Hard Freeze

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 away 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.

"Impunity, Don Gonzaga. Freedom not only of prosecution when murders are required of you, but freedom even from serious investigation. A get-out-of-jail card with no jail attached. Not only as far as Homicide is concerned, but Vice, Narcotics… all of the departments."

Gonzaga relit the cigar and furrowed his brow. He was an ostentatious thinker, Hansen could see. Finally Hansen saw the lightbulb over the toad's head as Gonzaga realized what he was being offered.

"One-stop shopping," said the don.

"I will be a veritable Wal-Mart," agreed Hansen.

"So you're so fucking sure that you're going to be chief of police?"

"Indubitably," said Hansen and then, as the toad-man's brow furrowed again, "Without doubt, sir. In the meantime, I can make sure that no homicide investigation even turns in your direction."

"In exchange for whacking one guy?"

"In exchange for simply helping me whack one guy."

"When?"

"I'm supposed to meet him at the old train station at midnight That means he'll probably be there by ten o'clock."

"This guy," said Gonzaga, looking at the photograph again. "He looks fucking familiar but I can't place him. Mickey."

The Asian glided over from the wall.

"You know this guy, Mickey?"

"That's Howard Conway." The man's voice was smooth as his gait, very quiet, but the words made Hansen's head spin, and for the second time that day he saw black spots dancing in his vision.

Kurtz has been playing with me. If he knows Howard's name, then Howard is dead. But why tell Gonzaga? Have they foreseen this move as well?

"Yeah," said Gonzaga, "Angie Farino's new fucking bodyguard." He flapped the photo at Hansen. "What's going on here? Why are you after this Raiford jailbird?"

"He's not a Raiford ex-con," Hansen said smoothly, blinking away the dancing spots while trying not to look distressed. "He's an Attica ex-con named Kurtz."

The don looked at the Asian. "Kurtz. Kurtz. Where've we heard that name, Mickey?"

"Before Leo, our guy in their camp, disappeared, he said that Little Skag was putting out some nickels and dimes to whack an ex-P.I. named Kurtz," said Mickey Kee, showing no special deference to Gonzaga.

Gonzaga's brow furrowed more deeply. "Why would Angie hire some guy that her brother's trying to whack?"

"She has her own agenda," said Hansen. "And my bet is that it doesn't include you in the picture, Mr. Gonzaga."

"How many men you want?" grunted Gonzaga.

"I don't care how many," said Hansen. "The fewer the better. I just want them to be the best. I need a guarantee that Kurtz—and anyone he brings with him—won't leave that train station alive. Are any of your men so good that you can give me that guarantee?"

Emilio Gonzaga smiled broadly, showing great horses' teeth like yellowed ivory. "Mickey?" he said.

Mickey Kee did not smile. But he nodded.

"Kurtz said midnight but he'll get there early," Hansen said to Mickey Kee. "I'm going to be there at eight with two men. It'll be dark in that old station. Make sure you don't mistake us for Kurtz. Can you get there through this storm?"

Emilio Gonzaga removed his cigar and gave a phlegmy laugh. "Mickey owns a fucking Hummer."