Hard as Nails

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Arlene arrived right at nine-thirty. Kurtz was waiting outside the Harbor Inn. The wind blowing in from the lake to the west was cold and smelted like October. Weeds, newspapers, and small debris blew across the empty industrial fields and skittered by Kurtz's feet.

When he got in the blue Buick, Arlene said, "I see you got the Pinto back." It was parked behind the triangular building in its usual spot.

"Yeah," said Kurtz. He'd had some problems with the local project youth the first weeks he'd lived here, until he'd beaten up the biggest of the car-stripper gang and offered to pay the smartest one a hundred bucks a week to protect the vehicle. Since then, there'd been no problem, except that he'd already paid several times what the Pinto was worth.

Making a U-turn and heading back to the lights of the city center, Arlene tapped a sealed manilla envelope on the console between them. "That blowdried mob guy showed up with the package you said was coming."

"Did you open it?"

"Of course not," said Arlene. She lit a Marlboro and frowned at him.

He opened the envelope. A list of five names and dates and addresses. One guy and two of his family members. A woman. Another guy.

"Angelina Farino Ferrara hired me to look into who's been hitting some of their skag dealers and clients," said Kurtz. "Toma Gonzaga bumped into me this afternoon and offered me the same job, only to see who's been hitting his family's clients."

"Someone's been killing both Gonzaga and Farino heroin dealers?" Arlene sounded surprised.

"Evidently."

"I haven't heard about this on the Channel Seven Action News." Kurtz knew that Arlene was old enough to remember and miss Irv Weinstein and his if-it-bleeds-it-leads TV newsreels from long ago. All the day's carnage and corpses wrapped up in forty-five seconds of fast footage. Kurtz missed it, too.

"They've kept it quiet," said Kurtz.

"The families have kept it quiet?"

"Yeah."

"How the hell do you keep five murders quiet?"

"It's worse than that," said Kurtz. "Twenty-two murders counting Gonzaga's dealers and addicts."

"Twenty-two murders? In what time period? Ten years? Fifteen?"

"The last month, I think," said Kurtz. He tapped the envelope. "I haven't read their publicity handout here yet."

"Christ," said Arlene. She flicked ashes out the window.

"Yep."

"And you've agreed to dig around for them? As if you have nothing better to do?"

"They made me an offer I couldn't refuse," said Kurtz. "Both Gonzaga and the don's daughter are offering cash and other incentives."

Arlene squinted at him through the cigarette smoke. She knew Kurtz almost never made movie jokes or references, and never Godfather jokes. "Joe," she said softly, "I don't mean to meddle, but I don't think that Angelina Farino has ever had your best interests at heart."

Kurtz had to smile at that. "There's the Civic Center garage," he said. "Do you have an idea how we're going to get in?"

"Did you get any sleep this afternoon?" She pulled up to the curb and parked.

"Some." He'd dozed for about an hour before his headache woke him.

"I brought some Percocet." She rattled the prescription bottle.

Kurtz didn't ask or want to know why she was carrying Percocet. "I took a couple of aspirin," he said, waving away the bottle. "I'm still curious about how we're going to get in. The place is closed up pretty tight at night. Even the parking garage has that metal-mesh screen that has to be raised from the inside."

Arlene held up her big, briefcase-sized purse as if that explained everything. "We're going in through the front door and the metal detectors. If you're carrying a gun, leave it out here."

"Help you?" grunted the guard by the metal detectors. One of the front doors had been unlocked, but it led only into this large foyer.

Arlene stepped closer and removed official ID and an official-looking letter on city stationery and handed them to the guard. Kurtz stood back from the overhead lights, keeping his face in shadow and the bandaged side of his head turned away.

"D.A.'s office?" said the guard after he'd read the paper with his lips moving only slightly. "What do you want tonight? Everything's closed. Everyone's gone home."

"You read it," said Arlene. "The D.A. himself has a nine A.M. hearing in front of Judge Garman, of all people, and half the paperwork on this parolee hasn't been sent over."

