Joe Kurtz Omnibus

by Dan Simmons

  Kurtz did not really expect Pruno’s friend, Mr. John Wellington Frears, to show. Pruno seemed to know everyone in Buffalo—of the dozen or so street informants Kurtz had used back when he was a P.I., Pruno had been the gem of the lot—but Kurtz doubted if any friend of Pruno’s would be sober enough and presentable enough to make it to Blues Franklin.

  Angelina Farino. Other than Little Skag—Stephen or Stevie to family members—she was the only surviving child of the late Don Farino. Her older sister, the late Maria Farino, had been a casualty of her own ambition. Everyone Kurtz knew believed that older sister Angelina had been so disgusted by the Family business that she had removed herself to Italy more than five years earlier, presumably to enter a convent. According to Pruno, this was not quite accurate. It seems that the surviving Ms. Farino was more ambitious than her brothers or sister and had gone back to study crime with the family in Sicily even while getting a master’s degree in business administration from a university in Rome. She also got married twice while there, according to Pruno—first to a young Sicilian from a prominent La Cosa Nostra family who managed to get himself killed, then to an elderly Italian nobleman, Count Pietro Adolfo Ferrara. The information about Count Ferrara was sketchy—he may have died, he may have retired, he may still be in seclusion. He and Angelina may have divorced before she returned here, but perhaps they had not.

  “So our local mobster’s kid is really Countess Angelina Farino Ferrara?” Kurtz had asked.

  Pruno shook his head. “It appears that whatever her marital status might be, she did not acquire that title.”

  “Too bad,” said Kurtz. “It sounds funny.”

  Upon returning to the United States a few months earlier, Angelina had worked as a liaison for Little Skag in Attica, paying off politicians to ensure his parole in the coming summer, selling the white elephant of the family house in Orchard Park and buying new digs near the river, and—this was the part that floored Kurtz—opening negotiations with Emilio Gonzaga.

  The Gonzagas were the other second-tier, has-been, wise-guy family in Western New York, and the relationship between the Gonzagas and the Farinos made Shakespeare’s Capulets and Montagues look like kissing cousins.

  Pruno had already known about the Three Stooges’ contract on Kurtz. “I would have warned you, Joseph, but word hit the street late yesterday and it seems she met with the unlucky trio only the day before.”

  “Do you think she was acting on Little Skag’s instructions?” asked Kurtz.

  “That is the speculation I hear,” said Pruno. “Rumor is that she was reluctant to pay for the contract…or at least reluctant to hire such inept workmen.”

  “Lucky for me she did,” said Kurtz. “Skag was always cheap.” Kurtz had sat in the windy packing crate, observing the ice crystals in the air for a silent minute. “Any word on who they’ll send next?” he asked.

  Pruno had shaken his oversized head on that grimy chicken neck of his. The old man’s hands were shaking in a way that was obviously due more to need for an overdue injection of heroin than to the cold air. For the thousandth time, Kurtz wondered where Pruno found the money to support his habit.

  “I suspect that the next time, they will invest more money,” Pruno said glumly. “Angelina Farino is rebuilding the Farino Family’s muscle base, bringing in talent from New Jersey and Brooklyn, but evidently they don’t want to have the reemerging Family tied to this particular hit.”

  Kurtz said nothing. He was thinking about a European hit man known only as the Dane.

  “Sooner or later, however, they will remember the old axiom,” said Pruno.

  “Which one’s that?” Kurtz expected a torrent of Latin or Greek. On more than one occasion, he’d left the old man and his friend Soul Dad alone to hash out their arguments in classical languages.

  “‘If you want a thing done right, do it yourself,’” said Pruno. He was glancing at the door of the shack, obviously eager for Kurtz to leave.

  “One last question,” said Kurtz. “I’m being followed off and on by two homicide cops—Brubaker and Myers. Know anything about them?”

  “Detective Fred Brubaker has—in the argot of our time—a major hard-on for you, Joseph. He remains convinced that you were responsible for the demise of his friend and fellow shakedown artist, the late and totally unlamented Sergeant James Hathaway from Homicide.”

