Joe Kurtz Omnibus

by Dan Simmons

  Kurtz had demanded half a million dollars, with a bonus for Frears, which was certainly enough to get the Farinos involved on spec, but Hansen suspected that Kurtz was too greedy to spread the money out. Perhaps this Farino daughter, Angelina, was giving Kurtz some logistical support without knowing the whole situation. That seemed probable.

  I could leave now, thought Hansen, his thoughts tuned to the metronomic pulse of the windshield wipers. Plant this .38, make an anonymous 911 call fingering the murderer of the old lady in Cheektowaga, and leave now. This would be the forearm-clearing-the-chess-pieces answer to the dilemma and it had a certain elegance to it. But who does this Kurtz think he is? was the immediate follow-on thought. By attempting blackmail, Kurtz had raised the game to a new and more personal level. If Hansen did not play out the rest of the game, he would be tipping his own king in defeat. That weakling Frears and this sociopath of an ex-convict would have beaten James B. Hansen at his own game.

  Not fucking likely, thought Hansen, immediately offering a prayer of apology to his Savior.

  Hansen turned the Cadillac SUV west and got on the expressway, heading north along the river.

  Kurtz had driven to the empty alley near Allen Street, parked the taxi next to the Lincoln, transferred Rafferty to the trunk of the Town Car and the bound, gagged and blindfolded cabdriver from the Lincoln to the taxi, then called Hansen while driving back to the Farino penthouse. Something about actually hearing James B. Hansen’s smooth, oily voice had made Kurtz’s head pulse with migraine pain.

  Back at Marina Towers, he left Rafferty in the trunk and took the elevator up. Everyone was chowing down on lunch and Kurtz joined them. Angelina Farino Ferrara had told her cook, servants, and the eleventh-floor accountants to take the day off—don’t try to get in through the storm, she’d said—so the motley crew in the penthouse had thrown together a big meal of chili, John Frears’s recipe, and various types of cheese, good French bread and taco chips and hot coffee. Angelina offered wine, but no one was in the mood for it. Kurtz was in the mood for several glasses of scotch, but he decided to forgo it until the day’s errands were all run.

  After the lunch, he stepped onto the icy and windblown west balcony to clear his head. A few minutes later, Arlene joined him, lighting one of her Marlboros.

  “Can you believe it, Joe? She’s a Mafia don’s daughter but she doesn’t allow smoking in her apartment. What’s La Cosa Nostra coming to?”

  Kurtz didn’t answer. The sky to the northwest was as black as a curtain of night sliding toward the city. The lights along the marina and the walkways below had already come on.

  “Rafferty?” said Arlene.

  Kurtz nodded.

  “Can we talk about Rachel for a minute, Joe?”

  Kurtz neither answered nor looked at her.

  “Gail says that she’s showing some improvement today. They’re keeping her sedated much of the time and watching for infection in her remaining kidney. Even if there is drastic improvement, it will be several weeks—maybe a month and a half—before she can leave the hospital. And she’ll need special care at home.”

  Kurtz looked at her now. “Yeah? And?”

  “I know you won’t let Rachel become a ward of the state, Joe.”

  He didn’t have to say anything to show his agreement with that.

  “And I know how you go straight at things. Like this Hansen situation. You’ve always gone straight at things. But maybe in this case you should consider taking the long way.”

  “How?” Tiny pellets of ice were pelting his face.

  “I shouldn’t be Rachel’s guardian… I’ve had my child, raised him as best I could, mourned his death. But Gail has always wanted a child. It’s one of the main reasons she and Charlie broke up…that and the fact that Charlie was a total asshole.”

  “Gail…adopt Rachel?” Kurtz’s voice was edged.

  “It wouldn’t have to be a full-scale adoption,” said Arlene. “Rachel is fourteen. She’ll just need a court-appointed guardian until she turns eighteen. That would be perfect for Gail.”

  “Gail is single.”

  “That’s not so important for a guardian. Plus, Gail has friends in social services and Niagara Frontier Adoption Option, and she knows several of the child-care legal people. She’s been an excellent nurse—remember, her specialty is pediatric surgery—and she has tons of time off coming to her.”

