"Won't they notice it?"

Arlene laughed and went back to her computer. "We could charge a fleet of Lexuses to that office, Joe. No one would notice. Do you have time to look at some possible office space with me today?"

"No, I've got things to do. But I do need your help on something."

Kurtz drove alone to the bar near Broadway Market, where he'd braced Donnie Rafferty. Detectives Brubaker and Myers had been driving a different unmarked car that morning when they had followed him from the Royal Delaware Arms to his office, and they had stayed several cars back and attempted a serious tail rather than just harassing him, but Kurtz had made them immediately. If they stopped him now with the two guns he was carrying, it would be bad news, but he suspected that they were actually on surveillance. He pulled into the parking lot, grabbed the camera bag he'd brought from the office, and went into the bar. He noticed that Brubaker and Myers parked across the street to watch the parking lot and the bar's only entrance. When he'd been waiting for Donald Rafferty here, Kurtz had noticed the alley running behind the row of buildings and the high board fence concealing the alley from the parking lot.

"Back door?" Kurtz said to the bartender in the dark, hops-smelling space within. Only three or four committed regulars were celebrating Saturday morning there.

"It's for emergency use only," said the bartender. "Hey!"

Kurtz stepped into the alley, Arlene guided her blue Buick to a stop, and he got in. They drove a block, turned north, then turned west on a street parallel to where the detectives were parked.

"Where to?" asked Arlene.

"Back to the office for you," said Kurtz. "I have to borrow your car for a few hours."

Arlene sighed. "We're not that far from Chippewa Street. We could check out an office space there."

"I bet it's over a Starbucks," said Kurtz.

"How did you know?"

"Every third store on Chippewa is a Starbucks these days," said Kurtz. "I don't have time today. And we don't want to pay yuppie leases. Let's find an office somewhere less gentrified."

Arlene sighed again. "It would be nice to have windows."

Kurtz said nothing on the ride back to the office.

The Tuscarora Indian Reservation was northeast of the city of Niagara Falls, curled around half of the big Power Reservoir that stored water to run through the Power Project's giant turbines. Big Bore Redhawk was not a Tuscarora, and quite possibly wasn't an Indian—word was that Big Bore had discovered his Native American ancestry when he was trying to fence stolen jewelry and learned that he would be tax-exempt as an Indian jewelry salesperson—but his trailer was on the reservation property. Kurtz knew so much about Redhawk's personal life because the big man had been one of the most talkative morons in C-Block.

Kurtz took Walmore Road into the reservation and turned left onto the third gravel road. Big Bore's rusted-out trailer squatted in the deep snow just short of where Garlow Road ran along the reservoir. A clapped-out Dodge Powerwagon with a blade sat in the Indian's driveway and snow was heaped eight feet high on either side. Big Bore earned his drinking money from plowing the reservation's private roads during the winter. Kurtz pulled the Buick back behind one of these snowpiles so he could see the door to Redhawk's trailer. Snow was falling, stopping, then falling harder.

Twenty-five minutes later, all six-feet-five-inches of Big Bore came stumbling out the door wearing only jeans and a loose plaid shirt—he did not seem aware of Kurtz's car—climbed one of the higher drifts, and urinated toward the line of trees.

Kurtz drove the Buick up, slid to a stop, and got out quickly with the.40 Smith & Wesson in his hand. "Good morning, B.B."

Redhawk turned with mouth and fly agape. His bloodshot eyes flickered toward the trailer, and Kurtz guessed that the half-breed's gun was still inside. Big Bore had always been a shank man.

"Kurtz? Hey, man, fucking good to see you, man. You out on parole too?"

Kurtz smiled. "You drinking the advance on my hit, B.B.?"

Big Bore worked his face into a puzzled frown, glanced down, and zipped up his fly. "Huh?" he said. "What's the piece for? We were friends, man."

"Yeah," said Kurtz.

"Fuck, man," said Big Bore. "I don't know what you heard, but we can talk it out, man. Come on inside." He took a half step toward his trailer.

Kurtz raised the semiauto's aim slightly and shook his head.

Big Bore raised his hands and squinted. "You're a big man with that gun, aren't you, Kurtz?"

Kurtz said nothing.

"You put that fucking piece down and fight me like a fucking man, we'll see who's hot shit," slurred Big Bore.

"I beat you in a fair fight, you tell me who hired you?" said Kurtz.

The Indian jumped down from the drift, landing lightly for three hundred pounds of muscled fat, and raised his huge arms, flexing his fingers. "Whatever," he said, showing prison dentistry.

Kurtz thought about it, nodded, and tossed his pistol onto the hood of the Buick, out of reach. He turned back to Redhawk.

"Fucking moron," said Big Bore, pulling an eight-inch hunting knife from a scabbard under his shirt. "Easiest fucking ten grand I ever earned." He grinned more broadly and took two crouched steps forward, flicking the fingers of his huge left hand in an invitation. "Let's see what you got, Kurtz."

"I've got a forty-five," said Kurtz. He pulled Angelina's Compact Witness from his coat pocket and shot Big Bore in the left knee.

The hunting knife went flying over the drift, blood and cartilage doing a Jackson Pollock on the snow, and Big Bore went down heavily.

Kurtz retrieved his S&W and walked over to the moaning, cursing Indian.

"I'm going to fucking kill your fucking ass, Kurtz, you fucking…" began Big Bore, then trailed away into a groan.

Kurtz waited for the monologue to continue.

"And fucking call the cops and fucking send you away until I'm motherfucking ready to kill your fucking ass," gasped the big man, wanting to hold his shattered knee together but unwilling to touch the mess.

"No," said Kurtz. "Remember telling everyone in the exercise yard how you killed your first two wives and where they're buried?"

"Aww, fuck, man," moaned Big Bore.

"Yeah," said Kurtz. He went into the trailer and rummaged through the mess there a bit, finding $1,410 in small bills hidden under a hardcase holding a shiny new.45 Colt. Kurtz was no thief, but this was a down payment on his own death, so he took the money and went back to the Buick. Big Bore had begun the crawl to the trailer and was leaving an unpleasant trail in the snow.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Chief of Detectives Captain Robert Gaines Millworth, aka James B. Hansen, went into his office on Saturday morning at the main precinct station on Elmwood, just across from the courthouse. It was snowing.

The sergeant at the desk and a few duty officers were surprised to see Captain Millworth, since he had the rest of his weekend off for the last of his vacation. "Paperwork," said the captain, and went into his office.

Hansen called up the file on the ex-con that Brubaker and Myers were tailing. He'd run across Joe Kurtz's name before, but had never paid much attention to it. Rereading the previous arrest file and the man's thin dossier, Hansen realized that this lowlife Kurtz represented everything Hansen despised—a thug who had parlayed a short stint as a military policeman into a private detective's license in civilian life, had been tried for aggravated assault fifteen years earlier—dismissed on a technicality—and then plea-bargained out of a Murder Two charge into a Man One twelve years ago because of the laziness and sloppiness of the district attorney's office. The penultimate entry in the file was an interrogation by the late Detective James Hathaway the previous autumn, relating to an illegal weapons charge that was dropped when Kurtz's parole officer, Margaret O'Toole, had intervened to report to the watch commander that despite Hathaway's report, the perp had not been armed when arrested by the detective in her office. Hansen made a mental note to make life miserable for Miss O'Toole when he got the chance… and he would make sure that he got the chance.