by Dan Simmons
He'd been lucky with the child-abuse/molestation rap. Rafferty had indignantly denied everything to the cops when they interviewed him, pointed out that his adopted daughter Rachel was a typical teenager—hard to handle, given to lying and blaming others for her problems—and that he'd done nothing but go down to the bus station late that night to retrieve her after she'd run away. He was afraid, he told the cops, that she was doing drugs. They'd had a fight—Rachel hated the idea of Rafferty remarrying, even though her real mother had been dead for more than twelve years—and she was still angry at him in the car when he'd hit the black ice and the car had spun off the Kensington.
Yes, Rafferty admitted to the cops, since they had the blood-alcohol test results anyway, he'd been drinking that evening at home—hell, he was worried sick about Rachel, why wouldn't he have a few drinks at home—but what was he supposed to do when she called from the bus station at 2:30 a.m., leave her there? No, the drinking didn't cause the accident—the goddamned snowstorm and black ice had.
Luckily, when Rachel regained consciousness in the ICU, the cops had interviewed her and she'd retracted the story about Rafferty trying to rape her. She seemed confused to the police, probably because of the anesthesia and pain from the surgery. But she'd taken back the accusations she'd made to the paramedics as the firemen were cutting her out of the wreckage of the Honda.
Rafferty felt vindicated. Shit, he'd not come anywhere close to raping her. It was just that the girl was wearing pajamas two sizes too small when she came down to the kitchen to get some cake, Rafferty had been drinking all evening and was frustrated that DeeDee couldn't see him for the next couple of weekends, and he'd made the slight mistake of coming up behind Rachel as she stood at the counter and running his hands over her budding breasts, down her stomach and thighs.
Waiting in the hospital lounge for his taxi to arrive, Rafferty felt himself stir at that memory, even through the pain and the painkillers. He was sorry the brat had screamed and rushed to her room, locking the door and then going out the window and down the garage trellis while he stood like a dork in the hallway, threatening to kick the door down if she didn't come to her senses. She'd taken the last bus from Lockport into the city station, but then realized she didn't have the money to get out of Buffalo. Sobbing, cold—she'd only had time to grab a sweatshirt—she'd finally called Rafferty. This also made him smile. The girl had no one else to go to, which was probably why she'd recanted on her accusations. If she was going to go home at all, she'd have to go home to Donald Rafferty.
Normally, Rafferty would face the driving-under-the-influence charges and take his lumps, but when one of the nurses—not that bitch Gail Whatever, who kept looking in on Rachel and staring at Rafferty like he was some sort of amphibian, but that pretty nurse—had said that Rafferty's brother had stopped in to see him the morning after the accident, his blood had literally run cold. Donald Rafferty's brother was serving time in an Indiana prison. From the nurse's description, this man sounded like Joe Kurtz.
It was time to leave town for a while.
He'd called DeeDee in Hamilton, Ontario, telling her to get her cellulite ass down here to pick him up, but she couldn't get off work until after five and she griped about the storm coming in off the lake, so there was no way that Rafferty was going to wait for her. He'd had the nurse call him a cab and he was going to get to Lockport, pack the things he needed—including the .357 Magnum he'd bought after that asshole Kurtz threatened him—and then he was going to take a little vacation. Rafferty was sorry that Rachel had gotten hurt—he didn't mean the kid harm—but if she did have a setback and failed to pull through, well, hell, that was one way to be sure that she wouldn't change her mind and rat him out to the authorities again. All he'd wanted was a little feel, a touch, maybe a blow job from the kid; it wasn't like he was going to take her virginity from her or anything. She had to grow up sooner or later. Or maybe not.
An orderly came into the lounge and said, "Your cab is here, Mr. Rafferty."
He tried to stand but the nurse he didn't like shook her head and he settled back into the wheelchair. "Hospital policy," she said, wheeling him out under the overhang. Big deal, hospital policy, thought Rafferty. They make sure you stay in the wheelchair until you're out of the building and then you're on your own. You can go home and die that day as far as they're concerned. Tough titty.
The cabdriver didn't even get out to open the door or to help Rafferty into the back seat. Typical. The ugly nurse steadied him with one hand while Rafferty struggled out of the wheelchair, his injured wrist hurting like hell and his head spinning. The concussion was worse than he'd thought. He collapsed into the seat and took some deep breaths. When he turned around to tell the nurse that he was okay, she'd already turned away and pushed the chair back into the hospital. Bitch.