  Kurtz looked back at the approaching storm.

  “You could spend time with her, Joe. With Rachel. Get to know her. Let her get to know you. Someday you could tell her—”

  Kurtz looked at her. Arlene stopped, took a drag on her cigarette, and looked up to meet his gaze. “Tell me you’ll think about it, Joe.”

  He went back through the sliding doors into the penthouse.

  Hansen crossed the bridge to Grand Island and drove to Emilio Gonzaga’s compound. The guards at the gatehouse looked astonished when he showed his badge and said that he was there to see Mr. Gonzaga, but they conferred with the main house via portable radios, searched him carefully to make sure he was not wearing a wire, appropriated his service Glock-9—Hansen had stowed the .38 under the passenger seat—transferred him to a black Chevy Suburban, and drove him up to the main house, where he was searched again and left to wait in a huge library in which the hundreds of leather-bound books looked as if they had never been opened. Two bodyguards, one an Asian man with absolutely no expression on his smooth face, stood against the far wall with their hands at their sides.

  When Gonzaga came in, smoking a Cuban cigar, Hansen was struck by how truly ugly the middle-aged don was. The man looked like a toad that had been molded into human form, with an Edward G. Robinson mouth minus the touch of humor.

  “Captain Millworth.”

  “Mr. Gonzaga.”

  Neither man offered to shake hands. Gonzaga remained standing; Hansen remained sitting. They looked at one another.

  “You want something, Detective?”

  “I need to talk to you, Don Gonzaga.”

  The tall, ugly man made a gesture with his cigar.

  “You paid my predecessor,” said Hansen. “You sent me a check last December. I sent it to charity. I don’t need your money.”

  Gonzaga lifted one heavy black eyebrow. “You come out here in a fucking blizzard to tell me that?”

  “I came out here in a blizzard to tell you that I need something more important and that I can give you something very important.”

  Gonzaga waited. Hansen glanced at the bodyguards. Gonzaga shrugged and did not tell them to leave.

  James B. Hansen removed a photograph of Joe Kurtz that he’d pulled from the felon’s file. “I need to have this man killed. Or to be more specific, I need help in killing him.”

  Gonzaga smiled. “Millworth, if you are wearing a wire which somehow my boys did not discover, I shall kill you myself.”

  Hansen shrugged. “They searched me twice. I’m not wearing a wire. And if I were, what I said is a felony by itself—suborning you to be an accomplice to murder.”

  “And entrapment also in addition,” said Gonzaga. The way the man spoke made Hansen think that human language was not the don’s native tongue.

  “Yes,” said Hansen.

  “And what is it that I would receive in exchange for this hypothetical quid-pro-quo service, Detective Millworth?”

  “It’s Captain Millworth,” said Hansen. “Of Homicide. And what you will receive is years of a service that you could not otherwise buy.”

  “Which would be?” said Gonzaga, implying that he’d already bought every service the Buffalo Police Department had to offer.

  “Impunity,” said Hansen.

  “Im—what?” Emilio Gonzaga removing a long cigar from his mouth made Hansen think of a frog wrestling with a turd.

  “Impunity, Don Gonzaga. Freedom not only of prosecution when murders are required of you, but freedom even from serious investigation. A get-out-of-jail card with no jail attached. Not only as far as Homi
cide is concerned, but Vice, Narcotics…all of the departments.”

  Gonzaga relit the cigar and furrowed his brow. He was an ostentatious thinker, Hansen could see. Finally Hansen saw the lightbulb over the toad’s head as Gonzaga realized what he was being offered.

  “One-stop shopping,” said the don.

  “I will be a veritable Wal-Mart,” agreed Hansen.

  “So you’re so fucking sure that you’re going to be chief of police?”

  “Indubitably,” said Hansen and then, as the toad-man’s brow furrowed again, “Without doubt, sir. In the meantime, I can make sure that no homicide investigation even turns in your direction.”

