"Lockport," he told the driver. "Locust Street. I'll tell you which house to stop at."

The driver nodded, hit the meter, and pulled away into the falling snow.

Rafferty rubbed his temples and closed his eyes for a minute. When he opened them, the taxi had pulled onto the Kensington but was going in the wrong damned direction, toward the downtown instead of east and then north. Fucking idiot, Rafferty thought through his headache. He rapped on the bulletproof glass and slid the open partition wider.

The driver turned. "Hello, Donnie," said Kurtz.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Hansen was driving to the Royal Delaware Arms to plant the.38 in Kurtz's room when his cell phone rang. He considered not answering it—the life of Captain Robert Millworth was effectively at an end—but decided that he'd better respond; he didn't want people at the precinct to notice his absence for at least twenty-four hours.

"Hansen?" said a man's voice. "James B. Hansen?"

Hansen was silent but he had to pull the Escalade to the side of the road. It was Joe Kurtz's voice. It had to be.

"Millworth then?" said the voice. The man went on to name a half dozen of Hansen's other former personae.

"Kurtz?" Hansen said at last. "What do you want?"

"It's not what I want, it's what you might want."

The shakedown, thought Hansen. All this has been leading up to the shakedown. "I'm listening."

"I thought you might. I have your briefcase. Interesting stuff. I thought you might like it back."

"How much?"

"Half a million dollars," said Kurtz. "Cash, of course."

"Why do you think I have that much cash around?"

"I think the two hundred K I liberated from your safe today was just the tip of the iceberg, Mr. Hansen," said Kurtz. "A lot of the people you've been posing as earned a lot of money—a stockbroker, a Miami realtor, a plastic surgeon, for Christ's sake. You have it."

Hansen had to smile. He'd hated the thought of leaving Kurtz and Frears behind him, alive. "Let's meet. I have a hundred thousand in cash with me right now."

"So long, Mr. Hansen."

"Wait!" said Hansen. The silence on the line showed that Kurtz was still there. "I want Frears," said Hansen.

The silence stretched. "That would cost another two hundred thousand," Kurtz said at last.

"All I can get in cash is three hundred thousand."

Kurtz chuckled. It was not a pleasant sound. "What the hell. Why not? All right, Hansen. Meet me at the abandoned Buffalo train station at midnight."

"Midnight's too late—" started Hansen, but Kurtz had disconnected.

Hansen sat for a minute by the curb, watching the Escalade's wipers bat away the falling snow, trying to think of nothing, allowing the neutral Zen state to fill his mind. It was impossible to clear this noise, these events—they kept falling on him like the snow. Hansen had not played tournament chess for years, but that part of his mind was fully engaged. Frears and Kurtz—he had to think of them as a unit, partners, a single opponent with two faces—had made this chess game interesting, and now Hansen had the option of walking away and always remembering the pieces frozen in mid-play, or the option of clearing the chessboard with his forearm, or of beating them at their own game.

So far, the Frears-Kurtz team had been on the attack even when Hansen had thought he was playing offense. Somehow, they had stumbled upon his current identity—probably John Wellington Frears's contribution to the game—and their moves after that had been predictable enough. The robbery of his home to obtain the evidence had been shocking, though obvious enough in retrospect. But they had not yet gone to the police. This meant one of three endgames had to be in play—A) Frears-Kurtz wanted to kill him; B) Kurtz was actually double-crossing his partner to carry out the blackmail and might actually tell Hansen of Frears's whereabouts if he was paid; or C) Frears-Kurtz wanted him dead and wanted the blackmail money.

From what Hansen remembered of John Wellington Frears, the black man was too civilized for his own good. Even twenty years of stewing about his daughter's death probably had not prepared Frears for murder; he would always opt for turning Hansen in to the proper authorities. Hansen also remembered that the violinist had used the phrase "proper authorities" frequently back during their political discussions at the University of Chicago.

So that left Kurtz. The ex-convict must be running the show now, overriding Frears's protests. Perhaps Kurtz had made contact with the Farinos for help. But James B. Hansen knew how limited the Farino Family clout was in this new century—almost nonexistent with the old don dead, the core of the Family scattered, and the drug addict Little Skag locked up in Attica. There were intelligence reports of a few new people being recruited for the Farinos, but they were middle-management people: numbers runners, a few bodyguards, accountants—no real muscle to speak of. Which left only the Gonzagas as a power in Buffalo.

Kurtz had demanded half a million dollars, with a bonus for Frears, which was certainly enough to get the Farinos involved on spec, but Hansen suspected that Kurtz was too greedy to spread the money out. Perhaps this Farino daughter, Angelina, was giving Kurtz some logistical support without knowing the whole situation. That seemed probable.

I could leave now, thought Hansen, his thoughts tuned to the metronomic pulse of the windshield wipers. Plant this.38, make an anonymous 911 call fingering the murderer of the old lady in Cheektowaga, and leave now. This would be the forearm-clearing-the-chess-pieces answer to the dilemma and it had a certain elegance to it. But who does this Kurtz think he is? was the immediate follow-on thought. By attempting blackmail, Kurtz had raised the game to a new and more personal level. If Hansen did not play out the rest of the game, he would be tipping his own king in defeat. That weakling Frears and this sociopath of an ex-convict would have beaten James B. Hansen at his own game.

Not fucking likely, thought Hansen, immediately offering a prayer of apology to his Savior.

Hansen turned the Cadillac SUV west and got on the expressway, heading north along the river.

Kurtz had driven to the empty alley near Allen Street, parked the taxi next to the Lincoln, transferred Rafferty to the trunk of the Town Car and the bound, gagged and blindfolded cabdriver from the Lincoln to the taxi, then called Hansen while driving back to the Farino penthouse. Something about actually hearing James B. Hansen's smooth, oily voice had made Kurtz's head pulse with migraine pain.

Back at Marina Towers, he left Rafferty in the trunk and took the elevator up. Everyone was chowing down on lunch and Kurtz joined them. Angelina Farino Ferrara had told her cook, servants, and the eleventh-floor accountants to take the day off—don't try to get in through the storm, she'd said—so the motley crew in the penthouse had thrown together a big meal of chili, John Frears's recipe, and various types of cheese, good French bread and taco chips and hot coffee. Angelina offered wine, but no one was in the mood for it. Kurtz was in the mood for several glasses of scotch, but he decided to forgo it until the day's errands were all run.

After the lunch, he stepped onto the icy and windblown west balcony to clear his head. A few minutes later, Arlene joined him, lighting one of her Marlboros.

"Can you believe it, Joe? She's a Mafia don's daughter but she doesn't allow smoking in her apartment. What's La Cosa Nostra coming to?"

Kurtz didn't answer. The sky to the northwest was as black as a curtain of night sliding toward the city. The lights along the marina and the walkways below had already come on.