Hard Freeze

CHAPTER NINETEEN

James B. Hansen left his office at police headquarters in late morning and drove to the Airport Sheraton. He had an absolutely untraceable.38-caliber pistol in his briefcase, right next to the clear evidence bags containing the knife, thread, and hairs he had picked up in Joe Kurtz's hotel room.

It might have been a slight problem finding John Frears's room number—Hansen was certainly not going to show his badge and ask at the desk—but the old violinist had left his phone number, complete with room extension, when he had spoken to a bored lieutenant in Homicide the week before about the unlikely sighting at the airport. Frears was making it almost too easy.

Hansen knew what the old man was up to, speaking to the Buffalo News, going on a radio talk show and all the rest. He was offering himself up like a staked-out goat, trying to flush the man he'd known as James B. Hansen out of hiding so the police would put two and two together and track down the killer. Hansen had to smile at that. Homicide detectives, under Hansen's supervision—after all, John Wellington Frears was an important man in his own little musical circles, and his murder would demand the A-team's presence—would put two and two together all right. And then the fingerprints on the knife and the DNA in the hair would lead them straight to an ex-con killer named Joe Kurtz.

Hansen entered by a side door, went up an empty staircase to the fifth floor, paused outside Frears's room, and readied the card key—programmed by Hansen himself to open any door in the Sheraton—in his left hand and the.38 in his right. The pistol, of course, would later be found in Kurtz's flophouse room. The knife—which would not be the murder weapon, but which would draw blood as if the two men were fighting over it—would be found in the hotel room. Hansen had taken care to wait until the maids would be done with their housekeeping and the long hallway was empty as he keyed the door open. The chain lock was not on. Hansen had planned to hold his badge up to the peephole if it had been.

As soon as Hansen saw the sterile, empty room and neatly made bed, he knew that Frears had fled.

Damn it. Hansen immediately asked forgiveness from the Lord for his curse.

He closed the door, went out to his SUV, and used a disposable cell phone to call the Sheraton's front desk. "This is Detective Hathaway of the Buffalo Police Department, badge number…" He rattled off the retired number he'd looked up in the dead detective's file. "We're returning a call from one of your guests, ah…" He paused a few seconds as if looking up the name. "Mr. John Frears. Could you ring him for me, please?"

"I'm sorry, Detective Hathaway, Mr. Frears checked out this morning. About three hours ago."

"Really? He wanted to talk to us. Did he leave a forwarding address or number?"

"No, sir. I was the one who checked Mr. Frears out and he just paid his bill and left."

Hansen took a breath. "I'm sorry to bother you with all this, Mr.—"

"Paul Sirsika, Detective. I'm the day manager here."

"Sorry to bother you with all this detail, Mr. Sirsika, but it might be important. Was there someone with him when he checked out? Mr. Frears had some concerns for his safety, and I need to ascertain that he didn't leave under duress."

"Under duress? Good heavens," said the clerk. "No, I don't remember anyone at the counter with him or seeing him speak with anyone else, but there were other people in the lobby at the time."

"Did he leave alone?"

"I don't recall anyone going out with Mr. Frears, but I was busy with other guests checking out."

"Sure. Do you know if he called a cab or caught one outside? Or perhaps he mentioned something about the airport or catching a flight?"

"He didn't mention a flight to me or ask me to call a cab, Detective Hathaway. He might have hailed one outside. I could ask our bell captain."

"Would you do that, please? I'd appreciate it."

The clerk was back in a minute. "Detective Hathaway? Clark, our bell captain, remembers Mr. Frears leaving but noticed that he did not take a cab. Clark said that he was walking to the parking lot, carrying his suitcase in one hand and his violin case in the other when Clark last saw him."

"So Mr. Frears had a rental car?" asked Hansen. "The license number would be on your registration card and in the computer."

"Just a second, please, Detective." The clerk was sounding a bit peevish now. "Yes, sir. It says that the vehicle was a white Ford Contour. Mr. Frears did give us a tag number when he checked in. I have it here if you'd like it."

"Go ahead," said Hansen. He memorized the number rather than write it down.

"I wish I could help you more, Detective."

