Hard Freeze

  "I want that pistol back as well," she said.

  "Why? Did you shoot your second husband with it?"

  Angelina let out a breath. Comedians. They all thought they were comedians. "I know its maker," she said. "Fratelli Tanfoglio of the Gardone Tanfoglios." He ignored her and tossed her purse back to her as she turned toward him. "In Italy," she added uselessly.

  "Let's go," said Kurtz.

  "Go where?" asked Angelina, feeling a surge of alarm for the first time. "I was just supposed to tell you how to find the evidence that Emilio Gonzaga whacked your old partner. I don't have to go anywhere to—" She looked at Joe Kurtz's face and fell silent.

  "Let's go," repeated Kurtz.

  They walked through the dark and icy parking lot. "My Jaguar's parked on the other side," said Angelina. "In the VIP lot near—"

  "We're not taking your car," said Kurtz.

  "When Marco and Leo find me gone—with my car still there—they're going to go so totally apeshit that—"

  "Shut up," said Kurtz.

  Kurtz had the woman drive his Volvo. He sat with his back to the passenger door and the pistol propped on his left forearm. They were taking back streets through the snowy night, driving slowly because he had told her that if she drove over forty miles per hour, he would kill her. Kurtz had been in the driver's seat when someone was holding a gun on him, and he'd discovered that getting the car up to eighty-five or ninety miles per hour was a serious disincentive to the shooter.

  "Tell me about Gonzaga and this guy," he said.

  Angelina glanced at him. The yellow light from the sodium-vapor anticrime lamps was painting both their faces dead yellow. "You were in love with her, weren't you, Kurtz? Your partner. The woman Emilio ordered murdered. I'd thought it was just a Maltese Falcon sort of thing… you know, you can't let your partner get killed. That sort of macho shit."

  "Tell me about Gonzaga and the guy we're going to see," said Kurtz.

  "Gonzaga's man who brought the order down to the two punks you wasted—Falco and Levine—is named Johnny Norse. I was going to give you his name and address tonight. But there's no reason for me to go along. It's just going to cause a world of trouble when Marco and Leo—"

  "Tell me about Johnny Norse," said Kurtz.

  Angelina Farino Ferrara took a breath. She did not look nervous to Kurtz. He had considered settling this whole thing back in the darkened parking lot. But he needed information and right now she was the only conduit.

  "Norse was Emilio Gonzaga's favorite button man back in the late eighties and early nineties," Angelina said. "A real Dapper Dan type. Always wore Armani. Thought he was Richard Gere. Ladies' man. Man's man. Swung both ways. Now he's dying of AIDS. He's dead, really, he just doesn't know it yet—"

  "For your sake," said Kurtz, "he'd better not be dead."

  Angelina shook her head. "He's in this hospice in Williamsville." She glanced at Kurtz in the yellow light. "Look, we can avoid the shitstorm that'll blow in if I'm out of the Boys' sight any longer. Let me go back to the game. I'll make up some bullshit story about where I was. Check out Norse on your own. He'll confirm what I told you about Gonzaga ordering the hit."

  Kurtz smiled ever so slightly. "It sounds like a good plan," he said. "Except for the part where I go off to some address you give me and find ten of your boys—or Gonzaga's—waiting there. No, I think we'll do this together. Tonight Now."

  "What's to insure that you don't kill me anyway?" asked Angelina. "After I bring you to Norse. Even if he tells the truth?"

  Kurtz's silence answered that question.

  The hospice was in a tasteful, Georgian-style building at the end of a cul-de-sac in the expensive part of Williamsville. It might have been a private home had it not been for the "Exit" signs at the doors, the white-clothed aides pushing wheelchairs in the halls, and the receptionist behind the tiger-maple desk in the foyer. Kurtz wondered for a bemused second or so whether this was a home for aged and dying button men, whether the mob ran a chain of these places across the country—Wiseguy Manors. He suspected not The receptionist told them quietly that visiting hours were over, but when Angelina said that they had come to see Mr. Norse, the receptionist was obviously surprised.

  "No one has come to see Mr. Norse while he has been under our care," she said. "Are you family?"

  "Gonzaga family," Kurtz said, but the woman showed no reaction. So much for the mob-franchise theory.

  "Well…" The woman hesitated. "You are aware that Mr. Norse is very near the end?"

  "That's why we've come," said Angelina Farino Ferrara.