  “In exchange for whacking one guy?”

  “In exchange for simply helping me whack one guy.”

  “When?”

  “I’m supposed to meet him at the old train station at midnight That means he’ll probably be there by ten o’clock.”

  “This guy,” said Gonzaga, looking at the photograph again. “He looks fucking familiar but I can’t place him. Mickey.”

  The Asian glided over from the wall.

  “You know this guy, Mickey?”

  “That’s Howard Conway.” The man’s voice was smooth as his gait, very quiet, but the words made Hansen’s head spin, and for the second time that day he saw black spots dancing in his vision.

  Kurtz has been playing with me. If he knows Howard’s name, then Howard is dead. But why tell Gonzaga? Have they foreseen this move as well?

  “Yeah,” said Gonzaga, “Angie Farino’s new fucking bodyguard.” He flapped the photo at Hansen. “What’s going on here? Why are you after this Raiford jailbird?”

  “He’s not a Raiford ex-con,” Hansen said smoothly, blinking away the dancing spots while trying not to look distressed. “He’s an Attica ex-con named Kurtz.”

  The don looked at the Asian. “Kurtz. Kurtz. Where’ve we heard that name, Mickey?”

  “Before Leo, our guy in their camp, disappeared, he said that Little Skag was putting out some nickels and dimes to whack an ex-P.I. named Kurtz,” said Mickey Kee, showing no special deference to Gonzaga.

  Gonzaga’s brow furrowed more deeply. “Why would Angie hire some guy that her brother’s trying to whack?”

  “She has her own agenda,” said Hansen. “And my bet is that it doesn’t include you in the picture, Mr. Gonzaga.”

  “How many men you want?” grunted Gonzaga.

  “I don’t care how many,” said Hansen. “The fewer the better. I just want them to be the best. I need a guarantee that Kurtz—and anyone he brings with him—won’t leave that train station alive. Are any of your men so good that you can give me that guarantee?”

  Emilio Gonzaga smiled broadly, showing great horses’ teeth like yellowed ivory. “Mickey?” he said.

  Mickey Kee did not smile. But he nodded.

  “Kurtz said midnight but he’ll get there early,” Hansen said to Mickey Kee. “I’m going to be there at eight with two men. It’ll be dark in that old station. Make sure you don’t mistake us for Kurtz. Can you get there through this storm?”

  Emilio Gonzaga removed his cigar and gave a phlegmy laugh. “Mickey owns a fucking Hummer.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-TWO

  The afternoon and early evening in Marina Towers had a strangely sweet, almost elegiac calm to it.

  Pruno had taught Joe Kurtz the word “elegiac” during their long correspondence while Kurtz was in Attica. Before Kurtz had gone behind bars, Pruno had given him a list of two hundred books he should read to begin his education. Kurtz had read them all, beginning with The Iliad and ending with Das Kapital. He had to admit that he’d enjoyed Shakespeare the most, spending weeks on each play. Kurtz had a hunch that before the night was over, the Buffalo train station might look like the last act of Titus Andronicus.

  After the chili lunch, Frears had gone to one end of the big penthouse living room to tune his violin and it was Arlene who asked him to play. Frears had only smiled and shaken his head, but Angelina had joined in the request. Then—surprisingly—so had Marco, and even Kurtz had looked up from his brooding by the window.

  While everyone sat around on sectionals and bar stools, John Wellington Frears had walked to the center of the room, removed a linen handkerchief from his suit pocket and draped it on the chin rest of the impossibly expensive violin, stood almost on his tiptoes with bow poised, and had begun playing.

  To Kurtz’s surprise, it was not classical. Frears played the main theme from Schindler’s List, the long, plaintive passages holding notes that seemed to die with a sigh, the dying-away parts echoing against the cold glass windows like the half-heard cries of children in the trains being pulled to Auschwitz. When he was done, no one applauded, no one moved. The only sound was the snow pelting against the glass and Arlene’s soft snuffling.

  Frears took Hansen’s titanium briefcase with its photographs and went into the library. Angelina poured herself a tall scotch. Kurtz went back to the window to watch the storm and the growing darkness.

