"What is it?" The voice was youngtoo young for Conwayand
harsh.
"I 'ave a 'oothache," moaned Kurtz. "I 'eed a 'entis'."
"What?"
"I 'ave a 'errible 'oothache."
"Fuck off." The intercom went dead.
Kurtz leaned on the buzzer.
"What?"
"I 'ave a 'errible 'oothache," moaned Kurtz, louder now, audibly whining.
"Dr. Conway doesn't see patients." The intercom clicked off.
Kurtz hit the buzzer button eight times and then leaned his weight on it.
There came a thudding on bare stairs and the door jerked open to the length of a chain. The man standing there was so large that he blocked the light coming down the stairwaythree hundred pounds at least, young, perhaps in his twenties, with cupid lips and curly hair. "Are you fucking deaf? I said Dr. Conway doesn't see patients. He's retired. Fuck off."
Kurtz held his jaw, keeping his head lowered so that his face was in shadow. "I 'eed to see a dentist. It 'urts."
The big man started to close the door. Kurtz got his boot in the opening. "P'ease."
"You fucking asked for this, pal," said the big man, jerking the chain off, flinging the door open, and reaching for Kurtz's collar.
Kurtz kicked him in the balls, took the big man's offered right hand, swung it around behind him, and broke his little finger. When the man screamed, Kurtz transferred his grip to his index finger and bent it far back, keeping the hand and arm pinned somewhere around where the big man's shoulder blades were buried under fat. "Let's go upstairs," Kurtz whispered, stepping into a foyer that smelled of cabbage. He kicked the door shut behind them and wheeled the man around, helping him up the first stairs by applying leverage to his finger.
"Timmy?" called a quavery voice from the second floor. "Is everything all right? Timmy?"
Kurtz looked at the blubbering, weeping mass of stumbling flesh ascending the stairs ahead of him. Timmy?
The second-floor landing opened onto a lighted parlor where an old man sat in a wheelchair. The man was bald and liver-spotted, his wasted legs were covered by a lap robe, and he was holding some sort of blue steel.32-caliber revolver.
"Timmy?" quavered the old man. He squinted at them through pop-bottle-thick lenses set in old-fashioned black frames.
Kurtz kept Timmy's mass between him and the muzzle of the.32.
"I'm sorry, Howard," Timmy gasped. "He surprised me. He ahhhhh!" The last syllable erupted as Kurtz bent Timmy's finger back beyond design tolerances.
"Dr. Conway," said Kurtz, "we need to talk."
The old man thumbed the hammer back. "You're police?"
Kurtz thought that question was too stupid to dignify with an answer. Timmy was trying to lean far forward to reduce the pain in his arm and finger, so Kurtz had to knee him in his fat buttocks to get him upright in shield position again.
"You're from him ?" said the old man, voice shaking almost as much as the gun's muzzle.
"Yes," said Kurtz. "James B. Hansen."
As if these were the magic words, Dr. Howard K. Conway squeezed the trigger of the.32 once, twice, three, four times. The reports sounded loud and flat in the wood-floored room. Suddenly the air smelled of cordite. The dentist stared at the pistol as if it had fired of its own volition.
"Aww, shit," Timmy said in a disappointed voice and pitched forward, his forehead hitting the hardwood floor with a hollow sound.
Kurtz moved fast, diving around Timmy, rolling once, and coming up fast to knock the pistol from Conway's hand before the crippled dentist could empty chambers five and six. He grabbed the old man by his flannel shirt-front and lifted him out of the chair, shaking him twice to make sure there were no more weapons hidden under the slipping lap robe.
French doors opened onto a narrow balcony at the far end of the room. Booting the wheelchair aside, Kurtz carried the struggling scarecrow across the room, kicked those doors open, and dangled the old man over the icy iron railing. Dr. Conway's glasses went flying into the night.
"Don't don't don't don't." The dentist's mantra had lost its quaver.
"Tell me about Hansen."
"What I don't know any good Christ, don't. Please don't!"
With one hand, Kurtz had literally tossed the old man backward and caught him by the shirtfront. Flannel ripped.
Dr. Howard K. Conway's dentures had come loose and were clacking around in his mouth. If the old piece of shit hadn't been a silent accomplice to a dozen or more children's murders, Joe Kurtz might have felt a little bit sorry for him. Maybe.
"My hands are cold," whispered Kurtz. "I might miss my grip next time." He shoved the dentist back over the railing.
"Anything anything! I have money. I have lots of money!"
"James B. Hansen."
Conway nodded wildly.
"Other names," hissed Kurtz. "Records. Files."
"In my study. In the safe."
"Combination."
"Left thirty-two, right nineteen, left eleven, right forty-six. Please let me go. No! Not over the drop!"
Kurtz slammed the old man's bony and presumably unfeeling ass down hard on the railing. "Why didn't you tell someone, Conway? All these years. All those dead women and kids. Why didn't you tell someone?"