by Dan Simmons
He saw sparks as a bullet struck a concrete pillar eight feet behind them. O'Toole drew her 9-mm Sig Pro and swung it in the direction the shooting was coming from. Kurtz watched himself swing around as if he was going to run for the shelter of the pillar, but then O'Toole was struck. Her head snapped back.
Kurtz remembered now. Remembered bits of it. The phut, phut, phut and muzzle flare coming from the sixth or seventh dark car down the ramp. Not a silenced weapon, Kurtz realized at the time and remembered now, but almost certainly a .22-caliber pistol, just one, sounding even softer than most .22s, as if the shooter had reduced the powder load.
O'Toole dropped, a black corsage blooming on her pale white forehead in the video. The gun skidded across concrete.
Kurtz dove for the Sig Sauer, came up with it, went to one knee in front of the parole officer, braced the pistol with both hands, and returned fire, the muzzle flare making the video bloom.
There were two figures, remembered Kurtz. Shadows. The shooter near the trunk of the car, and another man, taller, behind the bulk of the vehicle, just glimpsed through the car's glass. Only the shorter man was shooting.
Kurtz was firing on the screen. Suddenly he stopped, dragged O'Toole by the arm across the floor, lifted her suddenly, and began carrying her back toward the doors.
I Hit the shooter, remembered Kurtz. He spun and sagged against the car. That's when I tried to get O'Toole out. Then the other man grabbed the gun and kept shooting at us.
Officer O'Toole's arm seemed to twitch—a slug going through her upper arm, Kurtz thought, remembering the doctor's explanation—Kurtz's upper body twisted and his head jerked around to the left as he brought the Sig Pro to bear again, and then he went down bard, dropping the woman. The two sprawled onto the concrete. Black-looking blood pooled on the floor.
A full minute went by with just the two bodies lying entangled there.
"There was no coverage of the exit ramp," said Rigby. "We didn't see the car leave… at least until it got to the ticket station."
"Why didn't he come out to finish us?" said Kurtz. He was looking at his own body sprawled next to O'Toole's and thinking about the second shooter.
"We don't know," said Kennedy. "But a court stenographer comes out through those doors in a minute… ah, there she is… and she may have spooked the shooter."
Shooters, thought Kurtz. Remembering the adrenaline of those few minutes made his head hurt worse.
On the screen, a woman steps out, claps her hands to her cheeks, screams silently, and runs back in through the doors.
Kennedy stopped the tape. "Another three and a half minutes before she gets someone down there—a security guard. He didn't see anyone else, just you and Peg on the ground. He radioed for the ambulance. Then another ten minutes of people milling until the paramedics arrive. It's lucky Peg survived all that loss of blood."
Why didn't the second shooter finish us? wondered Kurtz. Whichever one of us he was trying to kill.
Kennedy pulled the tape and popped another one in. Kurtz looked at Rigby King. "Why was I handcuffed?" His voice wasn't pleasant.
"We hadn't seen this yet," she said.
"Why not?"
"The tapes weren't marked," said Brian Kennedy, answering for her. "There was some confusion. We didn't have this to show Officers Kemper and King until after they visited you yesterday evening."
I was handcuffed the entire fucking night, thought Kurtz, glaring at Rigby King. You left me helpless and handcuffed in that fucking hospital all night. She was obviously receiving his unspoken message, but she just returned his stare.
"This is the security camera at the Market Street exit," said Kennedy, thumbing the remote control.
A young black woman was reading the National Enquirer in her glass cashier's cubicle. Suddenly an older-make car roared up the ramp and out of the parking garage, snapping the wooden gate off in pieces and skidding a right turn into the empty street before disappearing.
"Freeze frame?" said Kurtz.
Kennedy nodded and backed the video up until the car was frozen in the act of hitting the gate. Only the driver was visible, a man, long hair wild, but his face turned away and his body only a silhouette. The camera was angled to see license tags, but this car's rear tag looked like it had been daubed with mud. Most of the numerals and letters were unreadable.
"Attendant get a good look?" asked Kurtz.