  He met with Angelina in her private office at the northwest corner of the penthouse.

  “What’s happening tonight, Kurtz?”

  He held up one hand. “I’ve given Hansen blackmail demands. We’re supposed to meet at midnight. I suspect he’ll be there early.”

  “You going to take the money if he brings it?”

  “He won’t bring it.”

  “So you’re going to kill him.”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Angelina raised a dark eyebrow at that. Kurtz came over and sat on the edge of her modern rosewood desk. “I’ll ask you again, what are your goals? What have you been trying to get out of all this bullshit?”

  She studied him for a minute. “You know what I wanted.”

  “Gonzaga dead,” said Kurtz. “Your brother…neutralized. But what else?”

  “I’d like to rebuild the family someday, but along different lines. In the meantime, I’d like to be the best thief in the state of New York.”

  “And you have to be left alone to do both those things.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if I help you get those things, are you going to leave me the fuck alone?”

  Angelina Farino Ferrara hesitated only a second. “Yes.”

  “Did you print out that list I asked for?” said Kurtz.

  Angelina opened a drawer and produced three sheets of paper stapled together. Each page held columns of names and dollar amounts. “We can’t use this for anything,” she said. “If I were to release it, the Five Families would have me killed within the week. If you release it, you’ll be dead within a day.”

  “You’re not going to release it and neither am I,” said Kurtz. He told her the last version of his plans.

  “Jesus,” whispered Angelina. “What do you need tonight?”

  “Transportation. And do you have two walkie-talkie-type radios? The kind with earphones? They’re not necessary, but could be useful.”

  “Sure,” said Angelina. “But they’re only good within a range of a mile or so.”

  “That’ll work.”

  “Anything else?”

  “That pair of handcuffs you used on Marco.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Marco. I have some heavy lifting to do.”

  “Are you going to arm him?”

  Kurtz shook his head. “He can bring a knife if he wants to. I’m not asking him to get mixed up in a gun-fight, so he doesn’t need to come heavy. There’ll probably be enough guns there in the dark anyway.”

  “What else?”

  “Long underwear,” said Kurtz. “Thermal long Johns if you’ve got them.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Kurtz shook his head. “It may be a long wait and it’s going to be cold as a witch’s teat in there.”

  He went into the library, where John Wellington Frears was sitting in an Eames chair, the briefcase open on the ottoman, photographs of dead children reflecting l
ight from the soft halogen spotlight above. Kurtz assumed that Frears’s daughter Crystal was one of the corpses on display, but he did not look and he did not ask.

  “Can I talk to you a minute?” said Kurtz.

  Frears nodded. Kurtz took a seat in a second leather Eames chair across from the violinist.

  “I need to talk to you about what’s going to happen next with Hansen,” said Kurtz, “but first I have a personal question.”

  “Go ahead, Mr. Kurtz.”

  “I’ve seen your files. All of your files. Arlene pulled information off the Net that’s usually kept confidential.”

  “Ah,” said Frears, “the cancer. You want to know about the cancer.”

  “No. I’m curious about the two tours in Vietnam back in nineteen sixty-eight.”

  Frears blinked at this and then smiled. “Why on earth are you curious about that, Mr. Kurtz? There was a war on. I was a young man. Hundreds of thousands of young men served.”

  “Hundreds of thousands of guys were drafted. You volunteered for the army, were trained as an engineer, specialized in disarming booby traps over there. Why for Christ’s sake?”

  Frears was still smiling slightly. “Why did I specialize in that area?”

  “No. Why volunteer at all? You’d already gone to Princeton for a couple of years, graduated from Juilliard. You had a high draft number, I checked. You didn’t have to go at all. And you volunteered. You risked your life.”

  “And my hands,” said Frears, holding those hands in the beam of light from the halogen spot. “Which were much more important to me than my life in those days.”

  “Why did you go?”

  Frears scratched his short, curly beard. “If I try to explain, Mr. Kurtz, I do so at the real risk of boring you.”