For a second, Rafferty considered telling the driver to drop him off at one of his favorite bars, maybe the one on Broadway. A few drinks would probably help more than these wimpy Tylenol Threes they'd grudgingly given him. But then Rafferty thought better of it. First, it was snowing like a bastard, and if he waited too long, the goddamn roads would be closed. Second, he wanted to get his stuff and be ready when DeeDee got there. No time to waste.
"Lockport," he told the driver. "Locust Street. I'll tell you which house to stop at."
The driver nodded, hit the meter, and pulled away into the falling snow.
Rafferty rubbed his temples and closed his eyes for a minute. When he opened them, the taxi had pulled onto the Kensington but was going in the wrong damned direction, toward the downtown instead of east and then north. Fucking idiot, Rafferty thought through his headache. He rapped on the bulletproof glass and slid the open partition wider.
The driver turned. "Hello, Donnie," said Kurtz.
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
« ^ »
Hansen was driving to the Royal Delaware Arms to plant the .38 in Kurtz's room when his cell phone rang. He considered not answering it—the life of Captain Robert Millworth was effectively at an end—but decided that he'd better respond; he didn't want people at the precinct to notice his absence for at least twenty-four hours.
"Hansen?" said a man's voice. "James B. Hansen?"
Hansen was silent but he had to pull the Escalade to the side of the road. It was Joe Kurtz's voice. It had to be.
"Millworth then?" said the voice. The man went on to name a half dozen of Hansen's other former personae.
"Kurtz?" Hansen said at last. "What do you want?"
"It's not what I want, it's what you might want."
The shakedown, thought Hansen. All this has been leading up to the shakedown. "I'm listening."
"I thought you might. I have your briefcase. Interesting stuff. I thought you might like it back."
"How much?"
"Half a million dollars," said Kurtz. "Cash, of course."
"Why do you think I have that much cash around?"
"I think the two hundred K I liberated from your safe today was just the tip of the iceberg, Mr. Hansen," said Kurtz. "A lot of the people you've been posing as earned a lot of money—a stockbroker, a Miami realtor, a plastic surgeon, for Christ's sake. You have it."
Hansen had to smile. He'd hated the thought of leaving Kurtz and Frears behind him, alive. "Let's meet. I have a hundred thousand in cash with me right now."
"So long, Mr. Hansen."
"Wait!" said Hansen. The silence on the line showed that Kurtz was still there. "I want Frears," said Hansen.
The silence stretched. "That would cost another two hundred thousand," Kurtz said at last.
"All I can get in cash is three hundred thousand."
Kurtz chuckled. It was not a pleasant sound. "What the hell. Why not? All right, Hansen. Meet me at the abandoned Buffalo train station at midnight."
"Midnight's too late—" started Hansen, but Kurtz had disconnected.
Hansen sat for a minute by the curb, watching the Escalade's wipers bat a
way the falling snow, trying to think of nothing, allowing the neutral Zen state to fill his mind. It was impossible to clear this noise, these events—they kept falling on him like the snow. Hansen had not played tournament chess for years, but that part of his mind was fully engaged. Frears and Kurtz—he had to think of them as a unit, partners, a single opponent with two faces—had made this chess game interesting, and now Hansen had the option of walking away and always remembering the pieces frozen in mid-play, or the option of clearing the chessboard with his forearm, or of beating them at their own game.
So far, the Frears-Kurtz team had been on the attack even when Hansen had thought he was playing offense. Somehow, they had stumbled upon his current identity—probably John Wellington Frears's contribution to the game—and their moves after that had been predictable enough. The robbery of his home to obtain the evidence had been shocking, though obvious enough in retrospect. But they had not yet gone to the police. This meant one of three endgames had to be in play—A) Frears-Kurtz wanted to kill him; B) Kurtz was actually double-crossing his partner to carry out the blackmail and might actually tell Hansen of Frears's whereabouts if he was paid; or C) Frears-Kurtz wanted him dead and wanted the blackmail money.
From what Hansen remembered of John Wellington Frears, the black man was too civilized for his own good. Even twenty years of stewing about his daughter's death probably had not prepared Frears for murder; he would always opt for turning Hansen in to the proper authorities. Hansen also remembered that the violinist had used the phrase "proper authorities" frequently back during their political discussions at the University of Chicago.
So that left Kurtz. The ex-convict must be running the show now, overriding Frears's protests. Perhaps Kurtz had made contact with the Farinos for help. But James B. Hansen knew how limited the Farino Family clout was in this new century—almost nonexistent with the old don dead, the core of the Family scattered, and the drug addict Little Skag locked up in Attica. There were intelligence reports of a few new people being recruited for the Farinos, but they were middle-management people: numbers runners, a few bodyguards, accountants—no real muscle to speak of. Which left only the Gonzagas as a power in Buffalo.
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.
