by Dan Simmons
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.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The week Joe disappeared, she'd had to move everything out of their basement office so the city could tear down the building. Gail and some friends helped her with the move. Arlene stored the computers and files and miscellaneous stuff in her garage out in Cheektowaga.
The week after that, Angelina Farino Ferrara phoned her. "Did you hear the news?" asked Ms. Ferrara.
"I'm sort of avoiding the news," admitted Arlene.
"They got Little Skag. Shanked him eleven times in the Attica exercise yard last night. I guess it's true that cons don't like Short Eyes any more than the Five Family bosses do."
"Is he dead?" asked Arlene.
"Not quite. He's in some sort of high-security secret infirmary somewhere. They won't even let me—his only surviving family member—visit him. If he lives, they'll move him out of Attica to some undisclosed location."
"Why are you telling me?"
"I just thought Joe would like to know if you happen to talk to him. Do you talk to him?"
"No. I have no idea where he is."
"Well, if he gets in touch, tell him that I'd like to talk to him sometime. We don't exactly have any unfinished business between us, but I might have some business opportunities for him."
"I'll tell Mr. Kurtz that you called."
That same afternoon, Arlene received a check for $35,000 from John Wellington Frears. The note on the check said only: "Wedding Bells.com." Arlene vaguely remembered discussing her idea with him the day they were together at her house. The news that evening reported that the violinist had checked himself into a hospital—not Erie County, but an expensive private hospital in the suburbs. A few days later, the newspaper said that Frears was on a respirator and in a coma.
Three and a half weeks after the Train Station Massacre, there was hardly anything about it in the papers except for the continuing string of city resignations and ongoing investigations and commissions. On that Wednesday in early March, Rachel came home to Gail's duplex on Colvin Avenue. Arlene visited them the next day and brought some homemade cake.
The next morning, early, Arlene's doorbell rang. She'd been sitting at the kitchen table, smoking her first cigarette of the day and sipping coffee, staring at the unopened paper, and the sound of the doorbell made her jump. She left her coffee but took her cigarette and the.357 Magnum she kept in the cupboard and peered out the side window before opening the door.
It was Kurtz. He looked like shit. His hair was rumpled, he hadn't shaved for days, his left arm was still in a sling, his right wrist was in a bulky cast, and he stood stiffly as if his taped ribs were still hurting him.
Arlene set the big pistol on her curio cabinet and opened the door. "How're they hanging, Joe?"
"Still low, wrinkled, and to the left."
She batted ashes out onto the stoop. "You came all the way over from whatever Dumpster you've been sleeping in to tell me that?"
"No." Kurtz peered up at the strange, glowing orb that had appeared in the sky over Buffalo that morning. "What the hell is that?"
"The sun," said Arlene.
"I just wondered," said Kurtz, "if you'd like to go out today to look for some office space."
About the Author
Since his first published short story won the Rod Serling Memorial Award in the 1982 Twilight Zone Magazine Short Fiction contest, DAN SIMMONS has won some of the top awards for the science fiction, horror, fantasy, and thriller genres, as well as honors for his mainstream fiction. He lives along the Front Range of Colorado, where he is currently at work on a new Joe Kurtz novel.
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