Hard Freeze

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

John Wellington Frears drove Kurtz to the Erie County Medical Center that night. It wasn't the hospital closest to the train station, but it was the only one he knew about since he'd driven past it several times on the way to and from the Airport Sheraton. Despite the storm, or perhaps because of it, the emergency room was almost empty, so Kurtz had no fewer than eight people working on him when he was brought in. The two real doctors in the group didn't understand the injuries—severe cuts, lacerations, concussion, broken ribs, broken wrist, damage to both legs—but the well-dressed African-American gentleman who'd brought the patient in said that it had been an accident at a construction site, that his friend had fallen three stories through a skylight, and the shards of glass in Kurtz seemed to bear that story out.

Frears waited around long enough to hear that Kurtz would live, and then he and the black Lincoln disappeared back into the storm.

Arlene made it through the weather to the hospital that night, stayed until the next afternoon, and came back every day. When Kurtz regained consciousness late the next morning, she was reading the Buffalo News, and she insisted on reading parts of it aloud to him every day after that.

On that first day after the murders, Thursday, the carnage at the train station almost crowded out the news about the blizzard. "The Train Station Massacre," the papers and TV news immediately christened it. Three homicide detectives were dead, a civilian named Donald Rafferty, a petty criminal from Newark named Marco Dirazzio, and an Asian-American not yet identified. It was obvious to the press that some sort of straight-from-the-movies shoot-out between the crooks and the cops had taken place that night, probably while Captain Robert Gaines Millworth and his men were working undercover.

By that afternoon, the chief of police and the mayor of Buffalo had both vowed that this cold-blooded murder of Buffalo's finest would not go unavenged—that every resource, including the FBI, would be used to track down the killers and bring them to justice. It would, they said, be the largest manhunt in the history of Western New York. The vows were made in time to be picked up by the prime-time local and network news. Tom Brokaw said during the lead-in to the report, "A real—and deadly—game of cops-and-robbers took place in Buffalo, New York, last night, and the body count may not be finished yet." That odd prediction came true when the authorities announced late Thursday that the dead bodies of Captain Millworth's wife and son, as well as another unidentified body, had been discovered that morning at the captain's home in Tonawanda. One city alderman was quoted during the late news saying that it was inappropriate for a captain of Homicide on the Buffalo Police Department to live in Tonawanda, that city law and department policy required residence within the city limits of Buffalo for all city employees. The alderman was largely ignored.

On Friday, the second day after the murders, the dead Asian-American was identified as Mickey Kee, one of alleged Mafia Don Emilio Gonzaga's enforcers, and rumors were circulating that Detective Brubaker, one of the fallen hero cops, had been on the payroll of the Farino crime family. Chief Podeski's sound bite that night was: "Whatever the complicated circumstances of this heinous crime, we must not let it blind us to the incredible bravery of one man—Captain Robert Gaines Millworth—who gave his life and the lives of his beloved family for the people of Erie County and the Niagara Frontier." A hero's funeral was being planned for Captain Millworth. It was rumored that the President of the United States might attend.

Kurtz had surgery for his left leg, right lung, and both arms that day. He slept all that evening.

On Saturday, the third day, Arlene attended the funeral of her neighbor, Mrs. Dzwrjsky, and brought a tuna casserole to the family afterward. That same day, the Buffalo News ran a copyrighted story that canceled the President's visit: a world-famous violinist named John Wellington Frears had come forward with documents, photographs, and audio tapes showing that Captain Robert Gaines Millworth was an imposter, that the city had hired a serial child-killer with no history of law enforcement in his background, and that this imposter had once been James B. Hansen, the man who had murdered Frears's daughter twenty years earlier. Furthermore, Frears had evidence to show that Millworth/Hansen had been in the pay of crime boss Emilio Gonzaga and that the Train Station Massacre had not been a cops-versus-robbers fight at all, but a complicated gangland killing gone terribly wrong.

The Mayor and the chief of police announced on Saturday afternoon that there would be an immediate grand jury investigation into both the Gonzaga and Farino alleged crime families.

On that third evening, the CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, and CNN news all led with the story.