"You've been a big help, Mr. Sirsika. One last question. Did you or any of the other clerks or bellhops—or perhaps someone working in the restaurant or gift shop—notice anyone visiting Mr. Frears, dining with him, calling for him?"

"I would have to ask everyone," said Clerk Sirsika, sounding very put-upon now.

"Would you do that, please? And call and leave a message at this number?" said Hansen. He gave them his private line at work.

Hansen used his phone to have "Detective Hathaway" call all of the rental-car agencies at the airport. The white Contour was a Hertz vehicle, rented by Mr. Frears eight days ago upon his arrival in Buffalo, rental extended six days ago. It had not been returned. It was an open-ended rental. Hansen thanked the clerk and drove around the hotel parking lot, checking to make sure that the car was not there. His next step would be to check airlines to see if Frears had flown out without returning the car, but Hansen did not want Detective Hathaway to do more phoning than he had to.

The white Contour was parked near the far end of the lot. Hansen made sure no one was watching, slim-jimmed the driver's door open, checked the interior—nothing—and popped the trunk. No luggage. Frears had left with someone.

Driving his Cadillac SUV back toward police headquarters on the Kensington, Hansen mentally reviewed everything Frears had told Detective Pierceson when the violinist had made out his airport-sighting report. Frears had said that he knew no one in Buffalo other than some of the booking people at Kleinhan's Music Hall, where he had played his two concerts. Them and someone he had known years ago at Princeton.

Hansen couldn't close his eyes while driving, but he mentally did so in a trick he had used since he was a kid to recall entire pages of text with perfect recall. Even as he drove on the Kensington, he could see Pierceson's report on the interview with Frears the week before.

Dr. Paul Frederick. A former philosophy and ethics professor at Princeton. Frears thought he lived in Buffalo and was searching for him.

Well, that's an obvious place to start this investigation, thought Hansen. Find this old Professor Frederick. Perhaps your old pal came to pick you up at the Sheraton and told you to leave your car.

Hansen would join in the search for one Professor Paul Frederick. It shouldn't be hard to find him. Academics tended to hang around academia until they died.

But if Frears wasn't with his old friend?

Then where are you, Johnny boy? Whom did you leave with this morning?

Hansen was not happy with this development, but it was just a puzzle. He was very, very good at solving puzzles.

Angelina Farino Ferrara realized halfway through her meal with Emilio that Joe Kurtz was going to get himself killed, her killed, and everyone else in the house killed. The drive over from Marina Towers had been uneventful enough. Mickey Kee, the killer who always rode shotgun with Gonzaga's driver, had stared at Kurtz standing next to Marco and asked where Leo was.

"Leo's doing other things," Angelina said. "Howard here is with Marco and me today."

"Howard?" Mickey Kee said dubiously. Gonzaga's button man had tiny eyes that missed nothing, short, black hair cropped to a widow's peak, and skin so smooth that he could be any age between twenty-five and sixty. "Where are you from, Howard?"

Kurtz, the perfect lackey, had glanced at Angelica for permission before answering. She nodded.

"Florida," said Kurtz.

"Which part of Florida?"

"Raiford, mostly," said Kurtz.

The driver had snorted at this, but Mickey Kee showed no amusement. "I know some guys serving time in Raiford. You know Tommy Lee Peters?"

"Nope."

"Sig Bender?"

"Nope."

"Alan Wu?"

"Nope."

"You don't know many people, do you, Howard?"

"When I was there," said Kurtz, "Raiford had five thousand-some guys doing time. Maybe your friends weren't in the general population. I seem to remember that Raiford had a special ward for kept bitches."

Mickey Kee squinted at that. The driver, Al, had tugged at the gunman's arm and held the limo door open for Angelina, Marco, and Kurtz to get in the back. The window was up between the front section and the passenger area, but Angelina assumed that the intercom was kept on, so the drive to Grand Island was made in silence.

