Dan Simmons - Hard Freeze

"Triumvirate," said Angelina. She immediately wished she'd kept her mouth shut. Suffer fools . Count Ferrara had taught her. Then make them suffer .

"What's that?" Emilio Gonzaga was picking at something in his side teeth.

"Triumvirate," repeated Angelina. "That's what the Romans used to call it when they had three leaders at one time. A troika is the Russian phrase for three leaders… or three anything. It was what they called three horses hitched to a sleigh."

Emilio grunted and glanced over his shoulder. The two white-jacketed goons he had left in the room to act as waiters stood with their hands over their crotches and their stares focused on nothing. Mickey Kee and the other bodyguard stared at the ceiling. No one wanted to be paying attention when the don was corrected.

"Whatever," said Emilio. "The point is that you benefit, I benefit, and Little Ska… Stephen… he benefits the most. Like old times, only without the rancor." Gonzaga pronounced the last word rain-core .

It's like old times, only this time with you elected God, me elected your whore, and Stevie elected to die within a few months after he gets out , thought Angelina. She lifted the glass of bilious cabernet. "To new beginnings," she said brightly.

The cell phone Kurtz had given her rang. Emilio stopped his chewing and frowned at her breach of etiquette.

"I'm sorry, Emilio," she said. "Only Stevie, his lawyer, and a few other people use this private line. I should take it." She rose from the table and turned her back to the pig on his throne. "Yes?"

"The Sabres are playing tonight," came Joe Kurtz's voice. "Go to the game."

"All right."

"After the first serious injury, go to the women's rest room near the main doors." He disconnected.

Angelina put the phone back in her tiny purse and sat down again. Emilio was sloshing after-dinner liqueur around in his cheeks as if it were mouthwash.

"That was short," he said.

"But sweet," said Angelina.

The goons brought coffee in a silver urn and five types of pastry.

It was late afternoon, snowing harder and almost dark when Kurtz drove thirty minutes north to the suburban village of Lockport. The house on Locust Street looked comfortable, middle-class, and safe—lights burning on both floors—when Kurtz drove past, turned left, and parked halfway down the next street in front of a ranch house for sale. Donald Rafferty didn't know Kurtz's Volvo, but this wasn't the kind of neighborhood that wouldn't notice if a car with someone in it kept parking along a residential street for long periods of time.

Kurtz had an electronic device the size of a compact boom box on the passenger seat, and now he plugged in earphones. To anyone passing by, he would look like someone waiting for a realtor late on a Friday afternoon, someone enjoying his Discman.

The boom box was a short-range radio receiver tuned to the five bugs he had planted in Rafferty and Rachel's home three months earlier. The electronic gear had cost him what savings he'd had at the time, and Kurtz had not chosen to get a stronger transmitter or tape equipment—he didn't have the time or personnel to pour through tapes anyway—but this way, he could eavesdrop when he was in the neighborhood, which was often. The evening sampling told him quite a bit.

Rachel, Sam's fourteen-year-old daughter, was an intelligent, quiet, sensitive and lonely child. She made daughterly overtures to Rafferty, her adoptive father, but the man was either too busy, too distracted by his gambling, or too drunk to pay any attention. He wasn't abusive to Rachel, unless one counted absolute indifference as abuse. Sam had been married to Rafferty for only ten months—and that four years previous to Rachel's birth, which owed nothing to Donnie Rafferty—but Sam had left no other family behind when she was murdered twelve years ago, so his appointment as the girl's guardian had seemed to make sense at the time. Her insurance and family inheritance must have been attractive to Rafferty when he petitioned to adopt Rachel; the money had paid for his house and car and settled more than a few of his gambling debts. But now Rafferty had started losing heavily again, which meant that he was drinking heavily again as well. Rafferty had three regular girlfriends, two of whom spent nights with him in Lockport on a well-scheduled basis, so that each of the two would not find evidence of the other. The third girlfriend was a coke-pushing whore on Seneca Street who didn't know or care where Rafferty lived.

Kurtz tuned in the bugs. Donald Rafferty had just hung up after promising his bookie, a sleazo that Kurtz had known professionally, that he would have the next payment to him by Monday. Now Rafferty called DeeDee, his Number Two girlfriend, and started making plans for the weekend. This time, they were going away together, up to Toronto, which meant that Rachel was being left home alone again.

Kurtz had not bugged Rachel's bedroom, but he quickly checked the family room and kitchen taps. There came the soft sounds of plates being rinsed and set in the dishwasher.

Rafferty finished his phone conversation after telling DeeDee to "bring the little leather thing along this weekend" and walked into the kitchen—Kurtz could hear the footsteps. A cupboard was opened and closed; Kurtz knew that Rafferty kept his booze in the kitchen and his cocaine in the top drawer of his dresser. Another cupboard. The sensitive microphone picked up the sound of the drink—Rafferty stocked more bourbon than anything else—being poured.

"Goddamn snow. Walk'll need shoveling again in the morning." His voice was slurred.

"Okay, Dad."

"I've got a business trip again this weekend. I'll be back Sunday or Monday."

During the interval of silence, Kurtz tried to imagine what kind of weekend business trip a U.S. Postal Service clerk would have to take.

Rachel's voice. "Could Melissa come over tomorrow night to watch a video with me?"

"No."

"Could I go over to their house to watch one if I was back by nine?"

"No." The cupboard was opened and closed again.

The dishwasher began running.

"Rache?" Kurtz knew from his sampling of her phone conversations with Melissa—her only real friend—that Rachel hated that nickname.

"Yes, Daddy?"

"That's really a pretty thing you're wearing."

For a time, the only noise was the dishwasher.

"This sweatshirt?"

"Yeah. It looks… different."

"It's not. It's the one I got at the Falls last summer."

"Yeah, well… you look pretty is all."

The dishwasher kicked into the rinse cycle.

"I'm going to take the garbage out," said Rachel.

It was full dark now. Kurtz left his earphones on as he drove around the block, slowing as he passed the house. He saw the girl at the side of the house. Her hair was longer now, and even in the dim glow from the porch light, he could see that it looked more the color of Sam's red hair than it had when it was shorter in the fall. Rachel pressed the garbage bag down in the trash can and stood for a minute in the side yard, turned mostly away from Kurtz and the street, holding her face up to the falling snow.

At the same time, in the suburb of Tonawanda, a thirty-minute drive from Lockport, James B. Hansen—aka Robert Millworth aka Howard G. Lane aka Stanley Steiner aka half a dozen other names, none of which shared the same initials—was celebrating his fiftieth birthday.

Hansen—his current name was Robert Gaines Millworth—was surrounded by friends and loving family, including his wife of three years, Donna, his stepson Jason, and his eight-year-old Irish setter, Dickson. The long driveway to his modernist home facing Elicott Creek was filled with moderately expensive sedans and SUVs belonging to his friends and colleagues, who had braved yet another snowstorm to join him at his well-planned surprise party.