"No," said Kennedy. "She was too startled. Male. Maybe Caucasian. Maybe Hispanic or even black. Very long, dark hair. Light shirt."
"Uh huh," said Kurtz. "There could have been another man on the floor in the backseat."
"Do you remember a second man?" asked Rigby.
Kurtz looked at her. "I don't know," he said. "I was just saying there could have been a second man in the back."
"Yeah," said Rigby. "And the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in the trunk."
"Detective Kemper thinks it's a Pontiac, dark color, maybe late eighties, rust patches in the right rear fender and trunk," said Brian Kennedy.
"That narrows it down," said Kurtz. "Only about thirty thousand of those in Buffalo."
Kennedy gestured toward the frozen image and the license plate. "We've augmented this frame and think that there may be a two there on that tag, perhaps a seven as the last digit."
Kurtz shrugged. "You check Officer O'Toole's computer files? See if she has any pissed-off parolees?"
"Yes, the detectives copied the computer files and went through her filing cabinets, but…" began Kennedy.
"We're pursuing the investigation with all diligence," said Rigby, cutting off Kennedy's info-dump.
Kennedy looked at Kurtz and smiled as if to say, man to man, Women and cops, whattayagonna do?
"I'm going home," said Kurtz. Everyone stood. Kennedy offered his hand again and said, "Thanks for coming, Mr. Kurtz. I thank you for trying to protect Peg the way you did. As soon as I saw the video, I knew you weren't involved in her shooting. You were a hero."
"Uh huh," said Kurtz, looking at Rigby King. You left me there handcuffed all night so that an old man in a wheelchair could slap me around. Anybody could've killed me.
"You want a ride home?" asked Rigby.
"I want my Pinto back."
"We're finished with it. It's still in the Civic Center garage. And I have your clothes and billfold down in my car. Come on, I'll give you a ride to the garage."
Kurtz walked to the elevators with Rigby King, but before the elevator car arrived, Kennedy hustled out. "You forgot your portfolio, Mr. Kurtz."
Kurtz nodded and took the leather folder holding Gonzaga's paperwork listing seventeen murders unknown to the police or media.
* * *
CHAPTER TEN
« ^ »
It wasn't a long ride. Kurtz pulled the little brown-paper package of his clothes and shoes out of the backseat, checked his wallet—everything was there—and settled back, feeling the reloaded .38 against the small of his back.
"You know, Joe," said Rigby King, "if I searched you right now and found a weapon, you'd go in for parole violation."
Kurtz had nothing to say about that. The unmarked detective's car was like every other unmarked police car in the world—ugly paint, rumbling cop engine, radio half hidden below the dashboard, a portable bubble light on the floor ready to be clamped onto the roof, and city-bought blackwall tires that no civilian anywhere would put on his vehicle. Any inner-city kid over the age of three could spot this as a cop car five blocks away on a rainy night.
"But I'm not going to search you," said Rigby. "You wouldn't last a week back in Attica."
"I lasted more than eleven years there."
"I'll never understand how," she said. "Between the Aryan Nation and the black power types, loners aren't supposed to be able to make it a month inside. You never were a joiner, Joe."
Kurtz watched the pedestrians cross in front of them as they stopped at a red light They were only a few blocks from the civic center. He could have walked it if he
wasn't feeling so damned dizzy. Leaving the portfolio on the floor back at Kennedy's office showed Kurtz how much he needed some sleep. And maybe some pain medication. The pedestrians and the street beyond them seemed to shimmer from heat waves, even though it was only about sixty degrees outside today.
"When my husband left me," said Rigby, "I moved back to Buffalo and joined the force. That was about four years ago."
"I heard you had a little boy," said Kurtz.
"I guess you heard wrong," said Rigby, her voice fierce.
Kurtz held up both hands. "Sorry. I heard wrong."
"I never knew my father, did you?" said Rigby.
"You know I didn't," said Kurtz.
"But you told me once that your mother told you that your father was a professional thief or something."