  “I know that,” said Kurtz. “What I meant was, have you heard anything about Brubaker tying up with one of the families?”

  “No, Joseph, but it should be just a matter of time. Such an association was a major source of income for Detective Hathaway, and Brubaker was always sort of a dull-witted understudy to Hathaway. I wish that I had more optimistic news for you.”

  Kurtz had said nothing to this. He’d patted the old man’s quaking arm and left the shack.

  Sitting in the Blues Franklin, waiting for the mysterious Mr. Frears, Kurtz wondered if it was coincidence that the two homicide cops were tailing him again this evening.

  Coe Pierce’s quartet was just wrapping up a fifteen-minute version of Miles Davis’s “All Blues,” filled with Oscar Peterson-like solo riffs for Pierce to fool around with on the piano, when Kurtz saw the well-dressed, middle-aged black man coming toward him from across the room. Kurtz was still wearing his peacoat and now he slipped his hand into the right-side pocket and slid the safety off the .40-caliber S&W semiauto there.

  The dignified-looking man came up to the opposite side of Kurtz’s table. “Mr. Kurtz?”

  Kurtz nodded. If the man made a move for a weapon, Kurtz would have to fire through his own coat, and he was not crazy about putting a hole in his only jacket.

  “I am John Wellington Frears,” said the man. “I believe that our mutual acquaintance, Dr. Frederick, told you that I would be meeting you tonight.”

  Dr. Frederick? thought Kurtz. He had once heard Soul Dad refer to Pruno as Frederick, but he’d thought it was the old wino’s first name. “Sit down,” said Kurtz. He kept his hand on the S&W and the pistol aimed under the table as the man took a chair across the table, his back to the quartet that had just taken a break. “What do you want Mr. Frears?”

  Frears sighed and rubbed his eyes as if weary. Kurtz noticed that the man was wearing a vest—as Pruno had said—but that it was part of a three-piece gray suit that must have cost several thousand dollars. Frears was a short man, with short curly hair and a perfectly trimmed short curly beard, all going gracefully to gray. His nails were manicured and his horn-rimmed glasses were classic Armani. His watch was subtle, classic and understated, but expensive. He wore no jewelry. He had the kind of intelligent gaze Kurtz had seen in photographs of Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois, and in person only with Pruno’s friend Soul Dad.

  “I want you to find the man who murdered my little girl,” said John Wellington Frears.

  “Why talk to me?” asked Kurtz.

  “You’re an investigator.”

  “I’m not. I’m a convicted felon, on parole. I have no private investigator’s license, nor will I ever have one again.”

  “But you’re a trained investigator, Mr. Kurtz.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Dr. Frederick says—”

  “Pruno has a hard time telling what day it is,” said Kurtz.

  “He assures me that you and your partner, Ms. Fielding, were the finest—”

  “That was more than twelve years ago,” Kurtz said. “I can’t help you.”

  Frears rubbed his eyes again and reached into his inside jacket pocket. Kurtz’s right hand had never left his pistol. His finger remained on the trigger.

  Frears pulled out a small color photograph and slid it across the table toward Kurtz: a black girl, thirteen or fourteen, wearing a black sweater and silver necklace. The girl was attractive and sweet looking, her eyes alive with a more vital version of John Wellington Frears’s intelligence. “My daughter Crystal,” said Frears. “She was murdered twenty years ago next month. May I tell you the stor
y?”

  Kurtz said nothing.

  “She was our darling,” said Frears. “Marcia’s and mine. Crystal was smart and talented. She played the viola… I’m a concert violinist, Mr. Kurtz, and I know that Crystal was gifted enough to become a professional musician, but that was not even her primary interest. She was a poet—not an adolescent poet, Mr. Kurtz, but a true poet. Dr. Frederick confirmed that, and as you know, Dr. Frederick was not only a philosopher, but a gifted literary critic…”

  Kurtz remained silent.

