Hard Freeze

  Joe Kurtz knew that his one strength over the past dozen years—besides patience—was his ability to survive. Beyond the minimal survival skills necessary for spending more than a decade in a maximum security prison without getting raped or shanked or both, Kurtz had avoided the fatwa of the D-Block Mosque gangs when they had come to believe that he had killed a black enforcer named Ali a year before Kurtz's parole. Once back in Buffalo last autumn, Kurtz had gained the enmity of another black gang—the Seneca Street Social Club—who actually believed that he had thrown their leader, a drug-dealing psychopath named Malcolm Kibunte, over Niagara Falls.

  The cops who were tailing him—Brubaker and Myers—believed that Joe Kurtz had shot a crooked homicide detective named Hathaway, even though there was absolutely no evidence for that Kurtz knew that Brubaker's suspicion had been fueled from Attica by Little Skag Farino, whose gratitude for Kurtz having literally saved his ass from Ali was now being shown by the third-rate hit men that Skag was hiring to kill him.

  Kurtz doubted that Brubaker and Myers would try to kill him, but sooner or later they would roust him while he was carrying, which meant jail again, which meant all the current death sentences on Kurtz converging.

  Then there were the Farino and Gonzaga families. You don't strike—much less kill—a made guy without paying for it; it was one of the last enforceable tenets of the weakening Mafia structure. And while Kurtz had not been involved—directly—in the shootings of Don Farino, his daughter, his lawyer, or his bodyguards the previous autumn, that fact would do him little good. Little Skag knew that Kurtz had not killed his family members, since Little Skag had ordered the hits on them himself, but he was also aware that Kurtz had been there during the denouement at the Farino compound. Joe Kurtz knew too much to stay alive.

  Now Angelina Farino Ferrara was trying to use Kurtz to kill Gonzaga. Kurtz hated being used more than almost anything in the world, but in this situation, the woman had leverage over him. He had done his eleven and a half years in Attica for the killing of Sam's murderers with some patience because it had been worth it—Samantha Fielding had been his partner in every way—but now those years were shown to be worthless. If it had been Emilio Gonzaga who put the hit on Sam, then Gonzaga had to die. And die soon, since Gonzaga would be taking over the Farino Family by the end of summer, which would make him all but invulnerable.

  If Angelina really wanted Kurtz dead now, all she had to do was tell Gonzaga. There would be fifty button men on the street in an hour.

  But she had her own agenda and timeline. That's why Kurtz was allowing himself to be used by her. Gonzaga's death would suit both their purposes—but then what? A woman could not become don. Little Skag would still be the heir apparent of what was left of the once-formidable Farino family, although without the Gonzaga judge and parole-board connections, Little Skag might be cooling his heels in maximum security for more years to come.

  Was that Angelina's plan? Just to keep Little Skag in prison while she eliminated her rapist, Emilio Gonzaga, and tried to consolidate some power? If so, it was a dangerous plan, not just because Gonzaga's wrath would be terrible if an assassination failed, but because the other families would intervene eventually—almost certainly at Angelina's expense—and Little Skag had already shown a willingness, actually an eagerness, to whack a sister.

  But if she could blame Gonzaga's murder on this loose cannon, this non-made-guy, this madman Joe Kurtz—This scenario seemed especially workable if Joe Kurtz was dead before Little Skag's killers or the Gonzaga Family or the New York families' people caught up to him.

  Joe Kurtz's strength might be survival, but he was having increasing difficulty in seeing how he could do everything he had to do and still survive this mess.

  And then there was this Frears and James B. Hansen thing. And Donald Rafferty. And Arlene's need for another $35,000 to expand their on-line business.

  Suddenly, Kurtz had a headache.

  * * *

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  « ^ »

  "Did you bring the thirty-five thousand for Wedding Bells dot com?" asked Arlene when Kurtz came in the door.