"Well, Miz… uh… Johnson… I shouldn't really…"

"This has to be done quickly, Officer Jefferson. The D.A.'s tired of the incompetence here. If he's embarrassed tomorrow by not getting these files tonight…" Arlene had taken out her cell phone and flipped it open.

"Okay, okay," said Officer Jefferson. "Give me your bag and go through the detectors."

Kurtz went through first and stepped back into the relative shadows. Jefferson was holding a heavy portable diskdrive with dongles hanging out and looking dubious.

"That's a portable hard drive," said Arlene, barely restraining a sigh and eye roll. "You don't think we're going to copy these files by hand, do you?"

Jefferson shook his head, set the memory drive back, and lifted out a black rectangular box about twelve inches long with slots in it and an attached cord.

"That's my portable copier for files that do have to be copied by hand," said Arlene, glancing at her watch. "The District Attorney needs these files no later than ten-thirty, Mr. Jefferson. He hates staying up late."

Jefferson zipped up her giant purse and handed it back to her. "I didn't get a call about this, Miz Johnson."

Arlene smiled. "Officer, this is the D.A.'s office. Have you dealt with us before? The District Attorney is a wonderful man, but he's lucky to remember to zip up his fly."

"Ms. Feldman's on bereavement leave this week," said the officer.

"We know," said Arlene. "But the district attorney still needs her files."

Jefferson smiled. "Yeah." He glanced at Kurtz. "I should show you the way up to Ms. Feldman's parole office, but it'll be a couple of minutes. Leroy's still making his rounds."

Arlene held up a silver key. "Carol's sister gave us her key. This will just take a few minutes." She handed the heavy bag to Kurtz. "Here, Thomas, carry this."

Kurtz followed dutifully as she clacked her way across the lobby and summoned an elevator. Jefferson gave a half-salute as they stepped in.

"This will be on security video," said Kurtz as the doors closed.

Arlene shrugged. "No crime, no need to check the security videos."

"I presume that Ms. Feldman's office is near O'Toole's."

"A few doors away."

"Someday the D.A. will trace all this fun back to his predecessor's former executive secretary," said Kurtz.

"Not in this lifetime," said Arlene.

In another, less obvious pocket of Arlene's bag was the breaking and entering tool kit that Kurtz had always used for black bag jobs. He opened Feldman's office door first, turned on the lights, and then locked it behind them. There were three strands of yellow crime scene tape across O'Toole's doorway, but the door opened inward and they could step through. Kurtz took fifteen seconds to jimmy this lock as well.

They lowered the Venetian blinds, took out a pocket-sized low-light, no-flash infrared digital camera and took four photos so they could set everything back exactly the way it was. Then they clicked on halogen penlights. Both had pulled on gloves. Peg O'Toole's computer was still there on the desk extension. Arlene found a power outlet for the backup drive, ran a USB cord to O'Toole's computer, fired up the parole officer's machine and her own, and whispered that they were set to go.

"How long will this take?" whispered Kurtz.

"Depends on how many files she has," whispered Arlene, tapping her gloved fingers on O'Toole's keyboard. "It took me forty-eight minutes to back up the WeddingBells-dot-com files."

"We don't have forty-eight minutes!" hissed Kurtz.

"That's all right," said Arlene. "WeddingBells has three thousand, three hundred and eighty files. Ms. O'Toole has one hundred and six." The backup disk drive blinked a green light and began to whir. "Eight minutes and we're out of here."

"What if they're encrypted or password protected or whatever?" whispered Kurtz.

"I don't think they will be," said Arlene. "But we'll deal with that when we get the drive back to the office. Go do your file thing." She handed him the travel scanner.