Kurtz shrugged. "My mother was a whore. I didn't see much of her even before the orphanage. Once when she was drunk, she told me that she thought my old man was a thief, some guy with just one name and that not even his own. Not a second-story guy, but a real hardcase who would set up serious jobs with a bunch of other pros and then blow town forever. She said he and she were together for just a week in the late sixties."
"Must have been preparing for some heist," said Rigby.
Kurtz smiled. "She said that he never wanted sex except right after a successful job."
"Your old man may have been a professional thief but you never steal anything, Joe," said Rigby King. "At least you never used to. Every other kid at Father Baker's, including me, would lift whatever we could, but you never stole a damned thing."
Kurtz said nothing to that. When he'd first known Rigby—when they'd had sex in the choir loft of the Basilica of Our Lady of Victory—he was fourteen, she was seventeen, and they were both part of the Father Baker Orphanage system. They didn't know their fathers, and Kurtz didn't think either one of them gave a shit.
"You never met your old man either, did you?" he asked now.
"I didn't then," said Rigby, pulling up to the curb by the Civic Center parking lot entrance. "I tracked him down after Thailand. He was already dead. Coronary. But I think he might have been an all right guy. I don't think he ever knew I existed. My mother was a heroin addict."
Kurtz, never the best at social niceties, guessed that there was probably a sensitive and proper response to this bit of news as well, but he had no interest in spending the effort to find it. "Thanks for the ride," he said. "You have my Pinto keys?"
Rigby nodded and took them out of her jeans pocket. But she held onto them. "Do you ever think about those days, Joe?"
"Which days?"
"Father Baker days. The catacombs? That first night in the choir loft? Blues Franklin? Or even the ten months in Thailand?"
"Not much," said Kurtz.
She handed him the keys. "When I came back to Buffalo, I tried to look you up. Found out my second day on the job that you were in Attica."
"Modern place," said Kurtz. "They have visiting hours, mail, everything."
"That same day," continued Rigby, "I found out that you murdered that guy—tossed him onto the roof of a black and white from the sixth floor—the guy who killed your agency partner and girlfriend, Samantha something."
"Fielding," said Kurtz, stepping out of the vehicle.
The passenger window was down halfway, and Rigby leaned over and said, "We'll have to talk again about this shooting. Kemper wanted to brace you today, but I said let the poor bastard get some sleep."
"Kemper has a hard-on for me," said Kurtz. "You could have come and uncuffed me last night You both knew I didn't shoot O'Toole."
"Kemper's a good cop," said Rigby. Kurtz let that go. He felt stupid standing there holding his little brown-wrapped bundle of clothes like a con getting sent back out into the world.
But Rigby wasn't done. "He's a good cop and he feels—he knows—that you're on the wrong side of the law these days, Joe."
Kurtz should have just walked away—he even turned to do so—but then he turned back. "Do you know that, Rigby?"
"I don't know anything, Joe." She set the unmarked car in gear and drove off, leaving him standing there holding is brown-wrapped bundle.
* * *
CHAPTER ELEVEN
« ^ »
Arlene arrived right at nine-thirty. Kurtz was waiting outside the Harbor Inn. The wind blowing in from the lake to the west was cold and smelted like October. Weeds, newspapers, and small debris blew across the empty industrial fields and skittered by Kurtz's feet.
When he got in the blue Buick, Arlene said, "I see you got the Pinto back." It was parked behind the triangular building in its usual spot.
"Yeah," said Kurtz. He'd had some problems with the local project youth the first weeks he'd lived here, until he'd beaten up the biggest of the car-stripper gang and offered to pay the smartest one a hundred bucks a week to protect the vehicle. Since then, there'd been no problem, except that he'd already paid several times what the Pinto was worth.
Making a U-turn and heading back to the lights of the city center, Arlene tapped a sealed manilla envelope on the console between them. "That blowdried mob guy showed up with the package you said was coming."
"Did you open it?"
"Of course not," said Arlene. She lit a Marlboro and frowned at him.
He opened the envelope. A list of five names and dates and addresses. One guy and two of his family members. A woman. Another guy.
