by Dan Simmons
"Yes," said Kurtz.
He could hear Arlene sigh and then exhale cigarette smoke. "All right. Is this urgent? Should I push it ahead of today's Sweetheart Search?"
"No," said Kurtz. "It'll keep. Get to it when you can."
"I presume this isn't a Sweetheart Search client we're talking about, is it, Joe?"
Kurtz sipped the last of his beer.
"Is this James B. Hansen in Buffalo now?" asked Arlene.
"I don't know," he said. "Also, I need another check."
"Listening," said Arlene. He could imagine her with her pen and pad poised.
"John Wellington Frears," said Kurtz. "Concert violinist. He lives in New York, probably Manhattan, probably the Upper East Side. He probably doesn't have a criminal record, but I want everything you can get on his medical records."
"Shall I use all possible—"
"Yes," said Kurtz. Medical records were among the most closely guarded secrets in America, but Arlene's last job while Kurtz was in prison had been with a nest of ambulance chasers. She could ferret out medical records that the patient's doctor did not know existed.
"Okay. Are you coming in today? We could look at some office space I marked in the paper."
"I don't know if I'll be in," said Kurtz. "How's Wedding Bells coming?"
"Data-mining services are all lined up," said Arlene. "Kevin's waiting to get us incorporated. I've got the Website designed and ready to go. All I need is the money in the bank so I can write the check."
"Yeah," said Kurtz and clicked off. He lay on the couch for a while and gazed at the twelve-foot-wide waterstain on the ceiling. Sometimes it looked like some fractal imagery or a medieval tapestry design to Kurtz. Other times it just looked like a fucking waterstain. Today it was a stain.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Angelina Farino Ferrara hated eating shit for the Gonzagas. The «negotiations» all took place at the creepy old Gonzaga compound on Grand Island in the center of the Niagara River. This meant that Angelina and the Boys were picked up in one of Emilio Gonzaga's tacky white stretch limousines—the Gonzagas controlled most of the limousine services in Western New York—and driven across the bridge and through various checkpoints into the Grand Island fortress under the careful watch of Mickey Kee, Gonzaga's toughest killer. Once at the compound, more of Emilio's goons would pat them down and check them for wires before sitting the Boys down in a windowless vestibule and marching Angelina into one of the manse's many rooms as if she were a prisoner of war, which, in a real sense, she was.
The war hadn't been her doing, of course—nothing in the family business had been her doing for the past six years—but was a result of her brother Stephen's bizarre machinations to seize control of his own family business from behind bars in Attica. The housecleaning that Stevie had instigated—involving, Angelina knew, the murder of her conniving sister and useless father, although Stevie did not know that she knew—had also brought the Gonzagas into the Farino family business to the tune of a half-million dollars, most of it going to a hit man known only as the Dane, who had carried out the Hamlet-like last act for the don, Maria, and their double-dealing family consigliere at the time. The Gonzaga money had bought a sort of peace between the families—or at least a cease-fire with Stevie and the surviving members of the Farino family—but it also meant that tacit control of the Farino family was currently in the hands of their traditional enemies. When Angelina thought of the fat, fish-faced, blubbery-lipped, sweating pig-hemorrhoid that was Emilio Gonzaga determining the Farinos' destiny, she wanted to rip both his and her brother's heads off and piss down their necks.
"A pleasure to see you again, Angelina," said Emilio Gonzaga, showing his cigar-stained pig's teeth in what he undoubtedly thought was a seductive, debonair smile.
"So nice to see you, Emilio," said Angelina with a shy, self-effacing half-smile she had borrowed. from a Carmelite nun she used to drink with in Rome. If she and Emilio had been alone at that moment, with none of Gonzaga's bodyguards around, especially the dangerous Mickey Kee, she would have happily shot the fat don in the testicles. One at a time.
"I hope it is not too early for lunch," said Emilio, leading her into a dark-beamed, dark-paneled, window-less dining room. The interior furnishings looked as if they had been designed by Lucretia Borgia on a down day. "Something light," said Emilio, gesturing grandly to a table and a dark-wood sideboard groaning under the weight of large bowls of pasta, haunches of beef, fish whose eyes stared up plaintively, a stack of lobster glowing pink, three types of potatoes, entire loaves of Italian bread, and half a dozen bottles of heavy wine.
