Hard Freeze

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The afternoon and early evening in Marina Towers had a strangely sweet, almost elegiac calm to it.

Pruno had taught Joe Kurtz the word «elegiac» during their long correspondence while Kurtz was in Attica. Before Kurtz had gone behind bars, Pruno had given him a list of two hundred books he should read to begin his education. Kurtz had read them all, beginning with The Iliad and ending with Das Kapital. He had to admit that he'd enjoyed Shakespeare the most, spending weeks on each play. Kurtz had a hunch that before the night was over, the Buffalo train station might look like the last act of Titus Andronicus.

After the chili lunch, Frears had gone to one end of the big penthouse living room to tune his violin and it was Arlene who asked him to play. Frears had only smiled and shaken his head, but Angelina had joined in the request. Then—surprisingly—so had Marco, and even Kurtz had looked up from his brooding by the window.

While everyone sat around on sectionals and bar stools, John Wellington Frears had walked to the center of the room, removed a linen handkerchief from his suit pocket and draped it on the chin rest of the impossibly expensive violin, stood almost on his tiptoes with bow poised, and had begun playing.

To Kurtz's surprise, it was not classical. Frears played the main theme from Schindler's List, the long, plaintive passages holding notes that seemed to die with a sigh, the dying-away parts echoing against the cold glass windows like the half-heard cries of children in the trains being pulled to Auschwitz. When he was done, no one applauded, no one moved. The only sound was the snow pelting against the glass and Arlene's soft snuffling.

Frears took Hansen's titanium briefcase with its photographs and went into the library. Angelina poured herself a tall scotch. Kurtz went back to the window to watch the storm and the growing darkness.

He met with Angelina in her private office at the northwest corner of the penthouse.

"What's happening tonight, Kurtz?"

He held up one hand. "I've given Hansen blackmail demands. We're supposed to meet at midnight. I suspect he'll be there early."

"You going to take the money if he brings it?"

"He won't bring it."

"So you're going to kill him."

"I don't know yet."

Angelina raised a dark eyebrow at that. Kurtz came over and sat on the edge of her modern rosewood desk. "I'll ask you again, what are your goals? What have you been trying to get out of all this bullshit?"

She studied him for a minute. "You know what I wanted."

"Gonzaga dead," said Kurtz. "Your brother… neutralized. But what else?"

"I'd like to rebuild the family someday, but along different lines. In the meantime, I'd like to be the best thief in the state of New York."

"And you have to be left alone to do both those things."

"Yes."

"And if I help you get those things, are you going to leave me the fuck alone?"

Angelina Farino Ferrara hesitated only a second. "Yes."

"Did you print out that list I asked for?" said Kurtz.

Angelina opened a drawer and produced three sheets of paper stapled together. Each page held columns of names and dollar amounts. "We can't use this for anything," she said. "If I were to release it, the Five Families would have me killed within the week. If you release it, you'll be dead within a day."

"You're not going to release it and neither am I," said Kurtz. He told her the last version of his plans.

"Jesus," whispered Angelina. "What do you need tonight?"

"Transportation. And do you have two walkie-talkie-type radios? The kind with earphones? They're not necessary, but could be useful."

"Sure," said Angelina. "But they're only good within a range of a mile or so."

"That'll work."

"Anything else?"

"That pair of handcuffs you used on Marco."

"Anything else?"

"Marco. I have some heavy lifting to do."

"Are you going to arm him?"

Kurtz shook his head. "He can bring a knife if he wants to. I'm not asking him to get mixed up in a gun-fight, so he doesn't need to come heavy. There'll probably be enough guns there in the dark anyway."

"What else?"

"Long underwear," said Kurtz. "Thermal long Johns if you've got them."

"You're kidding."

Kurtz shook his head. "It may be a long wait and it's going to be cold as a witch's teat in there."

He went into the library, where John Wellington Frears was sitting in an Eames chair, the briefcase open on the ottoman, photographs of dead children reflecting light from the soft halogen spotlight above. Kurtz assumed that Frears's daughter Crystal was one of the corpses on display, but he did not look and he did not ask.

"Can I talk to you a minute?" said Kurtz.