  It was late morning. Brubaker and Myers had followed him from the Royal Delaware Arms and were out there now—Brubaker in the unmarked car at the end of the alley, watching the back door, Myers on the street in front, watching the entrance to the abandoned video store upstairs.

  "Not yet," Kurtz said. "Did you have Greg bring Alan's old Harley down this morning?"

  Arlene nodded and gestured with her right hand. Cigarette smoke spiraled. "I'm more interested in finding a new office anyway. Do you have time today?"

  "We'll see." Kurtz looked at the stack of files and empty Express Mail packages on his desk.

  "I got them about an hour ago," said Arlene. "The Hansen file from the Frears murder in Chicago, the Atlanta thing that had exactly the same M.O., and the ones from Houston, Jacksonville, Albany, and Columbus, Ohio. The other four haven't arrived yet."

  "You read them?"

  "Looked through."

  "Find anything?"

  "Yes," said Arlene. She batted ashes. "I bet we're the only ones ever to look at all these family murders together. Or any two of them together, for that matter."

  Kurtz shrugged. "Sure. The local cops all saw it as a local nut-case family murder—and they had the killer's corpse in the burned house. Each case open and shut. Why compare it to other cases they don't even know about?"

  Arlene smiled. Kurtz hung up his coat, shifted the holstered .40 S&W on his waistband, and settled in to read.

  Five minutes later he had it.

  "The dentist," he said. Arlene nodded.

  In each of the murder-suicides, identification of the killer's burned body was made through tattoos, jewelry, an old scar in the Atlanta case—but primarily through dental records. In three of the cases—the Chicago Frears/Hansen case, the Atlanta Murchison/Cable murders, and the Albany Whittaker/Sessions killings—the killer's dentist was from Cleveland.

  "Howard K. Conway," said Kurtz.

  Arlene's eyes were bright. "Did you see the dentists' signatures in the other cases?"

  It was Kurtz's turn to nod. Different names. But all from Cleveland. And the handwriting was the same. "Maybe our Dr. Conway is just the dentist to psychopaths around the country. Probably was Ted Bundy's dentist."

  "Uh-huh." Arlene stubbed her cigarette out and came over to Kurtz's desk. "What about the other I.D. factors? The tattoo in the Hansen killings? The scar in the Whittaker case?"

  "My guess is that Hansen finds his replacement for the fire first—some street person or male hooker or something—kills him, stores the body, and then decorates himself accordingly. If they have a tattoo, he sports a fake one. Whatever. It's just a few months."

  "Jesus."

  "I'll need his current—" began Kurtz.

  She handed him a three-by-five card with Dr. Howard K. Conway's business address on it. "I called this morning and tried to make an appointment, but Dr. Conway is semiretired and isn't accepting new patients. A younger man answered the phone and shooed me away. I found listings for Dr. Conway going back to the early fifties, so the guy must be ancient."

  Kurtz was looking at the photographs of the murdered girls. "Why would Hansen leave Conway alive all these years?"

  "I guess it's easier than getting a new dentist all the time. Plus, the dental records are probably all older than whatever identity Hansen—whatever his name is—is using at the time. It'd be weird, something even local cops would notice, if their killer only had dental records a few months old."

  "And it's not weird that someone living in Houston or Albany or Atlanta goes to a Cleveland dentist?"

  Arlene shrugged. "The nut cases all moved from Cleveland in the past year or two. No reason for local homicide cops to red-flag that."

  "No."

  "What are you going to do, Joe?" There was an edge to Arlene's voice that he had rarely heard when he had been a P.I.

 
He looked at her.

  "Come here often?" said Kurtz.

  Angelina Farino Ferrara just sighed. They were working in the weight room today, and the Boys were outside on the treadmills.

  Kurtz and Arlene had chosen the video-store basement for their office because it was cheap and because it had several exits: back door to the alley, stairway door to the now-defunct video store upstairs, and side door to the condemned parking garage next door. The drug dealers who had owned the place when it was a real bookstore had liked all those exits. So did Kurtz. It had come in handy when he'd left half an hour ago.