The files were locked. He had them open in twenty seconds. He used the penlight to look over several years worth of parolees' thick files. What he needed was a recent list… here it was. Peg O'Toole currently had thirty-nine active "clients," including one Joe Kurtz. He made a space, plugged in the digital copier/scanner, and began running pages through the small device. There were smaller scanners—some pen-sized—but this one was reliable and gobbled entire documents quickly, eliminating the need to run the scanner tip over lines of type. Kurtz fed in lists of current clients, addresses, phone numbers.

Arlene looked around the office and found a cassette tape recorder and racked stacks of cassettes. "She must record her notes, Joe," whispered Arlene. "Then transcribe them. And the last three weeks of cassettes are missing."

"Cops," whispered Kurtz. He was digitizing O'Toole's DayMinder, using the slower wand, playing the light over O'Toole's handwritten entries. "We'll just have to hope she had time to type her notes into the computer files." He finished copying the top three pages in each of the active thirty-nine cons' files, including his own, set the originals back, locked the file cabinets and came over to the desk.

The disk drive had already blinked that it was finished. Arlene left it attached and set a CD into the tray on O'Toole's computer. "I want her e-mail," whispered Arlene.

Kurtz shook his head. "That'll be password protected for sure."

Arlene nodded. "The program that I just loaded… ah… there it is. Will lie hidden in there and if anyone else knows her password and uses this computer, the program will quietly e-mail us a record of all the keystrokes."

"Is that possible?" whispered Kurtz. The idea appalled him and made his headache worse.

"I just did it," whispered Arlene. She unloaded the CD and put it in her bag.

"So all the hard-drive stuff is on the CD now?"

"No. Officer O'Toole didn't have a writable CD drive on this old machine. I just sent the data to the hard drive backup."

"Won't the cops find your keystroke program if they look again?"

Arlene smiled. "It would eat itself first. God, I wish I could smoke in here."

"Don't even think about it," whispered Kurtz. "Now move, I need to get into that desk."

"It's locked," whispered Arlene.

"Uh huh," said Kurtz. He used two bent pieces of metal and had the drawers open before Arlene got completely out of his way. The usual desk bric-a-brac in the center drawer—pens, paper clips, a ruler, pencils. Stationery and official stamps in the top right drawer. Old appointment journals in the right center drawer.

O'Toole had pulled the amusement park photographs out of the lower right drawer yesterday.

There were a few personal things there—tampons modestly pushed to the back, toothpaste, a toothbrush in a travel tube, some cosmetics, a small mirror. No photos. No envelope of the kind she'd taken the photos from. Kurtz checked everything again to make sure and then closed the drawers. The photos hadn't been among the loose paperwork or in the recent files he'd checked.

"Police?" whispered Arlene. She knew what he was looking for.

Kurtz shrugged. She could have had the photos in her purse when she was shot. "We done here?"

When Arlene nodded, he relocked everything and checked the infrared digital photos on the LCD screen to make sure everything looked the same. He went back to the desk and adjusted a pencil. They opened the door a crack, made sure the hallway was empty, and stepped out.

Seven minutes twelve seconds.

Kurtz unlocked Ms. Feldman's office and clicked off the lights. Locked the door.

They passed the other guard, Leroy, coming out of the elevator. "Phil told me you folks were here. Done already?"

Arlene held up the thick file of old SweetheartSearch-dot-com papers she'd taken from her briefcase. "We have what the D.A. needs," she said.

Leroy nodded and moved down the hall to check the doors.

Outside, Arlene didn't wait until they got to her Buick. She handed Kurtz the bag and lit a Marlboro. When they got in the car, Kurtz said, "You enjoy that?"

"You bet I did. It's been more than a dozen years since I helped in the fieldwork."

Kurtz thought about that. He didn't remember ever using Arlene in the field.

"Sam," said Arlene. Kurtz was surprised that Samantha had taken Arlene out for fieldwork and never told him. Evidently, a lot had gone on at the agency that he'd been oblivious to.

"Back to the office?" asked Arlene.

"Back to the office," said Kurtz. "But go through a Burger King or something on the way." It had been more than thirty hours since he'd eaten anything.