Frears nodded. Kurtz took a seat in a second leather Eames chair across from the violinist.

"I need to talk to you about what's going to happen next with Hansen," said Kurtz, "but first I have a personal question."

"Go ahead, Mr. Kurtz."

"I've seen your files. All of your files. Arlene pulled information off the Net that's usually kept confidential."

"Ah," said Frears, "the cancer. You want to know about the cancer."

"No. I'm curious about the two tours in Vietnam back in nineteen sixty-eight."

Frears blinked at this and then smiled. "Why on earth are you curious about that, Mr. Kurtz? There was a war on. I was a young man. Hundreds of thousands of young men served."

"Hundreds of thousands of guys were drafted. You volunteered for the army, were trained as an engineer, specialized in disarming booby traps over there. Why for Christ's sake?"

Frears was still smiling slightly. "Why did I specialize in that area?"

"No. Why volunteer at all? You'd already gone to Princeton for a couple of years, graduated from Juilliard. You had a high draft number, I checked. You didn't have to go at all. And you volunteered. You risked your life."

"And my hands," said Frears, holding those hands in the beam of light from the halogen spot. "Which were much more important to me than my life in those days."

"Why did you go?"

Frears scratched his short, curly beard. "If I try to explain, Mr. Kurtz, I do so at the real risk of boring you."

"I've got some time."

"All right I entered Princeton with the idea of studying philosophy and ethics. One of my teachers there was Dr. Frederick."

"Pruno."

Frears made a pained face. "Yes. During my junior year at Princeton, Dr. Frederick shared some early research he was doing with a Harvard professor named Lawrence Kohlberg. Have you heard of him?"

"No."

"Most people haven't Professors Kohlberg and Frederick were just beginning their research to test Kohlberg's theory that human beings pass through stages of moral development just as they have to pass through the Piagetian stages of development. Have you heard of Jean Piaget?"

"No."

"It doesn't matter. Piaget had proved that all children pass through various stages of development—being able to cooperate with others, say, which happens for most children around the age of kindergarten—and Lawrence Kohlberg reasoned that people—not just children, but all people—pass through discrete stages of moral development as well. Since Professor Frederick taught both philosophy and ethics, he was very interested in Kohlberg's early research, and that was what our class was about."

"All right."

Frears took a breath, glanced at the obscene photographs lying on the ottoman, scooped them into the briefcase, and closed the briefcase. "Kohlberg had classified six stages of moral development. Level One was simple avoidance of punishment Moral boundaries are set only to avoid pain. Essentially the moral development of an earthworm. We've all known adults who stop at Level One."

"Yes," said Kurtz.

"Level Two was a crude form of moral judgment motivated by the need to satisfy one's own desires," said Frears. "Level Three was sometimes called the 'Good Boy/Good Girl' orientation—a need to avoid rejection or the disapproval of others."

Kurtz nodded and shifted his weight slightly. The.40 Smith & Wesson was cutting into his hip.

"Stage Four was the Law and Order level," said Frears. "People had evolved to the moral degree that they had an absolute imperative not to be criticized by a duly recognized authority figure. Sometimes entire national populations appear to be made up of Stage Four and lower citizens."

"Nazi Germany," said Kurtz.

"Exactly. Stage Five individuals seem motivated by an overwhelming need to respect the social order and to uphold legally determined laws. The law becomes a touchstone, a moral imperative unto itself."

"ACLU types who allow the Nazis to march in Skokie," said Kurtz.

John Wellington Frears rubbed his chin through his beard and looked at Kurtz for a long minute, as if reappraising him. "Yes."

"Is Stage Five the top floor?" asked Kurtz.

Frears shook his head. "Not according to the research that Professors Kohlberg and Frederick were carrying out. A Level Six individual makes his moral decisions based on his own conscience in attempts to resonate with certain universal ethical considerations… even when those decisions fly in the face of existing laws. Say, Henry David Thoreau's opposition to the war with Mexico, or the civil-rights marchers in the South in the nineteen sixties."

Kurtz nodded.

"Professor Frederick used to say that the United States was founded by Level Six minds," said Frears, "protected and preserved by Level Fives, and populated by Level Fours and below. Does this make any sense, Mr. Kurtz?"