  Arlene's late husband's Harley had been parked on the dark lower level, just beyond the metal door. Greg had left a helmet on the handlebars and the keys in the ignition. Kurtz had straddled the machine, fired it up, and weaved his way up ramps and out of the basement of the empty parking garage, snaking by the permanent barricade on Market Street that kept cars out. Detective Brubaker presumably still had been on watch on the alley side, and Detective Myers on the street side, but no one was watching the Market Street garage exit. Taking care on the snowy and icy streets, reminding himself that he'd not been on a bike for fifteen years or more, Kurtz had ridden to the health club.

  Now he was doing repetitions on the chest-press machine with two hundred pounds. He had done twenty-three reps when Angelina said, "You're showing off."

  "Absolutely."

  "You can stop now."

  "Thank you." He lowered the bar and left it lowered. Angelina was doing curls with fifteen-pound weights. Her biceps were feminine but well-defined. No one was within earshot. "When do you have lunch with Gonzaga this week?"

  "Tomorrow, Tuesday. Then again on Thursday. Did you bring my property?"

  "No. Tell me the drill when you and the Boys go for lunch." There was a heavy bag and a speed bag in the room, and he put on gloves and began working on the heavy bag.

  Angelina set down the dumbbells and went to a bench to do some pull-ups. "The car takes us to Grand Island—"

  "Your car or Gonzaga's?"

  "His."

  "How many people other than the driver?"

  "One. The Asian stone-killer called Mickey Kee. But the driver's carrying as well."

  "What can, you tell me about Kee?"

  "He's from South Korea. He was trained in their Special Forces—sort of Green Berets by way of SMERSH. I think he got a lot of on-the-job experience assassinating North Korean infiltrators, people the regime didn't like, that sort of thing. He's probably the most efficient killer in New York State right now."

  "When you go to lunch, they pick you up at the Marina Tower?"

  "Yeah."

  "Frisk you there?"

  "No. They take the Boys' guns at the guardhouse. Then they drive us the rest of the way. There's a metal-detector at the entrance to the main house—it's subtle, but it's there—and then I get frisked again by a woman in a private room off the foyer before being allowed into Emilio's presence. I guess they're afraid I'll go at him with a hat pin or something."

  "A hat pin," repeated Kurtz. "You're older than you look."

  Angelina ignored him. "The Boys sit on a couch in the foyer while the Gonzaga goons watch them. The Boys get their guns back when we drive out."

  "Okay," said Kurtz. He concentrated on hitting the big bag for a few minutes. When he looked up, Angelina handed him a towel and a water bottle.

  "You looked like you meant it with the bag," she said.

  Kurtz drank and wiped the sweat from his eyes. "I'm going with you to Gonzaga's place tomorrow."

  Angelina Farino Ferrara's lips went pale. "Tomorrow? You're going to try to kill Emilio tomorrow? With me along? You're fucking crazy."

  Kurtz shook his head. "I just want to go along as one of your bodyguards."

  "Uh-uh." She was shaking her head hard enough to cause sweat to fly. "They only allow two guys to come with me. Marco and Leo, that's been the drill."

  "I know. I'll take the place of one of them."

  Angelina looked over her shoulder to where the Boys were sitting watching television. "Which one?"

  "I don't know. We'll decide later."

  "They'll be suspicious, new guard."

  "That's why I want to go tomorrow. So they'll know me on Thursday."

  "I—" She stopped. "Do you have a plan?"

  "Maybe."

  "Does it involve bulldozers and earthmovers?"

  "Probably not."

  She rubbed her lower lip with her fist. "We need to talk about this. You should come out to the penthouse this evening."

  "Tomorrow morning," Kurtz said. "I'll be out of town this evening."

