Hard Freeze

CHAPTER NINE

Angelina Farino Ferrara sat in her expensive rink-side seat at the Sabres game and waited impatiently for someone to get hurt. She did not have to wait long. Eleven minutes and nine seconds into the first period, Sabres defenseman Rhett Warrener got Vancouver Canucks captain Markus Naslund against the boards in the corner, threw him down and fractured his tibia. The crowd went wild.

Angelina hated ice hockey. Of course, she hated all organized sports, but hockey bored her the most. The potential of watching these toothless apes skate for an hour with the possibility of no score—no score at all! — made her want to scream. But then again, she had been dragged to Sabres games for almost fourteen years by her late hockey-loving father. The new arena was called HSBC, which stood for some banking thing, but everyone in Buffalo knew that it meant either "Hot Sauce, Blue Cheese" or "Holy Shit, Buffalo's Cold!"

Angelina did remember one game she had enjoyed immensely, many years ago when she was young. It was a Stanley Cup play-off game in the old Coliseum, and the season had run later than usual, deep into May. The temperature was in the low nineties when the game began, the ice was melting and setting off a thick fog, and the fog awakened scores of bats that had been hanging amidst the wooden rafters of the ancient Coliseum for years. Angelina remembered her father cursing as the fog grew so thick that even the expensive-seat holders could see almost nothing of the action, merely hear the grunts and shouts and curses from the rink as the players collided and battled in the fog, all the while the bats darted in and out of the mist, swooping among the stands, making women shriek and men curse all the louder.

Angelina had enjoyed that particular game.

Now, as trainers and medics and hulking teammates on skates huddled around the fallen Naslund, Angelina headed for the ladies' rest room.

The Boys, Marco and Leo, knuckled along beside her, squinting suspiciously at the crowd. Angelina knew that these two were decent bodyguards and button men—at least Marco seemed to be—but she also knew that they had been chosen by Stevie and that their first job was to report her actions and behavior to her brother-behind-bars. Angelina Farino Ferrara was all too familiar with public figures—Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, for one—who had been gunned down by their own turncoat security detail. She did not plan to check out that way.

At the entrance to the women's rest room, Marco and Leo continued to hulk. "Oh, for God's sake," said Angelina. "No one's lurking in the John. Go get us some beer and Cracker Jack and a hot dog. Three hot dogs." Marco nodded at Leo to go but seemed intent on staying around the women's rest room. "Go help Leo carry," she ordered.

Marco frowned but followed the other huge man around the corner toward the refreshment stand. Angelina stepped into the crowded rest room, did not see Joe Kurtz standing around in drag, and quickly stepped back out into the corridor.

Kurtz was leaning against the wall at the opening to a side hallway across the way. Angelina walked over to join him.

Kurtz kept his right hand in his peacoat pocket and nodded for her to walk down the narrow service corridor.

"Is that a pistol in your pocket," said Angelina, "or are you just happy to—"

"It's a pistol." Kurtz nodded for her to open the door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY at the end of the hall.

Angelina took a breath and went through the door, noticing that the latch had been taped Watergate-style. A metal stairway led down to a wildly cluttered underground filled with boilers and countless pipes and valves running to the rink above. Kurtz pointed down one of the narrow walkways through the machinery, and Angelina led the way. Halfway across the space, a black man looked through the window of his office, nodded at Kurtz, and went back to his business.

"A friend of yours?" asked Angelina.

"A friend of Ben Franklin's," said Kurtz. "Up that way." Another long, metal staircase led to a side door.

They emerged at the dark end of the parking lot behind the huge heating and air-conditioning blowers.

"Spread against the wall," said Kurtz. He had removed his.40-caliber semiauto and held it steady.

"Oh, for God's sake—" began Angelina.

Kurtz moved very, very quickly, spinning her around and shoving her toward the wall so fast that she had to raise her hands or plant her face in the brick. He kicked her legs farther apart, and she thanked the gods that she had changed out of her dress into wool slacks after visiting Gonzaga earlier in the day.