  “Twenty years ago next month, Crystal was killed by a man we all knew and trusted, a fellow faculty member—I was teaching at the University of Chicago then, we lived in Evanston. The man was a professor of psychology. His name was James B. Hansen, and he had a family—a wife, and a daughter Rachel’s age. The two girls rode horses together. We had bought Crystal a gelding—Dusty was its name—and we boarded it at a stable outside of town where Crystal and Denise, that was Hansen’s daughter’s name, would ride every Saturday during clement weather. Hansen and I took turns driving Crystal and Denise to the stable and we would wait while they took lessons and rode, Hansen one weekend, me the next.”

  Frears stopped and took a bream. There was a noise behind him and he glanced over his shoulder. Coe and the quartet were returning to the stage. They began a slow, Patricia-Barberish rendition of “Inchworm.”

  Frears looked back at Kurtz, who had clicked on the safety of the .40 Smith & Wesson, left it in his pocket and brought both hands up onto the table. He did not lift the photograph of the girl or look at it.

  “One weekend,” continued Frears, “James B. Hansen picked up Crystal saying that Denise was sick with a cold but that it was his turn to drive and he wanted to do so. But instead of driving her to the stable, he took her to a forest preserve on the outskirts of Chicago, raped our daughter, tortured her, killed her, and left her naked body to be found by hikers.”

  Frears’s tone had remained cool and level, as if reciting a story that meant nothing to him, but now he paused for a minute. When he resumed, there was an undercurrent if not a quaver, in his voice. “You may wonder, Mr. Kurtz, how we know for sure that James B. Hansen was the perpetrator of this crime. Well, he called me, Mr. Kurtz. After killing Crystal, he called me from a pay phone—this was before cell phones were common—and told me what he had done. And he told me that he was going home to kill his wife and daughter.”

  The Coe Pierce Quartet shifted from the wandering “Inchworm” to a stylized “Flamenco Sketches” that would feature the young black trumpeter, Billy Eversol.

  “I called the police, of course,” said Frears. “They rushed to Hansen’s home in Oak Park. He had arrived there first. His Range Rover was parked outside. The house was on fire. When the flames were extinguished, they found the bodies of Mrs. Hansen and Denise—they had each been shot in the back of the head by a large-caliber pistol—and the charred body of James. B. Hansen. They identified his body via dental records. The police determined that he had used the same pistol on himself.”

  Kurtz sipped his beer, set the glass down and said, “Twenty years ago.”

  “Next month.”

  “But your James B. Hansen isn’t really dead.”

  John Wellington Frears blinked behind his round Armanis. “How did you know that?”

  “Why would you need an investigator if he was?”

  “Ah, precisely,” said Frears. He licked his lips and took another bream. Kurtz realized that the man was in pain—not just existential or emotional pain, but serious physical pain, as if from a disease that made it hard for him to breathe. “He is not dead. I saw him ten days ago.”

  “Where?”

  “Here in Buffalo.”

  “Where?”

  “At the airport, Concourse Two to be precise. I was leaving Buffalo—I had performed twice at Kleinhan’s Music Hall—and was catching a flight to LaGuardia. I live in Manhattan. I had just passed through that metal-detector device when I saw him on the other side of the security area. He was carrying an expensive tan-leather satchel and heading for the doors. I cried out—I called his name—I tried to give chase, but the security people stopped me. I could not go through the metal detectors in the direction I had to in order to catch him. By the time the security people allowed me to go on, he was long gone.”

  “And you’re sure it was Hansen?” said Kurtz. “He looked the same?”

  “Not at all the same,” said Frears. “He was twenty years older and thirty pounds heavier. Hansen was always a big man, he had played football back in Nebraska when he was in college, but now he seemed even larger, stronger. His hair had been long and he had worn a beard in Chicago—it was the early eighties, after all—and now he had short gray hair, a military sort of crew cut, and was clean-shaven. No, he looked nothing like the James B. Hansen of Chicago twenty years ago.”

  “But you’re sure it was him?”

  “Absolutely,” said Frears.

  “You contacted the Buffalo police?”

  “Of course. I spent days talking with different people here. I think that one of the detectives actually believed me. But there is no James Hansen in any Buffalo-area directory. No Hansen or anyone fitting his description on the faculty of any of the local universities. No psychologists with that name in Buffalo. And my daughter’s case file is officially closed. There was nothing they could do.”