On the fourth morning, Sunday, it was revealed by the Buffalo News and two local TV stations that Mr. John Wellington Frears had produced an audio tape of a telephone conversation between Angelina Farino Ferrara—a young woman recently returned from Europe, a widow, and someone never connected to the Farino family's business of crime—and Stephen "Little Skag" Farino, calling from Attica over his lawyer's secure phone. The transcript ran in that morning's edition of the Buffalo News, but copies of the tape were played on radio and TV stations everywhere.

Ms. Farino:

You've been hiring cops to whack people. Detective Brubaker, for instance. I know you've put him on the payroll that used to go to Hathaway.

Stephen Farino:

Stephen Farino: What the [expletive deleted] are you talking about, Angie?

Ms. Farino:

I don't care about Brubaker, but I've gone over the family notes and I see that Gonzaga's got a captain of detectives on the arm. A guy named Millworth.

Stephen Farino:

[no response]

Ms. Farino:

Millworth's not really Millworth. He's a serial killer named James B. Hansen… and a bunch of other aliases. He's a childkiller, Stevie. A rapist and a killer.

Stephen Farino:

So?

And so on. Along with the transcript, the Buffalo News released a list of forty-five names that included cops, judges, politicians, parole-board members, and other Buffalo-area officials shown to be on the Gonzaga family payroll, along with the amount they were paid each year by Gonzaga. There was a shorter list—eight names—of lesser cops and minor politicians who were in the pay of the Farino Family. Detective Fred Brubaker's name was on the second list.

On the fifth day, Monday, three of the most expensive lawyers in the United States, including one famous lawyer who had been successful in the O.J. Simpson defense years ago, all now in the hire of Emilio Gonzaga, held a press conference to announce that John Wellington Frears was a liar and a scoundrel, as well as someone intent upon slandering Italian-Americans everywhere, and they were prepared to prove it in a court of law. Their client, Emilio Gonzaga, was suing John Wellington Frears for slander to the tune of one hundred million dollars.

That evening, Frears appeared on Larry King Live. The violinist was sad, dignified, but unwavering. He showed photographs of his murdered daughter. He produced documents showing that Gonzaga had hired Millworth/Hansen. He showed carefully edited photographs of Millworth/Hansen posing with other murdered children—and with Frears's own daughter. When Larry King pressed Frears to tell how he had come by all this material, Frears said only, "I hired a skilled private investigator." When confronted with the news of the hundred-million-dollar lawsuit, Frears talked about his battle with colon cancer and said simply that he would not live long enough to defend his name in such a lawsuit. Emilio Gonzaga and Stephen Farino, said Frears, were murderers and child molesters. They would have to live with that knowledge, Frears said. He would not.

"Shut that damned thing off," Kurtz said from his hospital bed. He hated Larry King.

Arlene shut it off but lit a cigarette in defiance of all hospital rules.

On the sixth day after the massacre, Arlene came into the hospital to find Kurtz out of his bed and room. When he returned, pale, shaking, trailing his IV stand, he would not say where he had been, but Arlene knew that he had gone one floor up to look in on Rachel, who was in a private room now. The doctors had saved the girl's remaining kidney and she was on the road to recovery. Gail had put in the necessary papers to become Rachel's legal guardian, and the two spent hours together in Rachel's room each evening when Gail got off work.

On the seventh day, Wednesday, Arlene came in with a copy of USA Today: Emilio Gonzaga had been found in New York City that morning, stuffed in the trunk of a Chevrolet Monte Carlo parked near the fish market, two.22 bullets in the back of his head. "A double tap, obviously a professional hit," said the experts in such things. The same experts speculated that the Five Families had acted to end the bad publicity. "They're sentimentalists when it comes to kids," said one source.

But Kurtz was gone on that seventh morning. He'd checked himself out during the night. The previous evening, an inquiring mind from one of the newspapers had come by the hospital to ask Kurtz if he was the "skilled private investigator" mentioned by John Wellington Frears.

Arlene checked the office and the Royal Delaware Arms, but Kurtz had taken some essentials from both places and disappeared.