Once again, Kurtz's frisk was fast and effective and impersonal, if you can call having someone's hands moving across your breasts, buttocks, thighs, and crotch impersonal. He pulled the little.45 from its holster in the small of her back and slid it into his pocket while he pawed through her purse.

"I want that pistol back as well," she said.

"Why? Did you shoot your second husband with it?"

Angelina let out a breath. Comedians. They all thought they were comedians. "I know its maker," she said. "Fratelli Tanfoglio of the Gardone Tanfoglios." He ignored her and tossed her purse back to her as she turned toward him. "In Italy," she added uselessly.

"Let's go," said Kurtz.

"Go where?" asked Angelina, feeling a surge of alarm for the first time. "I was just supposed to tell you how to find the evidence that Emilio Gonzaga whacked your old partner. I don't have to go anywhere to—" She looked at Joe Kurtz's face and fell silent.

"Let's go," repeated Kurtz.

They walked through the dark and icy parking lot. "My Jaguar's parked on the other side," said Angelina. "In the VIP lot near—"

"We're not taking your car," said Kurtz.

"When Marco and Leo find me gone—with my car still there—they're going to go so totally apeshit that—"

"Shut up," said Kurtz.

Kurtz had the woman drive his Volvo. He sat with his back to the passenger door and the pistol propped on his left forearm. They were taking back streets through the snowy night, driving slowly because he had told her that if she drove over forty miles per hour, he would kill her. Kurtz had been in the driver's seat when someone was holding a gun on him, and he'd discovered that getting the car up to eighty-five or ninety miles per hour was a serious disincentive to the shooter.

"Tell me about Gonzaga and this guy," he said.

Angelina glanced at him. The yellow light from the sodium-vapor anticrime lamps was painting both their faces dead yellow. "You were in love with her, weren't you, Kurtz? Your partner. The woman Emilio ordered murdered. I'd thought it was just a Maltese Falcon sort of thing… you know, you can't let your partner get killed. That sort of macho shit."

"Tell me about Gonzaga and the guy we're going to see," said Kurtz.

"Gonzaga's man who brought the order down to the two punks you wasted—Falco and Levine—is named Johnny Norse. I was going to give you his name and address tonight. But there's no reason for me to go along. It's just going to cause a world of trouble when Marco and Leo—"

"Tell me about Johnny Norse," said Kurtz.

Angelina Farino Ferrara took a breath. She did not look nervous to Kurtz. He had considered settling this whole thing back in the darkened parking lot. But he needed information and right now she was the only conduit.

"Norse was Emilio Gonzaga's favorite button man back in the late eighties and early nineties," Angelina said. "A real Dapper Dan type. Always wore Armani. Thought he was Richard Gere. Ladies' man. Man's man. Swung both ways. Now he's dying of AIDS. He's dead, really, he just doesn't know it yet—"

"For your sake," said Kurtz, "he'd better not be dead."

Angelina shook her head. "He's in this hospice in Williamsville." She glanced at Kurtz in the yellow light. "Look, we can avoid the shitstorm that'll blow in if I'm out of the Boys' sight any longer. Let me go back to the game. I'll make up some bullshit story about where I was. Check out Norse on your own. He'll confirm what I told you about Gonzaga ordering the hit."

Kurtz smiled ever so slightly. "It sounds like a good plan," he said. "Except for the part where I go off to some address you give me and find ten of your boys—or Gonzaga's—waiting there. No, I think we'll do this together. Tonight Now."

"What's to insure that you don't kill me anyway?" asked Angelina. "After I bring you to Norse. Even if he tells the truth?"

Kurtz's silence answered that question.

The hospice was in a tasteful, Georgian-style building at the end of a cul-de-sac in the expensive part of Williamsville. It might have been a private home had it not been for the «Exit» signs at the doors, the white-clothed aides pushing wheelchairs in the halls, and the receptionist behind the tiger-maple desk in the foyer. Kurtz wondered for a bemused second or so whether this was a home for aged and dying button men, whether the mob ran a chain of these places across the country—Wiseguy Manors. He suspected not The receptionist told them quietly that visiting hours were over, but when Angelina said that they had come to see Mr. Norse, the receptionist was obviously surprised.