Angelina's choice of Joe Kurtz to carry out the elimination of Emilio Gonzaga had been one of the most dangerous decisions she had ever made, but up to now she had not considered it totally reckless. She could have Kurtz eliminated at any time, she thought, and erase the record of her contacts with him at the same time. But now there was the problem of those tapes he'd made. For the first time since her return to the States, Angelina felt the way she had in her first chess games with the bedridden Count Ferrara, when she would be trading a few pawns, working on her attack, only to realize that the dying old man had set her up—that his apparently defensive and random movements had been part of an attack so subtle that she had no place to flee, no pieces to move in defense, the only response to tip over her king and smile graciously.

Well, thought Angelina, fuck that.

She'd known that Joe Kurtz was a stone-killer. Her brother Stevie… fuck it, Little Skag… had told her about Kurtz's past: the former detective's love for his dead partner, Samantha Fielding, that resulted in one of the probable killers disappearing and the other being thrown out of a six-story window onto the roof of an arriving squad car. Kurtz had done more than eleven years of hard time for that vengeance, and according to Little Skag, had never whined once about it. The day after Kurtz got out of Attica, he'd made a business proposition to Don Farino. That had been a bloody business and before it was over, Angelina's father and sister were dead. Kurtz hadn't killed them—Little Skag, Angelina's darling little brother, had arranged that—but Kurtz had left his own wake of bodies.

Angelina had been sure that she could control Kurtz or, if not control him exactly, aim him. Johnny Norse, the breathing corpse in the Williamsville hospice, had supplied Angelina and her sister with drugs from junior high on—Don Farino would have disowned his girls if he'd found them buying drugs from his own people—and it had been from Norse that she had heard about Emilio's order to kill Samantha Fielding twelve years earlier. It had meant nothing to Angelica when she heard it, but using that information to aim Joe Kurtz at Emilio seemed like a good idea when her other plans had failed.

But Angelina was constantly being surprised by Joe Kurtz. Like other sociopaths she had known, Kurtz seemed contained, quiet, almost sleepy at times, but unlike the other stone-killers she'd been around, including her first husband in Sicily, Kurtz sometimes revealed a sense of humor bordering on real wit. And then, just as she began thinking that he would be too weak for this job… well, she remembered the way Kurtz had put a bullet through Leo's left eye without changing expression.

Kurtz seemed sleepy as they stopped at the gate to the Gonzaga compound. He gave up his pistol and submitted to a careful frisk without expression. He still seemed half-asleep as they drove up the long drive, but Angelina knew that Kurtz was looking at everything in the compound, making mental notes. Marco was his usual silent self and Angelina had no clue to what he was thinking.

Inside, they were frisked again. When Angelina was led in for lunch with Emilio, Mickey Kee took the unusual step of staying out in the foyer with the two guards watching Marco and "Howard." Kee seemed to see or sense something in Kurtz that focused his attention.

It was after the soup course with Emilio and after listening to the fat bastard sweet-talk her and explain the new split on drugs and prostitution after the two families "merged," and after the fish had been served, that Angelina suddenly realized what Joe Kurtz was going to do.

Kurtz wasn't here today to case the place or to let Emilio's guards get used to him so he could return with her later, when the plans were made. Today was the day. She knew that Kurtz didn't have so much as a penknife with him but that he planned somehow to get a weapon out in the foyer—take a gun away from Mickey Kee? — kill Kee and the other two guards, shoot Marco, and come into the dining room with guns blazing.

Kurtz didn't care that there was no way out for him or Angelina. Kurtz's plan was simple—kill Emilio and everyone else in the room before he got gunned down himself. Maybe he'd grab Angelina and use her as a human shield while he was killing Emilio. Elegant.

"Whatsamatta?" said Emilio. "Fish bad or something?"

Angelina realized that she had quit eating with her fork still raised. "No. No, it's fine. I just remembered something I have to do." Run. Get the hell out of here. Survive.

But how? Tell Emilio Gonzaga that the new bodyguard she'd brought into the paranoid don's compound was here to shoot him? And that she knew about it because she'd set it up? Not a good plan.

Fake menstrual cramps? These Sicilian macho shits were so squeamish about a woman's period that they wouldn't ask questions if she requested a police escort in her retreat. Did she have time for this playacting?

Suddenly there was a commotion in the hallway and Joe Kurtz came into the dining room, his eyes looking wild.