"Wonderful," said Angelina. Emilio Gonzaga held the black, high-backed chair for her while she took her place. As always, the fat man smelled of sweat, cigars, halitosis, and something faintly Cloroxy, like stale semen. She gave him her coyest smile again while one of his pigboy bodyguards pulled out his chair as he took his place at the head of the table, to her left.
They talked business while they ate. Emilio was one of those men—like former President Clinton—who liked to grin and talk and laugh with his mouth full. Another reason Angelina had fled to Europe for six years. But now she ignored the display, nodded attentively, and tried to sound smart but not too smart, agreeable but not a total pushover, and—when Emilio flirted—appropriately slutty but not a complete roundheels.
"So," he said, segueing smoothly from the business side of the new merger and acquisition he was arranging, in which the Farino family would merge into oblivion and the Gonzagas would acquire everything, "this power-sharing thing, this idea of the three of us running things—" Emilio's veneer of education slipped as he pronounced the word tings " — it's what the old guys, the Romans, our ancestors, used to call a troika."
"Triumvirate," said Angelina. She immediately wished she'd kept her mouth shut. Suffer fools. Count Ferrara had taught her. Then make them suffer.
"What's that?" Emilio Gonzaga was picking at something in his side teeth.
"Triumvirate," repeated Angelina. "That's what the Romans used to call it when they had three leaders at one time. A troika is the Russian phrase for three leaders… or three anything. It was what they called three horses hitched to a sleigh."
Emilio grunted and glanced over his shoulder. The two white-jacketed goons he had left in the room to act as waiters stood with their hands over their crotches and their stares focused on nothing. Mickey Kee and the other bodyguard stared at the ceiling. No one wanted to be paying attention when the don was corrected.
"Whatever," said Emilio. "The point is that you benefit, I benefit, and Little Ska… Stephen… he benefits the most. Like old times, only without the rancor." Gonzaga pronounced the last word rain-core.
It's like old times, only this time with you elected God, me elected your whore, and Stevie elected to die within a few months after he gets out, thought Angelina. She lifted the glass of bilious cabernet. "To new beginnings," she said brightly.
The cell phone Kurtz had given her rang. Emilio stopped his chewing and frowned at her breach of etiquette.
"I'm sorry, Emilio," she said. "Only Stevie, his lawyer, and a few other people use this private line. I should take it." She rose from the table and turned her back to the pig on his throne. "Yes?"
"The Sabres are playing tonight," came Joe Kurtz's voice. "Go to the game."
"All right."
"After the first serious injury, go to the women's rest room near the main doors." He disconnected.
Angelina put the phone back in her tiny purse and sat down again. Emilio was sloshing after-dinner liqueur around in his cheeks as if it were mouthwash.
"That was short," he said.
"But sweet," said Angelina.
The goons brought coffee in a silver urn and five types of pastry.
It was late afternoon, snowing harder and almost dark when Kurtz drove thirty minutes north to the suburban village of Lockport. The house on Locust Street looked comfortable, middle-class, and safe—lights burning on
both floors—when Kurtz drove past, turned left, and parked halfway down the next street in front of a ranch house for sale. Donald Rafferty didn't know Kurtz's Volvo, but this wasn't the kind of neighborhood that wouldn't notice if a car with someone in it kept parking along a residential street for long periods of time.
Kurtz had an electronic device the size of a compact boom box on the passenger seat, and now he plugged in earphones. To anyone passing by, he would look like someone waiting for a realtor late on a Friday afternoon, someone enjoying his Discman.
The boom box was a short-range radio receiver tuned to the five bugs he had planted in Rafferty and Rachel's home three months earlier. The electronic gear had cost him what savings he'd had at the time, and Kurtz had not chosen to get a stronger transmitter or tape equipment—he didn't have the time or personnel to pour through tapes anyway—but this way, he could eavesdrop when he was in the neighborhood, which was often. The evening sampling told him quite a bit.
