But Angelina was constantly being surprised by Joe Kurtz. Like other sociopaths she had known, Kurtz seemed contained, quiet, almost sleepy at times, but unlike the other stone-killers she'd been around, including her first husband in Sicily, Kurtz sometimes revealed a sense of humor bordering on real wit. And then, just as she began thinking that he would be too weak for this job… well, she remembered the way Kurtz had put a bullet through Leo's left eye without changing expression.
Kurtz seemed sleepy as they stopped at the gate to the Gonzaga compound. He gave up his pistol and submitted to a careful frisk without expression. He still seemed half-asleep as they drove up the long drive, but Angelina knew that Kurtz was looking at everything in the compound, making mental notes. Marco was his usual silent self and Angelina had no clue to what he was thinking.
Inside, they were frisked again. When Angelina was led in for lunch with Emilio, Mickey Kee took the unusual step of staying out in the foyer with the two guards watching Marco and "Howard." Kee seemed to see or sense something in Kurtz that focused his attention.
It was after the soup course with Emilio and after listening to the fat bastard sweet-talk her and explain the new split on drugs and prostitution after the two families "merged," and after the fish had been served, that Angelina suddenly realized what Joe Kurtz was going to do.
Kurtz wasn't here today to case the place or to let Emilio's guards get used to him so he could return with her later, when the plans were made. Today was the day. She knew that Kurtz didn't have so much as a penknife with him but that he planned somehow to get a weapon out in the foyer—take a gun away from Mickey Kee? — kill Kee and the other two guards, shoot Marco, and come into the dining room with guns blazing.
Kurtz didn't care that there was no way out for him or Angelina. Kurtz's plan was simple—kill Emilio and everyone else in the room before he got gunned down himself. Maybe he'd grab Angelina and use her as a human shield while he was killing Emilio. Elegant.
"Whatsamatta?" said Emilio. "Fish bad or something?"
Angelina realized that she had quit eating with her fork still raised. "No. No, it's fine. I just remembered something I have to do." Run. Get the hell out of here. Survive.
But how? Tell Emilio Gonzaga that the new bodyguard she'd brought into the paranoid don's compound was here to shoot him? And that she knew about it because she'd set it up? Not a good plan.
Fake menstrual cramps? These Sicilian macho shits were so squeamish about a woman's period that they wouldn't ask questions if she requested a police escort in her retreat. Did she have time for this playacting?
Suddenly there was a commotion in the hallway and Joe Kurtz came into the dining room, his eyes looking wild.
CHAPTER TWENTY
James B. Hansen parked his Cadillac Escalade beyond the overpass and followed a trodden path through the snow down toward the railroad yards. It was Captain Millworth's lunch hour.
Calls to the university showed no Dr. Paul Frederick on the staff. The Buffalo area phone directories did not list a Paul Frederick. The precinct showed only one record of a Paul Frederick being detained—no photographs, no fingerprints, no rap sheet, just a detention 326-B form mentioning a vagrant named Pruno, aka the Prof, aka P. Frederick, being picked up during a sweep to interrogate homeless people after a murder of a vagrant some two summers ago. Hansen had talked to the uniformed officer who handled the downtown homeless beat and was told that this Pruno wandered the streets, almost never went to shelters, but had favorite niches under the overpass and a shack near the tracks.
Hansen had no trouble finding the shack. The path through the snow led to it, and there were no other structures here in what must be a hobo jungle in the summer. Why would this vagrant stay out here in weather like this? wondered Hansen. It had stopped snowing but the temperature had dropped to the single digits and a cold wind came in off the river and Lake Erie.
"Hello?" Hansen did not expect a response from the shack, and he didn't get one. Actually, he thought, «shack» was too fancy a title for this miserable heap of corrugated steel and plywood and cardboard. He took out the.38 that was going to become the property of Mr. Joe Kurtz after the murder of John Wellington Frears, stooped low, and went into the shack, expecting to find it empty.
It was not empty. An old wino in an overcoat stinking of urine sat close to a small burner. The floor was plastic-tarp material, the walls whistled cold wind through, and the wino was so high on crack or heroin that he hardly noticed Hansen's entrance. Keeping the gun aimed at the man's chest, Hansen worked to make out the wino's features in the dim light. Gray stubble, grime-rimmed wrinkles, reddened eyes, wisps of gray hair left on his mottled skull, a chapped-looking chicken neck disappearing into the oversized raincoat—he matched the description of Pruno aka the Prof aka one P. Frederick that the uniformed officer had given Hansen. But then, what wino didn't?
"Hey!" shouted Hansen to get the nodding addict's attention. "Hey, old man!"
The homeless man's red, watery eyes turned in the police captain's direction. The grubby fingers were in plain sight, red and white from the cold, and shaking. Hansen watched the internal struggle as the old addict reluctantly tried to focus his attention.
"You Paul Frederick?" shouted Hansen. "Pruno? Paul Frederick?"
The wino blinked repeatedly and then nodded dubiously. Hansen felt physically sick. Nothing repulsed him more than one of these useless derelicts.
"Mr. Frederick," said Hansen, "have you seen John Wellington Frears? Has Frears been in touch with you?" The thought of this old heroin addict being a friend of the urbane Frears, much less the idea of Frears visiting him in this shack, was absurd. But Hansen waited for an answer.
The wino licked his cracked lips and tried to concentrate. He was looking at the.38. Hansen lowered the muzzle slightly.
As if seeing his chance, the old man's right hand shot into his raincoat, reaching for something.
Without thinking, Hansen lifted his aim and fired twice, hitting the wino once in the chest and once in the neck. The old man flopped backward like an empty bundle of rags. For a minute he continued to breathe, the laborious rasp sounding high and cracked and obscene in the cold dark of the shack, but then the breathing stopped and Hansen lowered the hammer on the.38. Then he stuck his head out the door of the shack and took a quick look around—there was no one to hear the shot, and trains were crashing and roaring in the yards just out of sight—and Hansen crouched by the body. He needed to search the corpse, but he wasn't going to touch those filthy, lice-ridden rags.
Hansen found a stick the old man had used for lifting his cooking pot and stirring soup, and pushing open the filthy raincoat, Hansen saw that the wino's hands had been reaching not for a weapon, but for a stobby pencil. The dead fingers were just touching it. A small yellow pad—empty of writing—had also tumbled out of the wino's vest pocket.
"Damn," whispered Hansen, saying a fast prayer asking forgiveness for his use of the obscenity. He'd not planned on killing the old man, and the fact that he'd asked the patrolman about him might raise suspicions.
Not at all, thought Hansen. When Frears ends up dead, this will be just another killing connected to Joe Kurtz. We won't know why Kurtz killed both of them, but the.38 found in Kurtz's apartment will provide the connection. Hansen slid the revolver into his coat pocket. He had never kept a murder weapon with him after the act—it was amateurish—but in this case, he would have to, at least until he found and killed Frears. Then he could plant the weapon in Kurtz's hotel room… or on Kurtz's body if the perp tried to resist arrest, which James B. Hansen fully anticipated.