  “And what did you want me to do?” said Kurtz, his voice low.

  “Well, I want you to…”

  “Kill him,” said Kurtz.

  John Wellington Frears blinked and his head snapped back as if he had been slapped. “Kill him? Good God, no. Why would you say that, Mr. Kurtz?”

  “He raped and killed your daughter. You’re a professional violinist, obviously well off. You could afford to hire any legitimate private investigator—hire an entire agency if you want. Why else would you come to me unless you wanted the man killed?”

  Frears’s mouth opened and then closed again. “No, Mr. Kurtz, you misunderstand. Dr. Frederick is the one person I know well in Buffalo—obviously he has fallen on hard times, but his sagacity abides beneath the sad circumstances—and he recommended you highly as an investigator who could find Hansen for me. And you are correct about my financial status. I will reward you very generously, Mr. Kurtz. Very generously indeed.”

  “And if I found him? What would you do, Mr. Frears?”

  “Inform the police, of course. I’m staying at the Airport Sheraton until this nightmare is over.”

  Kurtz drank the last of his beer. Coe was playing a bluesy version of “Summertime.”

  “Mr. Frears,” Kurtz said, “you’re a very civilized man.”

  Frears adjusted his glasses. “So you’ll take the case, Mr. Kurtz?”

  “No.”

  Frears blinked again. “No?”

  “No.”

  Frears sat in silence a moment and then stood. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Kurtz. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

  Frears turned to go and had taken several steps when Kurtz called his name. The man stopped and turned, his handsome, pained face showing something like hope. “Yes, Mr. Kurtz?”

  “You forgot your photograph,” Kurtz said. He held up the photo of the dead girl.

  “You keep it, Mr. Kurtz. I no longer have Crystal and my wife left me three years after Crystal’s death, but I have many photographs. You keep it, Mr. Kurtz.” Frears crossed the room and went out the door of the Blues Franklin.

  Big Daddy Brace’s granddaughter Ruby came over. “Daddy told me to tell you that those two cops parked down the street left.”

  “Thanks, Ruby.”

  “You want another beer, Joe?”

  “Scotch.”

  “Any particular kind?”

  “The cheapest kind,” said Kurtz. When Ruby went back to the bar, Kurtz lifted the photograph, tore it into small pieces, and dropped the pieces into the ashtray.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE


  Angelina Farino Ferrara jogged every morning at 6:00 A.M., even though 6:00 A.M. at this time of the winter in Buffalo meant she jogged in the dark. Most of her jogging route was lighted with streetlights or pedestrian-walkway streetlamps, but for the dark patches near the river she wore a backpacking headlamp held in place by elastic straps. It did not look all that elegant, Angelina supposed, but she didn’t give a flying fuck how she looked when she ran.

  Upon her return from Sicily in December, Angelina had sold the old Farino estate in Orchard Park and moved what was left of the Family operation to a penthouse condo overlooking the Buffalo Marina. Ribbons of expressways and an expanse of park separated the marina area from the city, but at night she could look east and north to what little skyline Buffalo offered, while the river and lake guarded her eastern flank. Since she had bought the place, the view westward was mostly of the ice and gray clouds above the river, although there was a glimpse of Canada, that Promised Land to her grandfather during Prohibition days and the earliest source of the family revenue. Staring at the ice and the dreary Buffalo skyline day after day, Angelina Farino Ferrara looked forward to spring, although she knew that summer would bring her brother Stephen’s parole and the end of her days of being acting don.

  Her jogging route took her a mile and a half north along the pathway following the marina parkway, down through a pedestrian tunnel to the frozen riverside—one could not call it a beach—for another half mile before looping around and returning along the Riverside Drive walkway. Even from behind bars in Attica, her brother Stevie—Angelina knew that everyone else thought of him as little Skag—refused to allow her to go out alone, but although she was importing good talent from New Jersey and Brooklyn to replace the idiots her father had kept on retainer, none of these lasagna-fed mama’s boys were in good enough shape to keep up with her when she ran. Angelina envied the new President of the United States; even though he didn’t jog much, when he did, he had Secret Service men who could run with him.