Rachel, Sam's fourteen-year-old daughter, was an intelligent, quiet, sensitive and lonely child. She made daughterly overtures to Rafferty, her adoptive father, but the man was either too busy, too distracted by his gambling, or too drunk to pay any attention. He wasn't abusive to Rachel, unless one counted absolute indifference as abuse. Sam had been married to Rafferty for only ten months—and that four years previous to Rachel's birth, which owed nothing to Donnie Rafferty—but Sam had left no other family behind when she was murdered twelve years ago, so his appointment as the girl's guardian had seemed to make sense at the time. Her insurance and family inheritance must have been attractive to Rafferty when he petitioned to adopt Rachel; the money had paid for his house and car and settled more than a few of his gambling debts. But now Rafferty had started losing heavily again, which meant that he was drinking heavily again as well. Rafferty had three regular girlfriends, two of whom spent nights with him in Lockport on a well-scheduled basis, so that each of the two would not find evidence of the other. The third girlfriend was a coke-pushing whore on Seneca Street who didn't know or care where Rafferty lived.
Kurtz tuned in the bugs. Donald Rafferty had just hung up after promising his bookie, a sleazo that Kurtz had known professionally, that he would have the next payment to him by Monday. Now Rafferty called DeeDee, his Number Two girlfriend, and started making plans for the weekend. This time, they were going away together, up to Toronto, which meant that Rachel was being left home alone again.
Kurtz had not bugged Rachel's bedroom, but he quickly checked the family room and kitchen taps. There came the soft sounds of plates being rinsed and set in the dishwasher.
Rafferty finished his phone conversation after telling DeeDee to "bring the little leather thing along this weekend" and walked into the kitchen—Kurtz could hear the footsteps. A cupboard was opened and closed; Kurtz knew that Rafferty kept his booze in the kitchen and his cocaine in the top drawer of his dresser. Another cupboard. The sensitive microphone picked up the sound of the drink—Rafferty stocked more bourbon than anything else—being poured.
"Goddamn snow. Walk'll need shoveling again in the morning." His voice was slurred.
"Okay, Dad."
"I've got a business trip again this weekend. I'll be back Sunday or Monday."
During the interval of silence, Kurtz tried to imagine what kind of weekend business trip a U.S. Postal Service clerk would have to take.
Rachel's voice. "Could Melissa come over tomorrow night to watch a video with me?"
"No."
"Could I go over to their house to watch one if I was back by nine?"
"No." The cupboard was opened and closed again.
The dishwasher began running.
"Rache?" Kurtz knew from his sampling of her phone conversations with Melissa—her only real friend—that Rachel hated that nickname.
"Yes, Daddy?"
"That's really a pretty thing you're wearing."
For a time, the only noise was the dishwasher.
"This sweatshirt?"
"Yeah. It looks… different."
"It's not. It's the one I got at the Falls last summer."
"Yeah, well… you look pretty is all."
The dishwasher kicked into the rinse cycle.
"I'm going to take the garbage out," said Rachel.
It was full dark now. Kurtz left his earphones on as he drove around the block, slowing as he passed the house. He saw the girl at the side of the house. Her hair was longer now, and even in the dim glow from the porch light, he could see that it looked more the color of Sam's red hair than it had when it was shorter in the fall. Rachel pressed the garbage bag down in the trash can and stood for a minute in the side yard, turned mostly away from Kurtz and the street, holding her face up to the falling snow.
CHAPTER EIGHT
At the same time, in the suburb of Tonawanda, a thirty-minute drive from Lockport, James B. Hansen—aka Robert Millworth aka Howard G. Lane aka Stanley Steiner aka half a dozen other names, none of which shared the same initials—was celebrating his fiftieth birthday.
Hansen—his current name was Robert Gaines Millworth—was surrounded by friends and loving family, including his wife of three years, Donna, his stepson Jason, and his eight-year-old Irish setter, Dickson. The long driveway to his modernist home facing Elicott Creek was filled with moderately expensive sedans and SUVs belonging to his friends and colleagues, who had braved yet another snowstorm to join him at his well-planned surprise party.