  "Where the hell is he going?" asked Detective Myers. He and Brubaker had spent a cold and boring and useless afternoon watching Joe Kurtz's car and office, and when the son of a bitch finally emerged and started driving his scratched-up Volvo, the bastard had taken the 190 out to 90-South and seemed headed for the toll booths and the Thruway to Erie, Pennsylvania.

  "How the fuck should I know where he's going?" said Brubaker. "But if he leaves the fucking state, he's in violation of his parole and we've got him." Five minutes later, Brubaker said, "Shit."

  Kurtz had exited onto Highway 219, the last turnoff before the I-90 West Thruway toll booths. It was snowing and getting dark.

  "What's out here?" whined Myers as they followed Kurtz toward the town of Orchard Park. "The Farino Family used to have their headquarters out here, but they moved it to town after that nun sister showed up, didn't they?"

  Brubaker shrugged, although, he knew exactly where the new Farino Family digs were at Marina Towers since he took his weekly payoff from Little Skag via Skag's lawyer, Albert Bell, near there every Tuesday. Brubaker knew that Myers suspected him of being on the Farino payroll but wasn't sure. If Myers was certain, he'd want in himself, and Brubaker didn't like sharing.

  "Why don't we just roust Kurtz tonight?" said Myers. "I got the throwdown if he's not armed."

  Brubaker shook his head. Kurtz had turned right near Chestnut Ridge Park, and it was hard to follow the Volvo in the gloom and snow along these two-lane roads amidst all the construction cones and commuter traffic. "We're out of our jurisdiction here," he said. "His lawyer could call it harassment if we get him out here."

  "Fuck that. We got probable cause."

  Brubaker shook his head again.

  "Then let's just forget this shit," Myers said. "It's a fucking waste of time."

  "Tell that to Jimmy Hathaway," Brubaker said, invoking the name of the cop killed under mysterious circumstances four months earlier. The only link to Kurtz, Brubaker knew, was Little Skag Farino's comment to him that Hathaway—who had been the Farinos' bitch for years—had tapped a phone call and followed Kurtz somewhere on the night of the detective's murder. Hathaway had been eager to earn a bounty on Joe Kurtz's head at the time.

  "Fuck Jimmy Hathaway," said Myers. "I never liked the asshole."

  Brubaker shot a glance at his partner. "Look, if Kurtz leaves the state, we've got him on parole violation."

  Myers pointed two cars ahead of him. "Leave the state? The fucker's not even leaving the county. Look—he just turned back toward Hamburg."

  Brubaker lit a cigarette. It was hard to follow Kurtz now that it was really dark.

  "You want him," said Myers, "let's roust him tomorrow in the city. Use the throwdown. Beat the shit out of him and turn him over to County."

  "Yeah," said Brubaker. "Yeah." He turned back to Highway 219 and the Thruway to Buffalo.

  * * *

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  « ^ »

  When Kurtz was sure that the unmarked car had turned back, he took the back road from Hamburg to the Thruway, accepted a ticket at the toll booth, and drove the two hundred miles to Cleveland.

  Dr. Howard K. Conway's office and home were in an old section not far from the downtown. It was a neighborhood of big old Victorian homes broken into apartments and large Catholic churches, either closed or locked tight ag
ainst the night. As the Italian and Polish residents had been replaced by blacks in the old neighborhoods, the parishes had died or moved to the suburbs. Despite its new stadium and rock-and-roll museum, Cleveland was still, like Buffalo, an old industrial city with rot at its heart.

  If Emilio Gonzaga's compound was a fortress, Conway's home was fortress-lite, circled by a black iron fence, its first-floor windows caged, the old house dark except for a single lighted window on the second floor. The sign outside read Dr. H.K. Conway, DDS. Kurtz unlatched the iron gate—assuming that an alarm was being tripped in the house—and walked to the front door. There was a buzzer and an intercom, and he leaned on the former and moaned in the direction of the latter.

  "What is it?" The voice was young—too young for Conway—and 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 stairway—three 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.