  The receptionist nodded and summoned a woman in white to take them to Mr. Norse.

  The dying thing in the bed was no Dapper Dan. The remnants of Johnny Norse now weighed ninety pounds at the most, showed emaciated arms that reminded Kurtz of a baby bird's bended wings tipped with yellowed nails, and had flesh mottled with sores and the lesions of Kaposi's sarcoma. Most of the mobster's hair had fallen out. Oxygen tubes ran up under the man's gaping nostrils. Norse's lips were cracked and already pulled back over his teeth like a corpse's and his eyes had sunken, the corners radiating small white webs as if spiders had already laid claim there.

  Pruno had given Kurtz a reading list before he left for prison, and the first book Kurtz had read was Madame Bovary. He was reminded now of how Emma Bovary's corpse had looked after the arsenic had killed her.

  Norse stirred in his bed and turned unblinking eyes in their direction. Kurtz stepped closer to the bed.

  "Who are you?" whispered Norse. There was a pathetic eagerness in that whisper. "Did Emilio send you?"

  "Sort of," said Kurtz. "Do you remember Emilio Gonzaga having you pass down an order twelve years ago to kill a woman named Samantha Fielding?"

  Norse frowned up at Kurtz and reached for the call button on a beige wire. Kurtz moved the button out of the man's trembling grasp. "Samantha Fielding," repeated Kurtz. "A private investigator. It was during the Elizabeth Connors kidnapping. You were the go-between with Eddie Falco and Manny Levine."

  "Who the fuck are you?" whispered Johnny Norse. The lusterless eyes flicked toward Angelina and then came back to Kurtz. "Fuck you."

  "Wrong answer," said Kurtz. He leaned over with both arms extended as if to hug Norse, but instead, he closed his thumbs over the two oxygen lines and squeezed them shut.

  Norse began gasping and rasping. Angelina closed the door and set her back against it.

  Kurtz released the hoses. "Samantha Fielding?"

  Johnny Norse's eyes were flicking back and forth like cornered rodents. He shook his head and Kurtz kinked the oxygen lines again, holding them kinked this time until Norse's gasps were as loud as Cheyne-Stokes death rattles.

  "Samantha Fielding?" repeated Kurtz. "About twelve years ago."

  The corpse in the bed nodded wildly. "The Connors kid… Emilio was… squeezing Connors… just wanted… the money."

  Kurtz waited.

  "Some… cunt… of a P.I… found the connection… between Falco and Levine… and us snatching the kid. Emilio—" He stopped and looked up at Kurtz, his corpse mouth twitching in what might have been an attempt at an ingratiating Johnny Norse smile. "I didn't have… nothing to do with it. I didn't even know who they were talking about. I didn't—"

  Kurtz reached for the oxygen hose.

  "Jesus… fuck… all right Emilio put the word out I… delivered it… to the drug dealers… Falco and… Levine. You got what you want asshole?"

  "Yes," said Kurtz. He took the .40 S&W semiautomatic from his belt, thumbed back the hammer, and set the muzzle in Johnny Norse's mouth. The man's teeth chattered against the cold steel. Something like wild relief flickered behind the clouded eyes.

  Kurtz removed the muzzle and lowered the hammer. There was a bottle of medical disinfectant on the expensive nightstand, and Kurtz sprayed the barrel of the S&W with it before wiping it with the hem of Norse's hospital gown and sliding it back in his belt. He nodded at the woman and they left.
br />   * * *

  CHAPTER TEN

  « ^ »

  Kurtz had her drive farther east to an industrial park along the Thruway behind Erie Community College. They followed empty lanes and crossed empty parking lots to a silent loading-dock area. "Here," said Kurtz. The .40 S&W was steady, propped on his forearm.

  Angelina Farino Ferrara set the emergency brake, left the engine running, and put her hands on top of the steering wheel. "Is this the end of the line?"

  "Could be."

  "What are my options?"

  "Truth."

  She nodded. Her lips were white but her eyes were defiant and Kurtz could see that her pulse, visible at the base of her throat, was slow and regular.

  "Word on the street today," said Kurtz, "is that you put out another contract on me."

  "Same contract Different contractor."

  "Who?"

  "Big Bore Redhawk. He's—"

  "An Indian," said Kurtz. "What is this? Hire the Attica Handicapped Month?"