Hansen was relaxed and jovial. He'd returned from an extended business trip to Miami only a week and a half earlier and his tan was the envy of everyone. Hansen had indeed put on almost thirty pounds since his University of Chicago psychologist days, but he was six-feet-four, much of the extra weight was muscle, and even the fat was toned up and useful when push came to shove.
Now Hansen moved among his guests, stopping to chat with clusters of friends, grinning at the inevitable fiftieth-birthday-over-the-hill jokes, and generally patting everyone on the shoulder or shaking their hands. Occasionally Hansen would think about that hand of his, where it had been, about what he'd buried in an Everglades hummock twelve days earlier, and what that hand had touched, and he had to smile. Stepping out onto the modern concrete-and-industrial-wire terrace above the front door, James Hansen breathed in the cold night air, blinked snowflakes off his eyelashes, and sniffed his hand. After two weeks, he knew the smell of lime and blood could not still be there, but the memory of it made something hard stir in him.
When James B. Hansen had been twelve years old—living under his real name, which he had all but forgotten by now—and growing up in Kearney, Nebraska, he had seen the Tony Curtis movie The Great Imposter. Based on a true story, the film was about a man who went from job to job and identity to identity—at one point impersonating a doctor and actually carrying out lifesaving surgery. Since then, almost forty years ago, the idea had been used countless times in films and television and so-called "reality programming," but to young James B. Hansen, the movie was an epiphany comparable to Saul's being-knocked-off-his-ass revelation on the road to Damascus.
Hansen had immediately begun re-creating himself, first by lying to friends, teachers, and his mother—his father had died in a car accident when Hansen was six. Hansen's mother then died when he was a freshman at the University of Nebraska; within days he dropped out of the university, moved to Indianapolis, and changed his name and history. It was so easy. Identity in the United States was essentially a matter of choice and acquiring the proper birth certificates, driver's licenses, credit cards, college and graduate-school transcripts, and so forth was child's play.
Child's play for James B. Hansen as a child had been pulling the wings off flies and vivisecting kittens. Hansen knew that this was a sure early sign of a sociopathic and dangerous psychotic personality—he had earned his living for two years as a professor of psychology and taught these things in his abnormal-psych courses—but this did not bother him. What the conformity-strait-jacketed medio
crities labeled as sociopathology, he knew to be liberation—liberation from social constraints that the weak millions never thought to challenge. And Hansen had unsentimentally known of his own superiority for decades: the only good thing his Nebraska high school had ever done for him was to administer a full battery of intelligence tests to him—he was being staffed for possible emotional and learning problems at the time—and the amazed school psychologist had told his mother that Jimmy (not his name at the time) had an IQ of 168, effectively in the genius category and as high as that battery of tests could measure intelligence. This was no news to Jimmy, who had always known that he was far more intelligent than his classmates and teachers (he had no real friends or playmates). This was not arrogance, merely astute observation. The school psychologist had said that a gifted/talented program or special school for the gifted would have been appropriate for young Hansen, but of course no such thing existed in 1960s Kearney, Nebraska. Besides, by that time, Hansen's teacher had become aware—through Jimmy's creative-writing essays—of the sixteen-year-old student's penchant for torturing dogs and cats, and Jimmy came close to being expelled. Only his ailing mother's intervention and his own stonewalling had kept him in school.
Those creative-writing papers had been the last time Hansen had told the truth about anything important.
At an early age, James B. Hansen had learned a profound truth: namely, that almost all experts and specialists and professionals are absolutely full of shit. The great bulk of each of their so-called professions is language, jargon, specialized babble. Given that, and some deep reading in the field, and the proper attire, anyone smart enough could do damned near anything. In his last thirty-two years of liberation from truth and imposed identity, Hansen had never impersonated an airline pilot or a neurosurgeon, but he suspected that he could if he put his mind to it. During those years, however, he had made his living as an English professor, a senior editor at a major publishing house, a handler of heavy construction equipment, a NASCAR driver, a Park Avenue psychiatrist, a professor of psychology, a herpetologist specializing in extracting venom, an MRI specialist, a computer designer, an award-winning realtor, a political consultant, an air traffic controller, a firefighter, and half a dozen other specialties. He had never studied for any of these fields beyond visits to the library.