by Dan Simmons
Kurtz collapsed in the back seat of the cab and said, “KG’s. Then we’ll call it a day.”
“No, no, boss, you don’t wanna go to Knob Gobbler’s.”
“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.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
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?”
“No.”
Gonzaga brushed invisible lint off the sharp crease of his gray slacks. “When my father went back to New York for a meeting last winter and was murdered, most of his closest associates here disappeared. It’s difficult to discover what really went on during my father’s last days here.”
Kurtz looked at the bodyguard aiming the Glock-nine at him. The cops had Glocks. Now all the hoods wanted them. They’d turned south on the Kensington and beaded back toward downtown. Whatever was going to happen, it wasn’t going to happen in Toma Gonzaga’s limo.
“Did you ever happen to meet a man named Mickey Kee?” asked Gonzaga.
“No.”
“I wouldn’t think so. Mr. Kee was my father’s toughest…associate. They found him dead at the old, abandoned Buffalo train station two days after the big blizzard you people had here in February. It was eighty-two degrees in Miami that week.”
“Did you drag me in here at gunpoint to give me a weather report?” asked Kurtz.
Toma squinted at him and Kurtz realized that he was skating now on very thin ice indeed. This man may look like Tony Curtis, he thought, but his genes were all from the murderous Gonzaga line.
“I invited you here to make you an offer you won’t want to refuse,” said Gonzaga.
Did he really say that? thought Kurtz. These mafia idiots were tiresome enough without having them get self-referential and ironic on you. Kurtz put on an expression that was supposed to look both receptive and neutral.
“Angelina talked to you today about the problem with some people of hers in the drug supply and consumer side of things disappearing,” said Toma Gonzaga.
Angelina? thought Kurtz. He wasn’t surprised that the gay don knew that Angelina Farino Ferrara had offered him the job—Gonzaga could have people following her, or maybe the two just talked after the offer—but Kurtz couldn’t believe the two Buffalo dons were on a first-name basis. Angelina? And she had called him “Toma.” Very hard to believe—seven months earlier, Angelina Farino Ferrara was doing everything within her power—including the hiring of Joe Kurtz—to get Toma Gonzaga’s father whacked.
“Didn’t she offer you the job of tracking down the killer?” pressed Gonzaga. “She and I had discussed the idea of her talking to you about this situation.”
Kurtz blinked. The concussion was making him fuzz out. “She didn’t say anything about drugs,” he said, trying to stay noncommittal.
“She told you that the Farino group has lost five people to some crazy person killing them?” said Toma Gonzaga, raising the inflection on the last word just enough to suggest a question.
“She said something about that,” said Kurtz. “She didn’t give me any details.” Yet. He wondered if her blowdried bodyguard had dropped off the information with Arlene yet. And you’d be my first suspect if I take this job, thought Kurtz, staring Gonzaga in the eye.
“Well, we’ve lost seventeen people in the last three weeks,” said the don.
Kurtz blinked at this. Even blinking hurt. “Seventeen of your people killed in three weeks?” he said skeptically.
“Not my people,” said Gonzaga. “And the people Angelina lost aren’t really her people. Not employees. Not directly.”
Kurtz didn’t understand any of this, so he waited.
“They’re the street dealers and users we associate with to move the heavy drugs,” said Gonzaga. “Heroin, to be precise.”
Kurtz was surprised to hear that the Farinos were moving skag now. It had been the one source of profit that the old don, Byron Farino, had forbidden for his family. His oldest son, David, had wrapped his Ferrari around a tree and killed himself while on coke, and the don had shut down what little drug trade the Farinos had cornered. It had always been Emilio Gonzaga who’d controlled serious drugs in Western New York.
“I’ve been out of town the last few days,” said Kurtz, not believing any of this, “but I would have heard on the national news about twenty-two drug-related murders.”
“The cops and press haven’t heard about any of them.”
“How can that be?” said Kurtz.
“Because the nut-job who whacks them calls us—mostly me, but Angelina twice—to tell us where the murders have taken place. We’ve been cleaning up after this guy for almost a month.”
“I don’t get it,” said Kurtz. “Why would you help him hide the murders? You’re telling me that you didn’t kill them.”
“Of course we didn’t kill them, you idiot,” snarled Gonzaga. “They’re our customers and street-level dealers.”
“Which is why you’re doing clean-up,” said Kurtz. “So the other heroin addicts still able to drive or hold a job don’t get wind of this and run down to Cleveland or somewhere to score.”