"Angelina Farino Ferrara hired me to look into who's been hitting some of their skag dealers and clients," said Kurtz. "Toma Gonzaga bumped into me this afternoon and offered me the same job, only to see who's been hitting his family's clients."
"Someone's been killing both Gonzaga and Farino heroin dealers?" Arlene sounded surprised.
"Evidently."
"I haven't heard about this on the Channel Seven Action News." Kurtz knew that Arlene was old enough to remember and miss Irv Weinstein and his if-it-bleeds-it-leads TV newsreels from long ago. All the day's carnage and corpses wrapped up in forty-five seconds of fast footage. Kurtz missed it, too.
"They've kept it quiet," said Kurtz.
"The families have kept it quiet?"
"Yeah."
"How the hell do you keep five murders quiet?"
"It's worse than that," said Kurtz. "Twenty-two murders counting Gonzaga's dealers and addicts."
"Twenty-two murders? In what time period? Ten years? Fifteen?"
"The last month, I think," said Kurtz. He tapped the envelope. "I haven't read their publicity handout here yet."
"Christ," said Arlene. She flicked ashes out the window.
"Yep."
"And you've agreed to dig around for them? As if you have nothing better to do?"
"They made me an offer I couldn't refuse," said Kurtz. "Both Gonzaga and the don's daughter are offering cash and other incentives."
Arlene squinted at him through the cigarette smoke. She knew Kurtz almost never made movie jokes or references, and never Godfather jokes. "Joe," she said softly, "I don't mean to meddle, but I don't think that Angelina Farino has ever had your best interests at heart."
Kurtz had to smile at that. "There's the Civic Center garage," he said. "Do you have an idea how we're going to get in?"
"Did you get any sleep this afternoon?" She pulled up to the curb and parked.
"Some." He'd dozed for about an hour before his headache woke him.
"I brought some Percocet." She rattled the prescription bottle.
Kurtz didn't ask or want to know why she was carrying Percocet. "I took a couple of aspirin," he said, waving away the bottle. "I'm still curious about how we're going to get in. The place is closed up pretty tight at night. Even the parking garage has that metal-mesh screen that has to be raised from the inside."
Arlene held up her big, briefcase-sized purse as if that explained everything. "We're going in through the front door and the metal detectors. If you're carrying a gun, leave it out here."
"Help you?" grunted
the guard by the metal detectors. One of the front doors had been unlocked, but it led only into this large foyer.
Arlene stepped closer and removed official ID and an official-looking letter on city stationery and handed them to the guard. Kurtz stood back from the overhead lights, keeping his face in shadow and the bandaged side of his head turned away.
"D.A.'s office?" said the guard after he'd read the paper with his lips moving only slightly. "What do you want tonight? Everything's closed. Everyone's gone home."
"You read it," said Arlene. "The D.A. himself has a nine A.M. hearing in front of Judge Garman, of all people, and half the paperwork on this parolee hasn't been sent over."
"Well, Miz… uh… Johnson… I shouldn't really…"
"This has to be done quickly, Officer Jefferson. The D.A.'s tired of the incompetence here. If he's embarrassed tomorrow by not getting these files tonight..." Arlene had taken out her cell phone and flipped it open.
"Okay, okay," said Officer Jefferson. "Give me your bag and go through the detectors."
Kurtz went through first and stepped back into the relative shadows. Jefferson was holding a heavy portable diskdrive with dongles hanging out and looking dubious.
"That's a portable hard drive," said Arlene, barely restraining a sigh and eye roll. "You don't think we're going to copy these files by hand, do you?"
Jefferson shook his head, set the memory drive back, and lifted out a black rectangular box about twelve inches long with slots in it and an attached cord.
"That's my portable copier for files that do have to be copied by hand," said Arlene, glancing at her watch. "The District Attorney needs these files no later than ten-thirty, Mr. Jefferson. He hates staying up late."
Jefferson zipped up her giant purse and handed it back to her. "I didn't get a call about this, Miz Johnson."