  Angelina shrugged slightly. "Stevie likes to deal with people he knows."

  "Little Skag is a cheap fuck," said Kurtz. "When is Big Bore supposed to do this?"

  "Any time in the next week."

  "And if he fails?"

  "Stevie has the look for real talent. And raises the price from ten thousand to twenty-five."

  Kurtz sat in silence for a minute. The headlights were off. Snow fell steadily past the yellow lamps beyond the loading dock. The only sounds were the rough idle of the old Volvo engine and the distant hiss of traffic on the I-90 Thruway behind them.

  "You don't want to kill me tonight," said Angelina.

  "No?"

  "No. We need each other."

  Kurtz sat in silence for another short spell. Finally, he said, "Turn off the engine. Get out."

  She did. Kurtz gestured toward the far end of the loading dock, near the Dumpsters. He had her walk ahead of him to the end of the asphalt there. Her Bally shoes made small tracks in the snow.

  "Stop here."

  Angelina turned to face him. "I said the wrong thing. You know it's bullshit. We don't need each other. I just need you—need to use you. And Joe Kurtz isn't a man who likes to be used."

  Kurtz bent his arm, keeping it close to his body, aiming the pistol from his waist.

  "Not in the face, please," said Angelina Farino Farrera.

  Traffic passed on the Thruway, out of sight to their right.

  "Why?" said Kurtz. "Why goad me and set me up this way and then meet me without backup? What did you expect?"

  "I expected you to be more stupid."

  "Sorry to disappoint you."

  "You haven't so far, Kurtz. It's all been very amusing up to this point. Perhaps Big Bore Redhawk will avenge me."

  "I doubt it."

  "You're probably right. But my brother will."

  "Maybe."

  Two semis roared by on the Thruway, throwing slush into the cones of yellow light there. Kurtz did not glance that way. "I have most of it figured," he said. "How you were going to use me against both Little Skag and Gonzaga. But why me? You're planning to become don in reality if not in name—you've had all this time to plan—why not bring people you trust to do your work?"

  "I'm getting cold," said Angelina. "Can we go back to your car now?"

  "No."

  "I'm going to raise my hands just to rub my arms, all right?"

  Kurtz said nothing.

  Angelina briskly massaged her arms through the thin jacket she was wearing. "I had more than six years to plan what I had to do, but the little bloodbath you were part of last November ruined those plans. If I was going to act, I had to act now, but all of a sudden my father's dead, my whore-sister Maria is dead, even Leonard Miles, the crooked consigliere, is dead. Stevie explains how you set it all up, hired the Dane. Revenge for something my father had done to you."

  Kurtz said nothing.

  "I know that's not true," said Angelina, speaking slowly and clearly. "Stevie set up the hit, borrowing money from the Gonzagas to do it. But you helped get Stevie's deal to the Dane, Kurtz. You were part of it."

  "I just passed it along," said Kurtz.

  "Just like Johnny Norse," said Angelina with an audible sneer. "Innocent. Just a messenger. I hope you end up in the ninth circle of hell, just like Norse."

  Kurtz waited.

  "Six years, Kurtz. You know what that sort of time is like—waiting, planning? I married two men to get in the right position, acquire the right sort of power and knowledge. All for nothing. I come back to chaos and the whole plan is shot to shit."

  Red and blue police flashers reflected from the Thruway, but the cop car was out of sight, rushing somewhere else. Neither of them turned to look.

  "Stevie sold what was left of the Family to Emilio Gonzaga," said Angelina. "He had to."

  "Gonzaga controls the judges and the swing vote on the parole board," said Kurtz. "But why don't you just wait for Skag to get out? Rewrite the script. Run your game later, when he trusts you?"

  "Stevie will be dead before autumn," Angelina said with a sharp little laugh. "Do you think that Emilio Gonzaga is going to keep the Farino heir apparent around? Emilio will be running both families then. He doesn't need Stephen Farino."

  "Or you?"

  "He needs me as his whore."

  "Not a bad position to plot from," said Kurtz.

  Angelina Farino Ferrara took half a step forward, as if she was going to slap Kurtz's face. She caught herself and stopped. "Want to know why I went to Sicily and the Boot?"

  "A sudden interest in Renaissance art?" said Kurtz.