"No one has come to see Mr. Norse while he has been under our care," she said. "Are you family?"

"Gonzaga family," Kurtz said, but the woman showed no reaction. So much for the mob-franchise theory.

"Well…" The woman hesitated. "You are aware that Mr. Norse is very near the end?"

"That's why we've come," said Angelina Farino Ferrara.

The receptionist nodded and summoned a woman in white to take them to Mr. Norse.

The dying thing in the bed was no Dapper Dan. The remnants of Johnny Norse now weighed ninety pounds at the most, showed emaciated arms that reminded Kurtz of a baby bird's bended wings tipped with yellowed nails, and had flesh mottled with sores and the lesions of Kaposi's sarcoma. Most of the mobster's hair had fallen out. Oxygen tubes ran up under the man's gaping nostrils. Norse's lips were cracked and already pulled back over his teeth like a corpse's and his eyes had sunken, the corners radiating small white webs as if spiders had already laid claim there.

Pruno had given Kurtz a reading list before he left for prison, and the first book Kurtz had read was Madame Bovary. He was reminded now of how Emma Bovary's corpse had looked after the arsenic had killed her.

Norse stirred in his bed and turned unblinking eyes in their direction. Kurtz stepped closer to the bed.

"Who are you?" whispered Norse. There was a pathetic eagerness in that whisper. "Did Emilio send you?"

"Sort of," said Kurtz. "Do you remember Emilio Gonzaga having you pass down an order twelve years ago to kill a woman named Samantha Fielding?"

Norse frowned up at Kurtz and reached for the call button on a beige wire. Kurtz moved the button out of the man's trembling grasp. "Samantha Fielding," repeated Kurtz. "A private investigator. It was during the Elizabeth Connors kidnapping. You were the go-between with Eddie Falco and Manny Levine."

"Who the fuck are you?" whispered Johnny Norse. The lusterless eyes flicked toward Angelina and then came back to Kurtz. "Fuck you."

"Wrong answer," said Kurtz. He leaned over with both arms extended as if to hug Norse, but instead, he closed his thumbs over the two oxygen lines and squeezed them shut.

Norse began gasping and rasping. Angelina closed the door and set her back against it.

Kurtz released the hoses. "Samantha Fielding?"

Johnny Norse's eyes were flicking back and forth like cornered rodents. He shook his head and Kurtz kinked the oxygen lines again, holding them kinked this time until Norse's gasps were as loud as Cheyne-Stokes death rattles.

"Samantha Fielding?" repeated Kurtz. "About twelve years ago."

The corpse in the bed nodded wildly. "The Connors kid… Emilio was… squeezing Connors… just wanted… the money."

Kurtz waited.

"Some… cunt… of a P.I… found the connection… between Falco and Levine… and us snatching the kid. Emilio—" He stopped and looked up at Kurtz, his corpse mouth twitching in what might have been an attempt at an ingratiating Johnny Norse smile. "I didn't have… nothing to do with it. I didn't even know who they were talking about. I didn't—"

Kurtz reached for the oxygen hose.

"Jesus… fuck… all right Emilio put the word out I… delivered it… to the drug dealers… Falco and… Levine. You got what you want asshole?"

"Yes," said Kurtz. He took the.40 S&W semiautomatic from his belt, thumbed back the hammer, and set the muzzle in Johnny Norse's mouth. The man's teeth chattered against the cold steel. Something like wild relief flickered behind the clouded eyes.

Kurtz removed the muzzle and lowered the hammer. There was a bottle of medical disinfectant on the expensive nightstand, and Kurtz sprayed the barrel of the S&W with it before wiping it with the hem of Norse's hospital gown and sliding it back in his belt. He nodded at the woman and they left.