a beautiful October afternoon were aiming semiautomatic pistols at Kurtz's chest.

"Drop it," said the shorter of the two. "Two fingers only. Slow."

Kurtz did what he was told.

"In the car, asshole."

Silently agreeing that he was, indeed, an asshole, Kurtz again did what he was told.

"You're a hard man to track down, Mr. Kurtz."

The limousine, followed by the Lincoln filled with the other bodyguards, had headed west and was within sight of the lake and river now, moving north along the expressway. They had Kurtz in the jump seat near the liquor cabinet, opposite Toma Gonzaga and one of his smarter-looking bodyguards. The bodyguard held Kurtz's.38 loosely in his left hand and kept his own semiauto braced on his knee and aimed at Kurtz's heart A second bodyguard sat along the upholstered bench to Kurtz's right, his arms folded.

When Kurtz said nothing, Gonzaga said, "And odd to find you in a place like Knob Gobbler's."

Kurtz shrugged. "I heard that you were hunting for me. I figured I'd find you there."

The bodyguard next to the don thumbed back the hammer on his gun. Toma Gonzaga shook his head, smiled slightly, and set his left hand lightly on the pistol. Eyes never leaving Kurtz, the glowering bodyguard lowered the hammer.

"You're trying to provoke me, Mr. Kurtz," said Gonzaga. "Although in the current circumstances, I have no idea why. I presume you heard that my father exiled me to Florida eight years ago when he found out I was a homosexual."

"I thought all you guys preferred the term 'gay' these days," said Kurtz.

"No, I prefer 'homosexual, or even 'queer, " said Gonzaga. "'Fag' will do in a pinch."

"Truth in advertising?"

"Something like that. Most of my homosexual acquaintances over the years have been anything but gay people, Mr. Kurtz. In the old meaning of the term, I mean."

Kurtz shrugged. There must be some subject that would interest him less—football, perhaps—but he'd be hard-pressed to find it.

Gonzaga's cell phone buzzed and the man answered it without speaking. While he was listening, Kurtz studied his face. His father—Emilio—had been an outstandingly ugly man, looking like some mad scientist had transplanted the head of a carp onto the body of a bull. Toma, who looked to be in his early forties, had the same barrel chest and short legs, but he was rather handsome in an older-Tony-Curtis sort of way. His lips were full and sensuous like his father's, but looked to be curled more from habits of laughter than the way his father's fat lips had curled with cruelty. Gonzaga's eyes were a light blue and his gray hair was cut short. He wore a stylish and expensive gray suit, with brown shoes so leathery soft that it looked as if you could fold them into your pocket after wearing them.

Gonzaga folded the phone instead and slipped it into his pocket. "You'll be relieved to know that Bernard has regained consciousness, more or less, although you may have broken two or three of his ribs."

"Bernard?" said Kurtz, putting the emphasis on the second syllable the way Gonzaga had. First 'Colin' and now 'Bernard , he thought. What's the underworld coming to? He'd seen them carry the huge bodyguard out of KG's and fold him into the backseat of the accompanying Lincoln.

"Yes," said Gonzaga. "If I were in Bernard's line of work, I'd change my name as well."

"Isn't Toma a girl's name?" said Kurtz. He wasn't sure why he was provoking a man who might already be planning to kill him. Maybe it was the headache.

"A nickname for Tomas."

Just before they reached the International Bridge, the driver swept them right onto the Scajaquada and the limo headed east toward the Kensington, followed by the Lincoln.

"Did you know my father, Mr. Kurtz?"

This is it , thought Kurtz.

"No."

"Did you ever meet him, Mr. Kurtz?"