  "Emilio Gonzaga raped me seven years ago," she said, voice flat and hard. "My father knew about it Stevie knew about it. Instead of castrating that Gonzaga fuck with bolt cutters, they decided to send me away. I was pregnant. Twenty-five years old and pregnant with Emilio Gonzaga's love child. Daddy wanted me to have the baby. He wanted leverage for a merger. So I went to Sicily. Married an idiot don-in-waiting our family knew there."

  "But you didn't have the baby," said Kurtz.

  "Oh, but I did," said Angelina and laughed that hard, short laugh again. "I did. A boy. A beautiful baby boy with Emilio's fat, rubbery lips, lovely brown eyes, and the Gonzaga chin and forehead. I drowned him in the Belice River in Sicily."

  Kurtz said nothing.

  "You'll have a hard time killing Emilio Gonzaga, Kurtz. His compound on Grand Island isn't like a fortress, it is a fortress. The older Emilio gets, the more paranoid he becomes. And he was born paranoid. He rarely goes out anymore. Lets no one near him. Keeps twenty-five of the best killers in New York State on his payroll, rotting away out there on the island."

  "How did you plan to kill him?" asked Kurtz.

  Angelina smiled. "Well, I sort of hoped you'd take care of that detail for me, now that you know what you know."

  "How did you find out about that? About Gonzaga authorizing the hit on Sam?"

  "Stevie told me when he told me about you."

  Kurtz nodded. His hair was wet with the falling snow. Three years in the same cell block with Little Skag, saving his ass—literally—from a black rapist named Ali. And all the while, Little Skag knew who had really been behind Sam's death. It must have amused Skag. Kurtz almost had to smile at the irony. Almost.

  "Can we get out of this fucking snow now?" asked Angelina.

  They walked back to the car. Kurtz nodded her to the driver's seat She was shaking from the cold when she turned the ignition and lights on.

  "Are you in this with me, Kurtz?"

  "No."

  She let out a breath. "Are we going back to the HSBC arena?"

  "No," said Kurtz. "But we'll stop somewhere you can find a cab."

  "My absence is going to be hard to explain to the Boys and Stevie," said Angelina, driving across the parking lot and back onto the empty industrial service road.

  "Tell them you were fucking Emilio," said Kurtz.

  She looked at him then and
it was good for Kurtz that he had the gun at that moment. "Yes," she said at last. "I might say just that."

  They drove in silence for a few minutes. Finally Angelina Farino Ferrara said, "You really loved her, didn't you? Your ex-partner Sam, I mean."

  Kurtz gestured with the pistol, explaining that she should shut up and drive.

  * * *

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  « ^ »

  Kurtz let himself into the office about ten the next morning, only to find Arlene taking a coffee-and-cigarette break at her desk while reading a detective novel. Kurtz tossed his peacoat onto the coatrack and settled into the old chair behind his desk. Three new files on his desktop were labeled "Frears," "Hansen," and "Other Murder-Suicides/Common Factors."

  "How's the book?" asked Kurtz. He squinted at the title. "Isn't that the same guy you were reading twelve years ago, before I got sent away?"

  "Yeah. His detective fought in the Korean War, which makes the old fart in his late sixties at least, but he still kicks ass. A new book comes out every year, if not sooner."

  "Good, huh?"

  "Not anymore," said Arlene. "The P.I.'s got a girlfriend who's a real bitch. An arrogant piece of work. And she's got a dog."

  "So?"

  "A dog who eats on the table and sleeps in their bed. And the P.I. loves them both to bits."

  "Then why do you keep reading him?"

  "I keep hoping the P.I. will wake up and cap both the girlfriend and that ratty dog," said Arlene. She put the book down. "To what do I owe this Saturday-morning pleasure, Joe?"

  He patted the three files on the desk. He started thumbing through the Frears folder. It was quite a biography—born to upper-class parents in 1945, John Wellington Frears was one of those rarest of anomalies—an African-American in mid-twentieth-century America who had been a child of privilege. Something of a musical prodigy, Frears had gone to Princeton as an undergraduate but had transferred to Juilliard for his junior year. Then something truly strange: after graduation from Juilliard, with offers from several prestigious city symphonic groups, John Wellington Frears had volunteered for the U.S. Army and had gone to Vietnam in 1967. The note said that he had been with the Army Engineers, a sergeant in charge of demolition and disarming booby traps. He'd served two tours in Vietnam and one year in the States before returning to civilian life and beginning his professional music career.