"Sure. But it hasn't done a damned thing toward telling me why you left Juilliard and went to the Vietnam War."

Frears smiled. "At the time, this idea of moral development was very important to me, Mr. Kurtz. Lawrence Kohlberg's dream was to find a Level Seven personality."

"Who would that be?" said Kurtz. "Jesus Christ?"

"Precisely," Frears said with no hint of irony. "Or Gandhi. Or Socrates. Or Buddha. Someone who can only respond to universal ethical imperatives. They have no choice in the matter. Usually the rest of us respond by putting them to death."

"Hemlock," said Kurtz. Pruno had made Plato's dialogues required reading for him in Attica.

"Yes." Frears set his long, elegant fingers on the metal briefcase. "Lawrence Kohlberg never found a Stage Seven personality."

Surprise, thought Kurtz.

"But he did find something else, Mr. Kurtz. His testing showed that there were many people walking the street who can only be classified as Level Zeroes. Their moral development has not even evolved to the point where they will avoid pain and punishment if their whim dictates otherwise. Other human beings' suffering means absolutely nothing to them. The clinical term is 'sociopath, but the real word is 'monster. "

Kurtz looked at Frears's fingers tensed against the lid of the briefcase as if trying to keep it closed. "This Kohlberg and Pruno had to do university research to find this out? I could have told them that when I was five years old."

Frears nodded. "Kohlberg committed suicide in nineteen eighty-seven—walked into a marsh and drowned. Some of his disciples say that he couldn't reconcile himself to the knowledge that such creatures walk among us."

"So you went to Vietnam to find out what rung of Kohlberg's ladder you were on," said Kurtz.

John Wellington Frears looked him in the eye. "Yes."

"And what did you find out?"

Frears smiled. "I discovered that a young violinist's fingers were very good at disarming bombs and booby traps." He leaned forward. "What else did you want to talk to me about, Mr. Kurtz?"

"Hansen."

"Yes?" The violinist was completely attentive.

"I don't think Hansen has cut and run yet, but he's close to doing that. Very close. Right now I think he's waiting a few hours just because I've been a factor he doesn't understand. The miserable son of a bitch is so smart that he's stupid… he thinks he understands everything. As long as we appear to be one step ahead of him, he hangs around to see what the fuck is going to happen—but not much longer. A few hours maybe."

"Yes."

"So, Mr. Frears, the way I see it, we can play this endgame one of three ways. I think you should decide."

Frears nodded silently at this.

"First," said Kurtz, "we hand over this briefcase to the authorities and let them chase down Mr. James B. Hansen. His modus operandi is shot to hell, so he won't be repeating his imposter kill-the-kids routine in the same way. He'll be on the run, pure and simple."

"Yes," said Frears.

"But he might stay on the run and ahead of the cops for months, even years," said Kurtz. "And after he's arrested, the trial will take months, or years. And after the trial, the appeals can take more years. And you don't have those months and years. It doesn't sound like the cancer's going to give you very many weeks."

"No," agreed Frears. "What is your second suggestion, Mr. Kurtz?"

"I kill Hansen. Tonight."

Frears nodded. "And your third suggestion, Mr. Kurtz?"

Kurtz told him. When Kurtz finished talking, John Wellington Frears sat back in the Eames chair and closed his eyes as if he was very, very tired.

Frears opened his eyes. Kurtz knew immediately what the man's decision was going to be.

Kurtz wanted to leave by six-thirty so he could get to the train station no later than seven. The storm had come in with nightfall, and there was a foot of new snow on the balcony when he stepped out for a final look at the night Arlene was smoking a cigarette there.

"Today was Wednesday, Joe."

"So?"

"You forgot your weekly visit to your parole officer."

"Yeah."

"I called her," said Arlene. "Told her you were sick." She flicked ashes. "Joe, if you manage to kill this Hansen and they still think he's a detective, every cop in the United States is going to be after you. You're going to have to hide so far up in Canada that your neighbors'll be polar bears. And you hate the out-of-doors."

Kurtz had nothing to say to that.

"We get kicked out of our basement in a week," said Arlene. "And we never got around to looking for new office space."