Dan Simmons - Hard Freeze

"Word on the street has it that Kurtz tossed that drug dealer, Malcolm Kibunte, over Niagara Falls right after he got out of Attica," offered Myers. "Just threw him right over the fucking… sorry, Captain."

"I'm getting cold," said Hansen. "What do you want?"

"We been following this Kurtz some on our own time," said Brubaker. "We'd like to make the surveillance official. Three teams can do it. Woltz and Farrell aren't assigned to anything right now and—"

Hansen shook his head. "You're it. You want surveillance on this guy, do it on department time for a few days. But don't put in for overtime."

"Aw, Chri… cripes, Captain," said Myers. "We've put in twelve hours today already and—"

Hansen cut him off with a glance. "Anything else?"

"No, sir," said Brubaker.

"Then please move this piece of junk out of my driveway," said Hansen, turning back toward his lighted house.

Angelina Farino Ferrara sat in her expensive rink-side seat at the Sabres game and waited impatiently for someone to get hurt. She did not have to wait long. Eleven minutes and nine seconds into the first period, Sabres defenseman Rhett Warrener got Vancouver Canucks captain Markus Naslund against the boards in the corner, threw him down and fractured his tibia. The crowd went wild.

Angelina hated ice hockey. Of course, she hated all organized sports, but hockey bored her the most. The potential of watching these toothless apes skate for an hour with the possibility of no score—no score at all! — made her want to scream. But then again, she had been dragged to Sabres games for almost fourteen years by her late hockey-loving father. The new arena was called HSBC, which stood for some banking thing, but everyone in Buffalo knew that it meant either "Hot Sauce, Blue Cheese" or "Holy Shit, Buffalo's Cold!"

Angelina did remember one game she had enjoyed immensely, many years ago when she was young. It was a Stanley Cup play-off game in the old Coliseum, and the season had run later than usual, deep into May. The temperature was in the low nineties when the game began, the ice was melting and setting off a thick fog, and the fog awakened scores of bats that had been hanging amidst the wooden rafters of the ancient Coliseum for years. Angelina remembered her father cursing as the fog grew so thick that even the expensive-seat holders could see almost nothing of the action, merely hear the grunts and shouts and curses from the rink as the players collided and battled in the fog, all the while the bats darted in and out of the mist, swooping among the stands, making women shriek and men curse all the louder.

Angelina had enjoyed that particular game.

Now, as trainers and medics and hulking teammates on skates huddled around the fallen Naslund, Angelina headed for the ladies' rest room.

The Boys, Marco and Leo, knuckled along beside her, squinting suspiciously at the crowd. Angelina knew that these two were decent bodyguards and button men—at least Marco seemed to be—but she also knew that they had been chosen by Stevie and that their first job was to report her actions and behavior to her brother-behind-bars. Angelina Farino Ferrara was all too familiar with public figures—Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, for one—who had been gunned down by their own turncoat security detail. She did not plan to check out that way.

At the entrance to the women's rest room, Marco and Leo continued to hulk. "Oh, for God's sake," said Angelina. "No one's lurking in the John. Go get us some beer and Cracker Jack and a hot dog. Three hot dogs." Marco nodded at Leo to go but seemed intent on staying around the women's rest room. "Go help Leo carry," she ordered.

Marco frowned but followed the other huge man around the corner toward the refreshment stand. Angelina stepped into the crowded rest room, did not see Joe Kurtz standing around in drag, and quickly stepped back out into the corridor.

Kurtz was leaning against the wall at the opening to a side hallway across the way. Angelina walked over to join him.

Kurtz kept his right hand in his peacoat pocket and nodded for her to walk down the narrow service corridor.

"Is that a pistol in your pocket," said Angelina, "or are you just happy to—"

"It's a pistol." Kurtz nodded for her to open the door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY at the end of the hall.

Angelina took a breath and went through the door, noticing that the latch had been taped Watergate-style. A metal stairway led down to a wildly cluttered underground filled with boilers and countless pipes and valves running to the rink above. Kurtz pointed down one of the narrow walkways through the machinery, and Angelina led the way. Halfway across the space, a black man looked through the window of his office, nodded at Kurtz, and went back to his business.

"A friend of yours?" asked Angelina.

"A friend of Ben Franklin's," said Kurtz. "Up that way." Another long, metal staircase led to a side door.

They emerged at the dark end of the parking lot behind the huge heating and air-conditioning blowers.

"Spread against the wall," said Kurtz. He had removed his.40-caliber semiauto and held it steady.

"Oh, for God's sake—" began Angelina.

Kurtz moved very, very quickly, spinning her around and shoving her toward the wall so fast that she had to raise her hands or plant her face in the brick. He kicked her legs farther apart, and she thanked the gods that she had changed out of her dress into wool slacks after visiting Gonzaga earlier in the day.

Once again, Kurtz's frisk was fast and effective and impersonal, if you can call having someone's hands moving across your breasts, buttocks, thighs, and crotch impersonal. He pulled the little.45 from its holster in the small of her back and slid it into his pocket while he pawed through her purse.

"I want that pistol back as well," she said.

"Why? Did you shoot your second husband with it?"

Angelina let out a breath. Comedians. They all thought they were comedians. "I know its maker," she said. "Fratelli Tanfoglio of the Gardone Tanfoglios." He ignored her and tossed her purse back to her as she turned toward him. "In Italy," she added uselessly.

"Let's go," said Kurtz.

"Go where?" asked Angelina, feeling a surge of alarm for the first time. "I was just supposed to tell you how to find the evidence that Emilio Gonzaga whacked your old partner. I don't have to go anywhere to—" She looked at Joe Kurtz's face and fell silent.

"Let's go," repeated Kurtz.

They walked through the dark and icy parking lot. "My Jaguar's parked on the other side," said Angelina. "In the VIP lot near—"

"We're not taking your car," said Kurtz.

"When Marco and Leo find me gone—with my car still there—they're going to go so totally apeshit that—"

"Shut up," said Kurtz.

Kurtz had the woman drive his Volvo. He sat with his back to the passenger door and the pistol propped on his left forearm. They were taking back streets through the snowy night, driving slowly because he had told her that if she drove over forty miles per hour, he would kill her. Kurtz had been in the driver's seat when someone was holding a gun on him, and he'd discovered that getting the car up to eighty-five or ninety miles per hour was a serious disincentive to the shooter.

"Tell me about Gonzaga and this guy," he said.

Angelina glanced at him. The yellow light from the sodium-vapor anticrime lamps was painting both their faces dead yellow. "You were in love with her, weren't you, Kurtz? Your partner. The woman Emilio ordered murdered. I'd thought it was just a Maltese Falcon sort of thing… you know, you can't let your partner get killed. That sort of macho shit."

"Tell me about Gonzaga and the guy we're going to see," said Kurtz.