“Yes. The fact that all our street middlemen and dealers are getting murdered wouldn’t make these junkies drop their habit—they can’t—but it might put them off buying from us. Especially when this psychopath leaves signs behind saying things like ‘Score from Gonzaga and die.’”
“He calls you?” mused Kurtz.
“Yes, but we can’t tell much about him through that. Voice is all distorted through one of those phone clip-on devices. Probably a white man—he doesn’t say ‘axe’ instead of ‘ask’ or any of that, or use ‘motherfucker’ or ‘you know’ every third word—but we can’t identify the voice, or even his age.”
“Have you tried tracing…”
“Of course we’ve tried tracing his calls. I had the Buffalo P.D. do it for me—the Family’s still got men and women on the arm down there—but this psycho has some way of routing calls through the phone system. My people never get to the pay phone in time.”
“Then you go…what do you do with the bodies of his victims?” asked Kurtz. He tried not to laugh. “I guess you have your favorite out of the way places for such things. Whole Forest Lawns out there in the woods.”
Gonzaga was not amused. “There aren’t any bodies.”
“What?”
“You heard me. We go and mop up the blood and brains and we plaster over the bullet holes when we have to, but this killer doesn’t leave any bodies. He takes them with him.”
Kurtz thought about that a minute. It made his head hurt worse. He rubbed his temples. “I already have a client who hired me related to this mess,” said Kurtz. “I can’t take a second one.”
“You’re talking like a P.I.,” said Gonzaga. “You’re not an investigator anymore, Mr. Kurtz. I’m just offering you a private deal, one civilian to another.”
The limo came down off the expressway and rolled into the downtown again.
“Angelina’s going to pay you ten g’s for finding this guy…”
“Fifteen,” said Kurtz. He didn’t usually volunteer information, but his head hurt and he was tired of this conversation. He closed his eyes for a second.
“All right,” said Gonzaga. “My offer’s better. Today’s Thursday. Next Monday’s Halloween. You tell us who this asshole is by midnight next Monday, I’ll pay you one hundred thousand dollars and I’ll let you live.”
Kurtz opened his eyes. It took only one look into Toma Gonzaga’s eyes to know that the gay don was completely serious. Kurtz realized that whether this man knew that he had been involved in the events that led to Gonzaga’s father’s death or not, didn’t matter. History meant nothing now. Kurtz had just heard his death sentence.
Unless he found the man who was murdering heroin users and dealers.
“One thing,” said Gonzaga, smiling slightly as if remembering some amusing detail. “I should tell you that this psychopath hasn’t just been whacking the dealers and users—he goes to their homes and shoots their entire families. Kids. Mothers-in-law. Visiting aunts.”
“Twenty-two murdered and missing people,” said Kurtz.
“Murdered people, bodies missing, but the people aren’t really missed,” said Toma Gonzaga
. “These are all junkies or dealers. Heroin addicts and their families. No one’s been reported missing yet.”
“But they will be soon,” said Kurtz. “You can’t keep the lid on twenty-two murdered people.”
“Of course,” said Gonzaga. “Bobby.” He nodded toward the bodyguard on the side bench.
Bobby handed Kurtz a slim leather portfolio.
“Here’s what we know, the names of those who’ve been murdered, dates, addresses, everything we have,” said Gonzaga.
“I don’t want this job,” said Kurtz. “This crap has nothing to do with me.” He tried to hand the portfolio back, but the bodyguard folded his arms.
“It has a lot to do with you now,” said Gonzaga. “Or it will at midnight on Monday—that’s Halloween, I believe—especially if you don’t find this man.”
Kurtz said nothing.
Gonzaga handed him a cell phone. “This is how you get in touch with us. Hit the only stored number. Somebody’ll answer night or day and I’ll call you back within twenty minutes.”
Kurtz slipped the phone in his pocket and pointed toward the bodyguard who was holding his .38. The bodyguard looked to Gonzaga, who nodded. The man dumped the cartridges out onto his palm and handed the empty weapon to Kurtz.
“Can we drop you somewhere?” asked Toma Gonzaga.
Kurtz peered out through the tinted windows. They were near the Hyatt and the Convention Center, within a block of the office building where Brian Kennedy had his security company’s Buffalo headquarters.
“Here,” said Kurtz.
When he was standing on the curb by the open door, Toma Gonzaga said, “One more thing, Mr. Kurtz.”
